Endorse, Of Course

November 17th, 2005

What do the American Academy of Environmental Medicine, the National Association of Nutrition Professionals, BioRenew and Freedom Club USA have in common?

Each organization has taken a bold step that you can take, too. Each one of them has endorsed
-the Revised Vitamin and Mineral Guideline which when ratified, will overturn the deadly impact of the Codex Vitamin and Mineral Guideline.

These endorsements are extremely important and I urge you to read the Citizen Petition, the Revised Vitamin and Mineral Guideline (we’ve provided a marked up copy so you can easily see the difference between the Codex guideline, which mandates under-nutrition, and our Revised Vitamin and Mineral Guideline“>Revised Vitamin and Mineral Guideline, which pushes for optimal nutrition).

Here’s the strategy: If countries are not Codex compliant (that is, their domestic laws do not match Codex regulations), they will loose in the World Trade Organization Dispute Resolution process if another country accuses them of creating a barrier to trade by violating a Codex guideline, standard or regulation. If they loose, the penalties are enormous: trade sanctions can run several hundred million dollars per year or more until the country caves in. Not only that, the sanctions are imposed on any economic sector it pleases by the prevailing country. If the two countries are competitors in, say, electronics, although the dispute was about, for example, turkey breasts, the sanctions could be applied to that contested electronics industry to do the most economic harm to the loosing country.

Is it any wonder, then, that the nations of the world are racing to adopt the Codex standards as fast as possible, despite the terrible impact it will have on health and longevity?

Our Codex working group, was greatly assisted by two brilliant and dedicated lawyers, Jim Turner and Jim Fucetola examined just what makes a country compliant and came up with a unique and powerful approach: we have created the first of a series of Revised Codex documents which, when adopted by a country, keeps the country in Codex compliance but stands the destructive impact of the Codex version on its head. In other words, the Revised Vitamin and Mineral Guideline extends the principles of DSHEA world-wide and makes them the global strategy, rather than a localized American anomaly. The impact on world hunger and disease will be staggeringly positive.

I urge you to read and compare the Codex Vitamin and Mineral Guideline, which is based on the premise that nutrients are toxins, and our Revised Vitamin and Mineral Guideline, which states that biochemical individuality is crucial for optimal nutrition and that individual requirements vary widely and must be permitted. Countries which are not tied to the Pharmaceutical Death Apparatus (the real PH D A) are searching for a way to protect their people and avoid the enormous sums of penalty money the WTO keeps nations in line with. Adoption of the Revised VMG allows them to do just that.

Other Revised Codex standards, etc. will follow.

Public support gives this strategy “legs” as they say in Congress, in two ways

1. Every person who signs the join-in letter counts as 13,000 constituents in the mind of Congress. So although you may believe that your voice has no weight or meaning, it is not true. Hundreds of thousands of letters will send a clear message to Congress: these people are serious and their health freedom is a serious concern to them. I’d best listen up! Remember, this is not a simple grocery store petition. This is a serious legal challenge to the United States Government position and policy on Codex.

2. Endorsements by individuals though joining the legal challenge known as the Citizen Petition or by organizations which pass resolutions of support for the Revised Vitamin and Mineral Guideline tells Congress here at home and countries friendly to health freedom that there is a movement which has power and strategic thinking behind it with which they can safely align themselves.

Can Codex counter attack? Of course they can. Will they? Probably. But with a growing constituency of support both at home and abroad, the terrible damage done by mandating chronic under-nturition world-wide is averted. The Revised Vitamin and Mineral Guideline does that.

General Stubblebine and I are leaving later today to attend the Codex Committee on Nutrition and Foods for Special Dietary Uses in Bonn, Germany.
You can bet that we will be following up with the people we met in Rome who, when asked if they understood what using Risk Assessment would mean to their pregnant women, their elderly, their cancer rates, etc., did not. We explained that Risk Assessment is a discipline of toxicology designed to determine doses so low that they have no discernable impact on humans. We further pointed out that Codex has declared nutrients to be toxins and treats them as such. They quickly saw, when it was presented that way, that the Vitamin and Mineral Guideline has nothing to do with promoting health but everything to do with promoting widespread illness with its resultant dependence on expensive, dangerous and ineffective drugs to treat the chronic degenerative diseases of under-nutrition. And then, to a man or woman, they asked for help.

The Revised Vitamin and Mineral Guideline is the first part of that help. We need public support to generate Congressional support. We need Congressional Support to generate international support.

So please, get active, get your groups active (churches, coops, ladies clubs, student clubs, professional clubs, all are welcome!)

Yours in health and freedom,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation

Posted in Activism, Citizen's Petition, International Cooperation, Promising Developments | 1 Comment »

Eat Safe, Eat Smart! Say NO to GMOs

October 31st, 2005

Up for some good news? The Eat Safe, Eat Smart Buy-Cott (what to buy, not what not to buy!) is nearly ready. Your source of GMO-free, organic products with just a click is nearly hear. We have a great selection of products from chocolate to deodorant for you to chose from. This site is meant to please you so we are taking the unusual step of asking you to help us put the finishing touches on it.

Just go to www.EatSafeEatSmart.com and take a look at the site. Then tell me at info@healthfreedomusa.org what you like and what you don’t like about it. Let me know if there is something we forgot or a whole product line you love and feel should be there. Tell us if the format works for you and tell us what doesn’t work for you.

We’ll change it and make it right so you can have a site which offers you the best in Safe, Smart food and products!

Thanks in advance for your input!

Oh, yes. One other thing: Please go to our website and sign the Citizens Petition. Even if you signed before, since it has been revised and now contains the Revised Vitamin and Mineral Guideline, we invite you to sign again and get everyone you know on board. Thanks.

Yours in health and freedom,

Rima E. Laibow, MD

Posted in Activism, Buy-Cott, GMOs | 4 Comments »

Five Days Toward Clean!

October 4th, 2005

Five days is not much time to see results when you change your diet. So the remarkable study by Chensheng Lu of Emory University in Atlanta is all the more astounding. Lu and his colleagues recruited 23 families in suburban Seattle which had children between 3 and 11 years old and showed that in just 5 days on organic foods, the levels of deadly pesticides in the children dropped so low they were undetectable! Prior to the study, all of the children ate conventionally grown and produced food (that includes produce with 5 number codes on the little tags that begin with either a “4” [grown with pesticides] or “8” [genetically modified]).

The study consisted of 5 days during which the 23 test families and their children, between 3 and 11 years old, substituted organic fruits, vegetables, fruit juices, cereals and pastas for conventional ones. The families made the same meals that they would have with conventional foods and followed the same dietary habits, just substituting the organic foods supplied by Lu and his team.

The results showed that in those 5 short days, the levels of two dangerous organophosphate pesticides became undetectable in the children’s urine. Parents collected two daily urine samples from their children to allow researchers to see what the impact of the change in diet was on the pesticide levels. Both before and after the test period, when they were eating conventional food, the pesticides were detectalbe in the children’s urine.

The researchers were interested in the levels of two dangerous organophosphate pesticides routinely used in food, called “malithion” and “chlorpyrophos” which are, unfortunately, legal in this country for use on conventional food crops. Organophosphates have numerous well established, serious negative impacts on health including profound and often irreversible neurological, psychological, immunological and skin problems. Malathion, for example, is neurotoxic: “The main target of malathion toxicity in children is the nervous system, the same as in adults.

So when children were given a rest from pesticides for just 5 days, their bodies were able to detoxify and get rid of those dangerous chemicals. Perhaps it would take adults longer, since these toxins build up in fats, but doesn’t it seem reasonable to cut down the toxic burden of your body when you know that the toxins are poisonous, nerve poisons, in fact?

Is organic food worth the approximately 25% price premium? You tell me: what is your Central Nervous System worth? How about your child’s (or your mother’s or your brother’s) brain and nerves? And given that the cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and other epidemics which are making us so sick and killing us so rapidly are primarily the result of toxins in the food supply and environment, doesn’t it seem reasonable to eat as much clean, safe, smart food as possible? Think of what you will save on medication and hospital co-pays later on!

Of course, that means that the organic food supply must be worth spending that extra money on. We pushed back the degraded organic standards shamefully being pushed by the major corporate interests in the Organic Trade Association last week. The OTA wanted a rider attached to the Agricultural Spending Bill which would have allowed many, many contaminants in the organic food supply with no notification to consumers about what they were buying or consuming. Our letters and those of other activists succeeded, with the help of Sen. Patrick Leahey of Vermont, in putting the matter before the Secretary of Agriculture “for further study”. Let’s help with that study: write a quick letter to your Congressional delegation and let them know how important maintaining organic standards is to you.

And take a suggestion from a doctor who knows what the health impact of organophosphate pesticides is: spend the extra money on organic food. It’s your life, your body, your health and your choice! Do it before there’s a diagnosis of cancer, heart disease, dementia, seizures, etc. in your family. Prevention really is the best medicine. And if there is already a health problem for you or a loved one, going organic will make things better by lowering the toxic burden the body has to struggle with.

Watch for our new website, www.EatSmartEatSafe.info to help you make those healthy choices!

Yours in health and freedom,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director

Posted in Activism, Buy-Cott, Medical Hazards, Miscellaneous | No Comments »

Pink Ribbon Deceit

October 2nd, 2005

It’s Pink Ribbon time when we are all urged do our best to walk and talk for a “Cure”. That’s right; it’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month again. Never mind that the last thing the “cancer cure industry” wants is a cure for cancer. After all, cancer is the single most economically productive disease in the history of mankind. Never mind that valid, successful and inexpensive cures for cancer are ruthlessly suppressed by the cancer industry, including the shameful performance of my profession, organized medicine. Pink Ribbon Season means well crafted messages to maneuver women all over America to have mammograms and undergo dangerous and often unnecessary treatment for it in the common event that the diagnosis of breast cancer is wrong.

Breast Cancer is a largely preventable disease on an epidemic rise and is now the leading killer of woman between 45 and 55, according to Preventing Breast Cancer. The Story of a Major, Proven, Preventable Cause of This Disease. by Dr. John Gofinan. There is no doubt that finding and treating a malignant breast tumor early increases survival by at least 17 % according to the [highly suspect, Big Pharma dominated] American Cancer Society.

Breast Cancer Awareness Month is, simply put, a corporate strategy , sponsored by, among others, Astra Zeneca, which makes Tamoxifen. Every word, walk and wink associated with the ubiquitous pink ribbon must pass their approval process. Perhaps you have noticed that, under their guidance, “prevention” has become “early detection” and early detection means, pure and simple, mammograms.

But do mammograms detect cancer? Well, no, not particularly well. In fact, 70 to 80 percent of all positive mammograms do not, upon pathology examination, show any presence of cancer.. How’s that? After an invasive technique like mastectomy (removal of a breast), lumpectomy (removal of a lump) or biopsy (sample material removed from the area for study), the false positive rate is between 70 and 80%? Right. But the cost is anywhere between $250-$500 per woman per year. You do the math. Industry can well afford to support those “Walk for the Cure” Events. Except they should be renamed “Walk for the Profit”.

Well, when a mammogram says there is no cancer, that’s correct, isn’t it? Actually mammograms are shockingly bad at finding cancers that really are there. Dr. Samuel Epstein in his book, The Politics of Cancer, notes that the false negative rate is, according to the National Cancer Institute, about 40 percent among women ages 40-49. The National Institutes of Health says that mammograms also miss 20 percent of malignant tumors in women.

But at least they can’t do any harm, right? Wrong. Mammograms currently deliver about 1 rad per breast per screening for a glandular dose of 0.1 rad per breast or a total glandular dose of 0.2 rad.. The National Cancer Institute estimates that each rad in a woman between the ages of 35 and 50 increases the risk of breast cancer by 1% so a bilateral mammogram each year increases a woman’s rate of breast cancer by 20% over each decade of screening! This is not a negligible risk.

But wait! There’s more.

Since mammography was introduced, Ductal Carcinoma In Situ (DCIS), the most common form of breast cancer has increased by 328% and 200% of this increase may be largely caused by mammography! Radiation, like that delivered by mammography equipment, is associated with sharp increases in breast cancer. In fact, Dr. John W. Gofman, an expert on the health impact of ionizing radiation, believes that 75% of breast cancer can be prevented by avoiding ionizing radiation altogether! Now, that’s good for us, but it’s not good for the people who make mammography equipment. Prevention is, unfortunately, very bad business if you make detection equipment or treatment options for a preventable condition like breast cancer. And there are a host of studies showing that mammography is, at best, a major question and, at worst, a serious problem.

Mammography also may spread existing cancer because, during the procedure, massive, and painful, pressure is applied to the breast. This may cause existing cancer cells to spread before immune processes can kill them (which a healthy immune system does routinely).

And, if you are unlucky enough to carry predisposing genes (Oncolgene A-T, BRCA1 and BRCA2), you are particularly susceptible to even small amounts of radiation and will perhaps be among the estimated 10,000 women who will succumb this year to breast cancer directly caused by mammography.

These are not unknown, controversial facts touted by obscure researcher. Dr. Gofman analyses NCI data showing that among women under 35, mammography can induce 75 cases of breast cancer for every 15 it identifies. Canadian National Breast Cancer Study Canadian study tracking outcome showed that woman40-50 who had mammograms had a 52 percent increase in breast cancer mortality (that is, death) compared to similar woman who did not and that they were more likely to die of breast cancer if they were screened regularly than if they were not!

So what do I, as a woman, as a physician and as a health advocate suggest? First of all, I recommend finding, and using regularly, another screening technology called “thermography” which detects cancer sooner, far more accurately and with no harm at all to the body since it relies on heat emitted by your body and takes a sensitive heat picture of your body. Because malignancies grow extra blood vessels, they emit more heat so they are detectible early and without danger. So, from where I sit,

1. Women under 35 are not well served by mammograms as a screening tool and should not allow mammograms to be performed

2. Although the American Cancer Society advocates mammogram screening for woman 40-49 every two years, I suggest thermography, not mammography, for all women of all ages along with any one of several high sensitivity biochemical tests for cancer. Please note that many experts, especially those whose incomes depend, directly or indirectly, on mammography and treatment for cancers –even false positive cancers — do not agree with my conclusions. Although many experts feel that the risk of breast cancer for women under 35 is not high enough to warrant the risk of radiation exposure, many feel that for women over 55 the risk is high enough to warrant the significant risk of mammograms.

In 1997, NIH appointed a consensus panel to evaluate the risk of mammography. They found no evidence that mammograms for this age group save lives and may do more harm than good. Rather than coming to a conclusion, the panel advised women to weigh the risks with their doctors and decide for themselves.

I do not have mammograms. I also do not have the approval of the Pink Ribbon people to tell you this. (Tamoxifen is another, sad, deadly story. We’ll talk about it another time.) In the mean time, walk for a cure because exercise reduces the risk of breast cancer. Eat for a cure because sensible, natural diets reduce the risk of breast cancer. Laugh for a cure because stress and loneliness reduce immune competence. Pray for a cure because people with sincere religious convictions live longer and healthier than those without them.

Yours in radiation-free health and freedom,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director

Posted in Buy-Cott, Events, Medical Hazards, Miscellaneous | 5 Comments »

Food Fight! Codex vs. Organic Food

September 25th, 2005

If anyone had a shred of doubt that Codex is creeping toward us on all of its loathsome legs as quickly as possible, rather like a venomous centipede, that doubt should vanish by the time you finish this blog. Each of the segments of the Codex creature may appear to be unaware of what the others are doing, but the net result is forward movement coordinated by some ganglion of control somewhere. Where? I don’t know, but I do know that the effect is one I don’t like one bit.

This week and next, the Joint House/Senate Appropriations Committee will be finalizing the 2007 Agriculture Spending Bill. Using the thinly veiled excuse of meeting the requirements of a Federal Judge who ruled in favor of an Organic Blueberry farmer in Maine in Harvey v. Veneman that the USDA organic standards violated the 1990 Organic Foods Production Act and that synthetic materials could not be added to food, the USDA is once again trying to destroy organic food purity by submitting a Draft Amendment to the Joint Committee which would BRING US ORGANIC FARMING STANDARDS INTO COMPLIANCE WITH CODEX ONES despite the fact that these standards are highly damaging to the American Organic standards. They will allow the following without labeling or identification:
– Pesticides to be used in the growing of organic food
– Synthetic materials to be included in organic foods
– Cattle can be treated with antibiotics and then administratively converted back to “organic
– Large percentage of non-organic feed for supposedly organic animals

This is the same imitative that the same USDA and the same industries attempted to bring us in 1997-78 when they wanted to use toxic sludge containing cadmium and other heavy metals as “fertilizer” for organics along with the ever-popular pesticides, herbicides (many of which contain mercury, by the way) and veterinary drugs for animals.

This is the same initiative that is leading to the attempt to undermine, gut or overturn DSHEA (by the way, if you haven’t sent your letters to Congress to protect DSHEA, please do so now). The target here, however, is yet another set of protective regulations embodied in the Organic Foods Production Act which give us the option of purchasing a reliably healthy, non-polluted, non-GMO, non-toxic food supply.

If you value your right to make meaningful choices about your health AND if you value your health AND if you see the relationship between your food and your health, NOW IS THE HOUR! Write to Congress now to impress upon them how important retaining meaningful organic food standards are to you!
You know, if I were reading this and other blogs and emails the Natural Solutions Foundation sends out I might get weary: there are so many issues, so many times I get asked to write to Congress, so many different problems. And that is exactly the point. If the issues can be fragmented and we can be driven into apathy, Codex and its organizational brethren, global control and loss of personal freedoms, win. The Bigs, who have enough lawyers and publicists and campaign managers, win. Big Pharma, Big Agribiz, Big Biotechna, Big Chema and Big Medica get to set the rules, set the standards and reap the benefits. Your illness and needless suffering and mine are not even collateral damage because they profit two Bigs on that list: Big Pharma and Big Medica.
So yes, there are a lot of letters to write and there will be more. And yes, there will be a lot of issues coming at you. And yes, this war is being fought on many fronts. Remember Jefferson, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty”. Which side would each and every one of the Founding Fathers and Mothers (yes, there were women partitions, too) have been on? Corporate greed and the apathy that allows it to flourish or the battle for our bodies and our rights under our own control?

So please contact Congress NOW! We have about 1 week on this one, perhaps less. “Urgent” does not even begin to describe this one!
Oh, two more things: don’t forget about starting a Health Freedom Meetup (go to http:.//healthfreedom.meetup.com to get started). You pick the time, date and location. Let people in your area know about it by email, word of mouth and some posters in health food stores, etc. Schedule it with me and I will do a phone visit via speaker phone and provide materials to make organizing easier. Grass roots give us the strength we need. Spreading the word is absolutely crucial. It’s a numbers game: the number of their dollars versus the numbers of our voices! If we have enough numbers, we win. If not, we loose. It’s that simple.

The other item is donation to our $10,000 fund. We are less than $800 away from our fund raising goal. If you have not yet done so, please donate generously. Think about what having dedicated health freedom warriors on your side is worth to you and share that amount with us. Consider making a monthly pledge so that we can spend our time on the battle, not on finding the resources to stay in the battle.

Thanks for you continuing active involvement. Your emails and calls are inspiring and heart warming. I learn from them every day and I appreciate the new ways of fighting this war coming from you.

Yours in health and organic freedom,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director

Posted in Activism, CODEX Consequences, Legislation to Oppose, Medical Hazards, The Law & CODEX | 7 Comments »

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