Showing posts with label AMA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label AMA. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

America’s Drug Story and the Rockefeller Empire

 “We Are Living Too Short and Dying Too Long”.

…Dr. Myron Wentz, founder, chairman, and CEO of USANA Health Sciences, Inc. (NASDAQ: USNA) and Sanoviv Medical Center, honored with the Albert Einstein Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Life Sciences.

 
By Marion Algier – AskMarion/THITW
The Drug Story

"The truth about cures without drugs is suppressed, unless it suits the purpose of the censor to garble it. Whether these cures are effected by chiropractors, Naturopaths, Naprapaths, Osteopaths, Faith Healers, Spiritualists, Herbalists, Christian Scientists, or MDs who use the brains they have, you never read about it in the big newspapers."  ...Morris A. Bealle

In the 30's, Morris A. Bealle, a former city editor of the old Washington Times and Herald, was running a county seat newspaper, in which the local power company bought a large advertisement every week. This account took quite a lot of worry off Bealle' s shoulders when the bills came due. But according to Bealle's own story, one day the paper took up the cudgels for some of its readers that were being given poor service from the power company, and Morris Bealle received the dressing down of his life from the advertising agency which handled the power company' s account. They told him that any more such 'stepping out of line' would result in the immediate cancellation not only of the advertising contract, but also of the gas company and the telephone company.

That' s when Bealle' s eyes were opened to the meaning of a 'free press', and he decided to get out of the newspaper business. He could afford to do that because he belonged to the landed gentry of Maryland, but not all newspaper editors are that lucky.

Bealle used his professional experience to do some deep digging into the freedom-of-the-press situation and came up with two shattering exposes - The Drug Story, and The House of Rockefeller. The fact that in spite of his familiarity with the editorial world and many important personal contacts he couldn't get his revelations into print until he founded his own company, The Columbia Publishing House, Washington D.C., in 1949, was just a prime example of the silent but adamant censorship in force in 'the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave'. Although The Drug Story is one of the most important books on health and politics ever to appear in the USA, it has never been admitted to a major bookstore nor reviewed by any establishment paper, and was sold exclusively by mail until the 1970s,  when we first got to read it. But nevertheless, it was already in its 33rd printing, under a different label - Biworld Publishers, Orem, Utah.

As Bealle pointed out, a business which makes 6% on its invested capital is considered a sound money maker. Sterling Drug, Inc., the main cog and largest holding company in the Rockefeller Drug Empire and its 68 subsidiaries, showed operating profits in 1961 of $23,463,719 after taxes, on net assets of $43,108,106 - a 54% profit. Squibb, another Rockefeller controlled company, in 1945 made not 6% but 576% on the actual value of its property.

That was during the luscious war years when the Army Surgeon General's Office and the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery were not only acting as promoters for the Drug Trust, but were actually forcing drug trust poisons into the blood streams of American soldiers, sailors and marines, to the tune of over 200 million 'shots'. Is it any wonder, asked Bealle, that the Rockefellers, and their stooges in the Food and Drug Administration, the U.S. Public Health Service, the Federal Trade Commission, the Better Business Bureau, the Army Medical Corps, the Navy Bureau of Medicine, and thousands of health officers all over the country, should combine to put out of business all forms of therapy that discourage the use of drugs.

'The last annual report of the Rockefeller Foundation', reported Bealle (in the early 1970’s), 'itemizes the gifts [grants] it has made to colleges and public agencies in the past 44 years, and they total somewhat over half a billion dollars. These colleges, of course, teach their students all the drug lore the Rockefeller pharmaceutical houses want taught. Otherwise there would be no more gifts, just as there are no gifts to any of the 30 odd colleges in the United States that don't use therapies based on drugs.

'Harvard, with its well publicized medical school, has received $8,764,433 of Rockefeller's Drug Trust money, Yale got $7 ,927,800, Johns Hopkins $10,418,531, Washington University in St. Louis $2,842,132, New York's Columbia University $5,424,371, Cornell University $1,709,072, ete., etc.'

And while 'giving away' those huge sums to drug propagandizing colleges, the Rockefeller interests were growing to a world-wide web that no one could entirely explore. Already well over 30 years ago it was large enough for Bealle to demonstrate that the Rockefeller interests had created, built up and developed the most far reaching industrial empire ever conceived in the mind of man. Standard Oil was of course the foundation upon which all of the other Rockefeller industries have been built. The story of Old John D., as ruthless an industrial pirate as ever came down the pike, is well known, but is being today conveniently ignored. The keystone of this mammoth industrial empire was the Chase NationaI Bank, now renamed the Chase Manhattan Bank.

Not the least of its holdings are in the drug business. The Rockefellers own the largest drug manufacturing combine in the world, and use all of their other interests to bring pressure to increase the sale of drugs. The fact that most of the 12,000 separate drug items on the market are harmful is of no concern to the Drug Trust...

The Rockefeller Foundation was first set up in 1904 and called the General Education Fund. An organization called the Rockefeller Foundation, ostensibly to supplement the General Education Fund, was formed in 1910 and through long finagling and lots of Rockefeller money got the New York legislature to issue a charter on May 14, 1913.

It is therefore not surprising that the House of Rockefeller has had its own 'nominees' planted in all Federal agencies that have to do with health. So the stage was set for the 'education' of the American public, with a view to turning it into a population of drug and medico dependents, with the early help of the parents and the schools, then with direct advertising and, last but not least, the influence the advertising revenues had on the media makers.

A compilation of the magazine Advertising Age showed that as far back as 1948 the larger companies in America spent for advertising the sum total of $1,104,224,374, when the dollar was still worth a dollar and not half a zloty. Of this staggering sum the interlocking Rockefeller-Morgan interests (gone over entirely to Rockefeller after Morgan' s death) controlled about 80 percent, and utilized it to manipulate public information on health and drug matters - then and even more recklessly now.

'Even the most independent newspapers are dependent on their press associations for their national news,' Bealle pointed out, 'and there is no reason for a news editor to suspect that a story coming over the wires of the Associated Press, the United Press or the International News Service is censored when it concerns health matters. Yet this is what happens constantly.'

In fact in the '50s the Drug Trust had one of its directors on the directorate of the Associated Press. He was no less than Arthur Hays Sulzberger, publisher of the New York Times and as such one of the most powerful Associated Press directors.

It was thus easy for the Rockefeller Trust to persuade the Associated Press Science Editor to adopt a policy which would not permit any medical news to clear that is not approved by the Drug Trust 'expert', and this censor is not going to approve any item that can in any way hurt the sale of drugs.

This accounts to this day for the many fake stories of serums and medical cures and just-around-the-corner breakthrough victories over cancer, AIDS, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, which go out brazenly over the wires to all daily newspapers in America and abroad.

Emanuel M. Josephson, M.D., whom the Drug Trust has been unable to intimidate despite many attempts, pointed out that the National Association of Science Writers was 'persuaded' to adopt as part of its code of ethics the following chestnut: 'Science editors are incapable of judging the facts of phenomena involved in medical and scientific discovery. Therefore, they only report 'discoveries' approved by medical authorities, or those presented before a body of scientific peers.'

This explains why Bantam Books, America's biggest publisher, made a colossal mistake in its initial enthusiasm and optimism sending review copies of  SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENT to the 3,500 'science writers' on its list, instead of addressing them to the literary book reviewers who are not  subject to medical censorship. One single censor decreed NO and SLAUGHTER OF  THE INNOCENT sank in silence.

Thus newspapers continue to be fed with propaganda about drugs and their alleged value, although according to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) 1.5 million people landed in hospitals in 1978 because of medication side effects in the U.S. alone, and despite recurrent statements by intelligent and courageous medical men that most pharmaceutical items on sale are useless at best, but more often harmful or deadly in the long run.

The truth about cures without drugs is suppressed, unless it suits the purpose of the censor to garble it. Whether these cures are effected by Chiropractors, Naturopaths, Naprapaths, Osteopaths, Faith Healers, Spiritualists, Herbalists, Christian Scientists, or MDs who use the brains they have, you never read about it in the big newspapers.

To teach the Rockefeller drug ideology, it is necessary to teach that Nature didn't know what she was doing when she made the human body. But statistics issued by the Children's Bureau of the Federal Security Agency show that since the all-out drive of the Drug Trust for drugging, vaccinating and serumizing the human system, the health of the American nation has sharply declined, especially among children. Children are now given 'shots' for this and 'shots' for that, when the only safeguard known to science is a pure bloodstream, which can be obtained only with clean air and wholesome food. Meaning by natural and inexpensive means. Just what the Drug Trust most objects to.

When the FDA, whose officials have to be acceptable to Rockefeller Center before they are appointed, has to put an independent operator out of business, it goes all out to execute those orders. But the orders do not come directly from Standard Oil or a drug house director. As Morris Bealle pointed out, the American Medical Association (AMA) is the front for the Drug Trust, and furnishes the quack doctors to testify that even when they know nothing of the product involved, it is their considered opinion that it has no therapeutic value.

Wrote Bealle:

'Financed by the taxpayers, these Drug Trust persecutions leave no stone unturned to destroy the victim. If he is a small operator, the resulting attorney's fees and court costs put him out of business. In one case, a Dr. Adolphus Hohensee of Scranton, Pa., who had stated that vitamins (he used natural ones) were vital to good health, was taken to court for 'misbranding' his product. The American Medical Association furnished ten medicos who reversed all known medical theories by testifying that 'vitamins are not necessary to the human body'. Confronted with government bulletins to the contrary, the medicos wiggled out of that one by declaring that these standard publications were outdated!'

In addition to the FDA, Bealle listed the following agencies having to do with 'health' - i.e., with the health of the Drug Trust to the detriment of the citizens - as being dependent on Rockefeller: U.S. Public Health Service, U.S. Veterans Administration, Federal Trade Commission, Surgeon General of the Air Force, Army Surgeon General' s Office, Navy Bureau of Medicine & Surgery, National Health Research Institute, National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences.

The National Academy of Sciences in Washington is considered the all wise body which investigates everything under the sun, especially in the field of health, and gives to a palpitating public the last word in that science. To the important post at the head of this agency, the Drug Trust had one of their own appointed. He was none other than Alfred N. Richards, one of the directors and largest stockholders of Merck & Company, which was making huge profits from its drug traffic.

When Bealle revealed this fact, Richards resigned forthwith, and the Rockefellers appointed in his place the President of their own Rockefeller Institution, Detlev W. Bronk.

The medico drug cartel was summed up by J.W Hodge, M.D., of Niagara Falls,  N.Y., in these words:   'The medical monopoly or medical trust, euphemistically called the American Medical Association, is not merely the meanest monopoly ever organized, but the most arrogant, dangerous and despotic organization which ever managed a free people in this or any other age. Any and all methods of healing the sick by means of safe, simple and natural remedies are sure to be assailed and denounced by the arrogant leaders of the AMA doctors' trust as fakes, frauds and humbugs.  Every practitioner of the healing art who does not ally himself with the medical trust is denounced as a 'dangerous quack' and impostor by the predatory trust doctors. Every sanitarium who attempts to restore the sick to a state of health by natural means without resort to the knife or poisonous drugs, disease imparting serums, deadly toxins or vaccines, is at once pounced upon by these medical tyrants and fanatics, bitterly denounced, vilified and persecuted to the fullest extent.'

The Lincoln Chiropractic College in Indianapolis requires 4,496 hours, the Palmer Institute Chiropractic in Davenport a minimum of 4,000 60 minute classroom hours, the University of Natural Healing Arts in Denver five years of 1,000 hours each to qualify for a degree. The National College of Naprapathy in Chicago requires 4,326 classroom hours for graduation. Yet the medico drug cartel spreads the propaganda that the practitioners of these three 'heretic' sciences are poorly trained or not trained at all - the real reason being that they cure their patients without the use of drugs. In 1958, one of those 'ill trained' doctors, Nicholas P. Grimaldi, who had just graduated from the Lincoln Chiropractic College, took the basic science examination of the Connecticut State Board along with 63 medics and osteopaths. He made the highest mark (91.6) ever made by a doctor taking the Connecticut State Board examination.

Rockefeller' s various 'educational' activities had proved so profitable in the U S. that in 1927 the International Educational Board was launched, as Junior' s own, personal charity, and endowed with $21,000,000 for a starter, to be lavished on foreign universities and politicos, with all the usual strings attached. This Board undertook to export the 'new' Rockefeller image as a benefactor of mankind, as well as his business practices. Nobody informed the beneficiaries that every penny the Rockefellers seemed to be throwing out the window would come back, bearing substantial interest, through the front door.

Rockefeller had always had a particular interest in China, where Standard Oil was almost the sole supplier of kerosene and oil 'for the lamps of China'. So he put up money to establish the China Medical Board and to build the Peking Union Medical College, playing the role of the Great White Father who has come to dispense knowledge on his lowly children. The Rockefeller Foundation invested up to $45,000,000 into 'westernizing' (read corrupting) Chinese medicine.

Medical colleges were instructed that if they wished to benefit from the Rockefeller largesse they had better convince 500 million Chinese to throw into the ashcan the safe and useful but inexpensive herbal remedies of their barefoot doctors, which had withstood the test of centuries, in favor of the expensive carcinogenic and teratogenic 'miracle' drugs Made in USA, which had to be replaced constantly with new ones, when the fatal side effects could no longer be concealed; and if they couldn't 'demonstrate' through large-scale animal experiments the effectiveness of their ancient  acupuncture, this could not be recognized as having any 'scientific value'. Its millenarian effectiveness proven on human beings was of no concern to the Western wizards.

But when the Communists came to power in China and it was no longer possible to trade, the Rockefellers suddenly lost interest in the health of the Chinese people and shifted their attention increasingly to Japan, India and Latin America.

'No candid study of his career can lead to other conclusion than that he is victim of perhaps the ugliest of all passions, that for money, money as an end. It is not a pleasant picture.... this money maniac secretly, patiently, eternally plotting how he may add to his wealth.... He has turned commerce to war, and honey-combed it with cruel and corrupt practices.... And he calls his great organization a benefaction, and points to his church-going and charities as proof of his righteousness. This is supreme wrong-doing cloaked by religion. There is but one name for it - hypocrisy. '

This was the description Ida Tarbell made of John D. Rockefeller in her 'History of the Standard Oil Company', serialized in 1905 in the widely circulated McClure's Magazine. And that was several years before the 'Ludlow Massacre', so JDR was as yet far from having reached the apex of his  disrepute. But after World War II it would have been hard to read, in America or abroad, a single criticism of JDR, nor of Junior, who had followed in his father' s footsteps, nor of Junior' s four sons who all endeavored to emulate their illustrious forbears. Today's various encyclopedias extant in public libraries of the Western world have nothing but praise for the Family. How was this achieved?

Ironically, the two apparently most NEGATIVE events in the career of JDR brought about a huge POSITIVE change in his favor, to a degree that he himself could not foresee. To wit:

In the year when according to the current Encyclopedia Britanica (long become a Rockefeller property and transferred from Oxford to Chicago), Rockefeller had 'retired from active business', namely in 1911, he had been convicted by a U.S. court of illegal practices and ordered to dissolve the Standard Oil Trust, which comprised 40 corporations. This imposed dissolution was to provide his Empire with added might, to a degree that was unprecedented in the history of modem business. Until then, the Trust had existed for all to see - an exposed target. After that, it went underground, and thereby its power was cloaked in security, and could keep expanding unseen and therefore unopposed.

The Ludlow Massacre

The second apparently negative experience was a certain 1914 event that persuaded JDR, until then utterly contemptuous of public opinion, to gloss over his own image.

The United Mine Workers had asked for higher wages and better living conditions for the miners of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, one of the many Rockefeller owned companies.

The miners - mostly immigrants from Europe's poorest countries - lived in shacks provided by the company at exorbitant rent. Their low wages ($1.68 a day) were paid in script redeemable only at company stores charging high prices. The churches they attended were the pastorates of company-hired ministers; their children were taught in company-controlled schools; the company libraries excluded books that the Bible-thumping Rockefellers deemed 'subversive', such as 'Darwin's Origin of the Species.' The company maintained a force of detectives, mine guards, and spies whose job it was to keep the camp quarantined from the danger of unionization.

When the miners struck, JDR, Jr., then officially in command of the company, and his father's hatchet man, the Baptist Reverend Frederick T. Gates, who was a director of the Rockefeller Foundation, refused even to negotiate. They evicted the strikers from the company-owned shacks, hired a thousand strike-breakers from the Baldwin-Felts detective agency, and persuaded Governor Ammons to call out the National Guard to help break the strike.

Open warfare resulted. Guardsmen, miners, their women and children, who since their eviction were camping in tents, were ruthlessly killed, until the frightened Governor wired President Wilson for Federal Troops, who eventually crushed the strike, The New York Times, which then already could never be accused of being unfriendly to the Rockefeller interests, reported on April 21, 1914.

'A 14 hour battle between striking coal miners and members of the Colorado National Guard in the Ludlow district today culminated in the killing of Louis Tikas, leader of the Greek strikers, and the destruction of the Ludlow tent colony by fire.'

  And the following day.

'Forty five dead (32 of them women and children), a score missing and more than a score wounded is the known result of the 14 hour battle which raged between state troops and coal miners in the Ludlow district, on the property of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, the Rockefeller holding. The Ludlow is a mass of charred debris, and buried beneath it is a story of horror unparalleled in the history of industrial warfare. In the holes that had been dug for their protection against rifle fire, the women and children died like trapped rats as the flames swept over them. One pit uncovered this afternoon disclosed the bodies of ten children and two women.'

The worldwide revulsion that followed was such that JDR decided to hire the most talented press agent in the country, Ivy Lee, who got the tough assignment of whitewashing the tycoon' s bloodied image.

When Lee learned that the newly organized Rockefeller Foundation had $100 million lying around for promotional purposes without knowing what to do with it, he came with a plan to donate large sums - none less than a million- to well known colleges, hospitals, churches and benevolent organizations. The plan was accepted. So were the millions. And they made headlines all over the world, for in the days of the gold standard and the five cent cigar there was a maxim in every newspaper office that a million dollars was always news.

That was the beginning of the cleverly worded medical reports on new 'miracle' drugs and 'just-around-the-corner breakthroughs' planted in the leading news offices and press associations that continue to this day, and the flighty public soon forgot, or forgave, the massacre of foreign immigrants for the dazzling display of generosity and philanthropy financed by the ballooning Rockefeller fortune and going out, with thunderous press fanfare, to various 'worthy' institutions.

In the following years, not only newsmen, but whole newspapers were bought, financed or founded with Rockefeller money. So Time Magazine, which Henry Luce started in 1923, had been taken over by J.P. Morgan when the magazine got into financial difficulties. When Morgan died and his financial empire crumbled, the House of Rockefeller wasted no time in taking over this lush editorial plum also, together with its sisters Fortune and Life, and built for them an expensive 14 story home of their own in Rockefeller Center - the Time & Life Building.

Rockefeller was also co-owner of Time's 'rival' magazine, Newsweek, which had been established in the early days of the New Deal with money put up by Rockefeller, Vincent Astor, the Harrimann family and other members and allies of the House.

For all his innate cynicism, JDR must have been himself surprised to discover how easily the so-called intellectuals could be bought. Indeed, they turned out to be among his best investments.

By founding and lavishly endowing his Education Boards at home and abroad, Rockefeller won control not only of the governments and politicos but also of the intellectual and scientific community, starting with the Medical Power - the organization that forms those priests of the New Religion that are the modern medicine men. No Pulitzer or Nobel or any similar prize endowed with money and prestige has ever been awarded to a declared foe of the Rockefeller system.

Henry Luce, officially founder and editor of Time Magazine, but constantly dependent on House advertising, also distinguished himself in his adulation of his sponsors. JDR's son had been responsible for the Ludlow massacre, and an obedient partner in his father' s most unsavory actions. Nonetheless, in 1956 Henry Luce put Junior on the cover of Time, and the feature story, soberly titled 'The Good Man', included hyperbole like this:

'It is because John D. Rockefeller Junior's is a life of constructive social giving that he ranks as an authentic American hero, just as certainly as any general who ever won a victory for an American army or any statesman who triumphed in behalf of U.S. diplomacy.'

Clearly, Time's editorial board wasn't given the choice to change its tune even after the passing of Junior and Henry Luce, since it remained just as dependent on House of Rockefeller advertising. Thus, when in 1979 one of Junior's sons, Nelson A. Rockefeller died - who had been one of the loudest hawks in the Vietnam and other American wars, and was personally responsible for the massacre of prisoners and hostages at Attica prison - Time said of him in it obituary, without laughing:    'He was driven by a mission to serve, improve and uplift his country.'

Perhaps it was all this that Prof. Peter Singer had in mind when telling the judges in Italy that the Rockefeller Foundation was a humanitarian enterprise bent on doing good works. One of their best works seems to be sponsoring Prof. Peter Singer, the world's greatest animal friend and protector who claims that vivisection is indispensable for medical progress and for more than 20 years refuses to mention that legions of medical doctors are of the opposite view.

Another interesting revelation in the article of Time was that many years ago already Singer 'was pleasantly surprised when Britanica approached him to distill in about 30,000 words the discipline that is, at its heart, the systematic study of what we ought to do.' So now we touch the subject of sponsorship and patronage. They don't always mean immediate cash but, more important, long-term profits.

Many decades ago the Encyclopedia Britannica moved from Oxford to Chicago because Rockefeller had bought it to add much needed luster to the University of Chicago and its medical school, the first one he had founded. Peter Singer, 'the world's greatest animal defender' who keeps a door permanently open to vivisection and the lucrative medical swindle, gets millions of dollars free publicity thanks to the worldwide engagement of the Rockefeller Foundation and the media makers who are in no position to oppose it.

From the article in Time we also learned that Singer' s mother had been a medical doctor in the old country, which could mean that little Peter started assimilating all the Rockefeller superstition on vivisection with his mother's milk.

Taken from the CIVIS Foundation Report number 15, Fall-Winter 1993

CIVIS: POB 152, Via Motta 51-CH 6900, Massagno/Lugano, Switzerland

Originally web posted at: http://www.eurosolve.com/charity/bava/story.htm

 

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE ROCKEFELLER DRUG EMPIRE (Overview)

(Part II)

The Drug Story: By Hans Ruesch, although an older publication is definitely worth a read if you haven’t read it or don’t know the history!)

Also, please beware that the Insurance Companies, the Drug Companies and the Progressives in our Government are all Behind ObamaCare!!  Ask yourself why you (average Americans) should not be running the other way?!? Whenever the Federal Government and members of the Progressive movement are involved individuals and freedom lose!!

As Bealle pointed out, in his piece ‘The Drug Story’ (above), a business which makes 6% on its invested capital is considered a sound money maker. Sterling Drug, Inc., the main cog and largest holding company in the Rockefeller Drug Empire and its 68 subsidiaries, showed operating profits in 1961 of $23,463,719 after taxes, on net assets of $43,108,106 - a 54% profit. Squibb, another Rockefeller-controlled company, in 1945 made not 6% but 576% on the actual value of its property.

That was during the luscious war years when the Army Surgeon General's Office and the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery were not only acting as promoters for the Drug Trust, but were actually forcing drug trust poisons into the blood streams of American soldiers, sailors and marines, to the tune of over 200 million 'shots'. Is it any wonder, asked Bealle, that the Rockefellers, and their stooges in the Food and Drug Administration, the U.S.

Public Health Service, the Federal Trade Commission, the Better Business Bureau, the Army Medical Corps, the Navy Bureau of Medicine, and thousands of health officers all over the country, should combine to put out of business all forms of therapy that discourage the use of drugs.

"The last annual report of the Rockefeller Foundation", reported Bealle, "itemizes the gifts it has made to colleges and public agencies in the past 44 years, and they total somewhat over half a billion dollars. These colleges, of course, teach their students all the drug lore the Rockefeller pharmaceutical houses want taught. Otherwise there would be no more gifts, just as there are no gifts to any of the 30 odd colleges in the United States that don't use therapies based on drugs.

"Harvard, with its well-publicized medical school, has received $8,764,433 of Rockefeller's Drug Trust money, Yale got $7 ,927,800, Johns Hopkins $10,418,531, Washington University in St. Louis $2,842,132, New York's Columbia University $5,424,371, Cornell University $1,709,072, etc., etc."

And while "giving away" those huge sums to drug-propagandizing colleges, the Rockefeller interests were growing to a world-wide web that no one could entirely explore. Already well over 30 years ago it was large enough for Bealle to demonstrate that the Rockefeller interests had created, built up and developed the most far reaching industrial empire ever conceived in the mind of man. Standard Oil was of course the foundation upon which all of the other Rockefeller industries have been built. The story of Old John D., as ruthless an industrial pirate as ever came down the pike, is well known, but is being today conveniently ignored. The keystone of this mammoth industrial empire was the Chase National Bank, now renamed the Chase Manhattan Bank.

Not the least of its holdings are in the drug business. The Rockefellers own the largest drug manufacturing combine in the world, and use all of their other interests to bring pressure to increase the sale of drugs. The fact that most of the 12,000 separate drug items on the market are harmful is of no concern to the Drug Trust...

The Rockefeller Foundation

The Rockefeller Foundation was first set up in 1904 and called the General Education Fund. An organization called the Rockefeller Foundation, ostensibly to supplement the General Education Fund, was formed in 1910 and through long finagling and lots of Rockefeller money got the New York legislature to issue a charter on May 14, 1913.

It is therefore not surprising that the House of Rockefeller has had its own "nominees" planted in all Federal agencies that have to do with health. So the stage was set for the "education" of the American public, with a view to turning it into a population of drug and medico dependents, with the early help of the parents and the schools, then with direct advertising and, last but not least, the influence the advertising revenues had on the media-makers.

A compilation of the magazine Advertising Age showed that as far back as 1948 the larger companies in America spent for advertising the sum total of $1,104,224,374, when the dollar was still worth a dollar and not half a zloty. Of this staggering sum the interlocking Rockefeller-Morgan interests (gone over entirely to Rockefeller after Morgan's death) controlled about 80 percent, and utilized it to manipulate public information on health and drug matters - then and even more recklessly now.

Censorship

"Even the most independent newspapers are dependent on their press associations for their national news," Bealle pointed out, "and there is no reason for a news editor to suspect that a story coming over the wires of the Associated Press, the United Press or the International News Service is censored when it concerns health matters. Yet this is what happens constantly."

In fact in the 50s the Drug Trust had one of its directors on the directorate of the Associated Press. He was no less than Arthur Hays Sulzberger, publisher of the New York Times and as such one of the most powerful Associated Press directors.

It was thus easy for the Rockefeller Trust to persuade the Associated Press Science Editor to adopt a policy which would not permit any medical news to clear that is not approved by the Drug Trust "expert", and this censor is not going to approve any item that can in any way hurt the sale of drugs.

This accounts to this day for the many fake stories of serums and medical cures and just-around-the-corner breakthrough victories over cancer, AIDS, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, which go out brazenly over the wires to all daily newspapers in America and abroad.

Emanuel M. Josephson, M.D., whom the Drug Trust has been unable to intimidate despite many attempts, pointed out that the National Association of Science Writers was "persuaded" to adopt as part of its code of ethics the following chestnut: "Science editors are incapable of judging the facts of phenomena involved in medical and scientific discovery. Therefore, they only report 'discoveries' approved by medical authorities, or those presented before a body of scientific peers."

This explains why Bantam Books, America's biggest publisher, made a colossal mistake in its initial enthusiasm and optimism sending review copies of SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENT to the 3,500 "science writers" on its list, instead of addressing them to the literary book reviewers who are not subject to medical censorship. One single censor decreed NO and SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENT sank in silence.

Thus newspapers continue to be fed with propaganda about drugs and their alleged value, although according to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) 1.5 million people landed in hospitals in 1978 because of medication side effects in the U.S. alone, and despite recurrent statements by intelligent and courageous medical men that most pharmaceutical items on sale are useless at best, but more often harmful or deadly in the long run.

The truth about cures without drugs is suppressed, unless it suits the purpose of the censor to garble it. Whether these cures are effected by Chiropractors, Naturopaths, Naprapaths, Osteopaths, Faith Healers, Spiritualists, Herbalists, Christian Scientists, or MDs who use the brains they have, you never read about it in the big newspapers.

To teach the Rockefeller drug ideology, it is necessary to teach that Nature didn't know what she was doing when she made the human body. But statistics issued by the Children's Bureau of the Federal Security Agency show that since the all-out drive of the Drug Trust for drugging, vaccinating and serumizing the human system, the health of the American nation has sharply declined, especially among children. Children are now given "shots" for this and "shots" for that, when the only safeguard known to science is a pure bloodstream, which can be obtained only with clean air and wholesome food. Meaning by natural and inexpensive means. Just what the Drug Trust most objects to.

When the FDA, whose officials have to be acceptable to Rockefeller Center before they are appointed, has to put an independent operator out of business, it goes all out to execute those orders. But the orders do not come directly from Standard Oil or a drug house director. As Morris Bealle pointed out, the American Medical Association (AMA) is the front for the Drug Trust, and furnishes the quack doctors to testify that even when they know nothing of the product involved, it is their considered opinion that it has no therapeutic value.

Persecution

Wrote Bealle:

"Financed by the taxpayers, these Drug Trust persecutions leave no stone unturned to destroy the victim. If he is a small operator, the resulting attorney's fees and court costs put him out of business. In one case, a Dr. Adolphus Hohensee of Scranton, Pa., who had stated that vitamins (he used natural ones) were vital to good health, was taken to court for 'misbranding' his product. The American Medical Association furnished ten medicos who reversed all known medical theories by testifying that 'vitamins are not necessary to the human body'. Confronted with government bulletins to the contrary, the medicos wiggled out of that one by declaring that these standard publications were outdated!"

In addition to the FDA, Bealle listed the following agencies having to do with "health" - i.e., with the health of the Drug Trust to the detriment of the citizens - as being dependent on Rockefeller: U.S. Public Health Service, U.S. Veterans Administration, Federal Trade Commission, Surgeon General of the Air Force, Army Surgeon General's Office, Navy Bureau of Medicine & Surgery, National Health Research Institute, National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences.

The National Academy of Sciences in Washington is considered the all-wise body which investigates everything under the sun, especially in the field of health, and gives to a palpitating public the last word in that science. To the important post at the head of this agency, the Drug Trust had one of their own appointed. He was none other than Alfred N. Richards, one of the directors and largest stockholders of Merck & Company, which was making huge profits from its drug traffic.

When Bealle revealed this fact, Richards resigned forthwith, and the Rockefellers appointed in his place the President of their own Rockefeller Institution, Detlev W. Bronk.

America's Medico-Drug Cartel

The medico-drug cartel was summed up by J.W Hodge, M.D., of Niagara Falls, N.Y., in these words:

"The medical monopoly or medical trust, euphemistically called the American Medical Association, is not merely the meanest monopoly ever organized, but the most arrogant, dangerous and despotic organization which ever managed a free people in this or any other age. Any and all methods of healing the sick by means of safe, simple and natural remedies are sure to be assailed and denounced by the arrogant leaders of the AMA doctors' trust as fakes, frauds and humbugs.

Every practitioner of the healing art who does not ally himself with the medical trust is denounced as a 'dangerous quack' and impostor by the predatory trust doctors. Every sanitarian who attempts to restore the sick to a state of health by natural means without resort to the knife or poisonous drugs, disease imparting serums, deadly toxins or vaccines, is at once pounced upon by these medical tyrants and fanatics, bitterly denounced, vilified and persecuted to the fullest extent."

The Lincoln Chiropractic College in Indianapolis requires 4,496 hours, the Palmer Institute Chiropractic in Davenport a minimum of 4,000 60-minute classroom hours, the University of Natural Healing Arts in Denver five years of 1,000 hours each to qualify for a degree. The National College of Nephropathy in Chicago requires 4,326 classroom hours for graduation. Yet the medico-drug cartel spreads the propaganda that the practitioners of these three "heretic" sciences are poorly trained or not trained at all - the real reason being that they cure their patients without the use of drugs. In 1958, one of those "ill-trained" doctors, Nicholas P. Grimaldi, who had just graduated from the Lincoln Chiropractic College, took the basic science examination of the Connecticut State Board along with 63 medics and osteopaths. He made the highest mark (91.6) ever made by a doctor taking the Connecticut State Board examination.

Colonization

Rockefeller's various "educational" activities had proved so profitable in the U S. that in 1927 the International Educational Board was launched, as Junior's own, personal charity, and endowed with $21,000,000 for a starter, to be lavished on foreign universities and politicos, with all the usual strings attached. This Board undertook to export the "new" Rockefeller image as a benefactor of mankind, as well as his business practices. Nobody informed the beneficiaries that every penny the Rockefellers seemed to be throwing out the window would come back, bearing substantial interest, through the front door.

Rockefeller had always had a particular interest in China, where Standard Oil was almost the sole supplier of kerosene and oil "for the lamps of China". So he put up money to establish the China Medical Board and to build the Peking Union Medical College, playing the role of the Great White Father who has come to dispense knowledge on his lowly children. The Rockefeller Foundation invested up to $45,000,000 into "westernizing" (read corrupting) Chinese medicine.

Medical colleges were instructed that if they wished to benefit from the Rockefeller largesse they had better convince 500 million Chinese to throw into the ashcan the safe and useful but inexpensive herbal remedies of their barefoot doctors, which had withstood the test of centuries, in favor of the expensive carcinogenic and teratogenic "miracle" drugs Made in USA, which had to be replaced constantly with new ones, when the fatal side-effects could no longer be concealed; and if they couldn't "demonstrate" through large- scale animal experiments the effectiveness of their ancient acupuncture, this could not be recognized as having any "scientific value". Its millenarian effectiveness proven on human beings was of no concern to the Western wizards.

But when the Communists came to power in China and it was no longer possible to trade, the Rockefellers suddenly lost interest in the health of the Chinese people and shifted their attention increasingly to Japan, India and Latin America.

The Image

"No candid study of his career can lead to other conclusion than that he is victim of perhaps the ugliest of all passions, that for money, money as an end. It is not a pleasant picture.... this money-maniac secretly, patiently, eternally plotting how he may add to his wealth.... He has turned commerce to war, and honey-combed it with cruel and corrupt practices.... And he calls his great organization a benefaction, and points to his church-going and charities as proof of his righteousness. This is supreme wrong-doing cloaked by religion. There is but one name for it - hypocrisy."

This was the description Ida Tarbell made of John D. Rockefeller in her "History of the Standard Oil Company", serialized in 1905 in the widely circulated McClure's Magazine. And that was several years before the "Ludlow Massacre", so JDR was as yet far from having reached the apex of his disrepute. But after World War II it would have been hard to read, in America or abroad, a single criticism of JDR, nor of Junior, who had followed in his father's footsteps, nor of Junior's four sons who all endeavored to emulate their illustrious forbears. Today's various encyclopedias extant in public libraries of the Western world have nothing but praise for the Family. How was this achieved?

Ironically, the two apparently most NEGATIVE events in the career of JDR brought about a huge POSITIVE change in his favor, to a degree that he himself could not foresee. To wit:

In the year when according to the current Encyclopedia Britannica (long become a Rockefeller property and transferred from Oxford to Chicago), Rockefeller had "retired from active business", namely in 1911, he had been convicted by a U.S. court of illegal practices and ordered to dissolve the Standard Oil Trust, which comprised 40 corporations. This imposed dissolution was to provide his Empire with added might, to a degree that was unprecedented in the history of modem business. Until then, the Trust had existed for all to see - an exposed target. After that, it went underground, and thereby its power was cloaked in security, and could keep expanding unseen and therefore unopposed.

The second apparently negative experience was a certain 1914 event that persuaded JDR, until then utterly contemptuous of public opinion, to gloss over his own image.

"The Ludlow Massacre"

The United Mine Workers had asked for higher wages and better living conditions for the miners of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, one of the many Rockefeller-owned companies.
The miners - mostly immigrants from Europe's poorest countries - lived in shacks provided by the company at exorbitant rent. Their low wages ($1,68 a day) were paid in script redeemable only at company stores charging high prices. The churches they attended were the pastorates of company-hired ministers; their children were taught in company-controlled schools; the company libraries excluded books that the Bible-thumping Rockefellers deemed "subversive", such as "Darwin's Origin of the Species." The company maintained a force of detectives, mine guards, and spies whose job it was to keep the camp quarantined from the danger of unionization.

When the miners struck, JDR, Jr., then officially in command of the company, and his father's hatchet man, the Baptist Reverend Frederick T. Gates, who was a director of the Rockefeller Foundation, refused even to negotiate. They evicted the strikers from the company-owned shacks, hired a thousand strike-breakers from the Baldwin-Felts detective agency, and persuaded Governor Ammons to call out the National Guard to help break the strike.

Open warfare resulted. Guardsmen, miners, their women and children, who since their eviction were camping in tents, were ruthlessly killed, until the frightened Governor wired President Wilson for Federal Troops, who eventually crushed the strike, The New York Times, which then already could never be accused of being unfriendly to the Rockefeller interests, reported on April 21, 1914.
"A 14-hour battle between striking coal miners and members of the Colorado National Guard in the Ludlow district today culminated in the killing of Louis Tikas, leader of the Greek strikers, and the destruction of the Ludlow tent colony by fire."

And the following day:

"Forty-five dead (32 of them women and children), a score missing and more than a score wounded is the known result of the 14- hour battle which raged between state troops and coal miners in the Ludlow district, on the property of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, the Rockefeller holding. The Ludlow is a mass of charred debris, and buried beneath it is a story of horror unparalleled in the history of industrial warfare. In the holes that had been dug for their protection against rifle fire, the women and children died like trapped rats as the flames swept over them. One pit uncovered this afternoon disclosed the bodies of ten children and two women."

Thorough Facelift

The worldwide revulsion that followed was such that JDR decided to hire the most talented press agent in the country, Ivy Lee, who got the tough assignment of whitewashing the tycoon's bloodied image.

When Lee learned that the newly organized Rockefeller Foundation had $100 million lying around for promotional purposes without knowing what to do with it, he came with a plan to donate large sums - none less than a million - to well-known colleges, hospitals, churches and benevolent organizations. The plan was accepted. So were the millions. And they made headlines all over the world, for in the days of the gold standard and the five cent cigar there was a maxim in every newspaper office that a million dollars was always news.

That was the beginning of the cleverly worded medical reports on new "miracle" drugs and "just-around-the-corner breakthroughs" planted in the leading news offices and press associations that continue to this day, and the flighty public soon forgot, or forgave, the massacre of foreign immigrants for the dazzling display of generosity and philanthropy financed by the ballooning Rockefeller fortune and going out, with thunderous press fanfare, to various "worthy" institutions.

The Purchase of Public Opinion

In the following years, not only newsmen, but whole newspapers were bought, financed or founded with Rockefeller money. So Time Magazine, which Henry Luce started in 1923, had been taken over by J.P. Morgan when the magazine got into financial difficulties. When Morgan died and his financial empire crumbled, the House of Rockefeller wasted no time in taking over this lush editorial plum also, together with its sisters Fortune and Life, and built for them an expensive 14-story home of their own in Rockefeller Center - the Time & Life Building.

Rockefeller was also co-owner of Time's "rival" magazine, Newsweek, which had been established in the early days of the New Deal with money put up by Rockefeller, Vincent Astor, the Harrimann family and other members and allies of the House.

The Intellectuals - A Bargain

For all his innate cynicism, JDR must have been himself surprised to discover how easily the so-called intellectuals could be bought. Indeed, they turned out to be among his best investments.
By founding and lavishly endowing his Education Boards at home and abroad, Rockefeller won control not only of the governments and politicos but also of the intellectual and scientific community, starting with the Medical Power - the organization that forms those priests of the New Religion that are the modern medicine men. No Pulitzer or Nobel or any similar prize endowed with money and prestige has ever been awarded to a declared foe of the Rockefeller system.

Henry Luce, officially founder and editor of Time Magazine, but constantly dependent on House advertising, also distinguished himself in his adulation of his sponsors. JDR's son had been responsible for the Ludlow massacre, and an obedient partner in his father's most unsavory actions. Nonetheless, in 1956 Henry Luce put Junior on the cover of Time, and the feature story, soberly titled "The Good Man", included hyperboles like this:

"It is because John D. Rockefeller Junior's is a life of constructive social giving that he ranks as an authentic American hero, just as certainly as any general who ever won a victory for an American army or any statesman who triumphed in behalf of U.S. diplomacy."

Clearly, Time's editorial board wasn't given the choice to change its tune even after the passing of Junior and Henry Luce, since it remained just as dependent on House of Rockefeller advertising. Thus, when in 1979 one of Junior's sons, Nelson A. Rockefeller died - who had been one of the loudest hawks in the Vietnam and other American wars, and was personally responsible for the massacre of prisoners and hostages at Atticia prison - Time said of him in it obituary, without laughing:

"He was driven by a mission to serve, improve and uplift his country."

Perhaps it was all this that Prof. Peter Singer had in mind when telling the judges in Italy that the Rockefeller Foundation was a humanitarian enterprise bent on doing good works. One of their best works seems to be sponsoring Prof. Peter Singer, the world's greatest animal friend and protector who claims that vivisection is indispensable for medical progress and for more than 20 years refuses to mention that legions of medical doctors are of the opposite view.

Compare Animal-based toxicity testing of drugs and other chemicals and animal experimentation in cancer research: flawed science costing human lives?

Millions of Dollars Free Publicity

Another interesting revelation in the article of Time was that many years ago already Singer "was pleasantly surprised when Britannica approached him to distill in about 30,000 words the discipline that is, at its heart, the systematic study of what we ought to do." So now we touch the subject of sponsorisation and patronage. They don't always mean immediate cash but, more important, long-term profits.

Many decades ago the Encyclopedia Britannica moved from Oxford to Chicago because Rockefeller had bought it to add much needed luster to the University of Chicago and its medical school, the first one he had founded. Peter Singer, "the world's greatest animal defender" who keeps a door permanently open to vivisection and the lucrative medical swindle, gets millions of dollars free publicity thanks to the worldwide engagement of the Rockefeller Foundation and the media-makers who are in no position to oppose it.

From the article in Time we also learned that Singer's mother had been a medical doctor in the old country, which could mean that little Peter started assimilating all the Rockefeller superstition on vivisection with his mother's milk.

Taken from the CIVIS Foundation Report number 15, Fall-Winter 1993
CIVIS: POB 152, Via Motta 51-CH 6900, Massagno/Lugano, Switzerland

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Sunday, August 11, 2013

What a Survey of 1,400 Sued Doctors Can Tell Us About Health Care Reform

The Razor: Ever wonder how malpractice lawsuits turn out and what their effects on physicians are? Then click here for a slideshow showing the results of a study of 1,400 physicians who were sued for malpractice. There are several interesting points to take from this survey, including the fact that the majority of plaintiffs, 57%, received no monetary reward. But the one thing that stands out by far should be the advice these doctors give on slide 22:

  • Follow up even when you think you don’t have to.
  • Practice more defensive medicine.
  • Document more often, more thoroughly.
  • Get rid of rude, demanding, noncompliant patients.

Anyone who expects doctors, particularly primary care physicians (who also happen to be the most likely to be sued) to take on the responsibility of lowering health care costs by ordering fewer unnecessary tests and procedures (I’m looking at you Professor Mead) are simply delusional. Doctors do not have any incentive to stop ordering these procedures, quite the opposite. Whenever they rule out a particular test they must consider a bullet-proof and infallible reason why the test is not required in case they have to testify on the Stand to support their decision. In medicine, as in life, there are few situations that can attain such a level of infallibility. A runny nose can indicate a cold or allergy in a hundred thousand cases but it can also can result from a leak of cerebral-spinal fluid into the nasal cavity in rare instances. Should a doctor order the highly invasive – and expensive – test to rule out this leak in the snot-faced six year old kid sniffling in front of her? This is an extreme example of course, but the point stands: why should doctors risk being sued, a type of punishment judging by the emotional toll the survey shows, for trying to contain costs?

It would seem to me that if you want to reduce unnecessary testing you would address the reasons why they are ordered in the first place, yet this has not been done. While some states have attempted to limit the maximum amount a plaintiff can be awarded from a successful malpractice suit, none have made laws to make it harder to file them in the first place. The cynic may see the hand of self-interest here, with the lawyers who write the laws the ones also profiting from malpractice lawsuits. After all, scientifically dubious malpractice lawsuits almost elevated former Sen. John Edwards to the White House. But to ask doctors to refrain from ordering unnecessary tests and procedures without legal reform is like asking them to commit professional suicide.

The last item is particularly interesting. Legally doctors in private practice do not have to treat everyone who comes through the door. They can turn down patients for any reason. Once they establish a relationship with a patient they can also terminate that care at any time as long as they do not abandon them, usually by offering to care for them for a period of time when they can establish care with another provider. Many medical system reformers have talked zealously about basing payments to doctors on the success based measures, for example, on how well their diabetes patients’ blood sugar levels are controlled. Every practice has a coterie of diabetes patients who are non-compliant. They come in suffering from associated illnesses and for whatever reason refuse to control their blood sugar levels through exercise and diet, then expect the doctor to fix them. Such outcome based reimbursement schemes will only lead to doctors drafting letters telling these patients to find another provider. But even for doctors who aren’t reimbursed partly based on outcomes, it is in their interest to get rid of these patients who are more likely to complain and perhaps sue them.

Doctors have done a poor job at getting their point across in the health care debate in America. This is partly due to the nature of the profession, which tends to operate in solo or small groups and not think in broader terms the way other professions such as teachers and lawyers have done. It is also due to the corruption of the American Medical Association through years of operation in Washington DC reaching it’s pinnacle in the organization’s support of Obamacare in 2010 against the best interests of its own membership (but in line with the leftist ideology of the organization’s staff). But doctors had better learn quickly because if they don’t their profession will become extinct, and the healthcare of Americans will be even worse than it is today… much worse!

Monday, January 31, 2011

White House quietly exempts pampered politicos

WOLF: Tawdry details of Obamacare

By Dr. Milton R. Wolf

If you would like to know what the White House really thinks of Obamacare, there’s an easy way. Look past its press releases. Ignore its promises. Forget its talking points. Instead, simply witness for yourself the outrageous way the White House protects its best friends from Obamacare.

Last year, we learned that the Department of Health and Human Services(HHS) had granted 111 waivers to protect a lucky few from the onerous regulations of the new national health care overhaul. That number quickly and quietly climbed to 222, and last week we learned that the number of Obamacare privileged escapes has skyrocketed to 733.

Among the fortunate is a who’s who list of unions, businesses and even several cities and four states (Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio and Tennessee) but none of the friends of Barack feature as prominently as the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

How can you get your own free pass from Obamacare? Maybe you can just donate $27 million to President Obama‘s campaign efforts. That’s what Andy Stern did as president of SEIU in 2008. He has been the most frequent guest at Mr. Obama‘s White House.

Backroom deals have become par for the course for proponents of Obamacare. Senators were greased with special favors, like Nebraska Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson and his Cornhusker Kickback and Louisiana Democrat Sen. Mary L. Landrieu and her Louisiana Purchase. Even the American Medical Association was brought in line under threat of losing its exclusive and lucrative medical coding contracts with the government.

Not only are the payoffs an affront to our democracy and an outright assault on our taxpayers, the timing itself of the latest release makes a mockery of this administration’s transparency promises. More than 500 of the 733 waivers, we now know, were granted in December but kept conveniently under wraps until the day after the president’s State of the Union address. HHS is no stranger to covering up bad news; in fact, this is becoming a disturbing pattern. Last year, Secretary Kathleen Sebelius hid from Congress until after the Obamacare vote a damning report from the Medicare and Medicaid Office of the Actuary showing Obamacare would cost $311 billion more than promised and would displace 14 million Americans from their current insurance.

For this administration, transparency promises last only until the teleprompter is unplugged.

Backroom deals and cover-ups may be business as usual for Washington, but understanding why the Obama administration protects its friends from Obamacare offers special insight into what the purveyors of the mandate themselves think about their own law. This is key: The waivers aren’t meant to protect victims from unintended consequences of Obamacare; they are meant to exempt them from the very intentional increased costs of health insurance that the law causes. Under Section 2711 of the Public Health Service Act, Obamacare increases the annual cap of insurance benefits, which sounds great - as does everything else in big government - until the bill comes due, in this case, in the form of higher insurance premiums.

In short, the administration has decided that you will face increased health insurance premiums, but special friends in the unions will not. Look closely, and you’ll see not only the White House‘s duplicity but also what the Obama administration really thinks of its crown jewel, Obamacare. White House words say that the annual insurance benefit cap is a feature of the program, but its actions say that it’s a bug.

The question remains: If Obamacare is such a great law, why does the White House keep protecting its best friends from it?

Our democracy cannot allow a president to exercise the unholy power of picking and choosing winners and losers, of choosing who must follow his flawed laws and who gets a free pass. If any American deserves a waiver from Obamacare, then all Americans do.

It was Mr. Obama himself who infamously said, "We're gonna punish our enemies and we're gonna reward our friends." This president speaks anything but softly, and Obamacare is his big stick.

It's time to give every American his own waiver: Repeal Obamacare.

Dr. Milton R. Wolf is a board-certified diagnostic radiologist, medical director and cousin of President Obama. He blogs daily at miltonwolf.com.

h/t:  Laredo Tea Party  -  White House quietly exempts pampered politicos

Bill Hemmer

Breaking News: US JUDGE IN FLORIDA REFUSES TO IMPOSE INJUNCTION AGAINST OBAMA HEALTHCARE LAW.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

What MSM Won’t Tell You: Doctors Are Challenging Government Health Care-and the AMA

Attempting to enact his big-government health care scheme, President Obama and his supporters frequently claimed that a “majority” of doctors supported his health-care plans. When the American Medical Association – which had opposed HillaryCare – signed onto Obama’s plan last year, the organization seemed to make the President’s case. Most people assumed that the AMA represented most of the doctors in the country. But in fact, the AMA represents less than 20 percent of all physicians in the United States. And yet as the organization’s leadership moved more to the left, it held a near monopoly on media attention on issues pertaining to public health. No longer.

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As the AMA has become increasingly politicized in recent years – issuing a statement in support of climate change, for example, in 2008 – a new group of doctors has risen to challenge them. Like other anti-statist groups that have risen in opposition to the Obama-Reid-Pelosi agenda, Docs4PatientCare are challenging the AMA’s stranglehold on health care matters, just as other groups once challenged the right of the left-leaning American Bar Association to determine what judges are and are not qualified for the United States Supreme Court. How Docs4PatientCare managed to barge its way into the closed-door meetings of Washington offers a lesson to other groups seeking to have a voice in their federal government.

Founded by Dr. Hal Scherz, a prominent Atlanta physician, the group of doctors expressed concern that like so many other professional groups, the AMA’s leadership have been thoroughly “Washintonized” – caring more about the pleadings of other lobbyists on K Street, White House invitations and Capitol Hill committee appearances than the professions they are supposed to represent. As doctors have taken a battering over several decades from insurance companies, HMOS, and government agencies, Scherz says the AMA was a bystander.

“As the insurance companies become more and more impossible and government intrusion keeps growing, we’ve seen our delivery of care to our patients compromised and our incomes decrease,” he said.

But it was the AMA’s support for ObamaCare that really troubled Scherz and others in his field.

Many doctors run small businesses and by nature are entrepreneurial. Why then, he wondered, would the AMA favor ObamaCare’s regulatory and taxation burden? Why would they want a multitude of government panels interfering with the decisions doctors usually make with their patients about care and treatment? Recognizing that the AMA was compromised, Scherz decided to organize his own group in opposition to the Obama plan.

He recalled how effective talk radio had been the year before in stopping the seemingly unstoppable immigration amnesty bill, and wondered if there was a way for him to get his voice heard on the air. In fact, Scherz was driving home one night when he heard talk show host Hugh Hewitt ask on the air, “Where are the doctors?” opposing ObamaCare in the health care fight. Scherz wanted to give him an answer. So when Salem radio brought a “road show” on Obama’s first 100 days to Atlanta last May, he decided to attend. Listening to Hewitt and other Salem talk show stars like Bill Bennett and Dennis Praeger again ask, “Where are the doctors?” Scherz waited patiently in a long line of people to give them his answer. But just as he reached the head of the line, the master of ceremonies shut down the mikes for the evening.

Undeterred Scherz called a fellow physician, Congressman Tom Price, and asked the Congressman if he would come address a group of doctors if Scherz could assemble them. Price agreed and when Scherz got 40 doctors in the waiting room of his office to discuss ObamaCare, the meeting ended with the doctors deciding to form an organization to it. They christened themselves Docs 4 Patient Care that night and put together enough money to hire an attorney, set up a business structure, and establish a website.

Growing past this initial cadre of supporters proved difficult, however. Scherz spent as much time as he could emailing and phone calling more doctors to join the effort, but the response rate was slow. So coming home one night from the operating room, he called the Hewitt show and got in on the call-in queue. Waiting on hold for two hours, he finally got on the air in the show’s third hour. Delighted to have his missing-doctor question finally answered, Hewitt spoke with Scherz for a lengthy period.

“Then Hewitt blogged about us and put us the website and that made all the difference,” said Scherz.

Having heard the doctor on Hewitt’s program, Salem Radio’s vice president of content, Lee Habeeb, a legendary talk show producer, booked him on other Salem shows including a co-hosting gig with Mike Gallagher in Dallas, Atlanta, and New York. “Mike and his show were coming on strong. So it was just the right moment. He made our group a focal point of listener interest and it really helped,” says Scherz. This led to television interviews, involving Scherz and other members of the group to get their message out, such as Fred Shessel, one of Scherz’s partners and vice president, Scott Barbour, a prominent orthopedic and sports medicine surgeon, and Todd Rubin, a local anesthesiologist who started making something of the website (www.docs4patientcare.org). One talk show listener and activist, Felicia Horton, asked to be brought on as volunteer executive director.

With their newfound growth and publicity, Docs 4 Patient Care made getting heard in Washington their next objective. Wearing their scrubs and white jackets, the doctors drew attention as they walked the halls of congress and spoke at rallies on Capitol Hill. Often just showing up in the offices of members of the House and Senate, they would manage to get appointments with the members themselves or key staff members.

One particular meeting that stuck out in memories was with the staff of Senator Olympia Snowe, the Maine Republican senator who was being heavily courted by Democrats in the hope of getting some bipartisan window dressing for the Democratic bill. The meeting was a long one by Capitol Hill standards and the Snowe staff kept bringing up the arguments made by Democrats on behalf of ObamaCare. But in the face of the doctor’s facts and experience the arguments didn’t stand up long. Schertz believes Docs 4 Patient Care may have helped make a difference in Snowe’s ultimate, and fateful, decision not to sign on to ObamaCare.

Another memorable incident cited by members of the group occurred when one of their members, Joyce Lovett MD, an African American female pediatrician, got the doctors into a meeting of the Congressional Black Caucus. A debate opened up over the health care plan and soon the doctors were text-messaging their colleagues visiting other offices around the capitol for reinforcements. As the room began filling up, the doctors, doing well in the back and forth of debate, seemed to be changing some minds. At that point, a worried Black Caucus leader and diehard partisan, John Conyers, broke up the meeting, saying the doctors were more interested in embarrassing the first black president than in achieving real reform. Unused to this sort of political attack, the astonished doctors told other caucus members how they felt after taking time from their practices and patients to come all the way to Washington only to hear a member of Congress insinuate they were racists. One caucus member privately dismissed Conyers’ “old ways of thinking,” suggesting that the CBC might be ready for fresh, and more innovative, leadership.

In addition to return trips to Washington over the next 4 months, Docs4PatientCare also helped organize physician led-rallies around the country with hundreds of doctors participating in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Chicago, Indianapolis and Portland. The rallies proved crucial as the largely Atlanta-based group made new connections in taking on a national character. Jaime Ronderos MD, a prominent Texas anesthesiologist, who had already organized many of the doctors in his own state, folded his group in with D4PC. Also coming on board was Marc Neerhof, a perinatologist who is also on the faculty of the University of Chicago and a skillful op-ed writer. In addition, Reed Wilson, a well-known Los Angeles cardiologist with a business and political background became a board member. And finally, as the group showed its interest in working with all health care professionals, Joel Strom, a Los Angeles dentist and experienced coalition organizer agreed to head up an outreach program.

Only last month, the group had its inaugural board meeting in Atlanta where, in addition to making plans to increase their public and media presence, they inaugurated a fund raising program that would let them run a full-blown field operation in the elections this Fall. “We want to be out there in the states and let voters know which members of Congress put patient care second and voted for this power grab by Washington politicians,” said Scherz.

But, beyond this, Scherz and the other board members want Docs 4 patient Care to grow into what the AMA should have been. This means more than defeating ObamaCare. The group is non-partisan and anxious to work with all those who want to hear from Docs 4 Patient Care on the dangers of state-run medicine. With chapters recently up and running in several states, he sees growth ahead. That is likely discouraging news for the status quo world of Washington, D.C., but an inspiration for other Americans who see what their government is doing and want to offer an alternative.

Source: What MSM Won’t Tell You: Doctors Are Challenging Government Health Care-and the AMA by Matt Latimer

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

This Common Food Ingredient Can Really Mess Up Your Metabolism

by Dr. Mercola

What if you were to learn that every day, 25 percent of your calories came from a poison, disguised as a food?

And what if you discovered that this chemical imposter was responsible for your insulin resistance and weight gain?

And elevated blood pressure ...

And elevated triglycerides and LDL ...

And depletion of vitamins and minerals ...

And even gout, heart disease and liver damage?

What if you were to discover that this toxic substance had been dumped into your food in gradually increasing quantities for the last thirty years, with the full knowledge and blessings of the American Heart Association, the American Medical Association, the USDA and the FDA?

Would you be angry?

I wish I could tell you that this is just a dramatic plot from some fiction novel, but it’s actually a shocking reality.

The substance dealing such a crushing blow to your health and responsible for many, if not most of the chronic diseases that are so rampant in our society, is sugar -- and more specifically, fructose.

We now know without a doubt that sugar in your food, in all its myriad of forms, is taking a devastating toll on the health of this nation.

By the end of this article, you will have a solid understanding of how and why this has happened. In order to really grasp this material, you’ll have to learn a little of the biochemistry of energy, which is rather technical. But hang in there -- the knowledge you’re about to gain, and the impact it will have on your health, will be well worth the effort.

I will try my best to make the more technical aspects as simple as I can for you.

Big Gulp, Meet Big Belt

We are eating far more than we were 25 years ago.

On average, men are consuming 187 more calories per day, and women 335 more calories. People who were never heavy before are becoming overweight, and the obese are becoming more so. We are now a “supersized” population.

But why?

Modern science has shown that the obesity epidemic isn’t simply about lack of self-control, but rather a phenomenon driven by biochemical changes that have altered the way your body regulates energy.

Something has caused your appetite regulation system to go awry. Leptin, the hormone responsible for satiety, isn’t working. It isn’t simply a matter of calories in and calories out. Six-month old babies are the latest victims of the obesity epidemic--diet and exercise cannot explain that.

So, what are you eating now that you weren’t eating thirty years ago? What are you doing to yourself that started the day you were born?

Studies show that all of those extra calories are coming in the form of carbohydrates.

What carbohydrates in particular?

Sugar -- specifically, sugared drinks. Soft drinks (41 percent) and fruit drinks (35 percent) make up the majority of these extra calories.

Today, 55 percent of sweeteners used in food and beverage manufacturing are made from corn, and the number one source of calories in America is soda, in the form of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). In fact, the average American drinks 60 gallons of soda every year.

High Fructose Corn Syrup Has Only Been Around One Generation!

HFCS was invented in 1966 in Japan and introduced to the American market in 1975. Food and beverage manufacturers began switching their sweeteners from sucrose (table sugar) to corn syrup when they discovered that high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) was far cheaper to make -- sucrose costs about three times as much as HFCS.

HFCS is also about 20 times sweeter than table sugar. So it was expected that less sweetener would be needed per product. Instead, the amount of sweeteners has steadily risen.

The switch from sugar to fructose drastically altered the average American diet. The statistics are beyond alarming:

  • Corn syrup is now found in every type of processed, pre-packaged food you can think of. In fact, the use of HFCS in the U.S. diet increased by a whopping 10,673 percent between 1970 and 2005, according to a report by the USDA[i].

  • The current annual consumption of sugar is 141 pounds per person, and 63 pounds of that is HFCS.

  • Adolescents are taking in 73 grams per day of fructose, mostly from soft drinks and juice drinks -- and 12 percent of their total caloric intake is from fructose alone.

  • In the past century, fructose consumption has increased 5-fold.

  • Processed foods account for more than 90 percent of the money Americans spend on meals.

You’ve probably heard the statistic that one soda a day is worth 15 pounds of fat per year. However, one soda today does not equal one soda of yesteryear. The original coke bottle was 6.5 ounces. Now, you have 20-ounce bottles and a 44-ounce Big Gulp.

Tragically, many infant formulas are more than 50 percent sugar -- 43 percent being corn syrup solids. You might as well be giving your baby a bottle of Coke or Pepsi.

No wonder there is an obesity epidemic.

The War on Fat

Sugar’s rise to power was really an accidental by-product of three political winds, beginning with the Nixon administration:

  1. In 1972, Richard Nixon wanted to reduce food costs as part of his “war on poverty.” He partnered with the USDA to do whatever means necessary to bring food costs down.

  2. In 1975, HFCS was introduced, replacing sugar because it was cheap and readily available.

  3. In the mid 1970s, dietary fats were blamed for heart disease (more about this later), giving rise to the “low-fat craze.” Market response was an explosion of processed convenience foods, all nonfat and low fat, most of which tasted like sawdust unless sugar was added. Fructose was used to make fat-free products more palatable.

In 1982, the American Heart Association (AHA), the American Medical Association (AMA), and the United Stated Department of Agriculture (USDA) reduced fats from 40 percent of your diet to 30 percent. You eagerly complied, believing you were lowering your risks for both obesity and cardiovascular disease.

Yet, as the low-fat craze spread, so did rates of heart disease, diabetes, and obesity -- the very illnesses you thought you were preventing. Clearly, the plan wasn’t working.

Justification for Low-Fat Diet

But how did the war on fat start, in the first place?

It began with a study called the Seven Countries study by Ancel Keys[ii], a Minnesota epidemiologist who used multivariate regression analysis to examine diet and disease. He compared the diets of seven countries, and his main conclusion was that saturated fats were responsible for cardiovascular disease. After much heated public debate, this notion that saturated fats caused heart disease was widely adopted, especially once he made the cover of Time Magazine in 1980.

Keys’ study laid the foundation for nutrition science, education, and public policy for the next three decades.

There was only one problem. His conclusions were dead wrong.

Keys’ neglected to perform the converse analysis demonstrating that the effect of saturated fat on cardiovascular disease wasindependent of sucrose. In other words, sucrose and saturated fat were co-mingled into his data. In retrospect, it is impossible to tease out the relative contributions of sucrose versus saturated fat on cardiovascular disease in this study because the original data is long gone and Keys has passed on.

Additionally he never separated out the issue of how the fat was consumed. There is a major difference in raw and cooked animal fat, especially fat cooked at high temperatures, which clearly produces known carcinogens.

Nevertheless, lowering fat (without regard to sugar) became the nutritional model that persists to this day, despite copious evidence that it doesn’t work.

As your fats went from 40 percent to 30 percent, your carbohydrates went from 40 percent to 55 percent. And this carbohydrate increase was of the worst possible kind: SUGAR.

Proof that Sugar Cause Obesity

The American Beverage Association claims there is “no association between high fructose corn syrup and obesity.”[iii]

However, a long lineup of scientific studies suggest otherwise:

  • Dr. David Ludwig of Boston Children’s Hospital did a study of the effects of sugar-sweetened drinks on obesity in children[iv]. He found that for each additional serving of a sugar-sweetened drink, both body mass index and odds of obesity increased in the children he studied.

  • Dr. Kelly Brownell of Yale University did a systematic review and meta-analysis of 88 studies about the association between soft drink consumption and health outcomes[v]. He found clear associations between soft drink consumption and higher body weight.

  • The Fizzy Drink Study in Christchurch, England explored the effects on obesity when soda machines were removed from schools for one year. In the schools where the machines were removed, obesity stayed constant. In the schools where soda machines remained, obesity rates continued to rise[vi].

  • A study by Schulze in JAMA in 2004[vii] provides further evidence that sugared drinks cause type II diabetes.

  • A similar study in 2008 of African American women[viii] demonstrated higher intake of both sugar-sweetened soft drinks and fruit drinks leads to higher rates of type II diabetes.

  • In a very recent study[ix], sixteen volunteers were fed a controlled diet including high levels of fructose. Ten weeks later, the volunteers had produced new fat cells around their hearts, livers and other digestive organs. They also showed signs of food-processing abnormalities linked to diabetes and heart disease. A second group of volunteers who were fed a similar diet, but with glucose replacing fructose, did not have these problems.

But it doesn’t stop at soft drinks.

Sweetened fruit drinks are contributing to your expanding waistline as well. High fruit juice intake (sucrose) is associated with childhood obesity, especially in low-income families[x].

What is it in soft drinks and juice drinks that is damaging your health?

Primarily, it’s the fructose. Read on to discover exactly how and why this is so.

Fructose is NOT the Same as Glucose

Glucose is the form of energy you were designed to run on. Every cell in your body, every bacterium -- and in fact, every living thing on the Earth -- uses glucose for energy.

Glucose fructose molecular structure
Image from Clinton Community College

Fructose is not the same molecule. Glucose is a 6-member ring, but fructose is a 5-member ring. Sucrose (table sugar) is 50 percent glucose and 50 percent fructose, and HFCS is 42-55 percent fructose.

If you received your fructose only from vegetables and fruits (where it originates) as most people did a century ago, you’d consume about 15 grams per day -- a far cry from the 73 grams per day the typical adolescent gets as a bolus from sweetened drinks. In vegetables and fruits, it’s mixed in with fiber, vitamins, minerals, enzymes, and beneficial phytonutrients, all which moderate the negative metabolic effects.

It isn’t that fructose itself is bad -- it is the MASSIVE DOSES you’re exposed to that make it dangerous.

Before you can understand the differences between how your body metabolizes glucose and fructose, you have to have a basic understanding of LDL.

There are Two Types of LDL -- and Only One is Bad

In the 1970s, low-density lipoproteins (LDLs) were discovered. LDLs were found to be higher in people with cardiovascular disease, so the focus of medicine and nutrition became lowering your LDLs.

One of the crucial pieces of the puzzle that wasn’t recognized at the time was that there are two kinds of LDL: Pattern A and Pattern B.

  1. Pattern A LDLs are large, light, buoyant “floating” LDLs that don’t get under your endothelial cells, and they don’t cause plaque formation. They are harmless.

  2. Pattern B LDL (or VLDLs) are smaller, denser LDLs that are able to wedge themselves under your epithelial cells and therefore roughen surfaces and stimulate plaque formation. These are the bad guys.

Unfortunately, when you get a standard lipid profile at your annual check-up, the LDL measured is a combination of both types. Lab measurements lump them together unless you have a very specialized panel, which most physicians don’t order.

To decipher whether or not you have an excess of the bad type, you can look at your triglycerides and high-density lipoprotein (HDL) levels. (HDL, or “high density lipoprotein is commonly called “good cholesterol.”)

Here is a simple way to determine if you have too much bad LDL:

  1. If your triglycerides are low and your HDL is high, then the LDL you have is the good variety.

  2. If your triglycerides are high and your HDL is low, then the LDL you have is the bad variety. The triglyceride-to-HDL ratio is a far better indicator of cardiovascular disease than the total cholesterol-to-HDL ratio that everyone uses.

Now, here’s the bottom line: Dietary fat raises your large, buoyant LDL -- the one that is harmless. Dietary sugar raises your small, dense LDL -- the one that correlates with heart disease!

So, what has happened over the past 30 years was that sugar was added to our low-fat foods to improve palatability -- in the form of either HFCS or sucrose -- and a high-carb, high-risk diet was created -- simply the worst combination for your health.

And the fiber was eliminated.

Fiber Foregone

Fiber is an important nutrient (although not acknowledged as such by the government) and offers many health benefits, particularly if the fiber comes from vegetables.

A high-fiber diet may offer some protection from colorectal cancer, although the research is unclear exactly how this works and what all the factors are. The benefits of vegetable fiber are not yet completely understood. We do know that the risk ofcolorectal cancer is lower among populations with high intakes of vegetables and fruits, and there is some evidence that vegetable fiber may offer some protection from prostate cancer.

Fiber has three important roles:

  • It reduces the rate of intestinal carbohydrate absorption, reducing your insulin response.

  • It increases the speed of transit of intestinal contents to your ileum, which speeds up release of satiety hormones.

  • It inhibits absorption of some free fatty acids to your colon, which would become short chain fatty acids, which suppress insulin.

Thousands of years ago your ancestors likely consumed 100 to 300 grams of fiber every day. Now, you are lucky to get 12 grams daily.

Why is this?

  • Fiber-less foods are cheap.

  • They have a longer shelf life and are easier to ship. This makes them easier to export to other countries.

  • Fiber-rich foods take too long to prepare and eat, and are often less appealing to the general public.

The standard American diet (SAD) is typically loaded with processed foods full of sugar, and devoid of most nutrients and fiber. Sounds like the perfect recipe for an explosion of chronic disease.

The Molecule that Makes Fat Stick to You

Obesity is a disorder of excess fat accumulation. But what regulates fat accumulation?

Fat is a metabolically active tissue. Your adipose tissue is in a perpetual state of flux with free fatty acids (FFAs) being converted into triglycerides and back again, in an ongoing cycle.

FFAs can move in and out of your cells, across cell membranes, but triglycerides (three fatty acid molecules plus one glycerol molecule) are too big to cross. Fat enters and exits a cell as FFA, but is stored as a triglyceride. When fuel is needed, the triglyceride is broken down into FFAs, which can then be burned as fuel.

The glycerol molecule, which is a primary component of a triglyceride, comes from something called glycerol-3-phosphate (g-3-p), or “activated glycerol,” which originates from the metabolism of glucose. The amount of G-3-p you make determines the rate that FFAs are “esterified” into triglycerides inside your fat cells[xi].

The rate of deposition of fat into your fat cells is dependent on the presence of g-3-p. The more g-3-p that is available, the more fat is deposited.

Carbohydrate Biochemistry 101

I promised you a crash course in biochemistry -- so here we go.

Much of the following information comes from the important work of Dr. Robert Lustig[xii] Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco.

In order to appreciate just how damaging fructose is to your body, it is crucial to have a basic understanding of how different types of carbohydrates are metabolized.

We’ll start with glucose since it’s the basic carbohydrate energy source for all living cells.

I. Glucose Metabolism

Glucose is the basic fuel for living organisms, from bacteria to humans, and is the primary energy source for your brain. It is a product of photosynthesis and is found in rice, corn and other grains, and bread and pasta.

Once you take in glucose from a meal -- like, say, from two slices of bread -- 80 percent of it is used by all of the organs of your body -- every single cell. The remaining 20 percent goes to your liver to be metabolized and stored.

The following is what happens to that 20 percent, once it reaches your liver:

  • Whatever glucose your body doesn’t need immediately gets converted into glycogen for storage in the liver. Glycogen is your body’s non-toxic short-term energy storage package, where it can be easily converted to energy when you need it. Your liver has no limit to how much glycogen it can store without detrimental effects. (That is what athletes take advantage of when they “carbo-load.”)

  • A small amount of pyruvate is produced, which ends up being converted to ATP (the chemical storage form of energy) and carbon dioxide. An even smaller quantity of citrate is produced from this process through the “citrate shuttle,” which ends up as VLDL (very low density lipoproteins, the bad ones) in a process known as de novo lipogenesis -- but we’re talking about a very small amount (less than one calorie from two slices of bread).

  • Insulin is released by your pancreas in response to the rise in blood glucose (i.e., blood sugar), which helps the glucose get into your cells. Without insulin, your cells would not be able to process the glucose and therefore would have no energy for movement, growth, repair, or other functions. Insulin is key to unlocking the door of the cell to allow the glucose to be transferred from the bloodstream into the cell.

  • When you consume 120 calories of glucose, less than one calorie contributes to adverse metabolic outcomes.

This is all very normal, and it’s how you were designed to operate.

II. Ethanol Metabolism

Ethanol, or ethyl alcohol, is the favorite carbohydrate of many. But it is also a carbohydrate that undergoes a very different metabolic process, leaving in its wake a trail of toxins a mile long.

Ethanol is an acute central nervous system toxin and a chronic hepatotoxin due to the fact that it must be metabolized almost completely in the liver.

After consuming an alcoholic beverage, 10 percent of the ethanol gets broken down by the stomach and intestine as a “first pass” effect, and another 10 percent is metabolized by the brain and other organs. The fact that ethanol is partially metabolized in your brain is the reason you experience that familiar “buzz.”

The remaining 80 percent hits the liver, where it must be broken down. This is four times the load on the liver as the same number of calories from glucose.

But the metabolic process in the liver is quite different from that of glucose.

This metabolic cascade can be summarized as follows:

  • The liver converts ethanol to aldehydes, which produce free radicals that damage proteins in the liver.

  • Some of these aldehydes are converted to glucose, but a large amount of excess citrate is formed in the process, stimulating “junk chemicals” that result in free fatty acids (FFAs), VLDL and triglycerides. As compared to the 1 calorie from glucose that was converted to VLDL (see previous section), the same caloric intake from ethanol produces 30 calories of VLDL that are transported to your fat cells and contribute to your obesity, or participate in plaque formation. This is what leads to the dyslipidemia of alcoholism.

  • The resulting lipids, together with the ethanol, lead to an enzyme that begins an inflammation cascade, which in turn causes hepatic insulin resistance, liver inflammation and cirrhosis.

  • Fat globules accumulate in the liver as well, which can lead to fatty liver disease.

  • Free fatty acids (FFAs) leave the liver and cause your skeletal muscles to become insulin resistant. This is a worse form of insulin resistance than hepatic insulin resistance and can lead to type II diabetes.

  • After a 120-calorie bolus of ethanol, a large fraction (about 40 calories) can contribute to disease.

Why am I including a discussion of ethanol metabolism in a report about fructose?

Because, in nearly every way, fructose is metabolized the same way as ethanol, creating the same toxins in your body.

III. Fructose Metabolism

Now we finally come to fructose.

When you consume fructose, 100 percent of it goes directly to your liver to be metabolized. This is why it is a hepatotoxin -- it overloads the liver. Fructose metabolism creates the following adverse effects:

  • Fructose is immediately converted to fructose-1-phosphate (F1P), depleting your liver cells of phosphates.

  • The above process produces waste products in the form of uric acid. Uric acid blocks an enzyme that makes nitric oxide. Nitric oxide is your body’s natural blood pressure regulator, so when it is blocked, your blood pressure rises -- leading tohypertension. Elevated uric acid levels can also cause gout.

  • Almost all of the F1P is turned into pyruvate, ending up as citrate, which results in de novo lipogenesis, the end products of which are FFAs, VLDLs, and triglycerides. The result -- hyperlipidemia.

  • Fructose stimulates g-3-p (activated glycerol), which you will recall is the crucial molecule for turning FFAs into triglycerides within the fat cells. Remember, the rate of deposition of fat into fat cells is dependent on the presence of g-3-p. The more g-3-p that is available, the more fat is deposited. Fructose is the carbohydrate most efficiently converted into g-3-p11. In other words, fructose is the most lipophilic carbohydrate.

  • FFAs are exported from the liver and taken up in skeletal muscle, causing skeletal muscle insulin resistance.

  • Some of the FFAs stay in the liver, leading to fat droplet accumulation, hepatic insulin resistance and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD)[xiii][xiv].

  • Insulin resistance stresses the pancreas, which pumps out more insulin in response to rising blood sugar as your cells are unable to get the sugar out of your bloodstream, and this can progress to type II diabetes.

  • As with a bolus dose of ethanol, a 120-calorie bolus of fructose results in a large fraction (again, about 40 calories) that directly contributes to disease.

Do these symptoms sound a bit familiar to you? Hypertension, lipogenesis and dyslipidemia, obesity, inflammation, insulin resistance, and central nervous system leptin resistance?

If you are thinking it sounds a lot like classic metabolic syndrome, you are dead on!

The point to take away is: consuming fructose is consuming fat. Fructose is not really a carbohydrate -- a high fructose diet is a HIGH FAT diet. A high-fat diet that creates a vicious cycle of consumption that won’t turn itself off.

You can see by comparing the metabolism of fructose with the metabolism of ethanol that they are very similar. In fact, when you compare the metabolism of 150 calories of soda with 150 calories of beer (a 12 ounce can of each), about 90 calories reach the liver in either case. Fructose causes most of the same toxic effects as ethanol because both come from sugar fermentation.

Both ethanol metabolism and fructose metabolism lead to visceral adiposity (belly fat), insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome.

Studies are accumulating that bear this out.

For example, high-fructose diets were shown to cause dyslipidemia in healthy people with and without a family history of type II diabetes, a recent study showed[xv].

Two other studies were done using medical students, both looking at biological responses to fructose loading. In the first, the med students were given either a large glucose load or a large fructose load. In the students given fructose, almost 30 percent of the calories ended up as fat. In the students given glucose, almost none ended up as fat.

In the second study, medical students were given a high-fructose diet for 6 days. In just that short time, their insulin resistance and triglycerides doubled!

The Neurochemical Basis for Gluttony

You eat as a result of the activation of the “reward pathway” (also known as the hedonic pathway) of your brain.

Your brain’s pleasure center (aka ventral tegmental area, or VTA, and nucleus accumbens, or NA) is the root of all behavior, driven by chemical messengers that are intimately tied into the energy processes I have outlined above.

The part of your brain that responds to what you eat is the same part that responds to nicotine, morphine, amphetamine, ethanol, sex and exercise! That is why people taking narcotics tend to overeat.

Leptin and insulin are modulators of these reward responses, decreasing this VTA-NA activity. In other words, leptin and insulin cause your brain to send you signals to stop eating.

Fructose undermines these normal satiety signals, increasing caloric consumption both directly and indirectly:

  1. Fructose does not stimulate a leptin rise, so your satiety signals are diminished.

  2. Glucose suppresses ghrelin (the hunger hormone—it makes you want more food), but fructose does not.

  3. By raising triglycerides, fructose reduces the amount of leptin crossing your blood-brain barrier.

  4. Fructose increases insulin levels, interfering with the communication between leptin and your hypothalamus, so your pleasure signals aren’t extinguished. Your brain senses starvation and prompts you to eat more.

  5. Fructose decreases the production of malonyl-CoA, which may help promote a sense of energy adequacy.

Along with causing insulin resistance, fructose alters the hedonic response to food thereby driving excessive caloric intake, setting up a positive feedback loop for overconsumption.

Big Fat Lies From the Corn Industry

Now that scientific studies have shown the metabolic similarity between HFCS and sucrose, the Corn Refiners Association has embarked on a vociferous campaign to convince the public that their product is equal to table sugar, that it is “natural” and safe.

Of course, many things are “natural” -- cocaine is natural, but you wouldn’t want to use 141 pounds of it each year.

The food and beverage industry doesn’t want you to realize how truly pervasive HFCS is in your diet -- not just from soft drinks and juices, but also in salad dressings and condiments and virtually every processed food. The introduction of HFCS into the Western diet in 1975 has been a multi-billion dollar boon for the corn industry.

Now the corn industry has come up with another product it’s using in beverages called “crystalline fructose.” This is produced by allowing the fructose to crystallize from a fructose-enriched corn syrup, resulting in a product that is 99.5 percent pure fructose -- a fructose level twice as high as regular HFCS!

Clearly, all the health problems associated with HFCS could become even more pronounced with this product.

Making matters worse, crystalline fructose may also contain arsenic, lead, chloride and heavy metals -- a virtual laundry list of toxic agents you should clearly avoid. In fact, more than one study has detected unsafe mercury levels in HFCS[xvi]. If you have children, all of these contaminants can impact your child’s development and long-term health.

Why doesn’t the FDA regulate fructose since it poses the same health risks as ethanol -- and it regulates ethanol?

The FDA doesn’t touch chronic toxins. They regulate only acute toxins, and ethanol falls into that category because it produces immediately toxic neurological effects. Fructose doesn’t get metabolized in the brain, so it’s effects, although damaging, are cumulative and magnify over time.

Also realize that nearly all HFCS is made from genetically modified corn, which comes with its own set of risks.

The FDA classifies fructose as GRAS: Generally Regarded As Safe. Which pretty much means nothing and is based on nothing.

It is interesting to note that soda taxes[xvii] have recently been proposed both in New York and California, and legislation for the removal of soft drinks from schools has been enacted in several states.

What’s a Sugarholic to Do?

Ideally, I recommend that you avoid as much sugar as possible. This is especially important if you are overweight or have diabetes, high cholesterol, or high blood pressure.

In fact, I believe that the positive health impacts of breaking the country’s sugar addiction would be even greater than if everyone stopped smoking, because elevated insulin levels are the foundation of nearly every chronic disease known to man, from cancer and arthritis to cardiovascular disease.

I also realize you don’t live in a perfect world, and following rigid dietary guidelines is not always practical or even possible.

If you want to use a sweetener occasionally, this is what I recommend:

  1. Use the herb stevia

  2. Use organic cane sugar in moderation

  3. Use organic raw honey in moderation

Avoid ALL artificial sweeteners, which can damage your health even more quickly than HFCS.

And I don’t recommend agave syrup since it is a highly processed sap that is almost all fructose. Your blood sugar will spike just as it would if you were consuming regular sugar or HFCS. Agave has gained meteoric popularity due to a great marketing campaign, but any health benefits present in the original agave plant are processed away.

Be sure to eat your sugar with fiber ... as in a piece of fruit. As Dr. Lustig says, “When God made the poison, he packaged it with the antidote: fiber.”

Wait 20 minutes before second portions at meals, giving your brain a chance to receive satiety signals.

And exercise regularly. Dr. Ludwig recommends you “buy your screen time with physical activity.”

Exercise is important for several reasons, some of which might surprise you:

  • Exercise improves skeletal muscle insulin sensitivity (insulin works best in your muscles)

  • Exercise reduces stress and lowers cortisol, which decreases appetite

  • Exercise suppresses ghrelin, thereby decreasing appetite

  • Exercise speeds up metabolic cycles, reducing citrate levels, thus reducing fat production

  • Exercise can make you sharper, reduce arthritis, lift your mood, strengthen your bones, and even slow down aging

Avoid so-called energy drinks and sports drinks because they are loaded with sugar, sodium and chemical additives.

Rehydrating with pure, fresh water is a better choice.

If you or your child is involved in athletics, I recommend you read my article Energy Rules for some great tips on how to optimize your child’s energy levels and physical performance through good nutrition.

A Word of Warning About Infant Formula

And finally, be extremely careful about the infant formula you are feeding your baby. Nearly all infant formulas have as much or more high fructose corn syrup than a can of soda -- in addition to many other things that are extremely detrimental to your baby’s health and development.

You have learned that, metabolically, there is very little difference between ethanol and sugar, so by giving your infant formula, you might as well be giving him a bottle of beer or soda!

And studies have shown that the earlier you expose kids to sweets, the more they crave them later.

It is important for pregnant women to keep their blood sugars well managed not only for their own health, but also for the long-term health of their children.

Researchers have found that children born to mothers with gestational diabetes (high blood sugar during pregnancy) had an 82 percent chance of becoming obese between the ages of 5 and 7 through a phenomenon called “metabolic imprinting.” Even mothers with elevated blood sugar, short of gestational diabetes, had children with a significantly increased risk for obesity.[xviii]

I advocate breastfeeding if at all possible -- it is by far the healthiest option.

One of the most clear-cut, non-debatable topics in health care is that breast milk is the best source of nutrition for newborns. The benefits to the baby and the new mom are enormous. Breastfed infants have shown lower obesity rates in later childhood[xix].

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dr. Robert H. Lustig, Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology at University of California, San Francisco, for sharing his incredibly important insights, without which this article would not have been possible. Much of the above information came directly from Dr. Lustig’s work related to central regulation of energy balance, and I am very grateful for his willingness to share it with me so that I can pass it along to you.