There is so much evidence out there that clearly shows a conflict of interest between the American Cancer Society, the FDA, Big Pharma and Big Food, and I could show it all to you right here, but the truth is, I'd rather ignite a fire in you for truth enough that you start digging for it yourself.
When we have been shown our ignorance, and doubt is sparked in us for the establishments we have long trusted, it pisses us off, but most of all, it scares the hell out of us. The thought of the people in control of our country lying to us freaks us out because then we are left feeling helpless... at first, and only at first because you eventually recognize that "we the people" are really the ones in control.
Like they say... you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. Big business can tell you how to eat, how to live, or how to think. They can tempt you with appetizing pictures on their food packaging, and they can feed you lies about health, but they cannot make you do anything. That is YOUR choice and your choice alone. And it takes a lot of will power and commitment, but who said life was easy, right?
Big business is in the market to make it SEEM like they make your life easier. They portray their products as being convenient and making life "better." They know that the masses are weak minded sheeple who just follow the crowd and do what the media and pop culture tells them to do. That is why the advertising industry is booming... because it actually works.
Watch the clip below from an infomercial that I recently saw for a new weight loss solution.
Notice that they make a point of saying that you don't have to change anything about your diet. It caters to a large percentage of Americans who are obese and unhealthy that do not want to deny themselves the foods that got them there in the first place. The weight loss "solution" offers them an opportunity to shed pounds while still being able to consume whatever they want. Boy, that sounds awesome doesn't it?
Except there's one massive problem here. This infomercial tries to convince you that skinny people are healthy people and the AMOUNT that a person eats is what is unhealthy, not WHAT you eat. This is just plain false though.
While portion control is important and can help you lose weight, WHAT you are consuming is the main factor in your overall health. But this infomercial promises that you don't have to change one thing about your diet because it actually tricks the brain chemicals (just what we need, another brain altering substance) into thinking you have eaten more than you have. It assures you that you don't have to be a responsible adult and have any will power, which Americans just love, ya know. This is a prime example of how Big Pharma caters to the greed, laziness and lack of self control of consumers. They understand that most people want something for nothing, and they figure, hey, if you're not willing to control your own mind, we don't have one problem controlling it for you.
So let's say it works (I'm sure it does)... you look good now, but your body is still toxic and your chances for getting cancer haven't dropped. And on top of that, you have given more control of yourself to the pharmaceutical companies. They got you right where they want you. In my opinion, this is not a good solution at all.
There is something else I would like to point out about Sensa... they recommend you sprinkle it on everything, even fruits and raw veggies. WHY? Why would you need to sprinkle something that tricks the brain into portion control onto foods that don't make you gain weight? That's right, raw fruits and veggies do NOT contribute to significant weight gain. If you have ever done the Weight Watchers diet and counted calories, you know that raw veggies do not equal any points at all, and only 1 point per cup of fruit. So literally, you can stuff yourself full by eating a whole massive bag of baby carrots and celery and not consume one calorie. You can eat a combination of 12 apples, bananas and oranges throughout the day (that's a lot of food!) and only accumulate 12 points, which is only half of the allowed points for a whole day on the typical Weight Watchers plan.
If you stick to eating whole unprocessed foods, you can literally eat all day long and not gain weight as long as you're being physical in some way (walking, bending over, etc). In contrast to the diet you're allowed to maintain with taking Sensa, it is is actually beneficial to your overall health and reduces your risk for cancer and other diseases significantly. But as I said, the whole point of marketing is to convince the consumer that they shouldn't have to sacrifice or make hard choices because their product makes it easier to have a better life. It eliminates having to make tough decisions while still allowing the consumer to consume all the same junk they always have. After all, the same companies and associations who funded Dr. Alan Hirsch's (http://smellandtaste.org/?action=about#popup3) research doesn't want you to put them out of business.
According to studies in 2008 (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008), $57.5 billion was the total amount spent on pharmaceutical promotion in 2004, the latest year in which information was available. 2004 studies show that the U.S. pharmaceutical industry spent 24.4% of their sales on advertising and promotion, versus only 13.4% for research and development. That ought to tell us something. We have all seen the legal commercials. How many FDA approved drug recalls due to cause of extreme side effects and deaths have we seen? Several. Obviously, they were in more of a hurry to make sure people were buying them than they were to make sure it was actually safe to take.
The United States is the largest market for pharmaceuticals in the world, representing approximately 43% of global sales and global promotion expenditures. If we exclude direct-to-consumer marketing, of the $57.5 billion spent on pharmaceutical promotion in 2004, it's estimated that a whopping 80% of that is spent on physicians. That means, that with approximately 700,000 practicing physicians in the U.S. as of 2008 (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2008), Big Pharma spent nearly $61,000 per physician for marketing and promotion. As a side note, I would like to add that according to the 2003 U.S. census, the real median household income was $43,318.
How does the pharmaceutical industry depend on physicians for marketing and promotion, you ask? That's a great question. It's a question I have been contemplating myself. Supposedly physicians do not get kickbacks for prescribing drugs. I'm not saying I don't believe that, but if that is true, then what is $61,000 being spent on exactly? Posters placed in clinics? Drug samples? Some of that money goes toward that for sure, but not $61,000 worth.
While it is illegal for a pharmaceutical company to give a direct payment to a doctor for prescribing a particular medication, there are ways around those laws, and some pharmaceutical companies and physicians have found the loopholes.
One of the most popular is to hold "information seminars" regarding a particular drug. These medical seminars are invariably held in vacation and touristy locations such as Las Vegas, the Bahamas, New York etc (http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story). Basically, the doctor receives an all expense paid trip to a nice destination and is required to attend a 3 to 6 hour seminar or class. The rest of the week is free golf, mixers, and relaxation. Often times even spouses and senior nurses are invited. The doctors invited are typically the ones who have been the most successful in pushing the pharmaceutical company's drugs. To make it worse, these companies use the "educational business trip" as a tax deduction. So really, we end up with licensed "pushers" sending their dealers on vacation and we tax payers pay for it – all with the sanctioning of the government. The government a-okaying this is the only difference between these Big Pharma CEO's and the dealer on the corner. How's that for the war on drugs?
I, in no way, am saying that there aren't well intentioned doctors out there that truly care about the health of their patients. My own OBGYN is a perfect example of a doctor that truly cares for her patients. She has always told me the pros and cons of all my options and been honest about certain "solutions." She has never ever treated me like a patient, but got to know me personally and talks to me as a friend would. I know without a doubt that she is truly looking out for my overall health and well being. But she is the ONLY doctor I have ever experienced that from. As I said, I'm sure many of them start out meaning well, but trust me, when it comes right down to it, the majority of them care more about their career and monetary success than they do about your health. The American Medical Association has most physicians on a short leash, and if they do discover alternatives, it is frowned upon for them to offer these alternatives to their patients because the FDA has not approved of them. In fact, it is actually ILLEGAL in most states for a doctor to treat cancer patients with anything other than chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery. Here is an article that appeared in The Wall Street Journal in 1997 about fighting the FDA over personal choice of cancer treatment: http://forhealthfreedom.org/Publications/Monopoly/wsj-970602.html
This is absolute proof that the FDA is not in the business of looking out for the best interest of the people. Even after evidence that these cancer treatment alternatives had worked better and safer that chemotherapy and radiation, they still fought tooth and nail to incriminate this brilliant doctor for merely trying to save people's lives.
Like most regulatory agencies, the Food and Drug Administration operates with fees collected from the very companies it is mandated to scrutinize. In 1992, Congress passed the Prescription Drug User Fee Act, which exchanged industry fees paid with each new drug application for a promise that reviews would speed through the agency.
There's more. In it's request to Congress last year, the Obama administration sought after even more user fees (http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents), 1 for generic drug applicants and 3 for food processors. User fees will surpass $600 million a year in agency funding if the administration has it's way. Let's be honest, being financially dependent on the firms that the FDA is supposed to oversee, can indeed cloud the judgement of the council members testing and approving of those firms' products.
To fund the grueling tasks of the FDA, Congress appropriates a total of $2.5 billion, which comes out to about $8 per person, per year. You're likely to spend more on a club sandwich than the FDA is issued by Congress in your name to make sure the lettuce on your sandwich doesn't have e coli. That is why legislators from both political parties turned to user fees to fund the FDA, which comes with strings attached of course. If I'm the only one that thinks this whole system is messed up, I will eat my shoe.
Addressing the issue of conflict of interest with the FDA and the pharmaceutical industry, PBS's FRONTLINE published interviews of Sidney Wolfe, director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group, Steven Galson, acting director of the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, Raymond Woosley, vice president of the University of Arizona's Health Sciences Center, and John Kelly, spokesman for PhRMA, the industry's lobbying organization. These interviews are eye opening.
According to a survey by the Department of Health & Human Services Office of Inspector General, about two-thirds of Food & Drug Administration scientists are NOT fully confident in the agency's monitoring of the safety of prescription drugs now being sold. That is coming from the FDA drug scientists themselves! ...Doesn't that just make you feel all warm and cozy?
Based on the 2003 medical report Death By Medicine, by Dr. Gary Null, Dr. Carolyn Dean, Dr. Martin Feldman, Dr. Debora Rasio and Dr. Dorothy Smith, 783,936 people in America die every year from conventional medical mistakes. Of those deaths, about 106.000 are from prescription drugs alone! These are medical "mistakes?" Ok, that's like our banks wrongly making 20,000 withdrawals from bank accounts every day, every year. It would be an outrage and the people would not stand for it! So why are we tolerating this kind of behavior from our health care system?
So here's the problem in a nut shell... prescription drugs do not cure disease, they only keep symptoms in check. American physicians are trained to provide allopathic health care only. That is, they care for DISEASE, not health. So the prescribing of drugs is designed to care for disease rather than prevent it. Prevention is YOUR job. And because there is such a huge array of drugs available to treat literally anything and everything (the AMA comes up with new "illnesses" every year), adverse drug reactions and side effects are all too common. Note that these figures were before the infamous Vioxx scandal. Cox-2 inhibitor drugs could very well result in thousands of more deaths.
That doesn't mean that prescription antibiotics don't cure infections. They absolutely do, but they also eliminate the good bacteria that your system needs to be healthy, thus, causing multiple other health problems and weakening your immune system, causing you to be more susceptible to future infections. Antibiotics, in my opinion, are in a totally different category than all the other disease and disorder treating drugs. There is a huge difference between an infection and an illness. And there are indeed some prescription drugs that have for sure seemed to cure one thing, only to cause problems in another area of the body.
Dr. Gary Null's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Null) report points out the 5 most important aspects of health that conventional modern medicine overlooks: Stress, lack of exercise, high calorie intake, over-processed foods, and environmental toxins. All of these factors are putting people in such terrible health that they run to their doctor for answers, and rather than treating the CAUSES of their deteriorating health, such as putting them on a diet and exercises regimen or suggesting detoxing cleanses, they just load them up on prescription drugs to tone down their symptoms. Consequently, they are not really getting better because as long as they want their symptoms to stay away they must continue to take the medicine.
It is no wonder so many Americans die from prescription drugs. And that's not even the biggest killer! Believe it or not, the Center for Disease Control has heart disease, which is always a result of clogged arteries (because of WHAT people eat), at the top of the list as the #1 cause of death in the U.S., followed by cancer at a close 2nd, then stroke. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats
Currently the CDC stats show that 1 of 2 men and 1 of 3 women will develop cancer in their lifetime. That doesn't look good, but you're future isn't decided. Your choices will determine your outcome. If you want to be genuinely healthy, use the health care system and pharmaceuticals as an absolute last resort. I guarantee you will find that if you try every other natural option (healthy diet being the first), you will rarely, if ever, have to resort to modern medical methods. Physical accidents and emergencies are, of course, the exception.
And by no means am I telling you that if you are currently on prescription drugs, to quit taking them cold turkey. I am no doctor, so your best bet would be to find a holistic physician that can accurately diagnose your problems and help you wean yourself off your medications in a safe way.
Society needs to get back to the basics. Our bodies are meant to consume certain things and be self sustainable in our health. You get a cut, your body is meant to heal it back together. You get a bug your body is meant to go through a natural progression and then dump it. You get an infection, there are things in nature to help your body fight it off naturally. Iodine, which derives from kelp, and Oleuropein, which derives from the olive leaf are just a couple of perfect examples of this.
Do yourself a favor, and treat your body right. It will thank you and not fail you. And remember, the holistic approach works best with the right foundation. Nutrition is solid ground.
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