Category Archives: Controversial Issues

Truths, Half-Truths and Myths Surrounding Global Warming

One of my favorite weekly reads is the British magazine – The New Scientist.  In their May 19-25, 2007 issue, their main article is about laying out some truths and dispelling myths about the issue of global warming. Here are some of their major points:

  • Myth – “Carbon dioxide levels only rose after the start of warm periods, so CO2 does not cause warming.” Anti-warmists claim that the evidence does not show that CO2 levels were causative factors in global warming in the past, which is true. The problem is that never in history did humans add carbon dioxide into the atmosphere above and beyond what nature has.
  • Half-truth – “It has been warmer in the past, so what’s the big deal?” Just because it has been warmer in the past doesn’t mean that getting warmer now does not have a potential for disaster.
  • Half-truth – “Human carbon dioxide emissions are tiny compared with natural sources.” True but the average CO2 levels over the past half-million years have been between 180 – 300 parts per million. Only in recent time, since the start of the Industrial Revolution, has it gone to 380 ppm. Due to carbon dating and the levels of carbon-14 in ice cores, we are pretty sure that it is human caused.
  • Myth – “…volcanoes emit more CO2 than human activities.” That is simply not true. Volcanoes emit .3 gigatons of CO2 annually which is about one hundreth of the amount humans emit.
  • Myth – “It’s too cold where I live. A bit of warming will be great.” What a myopic attitude. This issue is not about weather (which is local), it is about global climate. If your area gets better, others who are too warm already, will get worse eventually affecting you. Current predictions claim that agricultural yields in most of the world will halve by 2100. Yeah but we’re warmer up north than before?  Ugh.
  • Myth – “It’s all down to cosmic rays.” Measurements of cosmic ray intensity has only started in the late 20th century and no data model has shown any relationship long-term.
  • Half-truth – “Antarctica is getting cooler and the ice sheets are getting thicker.” Yes they are but it is in part due to air circulation because of the hole in the ozone layer. As that repairs itself, the circulation is expected to change and the ice is expected to rapidly melt.
  • Myth – “It was warmer during the Middle Ages than it is now, with vineyards in England.” Actually, this seems to be a regional phenomena (local weather versus global climate).

One other issue is that it is not just how warm it is now but how much warmer it is going to get. Anti-warmists love to point out that science claimed that the planet was heading towards an ice age back in the 70’s so ha ha, why should we believe them now?  Boy is that a silly way of thinking. Hey, we thought that most ulcers were caused by stress and stomach acid back in the 70’s but now they say it is caused by heliobactor pylori so why should we believe doctors?  Hey guys, we have better science and computers than back in the 70’s. If you don’t believe it go to climateprediction.net and check the project they are doing that could not have been done 30 years ago.

Bipolar Disorders and Children – Growing Epidemic or Drug Company Bonanza?

Nothing is as painful as having a child with emotional issues. I should know, I have one. My daughter Tasya has had emotional problems ever since she started having epileptic seizures 7 years ago. She has had mood swings and temper tantrums which by themselves is not unusual (most kids go through that) but the number and severity has been a problem. Most every doctor we see wants to put her on one medication after another without regard to the potential for long term damage.

In a report coming from the British magazine, New Scientist, they question whether doctors in the United States are too quick to treat children with what they are diagnosing as bipolar disorder. Since 1996 the number of children being diagnosed with this behavioral problem went from 13 out of every 100,000 to 73 out of every 100,000 in 2004, a five-fold jump in the number of diagnoses in a scant 8 years. Children as young as 3 are being diagnosed with the disease despite the absolute ridiculousness of even attempting to diagnoses this in children that young.

The use of psychotropic drugs on young children should be viewed as a crime unless there is overwhelming evidence. The fact that we have absolutely no evidence that in the long-term, these drugs are anywhere near safe should be a red-flag. Add to that the fact that a child who was 4 years old has died when given not one, not two, but three drugs for supposedly having a bipolar disorder. The child, Rebecca Riley, was given clonidine, Depakote (anti-convulsant also known as valproic acid) and the anti-psychotic Seroquel (quetiapine fumarate). Her parents are on trial to see if they deliberately overdose her or it was an accident. My finger is pointing straight at the physicians who prescribed the drugs to this unfortunate little girl with the hopes of stabilizing her mood.

No other country is seeing this increase in the incidence of bipolar disorder despite following the same guidelines from the DSM-IV (the official psychiatric manual).  Instead of seeking natural and much, much safer means, drug companies are throwing parties for doctors who would prescribe their money making drugs for children. My daughter had enormous success and improvement in mood and seizure activity following her eliminating foods that were causing an inflammatory response (LEAP MRT Test). Amino acid therapy, nutrition and even psychotherapy should be our first line of attack on neuropsychiatric disorders and NOT harsh and life threatening drugs.

Thankfully the editors at the New Scientist call into question whether the diagnoses and treatments are real, or as I suspect, profit driven by an increasingly money hungry pharmaceutical industry.

Is the FDA About to Ban Supplements?

There is no doubt in my mind that some people (not the majority) in the Food and Drug Administration would like nothing better than to stop the public from having access to nutritional supplements in order to help their buddies in the harmaceutical industry to sell more drugs. A recent attempt was made to grab more power over supplements but it was defeated by the power of the public and lobby efforts from the supplement industry as well as Senators Orin Hatch (R-Utah) and Tom Harkin (D-Nebraska). Unfortunately, the fear mongers out there who want you to donate money to their pet charities (themselves), continue to say that bill SR-1082 will give the FDA the ability to control supplement use above and beyond the DSHEA law already on the books. This is simply not true.

If you follow this link, you can read the truth of the situation along with a transcript of the discussion between Hatch, Harkin, Kennedy and Enzi about protecting DSHEA.  As a matter of fact here is a quote from Senator Enzi of Wyoming, “Yes we took great pains to make certain that there would be no conflict with DSHEA.” Senator Harkin further stated “So to make this absolutely clear, what you are saying is that the bill we are debating would in no way interfere with consumers’ access to dietary supplements.” Senator Hatch even said that the language in the bill would be beneficial to consumers.

Come on, stop the fear-mongering and spend more time making sure the supplement industry gets rid of unscrupulous purveyors of garbage and multi-level companies who promise the moon at super high prices and deliver nothing more than overpriced junk. This is what we need to work on, not scaring people half to death about an issue that isn’t.

Multivitamin Use Causes an Increase in Prostate Cancer? Not!!!

In a paper published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Dr. Goran Bjelakovic (a noted anti-supplement warrior and well known harmaceutical shill) along with Dr. Christian Gluud insinuate that men taking multivitamins seven days a week have a much higher risk of dying of prostate cancer than those who take none. They further go on to dribble that their findings “underscore the possibility that antioxidant supplements could have unintended consequences for our health.”  You know, if I were as bad of a scientist and published garbage like this, I wouldn’t be allowed to speak at any conferences ever again. There are so many flaws and misjudgements in this as to be embarrassing to the National Cancer Institute.

Here are a few problems off the top of my head.

  1. Men who have been diagnosed with prostate cancer are more likely to take multivitamins than those with no health issues. This was not looked at.
  2. The use of multivitamins was done using an intake questionnaire which is notorious for false numbers.
  3. The authors had no idea how long any of the people in the study used the multi vitamins a truly serious flaw.
  4. They claim that the population in question was “well nourished” despite a lot of evidence to the contrary. Our food supply is notorious for poor nutrient levels (see my blog).
  5. They used a cohort study which does not look at all of the variables possible. Statistics are easily manipulated (as they are here) to find something you want to find regardless of whether it really is there or not.
  6. There is no way, using the data supplied that a causative relationship can be developed. The authors admit this yet make conclusions that suggest a causal relationship. This is scientific dishonesty at its worse.

There are more problems with this paper but my biggest issue is how it got out of peer-review unless it was done nefariously, with a pointed agenda attached, aka anti-supplement. As I mentioned earlier, these are well-known anti-nutrient shills and this should be made very well known before giving any credence to the paper.

Shame on the National Cancer Institute.

Phthalates in Toys – Time for a Ban

In their drive to make money, a number of toy manufacturers have thought nothing of having known toxins in the goods they sell to children. They bury their heads in research, funded by industry, that flies in the face of what unbiased science tells us which is that phthalates and Bisphenol A have no place in a childs world.  Here is a well written article about the subject, thanks to my friend David Vaughn, who has the best food nutrient diet software program anywhere.

Drug Companies Are Buying Your Doctors

Articles published in both the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association are showing that drug companies are spending big bucks try to influence physicians to buy their brand of drugs over the competitors even though there are rarely any real clinical benefits to a new drug. Many of the companies deny this practice is really effective but it makes you wonder why they keep spending more each year on it if it doesn’t work. Doctors claim they aren’t influenced but all the research suggests otherwise.

If the doctors groups like the American Medical Association are unwilling to force their members to change this practice and deny entrance to their offices to big pharma reps then legislation is in order. We need our physicians to be impartial and objective, not beholden to the purveyors of gifts and free lunches. We need a change in the way our country goes about its health care and we need a change now. If not we will continue to slip down the rankings of countries when it comes to delivering health care to our citizens.

Anti Global Warming Activists Stop Pointing Your Finger at China and India

The rallying cry by American anti-global warming activists has been the growing concern that China and India’s burgeoning economies will quickly surpass the United States as the largest polluters in the world. Only problem is, that those two countries and many other third world nations are doing far more to curtail pollution than we are. The fact is, they have more regulations demanding better gas mileage from auto manufacturers than we do, are doing more to curb greenhouse gases and doing more to better the environment than we are. Of course, they have a lot of work to do because there are segments of their society that think dumping toxins on the poor is ok because they don’t have a strong voice in the government but do we?

It really saddens me when I see people complain about mercury in the environment and how it negatively affects human health, yet they see no problem whining about the cost to business if we demand they be better environmental citizens. The Bush Administration continues to put roadblocks in our way by proposing to cutback industry reporting of pollution to “remove the burden on small business”. Yeah, small business. That is if you define small as making of half a billion dollars a year. What price our health?  Apparently not much. Sad but true.

An Addendum to Yesterday’s Post

Yesterday I discussed the problems within the supplement business, today’s headlines bring more distressing news, one company, Hi-Tech Pharmaceuticals, has had a multi-charge indictment put on it and it’s principals that reads like a description of all that is wrong with the nutritional supplement industry. This puts a nasty blanket of suspicion on all of us, regardless of the fact that most companies are stand-up citizens who produce good products and follow the law to the letter and then some.

In a well researched article on MSNBC, the reporter lays out a sordid tale of deception, illegal dealings and discussions of murder and blackmail. The company was found to have added the drug Cialis to their herbal “male-enhancement” supplement, which is something I have been privy to being done by others in the supplement industry. This is where our industry needs to be stronger, policing itself with more vigor and speed than ever before. If not, the FDA will step in and regulate nutritional supplements in a a far heavier handed way than is necessary.

Hey Supplement Industry – Get Your Act Together!!!

With all of the cry wolf alternative health fear mongers falsely claiming that CODEX is coming to America, they won’t discuss the supplement industries ugly secret which is how poorly we self-regulate our industry. In a report garnering headlines at MSNBC.com, a number of supplements which claim to contain chondroitin, either didn’t or had much less than the labels claimed. This is intolerable in our industry and almost beckons government intervention.

Instead of whining about a false impending doom called CODEX (which by the way cannot come to fruition in the US because of the DSHEA bill), start getting going after the lousy manufacturers and distributors who sell crap to consumers. If this trend of bad publicity continues, then the FDA has no choice but to step in and increase surveillance. In my opinion the biggest screamers against FDA interference are those who produce lousy products or people who use questionable practices in their clinics. There is one women, who claims to be a doctor (and is a total fraud), charges $14K to come to a clinic she works at to inject people with a protocol so lacking in science, but high in hype, that people line up to have the work done on them. Unfortunately for many, the results are disastrous. I have worked with a number of them, some physicians, who have had horrible side-effects, some lasting for years.

Maybe the time has come for intelligent regulation of this industry. Sadly, as with most regulation, it will come at a terrible price.