Natural Mythology

[KanadaHye]

Re: Natural Mythology

Now where was I ... oh yeah

For now a phase III clinical trial must be completed, involving many patients in a double-blind placebo-controlled format to determine if the drug is safe and effective. If this is proven to the FDA’s satisfaction, the drug can then be marketed.

The practice of herbal medicine, however, is imprecise, unscientific, and sloppy. It is far more likely to cause harm than good. It is a multi-billion dollar industry, however, that has managed to evade FDA regulation, primarily because of political support due to the popular mystique of “natural” medicine.

Defenders of unscientific medicine have used this fact to their advantage, attempting to portray their battle for acceptance as a fight for freedom. The same defense was used earlier in this century when the creation of the FDA threatened to put Mom and Pop snake oil producers out of business. Fortunately for the American public, it did.

By the way, I never post anything that isn't related to the topic in one way or another. I read the entire article and although it may seem like a long winded run around to conclude that modern medicine is better than traditional the real story behind the article is enforcing the validity of the FDA (FOOD & DRUG Administration)

The videos I linked are just a couple examples of what the company Monsanto is responsible for. They are fully supported by the FDA, a supposed be all, end all for what should and should not be permitted to be consumed by citizens.

The same military men behind these companies that are responsible for the creation of biological weapons such as Agent Orange also lead the decisions on what is deemed acceptable for people to consume. They are in it for the profit, the same reason they start wars.

Remember Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld?

From 1977 to 1985 Rumsfeld served as Chief Executive Officer, President, and then Chairman of G. D. Searle & Company, a worldwide pharmaceutical company based in Skokie, Illinois. During his tenure at Searle, Rumsfeld led the company's financial turnaround, thereby earning awards as the Outstanding Chief Executive Officer in the Pharmaceutical Industry from the Wall Street Transcript (1980) and Financial World (1981). In 1985, Searle was sold to Monsanto Company. Rumsfeld is believed to have earned around $12 million from this sale.

From January 1997 until being sworn in as the 21st Secretary of Defense in January 2001, Rumsfeld served as Chairman of Gilead Sciences, Inc. Gilead Sciences is the developer of Tamiflu (Oseltamivir), which is used in the treatment of bird flu. As a result, Rumsfeld's holdings in the company grew significantly when avian flu became a subject of popular anxiety during his later term as Secretary of Defense. Following standard practice, Rumsfeld recused himself from any decisions involving Gilead, and he directed the Pentagon's General Counsel issue instructions outlining what he could and could not be involved in if there were an avian flu pandemic and the Pentagon had to respond.

Tamilflu is also being pushed onto anyone with swine flu. The FDA is just as much a snake oil producer than any ma and pa shop, the only difference is... it has the power of the government behind it.

[jgk3]

Re: Natural Mythology

Andre, your discussion about how the FDA approves certain things for purely business interest is not the issue here. It is true that there exists corruption in all levels of federal regulatory institutions. It is also true that American standards for food are considerably lower than that of Canada for example, where we ban the use of bovine growth hormones for cow's milk and carbon monoxide treatments on fish to make them more colourful, and also have our fruits and vegetables labeled with a number code that indicates whether it's certified organic, conventionally grown or genetically modified.

But the ultimate message is, it's better to have a standard, than no standard at all! What are you arguing for exactly, abolishing the FDA?

Siggie's article basically argues that the alternative that all these conspiracy theorists and special interest groups in the food industry fight for, is to protect their efforts from having to pass through scientific tests so that they can enter the market easier and rely on easy and less than honest advertising to entice the lay consumer to buy their products.

Tying Monsanto into the picture is not related to this particular issue, but rather, how a corporation is using a country's government in order to consolidate patents and a monopoly over food production. According to the special interest groups that are against Monsanto, they are bribing the FDA to not properly test their products regarding longterm adverse health effects. Well, every generation needs to defend certain social issues, and this might be one that needs to be verified by ours. However, most of the funding and organization for this criticism of Monsanto also has a monetary interest, namely, to secure a segment of the population to by organic, or alternative foods.

In my opinion, the best thing is to take heed towards the message of Siggie's article, namely, to be wary of the "natural" advertising label, but at the same time, acknowledge that the FDA (though it has an inherently important purpose) does not always perform as it should according to theory. Ultimately, it is up to the consumer to make decisions in the marketplace, we vote with our dollars for products that we trust. If we don't trust what is available in store, then it is up to us to further our research and increase our knowledge about things, and not to become fearmongers and seek partisanship at the expense of actual possibility of having dialogue with their fellow citizens who don't do things their way.

[KanadaHye]

Re: Natural Mythology

Andre, your discussion about how the FDA approves certain things for purely business interest is not the issue here. It is true that there exists corruption in all levels of federal regulatory institutions. It is also true that American standards for food are considerably lower than that of Canada for example, where we ban the use of bovine growth hormones for cow's milk and carbon monoxide treatments on fish to make them more colourful, and also have our fruits and vegetables labeled with a number code that indicates whether it's certified organic, conventionally grown or genetically modified.

But the ultimate message is, it's better to have a standard, than no standard at all! What are you arguing for exactly, abolishing the FDA?

Siggie's article basically argues that the alternative that all these conspiracy theorists and special interest groups in the food industry fight for, is to protect their efforts from having to pass through scientific tests so that they can enter the market easier and rely on easy and less than honest advertising to entice the lay consumer to buy their products.

Tying Monsanto into the picture is not related to this particular issue, but rather, how a corporation is using a country's government in order to consolidate patents and a monopoly over food production. According to the special interest groups that are against Monsanto, they are bribing the FDA to not properly test their products regarding longterm adverse health effects. Well, every generation needs to defend certain social issues, and this might be one that needs to be verified by ours. However, most of the funding and organization for this criticism of Monsanto also has a monetary interest, namely, to secure a segment of the population to by organic, or alternative foods.

In my opinion, the best thing is to take heed towards the message of Siggie's article, namely, to be wary of the "natural" advertising label, but at the same time, acknowledge that the FDA (though it has an inherently important purpose) does not always perform as it should according to theory. Ultimately, it is up to the consumer to make decisions in the marketplace, we vote with our dollars for products that we trust. If we don't trust what is available in store, then it is up to us to further our research and increase our knowledge about things, and not to become fearmongers and seek partisanship at the expense of actual possibility of having dialogue with their fellow citizens who don't do things their way.

No, I'm suggesting that it is up to the individual to be aware of what they are putting into their bodies and not assume that just because something is regulated means that it's safe. The entire article argues on the premise that people didn't know what they were consuming when the mom and pop shops were around and the FDA is a much better way of regulating food and drugs when in fact, the corruption can be centralized instead of dispersed among a couple cases in some local communities.

Nearly every country has rejected Genetically Modified wheat... nobody wants to have anything to do with it but the powers that be are hold the gun to the farmers' heads so to speak.

"However, most of the funding and organization for this criticism of Monsanto also has a monetary interest, namely, to secure a segment of the population to by organic, or alternative foods."

Of course they have a reason to criticise Monsanto!

Look what they did in Iraq!

"A new law authorizing the introduction of genetically modified crops in Iraq threatens to destroy the country’s wheat heritage and diversity and ruin its indigenous agricultural practices, say critics of the law.

“Introducing transgenic wheat means replacing this diversity and leaving it to extinction,” warned Nagib Nassar, a professor of genetics at the Universidade de Brasilia. “It will be replaced by a monoculture with a very narrow genetic base. This is a problem. This will be a catastrophe.”

Order 81, issued in 2004 by Coalition Provisional Authority Administrator L. Paul Bremer, authorizes the introduction of GM crops and gives intellectual property rights to the developers of new GM seeds. The order makes it illegal for Iraqi farmers to reuse seed from any crops planted using a GM seed variety, and forces farmers who use GM varieties to buy new seed every year.

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) GRAIN and Focus on the Global South say Order 81 is intended to turn Iraqi farmers into cash crop producers. The NGOs fear that Iraq’s ancient agricultural practices will be lost as farmers are encouraged to replace their old seeds in favor of new, patented crop varieties requiring heavy doses of fertilizer and pesticide.

Since the US-led invasion, Iraq’s agricultural system has been stressed to the breaking
point. While 5 million acres of wheat were under cultivation in Iraq before the invasion,
only 1 million are being farmed today."

If they have no shame in doing this with wheat, would you trust the same system to regulate your DRUGS?

[jgk3]

Re: Natural Mythology

The countries that don't reject genetically modified grains include Bangladesh and India, for example, because the soil in their farms is full of arsenic pollution, at levels much higher than safe, and so, modifying the rice plants to limit the amount of arsenic they suck up from the soil actually saves peoples' lives.

After hearing out these cases, I no longer like to keep to the one sided dogma that GMO is evil and is something they force other people to accept with a gun, just for their own profits.

I also encourage you to provide more specification in your claims, especially when you say "nearly every country". Can you list the few that haven't? Likewise, I have my doubts about how "nearly every country" country has rejected genetically modified soya lecithin, or corn starch.

[KanadaHye]

Re: Natural Mythology

The countries that don't reject genetically modified grains include Bangladesh and India, for example, because the soil in their farms is full of arsenic pollution, at levels much higher than safe, and so, modifying the rice plants to limit the amount of arsenic they suck up from the soil actually saves peoples' lives.

After hearing out these cases, I no longer like to keep to the one sided dogma that GMO is evil and is something they force other people to accept with a gun, just for their own profits.

I also encourage you to provide more specification in your claims, especially when you say "nearly every country". Can you list the few that haven't? Likewise, I have my doubts about how "nearly every country" country has rejected genetically modified soya lecithin, or corn starch.

This information can be googled, but there is enough evidence to support that the majority of countries are rejecting specific GMO foods. Europe all together has repeatedly voted against the introduction of GM foods.

There are hundreds of sites with scientific support against GM foods.

"The biotech industry claims that the FDA has thoroughly evaluated GM foods and found them safe. This is untrue. Internal FDA documents made public from a lawsuit, reveal that agency scientists warned that GM foods might create toxins, allergies, nutritional problems, and new diseases that might be difficult to identify. Although they urged their superiors to require long-term tests on each GM variety prior to approval, the political appointees at the agency, including a former attorney for Monsanto, ignored the scientists. Official policy claims that the foods are no different and do NOT require safety testing. A manufacturer can introduce a GM food without even informing the government or consumers. A January 2001 report from an expert panel of the Royal Society of Canada said it was "scientifically unjustifiable" to presume that GM foods are safe. Likewise, a 2002 report by the UK's Royal Society said that genetic modification "could lead to unpredicted harmful changes in the nutritional state of foods," and recommended that potential health effects of GM foods be rigorously researched before being fed to pregnant or breast-feeding women, elderly people, those suffering from chronic disease, and babies.

How could the government approve dangerous foods? A close examination reveals that industry manipulation and political collusion-not sound science-was the driving force.

* Government employees who complained were harassed, stripped of responsibilities, or fired.

* Scientists were threatened. Evidence was stolen. Data was omitted or distorted. Some regulators even claimed they were offered bribes to approve a GM product.
There are only about two dozen published, peer-reviewed animal feeding studies on the health effects of GM foods.

* One study showed evidence of damage to the immune system and vital organs, and a potentially pre-cancerous condition.12-13 When the scientist tried to alert the public about these alarming discoveries, he lost his job and was silenced with threats of a lawsuit.

* Two other studies also showed evidence of a potentially pre-cancerous condition. The other seven studies, which were superficial in their design, were not designed to identify these details.

* In an unpublished study, laboratory rats fed a GM crop developed stomach lesions and seven of the forty died within two weeks. The crop was approved without further tests."


http://www.responsibletechnology.org...oods/index.cfm

[jgk3]

Re: Natural Mythology

I remember trolling about these same things, but ultimately stopped when I went to forums were actual scientists converse on a variety of issues and asked me if I actually had read the scientific literature of the tests conducted on GMOs, as some of them had and nonetheless felt that the tests were legit and did not think it harmful for GMOs to be on the market.

In short, the hundreds of websites you can give about how treacherous our governments and corporations are, appeal to the lay person, who will never read and likely will never try to understand the actual scientific literature. Therefore, this crowd will ALWAYS be at odds with the scientific community, in other words, people who do their homework before getting mad at something.

I don't have a knowledge of organic chemistry, don't understand genetics beyond common knowledge things, I don't like to spend time reading 100s of pages at a time of scientific literature, and yet, there I was, joining the bandwagon of a bunch of angry lay persons who think talking to people "too deep" into the science is a waste of time.

All this crowd is good at doing is copy pasting isolated, summarized claims from not very well known experiments, sowing enough of them up in such a sequence as too shock any reader who falls for this, or is new to this. I'm fed up of being this way, I'd prefer to ask questions to the chemists, the biologists and physicists so that I can learn something new, so that I can have more confidence when evaluating the literature, the advertising and the shocking articles written about the foods I consume.

[KanadaHye]

Re: Natural Mythology

I remember trolling about these same things, but ultimately stopped when I went to forums were actual scientists converse on a variety of issues and asked me if I actually had read the scientific literature of the tests conducted on GMOs, as some of them had and nonetheless felt that the tests were legit and did not think it harmful for GMOs to be on the market.

In short, the hundreds of websites you can give about how treacherous our governments and corporations are, appeal to the lay person, who will never read and likely will never try to understand the actual scientific literature. Therefore, this crowd will ALWAYS be at odds with the scientific community, in other words, people who do their homework before getting mad at something.

I don't have a knowledge of organic chemistry, don't understand genetics beyond common knowledge things, I don't like to spend time reading 100s of pages at a time of scientific literature, and yet, there I was, joining the bandwagon of a bunch of angry lay persons who think talking to people "too deep" into the science is a waste of time.

All this crowd is good at doing is copy pasting isolated, summarized claims from not very well known experiments, sowing enough of them up in such a sequence as too shock any reader who falls for this, or is new to this. I'm fed up of being this way, I'd prefer to ask questions to the chemists, the biologists and physicists so that I can learn something new, so that I can have more confidence when evaluating the literature, the advertising and the shocking articles written about the foods I consume.

Those chemists, biologist and physicists aren't being paid to answer your questions Independent studies are very expensive and their only reason to do so would be to file a lawsuit against a company that's bigger than government.... I don't think that is likely to happen.

[KanadaHye]

Re: Natural Mythology

On August 8, 2005 Reuters reported that the Iraqi seed supply is at risk. Below is an excerpt from the Reuters report.

"... The war in Iraq destroyed the country's seed industry, putting the country's domestic food supply at risk, the United Nations food agency said on Monday as it appealed for aid to rebuild farming.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation said it needed $5.4 million to help the agriculture ministry rebuild a seed industry destroyed by the fighting and looting.

"Iraq had a relatively stable and functioning public-sector-controlled seed industry before the war in 2003. After the war, research and seed production facilities have greatly deteriorated," FAO said in a statement.

Iraq can now cover only 4 percent of its demand for quality seeds from its own resources....

If no immediate action is taken, serious seed shortages can be expected in the near future, threatening the country's food security...."

How convenient...perfect timing. What a break for U.S. corporations, such as Monsanto. First outlaw the seeds and then destroy them, or did it happen the other way around. Were the seeds destroyed first and then outlawed? This news story has thus far received very little attention.

The news story about the Iraqi Orders has been virtually ignored by the U.S. press. Order 81 is just one of 100 Orders that have been imposed on the people of Iraq by the U.S. government. These orders are sometimes referred to as the Bremmer Orders. No one in the U.S. or Iraq was ever allowed to cast a vote in the ballot box for any of these Orders. This says a lot about the kind of democracy that the U.S. is imposing on the people of Iraq.

The important information about Iraqi Order 81 is that it was designed to have a major impact on the way farming is done in Iraq. This order prohibits Iraqi farmers from using the methods of agriculture that they have used for centuries. The practice of saving seeds from one year to the next is now illegal in Iraq. Order 81 wages war on Iraqi farmers. They have lost the freedom to choose their own methods of agriculture. The legalese in which the orders are written creates confusion about their exact meaning, but the desired result is obvious. Order 81 prohibits the farmers from using their own seeds, on their own farms, to grow their own crops.

Prior to the U.S. invasion, agriculture in Iraq was flourishing. The Fertile Crescent had developed a system of farming that was the envy of the world. Now, under Occupation, centuries of progress have been destroyed, almost overnight.

The food chain has been under worldwide assault by U.S. corporations for some time now. The Master Race of corporations has seized control of the very essence of life itself. We are now in the age of Genetically Modified Doomsday Seeds. The USDA was complicit in the development of these bastard seeds.

This is not a new phenomenon. It has been a gradual takeover. Remember Percy Schmeiser, the Canadian farmer, who was sued by Monsanto? Not enough people stood up for Percey, so then they came for other farmers. In fact, Monsanto has sued so many farmers that a national hotline (1-888-FARMHLP) has now been set up to assist them.

Is it possible that Iraqi farmers think back fondly to the good old days before the Occupation and before Order 81? Even Saddam Hussein allowed them to save seeds for the next year’s crop. Is the Pentagon a worse master than Saddam?

Farmers and consumers around the world need to stand in solidarity with the farmers and consumers in Iraq. There is no one who contributes more to society than the farmer. At the top of that hierarchy is the organic farmer. Doctors, lawyers, plumbers, and factory workers make important contributions to society, but none would survive without the farmer.

Why did the U.S. destroy the seeds? Did the Pentagon mistake the seeds for bombs and WMD's? Think of that as a headline for tomorrow's paper, "CIA confuses pomegranate seeds with WMD's." This sounds like a comedy "headline" from the Leno show. If the survival of thousands of people was not an issue, we could all laugh at the absurdity of this saga. The propagandists will try to convince the world that the destruction of the Iraqi seeds was just a mistake, an accident of war...collateral damage. Iraqi Order 81 proves otherwise. Iraqi Order 81 is proof that the U.S. had a strategic plan which would insure that U.S. corporations would not have to compete with the Iraqi farmers. U.S. corporations don't like competition. The idea of free markets is just a myth. The Predatory Capitalism of the U.S. could not survive without the threat of the military behind it.

Can it be denied that U.S. corporations are seeking total control of the food supply of the planet? After all of the seeds that are owned by farmers are destroyed, it will be necessary for the farmers to purchase them. Those most likely to profiteer are U.S. seed companies. General Smedley Butler was right. War is still a racket.

Imagine what would happen if there was a successful worldwide movement of resistance, an international Save the Seed Campaign. A source in Australia reports that a seed bank has been set up there. Every other nation must heed this warning and set up secure seed banks. It is not known what the U.S. government will do to eliminate this competition to U.S. seed corporations. Will the countries that institute seed banks be on a Pentagon hit list? Another possibility will be a covert CIA operation.

The U.S. policy of using food as a weapon of war shows a depraved, mind numbing level of cruelty. This has been referred to as the Ultimate War Crime. It is one of the most serious Crimes Against Humanity of our generation.

There is a hidden tragedy in this seed destruction policy of the U.S. The U.S. has not only endangered the entire population of Iraq but it has also shot each of its own citizens in the foot. Maybe it has rendered a fatal shot to our children and future generations. No one will ever know if any of the seeds, that have been destroyed during our war and occupation, would have produced plants that could have been used to prevent or cure disease. The seeds that have been lost can never be replaced.

Someday, in the distant future, maybe we will become more civilized. Then we will have monuments to honor farmers. We will have parades in celebration of farm workers. The era of glorification of war will just be a fading memory.

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=12547

[KanadaHye]

Re: Natural Mythology

Think of it as "castrating every man" on the planet and the only way women can become impregnated is by buying sperm from the sperm bank.

Natural or Un-Natural?

Just incase you think this is all propaganda and B.S.....

http://www.cpa-iraq.org/regulations/#Orders