Breaking News: Obama Announces New Initiative To Fix Obamacare

In light of the abject failure so far of the rollout of Obamacare, the signature achievement of his presidency, President Obama today announced that he will be taking a new tack to ensure help reverse the problem. Speaking before reporters in the Rose Garden, Obama declared,"Starting today, wherever I go, I will tirelessly give speeches about Obamacare until everyone in America has affordable health insurance. And by affordable, I mean insurance plans that mandate that come with higher premiums and deductibles, reduce access to physician because the plans have bumped your doctors from their networks, offer single males comprehensive maternity care coverage and fully insured access to mammograms, offer people who have never abused drugs or alcohol coverage for the addictions they don't have, and offer the millions of Americans who choose not to use pharmaceutical drugs because of the many safer and far less expensive natural options out there-not to mention the fact that such drugs kill over 100,000 people every year and cause another two million more to be hospitalized-have comprehensive drug coverage.

"Never mind about keeping your plan if you like it. That's no longer important. What's important is having the type of coverage that I and my advisors - the lobbyists for Big Pharma, Big Insurance, Big Hospital and other special interest groups whose profits are now soaring because of my landmark legislation - which is so popular that people now refer to it by my name - have deemed to be in your best interests. Trust me, we enacted the Abominably Craven Act for your own good! So it is that I am proud to stand before the American people today to let them know that I will now unceasingly blow hot air up everyone's asses and continue to deflect blame onto Sebelius, my campaign donor cronies and Michelle's friend's company to whom I've allocated hundreds of millions of dollars to create the ACA's state-of-the-art website that on its first day of operation saw over 4.7 million Americans visit it and an enrollment of 6 Americans within its first 24 hours of being online, thus shattering every record for lowest conversion rate in history! Be proud, America! For you can be assured that, as I continue to speechify, while simultaneously ducking all responsibility for everything that happens under my administration, my aides and I will be doing everything we can to foster media attention of newsworthy stories that deflect attention away from me and my nonachievements as president.

"Yes, that's right. Right now my staff is reaching out to Miley Cyrus, the Kardashians, and any and all other publicity whores, ahem...hahaha...I mean groundbreaking movers and shakers ready to take up the cause. Haha...Did you see what I did there? Movers and shakers? That was me being sophisticated and alluding to twerking. Because, as president, it is my solemn duty to keep abreast of current events. See what I did there? Abreast? Trust me, Bill Clinton's got nothing on me! I am the first real black president, after all, and let's all forget that my mother is white, meaning I am also a white American, but let's not go there, since fostering racial unrest is crucial to the success of my plan for America.

"Now, back to the Asinine Crud Act, let me be clear. I shall not rest until the media does it's job and returns to subserviently kissing my ass 24/7 and starts running stories about the grand success this historic legislation is. For instance, no other law has ever directly caused 85 percent of all physicians, and an almost equal number of nurses, to seriously consider leaving their professions precisely at the time that our nation's incidence of disease has been at its highest. And while it is true that Medicare caused medical expenses in the US to rise by 60% within its first few years of enactment, I can assure you that these cost increases will be like candlelight to the sun once everything within the Assbackwards Catastrophe Act is fully implemented. It may take some time, but I can promise you that I am bringing the same degree of initiative to this issue that I've given to restoring our economy, ending the nightmare years of the Bush surveillance state, closing Guantanamo and so forth. As a result of my attention to these areas, the average American today is actually worse off than during the years immediately following the Great Recession, the NSA is now eavesdropping on every single person with access to a phone or the Internet, and Guantanamo is...well, that's still open, but...haha...as we all know, that's Bush's fault and if you disagree, you're a racist. Now, then, if you excuse me, I'm late for another fundraiser, but I promise you, I have a lot more speeches within me and I will not rest until I've given every single one of them. And, in closing, let me just send a shout out to those folks who manufactured and maintain my teleprompter. Can you imagine if that task had been assigned to the people creating the healthcare.gov website!?! But seriously...let me be clear...um...ah...um...uh..."

Obamacare and the How We Got To It

In early 2010, soon after Congress passed and President Obama signed Obamacare into law, I wrote the following:

Obamacare is a sham in every way and, once implemented, will serve to make health care in the US worse than it is today. Moreover, despite all the rhetoric claiming otherwise, it will be a very profitable windfall for both Big Pharma and Big Insurance. Obama secretly negotiated with Big Pharma prior to any of the legislation even being drafted, and Time magazine reported that Big Insurance is now actively working to see that Obamacare is implemented ASAP. So much for attacking the evil insurance companies!

(It should surprise no one that the insurance companies are now on board – Obamacare just guaranteed them 32 million more customers each and every month, which will more than offset whatever they may lose from pre-existing conditions and caps on coverage over the life of their policies. Moreover, even the Democrats have admitted that premiums will still continue to rise, by a predicted average of 13% next year alone.) (During his campaign for president, Obama repeatedly said publicly that his health care plan would save an average of $2500 per policy. You can easily find him saying so, since it’s now a viral online video.) (Of course, he also pledged to allow the public 5 full days to read any legislation awaiting his signature before he signed it into law, stating that all such legislation would be posted online. 36 hours after Obamacare passed the convoluted and craven House Sunday night, he had his latest photo op, using 22 pens to enable the federal government to takeover 16% - and now sure to grow – of our nation’s GDP.)

But these are the least of the travesties to be found in what happened Sunday, “ the day that will live in infirmary”, as Matt Drudge of the DrudgeReport so brilliantly put it.

The real crime is that Obamacare is now mandating that all of us literally buy into a system of "health care" which cares nothing for health at all and never has. It’s a profit-driven, disease-fostering system that is the antithesis of everything that humankind knows about health and wellness, and it’s that way intentionally, ever since John D Rockefeller (in the USA) and IG Farben (in Germany – those gentle folks who, among other things, enabled Hitler’s rise to power, owned the factories at Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps, and used their own criminal scientists to subject the camps’ Jew, Gypsies, and other unfortunates to a wide range of horrific “scientific experiments” before they were killed or died from the experimentation) decided to jointly create a stranglehold over Western medicine. (IG Farben, by the way, like Rockefeller’s multicorporate business entities within the umbrella of Standard Oil, made a fortune as a direct result of World War Two and not only emerged unscathed despite their known criminality, they even got the US government – meaning US taxpayers – to indemnify them for the destruction of their factory plants caused by Allied bombing sorties over Germany – You can’t make this stuff up. Additionally, many of today’s best known pharmaceutical companies today are offshoots of IG Farben, including Bayer, as in, yes, Bayer aspirin.) (Aspirin, by the way, was recently found to NOT be effective in preventing heart attacks and also dangerous when used for that purpose. It’s long been known that regular aspirin use, as well as aspirin substitutes like ibuprofen, which are even worse, also kills an average of 10,000 Americans each year when taken properly because it thins the stomach lining and causes stomach bleeding. Despite recent published findings – from the American Medical Association, no less – that aspirin provides no benefit at all for people at high risk of heart attacks, and a recent Wall Street Journal article entitled The Danger of Taking Aspirin Daily, you can bet that Big Pharma, the AMA, and most doctors in the US will continue to tout daily aspirin as a good way to reduce heart attack risk.) But I digress…

Here’s how today’s US medical system came to be dominated by drug companies.

At the start of the 20th century, when our federal government was still properly in place the way our Founding Fathers intended it always to be – very small and very limited in scope – at least 25% of all health care providers in the US practiced some form of what is now disparaged as “alternative medicine”. This included diet, nutrition, herbology, naturopathic medicine, osteopathy (back when it was not a mirror image of conventional MD medicine, as it is today), chiropractic, homeopathy (very popular at the time, and still a very powerful healing modality in the right hands), etc. Then came the discovery of penicillin and the widespread belief that humanity was on the verge of having “wonder drugs” for all of their ills. Admittedly, penicillin was very much a wonder drug back in the day, and was responsible for saving the lives of millions of people. So far so good. (Not so good today. Penicillin’s antibiotic heirs are directly responsible for the still rising tide of drug-resistant bacteria. Which, irony of ironies, are found in highest concentrations in hospitals.)

Most of the wonder drugs back then were also petrochemicals. Petro means oil. Guess who had the monopoly on oil in the US and much of the rest of the Western world. Ole John D, of course, via Standard Oil (broken up in an antitrust suit around the same time this was occurring, only to have its separate parts emerge even more powerful and monopolistic, which is the only reason Rockefeller allowed the US government at the time to appear to be standing up for “the little man.”) Ever one to maximize profit any way he could, John D realized all of the natural (meaning nondrug-based, and therefore nonpatentable) forms of medicine at the time stood in the way of the complete and utter domination by pharmaceutical drugs. Therefore they had to be destroyed.

Here’s where it gets fun. (And seriously, I have long admired the high level of intelligence that elitist bastards like John D exhibit. If only they put it towards better use!) Obviously Johnny couldn’t simply put the natural-based forms of medicine out of business openly. The public would never have stood for it. So, crafty devil that he was, he did what all folks who pull the world’s puppet strings do. He got the public to demand the very thing he wanted to see accomplished, doing so without ever once suspecting they were playing right into his hands. In short, he used the proven 3-step formula for moving the populace where you want them. (Lyndon B Johnson did it after the now-known-to-be-false “Gulf of Tonkin incident”, GW Bush did it after 9/11, and Obama did it with Obamacare.)

Here are the formula’s three simple, almost fail-proof (they fail miserably when the public pays attention, which is why Thomas Jefferson – my favorite president – warned: “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.” Our nation’s in the mess it’s in primarily because said advice hasn’t been heeded for at least a century, probably much longer), ahem … here’s the three simple, almost fool-proof steps:

1. Create a problem.

2. Create a public reaction (“Somebody do something!”)

3. Provide a solution. (“Here I come to save the day!)

Of course, this 3-step tango only works if the solution to be provided is known before the problem is created. And the problem ALWAYS has to be based in fact.

For Johnny Boy’s purposes, this was all too easy. Being that – here’s the basis in fact – medical training at the turn of the 20th century had no minimum standards of curriculum. Quite the opposite. People could call themselves doctors in many cases simply after they attended what today would be called a weekend workshop at the end of which certification was provided. Or they could train diligently for a year or two. And everything in between. Some of the training was good. And some of it wasn’t.

So, step 1 for Good Ole John was to make sure the public knew about this. To which end, he and his cronies, all of whom also stood to profit from their brilliant gambit, hired a guy named Flexnor to investigate the system of medical education in the US at the time. Which Flexnor promptly did, all under the guise of altruism and having the public good at heart. After traveling around the country to purportedly examine our nation’s medical schools of the time, he issued what the American Medical Association still today calls the “most important” medical report of the 20th century.

In essence, it said:

OUR NATION’S SYSTEM OF MEDICAL EDUCATION IS A TRAVESTY. HELP! SOMEBODY DO SOMETHING!

As mentioned, at the time, the US government was properly limited in scope and therefore had no authority (Constitutionally, it still has no authority for most of what it does, including, now, Obamacare, but – too late! – the Constitution “is just a goddam piece of paper,” as Dubya said, and Obama completely agrees, and so do the vast majority of the other whores and puppets in DC) to make the changes that – Step 2 – the American public soon started to clamor for, thanks to Johnny’s pal William Randolph Hearst and others like him, stoking the flames of public outrage in their papers across the US. The changes being, of course, a uniform standard of medical education (again, note the brilliance, such a standard WAS absolutely necessary).

But if the federal government couldn’t step in and make this happen (you know, with back room deals and photo-op signings, etc, like they do today), well, Oh, Dear! Who could?

Never fear, good people. Here come’s Johnny D and his pals to – Still paying attention? Here comes step 3! – save the day!

And so they did. Supposedly.

What actually happened is that Johnny Boy and his pals sent their reps to every one of our nation’s medical schools via the benign posture of the charitable foundations. And these noble men (no women, at the time – exclusive boys club then) spent the next ten years telling each medical school, Look, the public is demanding change. Now, we know you are in no position to fund such change yourselves. We know how expensive that would be. But don’t worry. We, out of the goodness of our hearts and our love for our fellow man, are here to bear the cost for you. You’ll never have to pay us back, and we’ll provide you with annual funding in perpetuity. All, as we said, out of the goodness of hearts.

Oh, and, yes, there is one small thing, but it’s no matter really. What is it? Oh, nothing much, as we said. Only that, since we ARE after all providing you with desperately needed funds, we’re sure you’ll agree it’s only reasonable if we have a say in your curriculum from this point forward. Sound good? Excellent, please sign here, here, and here. What’s that? The part in the contract that mentions selling your souls? Oh, you know how it is. That’s just lawyerspeak.

Within that ten-year period, all but a handful (less than a dozen, by some estimates) of medical schools in the US had either accepted that deal or they went entirely out of business. As for those that stayed in business, gladly accepting Johnny’s moolah and that of his pals (all via charitable endowments), they very rapidly tossed out any mention of any natural therapy beyond superficial gleanings on diet (the average med school student today receives 25 hours of education of diet during his/her entire 8 or more years of medical training). (Don’t worry, there’s a pill for that.)

Instead, the curriculum is focused nearly entirely on drugs, drugs, and more drugs. And when the drugs fail, try even more drugs. And then even more. Rinse, repeat, and if worse comes to worse, well, we also have surgery. Very good, surgery is. Handsome profits to be had there too. And have we mentioned cancer-causing diagnostic devices like CT scans? You’ll love these. Real cash cows, as well.

All of the above is basically what happened. Not that you’ll learn any of it in modern medicine’s official story. And so things stand today.

(An historical aside: Despite never missing an opportunity to publicly rail against homeopathy and other forms of alternative medicine as “quackery,” Rockefeller used as his personal physician the same doctor used by England’s Royal Family. This physician’s specialty? Homeopathy! Allegedly, Rockfeller paid him well to keep his mouth shut. Rockefeller also became the largest donor to the AMA, which was formed in the 1800s in the US two years AFTER the formation of the much more highly regarded – at the time – American Homeopathic Association. In the early 20th century, the AMA was still a straggling, struggling organization. Johnny changed all that, making them the medical behemoth they are today. He also is largely responsible for our current Cancer Industry - along with IG Farben - but that, too, is another long screed for another time.)

Today, thanks to Rocky D and his boys, our medical system kills approximately 750,000 Americans each and every year, causes millions more to be hospitalized, and harms tens of millions of others, albeit not seriously enough to cause hospitalization. All of these facts are brilliantly spelled out in the book Death By Medicine by Carolyn Dean, MD and Gary Null.


And this is the corrupt system that Obamacare is now mandating all Americans partake in, whether they want to or not.

And that’s why I am so opposed to it. For me, it is not an issue of Dems v GOP issue, left, v right or whatever. The GOP is just as culpable for its passage as the Democrats are, and if they truly were serious about passing their own so-called free market reforms (most of which I support, by the way, and I despise the GOP as much as I despise the Democratic party), they could have easily done so during Dubya’s first term in office, But they were more interested in miring our nation in two illegal wars, the blowback from which we are only now starting to experience, along with shredding the Bill of Rights with passage of the so-called Patriot Act (another ploy of the puppetmasters – always use Orwellian “doublespeak” at all times – there is nothing at all patriotic in that abomination). (I maintain that our current economic crisis is karmic, in part, given that 90% of the nation at one time supported Bush’s warmongering – loss of jobs and homes and nest eggs in no way compares to what innocent civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan are enduring, including the fact that both nations are going to be birth defect and cancer hot zones for centuries - barring new technologies - due to all the depleted uranium US troops have bombarded them with.)

Back to Obamacare, to me the issue is far more serious than one’s political views. In essence, it comes down to a matter of freedom. No person or entity has the right to mandate that I, or anyone else, buy anything. Period. That alone makes Obamacare wrong in every respect. And certainly no one has the right to demand that I, or anyone else, partake of a so-called health care system that quite simply most of the time does not work.

But as I said, Obamacare isn’t about health care reform at all. It’s about government control. (Why else is the IRS responsible for overseeing its compliance?) Which is something desired by both the Dems and the GOP. They just go about it in different ways. Yet the results are always the same – continued erosion of our freedoms and continued expansion of the behemoth bureaucracy that is the exact opposite of what our Founding Fathers risked their lives to create.

Imagination and Health

Imagination and Health A number of years ago, I awoke from a dream with the following thought in my head: I seem to be a figment of my own Imagination. I was so struck by this that I wrote it down. Also years ago, I had the pleasure of teaching students in my grade school alma mater in an after school creative writing class. One of the first things I told them was that, when it comes to creative writing, the first and final authority on how stories, poems, etc., ought to be told is the writer him or herself. Similarly, I told them, when it comes to our lives and how it ought to be lived, there is only one expert – ourselves. With that encouragement, all 12 students in my class soon developed more confidence in themselves and their creative output soared from week to week, affording me one of the most fulfilling experiences I’ve ever had. In our class, we also discussed Imagination, which I redefined as I Make A Nation, since, when we imagine stories in poems, that is a fair approximation of what we do – literally making up the worlds, characters, themes and plots that we create. At the same time, I encouraged my students to take full responsibility for their creative efforts so that what they wrote rang true for them. Responsibility, I told them, to me means “respond ability” or “ability to respond,” which is just another way of saying freedom. When we take responsibility, we don’t make excuses. If something doesn’t “ring true,” we admit it and then work to the best of our best ability to rectify things. To writers, this process is known as editing and revision (re vision). I no longer lead that class, yet the lessons my students and I explored continue to serve me. Over the past few years, I’ve been exploring how they apply to health and illness. In doing so, I’ve also returned to the first idea I shared above: I seem to be a figment of my own Imagination. The more I explore that idea, the more I am realizing how true it is. As far as I’m concerned, it literally means that the many roles I play in life are roles that either I or someone else has literally made up for me. This is something I’ve long known. What’s new and exciting for me these days is my realization that the roles can be changed any time I wish to do so. Meaning that my life, just as anything else I “write,” can be edited and revised, which further means that there are no true limitations as to how my life story unfolds. The key, of course, lies in my taking responsibility for it. As I’ve been examining the various roles I play, I am asking myself if they are roles I want to continue in because I truly enjoy them. Those that are I then give further attention to by imagining how I might make those roles even more enjoyable for myself. As I do so, I then imagine that those changes already exist. And then I let them occur organically without worrying about the hows and whys that might be involved in making what I’ve imagined reality. Whenever I manage to do this as eloquently as I’m describing it here, the positive changes I decide I want tend to have a way of showing up pretty rapidly. For example, a few months ago, I decided that I wanted to create more free time for myself so that I can start to spend time exploring various things that my previous writing schedule didn’t allow for. As soon as I made that decision, I then imagined an ideal set of circumstances that would allow for that to happen. Soon thereafter I received an email a that resulted in the exact circumstances I imagined. Before going further, let me make one thing clear. This process of Imagination that I am discussing here has little to do with the namby-pamby New Age mumbo jumbo that was touted in the film and movie, The Secret. It requires time and effort and a fair deal of work to honestly and effectively re-imagine and recreate our lives. In other words, it takes a lot of responsibility. Yet, in our society, there is a pervasive tendency to want a quick fix solution for our problems (a pill, an herb, a book) and/or a demand that someone else fix them for us (family, spouses, partners, doctors, gurus, government officials, etc). Such a tendency has nothing to do with responsibility, as far as I’m concerned. Having said that, let’s explore how Imagination is related to health. As we consider this question, one thing that becomes clear is that, as a nation, we seem to be putting an increasing amount of attention not on health, but disease. Which, I think, accounts for how widespread chronic illness is in our country. (We get what we focus on.) We also spend a lot of time talking about various causes of disease and what can be done to prevent them or at least minimize our exposure to them. There is nothing wrong with that. After all, part of taking responsibility for one’s health involves knowing what risks to be aware of and then making lifestyle choices accordingly. Yet, if eating healthily, leading a healthy lifestyle, and minimizing our bodies’ toxic burden and so forth were all that were necessary to be and stay healthy, how do we account for the fact that some people who do all of those things die young or succumb to chronic degenerative diseases, while others who smoke, drink and eat whatever they feel like eating can live to a ripe old age with no health problems to speak of? A clue to answering this question might be found in a comment made by a man in Japan some years ago. At the time he was thought to be the oldest person in the world. Well past 100 years of age, he was still going strong when he was interviewed. The interviewer noted that he was a chain smoker and that he drank lots of sake throughout the day. Asked what he considered to be the secret to his longevity, the man shrugged, then smiled and said, “I only do things that make me happy.” When we follow the lead of our Imagination and actually take action to make what we imagine real, happiness, I find, inevitably results. As what we imagine becomes reality, satisfaction follows. Moreover, the creative process that results in “editing reality” brings with it a feeling of excitement that further fuels our creativity and increases our confidence that we can continue to adventurously create our lives from ever increasing levels of boldness. Even so, how many of us actually live our lives this way on a regular basis? I certainly don’t, although now that I have tasted how delicious doing so is I am doing so more and more. This lack of living from our Imagination, I believe, is precisely why so many of us become sick. In fact, I have long been convinced that illness of any sort is actually a gift we give to ourselves in order to reevaluate our lives so that we can better recognize what needs our attention and changing. This view is supported by people I’ve interviewed who recovered from cancer despite being told by their doctors that there was nothing more that could be done for them. Each long-term cancer survivor I’ve interviewed has told me that getting cancer was “the best thing that ever happened” to them precisely because of how it forced them to reconsider the lives they were living. In every case, these same people discovered things about their lives that no longer served them and then took action to stop engaging in them. In some cases, that meant leaving careers and/or relationships and then committing themselves to living their dreams in whatever time they had left to them. Many of these people, upon doing so, experienced spontaneous remissions and are now living far different lives than those they had before they were diagnosed with cancer. And all of them claim to be far happier and more fulfilled. The way that all of this ties into health and Imagination has, I think, mostly to do with a willingness on our part to first truly imagine what it is we want for ourselves, and then to be willing to do whatever is necessary on our part to make it happen. This means foregoing excuses and putting an end to relying on others and/or external circumstances for our fulfillment. For our happiness, like our health, is first and foremost our responsibility. Moreover, if, as my dream implied, we really are figments of our own Imagination, why not imagine that best version of ourselves that we can possibly be. This includes being as healthy as you want to be. So, if you are currently experiencing less than optimal health, here is an experiment I invite you to try: Imagine that there exists a version of yourself who is a radiant picture of health. Really bring your senses into this and allow yourself to fully explore what a radiantly healthy you would be like. How does this radiant you life his or her life? What choices does s/he make and what activities does s/he partake in? Imagine all of this on a daily basis for at least five to ten minutes at a time, and as you do so really feel what it is like to be that radiantly healthy you. And then assume that you are that person. And then watch yourself start to become that version of yourself. In the field of mind/body medicine, there are many documented cases of people who have cured themselves of illness, including cancer, using versions of this technique, which is known by various names, such as creative visualization and guided imagery. I prefer calling it Make Believe because that sounds like more fun. Will your health improve if you engage in this exercise? You won’t know unless you try it. I encourage you to do so.

How The FDA Works to Suppress Knowledge about Nutritional Supplement Benefits

What follows is an actual letter sent by the FDA to owners of a health food store in upstate NY. By reading it, you can see how the FDA literally uses words to make it a crime to share actual, scientifically-verified facts about nutritional and botanical supplements. I explain more about this after the letter.

From the FDA:

This is to advise you that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has reviewed your website..and has determined that the products "Kyolic Original Formula 100" (200 cap), "Nature's Way Sarsaparilla Root" (100 cap), "Nutrition Now PB 8 Pro-Biotic Acidophilus" (60 cap), and "Nature's Way Alfa-Max" (100 cap) are promoted for conditions that cause the products to be drugs under section 201 (g)(1)(B) of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (the Act) [21 U.S.C. § 321(g)(1)(B)]. The therapeutic claims on your website establish that the products are drugs because they are intended for use in the cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease. (emphasis added) The marketing of these products with these claims violates the Act.

Examples of some of the claims observed on your website include:

Kyolic Original Formula 100 (200 cap)

• "Kyolic Formula 100 ... may be beneficial for ... blood pressure, cholesterol levels, heart disease ... arteriosclerosis, arthritis, asthma, cancer ... infections of the eyes, ears, throat, respiratory infections ... flu ... fungal infections, viral infections ...."

Nature's Way Sarsaparilla Root (100 cap)

• "Sarsaparilla [an ingredient in your product] may help in the treatment of congestive heart failure, high blood pressure impotence ... swelling and discomfort from rheumatism and arthritis ... psoriasis ... syphilis ...."

Nutrition Now PB 8 Pro-Biotic Acidophilus (60 cap)

• "Acidophilus [an ingredient in your product] ... has anti-fungal activity ... and play [sic] a role in yeast infections, urinary tract infections, cancer prevention, cholesterol levels ...."

Nature's Way Alfa-Max (100 cap)

• "Alfalfa [an ingredient in your product] ... may be used for allergies, anemia, arthritis, asthma, blood disorders ... high cholesterol and diabetes ...."

Your products are not generally recognized as safe and effective for the above referenced uses and therefore, the products are "new drugs" under section 201(p) of the Act [21 U.S.C. § 321(P)]. New drugs may not be legally marketed in the U.S. without prior approval from FDA as described in section 505(a) of the Act [21 U.S.C. § 355(a)]. FDA approves a new drug on the basis of scientific data submitted by a drug sponsor to demonstrate that the drug is safe and effective. Furthermore, because your products are offered for conditions that are not amenable to self-diagnosis and treatment by individuals who are not medical practitioners, adequate directions cannot be written so that a layman can use the products safely for their intended uses. Thus, your products "Kyolic Original Formula 100" (200 cap), "Nature's Way Sarsaparilla Root" (100 cap), "Nutrition Now PB 8 Pro-Biotic Acidophilus" (60 cap), and "Nature's Way Alfa-Max" (100 cap) are also misbranded within the meaning of section 502(f)(1) of the Act [21 U.S.C. § 352(f)(1)] in that the labeling for these drugs fails to bear adequate directions for use. The introduction of a misbranded drug into interstate commerce is a violation of § 301(a) of the Act, 21 U.S.C. § 331(a).

The above violations are not meant to be an all-inclusive list of deficiencies in your products and their labeling. While reviewing your website, we noticed that you were promoting other products for disease treatment and/or prevention. The unlawful disease treatment and prevention claims on your website were too numerous to list in this letter. It is your responsibility to ensure that products marketed by your firm comply with the Act and its implementing regulations. We advise you to review your website, product labels, and other labeling and promotional materials for your products to ensure that the claims you make for your products do not cause them to violate the Act.

You should take prompt action to correct the violations described above and prevent their future recurrence. Failure to do so may result in enforcement action without further notice. The Act authorizes the seizure of illegal products and injunctions against manufacturers and distributors of those products [21 U.S.C. §§ 332 and 334].

Please notify this office, in writing, within fifteen (15) working days of the receipt of this letter, as to the specific steps you have taken to correct the violations noted above and to assure that similar violations do not occur. Include any documentation necessary to show that correction has been achieved. If corrective actions cannot be completed within fifteen working days, state the reason for the delay and the time within which the corrections will be completed.


My Comments

Note this sentence from the FDA's letter: "The therapeutic claims on your website establish that the products are drugs because they are intended for use in the cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease." By claiming the definition and usage of the word "drug", the FDA makes it illegal for any nutritional supplement company to share any health benefits related to their supplements without prior permission from the FDA (permission that will not be granted).

Also note that in the majority of examples the FDA cites, the website only said "may" in terms of the potential health benefits that the products might provide. More importantly, science does support the benefits attributed to the product. Kyolic, for instance, is a garlic supplement, and garlic has been shown to be beneficial for the conditions the website cites.

But as soon as someone shares these facts in conjunction with selling supplements, the FDA accuses them of a crime because doing so, they claim, means they are marketing "drugs."

But it's perfectly OK for drug companies to hawk their drugs to anyone without such FDA interference. Despite the fact that drugs, properly prescribed and taken, kill over 100,000 Americans each and every year, hospitalize another 2 million people, and cause additional harm to 20 million more, and these are conservative estimates.

This abominable double standard is just one example of how deeply the FDA is in bed with Big Pharma.

Some Facts About Addiction In Light of Whitney Houston's Death

In light of a variety of very judgmental comments about Whitney Houston’s death now appearing on Facebook and elsewhere, I thought I’d weigh in on the issue of addiction. Some people claim it’s a choice, others that it’s a disease.

The truth is that it’s both.

It begins as a choice, but it can very quickly become a disease. Not everyone who chooses to drink, smoke, do drugs, or engage in other addictive activities will develop the need (literally) to continue to do so. Those who do develop such a need are usually biologically predisposed towards addiction (due to biochemical imbalances in their brain and/or genetics) and most often suffering from some level of emptiness within their psyche. The addictive substance or substances they expose themselves to temporarily calm the biological aspects and provide an illusory relief of whatever mental/emotional issues are affecting the user.

In such people, a very vicious cycle soon develops. Each time they use whatever they are addicted to, receptor sites within the brain are formed which literally cry out for the substance or substances that they are linked to. The more the addictive substance is used, the more these receptor sites form, so that the brain increasingly demands more use of the substance (or activity, e.g., sex, gambling, and even running for those who are addicted to experiencing the “runner’s high”). This is why addiction treatments based on the AA model so often fail – because they do nothing to address the receptor sites.

As this cycle unfolds, the need for ever greater amounts of the addictive substance is also something that addicts typically experience, because there are now more receptor sites in the brain to satisfy. As an example, where once one or two beers each day was enough to leave someone satisfied, in alcoholics that level is nowhere near enough, and so drinking becomes heavier and the drinks themselves often change towards those with higher alcohol content. At the same time that all of this is happening, another equally insidious effect in occurring in the brain – namely a literal shutting down of the brains higher level centers that equate with choice, intelligence, and the ability to perceive and do “the right thing.” As these centers of the brain become impaired, simultaneously the “reptilian brain” that cares only about satisfying needs, grows increasingly stronger within addicts.

All of these facts have been proven for decades, as has the fact that addiction is most definitely a disease once it takes hold. As with any other disease, people can still get well, but it requires proper treatment that addresses all of the factors in one’s life that made addiction possible in the first place. Such treatments do not include judgment.

I know too many loved ones who suffer from some form of addiction. Every single one of them, at heart, is a very loving and kind person, and also very intelligent and creative. I’m convinced that they are also too sensitive to the harsh realities of this world.

When viewed from that awareness, the only appropriate response is compassion.

The Cancer Profile Test

Last time, in addition to emphasizing the importance of detecting cancer as early as possible, I also told you how and why conventional diagnostic tests for cancer so often fail to do so. Today I want to tell you about a simple combination blood and urine test that is able to detect changes in your body’s biochemistry that are early warning signs that you may be on the way to developing cancer.

The test is called the Cancer Profile© and is available from American Metabolic Laboratories here in the United States. Developed by Emil Schandl, PhD, AML’s founder, who has a master’s degree in both biochemistry and enzymology and a doctorate in molecular genetics, the test is based on the scientific fact that certain detectable changes in biochemistry occur as the human body progresses from a healthy state towards states that are precancerous and cancerous.

How The Cancer Profile Test Works

The Cancer Profile test incorporates eight tests which, combined, provide a far more accurate indication of whether or not a person’s biochemistry is shifting towards an unhealthy state than if the tests were done separately. The test measures levels of thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH), and indicator of thyroid function (low thyroid function, or hypothyroidism, can predispose one to developing cancer) ; DHEA-S, a hormone produced by the adrenal gland that serves as an indicator of adrenal and immune function, as well as a marker for cancer; gamma-glutamyltranspeptidase (GGTP), an enzyme marker for overall liver function (healthy liver function is essential for protecting against cancer); and the cancer markers CEA (carcinoembryonic antigen), PHI (phosphohexose isomerase enzyme), and HCG (human chorionic gonadotropin), the last of which is measured using three different methods to ensure the best possible accuracy.

Based on his many years of research, Dr. Shandl observed that the substances his Cancer Profile test measures tend to become elevated at least 10 or more years before cancer can be detected using conventional screening tests. This is not surprising, since we now know that, in the vast majority of cases, it takes years before cancer develops to the point where it becomes a threat to health. Because of this long timeline, alternative cancer specialists realize that, by looking for shifts in biochemistry such as those the Cancer Profile measures, they can help their patients actually avoid cancer before it gains a foothold inside their bodies, using highly effective approaches such as dietary and lifestyle changes, along with nutritional supplements, detoxification therapies, and other modalities, as necessary.

If you read my last article on the need for early detection, you will recall what I mentioned about the importance of sensitivity and specificity. Briefly put, sensitivity and specificity in combination with each other determine how accurate a cancer screening test is. Sensitivity refers to the probability that a test will show a positive result when cancer actually exists, while specificity refers to the probability that a negative test result will occur when no cancer exists. A test that has high sensitivity and high specificity is far more useful than tests for which one or both of these measures are lower.

Dr. Shandl developed the Cancer Profile test for precisely this reason. He wanted to ensure a high level of accuracy, which simply cannot be achieved when doctors rely on only one of the markers alone. For example, despite the fact that numerous scientific studies show that HCG levels in the body become elevated when cancer cells are present in the body, other studies have found that tests that screen for HCG alone can often fail to detect such increases in elevations, usually because, even though the levels have risen, they may not have done so at levels high enough to be detected. As a result, HCG screening tests by themselves account for approximately 30 percent false negative results. (A false negative reading means a patient is told he or she does not have cancer when in reality cancer is present but was not detected.)

Similarly, other studies have shown that screening for either CEA or PHI alone can also lead to false negative results, whereas when both of these markers are measured, the overall accuracy of such testing increases significantly.

Given these facts, you can understand the advantages that the Cancer Profile test offers in comparison to stand-alone marker tests. Simply put, what a single cancer market test can often miss, the combination of markers included in the Cancer Profile will usually find with far more accuracy. (Testing has shown that the Cancer Profile has an overall accuracy rate of between 87 and 97 percent, depending on the type of cancer that a person may be developing, which far exceeds the rates of most other cancer screening tests.) Even more significantly, as I said, it can detect cancer far earlier than conventional cancer tests.

Another significant advantage of Dr. Shandl’s test is that, unlike stand-alone marker tests that typically screen for only one type of cancer and therefore fail to detect others types of cancer that might be present, the Cancer Profile is able to detect whether cancer is present in general. This saves time and money and can potentially also save lives. As with other blood screening tests for cancer, however, the Cancer Profile by itself cannot definitively prove that cancer is present. Such confirmation can only be obtained with further testing methods, which also can determine which type of cancer a person has.

Finally, another major benefit of the Cancer Profile test is that is can not only be used to screen for cancer, but also to monitor how well patients’ cancer treatments are working. This is vitally important because no cancer treatment, whether alternative or conventional, works 100 percent of the time. This means that even the most promising treatments with the highest success rates are incapable of helping everyone. By using the Cancer Profile test to monitor how well their treatments are working, physicians can quickly know whether they are on the right track for each individual patient, or whether they need to change what they are doing before it is too late. In addition, if surgery is deemed necessary to remove cancerous tumors, the Cancer Profile can be used prior to surgical procedures to provide patients and their physicians with a benchmark to determine whether or not the surgery was successful. Following surgery, a follow-up Profile test can be given. If surgery was indeed successful, the Profile will confirm that by showing lowered levels of the cancer markers it measures. If the markers stay at the same level as before, or continue to rise, then doctors will quickly know that their patients need additional treatment.

Just as importantly, physicians can use the Cancer Profile to monitor how well their patients who achieve remission of their cancer are maintaining their health. As anyone who has had cancer knows (including me), once cancer strikes, it can strike again. Here too conventional cancer tests are often ineffective due to their inability to indicate in a timely fashion whether cancer is returning. For this reason, patients and their physicians alike are often forced to “watch and wait,” hoping that the patient’s remain cancer-free. Unfortunately, too many times cancer does return, and when it does so it is often worse than it was originally, making further treatment more challenging. By using the Cancer Profile, physicians don’t have to wait to detect signs of relapse. Instead, they can see from the Profile how well their cancer patients are doing and, if necessary, take appropriate action much earlier, before the cancer recurrence becomes more serious.


How You Can Obtain the Cancer Profile Test

Despite the benefits that the Cancer Profile test offers, as well as the fact that physicians and patients from all across the United States and around the world have made use of it, the test still remains relatively unknown. For this reason, I urge you not to wait for doctors to find out about it on their own. Instead, learn more about it yourself. You can do so by contacting:

American Metabolic Laboratories
1818 Sheridan Street, Suite 102
Hollywood, FL 33020
(954) 929-4814
http://americanmetaboliclaboratories.net

Your doctor can order the test for you, or you can do it yourself by contacting American Metabolic Laboratories directly. After you receive your results, you can also schedule a free phone consultation with one of the lab’s trained representatives.

The Need To Detect Cancer Early: Why Conventional Cancer Tests Are Not the Answer

One of the main reasons that cancer is such a costly disease—both in terms of human suffering and in the financial cost involved in treating it—is because by and large it is not detected early enough.

When it comes to early detection, conventional medicine is well behind alternative cancer approaches. That’s because conventional diagnostic cancer tests look only for signs of cancer tumors. This is true whether the screening methods are measuring cancer markers or looking for signs of tumors directly, such as through CT scans, MRIs, x-rays, etc.

Most people do not realize that it takes years, and in some cases even decades before cancer develops into a visible tumor that conventional screening can detect. By then, the challenge of treating cancer successfully is more difficult and costly. That’s because, during all of the time that tumors are not detectable by conventional means, cancer is still active in the body.

Since the conventional cancer establishment often refers to its approach to cancer as a “war,” think of detection this way:

In war, doesn’t it make sense to be aware of your enemy before he can come ashore and strike, rather than to wait for years while he stealthily infiltrates your defenses before he strikes in full force? Obviously your chances of defeating your enemy are much greater if you can stop him in his tracks before he has a chance to leave his homeland. Similarly, alternative and integrative cancer physicians recognize that the earliest possible detection of cancer greatly increases the chances of their patients’ long-term recovery and survival. Just as importantly, early detection makes treating cancer far less costly, compared to when it’s detected later on.

Limitations of Conventional Cancer Tests


Conventional cancer tests have a number of limitations, starting with the fact that, as I said, cancer must have developed into a tumor before they can successfully detect it. (For the purposes of this article, I am referring here to “solid state” cancers, meaning those for which tumor formation is involved. Nearly all types of cancer fall into this category, with two notable exceptions: leukemias and lymphomas, such as Hodgkin’s disease and non-Hodgkins lymphoma.) As mentioned, this means that cancer has to be present in the body for a long time before conventional cancer tests can detect it. And even then, small tumors can be missed by such tests, escaping detection until they grow larger, by which time cancer has progressed even further.

In addition, as I’ve written about in the past, a number of conventional cancer tests, such as x-rays and CT scans, are capable of causing cancer themselves due to the radiation they emit when patients are tested.

For this reason, conventional cancer specialists also rely on cancer markers to screen patients for cancer. A cancer marker refers to any of a variety of blood tests that measure the level of a protein material or other chemical that is produced by cancer cells. Marker levels become elevated in the presence of a cancerous tumor.

There are different cancer markers for different kinds of cancer. For example, the marker CEA (carcino-embryonic antigen) is used to screen for colon cancer, while CA 15-3 or CA 27-29 are used to screen for breast cancer. Other common cancer markers are CA 125, used to screen for ovarian cancer, and the PSA (prostate-specific antigen) test for men, which until recently was commonly relied upon by conventional physicians to screen for prostate cancer. (Recent research has shown that the PSA test may not be an accurate indicator of prostate cancer, to the points where its developer has now called on physicians to stop relying upon it for this purpose. The PSA test continues to be an accurate indicator for enlargement of the prostate gland or BPH.)

The most obvious limitation of conventional cancer marker tests is the fact that each of them can only be used to screen for one particular type of cancer. This means, for example, that a woman screened for breast cancer may be given a clean bill of health if her cancer markers show a low score all the while that she may have colon or another type of cancer that the markers cannot screen for.

Nor is that the only problem. Cancer markers can produce inaccurate results known as false positives and false negatives. A false positive results in patients being told they have cancer when in fact they don’t, while a false negative can result in people with cancer being told they are cancer-free. Obviously, either type of false reading is not a good outcome.

False positive and false negative outcomes from cancer marker tests are related to two statistical measures that determine a screening test’s usefulness. These measures are known as sensitivity and specificity. Sensitivity refers to the probability that a test will show a positive result when cancer actually exists, while specificity refers to the probability that a negative test result will occur when no cancer exists. A test that has high sensitivity and high specificity is far more useful than tests for which one or both of these measures are lower. Unfortunately, too many conventional cancer marker tests fall into this latter category. They include the PSA test, as well as the CA 27-29 and CEA tests, among others.

False negative outcomes are also quite high with the traditional PAP smear test, which is used to screen for cancer of the cervix. This test examines stained cells from the mucous membrane of the cervix for signs of precancerous changes. Pre-cancer of the cervix is called cervical dysplasia. When detected early enough, it is almost always reversible, but once it progresses into malignancy and becomes invasive it is much more difficult to treat. It is estimated that a full one-third of women who die from cervical cancer do so because it was not accurately detected soon enough for successful treatment to begin.

Given all of the above, you are probably wishing that there were accurate and noninvasive tests that could screen for cancer in its earliest stages, far ahead of the conventional diagnostic tests I’ve mentioned, that could also screen for multiple types of cancer at once, instead of patients needing to have multiple types of tests to know whether or not cancer is present in their bodies.

Fortunately these types of tests do exist, and more and more alternative physicians are now making use of them even though both tests are still ignored by their conventional counterparts. In future articles I will tell you about two of these tests, one from Germany and one that is available right here in the United States, and I will also let you know how you can obtain them. Stay tuned.

Until then, remember this: When it comes to cancer, prevention is your best option, followed by the earliest possible detection methods.