(Natural News) The dumbing down of civilization has been codified in a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. A pair of researchers from Norway found that average IQ levels are dropping precipitously, and that with each new generation, people in general are becoming progressively less intelligent.
After evaluating the test scores of more than 730,000 young men, the Norwegian duo learned that IQ levels are dropping by about seven points per generation. These findings mirror those uncovered by a separate by related study out of Great Britain, which revealed that IQ levels have been dropping by between 2.5 – 4.3 points per decade ever since the end of World War II.
This is a sharp contrast to the state of human intelligence during the first half of the Twentieth century, when average IQ scores were rising at a steady rate. So what might be the cause of this sudden change where we’re seeing people becoming dumber rather than smarter?
Fluoride chemicals directly linked to lowered IQ
Perhaps the more accurate question here is what are the causes, plural, of this steady IQ drop in the modern population? Research out of Harvard University from several years back identified one prominent culprit: artificial water fluoridation.
Based on the Ivy League analysis, children who drink fluoridated water have “significantly lower” IQ levels than children who consume clean, non-fluoridated water.
This was confirmed by Dr. William Hirzy, a former scientist at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), who conducted his own risk assessment along with a team of researchers from New Zealand. In their published paper entitled, Developmental neurotoxicity of fluoride: A quantitative risk analysis towards establishing a safe daily dose of fluoride for children, the team found that fluoride exposure is directly correlated to low IQ.
“The significance of this peer-reviewed risk analysis is that it indicates there may be no actual safe level of exposure to fluoride,” stated Dr. Hirzy following the paper’s publishing. “Fluoride may be similar to lead and mercury in having no threshold below which exposures may be considered safe.”
Prenatal exposure to two organophosphate pesticides in particular, chlorpyrifos and diazinon, were found in the study to profoundly harm young children, negatively impacting their ability to speak and understand words, engage in perceptual reasoning, and remember and process information.
Lead, which can leach out of old water piping as a result of fluoride corrosion, is another IQ destroyer. The EPA estimates that some 1.7 million children living in the United States, including 900,000 under the age of six, are currently suffering from lead poisoning.
The health damage caused by fluoride exposure has also been shown to persist into adulthood. Such damage includes not only lowered IQ, but also chronic headaches, poor memory, inability to concentrate, irritability, insomnia, motor skill dysfunction, aberrant behavior, and trouble speaking and seeing things clearly.
And let’s not forget mercury poisoning, a major cause of “brain drain.” Mercury, which is still added to many childhood vaccines such as multi-dose vial flu shots, destroys cells, neurotransmitters, and other “chemical messengers” inside the brain that are associated with cognitive function, as well as IQ.
For more news about the brain dangers of fluoride exposure, be sure to check out FluorideAlert.org.
You can also learn more about the mass chemical assault against humanity by visiting ChemicalViolence.news.
It’s one of the most popular soft drinks in the world, but it seems that Diet Coke may not be as safe as we think.
A new study has revealed that artificial sweeteners found in the drink are toxic to digestive gut microbes.
Researchers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev found that six artificial sweeteners – aspartame, sucralose, saccharine, neotame, advantame, and acesulfame potassium-k – are toxic to bacteria found in the digestive system.
It’s not news that tattoos are hitting the mainstream, but a new study reported in the journal Scientific Reports reveals that tattoo inks’ nanoparticles are adding color to other parts of your body.
As the tattooed population knows all too well, the process of tattooing consists of placing insoluble deposits of pigmented ink just below the epidermis, or outermost layer of skin. As they also know, your body does pretty much anything it can to get that ink out – which is why new tattoos excrete ink, plasma, and lymphatic fluid through the epidermis while healing.
But what ink is left in the body gets additionally filtered through the lymphatic system. The ink-lymph mixture is carried through the lymph nodes, whose job it is to process and filter harmful substances from the body.
None of this is really news – tattooed individuals have displayed pigmented lymph nodes for decades.
But what is it, exactly, that the lymph nodes are filtering out?
Working out the Inks
There are a wide variety of tattoo ink formulas, with a big variance in composition based on the ink’s color. Black tattoos are frequently made of iron oxides and carbon, while colored inks can contain nickel, chromium, manganese or cobalt.
From the study: An example of green ink particles that leached into a lymph node.
According to the study, the two most common ink ingredients are carbon black and titanium dioxide, the latter as a white shade commonly used for mixing.
And just how big are the particles in those compounds? On average, particles range in size from as large as 100 nanometers to as small as 1 micrometer
To discover what particles end up in the lymph nodes of tattooed individuals, researchers focused on the nodes of four tattooed cadavers and one non-tattooed control. The study revealed tattoo particle pigmentation in two out of the four tattooed donors – specifically, blue and green pigments.
Think Before You Ink
The study found that it was the smaller nanoparticles of ink that were transported to the lymph nodes, but researchers couldn’t establish a size limit that would prevent the ink’s transport. Researchers also showed that ink deposits in them results in a chronic enlargement of the exposed nodes.
Now that the presence of these nano-scale metals and oxides in the lymph nodes of tattooed individuals is proven, figuring out exactly what that means is the next step.
Maybe next time you head to the tattoo parlor for a zap, ask your artist whether their tattoo ink contains macro- or nano-scale oxide particles-or maybe not.
(Natural News) In just a few short days, Revolution for Truth will be holding a national call-in day for vaccine safety and reform, which aims to get as many people as possible to contact both Congress and President Trump to urge support for the establishment of an independent vaccine safety commission. This call-in day is taking place on March 30, though many people don’t know about it thanks to a media blackout by mainstream news outlets like The Washington Post and The New York Times, which are completely ignoring it.
On the heels of the release of the groundbreaking documentary film Vaxxed, which deals with vaccine safety head-on, Revolution for Truth, in conjunction with the World Mercury Project, is spearheading this awareness effort on behalf of children everywhere. Unlike WaPo and the NYT, these advocacy groups want to protect children against dangerous vaccine toxins like mercury, a neurotoxic heavy metal that’s still added to the influenza shot and other vaccines as a preservative. (RELATED: Watch as vaccine pushers are challenged to DRINK the very mercury they say is safe to inject into children.)
Coinciding with this call-in event is a live march on Washington, D.C., which will feature speakers such as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Barbara Loe Fisher, Dr. Bain Hooker, Del Bigtree, Minister Tony Muhammad, Dr. Judy Mikovits, Zen Honeycutt, and many others with expertise in vaccine science. A complete lineup of the speakers to be featured at the rally, as well as full schedule of events, is available here.
For those who cannot attend the rally in person but who would like to participate in the call-in day event, a full announcement via Catherine J. Frompovich from Activist Post contains all the instructions on what to do. Natural News‘ Mike Adams has also published information on how to contact the President and Congress, and what to say, here.
WaPo writer waves magic wand, declares vaccines are safe, demands $100k reward from World Mercury Project
Just to be clear, the purpose of both the call-in day and the march on Washington is to draw attention to the known dangers associated with vaccines that many health officials are ignoring. It’s not an “anti-vaccine” demonstration, per se, but rather an anti-deception campaign that seeks to break the standard of corruption between the vaccine industry and America’s regulatory bodies that for too long have allowed dangerous vaccines to be injected into children.
The goal is simply to have an independent scientific body take a look at the science surrounding vaccines, both positive and negative, in order to come up with an assessment as to whether or not current policies reflect what’s best for the public. If this ends up indicting much or all of the vaccine industry as it currently functions, then so be it. But this is hardly some crusade to destroy the concept of immunization at all costs, as some have falsely claimed.
Even so, the mainstream media has not only ignored the effort in most cases, but in some even attacked it. WaPo, for instance, published a propaganda piece recently demanding the $100,000 reward jointly offered by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and actor Robert De Niro for anyone who can procure even a single study proving that vaccines are safe for children and pregnant women.
No such study exists, it turns out, but WaPo writer Daniel Summers makes the declaration in his article that the science has already been settled on the subject, and that he knows this because he’s a doctor who went through medical school. He also points to claims by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that vaccines are safe and effective as further “evidence” that vaccine safety is undeniable gospel truth.
What these failing news outlets are doing, in essence, is pushing lies and censoring the truth, all the while claiming that they’re doing it for the children. In truth, they’re pushing fake science to prop up the vaccine industry, which in effect is poisoning children for profit. It’s amoral, and it’s exactly why the Revolution for Truth is doing what it’s doing.
Pesticides have been heavily scrutinized for years by activists around the world. And now, it seems that the rest of the world is finally waking up. A recent report by the United Nations (UN) has put the spotlight on pesticides — but not in a way that you might expect.
The report has garnered a substantial amount of attention because the UN has actually acknowledged the fact that pesticides can and do harm innocent people. In fact, the UN’s report accuses global pesticide manufacturers of “systematic denial of harms” and indicates that some 200,000 people die each year from acute pesticide poisoning.
As Toxics Action Center explains, pesticides are one of the few chemicals deliberately introduced into the environment with the explicit intent of killing other living things. Whether it’s a can of bug spray for that wasp’s nest on your deck, or tractors spraying farmland, the goal is the same: To kill bugs or other pests like weeds. And no matter how you look at it, if it can kill a bug or a plant, there’s a good chance that it can harm humans too.
Agrochemical companies that create and produce pesticides have long maintained that their products are essential to addressing the global hunger crisis. But is that really true? Experts from the UN certainly seem to disagree with the industry’s sentiments.
Hilal Elver, the UN’s special rapporteur on the right to food, has stated that this widely publicized belief about pesticides is truly nothing more than hot air. “It’s a myth,” Elver commented. She went on to say, “Using more pesticides is nothing to do with getting rid of hunger. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), we are able to feed 9 billion people today. Production is definitely increasing, but the problem is poverty, inequality and distribution.”
Elver also noted that the majority of pesticides are used on commodity crops and not crops that are needed to feed the world’s hungry people. Soy crops and crops used for palm oil are two examples of these commodity crops that rely on pesticides. Elver says that pesticide makers do not deal with world hunger at all, but rather large-scale agricultural efforts.
In the report, Elver and co-author Baskut Tuncak, the UN’s special rapporteur on toxins, detail the shortcomings of widespread pesticide use.
“Reliance on hazardous pesticides is a short-term solution that undermines the rights to adequate food and health for present and future generations,” the report proclaims.
Tuncak also notes that while science continues to demonstrate that there are adverse effects associated with pesticides, proving a definitive link between specific human diseases or environmental damage and pesticide use has been challenging. This obstacle has been made nearly insurmountable by the systemic denial promoted by the agrochemical industry. Tuncak states that the industry has used aggressive and unethical marketing tactics to keep the harms of pesticides under wraps and out of the public eye.
“The power of the corporations over governments and over the scientific community is extremely important. If you want to deal with pesticides, you have to deal with the companies – that is why [we use] these harsh words. They will say, of course, it is not true, but also out there is the testimony of the people,” Elver stated.
Jay Feldman, the executive director of Beyond Pesticides, a non-profit environmental organization, says that the $43 billion organic industry is more than enough proof that you don’t need pesticides to feed people — and it’s certainly hard to disagree with him. Experts across the world have expressly stated that there are more sustainable farming methods out there that would help fight global hunger without the added side effect of poisoning people. The UN report, for example, points to natural methods of pest suppression and the use of crop rotation to boost sustainability and reduce the toxic burden of pesticide use.
In case you haven’t heard, there’s an opioid crisis in America.
With majorities of Americans now clearly supportive of marijuana legalization, opioids, a class of drugs used for thousands of years to treat pain and other ailments, have become the latest target of drug warriors and do-gooders alike.
“Our nation is in the throes of a heroin and opioid epidemic,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Wednesday. “Overdose deaths more than tripled between 2010 and 2014. According to the CDC, about 140 Americans on average now die from a drug overdose each day. That means every three weeks, we are losing as many American lives to drug overdoses as we lost in the 9/11 attacks.”
Indeed, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 33,000 Americans lost their lives in 2015 due to opioid-related overdoses, including 12,989 deaths associated specifically with heroin.
Candidate Donald Trump suggested, of course, a border wall would help solve the problem, while President Trump has complained America is a “drug-infested” country where “drugs are becoming cheaper than candy bars.”
On the other side of the aisle, Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia has gone so far as to call for a new war on drugs to combat apparent problem of opioid use, abuse and overdoses.
With so many Americans dying, it’s important to clarify a few things about opioids, the folly of knee-jerk government reaction and the need for harm reduction.
The exaggerated danger of opioids
Despite their reputation, opioids are neither especially addictive nor dangerous on their own.
Research has consistently shown that few individuals who are prescribed opioids ever actually develop a problem with them. A 2016 study by Castlight Health, Inc. suggested only about 4.5 percent of individuals who receive opioid prescriptions are abusers. A 2010 Cochrane review of 26 studies found reports of opioid addiction in only 0.27 percent of patients.
Meanwhile, guidelines issued by the CDC in 2016 for prescribing opioids for chonic pain cited another study which followed chronic pain patients who received opioid prescriptions for 13 years. The study found that “one in 550 patients died from opioid-related overdose” over the 13 years, which upon reflection is a remarkably low rate considering the demographic involved.
As for the dangerousness of opioids, one variable often left out in discussions of opioid overdose is the fact that opioid overdoses tend to involve multiple drugs.
A 2014 report from the CDC based on nationwide emergency room data noted that alcohol was involved in 22.1 percent of deaths related to opioid pain relievers, but conceded the figure could be higher, given wide varieties in how states and localities collect and report toxicology data.
Other, more focused studies have found incredibly high rates of drug mixing at play in opioid overdoses. A 2015 paper looking into opioid overdoses in San Francisco from 2010-2012 found that 74.9 percent of opioid overdose deaths involved other drugs, including cocaine (35.3 percent), benzodiazepines (27.5 percent) and alcohol (19.6 percent). Likewise, data from the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene noted that “nearly all (97 percent) overdose deaths involved more than one substance.”
With respect to heroin specifically, as a 2003 article published in the Journal of Urban Health explained, “The overwhelming majority of overdoses, both fatal and nonfatal, involved the concomitant consumption of heroin with other drugs. The extensiveness of polydrug use among ‘heroin’ over-doses suggests that ‘polydrug toxicity’ is a better description of the toxicology of overdose.”
Rarely do mainstream media reports of the opioid crisis mention the prevalence of polydrug toxicity – except for the occasional surge in excitement over fentanyl, a highly potent opioid which unscrupulous drug dealers sometimes put into heroin to strengthen its effects. (Naturally, the mixture of fentanyl with heroin is more an unintended consequence of prohibitionist drug policies and a resistance to harm reduction approaches than anything else.)
Of course, it is much more politically lucrative to exaggerate the risk and danger of opioids than to acknowledge the relatively low risk of addiction and the likelihood that harm reduction efforts (like warnings against mixing opioids with other drugs) might save lives.
Government policies turned people to heroin
As the prescription and use of opioids surged in the first decade of the 2000s, so too did the number of people seeking addiction treatment and experiencing overdoses. Rather than take a measured approach, government officials instead pursued policies aimed at restricting access to prescription painkillers, criminalizing and arresting doctors and patients in the process.
The continued rise in overdose deaths only indicates these approaches haven’t worked to curtail abuse or death from opioid use and misuse.
Instead, individuals who previously used pharmaceutical opioids have increasingly been pushed towards heroin use, with heroin use in the United States the highest its been in 20 years. According to the Drug Policy Alliance, “Ninety-four percent of opioid-addicted individuals who switched from prescription opioids to heroin reported doing so because prescription opioids ‘were far more expensive and harder to obtain.’”
Of course, for people who have switched from pharmaceuticals to heroin due to lack of access to legal pain medication, or those who abuse either pharmaceuticals or heroin for whatever reason, government policy has only made them less safe.
And there’s plenty of reason to believe government policies have only made opioid and heroin use less safe than before. The increased number of deaths reported in 2016 happened despite decreases in the number of opioid prescriptions and the number of heroin users.
Harm reduction
Despite the well-documented role of polydrug use opioid overdoses, it’s unlikely we’ll see proclamations from Jeff Sessions or Trump or any other prominent politicians warning people to engage in harm reduction when using opioids by foregoing alcohol, benzodiazepines or any other contraindicated drug that could heighten the risk of harm or death from opioid use.
Other ideas include getting allowing individuals with chronic pain to access the medication they need without criminalizing their ailment or threatening their doctors with prosecution. Or allowing the operation of safe injection sites and expanding access to medication-assisted treatment and access to syringe exchange programs and naloxone, which can effectively reverse opioid overdoses.
Of course, a border wall won’t solve the problems associated with opioid use and abuse, nor will an expansion or perpetuation of prohibitionist policies. Yet, Trump’s budget proposal includes $175 million in increased expenditures for the Department of Justice “to target the worst of the worst criminal organizations and drug traffickers in order to address violent crime, gun-related deaths, and the opioid epidemic.” It also, of course, includes calls for billions of dollars for his beloved wall. Furthermore, Jeff Sessions’ public proclamations have overemphasized the role of enforcement and drug abuse prevention ideas from the ’80s and ’90s.
Alas, the nation’s massive anti-drug bureaucracies and agencies need some way to stay afloat, even though their entire mission is predicated on the fraudulent idea that drug prohibition and enforcement will keep Americans safe and drug-free. Anti-drug crusades predicated on saving people from themselves or sinister chemicals may be dressed up in good intentions, but as history has shown, they are little more than ruses to further expand government intervention in our lives and bloat the budgets of government agencies.
Sal Rodriguez is a contributing writer at Solitary Watch. He writes frequently on criminal justice reform and can be reached at:sal.solitary@gmail.com
(NaturalNews) Even though the federal government’s health care bureaucracy, Big Pharma and the vaccine industry refuse to admit it, yet another study has linked mercury (still found in some vaccines) with autism.
As reported in EcoWatch by Robert Kennedy, Jr., a pair of international research teams, including Egyptian scientists have validated the link between autism and mercury. In an article published in the journalMetabolic Brain Disease, a team of nine research scientists from top Egyptian universities and academic medical institutions have now confirmed the causal role of mercury as a leading cause of autism.
The researchers determined the degree of mercury poisoning in children by analyzing the excretion in urine of organic elements called porphyrins. These are biomarkers that indicate the toxicity level of mercury, Kennedy wrote.
In addition, the researchers measured levels of mercury and lead in the blood.
‘Half-dozen’ U.S. studies have also shown a link
The teams found a substantial relationship between autism and mercury toxicity, as well as a direct correlation between the levels of mercury toxicity and the presence and severity of autism symptoms.
Kennedy noted further:
The scientists studied 100 children; 40 with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), 40 healthy individuals and 20 healthy siblings of ASD children. The results showed that the children with ASD had significantly higher mercury levels than healthy children and healthy siblings. Children with the highest mercury levels had the most severe autism symptoms.
He went on to write that at least a half-dozen U.S. studies have also found a link between the development of autism and exposure to mercury, as determined by measuring porphyrins in urine. The first study, which was completed in 2012, found a correlation between the presence of specific urinary porphyrins linked to mercury toxicity and autism. That study affirmed an earlier one in 2011 that determined specific porphyrins associated with mercury toxicity were much higher in ASD kids when compared to non-autistic controls, Kennedy noted.
Further, a study in 2010 also found “disordered porphyrin metabolism” in autistic children that was not found in non-autistic kids, once more suggesting a higher mercury toxicity that is associated with autism and ASD – autism spectrum disorder.
A second study, which was also published in Metabolic Brain Disease (June 2016), an international team consisting of researchers and physicians from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Norway and Chile used a different set of measurements to identify a direct link between levels of mercury in the body and the diagnosis of autism.
The team measured levels of neurokinin A and B—these are pro-inflammatory neuro peptides that help identify mercury in blood—in 84 children with ASD, along with 84 controls. Researchers found a positive relationship between the severity of autism symptoms and the levels of mercury in the blood.
Kennedy explained that many mothers of children in the first Egyptian study had several dental amalgams which some believe likely helped create elevated levels of mercury in their kids. But that study did not analyze any potential link between higher incidences of autism and thimerosal, a vaccine preservative, which is 50 percent ethyl mercury by weight. But other studies have noted that thimerosal is 50 times more toxic to human tissue than the methylmercury in amalgams and fish, according to this 2012 study, and twice as prevalent, at a minimum, in the brain.
Even the FDA has admitted the link
It should be noted again that these two studies are only the latest in a growing body of research that link autism and mercury. In fact, as Natural News founder and editor Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, reported in March, the Food and Drug Administration’s own website admits openly that vaccines lead to autism.
Adams noted that the document—which is a really a product insert for the Tripedia vaccine—openly admits to the vaccine being linked to “idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura, SIDS, anaphylactic reaction, cellulitis, autism, convulsion/grand mal convulsion, encephalopathy, hypotonia, neuropathy, somnolence and apnea.”
Adams also produced a video explaining his findings, here.
(Era of Wisdom) Earlier this year, we reported on our observed escalation of geoengineering or chemtrail spraying in California, South Carolina, and all over the US. At this time, we described this smell as powdery, starchy, kind of ashy and dull. We reported on how Google searches for “chemtrails” skyrocketed after this easily observed escalation of activity. We reported on Sacramento rain tests revealing 100x the reporting limit of aluminum, paralleling geoengineering patents.
Now, there has been another increase of activity, and it has a distinctly different smell: it’s sharper. It smells like static electricity, like a hospital, metallic, and it seems to cause flu-like symptoms worse than the previously described material.
In a previous Era of Wisdom video, we examined the possibility of two different types of “chemtrails”: those for weather modification, geoengineering, as summarized with heaps of evidence in Peter A. Kirby’s book “Chemtrails Exposed.”
Then, there is the possibility of biological agents and other chemicals being hidden in the mix, like a second layer of obfuscated purpose. We examined a long history of biological warfare experiments on US citizens, all proven facts, to illustrate the real probability of being sprayed with biological materials now.
With the endless accounts of flu-like symptoms after being exposed to this, and my own repeated firsthand observation, when Russ Tanner of Global Skywatch made this video describing the exact same new smell I had observed, I knew it was time to make this video.
We would advise everyone to keep their windows shut during heavy spraying, and closely examine what you smell on a daily basis: what odors you may notice in the air after heavy spraying. If you smell it in your house, like it’s building up and not going away, that’s exactly what I experienced. Discipline with not keeping the windows open helps a lot.
I truly don’t understand how people can’t detect it, because I can smell this before I even look out the window to know spraying is going on. These are some of the most distinct, sharp odors I have ever smelled, yet some people seem complete unable to detect them.
Please share this with as many people as possible.
Up to 50 percent of global population is infected by the ‘cat parasite’ Toxoplasma gondii, and in some areas, the infection rate is as high as 95 percent. Unless you get tested, there’s no way of knowing that you’re infected, but it’s been associated with a number of mental disorders, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
Yep, Toxoplasma is everywhere, and while the jury is still out on how much it actually messes with our minds, scientists have finally figured out why it’s so good at dodging our body’s immune response.
For the uninitiated, Toxoplasma is a cat-borne parasite that causes Toxoplasmosis – a disease that is considered ‘asymptomatic’ in most healthy people, but can lead to a range of other disorders in those with compromised immune systems, such as pregnant women and the elderly.
While most doctors wouldn’t recommend you bother testing for Toxoplasma unless you’re at risk of getting sick from it, studies have turned up curious links between it and certain host behaviours.
At the forefront of this research is Jaroslav Flegr, an evolutionary biologist at Charles University in the Czech Republic, who once asserted that, “Toxoplasma might even kill as many people as malaria, or at least a million people a year,” because of how it appears to change our response to dangerous situations.
It’s been hypothesised that the parasite messes with rodent brains to help it complete its life cycle, and for years now, scientists have been investigating if something similar is occurring in its human hosts.
“There is a fascinating association between Toxoplasma infection and psychiatric diseases including schizophrenia and bipolar disorder,” says parasite researcher Chris Tonkin from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Australia.
But there’s one thing about Toxoplasma that’s far from ambiguous – its ability to manipulate our immune response.
The fact that in some areas of the world, almost the entire local population is infected shows just how successful this parasite is, and its success lies in its ability to strike a delicate balance with our immune system.
Toxoplasma has managed to keep the body’s immune response to it low enough to ensure that it can still thrive in its human hosts, but high enough that those who are infected can live a healthy life as one giant parasite incubator.
And now scientists have figured out how.
“The parasite rewires the host’s inflammatory response,” says Matthew Bowler from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory. “It completely subverts the chain reaction that would normally trigger our body’s defences.”
Under normal circumstances, when cells in your body detect a parasite, a series of molecular signals will activate a protein called p38α, prompting it to move into the cells’ nuclei. Here, it activates the genes that trigger an inflammatory response to eliminate the pathogen.
Interestingly, rather than simply blocking those signals, Toxoplasma gets its way by doing the exact opposite: Bowler and his team found that the parasite actually kickstarts the human inflammatory response, and proceeds to manipulate it according to its own needs.
Something is causing first responders and some of the people they interact with to become disoriented and hallucinate – though no good explanation is apparent.
Maybe MK Ultra? Maybe new experimental drugs? Maybe a secret government test on the general population?
Your guess is as good as mine, but this story is downright weird.
Something is causing first responders and some of the people they interact with to become disoriented and hallucinate – though no good explanation is apparent.
This week, an emergency room in the Pacific Northwest was briefly quarantined after five people—including two police officers and a hospital worker—experienced mysterious hallucinations from an unidentified illness believed to be spread by touch.
According to Oregon Live, the enigmatic incident began early Wednesday morning when a 54-year-old caregiver in North Bend, Oregon, called police to report seven or eight people “trying to take the roof off her vehicle.” Police say they found nothing, but after the caregiver reported the unseen vandals a second time, sheriff’s deputies escorted her to a nearby hospital for suspected hallucinations.
Shortly afterward, however, one of the deputies began experiencing similar symptoms and returned to the hospital. Soon after that, the other deputy, a hospital worker and the caregiver’s 78-year-old patient also began hallucinating and were hospitalized.
Initially, authorities tried to explain it away by suggesting that the elderly woman was using or wearing fentanyl patches, which sometimes have a side effect of hallucinations. But those reports proved to be incorrect, as it fails to explain how those who started hallucinating would have come into contact with, let alone spread the issue. The Oregonian reported this, but their readers picked apart the weak case, which does little to explain the phenomenon:
A haz-mat team checked the house but found nothing suspicious. They figure it was the fentanyl, a powerful narcotic.
The 78-year-old woman uses fentanyl patches. Though all of the patches were accounted for, the deputies figured they still ended up being affected anyway, Downing said.
“They think they got exposed from handling and being in the same room with everybody,” he said.
But whatever is causing hallucinations may have been spread through personal contact – though it isn’t exactly clear what the culprit may be.
Then again, one has to wonder if we are all being subjected to experimentation… perhaps to see who is affected, and how many people panic.
Exposure to electromagnetic energy has been known to cause hallucinations that are otherwise unexplainable, but that would affect only those in path of the frequency, not those who had hand-to-hand contact.
As Melissa Dykes explains, the extremely bizarre and unexplainable can be simulated and recreated in a lab using sophisticated electromagnetic technology on the brain:
Scientists Could Simulate Alien Abductions over 20 Years Ago
Here’s what they never told you about alleged alien abduction and UFO encounter experiences – the bizarre and surely unnerving experience can be induced by advanced use of stimulation of the brain and artificially tricking the neurons to fire in specific ways – using electromagnetic energy.
It is a little known topic that CIA-affiliated paranormal researchers like Dr. Michael Persinger have proven experimentally. His subjects – including one journalist reporting for the New Scientist back in the early 90s – reported sudden and intense emotions and even feelings of being grabbed, stretched beyond physical limitations and dragged up a wall! They were able to simulate the entire thing in a lab…
As for whatever happened in this case…
It’s just weird, and hopefully not something that will ever happen on a widespread basis.
A large portion of humanity has adopted a lifestyle that doesn’t really take health into consideration. The products we choose to surround ourselves with on a daily basis also have some very serious health concerns.
Last year, we published an article titled 10 things you need to throw away immediately for better health, the list included artificial sweeteners, air fresheners, electronic devices, commercial cleaning products and more.Below, Dr. Joseph Mercola has complied a list of 10 foods in the form of an infographic, many of which are banned in other countries, that every American should stop eating
A statement from his website sums it up best,
There is little doubt that in terms of quality, much of the food sold in the United States lags behind those sold in other nations. In fact, what you are eating now may ALREADY be banned in other countries because of harmful additives, growth promoters, genetically engineered ingredients, or other dangerous practices.
The overall level of health in the country is deteriorating, faring lower than other industrialized countries even in the face of greater healthcare spending. You can’t help but see a connection between these toxic foods and the rising rates of disease. from now on.
(NaturalNews) The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is praised for its philanthropy around the world, but much of the foundation’s good deeds are merely no-consent vaccine experiments carried out on the poor. Under the pretense of providing healthcare to third world countries, the Gates Foundation instead coerces tens of thousands of children to test out various vaccines for pharmaceutical companies.
Bill Gate’s massive wealth from selling computers is being redistributed to pharmaceutical research, as human rights-violating corporations such as Merck and GlaxoSmithKline test out new vaccines on multiple thousands of unsuspecting victims.
In India, the propaganda campaign is in full force, as the natives are instructed to get their “well-being” shots. The resulting health problems have been noticeable and devastating, raising questions about the sinister motives behind the Gates Foundation and their extraordinary vaccine push.
Young girls’ health rapidly deteriorated following Gates vaccine push
In 2009, the tribal children of the Khammam district in Andhra Pradesh were gathered together and told they would be receiving healthcare shots. Even though the Gates foundation has the wealth to give these tribes access to clean water, sanitation services, nutrition and low stress living conditions, they instead push for HPV vaccines and call them “well-being” shots. The shot these young girls received was an HPV vaccine manufactured by Merck and administered by the state’s health department. The young girls, aged 9–15, were instructed to line up for three doses of the vaccine. As the months rolled on, the health of the 16,000 girls rapidly deteriorated. Five of the girls died shortly thereafter.
In Vadodara, Gujarat, another 14,000 or more tribal children were put to the test. This time the Gates Foundation carried out their humanitarian healthcare mission by providing the HPV vaccine called Cervarix, made by Glaxo SmithKline.
Giving no informed consent, the Gates Foundation coerced the tribal people on the belief that the shots were beneficial and necessary. However, when virus material, heavy metals and other preservatives foreign to the body are injected into young, developing women, drastic changes are bound to occur in their bodies. Having no idea that they were being signed up for vaccine trials, thousands of young girls were injected with these experimental vaccines purported to prevent cervical cancer.
Instead of seeing their health improve, the tribes reported numerous, bizarre adverse events in the days, weeks and months following vaccination. Young girls in India lost weight, appetite and stamina. 16-year-old Aman Dhawan had no idea he was even signed up for the vaccine trial. Soon thereafter he began to lose weight and energy, as the life was sucked right out of him. The same problem broke out among girls in Colombia, where the same vaccine had been doled out to the young girls there.
NGO activists speak out about young girls being used as guinea pigs for vaccine experiments
When health reporters and activists visited Andhra Pradesh, they met more than 100 young girls who were now having epileptic seizures, severe mood swings and migraine headaches. The toxins that had been deliberately injected into them caused additional health problems such as early menstruation, heavy bleeding and menstrual cramps – problems the tribes had not experienced before in such severity or magnitude.
The push was started by the NGO Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH). The group coordinated with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to test the cervical cancer vaccines on thousands of young females across India and Africa. The Gates Foundation has also coordinated with the NGO to study the effects of the Rotavirus and pneumococcal vaccines in Africa and Asia.
Whistleblowers from another NGO, Sama, witnessed the horror and spoke out about what was really going on, revealing how the young girls were being used as guinea pigs for vaccine trials all under the guise of receiving healthcare. Sama reported that the administers of the vaccine were giving no informed consent; in fact, authorities made the people give thumb prints, treating them as subjects, not intelligent human beings with human rights.
When billions of dollars are behind a mission, authorities will gladly follow along and do as they are told. Testing chemicals and viruses out on human subjects is easy in third world countries where human life seems to be expendable.
In today’s highly controversial and aggressive world, virtually anything can present a threat to the life of a human being, not just wars, climate change, or short-sighted and often criminal actions of certain politicians.
As it has been shown by a number of scientific studies, the activities of a number of American corporations present a very real threat the well-being of the population mainly due to the use of genetically modified substances in their products while manufacturing substandard health and beauty aids. The truth is that it’s the people of developing countries that are being affected by these fraudulent business practices the most, since Western corporations try to suppress any information about the health effects of their products to obtain maximum profit.
At the end of the twentieth century British scientists have come to a sensational conclusion that parabens are capable of penetrating the skin barrier and are being accumulated in the tissues of the body, causing cancer, hormone system failures, endocrine system suppression, and skin diseases. Research made this finding while studying malignant tumors in breast tissue, all of which contained parabens, Later on, these findings were confirmed by Canadian and French scientists.
Parabens are artificial preservatives that are often used in the pharmaceutical and cosmetic industry by a number of Western corporations. Even though they are effectively increasing the shelf life of a product, while remaining relatively cheap to use, parabens pose a serious threat to human health and well-being. From time to time one can come across articles on the harmful effects of parabens in Europe and the United States, forcing certain companies to replace parabens with less harmful preservatives. However, the markets of developing countries, especially those with hot and humid climates, are flooded with Western cosmetic products that contain the dangerous substance.
In order to attract international attention to this danger, the French Le Monde went as far as to publish a list of the 400 Western pharmaceutical products containing parabens and that are, therefore, dangerous for use or consumption. In this list one may find the baby cream Biafine, such cough medicines as Clarix, Codotussyl, Drill, Hexapneumine, Humex, Pectosan, and Rhinathiol, stomach relief medicine such as Maalox, Gaviscon, Josacine, and antibiotic Zinnat, along with a list of other drugs produced by Western corporations and actively advertised for mass consumption.
As it has been pointed out by French journalists, numerous studies have shown that drugs from this list compromise the functioning of the hormone system, especially the reproductive ability of men and women, and may result in cancer.
At the same time, scientists are stressing the danger of hydro-alcoholic gels which were brought to the market in the wake of the artificially created hysteria around the “danger” of the so-called “bird flu,” the H1N1. These gels are advertised as the ultimate solution for sanitizing hands and body in the absence of soap. A study carried out by the University of Missouri and published in the Plos ONE journal shows that hydro-alcoholic gels make a person more susceptible to Bisphénol-A.
In 2010, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officially recognized that Bisphénol-A is harmful to human health due to the negative effect it has on brain functions and the reproductive system. It also causes a number of cancers (in both women and men) – in particular, prostate cancer, breast cancer as well as autism, depression, reproductive and endocrine systems failure, delays in brain development, diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease.
Yet another study conducted in Argentina showed that 85% of the women’s hygienic pads presented a serious threat to women since they contain the chemically hazardous substance known as glyphosate. This fact was revealed by researchers of the National Argentine University of La Plata at a recent congress of physicians in Buenos Aires, upon examining sanitary towels and sanitary pads produced with the use of genetically-modified cotton that was grown using Roundup herbicide of the American company Monsanto-Bayer. As we learn from this study, after the use of this herbicide, all cotton products contain this carcinogenic substance. For this reason, there’s been a massive movement in many countries through the collection of signatures to force such producers as Tampax or Always to state the composition of their products.
Jean Périer is an independent researcher and analyst and a renowned expert on the Near and Middle East, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”
On the World Wide Web, there are few black holes more enticing to fall down than the great fluoride conspiracy. Some would call it the ramblings of paranoid truth gurus who spend too much time maintaining their dreads and making YouTube videos about Atlantis. Others insist that it’s the largest mass control experiment of our times.
Where does the truth lie in an argument taken up by both sides with near religious conviction? It’s almost impossible to decipher. Perhaps it’s somewhere between the two.
The idea, in a nutshell, is that governments put fluoride in our water supply in order to negatively affect huge populations, for their own financial gains. That fluoride is actually a strong tranquilizer in disguise. That the US want their citizens to be zombies. That Kellogg’s, Nestle, Crest and other food companies – known as “The Fluoride Mafia” – are all in on it. That fluoride dumping is secretly wrapped up in Illuminati interests.
If you dig into why water fluoridation began, you find a convoluted, suspicious mess. According to the conspiracy theory, the name of the company with the biggest profit to be made from water fluoridation was ALCOA. The ALCOA Company had an unlimited supply of toxic waste – a byproduct of aluminium, AKA fluoride. At their lab, an ALCOA-sponsored biochemist did a test on rats that showed cavities were reduced with the fluoridated water and concluded that: “The case should be regarded as proved.” In this historic moment in 1939, so the story goes, the first public proposal that the US should fluoridate its water supplies wasn’t made by a doctor or a dentist, but an industry scientist working for a company that was also threatened by fluoride damage claims.
Another part of the theory is that, during the Second World War, industrial fluoride pollution increased because of the production and extensive use of ALCOA aluminium in aircraft manufacturing. It was after the Second World War that many governments began to put fluoride in our water supplies to protect people against cavities. Coincidence!?
Currently, about 372 million people (around 5.7 percent of the world’s population) receive artificially fluoridated water in about 24 countries, including Australia, Canada, Ireland, the US and the UK. Since the 1950s, there has been relentless debate over whether there’s any real reason to do this. Early conspiracy theorists declared that it was a communist plot to weaken American public health. Many have argued from a moral and ethical view that the public haven’t chosen to be consuming it and so it’s against individual will. From an economic standpoint, public money is being used on something without definitive proof of benefits. Some dentists and medical professionals have even said fluoridation of water isn’t the best way to reduce tooth decay.
The tangled conspiracy gets even darker with comments on Reddit threads such as “Hitler used fluoride first!!” and “They got this from the Nazis! Illuminati scum.” The so-called “fact” that Hitler gave people in concentration camps fluoride water to keep them docile and unable to resist Nazi power is used often by the anti-fluoridation brigade. Many say this treatment was then repeated in Russian gulags.
Ian E Stephens, a writer for the Australian “alternative news” magazine Nexus (which covers “health breakthroughs, future science and technology, suppressed news, free energy, religious revisionism, conspiracy, the environment, history and ancient mysteries, the mind, UFOs, paranormal and the unexplained”) claims he was told by chemist and researcher Charles E Perkins, who wrote the book The Truth About Water Fluoridation, that the Nazis envisioned a far-reaching plan of mass control and reduced population by using a medication in water that could cause sterility in women.
“Repeated doses of infinitesimal amounts of fluoride will in time reduce an individual’s power to resist domination, by slowly poisoning and narcotising a certain area of the brain, thus making him submissive to the will of those who wish to govern him,” Perkins wrote. He goes on to say: “I say this with all the earnestness and sincerity of a scientist who has spent nearly 20 years’ research into the chemistry, biochemistry, physiology and pathology of fluorine – any person who drinks artificially fluorinated water for a period of one year or more will never again be the same person mentally or physically.” There is no trace of a credible living source on Nazi history coming out in support of this theory.
To many in the new age community, this doesn’t matter. They believe fluoride is instrumental in mind control because, they insist, it blocks the “third eye”. Mystics and spiritual masters have concluded that the pineal gland, situated in the centre of the brain, is a connection between the body and the soul. They say: wake up, sheeple, the government-slash-Illuminati-slash-powers-that-be want us to stay on this spiritual plane. It’s not in their best interests that we are conscious. If people get conscious, they’ll stop turning up to their horrible jobs, eating meat and wasting food, and they’ll live in collectives and spoil their ballot papers.
This might sound ridiculous to some, but it has a degree of basis in science. In the 1990s, a British scientist, Jennifer Luke, discovered that by old age, the pineal gland contains about the same amount of fluoride as teeth, and we now know that calcification of the pineal gland gets worse with age and can occur in children as young as two. This gland is in the brain – it maintains the body’s sleep-wake cycle, regulates the onset of puberty in females and helps protect the body from cell damage. A huge review on fluoride toxicity published by the National Research Council in 2006 reported a range of negative side effects from fluoride, including “decreased melatonin production” and “other effects on normal pineal function, which in turn could contribute to a variety of effects in humans”.
Go on YouTube and you’ll find plenty of people sharing “knowledge” of the spiritual dangers of fluoride and how to reverse the effects of a “calcified” pineal gland (many say you can’t; it’s too late). They say stop drinking tap water. Stop using regular toothpaste and find a fluoride-free one. Get a shower filter to cut the fluoride from your shower. Cut out meat because you can be sure as heck they’ve been guzzling the fluoride water, too. Tell your dentist you don’t want fluoride-based products used. And after all that, detox.
However, there are more serious scientific objections to fluoride, and many are far removed from the assertions of David Icke disciples. Numerous studies researched by Harvard and China Medical University in Shanghai have shown that fluoride may be linked to reduced IQ in children, and even suggest that it could be toxic to a developing brain. Fluoride at high levels has been shown to destroy the male reproductive system in rabbits. Fluoride lowers the thyroid function. One study linked it to bone cancer in boys. A 2007 Nuffield Council on Bioethics report reached a conclusion that the benefit-to-risk ratio on water fluoridation is unclear due to lack of good evidence, that alternatives to water fluoridation exist and that the role of consent gets priority when there are potential harms.
Professors doing this research have been met with numerous attempts to discredit them. Stephen Peckham – director of the Centre for Health Services at the University of Kent, and professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine at the University of Toronto – has had his research of water fluoridation rejected from dental health journals. He’s spoken out about being accused of “statistics-hacking” and for research that made the link between fluoride and hypothyroidism. Catherine Carstairs, a professor who wrote about the history of water fluoridation, was attacked and the Journal of Public Heath had to defend itself for publishing “strong… research even when [it does] not fit well with our preconceived ideas”.
Why are efforts to uncover the effects of fluoride so vilified, and why is the atmosphere so toxic?
In fact, there has been a sea change in attitudes towards water fluoridation. About 10 years ago, York University found that tooth decay in children across Europe had fallen, regardless of whether or not there was fluoride in the water. The countries showing the biggest decrease – Sweden, Netherlands, Finland and Denmark – don’t fluoridate their supplies.
Increasingly, water fluoridation is being rejected in local British areas. In 2014, Bolton refused to add fluoride to their water supply, with David Crausby, MP for Bolton North East, likening it to “mass medication”. That same year, Public Health England had to drop plans to fluoridate water in Southampton and parts of Hampshire because of fierce opposition from Southampton City Council. But still, Public Health England encourages fluoridation and the NHS website states that fluoride provides no significant health risk. Millions around the country still drink fluoridated water.
But what do the water companies think? I called United Utilities, who said that most water companies have to have a “neutral position” on fluoridation. “The water company is just obliged to fluoridate where asked,” a spokesperson said. “We’re just a contractor.” But have they heard the conspiracies? I asked a Severn Trent Water spokesperson, who laughed and said: “Oooh yes, don’t worry, we’ve heard all sides of the story very loudly, but to be honest we try and stay out of it. We don’t want to get involved because then it makes it much too complicated.” Complicated indeed.
In countries like Brazil, China and, unsurprisingly, the US, fluoridation still has a stronghold. Significantly, 194 million Americans are supplied with this water, including those who live in 43 of its 47 largest cities. It’s there that the “truth” is being spread with most fervour.
Despite various claims by “truth gurus” being torn down – it’s unlikely that Margaret Thatcher pumped fluoride into Northern Ireland to control the rebels or that pharmaceutical companies are pumping us full of fluoride via Prozac – the conspiracy rages ahead, while science slowly erodes fluoride’s reputation. Will this be the next formaldehyde? The next lead? Don’t forget that dentists and doctors once promoted cigarettes. Should we listen to YouTubers? What if this became the greatest public health conspiracy of our time – of all times?
More than 20 studies have linked the use of talcum powder around the genital area to ovarian cancer. Are your cosmetics and personal care products safe to use?
More than 20 studies have linked the use of talcum powder around the genital area to ovarian cancer in women. Cornstarch is a safe substitute that can do the job of absorbing moisture
In February 2016, a jury found Johnson & Johnson’s talcum powder contributed to a 62-year old woman’s ovarian cancer, awarding her $72 million in damages
In May 2016, another woman was awarded $55 million in damages after talc embedded in her ovaries was found to have contributed to her cancer
Nearly 13,000 chemicals are used in cosmetics, of which only an estimated 10 percent have been evaluated for safety. Many do not realize that cosmetics can be brought to market without having to undergo an approval process.
Cosmetics are regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) but they’re not FDA-approved. This means that only AFTER a product is deemed harmful, adulterated or misbranded will the FDA take regulatory action.1 The only cosmetic ingredients requiring FDA premarket approval are color additives.
So who is responsible for ensuring cosmetics and personal care products are safe? The answer is the companies that manufacture and market the products. It’s a classic example of the fox guarding the henhouse, which puts us all at serious risks.
Not only do FDA regulations not require specific tests to demonstrate safety, but companies are also not required to share whatever safety information they might have with the FDA. This poses an obvious conflict of interest, and as recent lawsuits show, this can have serious consequences for public health.
Baby Talcum Powder Increases Woman’s Risk of Ovarian Cancer
Johnson & Johnson (J&J) is a well-known and trusted “baby friendly” brand, producing a range of baby products and feminine hygiene items. Unfortunately, J&J has failed the public trust yet again. And the lack of regulations relating to cosmetics is what helped them bury the dangers of one of its flagship products.
In 2008, I warned women to cease using talcum powder. I noted there were several studies showing that applying talcum powder to the genital area might raise a woman’s risk of ovarian cancer if the powder particles were to travel up through her vagina and get lodged in her ovaries.2
As noted by Robinson Calcagnie Inc., a legal firm representing talcum powder victims, more than 20 such studies exist.3 Some date back to 1971, when British researchers found talc particles embedded in a majority of the ovarian tumors investigated.4
While the measure of risk varies from study to study, the results suggest women may increase their risk for ovarian cancer anywhere from 30 to 90 percent by applying talcum powder to their genital area.5
A 2008 study concluded that using talc as little as once a week raised a woman’s risk of ovarian cancer by 36 percent. Daily users faced a 41 percent increased risk.6
Johnson & Johnson Faces Legal Challenges Over Carcinogenic Talcum Powder
According to Robinson Calcagnie:
“The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer [IARC] has designated ‘perineal [genital] use of talc-based body powder is possibly carcinogenic to humans.’
However, manufacturers of talc-containing products, such as [J&J] and its Baby Powder and Shower to Shower products, have refused to acknowledge the link between talc and ovarian cancer and have failed [to] adequately warn consumers of the risks.
Now, more than 1,000 women across the country have filed lawsuits against [J&J] and its talc distributor Imerys, claiming the companies knew of the association between talcum powder use and ovarian cancer yet failed to adequately warn consumers.”
Johnson & Johnson to Pay $72 Million in Damages to Ovarian Cancer Victim
In February, 2016, a jury found J&J’s talcum powder had contributed to 62-year old Jacqueline Fox’s ovarian cancer, awarding Fox $72 million in damages.7
Ten million dollars was awarded for compensatory damages. Another $62 million in punitive damages was awarded to her family members, as Fox died last fall, succumbing to the disease after being diagnosed with ovarian cancer three years ago.
Fox’s deposition was delivered via a prerecorded statement, in which she said she’d been using J&J’s talcum powder and Shower to Shower body powder for 35 years. She now believed these products were responsible for killing her. Fox was the first to receive financial compensation.
Waiting for their day in court are another 1,200 women who, like Fox, claim J&J knew about the risks yet failed to warn them about the dangers of its talcum products. One Missouri-based law firm was contacted by 17,000 individuals after hearing about Fox’s case, so the number of plaintiffs is likely to increase exponentially with time.8
The second defendant in the case, Imerys Talc America, was not found to be at fault. According to the jury foreman, Krista Smith, internal J&J documents clearly showed the company was hiding their knowledge about the products’ risks.
“All they had to do was put a warning label on,” Smith told Bloomberg.9 In a statement, J&J responded to the verdict saying:10
“We have no higher responsibility than the health and safety of consumers and we are disappointed with the outcome of the trial. We sympathize with the plaintiff’s family but firmly believe the safety of the cosmetic talc is supported by decades of scientific evidence.”
J&J Hid Dangers of Talc for 40 Years
Two additional court cases have tied J&J’s talcum powder to ovarian cancer. On May 2, 2016, jurors awarded Gloria Ristesund $55 million in damages. Ristesund, who was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2011, had used J&J’s talcum products for 40 years.
After her hysterectomy, doctors did indeed find talcum powder in her ovarian tissue. According to the Huffington Post, internal documents and memos sealed the deal for jurors in this case as well, proving the company “tried to cover up and influence the boards that regulate cosmetics.”11
Talcum powder is a magnesium trisilicate mineral. In the 1970s, concerns were raised when talc was found to contain cancer-causing asbestos. In 1973, it was written into law that all talcum powders must be asbestos-free.
However, the ovarian cancer connection is actually not related to the asbestos but is an independent risk factor. As reported by the Huffington Post:
“In 1993, the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP) published a study on the toxicity of non-asbestiform talc and found clear evidence of carcinogenic activity. Talc was found to be a carcinogen, with or without the presence of asbestos-like fibers.
In response to the federal NTP study, the Cosmetic Toiletry and Fragrance Association formed the Talc Interested Party Task Force (TIPTF). Johnson & Johnson was a member of the trade lobby and was the primary actor and contributors of TIPTF.
The stated purpose of TIPTF was to pool financial resources of these companies in an effort to collectively defend talc use and to prevent regulation of any type over this industry.”
The Talc Cover-Up
As many other dangerous industries have done, TIPTF hired scientists to produce biased research that was then used to give consumers a false sense of security.
This worked for a number of decades, but then, in 2006, the Canadian government classified talc as a D2A substance under its Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System. D2A substances are considered “very toxic” and “cancer causing.”
That same year, J&J’s talc supplier, Imerys Talc, started adding warnings to the talc sold to J&J, providing safety information not only from the IARC but also the Canadian government.
J&J never passed these warnings on to consumers, and still don’t, claiming the scientific evidence supports its safety.
J&J also continues to “educate” consumers about the safety of talc on its website, making no mention of having been found guilty of negligence by two separate juries, or the 1,200 pending cases charging talcum powder contributed to ovarian cancer.
Some Talc May Still Be Contaminated With Asbestos
BASF and its lawyers are also facing fraud charges related to talc — in this case asbestos-contaminated talc. A class action lawsuit filed against them alleges the parties “conspired to hide and/or destroy evidence of asbestos exposure to prevent lawsuits.”
As it turns out, while asbestos-containing talc has been banned since 1973, a company called Engelhard sourced talc from a mine in Vermont that contained asbestos. Engelhard was later acquired by BASF, which inherited the company’s liabilities. According to the law office Bergman Draper Ladenburg:12
“Three Engelhard officials testified in depositions that there was in fact asbestos in the talc and that company officials hid this fact.”
J&J Has a Long History of Malfeasance
You may be surprised to realize that J&J actually has a long history of corporate malfeasance. AllBusiness.com named J&J as one of the Top 100 Corporate Criminals of the 1990s13 for deliberately destroying documents related to a criminal investigation of one its products. In the last three years alone the company has spent more than $5 billion to settle lawsuits related to its products.
2010 was a particularly bad year for J&J. First it was discovered the company hid drug manufacturing problems, and instead of recalling its defective Motrin tablets, it sent undercover agents disguised as regular shoppers to buy up remaining stock.
That same year, the government of British Columbia, Canada, filed suit against J&J, claiming they aggressively marketed the Ortho Evra contraception patch without disclosing serious side effects like blood clots, pulmonary embolism, strokes, heart attacks and deep vein thrombosis. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) also accused the company of paying tens of millions of dollars in kickbacks to Omnicare Inc. to buy and recommend J&J drugs.14
Investigations also revealed J&J’s No More Tears baby shampoo contained two potentially cancer-causing chemicals: quaternium-15, which releases formaldehyde (a skin, eye and respiratory irritant, and a known carcinogen), and 1,4-dioxane, known to be a likely carcinogen. After several years of pressure from consumer advocates, J&J finally removed these dangerous ingredients from its baby shampoo in 2014.15
How Many Chemicals Does Your Beauty Routine Expose You to?
The average American woman uses 12 personal care products and/or cosmetics a day, containing 168 different chemicals, according to the Environmental Working Group (EWG). While most men use fewer products, they’re still exposed to about 85 such chemicals daily, while teens, who use an average of 17 personal care products a day, are exposed to even more.16 Clearly, such chemical exposures are not insignificant, especially when they occur virtually daily for a lifetime.
When EWG tested teens to find out which chemicals in personal care products were found in their bodies, 16 different hormone-altering chemicals, including parabens and phthalates, were detected. There are other chemicals risks as well.
In the report “Heavy Metal Hazard: The Health Risks of Hidden Heavy Metals in Face Makeup,”17 Environmental Defense tested 49 different makeup items, including foundations, concealers, powders, blushes, mascaras, eye liners, eye shadows, lipsticks and lip glosses. Their testing revealed serious heavy metal contamination in virtually all of the products:
1. 96 percent contained lead
2. 90 percent contained beryllium
3. 61 percent contained thallium
4. 51 percent contained cadmium
5. 20 percent contained arsenic
Your skin is your largest organ, and anything you put on it should contain only the best and safest ingredients from nature. So before slathering lotion or body wash on your skin, take a look at this infographic on toxic chemicals found in personal-care-products.
How to Reduce Your Chemical ExposuresThe EWG has a great database to help you find personal care products that are free of potentially dangerous chemicals.18 Products bearing the “USDA 100% Organic” seal are among your safest bets if you want to avoid potentially toxic ingredients. Beware that products boasting “all-natural” labels can still contain harmful chemicals, so be sure to check the full list of ingredients.
Better yet, simplify your routine and make your own products. A slew of lotions, potions and hair treatments can be eliminated with a jar of coconut oil, for example, to which you can add a high-quality essential oil, if you like, for scent.
It’s important to remember that your skin is your largest and most permeable organ. Just about anything you put on your skin will end up in your bloodstream and distributed throughout your body. Once these chemicals find their way into your body, they tend to accumulate over time because you typically lack the necessary enzymes to break them down.
When it comes to talcum powder, my recommendation is to avoid it altogether. Also remember that adult women are not the ones most commonly exposed to talc. Most parents generously apply baby talcum powder to their baby’s bottom at each diaper change.
A safe substitute that can absorb moisture is cornstarch. In 1999, following reports of talcum dangers, the American Cancer Society (ACS) and the National Ovarian Cancer Coalition (NOCC) came out with the recommendation to use cornstarch-based products in the genital area in lieu of talcum powder.19
(NaturalNews) Nearly half a century has passed since Monsanto scientist John Franz first discovered glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, which today is sprayed heavily all over the globe, including on our food and water, and in recreational areas where people go for leisure.
However, it is only now that scientists are beginning to truly understand the way this insidious chemical affects not only wildlife and the environment, but also the human body and its intricate biological functions.
A recent review of the scientific literature conducted by independent researchers Anthony Samsel, Ph.D. and Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D. – a scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) – uncovered some disturbing information about the way glyphosate interferes with the structure and functionality of important proteins in the human body.
What they learned is that glyphosate behaves as a glycine analogue that incorporates peptides during protein synthesis, according to AlterNet. In other words, the herbicide alters various proteins dependent “on conserved glycine for proper function.”
Glyphosate found to adversely impact structure and function of important proteins
When the human body substitutes glyphosate for glycine, it leads to a host of serious illnesses including diabetes, obesity, asthma, Alzheimer’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and Parkinson’s disease, among other conditions, according to the study’s authors.
“Glycine, the smallest amino acid commonly found in proteins, has unique properties that support flexibility and the ability to anchor to the plasma membrane or the cytoskeleton.
“This new direct biological evidence, taken together with correlational data, make a compelling case that glyphosate action as a glycine analogue accounts for much of glyphosate’s toxicity,” explains AlterNet, interpreting the researchers’ data.
Researchers say that when glyphosate behaves as an amino acid analogue of glycine, it can be incorporated into polypeptide chains during protein synthesis, which in turn affects the structure and function of important proteins in the human body.
Metabolic and regulatory processes may be disrupted by widely used herbicide
“Proteins fold up, and glycine is a small molecule that is often found at the folding places. Since glyphosate is much larger, it prevents the protein molecule from folding properly, leading to the disruption of function of many proteins with essential roles in metabolism and regulatory processes.”
Samsel and Seneff highlight a number of ways that this may affect humans, as well as other organisms, including the potential that “impaired fatty acid release” could lead to obesity and diabetes, because the chemical can disrupt the behavior of insulin receptors.
The researchers observed that glyphosate may prevent proteins from folding properly, causing “impaired one-carbon metabolism,” leading to neural tube defects and autism.
Researchers explain how glyphosate may cause autism, cancer and autoimmune diseases
It’s highly plausible that the herbicide may also disrupt “cell cycle control during DNA synthesis, and disregulated phosphorylation cascades,” which can end up causing cancer, complications with the lungs and autoimmune diseases.
Needless to say, the adverse effects glyphosate has on humans and other living things is absolutely frightening, and we still don’t understand the full extent of its impact. Nearly every chronic illness affecting Americans today can be traced back to glyphosate.
Yet, we can’t even get our regulatory agencies (namely the EPA) to recognize its carcinogenic effects, let alone the host of other debilitating, painful diseases it’s causing among humans.
“When a cell is trying to form proteins, it may grab glyphosate instead of glycine to form a damaged, mis-folded protein. After that it’s medical chaos. Where glyphosate replaces glycine, the cell can no longer conduct business as usual causing unpredicted consequences with many diseases and disorders as a result,” explains Stephen Frantz, Ph.D., a research pathobiologist.
While it’s essentially impossible to avoid exposure to glyphosate, you can take control of your health by boosting your immune system with clean, healthy foods such as The Health Ranger’s Organic Bee Pollen, sourced solely from carefully selected beekeepers in Spain.
Users of increasingly popular street drugs called K2 or spice, which are made from mixtures of herbs laced with synthetic cannabinoids and other chemicals, are showing some incredibly strange behaviors.
Indeed, as the use of these so-called synthetic-marijuana drugs escalate among U.S. teens and young adults — who typically smoke or vape the drugs — TV and newspaper accounts report that users are passing out on sidewalks, stumbling out into traffic, and “looking and acting like zombies.”
People on synthetic cannabinoid products can act anywhere from a bit confused to completely out of their minds, depending on the dose of K2 used and an individual’s susceptibility to the drug, said Dr. Anthony Scalzo, a professor of pediatrics and chief of toxicology at Saint Louis University School of Medicine in Missouri. [3 Dangerous New Drug Habits in Teens]
“This is extremely dangerous stuff, and it’s getting more dangerous” as manufacturers continually find new ways to tweak the chemicals in the drug to skirt laws that made some compounds used in K2 illegal since March 2011, Scalzo said. He first discovered the health dangers of K2 in 2010, after noticing a spike in calls to the Missouri Poison Center about young people who had smoked K2. He said these users thought the drug’s effects would be similar to those of marijuana, but they instead experienced stronger symptoms, including hallucinations, extreme agitation, a rapid heartbeat and extremely high blood pressure.
Other changes in mood, thinking and perception have been linked with synthetic cannabinoids. Their use has been associated with paranoia, which is an unreasonable distrust of others; anxiety; panic attacks; and psychotic episodes. Together, these mind-altering behaviors have been labeled as the “zombie effect,” according to K2/Zombie DC, a public-education campaign based in Washington, D.C., that uses zombie-themed messages to raise awareness among teens and parents of these drugs’ dangers.
“Synthetic cannabinoids have chemicals in them that were never meant to be inside the human body,” Scalzo told Live Science. [11 Odd Facts About Marijuana]
Some versions of the drugs are illegal and are sold on the street, but the versions that are legal are sold in stores, where their glitzy packages marketed to young people may make them look mainstream, natural and safe, Scalzo noted. But the herbal blends, which may resemble potpourri, “can make people do what they normally would not do either to themselves or to others,” Scalzo said.
Unpredictable effects
In 2011, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) placed five compounds that are commonly found in K2 on its list of illegal substances, to help clamp down on sales. But manufacturers responded by tinkering with the chemicals to sidestep the regulations.
This led to the creation of newer versions of K2 that are even more harmful than early versions, Scalzo said. The newest products on the street can cause low blood pressure and a slow heart rate, and may even result in coma, seizures and kidney damage, he said.
And because the compounds in the drugs can constantly change, their effects on users can be unpredictable and, in some cases, deadly.
Exactly how the compounds in K2/spice work to produce their effects is unclear, Scalzo said. They may act directly on the specific receptors in the brain that can bind these chemicals, and they may change how the brain works in the short term and, potentially, the long term, Scalzo explained.
For example, Scalzo said, when synthetic cannabinoids attach to receptors in the brain and then interact with dopamine — a brain chemical that affects movement — it may cause users’ arms and legs to feel stiff or locked up. But when the drugs interact with serotonin — a brain chemical responsible for sleep and dreams — it may cause users to feel zombie-like and out of it, he said.
Diatomaceous earth (DE) is a naturally occurring rock made from the skeletons of fossilized diatoms, a type of hard-shelled algae.
When ground into a fine powder, diatomaceous earth works mechanically to destroy a wide range of pests, insects, parasites and pathogens by cutting through the exoskeleton, absorbing bodily fluids and causing them to die.
Diatomaceous earth has many uses including detoxification of the body — inside and out; protecting pets and livestock from parasites and insect infestation; and keep your yard and garden pest-free.
Detoxing
Add diatomaceous earth to your diet to detox parasites that can contribute to food intolerance, nausea, bowel discomfort, pain, itching, asthma, sinus infections, Morgellon’s disease, and a host of other allergic-type reactions.
DE detoxes mercury, cadmium, lead and other heavy metals; removes poisons from chemtrails, radiation and may alleviate the effects of GMOs. DE possesses antibacterial, anti-fungal and antiviral properties.
In addition to detoxing and destroying pathogens, diatomaceous earth helps to lower blood pressure and contributes to the production of collagen to improve skin tone, strengthening the tendons and joints.
To consume DE orally, start with half a teaspoon and work up to two heaping tablespoons. Mix thoroughly in four ounces of water.
Drink immediately and follow with another eight ounces of water. Take on an empty stomach. Continue drinking water throughout the day, because DE can cause constipation.
Initially, you may experience a Herxhemier reaction, which can cause abdominal discomfort and flu-like symptoms.
This is a normal response to detoxing, as parasites and pathogens die, releasing their toxins into your system for elimination. The symptoms disappear after a few days.
Come on Portugal, you are better and smarter than that. You got rid of the farce called the war on drugs. Now you need to eliminate all companies that did this your population. And demand retribution.
(NaturalNews) Recent tests by the Portuguese No GMO Coalition showed that volunteers in the country had extremely high levels of glyphosate in their urine, placing their contamination rate well above that of many places in Europe. Every single one of the 26 volunteers had cancer-causing glyphosate in their urine; similar tests in Switzerland last year found glyphosate in only 38 percent of people. Meanwhile, testing by Friends of the Earth across 18 different European countries found glyphosate in just 44 percent of the urine samples tested.
It is not just the mere presence of glyphosate that is setting off alarm bells; the levels noted were also disturbingly high. The EU limit for acceptable levels in drinking water is 0.1 ng/ml. The average glyphosate value found in the Portuguese volunteers’ samples was 26.2 ng/ml – a whopping 260 times higher than the maximum legal limit!
Meanwhile, testing of more than 2,000 Germans found an average of 1.1 ng/ml, and the highest value noted in that country was 4.2 ng/ml. The range of values for Portuguese volunteers went from 12.5 to 32.5 ng/ml, which means that even the worst German case was better than the least contaminated Portuguese case!
Children showed the highest glyphosate levels
It is also worth noting that the youngest volunteers showed a higher average value (26.7 ng/ml) than the group as a whole, and this phenomenon was also noted in the German study. The researchers also point out that the values higher than 20 ng/ml are the highest amounts ever recorded in people who do not have professional exposure to glyphosate – a clear indication that the poisoning is coming from the food and/or water supply.
Unfortunately for the Portuguese, glyphosate is the most widely used chemical herbicide in their country. More than 1,600 tons of this toxic chemical are sold there each year. There has been a rise in its use for controlling weeds in olive groves, something that was traditionally done via mowing, grazing, or tillage. It is being overused in the country’s orchards and vineyards, and urban street spraying is also believed to play a role.
Nevertheless, similar practices also occur in other European countries, and it is not clear why the levels are so much higher in the Portuguese volunteers. The Portuguese No GMO Coalition is calling for official testing on the country’s soil, food, air, water and citizens – something that has not been done in more than a decade. The country’s Ministry of Agriculture does monitor food for more than 300 pesticide residues, but glyphosate is somehow not on its list.
Private testing shows large-scale global poisoning
This illustrates why it is so important for groups such as the Portuguese No GMO Coalition to take matters into their own hands and carry out tests to uncover just how widespread this problem is. Governments do not always look out for the best interests of their people, and concerned citizens have the power to draw attention to these problems.
A similar effort is currently underway by EPAWatch.org to uncover the presence of heavy metals in the tap water of various American cities. In addition, Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, tested more than 800 foods in his cutting-edge analytical lab to determine the presence of a host of toxins. This information can be found in his book, Food Forensics.
Such efforts are doing a lot to highlight the problem of dangerous substances in our food and water supply. As people become more aware of these issues, they are starting to demand that food companies use honest labeling practices, and are trying to put an end to this large-scale global poisoning.
The news of Portugal’s far-reaching glyphosate contamination comes as the date approaches later this month for EU member states to vote on the re-licensing of glyphosate.
The Coaltion stated that, “Portugal must now face the problem and find solutions both at the national and European levels in order to clarify the reasons for such high human contamination and reduce it by several orders of magnitude.”
Despite the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer calling the chemical a “probable human carcinogen,” its use still continues mostly unabated around the world, thanks largely to the efforts of Big Agri company Monsanto, who have been known to fudge research results, smear doctors and journalists who speak out about glyphosate’s ill effects, and bribe government officials to protect their business interests.
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Over the past couple of years, I had the unpleasant experience of having bloodwork done to confirm that I am gluten intolerant, only to have it come back and say, “Nope, you’re just crazy.” The same thing happened to my good friend Melissa Melton, who was terribly ill before she cut wheat out of her life. It’s happened to scores of other people, who pass the test for the anti-gliadin antibodies but still know that their health issues directly correlate with what they eat.
“Standard wheat harvest protocol in the United States is to drench the wheat fields with Roundup several days before the combine harvesters work through the fields as withered, dead wheat plants are less taxing on the farm equipment and allows for an earlier, easier and bigger harvest.”
Pre-harvest application of the herbicide Roundup and other herbicides containing the deadly active ingredient glyphosate to wheat and barley as a desiccant was suggested as early as 1980. It has since become routine over the past 15 years and is used as a drying agent 7-10 days before harvest within the conventional farming community.
According to Dr. Stephanie Seneff of MIT who has studied the issue in depth and who I recently saw present on the subject at a nutritional Conference in Indianapolis, desiccating non-organic wheat crops with glyphosate just before harvest came into vogue late in the 1990′s with the result that most of the non-organic wheat in the United States is now contaminated with it. Seneff explains that when you expose wheat to a toxic chemical like glyphosate, it actually releases more seeds resulting in a slightly greater yield: “It ‘goes to seed’ as it dies. At its last gasp, it releases the seed.”
According to the US Department of Agriculture, as of 2012, 99% of durum wheat, 97% of spring wheat, and 61% of winter wheat has been doused with Roundup as part of the harvesting process. This is an increase from 88% for durum wheat, 91% for spring wheat and 47% for winter wheat since 1998. (source)
How horrifying is it that they douse this stuff for human consumption with the most toxic, prevalent herbicide around, an herbicide which has been linked to all sorts of problems, just days before the harvest? That stuff doesn’t get removed – it gets milled in with the wheat and lurks in your bags of flour, your loaves of bread, and your desserts.
This could also explain why some people who have terrible gluten symptoms are able to eat products made from organic Einkorn wheat. It may not be that it’s heirloom Einkorn – it could just be that it hasn’t been doused in glyphosate.
The first study found that glyphosate increases the breast cancer cell proliferation in the parts-per-trillion range.
An alarming new study, accepted for publication in the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology last month, indicates that glyphosate, the world’s most widely used herbicide due to its widespread use in genetically engineered agriculture, is capable of driving estrogen receptor mediated breast cancer cell proliferation within the infinitesimal parts per trillion concentration range.
The study, titled, “Glyphosate induces human breast cancer cells growth via estrogen receptors,” compared the effect of glyphosate on hormone-dependent and hormone-independent breast cancer cell lines, finding that glyphosate stimulates hormone-dependent cancer cell lines in what the study authors describe as “low and environmentally relevant concentrations.”
Another study found that consumption of glyphosate causes intestinal and gut damage, which opens the door to numerous human diseases, such as diabetes, gastrointestinal disorders, heart disease, obesity, autism, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s
However, another classification of allergy-type food is emerging and getting recognized for adverse effects on the human intestinal tract and gut. Those foods are genetically modified organisms known as GMOs or GEs. There is scientific research indicating intestinal damage from GMO food and the article “Glyphosate’s Suppression of Cytochrome P450 Enzymes and Amino Acid Biosynthesis by the Gut Microbiome: Pathways to Modern Disease” discusses how the inordinate amount of pesticides sprayed on GMOs leaves residues in GMO crops that, in turn, are being traced to modern diseases. (source)
The Organic Consumers Association says: Glyphosate is the most widely used herbicide in the world. According to the EPA, at least 208 million tons of Roundup were sprayed on GE crops, lawns and roadsides in the years 2006 and 2007. In 2007, as much as 185 million pounds of glyphosate was used by U.S. farmers, double the amount used just six years ago.
A 2009 study found that Americans use about 100 million pounds of glyphosate annually on their lawns and gardens. It’s safe to assume all these number are much higher now. Why? Because GE crops are now being invaded by new strains of herbicide-resistant “superweeds” requiring higher and higher doses of poison.
Beyond Pesticides has assembled extensive documentation of past research linking glyphosate to increased cancer risk, neurotoxicity and birth defects, as well as eye, skin, respiratory irritation, lung congestion, increased breathing rate, damage to the pancreas, kidney and testes.
Glyphosate also endangers the environment, destroys soil and plants, and is linked to a host of health hazards. The EPA’s decision to increase the allowed residue limits of glyphosate is out of date, dangerous to the health of people and the environment and scientifically unsupportable. (source)
Nearly all of the symptoms we chalk up to gluten intolerance can also be related to glyphosate exposure. This horrific little farming shortcut may have created an epidemic across the country.
Just last week I picked up a loaf of organic sourdough bread to serve with some beef stew. I was hesitant but astonished when I didn’t suffer abdominal pain, bloating, and digestive upset. I thought, “Yay! I ate bread and didn’t die!”
Sarah’s article blew my mind, because when I read it, all of the inconsistencies with my own gluten issues began to make sense. It explains why I can eat the fancy Italian pasta that a friend sent as a gift. It explains why the odd baked good from the organic bakery doesn’t make me sick. It explains the blood test that says I don’t have a problem with gluten, even though my gut says that I do have a problem.
It’s time to say no to Big Food. Vote with your wallet and forgo eating anything containing poisoned wheat. Either skip the wheat products entirely or choose organic wheat products.
Perhaps our family diet can get a little bit broader now. It would be far less expensive to buy a bag of organic flour than the gluten free flour that we use for baking, pancakes and thickening stuff.
Maybe the bloodwork was right. Maybe we aren’t actually gluten intolerant at all.
Maybe we are just poison intolerant.
This article is reproduced with permission from TheOrganicPrepper. Please check the website out–it’s great and you should honor Daisy Luther’s guidelines for republishing. Daisy Luther lives in a small village in the Pacific Northwestern area of the United States. She is the author of The Organic Canner and The Pantry Primer: How to Build a One Year Food Supply in Three Months. On her website, The Organic Prepper, Daisy uses her background in alternative journalism to provide a unique perspective on health and preparedness, and offers a path of rational anarchy against a system that will leave us broke, unhealthy, and enslaved if we comply. Daisy’s articles are widely republished throughout alternative media. You can follow her on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter, and you can email her at daisy@theorganicprepper.ca
“Our citizens should know the urgent facts…but they don’t because our media serves imperial, not popular interests. They lie, deceive, connive and suppress what everyone needs to know, substituting managed news misinformation and rubbish for hard truths…”—Oliver Stone