Category Archives: Controversial Issues

Zeolite Criticisms – The Truth Hurts Sales?

Of all the issues I blog about, my criticism of zeolite, a much hyped, poorly researched, money maker, is one I get the most comments about. Usually, it is in the form of threats (I refuse to allow those to see the light of day), angry diatribes, accusations which border on the ridiculous and downright silly comments. But the one thread I see is a total lack of any responses to my belief that zeolite is nothing but volcanic ash that has uses in industrial cleanups but no value in promoting human health.

I cannot wait to hear from the supposed cancer survivors who claim zeolite cured them. Of course, when confronted with the request to prove they had cancer and to publicly reveal their name with the proof, they vanish. When asked to provide research papers that have gone through the peer-review process, the constant whining that “it is about to be published in a major journal” comes out. Unfortunately for them, this claim has been going on for years with no paper being published.

Then we see the conspiracy theory coming out that the big, bad establishment is out to get them and wants to hide the positive effects of zeolite so big pharma can make more money. When you have nothing to stand on, it is time to bring out the boogie man. Why can’t they can’t release the studies on their own? Maybe because they show that their product does little but chelate money from peoples wallets into their coffers.

Boy, I can’t wait to see the comments I get on this post.

Another Series of Pharmaceutical Studies in Question

I know I sometimes harp on the pharmaceutical industry and how so many studies that show negative effects or less than positive ones, but a report out of Massachusetts has me very concerned about the validity of many studies out there. If you read this report from MSNBC.com, you can see why I am so disturbed.

It seems that Dr. Scott Reuben was fabricating data about the effectiveness of a number of drugs, including the pain killer Celebrex made by Pfizer and the antidepressant Effexor XR made by Wyeth among others. While this is certainly bad news for the two pharmaceutical companies, it should make us wonder how pervasive this is not only in the pharmaceutical world but also in the nutraceutical community.

I have often times railed against outrageous claims made by the makers of supplements that seem to be heavily anecdotal and curiously non-scientific. One case is the zeolite claims of chelating heavy metals. Still waiting for that study that is due any day showing how great it really is. Been waiting for over three years for something that was supposed to be out already. I’ve heard doctors get on stage and claim super high “cure” rates for autism, only to hear different numbers every conference he spoke at.

Research fraud is more common than you might think which means you need to read the studies with a more critical eye and not to jump on the latest hot drug or supplement. The studies have to make biochemical sense and not just report possible effects that seem too good to be true. There are a lot of Bernie Maddoff’s in science so approach those claims from the pharmaceutical and nutraceutical companies with a grain of salt. The life you save could be your own.

Latest Presentation

The Effects of Petrochemical and Related Toxins on Human Health

Just last weekend, I gave a presentation at a conference put on by the Klinghardt Academy of Neurobiology on petrochemical toxicity and its effect on human health. Here is the Powerpoint of my talk. Please use whatever you want out of the presentation, please make sure you site me if you do.

How to Improve Our World With Four Ideals

According to Forbes magazine, the average pay of a senior executive in 1980 was 40 times the average workers salary. In 2007 is was 433 times. Want to guess why things got so screwed up? Yeah, I didn’t think it was so difficult to figure out. Greed.

Instead of capping the salaries of the fat cats in the banking industry and on Wall Street, I have a better plan. Make them recite and follow the Rotary 4 way test of the things we think say or do.

  1. Is it the truth. (boy this one should make as big a change as any to the corporate culture).
  2. Is it fair to all concerned (a little bit of careing for all the people in the world would make our planet a nicer place to live in).
  3. Will it build good will and better friendships (this might have slowed down Bernie Maddoff)
  4. Is it beneficial to all concerned. (wouldn’t that be great).

I have run my businesses with these four principles in mind. I go to sleep each night knowing that I am running an ethical and honest company and that in the long run I will make a positive impact on the world. If maybe, just maybe our government and all business would apply this 77 year old ideal to what they do, we’d have no budget deficits, our economy would be far stronger and our environment would be a lot cleaner.

To read more about how the 4-way test was developed, click on the link and read about why Herbert J. Taylor wrote this brilliant manifesto.

Tara Parker-Pope: A Reporter Who Needs a Different Job

The New York Times, a newspaper you either love or hate, typically has a fine line-up of reporters and writers but one in particular needs resign from her position and find another line of work that does not require the ability to do careful research and intelligence. Tara Parker-Pope, needs to switch from reporting to something that only requires manual labor. Her recent article, “News Keeps Getting Worse for Vitamins” is an embarassment and is just another example of an inability she has to find out what the word truth means.

If she had bothered to research the studies she cites instead of choking the nonsense down like an obese person at an all you can eat buffet, she would have seen that what was presented was biased and consisted of terribly constructed research. The quantities of vitamin C and E used in the cardiovascular and cancer study were ridiculously low. Go to my podcast site labinterpretation.podhoster.com and listen to episode 13 where I discuss the issues that should have made the studies Ms. Parker-Pope cites go unpublished.

One of the major problems I have with the study on Vitamin C was the insanely low dose used. They used 500 mg of C daily when all intelligent researchers and clinicians know that you need a minimum of 2 grams and with cancer, 10 grams daily to get the needed effect. It is similar to the nonsense from the Mayo Clinic when they tried to disprove Dr. Pauling and Dr. Cameron’s work on cancer. They used intravenous vitamin C and Mayo used oral C and yet they claimed it was the same (it is definitely not). This is blatant dishonesty and the media is supposed to be objective and uncover the truth, not chow down on anything the so-called experts say. Ms. Parker-Pope, find a new job.

Cutler Interview – Transcript Now Available

Laboratory Medical Update – Dr. Andrew Cutler Interview

Earlier this year, I did an interview with Andrew Cutler, PhD talking about his thoughts on autism, mercury, and porphyrin testing. You can listen to it on my Let’s Talk Real Health podcast site.  Just recently, Michael Ross, did a transcript of the interview that you can download and read for yourself. Thank you Michael for the work.

Boy Am I Angry About the Bailouts!!!

In 1981, when Ronald Reagan came to office I was concerned that his economic policies that he was proposing were insane. They made no sense to me as an economics major. Trickle down economics, his theory that giving tax breaks to the rich would trickle down to the middle class and make the economy boom was implausible. It was, in my opinion, one of the most bizarre and illogical ideas I ever heard and even George Bush Sr agreed. Heck he even called it voodoo economics. But heck, I was just a 23 year old and too young to understand things. Or was I?

This week we barely missed going into the Great Depression part two. It was inevitable. What bothers me is that all of the billionaires and millionaires who have made so much money got bailed out and now we, the taxpayers, the hard working individuals and families have to pay for all the losses. Do the rich people who basically stole my money and your money have to pay?  Hell no. Now they put up a candidate who not only doesn’t want to pay more taxes, he wants more tax breaks for the wealthy. How much more do they want to steal from us now?

The rich have gotten richer in the past 30 years and the middle class has been squeezed and the poor have gotten nothing and been swelling over the years. On September 16th with the takeovers of AIG, trickle down and the nonsense of the past 30 years have come to an end.

Funny to hear John McCain talking about increasing regulation of the financial markets when his party spent the past three decades espousing deregulation and his chairmanship of commerce commitees were at the forefront of the deregulation movement. What a hypocritical position. While my blog is not intended to be a political blog, I am sitting here in my living room looking at my children wondering how the hell they are going to pay for this mess. I don’t know, do you?

I urge my readers to vote for Barack Obama and end the decades of the same bad economic policies that have put us on the brink of disaster. He may not be the perfect candidate, who is, but he does represent a change we really need badly or all of the sacrifices our ancestors made for this country go for naught.

The Presidential Candidates – Educational Matchup

I don’t want my blog to be a political battle ground but as my readers are aware, I am big on science and the environment and feel that these past 7 years have been a true debacle. Never in U.S. history has a President been so against science. It hurts our educational system, it hurts our environment and it hurts the citizens of these United States and the world. The current President’s education must have been severely lacking to be so anti-science.

So, how do the two major party candidates compare educationally. Actually, it seems to be a big win for the Democratic ticket of Obama and Biden. Obama graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School and got his undergrad degree from Columbia University which is pretty impressive. John McCain graduated 894 out of 899 at the Naval Academy. Obama wins this one hands down.

It is even worse when you compare Biden and Palin. She graduated from the University of Idaho, a fine school, in Journalism. Biden on the other hand graduated from the University of Delware with a double major and has a doctorate in law from Syracuse University. Neither of the Republicans has an advanced degree and while this does not exclude them from running for President, it should make you doubt their capacity for running the most powerful country in the world.

The big scare for me is how do they handle scientific issues? Or will it be more of the same as the past 7+ years? I won’t say much else politically but I think this is an issue that needs to be aired out. Not more nonsense about the candidates kids or spouses.

More Deceit From the Pharmaceutical Industry

It just keeps coming it seems, the pharmaceutical industry has stooped to levels even I didn’t think possible. Merck was just found to have paid academic scientists to put their names on papers they didn’t write. Who wrote the papers? Company hired medical writers of course.

According to Dr. Catherine DeAngelis, JAMA’s editor-in-chief, “The manipulation is disgusting. I just didn’t realize the extent.”  I think her use of the word disgusting pretty much sums up my opinion of this revelation. The article about this scandal is in today’s Journal of the American Medical Association. You can read the two articles, one by Ross, Hill, Egilman, and Krumholz and the other by Psaty and Kronmal. 

One JAMA report says internal company data showed in 2001 that Vioxx patients in two Alzheimer’s studies had a higher death rate than patients on dummy pills. Merck didn’t publicize that “in a timely fashion” and provided information to federal regulators that downplayed the deaths, the report said. It’s time to reign in the industry through Congressional legislation.

Lest you think that only Merck is guilty of this deception, think again. I am sure that you will see more of this cropping up in the coming months. In my opinion, this type of behavior is driven by executives of pharmaceutical companies need to impress Wall Street and fluff up their balance sheets instead of having patient’s health in mind.

Here is the result of a paper done by Choudry, et al published in JAMA about how pervasive the industry’s hooks into medicine is:

“Eighty-seven percent of authors had some form of interaction with the pharmaceutical industry. Fifty-eight percent had received financial support to perform research and 38% had served as employees or consultants for a pharmaceutical company. On average, CPG authors interacted with 10.5 different companies. Overall, an average of 81% (95% confidence interval, 70%-92%) of authors per CPG had interactions. Similarly, all of the CPGs for 7 of the 10 diseases included in our study had at least 1 author who had some interaction. Fifty-nine percent had relationships with companies whose drugs were considered in the guideline they authored, and of these authors, 96% had relationships that predated the guideline creation process. Fifty-five percent of respondents indicated that the guideline process with which they were involved had no formal process for declaring these relationships. In published versions of the CPGs, specific declarations regarding the personal financial interactions of individual authors with the pharmaceutical industry were made in only 2 cases. Seven percent thought that their own relationships with the pharmaceutical industry influenced the recommendations and 19% thought that their coauthors’ recommendations were influenced by their relationships. “

What is truly sad is how many people have suffered health and financial wise due to the greed and immoral behavior by the pharmaceutical industry.

Another National Shame – Politics Over Science

In yet another sad loss to science, the Bush Administration has superceeded science in the name of politics. Since 2001 this politically motivated administration have made it almost impossible to denote an animal species as being endangered which has already led to the extinction of a number of creatures that are part of our world. This despite the protestations of numerous scientists within the Department of the Interior.

Furthermore, the present “Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne has not declared a single native species as threatened or endangered since he was appointed nearly two years ago.” George Bush Sr. and Bill Clinton averaged adding around 60 species per year but these people see fit to blame everyone else but not themselves for this global shame.

We have the moral obligation to preserve life but I guess when you have such a low respect for science which this administration has, nothing is off limits and their is no shame. This is not a Republican or Democratic issue. This is not conservatism versus liberalism. This is about the total lack of respect for our people, our land, and the creatures who inhabit our country. It is a true national tragedy. You can read the full story here at MSNBC.com