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Colloidal Silver Has Mainstream Medicine Singing the Blues
by Tony Isaacs author of Cancer's Natural
Enemy
The recent widespread mainstream media coverage
of the “blue man” Paul Karason and his rare skin
condition known as Argyria is the latest in a series of largely
misleading and sensationalized scare stories about the dangers
of colloidal silver turning a person’ skin blue.
Although this latest story did not appear to
originate from mainstream medicine or the FDA, there is little
doubt that they have welcomed it with open arms and have been
quick to trot out “medical experts” and past FDA
warnings to help “sing the blues” about colloidal
silver. The truth is that mainstream medicine has a very good
reason to cry long and loud about colloidal silver, because
it does represent a very real danger – a danger to the
huge profits of the pharmaceutical industry’s patented
antibiotics.
The truth is that silver has been used effectively
by mankind to fight germs and ailments for thousands of years,
and the instances of it turning people’s skin blue are
so rare as to be almost non-existent. As a matter of fact, almost
all of the relative handful of reported instances have involved
one or more of the following: older silver products that contained
as much as 10% or more silver (compared to mere parts per million
in modern colloidal silver), silver nitrate, home made colloidal
silver that was contaminated with salt, and silver that has
been consumed continuously in very large quantities over a very
long period of time
What is also true is that colloidal silver is
far safer, more effective and less expensive than the marginally
effective and side effect laden mainstream antibiotics. The
best and strongest of the FDA approved antibiotics are effective
for a handful of bacteria at best, whereas colloidal silver
is supremely effective against just about every kind of single
celled pathogen, including bacteria, fungal growths and viruses
(which antibiotics are often miss-prescribed for, but have zero
effect on).
If the public were told the truth, a rarity
when it comes to mainstream drugs versus natural competition,
colloidal silver would represent a threat to literally billions
of dollars of profits and so it is no wonder that mainstream
medicine and their duped allies in the mainstream media are
singing the blues – just as they have repeatedly done
with many other natural plants, supplements, vitamins and minerals
that represent safer, more effective and less expensive alternatives
to the synthetics created in the labs of the powerful world
pharmaceutical empire.
Since the early 1900’s the modern pharmaceutical
industry has been all about profits and controlling the world
drug trade and their only marketplace is our bodies. They have
a longstanding and clear track record of doing whatever it takes
to suppress any and all competition, including lies, misleading
industry funded studies, and the suppression and persecution
of competition through the agency much of the public thinks
is protecting the general public, but in reality serves foremost
to protect the profits of the pharmaceutical empire it serves
and depends on. The same can be said of mainstream germ theory
medicine, whose American Medical Association, along with the
FDA, also has a track record of supporting industry at any and
all costs and suppressing and harassing competition.
While there are a great many natural threats
to mainstream profits, whose track records of being used safely
and effectively by mankind for hundreds and even thousands of
years cast very dark shadows of doubts on industry claims of
their dangers and ineffective, perhaps no natural alternative
to mainstream drugs represents as big of a threat to industry
profits as colloidal silver, and it is no coincidence that colloidal
silver has been placed at the very top of the FDA/mainstream
medicine hit list.
When it comes to warning and scaring people
away from silver, both the mainstream medical industry and the
FDA have some very big credibility problems. As noted earlier,
silver has a history of safe and effective use dating back thousands
of years. Today it is used by NASA, the US military and Potters
for Peace for water purification, is used as a germicidal agent
by hospitals, medical suppliers and recently was incorporated
into a new line of hospital pajamas to prevent the spread of
infection.
Moreover, at one time silver products were very
much in favor with both mainstream medicine and the FDA. No
fewer than 34 different prescribed and over-the-counter medications
containing silver were not only widely sold by industry, they
were also approved by the very same FDA which now seeks to warn
us of its dangers and have us believe it is ineffective. What
changed their minds? The obvious answer can be found in the
fact that silver fell out of favor at the very same time that
patented sulfa drugs and patented antibiotics created in drug
company labs came on the market. Once that happened, the non-patentable
silver was no longer a tool for healing, but a threat to profits.
Zealous protection of mainstream approved drugs
and suppression of natural competition is nothing new - look
at the estimated 100,000 or more deaths caused by Vioxx before
the FDA finally removed it from the market. Look at the ridiculous
actions of the FDA when it threatened Washington cherry growers
for telling the truth about the health benefits of eating cherries,
or at the storm trooper actions against the makers of Charantia
(bitter melon) tea in Florida who dared put references to some
of the 650 plus PubMed studies and citations about bitter melon
on their website.
The FDA persecutions and prosecutions of cherry
farmers, bitter melon, and a long line of other natural alternatives
points out just how extreme the protection of the big drug companies
products and profits really is. Consider this: other than issues
of national security, only in natural health is it a crime to
tell the truth. For example, only the makers of FDA approved
drugs can use the word cure, or even imply and health benefits
without the FDA considering the product a drug.
The catch is that in order to be FDA approved,
no matter how many PubMed cited studies or other studies have
been performed, and no matter how much of a history of hundreds
or thousands of years and users, the FDA only approves drugs
that go through its specific approval process – one that
costs hundreds of billions of dollars.
When it comes to natural alternatives, spending
such money on a natural product that cannot be patented is prohibitive
and, though the process is purported to be one which protects
the public from unsafe medicines (we see how well that worked
for hall of shame list of drugs like Vioxx, Avandia, et al),
the net effect of the FDA’s drug definitions and approval
process is to exclude natural competition and insure that only
the patentable and profitable synthetics created in drug company
labs can be approved.
The most recent example of such one-sided treatment
favoring industry came in the following news story earlier this
past week about a lawsuit filed against the FDA by Public Citizen
after the FDA ignored years of complaints about the dangers
of ruptured tendons caused by one of the drug industry’s
most powerful and profitable antibiotics:
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Despite long-standing
evidence that fluoroquinolone antibiotics can cause tendon ruptures,
the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has failed to increase
its warnings to patients and physicians about the dangers of
the medicines, Public Citizen told a federal court Thursday.
Public Citizen sued in the U.S. District Court for the District
of Columbia, asking the court to force the FDA to act upon a
petition the consumer group filed with the agency 16 months
ago. The FDA has failed to respond to the petition, which asked
the agency to put a “black box” warning on fluoroquinolone
antibiotics (such as Cipro, Levaquin and others) to make doctors
and patients more aware of the risk of serious tendon injury
before tendons actually rupture.
The petition also urged the FDA to send
a warning letter to physicians, as well as require an FDA-approved
medication guide to be dispensed when prescriptions are filled.
Public Citizen contends that the FDA is violating the Administrative
Procedure Act by not acting upon the petition.
Stronger warnings could lead to earlier intervention and prevent
needless injuries by allowing doctors to switch patients to
other antibiotics, said Dr. Sidney Wolfe, director of Public
Citizen’s Health Research Group.
“While the FDA sits idly by
and ignores the problem, more people will suffer serious tendon
ruptures that could have been prevented,” Wolfe said.
“The current warning is buried in a long list of possible
adverse reactions and is far too easy to miss.”
From November 1997 through December 2005,
the FDA received 262 reports of tendon ruptures, mainly of the
Achilles tendon, 258 cases of tendonitis and 274 cases of other
tendon disorders in patients using fluoroquinolone antibiotics.
An additional 74 tendon ruptures have subsequently been reported
to the FDA for a total of 336. Because only a small fraction
of cases are typically reported to the FDA, the actual number
of ruptures and other tendon injuries attributable to the antibiotic
is much higher
Source: Healthy News
One can only imagine the FDA's reaction if 336
tendon ruptures had been reported for those who take the best
antibiotic and pathogen destroyer on the planet - colloidal
silver. No doubt, they would have raided the manufacturer with
storm troopers and shut it down years ago, just as they have
done many times with the manufacturers and sellers of other
natural competitors to drug company products.
In conclusion, as far as I can tell, not one
single instance of Argyria has been attributed to properly made
colloidal, that has not stopped the FDA from continuing to "sing
the blues" about silver or from going after those who make
and sell colloidal silver products, not because silver represents
a whit of threat to human health but rather because it represents
a threat to the inflated bottom line profits of the mainstream
drug manufacturers.
Finding out who the FDA really serves is a simple
task - all you have to do is follow the money. Don’t take
it from me– see what a noted past FDA commissioner has
to say:
"The FDA 'protects' the big drug companies
and are subsequently rewarded, and using the government's police
powers they attack those who threaten the big drug companies.
People think that the FDA is protecting them."
It isn't.
"What the FDA is doing and what the
public thinks it is doing are as different as night and day."
Dr. Herbert Ley
Former U.S. FDA Commissioner
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Statistics Prove Prescription Drugs Are 16,400%
More Deadly Than Terrorists
by Jessica Fraser
America was rudely awakened to a new kind
of danger on September 11, 2001: Terrorism. The attacks that day
left 2,996 people dead, including the passengers on the four commercial
airliners that were used as weapons. Many feel it was the most
tragic day in U.S. history.
Four commercial jets crashed that day. But what
if six jumbo jets crashed every day in the United States, claiming
the lives of 783,936 people every year? That would certainly
qualify as a massive tragedy, wouldn't it?
Well, forget "what if." The tragedy
is happening right now. Over 750,000 people actually do die
in the United States every year, although not from plane crashes.
They die from something far more common and rarely perceived
by the public as dangerous: modern medicine.
According to the groundbreaking 2003 medical
report Death by Medicine, by Drs. Gary Null, Carolyn Dean, Martin
Feldman, Debora Rasio and Dorothy Smith, 783,936 people in the
United States die every year from conventional medicine mistakes.
That's the equivalent of six jumbo jet crashes a day for an
entire year. But where is the media attention for this tragedy?
Where is the government support for stopping these medical mistakes
before they happen?
After 9/11, the White House gave rise to the
Department of Homeland Security, designed to prevent terrorist
attacks on U.S. soil. Since its inception, billions of dollars
have been poured into it. The 2006 budget allots $34.2 billion
to the DHS, a number that has come down slightly from the $37.7
billion budget of 2003.
According to the study led by Null, which involved
a painstaking review of thousands of medical records, the United
States spends $282 billion annually on deaths due to medical
mistakes, or iatrogenic deaths. And that's a conservative estimate;
only a fraction of medical errors are reported, according to
the study. Actual medical mistakes are likely to be 20 times
higher than the reported number because doctors fear retaliation
for those mistakes. The American public heads to the doctor's
office or the hospital time and again, oblivious of the alarming
danger they're heading into. The public knows that medical errors
occur, but they assume that errors are unusual, isolated events.
Unfortunately, by accepting conventional medicine, patients
voluntarily continue to walk into the leading cause of death
in America.
According to a 1995 U.S. iatrogenic report,
"Over a million patients are injured in U.S. hospitals
each year, and approximately 280,000 die annually as a result
of these injuries. Therefore, the iatrogenic death rate dwarfs
the annual automobile accident mortality rate of 45,000 and
accounts for more deaths than all other accidents combined."
This report was issued 10 years ago, when America had 34 million
fewer citizens and drug company scandals like the Vioxx recall
were yet to occur. Today, health care comprises 15.5 percent
of the United States' gross national product, with spending
reaching $1.4 trillion in 2004.
Since Americans spend so much money on health
care, they should be getting a high quality of care, right?
Unfortunately, that's not the case. Of the 783,936 annual deaths
due to conventional medical mistakes, about 106,000 are from
prescription drugs, according to Death by Medicine. That also
is a conservative number. Some experts estimate it should be
more like 200,000 because of underreported cases of adverse
drug reactions.
Americans today are used to fixing problems
the quick way – even when it comes to their health. Thus,
they rely heavily on prescription drugs to fix their diseases.
For every conceivable ailment – real or not – chances
are there's a pricey prescription drug to "treat"
it. Chances are even better that their drug of choice comes
chock full of side effects.
The problem is, prescription drugs don't treat
diseases; they merely cover the symptoms. U.S. physicians provide
allopathic health care – that is, they care for disease,
not health. So, the over-prescription of drugs and medications
is designed to treat disease instead of preventing it. And because
there are so many drugs available, unforeseen adverse drug reactions
are all too common, which leads to the highly conservative annual
prescription drug death rate of 106,000. Keep in mind that these
numbers came before the Vioxx scandal, and Cox-2 inhibitor drugs
could ultimately end up killing tens of thousands more.
American medical patients are getting the short
end of a rather raw deal when it comes to prescription drugs.
Medicine is a high-dollar, highly competitive business. But
it shouldn't be. Null's report cites the five most important
aspects of health that modern medicine ignores in favor of the
almighty dollar: Stress, lack of exercise, high calorie intake,
highly processed foods and environmental toxin exposure. All
these things are putting Americans in such poor health that
they run to the doctor for treatment. But instead of doctors
treating the causes of their poor health, such as putting them
on a strict diet and exercise regimen, they stuff them full
of prescription drugs to cover their symptoms. Using this inherently
faulty system of medical treatment, it's no wonder so many Americans
die from prescription drugs. They're not getting better; they're
just popping drugs to make their symptoms temporarily go away.
But not all doctors subscribe to this method
of "treatment." In fact, many doctors are just as
angry as the public should be, charging that scientific medicine
is "for sale" to the highest bidder – which,
more often than not, end up being pharmaceutical companies.
The pharmaceutical industry is a multi-trillion dollar business.
Companies spend billions on advertising and promotions for prescription
drugs. Who can remember the last time they watched television
and weren't bombarded with ads for pills treating everything
from erectile dysfunction to sleeplessness? And who has ever
been to a doctor's office or hospital and not seen every pen,
notepad and post-it bearing the logo of some prescription drug?
Medical experts claim that patients' requests
for certain drugs have no effect on the number of prescriptions
written for that drug. Pharmaceutical companies claim their
drug ads are "educational" to the public. The public
believes the FDA reviews all the ads and only allows the safest
and most effective drug ads to reach the public. It's a clever
system: Pharmaceutical companies influence the public to ask
for prescription drugs, the public asks their physicians to
prescribe them certain drugs, and doctors acquiesce to their
patients' requests. Everyone's happy, right? Not quite, since
the prescription drug death toll continues to rise.
The public seems to genuinely believe that drugs
advertised on TV are safe, in spite of the plethora of side
effects listed by the commercial's narrator, ranging from diarrhea
to death. Patients feel justified in asking their physicians
to prescribe them a particular drug they've seen on TV, since
it surely must be safe or it wouldn't have been advertised.
Remember all those TV ads heralding the wonders of Vioxx? One
might wonder how many lives could have been spared if patients
didn't see the ad on TV and request a prescription from their
doctors.
But advertising isn't the only tool the pharmaceutical
industry uses to influence medicine. Null's study cites an ABC
report that said pharmaceutical companies spend over $2 billion
sending doctors to more than 314,000 events every year. While
doctors are riding the dollar of pharmaceutical companies, enjoying
all the many perks of these "events," how likely are
they to question the validity of drug companies or their products?
Admittedly, not all doctors reside in the pockets
of the pharmaceutical companies. Some are downright angry at
the situation, and angry on behalf of an unaware public. Major
conflicts of interest exist between the American public, the
medical community and the pharmaceutical industry. And although
the public suffers the most from this conflict, it is the least
informed. The public gets the short end of the stick and they
don't even know it. That is why the pharmaceutical industry
remains a multi-trillion dollar business.
Prescription drugs are only a part of the U.S.
healthcare system's miserable failings. In fact, outpatient
deaths, bedsore deaths and malnutrition deaths each account
for higher death rates than adverse drug reactions. The problems
run deep and cannot be remedied without drastic, widespread
change in the system's money and ethics.
The first issue – money – is the
main reason the medical industry cannot seem to change. Prescribing
more drugs and recommending more surgeries means more profits.
Getting more drugs approved by the FDA, regardless of their
safety, means more money for the pharmaceutical industry. As
the healthcare system stands today, physicians and drug companies
can't seem to pass up earning loads of money, even if a few
hundred thousand people lose their lives in the process. Even
in drastic cases of deadly drugs, everyone involved has a scapegoat:
Drug companies can blame the FDA for approving their product
and the doctors for over-prescribing it, and doctors can blame
the patients for wanting it and not properly weighing the risks.
What ultimately arises is a question of ethics.
In layman's terms, ethics are the rules or moral guidelines
that govern the conduct of people or professions. Some ethics
are ingrained from childhood, but some are specifically set
forth. For example, nearly all medical schools have their new
doctors take a modern form of the Hippocratic Oath. While few
versions are identical, none include setting aside proper medical
care in favor of money-making practices.
On the research side of the issue, "Death
by Medicine" cites an ABC report that says clinical trials
funded by pharmaceutical companies show a 90 percent chance
that a drug will be perceived as effective, whereas clinical
trials not funded by drug companies show only a 50 percent chance
that a drug will be perceived as effective. "It appears
that money can’t buy you love, but it can buy you any
'scientific' result you want," writes Null and his team
of researchers.
The government spends upwards of $30 billion
a year on homeland security. Such spending seems important.
Since 2001, 2,996 people in the United States have died from
terrorism – all as a result of the 9/11 attacks. In that
same period of time, 490,000 people have died from prescription
drugs, not counting the Vioxx scandal. That means that prescription
drugs in this country are at least 16,400 percent deadlier than
terrorism. Again, those are the conservative numbers. A more
realistic number, which would include deaths from over-the-counter
drugs, makes drug consumption 32,000 percent deadlier than terrorism.
But the scope of "Death by Medicine" is even wider.
Conventional medicine, including unnecessary surgeries, bedsores
and medical errors, is 104,700 percent deadlier than terrorism.
Yet, our government's attention and money is not put into reforming
health care.
Couldn't a little chunk of the homeland security
money be better spent on overhauling the corrupt U.S. healthcare
system, the leading cause of death in America? Couldn't we forfeit
the color-coded threat system in favor of stricter guidelines
on medical research and prescription drugs? No one is attempting
to say that terrorism in the world is not a problem, especially
for a high-profile country like the United States. No one is
saying that the people who died on 9/11 didn't matter or weren't
horribly wronged by the terrorists that day. But there are more
dangerous things in the United States being falsely represented
as safe and healthy, when, in reality, they are deadly. The
corruption in the pharmaceutical industry and in America's healthcare
system poses a far greater threat to the health, safety and
welfare of Americans today than terrorism.
If the Bush Administration really wants to save
lives -- a lot of lives -- it needs look no further than the
chemical war has been declared on Americans by Big Pharma.
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A Familiar Fiend: Painkiller
Addiction
from ABC News
After years of reoccurring kidney stones
and regular surgeries, Jared Hess became addicted to painkillers.
After a monthlong stay in the hospital and
being prescribed the powerful painkiller Oxycontin, Hess continued
to use the drug against his doctors' orders, surreptitiously
obtaining pills.
Within a year of first being prescribed the
painkiller, he found himself in rehab. He was just 19 years
old.
"I was in college when it first became
a real problem. I lost interest in school, stopped going to
class, my relationships with friends and family deteriorated,"
Hess, now 24, told ABCNEWS.com.
"I was doing it every day and by myself.
My life revolved around getting the drug and using it,"
he said.
Hess now works for the nonprofit Faces and
Voices of Recovery, which advocates for substance abusers,
who like Hess, often have a hard time getting insurance companies
to pay for their treatment.
Hess embodies the two groups experts say are
most susceptible to painkiller abuse — patients prescribed
drugs who later become addicted, and young people who generally
begin using the drugs recreationally and not for medical reasons.
An estimated 5.2 million people used prescription
pain relievers in 2006 for nonmedical reasons, up from 4.7
million in 2005, according to the Department of Health and
Human Services. That's more than twice the 2.4 million people
the department estimates use cocaine nationwide.
According to statistics compiled by the Partnership
for a Drug Free America, nearly one in five teens, or a staggering
4.5 million kids age 12-19, reportedly abused prescription
medications to get high last year. Despite an overall downward
trend in overall drug use among teenagers, painkiller abuse
is up, according to a White House report released by President
Bush last month.
What makes opioids — the class of common
pain drugs like Oxycontin and Vicodin — effective pain
relievers is also what makes them so highly addictive, said
Fred Berger, medical director of the Scripps McDonald Center,
the drug rehabilitation center at Scripps Memorial Hospital
La Jolla, Calif.
"Opioids are chemicals that attach to
certain receptors in the brain. … These drugs both prevent
pain and stimulate the pleasure center in the brain. Those
drugs that are the most effective in terms of attaching to
those receptors give the most relief from pain as well as
the most pleasure."
Berger described a wide range of people who
become addicted to painkillers from "little old ladies
who fractured a vertebra, are placed on meds and then can't
come off them or don't want to," to "teenagers looking
through their parents' medicine cabinets in order to get high."
The most common medical problem abusers who
get hooked typically have is lower back pain, he said.
"These drugs serve a purpose and that's
to deal with short-term pain. There are physicians who prescribe
drugs chronically and after a while patients become habituated.
Patients need more medicine to have an effect, but the pain
doesn't get any better. They become dependent and if they
try to stop withdrawal symptoms set in and the pain becomes
more accentuated," he said.
Of those patients legitimately prescribed
painkillers, people with addictive personalities or who have
been addicted to other substances in the past are particularly
prone to developing addictions, experts told ABC News.
"Some people are more prone to addiction,"
said Joseph A. Califano Jr., chairman and president of the
National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia
University. "People who are depressed, prone to anxiety
or alcoholics are more likely to develop an addiction to prescription
drugs."
Doctors, he said, have to know their patients'
histories with substance abuse and remain involved in their
treatment while taking potentially addictive painkillers.
"Part of any physician's responsibility
is to carefully watch their patients. … It is vital
they question their patients enough to determine if they might
become addicted. If a doctor focuses on an alcoholic's pain,
or anxiety, or sleeplessness, and ignores his alcoholism,
there is an increased chance of developing a prescription
drug addiction," he said.
Unlike Hess, the majority of teenagers who
become addicted to painkillers were never prescribed medication
by a doctor. These kids instead find the drugs in their parents'
medicine cabinets, get them off friends or purchase them off
the Internet.
"There has been an explosion of prescription
drug abuse among teens," Califano said. "They see
their parents using these drugs and they think they are using
a clean pill approved by the FDA [Food and Drug Administration].
They think the drugs are safe because they're not buying it
from dirty drug dealers on dirty corners. The increase in
prescription drug abuse has wiped out any of the modest decreases
among teen users of marijuana."
Teenagers looking to get high often crush
and snort pills, quickly releasing the drug intended to be
spread throughout the body during 12 to 24 hours. Users report
a high similar to other opiates like heroin that can "really
affect their functioning," said Berger.
The visible effects on a typical painkiller
abuser, however, are subtle and family members of addicts
sometimes rarely know.
"There is very little medical damage
that goes along with opioid addiction," Berger said.
"It's destructive because it gets you by the throat in
terms of addiction potential. Your life becomes consumed with
worrying about how to get the medication. It is an ongoing
process centered on getting drugs, maintaining your supply
and worrying little about the other important aspects of your
life."
