Caustic Commentary, Spring 2020

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CORONOVIRUS AND THE FLU SHOT

As world leaders react over the coronavirus outbreak, centered in the city of Wuhan, China and now spreading to other countries worldwide, a paper published in Clinical Infectious Diseases (2012 Jun 15; 54(12): 1778–1783) reveals a disturbing fact: the inactivated flu vaccine increases the risk of noninfluenza respiratory virus infections. The study randomized one hundred fifteen children to receive the trivalent inactivated influenza vaccine or a placebo. Over the following nine months, children receiving the vaccine had an increased risk of rhinovirus and coxsackie virus infection, as well as of “other viruses,” including the coronavirus. Officials are blaming outdoor live animal markets as the source of the outbreak; no information about the vaccination status of the victims is forthcoming.

BURGER BIAS?

Writing for the pro-beef industry trade journal Tri-State Livestock News, South Dakota veterinarian James Stangle noted that the meatless Im­possible Burger, made f rom soy protein, contains for t y-four milligrams of estrogen while a burger made from hormone-implanted beef contains 2.5 nanograms of estrogen. Stangle points out (not that we are in favor of hormone-implanted beef) that there are one million nanograms in one milligram, meaning that the “Impossible Whopper has eighteen million times as much estrogen as a regular Whopper.” Eating four Impossible Whoppers per day is enough to make men grow breasts, he says. Actually, even one Impossible Whopper will have the same estrogenic effects as one glass of soymilk, and that is enough to cause estrogenic effects in both men and women. An article in the Washington Post was highly critical of Stangle’s analysis, accusing him of bias. Of course, the Post has its own biases and has shamelessly promoted the soy-based fake meat for months. Quoting New York University professor Marion Nestle, the Post trots out the same old tired arguments for soy: “Asians have been eating soy products for millennia and don’t seem to be any worse for it. They have among the longest lifespans and the best health, at least in classic diets.” And that’s just the point. Classic Asian diets contain very little soy, typically with about one-half the amount of estrogen in a glass of soymilk or an Impossible Whopper daily. However, we doubt that men—or women—will be eating a lot of Impossible Whoppers, as soy is very hard to digest and is bound to cause problems like stomach ache, heartburn, gas, constipation and diarrhea.

ROAD RAGE

Many medications can cause changes in behavior, includ­ing road rage, pathological gambling and complicated acts of fraud. In 2011, a French family man sued GlaxoSmith­Kline, claiming that a drug for Parkin­son’s disease he was taking turned him into a gambler and gay sex addict, re­sponsible for risky behaviors that led to him being raped. In 2015, a man taking Durominemade, a drug for obesity, claimed that it reduced his ability to control his impulses. A sinister side effect of the pain medication paracetamol—Americans purchase almost fifty thousand tons of the drug every year—is a reduction in the ability to feel positive empathy. The ability to feel positive empathy translates into more stable romantic relationships, better adjusted children and more successful careers. Worst of all in behavior-changing side effects are the cholesterol-lowering statins. One patient, a previously reasonable man, became explosively angry and developed a tendency for road rage after beginning statins; others report coming unnervingly close to murdering their wives. Suicide among normally well-adjusted people after starting statins is common. The truth is that drugs do more than lower blood markers or suppress symptoms of disease; they can exert profound effects on the brain and personality (bbc.com, January 8, 2020).

VACCINE HESITANCY

Mainstream media have mounted scathing attacks on what they call “vaccine hesitancy,” but several scientists expressed just that at the Global Vaccine Summit, held in Geneva, Swit­zerland, December 2-3, 2019. Hosted by the World Health Organization, which in early 2019 named vaccine hesitancy as one of the top ten threats to global health, the conference included several sober discussions about the “loose” science behind assurances that vaccines are “safe and effective.” One participant, Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, the WHO’s chief scientist, admitted that vaccines kill and cause death. Said Swaminathan, “I think I cannot over emphasize the fact that we really don’t have very good safety monitoring systems in many countries, and this adds to the miscommunication and the misapprehensions because we are not able to give clear-cut answers when people ask questions about the deaths that have occurred due to a particular vaccine. . . .” Dr. Mar­tin Howell Friede, coordinator of the Initiative for Vaccine Research at the WHO, noted that “The first accusation is the adjuvant when it comes to vaccine injuries and vaccine side effects.” He admitted that “without adjuvants we are not going to have the next generation of vaccines. . . Many of the vaccines we do have require adjuvants for the vaccines to work. So, the challenge we have in front of us is how do we build confidence in this?” Dr. Stephen Evans, profes­sor of pharmacoepidemiology, admitted that the adjuvants “multiply the reactogenicity in many instances, and therefore it seems to me that it is not unexpected if they multiply the incidence of adverse reactions. . . .” Dr. Bassey Okposen, program manager of Nigeria’s National Emergency Routine Immunization Coordination Centre, asked whether safety studies have ever been done on adjuvants from multiple vaccines given at one time and what their “cross reactions” would be. Pushback came from Dr. Robert Chen, former CDC scientist, who, in so many words, asserted that we don’t need any more studies and that hesitant scientists could find what they are looking for in existing databases. Dr. Chen was instrumental in killing evidence linking vaccines and autism (https://vaxxter.com/vaccines-2020-big-pharmas-admissions-of-fraud/).

HEART DISEASE STRIKING BACK

In spite of the fact that almost half of Americans under age sixty-five take cholesterol-lowering drugs (almost sixty-five percent over the age of sixty-five), and most people dutifully avoid saturated fats, heart disease rates are climbing—an in­crease of 4.3 percent for the U.S. as a whole, and higher rates in some rural areas and small and midsize cities. Three cities in Colorado (Fort Collins, Greeley and Colorado Springs) have seen increases of more than 25 percent, even though these cities boast bike trails, access to health care and nearby skiing and hiking. Most concerning is an increase among men and women in their thirties and forties. David Rosen­baum, a Colorado cardiologist, notes that a visit from a young patient was rare when he started practice seventeen years ago. Health officials cite a number of risk factors to explain the climb. Diabetes and obesity rates are up, rates of high blood pressure are climbing, urban and suburban lifestyles increase stress, computer time has replaced physical activity, and people are using more alcohol. . . and drugs (Wall Street Journal, January 1, 2020). Marijuana is legal in Colorado and one side effect of marijuana use is sudden heart attack. Marijuana can raise resting heart rate, dilate blood vessels and make the heart pump harder. Research suggests that the risk of heart attack is several times higher in the hour after smoking marijuana than it would be normally (https://www.health.harvard.edu/, June 24, 2019). This would explain the rising rate of heart attacks in the young.

TRAGIC CONSEQUENCES

A Florida couple who fed their children only raw fruits and vegetables has been charged with murder, aggravated child abuse, aggravated manslaughter and child abuse, and two counts of child neglect after their eighteen-month-old son starved to death. The child weighed only seventeen pounds—in line with what a seven-month-old should weigh. The couple’s three other children, ages three, five and eleven, were also victims of child abuse and extreme neglect, authori­ties said. This is only one of a number of tragic cases that we have reported in these pages, where parents end up losing their children and their freedom because they believed the promises made by those promoting veganism. Advocates for a diet without any animal products have a lot to answer for (nbcnews.com, December 19, 2019).

LDL IS YOUR FRIEND

For years we have heard that the main cause of heart disease is high LDL-cholesterol—the so-called “bad” cholesterol— and that we should get it down as low as possible using cholesterol-lowering drugs. However, it turns out that LDL may be our best friend. A study published in the British Medical Journal Open looked at over twenty-three thousand people to examine the relationship between LDL and dying. The subjects had all been hospitalized for a heart attack or acute heart failure. In the follow-up, those with high LDL were less likely to die and more likely to live longer. The paper cited six other studies that also found lower mortality in those with high LDL following heart failure. The authors concluded, “Findings of this study dispute the general as­sumption that HPL [hyperlipidemia, having LDL over 100 mg/dL] is associated with increased mortality” (http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2015-010401).

DAIRY DECLINE

Borden Dairy Company filed for bankruptcy protection in the new year, the second major U.S. dairy company to fold in recent months. Borden produces nearly five hundred mil­lion gallons of milk yearly for grocery stores, schools and institutions. It employs thirty-three hundred people and runs twelve plants across the U.S. The trend is for big competitors like Walmart to produce and process milk for their stores and sell it at a loss. Meanwhile, more and more traditional dairy farms are failing—over twenty-seven hundred have gone out of business in the last eighteen months alone. Com­mentators blame the pressure on the U.S. dairy industry on a shift in American eating habits; people are drinking more juice, soda and milk substitutes, and eating less breakfast cereal, resulting in a decline of 40 percent in milk consump­tion since 1975—but the real reason is growing intolerance to processed milk. The industry just does not want to admit that their ultra-pasteurized milk makes people sick (As­sociated Press, January 6, 2020) and that demand for real milk—pasture-fed, full fat and unprocessed—is growing.

ANEMIA FROM ALUMINUM

Aluminum injected into the bloodstream leads to lots of serious side effects, one of which is anemia. As explained by Dr. James Lyons-Weiler, 80 percent of injected aluminum is bound to transferrin, which blocks dietary iron from mov­ing from the blood into the bone marrow, where red blood cells are made. An expected effect of aluminum, therefore, is anemia, with all its attendant consequences including fatigue, lack of social referencing and mental retardation (jameslyonsweiler.com, January 7, 2020). A two-month-old infant may receive over one thousand micrograms of alumi­num from the vaccines administered during his visit to the pediatrician, far in excess of the twenty-five micrograms of aluminum allowed in intravenous feeding, and almost five thousand micrograms by eighteen months of age.

NO INSURANCE

According to the Verizon 2019 Annual Report, the telecom­munications company no longer carries insurance for EMF litigation, including litigation against 5G. “We are subject to a substantial amount of litigation. . . In addition our wire­less business also faces personal injury and wrongful death lawsuits relating to alleged health effects of wireless phones or radio frequency transmitters. We may incur significant expenses in defending these lawsuits. In addition, we may be required to pay significant awards or settlements.” Actually, this statement appears every year in this industry’s annual reports. Insurers dropped Verizon and other telecommunica­tions companies for EMF litigation many years ago (www.verizon.com/about/investors/sec-filings).

INCREDIBLE HEADLINE

Under Health News in the Washington Post (February 25, 2020): “Despite a rough flu season, ‘estimates are reassur­ing’ that vaccine helps kids, CDC says.” Hardly a reassuring argument to inject aluminum and other poisons into your child’s bloodstream.

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