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The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the largest charitable foundation in the world, with a trust endowment valued at $48 billion1 and yearly grant payments in excess of $5 billion annually.2 In addition to being one of the largest contributors to the World Health Organization (WHO), with heavy involvement in global public health, the Gates Foundation is deeply involved in agricultural development.
Their website lists four strategic goals as being key to their goal to drive agricultural transformation:3
It's a noble cause but one that's being carried out using an agenda that supports agrochemicals, patented seeds and corporate control — interests that undermine regenerative, sustainable, small-scale farming.
In a report by Global Justice Now, the excessive global influence held by the Gates Foundation is illustrated, starting with the $2 billion the foundation has spent on agriculture, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
"It is the world's fifth largest donor to agriculture, spending $389 million in 2013; only Germany, Japan, Norway and the U.S. have larger bilateral aid programs to agriculture," the report noted, and, "With funding comes in influence."4
Indeed, in February 2012, when the Gates Foundation announced a $200 million donation to the International Fund for Agricultural Development, Gates talked of the importance of brining "agricultural science and technology to poor farmers."5 These are buzzwords that imply genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and biotechnology, which are heavily favored by the Gates Foundation.
The No. 1 strategy invested in to drive agricultural change is, in fact, "new products, tools, technologies, systems, and approaches to advance inclusive agricultural transformation. These products may include new livestock vaccines, or new traits that increase a crop's drought tolerance," i.e., GMOs, the Gates Foundation website states.6 As further noted by Global Justice Now:7
"The BMGF [The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation] is promoting a number of specific priorities through its agriculture grants, several of which are undermining the interests of small farmers while claiming to support them.
These include promoting a model of industrial agriculture, the increasing use of chemical fertilisers and expensive, patented seeds, the privatisation of extension services and a very large focus on genetically modified seeds."
The Gates Foundation funds the Cornell Alliance for Science, which is essentially a front group for the agrichemical industry, which makes sense, since Gates has also bought millions of dollars' worth of shares in Monsanto stock, according to AlterNet (and also invested in soy- and GE-yeast-based "burgers").8
He's also furthering the Green Revolution, the Rockefeller Foundation-funded conversion of natural farming to a system dependent on chemicals, fossil fuels and industry, and in so doing, "Bill Gates is continuing the work of Monsanto," Vandana Shiva, environmental activist and anti-globalization author, stated in an interview with France 24.
The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), which has received about $420 million from the Gates Foundation, is essentially a Gates Foundation subsidiary, and while some of its projects appear to be beneficial, most of its goals are centered on promoting biotechnology and chemical fertilizers.
"The main problem with AGRA," Global Justice Now explains, "is that it is laying the groundwork for the deeper penetration of African agriculture by agribusiness corporations," and:9
"The BMGF, through AGRA, is one of the world's largest promoters of chemical fertiliser. Some grants given by the BMGF to AGRA have been specifically intended to 'help AGRA build the fertiliser supply chain' in Africa. One of the largest of AGRA's own grants, worth $25 million, was to help establish the African Fertiliser Agribusiness Partnership (AFAP) in 2012 whose very goal is to 'at least double total fertiliser use' in Africa."
Another red flag into the Gates' Foundations antiregenerative intentions is its heavy funding of research into genetic engineering (GE). Global Justice Now states the Gates Foundation is "probably the world's leading funder of GM [genetic modification] research in the global south," noting:10
"In an interview with the Guardian's John Vidal in 2012, the BMGF's head of agriculture, Sam Dryden, said that "only" 5 per cent of Gates' agricultural money is directed at transgenic research and development. But as Vidal noted, that may be around $100 million since 2007 — more than any other government or world body is known to have handed out."
In addition to funding GE research, the Gates Foundation has funded public relations activities that support the widespread adoption of GMOs, including influencing national regulations that favor GE technologies. Meanwhile, the Gates Foundation is targeting new markets in Africa to implement the adoption of these new GE products.
"The major beneficiaries of the BMGF's push for GM are of course the giant seed manufacturers, such as Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer and Dupont, and the agro-chemical companies producing fertiliser and pesticides, some of which are being supported in other BMGF-funded projects and investments by the BMFG Trust.
The Gates Foundation is in effect preparing the ground for them to access new profitable markets in hitherto closed-off developing countries, especially in Africa."11
In Africa, more than 80% of the seed supply comes from small farmers recycling, saving and exchanging seeds each year, but AGRA is pushing patented seeds that would allow a few large corporations to control the seed supply, production and distribution, forcing small farmers to be dependent on them for their very livelihoods to continue.12
Keep in mind, too, that a whopping 35% of cereal and soy, much of it GE, harvested globally is fed to animals being raised on CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations).13 Where you could once find locally grown food nearby, we're now very much dependent on the industrial agriculture complex for our very sustenance.
By taking the power away from small farmers and putting it into the hands of multinational corporations like Monsanto, we have a worrying consolidation and industrialization of agriculture and the food supply. To put the Gates Foundation in perspective, Global Research noted:14
"As for food security, the foundation would do better by supporting agroecological (agrochemical-free) approaches to agriculture, which various high-level UN reports have advocated for ensuring equitable global food security.
But this would leave smallholder agriculture both intact and independent from Western agro-capital, something which runs counter to the underlying aims of the corporations that the foundation supports — dispossession and market dependency."
The Gates Foundation's continued support of chemical-intensive industrial agriculture is detrimental for human health. In March 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which is the research arm of the World Health Organization (WHO), determined glyphosate to be a "probable carcinogen" (Class 2A).
Since then, Monsanto (which was acquired by Bayer in June 2018), has been inundated by lawsuits from people claiming their cancer was caused by Roundup, which contains glyphosate as its active ingredient.
In the U.S., approximately 42,700 U.S. lawsuits from individuals alleging that glyphosate caused them to develop cancer have already been filed.15 Bayer is in settlement talks to resolve the litigation but continues to deny that the chemical causes cancer.
Ken Feinber, a court-appointed mediator, stated in January 2020 that Roundup cancer claimants could surpass 75,000.16 Research published in Frontiers in Genetics found that exposure in low concentrations (in parts per trillion) may induce cancer in cells when combined with microRNA-182-5p (miR182-5p).17
Likewise, in a comprehensive analysis of glyphosate exposure over a lifetime in animals, its carcinogenicity was further revealed, with "37 significant tumor findings." Researchers stated:18
"The strongest evidence shows that glyphosate causes hemangiosarcomas, kidney tumors and malignant lymphomas in male CD-1 mice, hemangiomas and malignant lymphomas in female CD-1 mice, hemangiomas in female Swiss albino mice, kidney adenomas, liver adenomas, skin keratoacanthomas and skin basal cell tumors in male Sprague-Dawley rats, adrenal cortical carcinomas in female Sprague-Dawley rats and hepatocellular adenomas and skin keratocanthomas in male Wistar rats."
In the first three Roundup-cancer cases to go to trial, Bayer has been ordered to pay billions of dollars to the plaintiffs, although the awards were later slashed to the tens of millions range. Now, in February 2020, Bayer Chairmen Werner Wenning, who was instrumental in the Monsanto acquisition, announced he was stepping down, effective April 2020.19
It's the latest upheaval for the company which, in 2019, saw 55.5% of its shareholders vote against ratifying the management's actions.20 In response to the minority percentage of votes in favor of ratifying the actions of Bayer's board of management, the company's supervisory board said it would stand behind them, including in their efforts to appeal the trials concerning glyphosate.
"While we take the outcome of the vote at the annual stockholders' meeting very seriously, Bayer's supervisory board unanimously stands behind the board of management," Wenning said in a news release in April 2019.21
"The outcome of the vote … does nonetheless show that the annual stockholders' meeting wanted to send a clear signal to the board of management that Bayer AG should bring out the company's strengths to a greater extent in the future."22
While some questioned the timing of Wenning stepping down amid settlement talks for the glyphosate lawsuits, Wenning said in a statement, "We have made and continue to make progress in handling the legal issues in the U.S. That's why now is a good time to hand over to my successor."23
Dicamba, a highly volatile herbicide known for drifting and damaging off-target crops, is another example of industrial agriculture gone wrong. Millions of acres across the U.S. have been damaged by dicamba drift,24 and there's also disturbing information that the chemical is harming trees. Dicamba use has also turned farmers against one another, as those experiencing damaged crops blame neighboring farms for spraying dicamba.
Lawsuits are now springing up, including the case of a Missouri peach farm, which was awarded $265 million in compensatory and punitive damages due to dicamba damage. More than 2,000 U.S. farmers have since stepped up with additional dicamba damage to their crops and are likely to be included in upcoming dicamba-damage lawsuits against dicamba makers Bayer and BASF.25
What many people don't realize is that pesticides are not the answer to productive agriculture and feeding the world. In fact, research shows that most farmers could cut pesticide usage by 40% without harming their production. Eighty-six percent of these farms would even improve their production as a result,26 so why isn't this something the Gates Foundation is standing behind?
To opt-out of the madness, seek out non-GMO, organic foods as much as possible, and support farmers who are using regenerative and biodynamic farming principles instead of chemical pesticides.
The fact remains that one of the best ways to fight back against the multinational corporations and industry-controlled front groups angling to control agriculture and the food supply is to make an effort to support the farmers who are farming the right way, using regenerative farming techniques — without the help of GMOs, Roundup, dicamba and other toxic agricultural chemicals.
The December 27, 2019, Science News DK article,1 “Vaccines — An Unresolved Story in Many Ways,” touches on one of the crucial talking points of vaccine safety and informed consent advocates, which is the intentional cover-up of real-world vaccine injuries and deaths.
While the vaccine industry and most public health organizations insist vaccines are universally safe and effective and that the science on this “is settled,” much of the actual data tells a very different story.
The problem is, most people never see that data, much less take the time to interpret it and, thus, the lie, through simple repetition, becomes “established fact.” As noted in the Science News DK article:
“For 40 years, Danish researchers … have shown that vaccines against everything from polio and smallpox to malaria and tuberculosis have both beneficial and harmful health effects that are unrelated to the diseases the vaccines protect against.
Now these researchers have put the research into a historical perspective that they hope can help make the world’s health authorities realize that the relationship between vaccines and disease is not always simple.
In fact, their research shows that some vaccines protect against completely different diseases than those for which they are designed. Unfortunately, other vaccines are associated with excess mortality from unrelated diseases …
‘What do researchers do when they discover that vaccination opponents are justified in being concerned? No vaccines have been studied for their non-specific effects on overall health, and before we have examined these, we cannot actually determine that the vaccines are safe.
In addition, our research shows that some vaccines actually increase overall mortality, especially among girls, and this is very worrying,’ explains Christine Stabell Benn, Clinical Professor, University of Southern Denmark, Odense.”
So, where are the headlines declaring the scientific conclusion that vaccination opponents are justified in their concern? As expected, the information — published in Clinical Microbiology and Infections2 — has not been well received by health authorities, including the World Health Organization. It’s been largely ignored wholesale.
This, despite the researchers’ intentional attempt to highlight the beneficial effects of vaccines in their paper. “Communicating this message is a little easier,” admits Stabell Benn, one of the authors of the paper.
The fact, though, is that while there appear to be benefits, there also appear to be significant drawbacks and risks, and this too needs to be fully acknowledged, especially in light of the current march toward medical fascism where people who point out potential problems are branded as dangerous and threatened with everything from loss of employment to imprisonment.
As reported in “Vaccines — An Unresolved Story in Many Ways,”3 a new high titer measles vaccine rolled out in Africa in 1989 was found to double mortality from other diseases in girls. At first, the WHO refused to believe the results. The WHO didn’t withdraw the vaccine until 1992, after studies in Haiti, Sudan and other countries confirmed that female young children were dying in higher numbers.
During the 1990s, Stabell Benn and her colleague Peter Aaby continued studying the effect of many other vaccines on overall mortality, coming to the shocking conclusion that six of the 10 vaccines investigated actually INCREASED mortality by rendering children more susceptible to other lethal diseases.
The diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (whooping cough) vaccine (DTP) had the same disastrous effect as the measles vaccine — it doubled mortality among children under the age of 5, and girls were again more likely to die.
Overall, live attenuated vaccines — the older measles vaccine, the bacillus Calmette-Gueri against tuberculosis, oral polio vaccine and the smallpox vaccine — all seemed to offer nonspecific protection against deadly diseases, contributing to lowering overall mortality.
Inactivated (non-live) vaccines, on the other hand — the DTP, pentavalent vaccine, inactivated polio vaccine, H1N1 influenza vaccine and the hepatitis B vaccine — increased overall mortality, especially among girls, even when they offered a high degree of protection against the target disease.
More recently, GlaxoSmithKline’s antimalarial vaccine (RTS, S/AS01 or RTS,S, sold under the brand name Mosquirix), which appears to offer between 18% to 36.3% protection against malaria depending on the age group,4 was also found to increase overall mortality.
As reported by “Vaccines — An Unresolved Story in Many Ways,” “Overall mortality was 24% higher among people who had been vaccinated against malaria compared with unvaccinated individuals.” Stabell Benn told Science News DK:5
“A vaccine that protects against malaria that does not reduce mortality makes no sense. We therefore asked GlaxoSmithKline for access to the original data and found that the vaccine reduced mortality among boys by a modest 15% while doubling the overall mortality rate for girls. This was the sixth non-live vaccine that we associated with mortality among girls — exactly as we had seen for other non-live vaccines.”
Stabell Benn also admits she “would not voluntarily give my newborn the hepatitis B vaccine let alone want to be forced to do it,” considering its hazards. She told Science News DK:6
“Vaccination this early only makes sense if the mother is chronically infected with hepatitis B, for which there is a test, and only a few percent have it. So the vast majority of infants who get the vaccine at birth do not need it, and no one has tested what the vaccine means for overall morbidity and mortality.
The only study to investigate this is our study, showing the hepatitis B is associated with higher female than male mortality, which is a serious danger signal given our results for other non-live vaccines.”
Despite Stabell Benn and Aabel’s disturbing findings, showing GlaxoSmithKline’s new antimalarial vaccine doubles mortality among girls, the WHO went ahead and introduced the vaccine in Malawi, Ghana and Kenya anyway.
January 24, 2020, Stabell Benn, Aaby and colleagues published a pointed analysis7 in The BMJ, noting that Phase 3 trials of the vaccine have already identified three safety concerns:
The WHO is now planning to decide whether to extend the vaccine to other African countries, even though it’s only been in use for 24 months. This is problematic, as the initial data tend to provide a skewed view of the vaccine’s safety and effectiveness.
According to Stabell Benn and Aaby, the vaccine appeared to be “more efficacious in the first year to follow-up in the Phase 3 trials.” The rise in cerebral malaria and female mortality doesn’t become apparent until after the booster dose, which is given 20 months after the first dose.
“We recommend that the pilot studies use ‘overall mortality’ to assess vaccine performance and that study populations are followed for the full four to five years of the study before a decision on rollout is made,” the authors state.9
A February 26, 2020, BMJ special report10 by associate editor Peter Doshi brings up yet another malaria vaccine-related concern — that of informed consent or, rather, the lack of it. Doshi reports that “WHO’s malaria vaccine study represents a serious breach of international ethical standards,” as there’s an “apparent lack of informed consent” in the study. He writes:11
“Charles Weijer, a bioethicist at Western University in Canada, told The BMJ that the failure to obtain informed consent from parents whose children are taking part in the study violates the Ottawa Statement, a consensus statement on the ethics of cluster randomized trials … and the Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences’ International Ethical Guidelines …
WHO contends that the study is a ‘pilot introduction’ and not a ‘research activity.’ It says that those children living in areas randomized to receive the new vaccine will do so as part of each country’s routine vaccination schedule and that consent is ‘implied’ …
Weijer says that so called implied consent is 'no substitute for informed consent. Indeed, implied consent is no consent at all. We have no assurance that parents in fact received information about the study let alone that they understood it’ …
Christine Stabell Benn … professor in global health and a vaccine expert who recently published concerns about WHO’s study in The BMJ, added her concerns: ‘I think parents should be made aware of this doubled female mortality.
Imagine that this mortality was a true finding (and remember that it comes on top of five other non-live vaccines being associated with increased female mortality). If true, then how will this be perceived by the participants — that their children were unknowingly involved in a huge experiment by the authorities? This could be a disaster for public trust in vaccines and health authorities.’”
WHO training materials shared with The BMJ do not mention the doubled risk of death among girls, Doshi points out. It’s also unclear whether the WHO’s Research Ethics Review Committee has formally waived the informed consent requirement, and WHO did not answer the question directly.
McGill bioethicist Jonathan Kimmelman told Doshi that human subjects in research trials must provide informed consent, and that since the Malaria Vaccine Evaluation Programme in Malawi, Ghana and Kenya has been registered in clinicaltrials.gov,12 they are clearly being conducted as research, and thus must conform to “all sorts of rules and oversight mechanisms.”
The WHO has also come under fire for changes that make it even easier than before for vaccine makers and researchers to hide adverse events. The 2018 paper, “Revised World Health Organization’s Causality Assessment of Adverse Events Following Immunization — A Critique,” makes a number of salient points:13
“The … WHO has recently revised how adverse events after immunization (AEFI) are classified. Only reactions that have previously been acknowledged in epidemiological studies to be caused by the vaccine are classified as a vaccine-product–related-reaction.
Deaths observed during post-marketing surveillance are not considered as ‘consistent with causal association with vaccine’, if there was no statistically significant increase in deaths recorded during the small Phase 3 trials that preceded it. Of course, vaccines noted to have caused a significant increase in deaths in the control-trials stage would probably not be licensed.
After licensure, deaths and all new serious adverse reactions are labelled as ‘coincidental deaths/events’ or ‘unclassifiable’, and the association with vaccine is not acknowledged. The resulting paradox is evident.
The definition of causal association has also been changed. It is now used only if there is ‘no other factor intervening in the processes’. Therefore, if a child with an underlying congenital heart disease (other factor), develops fever and cardiac decompensation after vaccination, the cardiac failure would not be considered causally related to the vaccine.
The Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety has documented many deaths in children with pre-existing heart disease after they were administered the pentavalent vaccine. The WHO now advises precautions when vaccinating such children. This has reduced the risk of death.
Using the new definition of causal association, this relationship would not be acknowledged and lives would be put at risk. In view of the above, it is necessary that the AEFI manual be revaluated and revised urgently. AEFI reporting is said to be for vaccine safety. Child safety (safety of children) rather than vaccine safety (safety for vaccines) needs to be the emphasis.”
In my 2013 article, “Pulling Back the Curtain on the Organized Crime Ring That Is the Pharmaceutical Drug Cartel,” I review how a significant portion of corporate crime is committed by drug companies. Crimes committed by some of the most well-known drug companies include:
More recently, the Children’s Health Defense, chaired by Robert F. Kennedy, has exposed Merck’s fraudulent HPV vaccine science. Kennedy says the fraud Merck committed in its safety testing is (a) testing Gardasil against a neurotoxic placebo, and (b) hiding a 2.3% incidence of autoimmune disease occurring within seven months of vaccination.
On average, 1 in 43,478 women will die from cervical cancer. If 2.3% of girls develop an autoimmune disease from Gardasil, then that translates into 1,000 per 43,500. Even if a 1 in 43,478 chance of dying from cancer is eliminated (which there is absolutely no proof of14), girls and young women trade that risk elimination for a much larger 1 in 43 chance of getting an autoimmune disease from the vaccine.
Kennedy also describes another trick used by Merck to skew results: exclusion criteria. By selecting trial participants that do not reflect the general population, they mask potentially injurious effects on vulnerable subgroups.
For example, individuals with severe allergies and prior genital infections were excluded, as were those who’d had more than four sex partners, those with a history of immunological or nervous system disorders, chronic illnesses, seizure disorders, other medical conditions, reactions to vaccine ingredients such as aluminum, yeast and benzonase, and anyone with a history of drug or alcohol abuse.
Despite these deceptions, Merck’s own trial data still reveal Gardasil increases the overall risk of death by 370% and the risk of a serious medical condition by 50%.
Since its U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval in 2006,15 Gardasil has raised a firestorm of controversy, as young, healthy girls (and boys) have been permanently injured and died after receiving it. In January 2020, the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine published16 a critique of Merck’s clinical trials for Gardasil, stating they were never designed to detect whether HPV vaccination actually prevents cervical cancer.
Disturbingly, Merck’s trial data even shows Gardasil may actually increase the risk of cervical cancer if given after HPV infection.17 If you have been exposed to HPV strains 16 or 18 prior to vaccination, you may increase your risk of precancerous lesions caused by these two strains by 44.6%.
In January 2020, Cancer Research UK announced the cervical cancer rate among 24- to 29-year-olds (the first generation to receive the HPV vaccine) has skyrocketed by 54%.18,19,20 Similarly, a 2019 study21 found the cervical cancer rates in Alabama are highest in counties with the highest HPV vaccination rate.
A 2012 systematic review22 of pre- and post-licensure trials of the HPV vaccine also concluded that the vaccine’s effectiveness is both overstated and unproven. According to the authors, the review revealed:
“… evidence of selective reporting of results from clinical trials ... Given this, the widespread optimism regarding HPV vaccines long-term benefits appears to rest on a number of unproven assumptions (or such which are at odd with factual evidence) and significant misinterpretation of available data …
Likewise, the notion that HPV vaccines have an impressive safety profile is only supported by highly flawed design of safety trials and is contrary to accumulating evidence from vaccine safety surveillance databases and case reports which continue to link HPV vaccination to serious adverse outcomes (including death and permanent disabilities).”
A December 2017 Slate magazine article detailed yet other ways in which Gardasil trials were intentionally hiding safety risks. The public has been told HPV vaccines marketed in the U.S. have been tested on tens of thousands of individuals around the world, without any compelling evidence of serious side effects having emerged.
In fact, those studies were designed in such a way that makes detecting and evaluating serious side effects essentially impossible. One of the most egregious examples of this is the recording of serious side effects as “medical history” rather than vaccine adverse events.
When adverse events following vaccination are marked down as “medical history” instead of being tagged and investigated as potential side effects, is it any wonder “no side effects have been found” in any of these trials!?
Actually, even that statement is a gross misstatement of facts, as at least one Gardasil trial of the new nine-valent vaccine reported 9.7% of subjects who received the vaccine suffered “severe systemic adverse events” affecting multiple organ systems within 15 days of vaccination, and 3.3% reported “severe vaccine-related adverse events.”23
As discussed in several previous articles, Google and most major internet platforms are now actively censoring vaccine safety news, preventing the sharing of information that questions vaccine safety or highlights the dangers associated with routine immunizations. They’re even blocking first-hand testimony of vaccine harms.
That’s precisely what happened to Nick Catone, a former professional mixed martial arts fighter, who blames the DTaP vaccine for the death of his 20-month-old son. His son, Nicholas, died just 17 days after vaccination.24 In the wake of Nicholas’ death, Catone took to Facebook, creating an online memorial where he shared and processed his grief daily.
February 25, 2020, Facebook permanently removed his account without warning, which included not only Nicholas’ memorial page, but also Catone’s business and fan pages.
“One of our main priorities is the comfort and safety of the people who use Facebook, and we don’t allow credible threats of harm to others, support for violent organizations or exceedingly graphic content on Facebook,” the Facebook notification reads,25 suggesting Catone’s account was permanently closed on the grounds that he was spreading dangerous anti-vaccine propaganda that might hurt public health. February 26, 2020, Catone posted the following note to Instagram:26
“For 33 months every single day I have been writing to Nicholas on Facebook & IG since he has passed. It’s been my way of expressing my feelings and trying to go on day after day with him gone. As of yesterday Facebook has taken that away from me and probably only matter of time until they take IG away.
All of my posts and pictures of him every day gone … People say just start a new page. They don’t understand what the last 33 months without their child feels like. Hundreds of hours pouring my heart out writing to him day after day wishing he was here with his family.
Those posts have been a way for me to keep moving forward each day and also a way for me to keep my son’s memory alive. I can’t get those posts back now just like I can’t get back my son. I’m hoping someone can help me get my old pages back soon. I need to find a way. Some things just can’t be replaced.”
Clearly, Catone has cause to be suspicious. A perfectly healthy child doesn’t just die for no reason, and classifying injuries and deaths shortly after immunization as “coincidental” simply doesn’t confer trust.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: The public’s growing distrust of vaccines is not due to ignorant people crying wolf over things they don’t understand. It’s driven by an ever-growing number of parents who have lost their children or watched them regress into chronic poor health after being told vaccines are perfectly safe and essential — a “promise” based on falsified or shoddily constructed studies designed to hide rather than reveal safety problems.
A stent is a wire mesh tube that may be implanted into a coronary artery during a percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), or angioplasty, procedure. It’s intended to treat a clogged artery, which has reduced blood flow due to a buildup of fatty deposits, or plaque. The blockage can lead to a heart attack, but the stent helps to prevent this by expanding the artery and holding it open, improving blood flow to the heart.
According to the American Heart Association, in over one-third of patients who have an angioplasty without a stent, the artery becomes narrowed again within months, in a process known as restenosis. As such, most angioplasties include stents.1
The procedure is also said to have a much faster recovery period, and be less uncomfortable, than coronary artery bypass surgery, making them “fairly common.” In the U.S., more than 1.8 million stents are implanted annually, with 965,000 of them being coronary stents. Stenting procedures have been under scrutiny in the past, when it was estimated that about 30% of such procedures may be unnecessary.2
Controversy has been renewed once again, amid news reports suggesting the procedure not only may be ineffective but may cause more deaths than alternatives — a finding not made public because key data were held back from publication.3
The Excel trial, which was sponsored by U.S. stent manufacturer Abbott, compared the use of drug-eluting stents, which are covered in drugs to help prevent the blood vessel from reclosing, to coronary-artery bypass grafting (CABG) for patients with left main coronary artery disease. The primary end point of the study was the rate of death from any cause, stroke or heart attack at three years.
The results found that, at three years, death had occurred in 15.4% of patients in the stent group and 14.7% of those in the bypass group, a result that showed the two treatments to be equivalent, or noninferior. The researchers concluded “… PCI with everolimus-eluting stents was noninferior to CABG with respect to the rate of the composite end point of death, stroke, or myocardial infarction at three years.”4
The results, however, didn’t show the full picture, according to a BBC Newsnight investigation. At the time of the study’s publication, the researchers had access to data from some of the original enrollees, which had had the procedure performed five years’ prior.
There was evidence that the stents weren’t performing as well as CABG, but the researchers chose to only look at the data up to three years — and not a day after.
A spokesman for Abbott told BBC, "The study's execution, data collection, analysis and interpretation were entirely performed by independent research organizations. The publication of three-year Excel data reflects the original follow-up period and endpoints the study was powered to assess."5 Professor Nick Freemantle, a biostatistician at University College London, had a different view entirely, telling BBC:6
"If somebody had died three years and one day into the trial, that death wouldn't have been counted in the results. I'm absolutely appalled that they've done this. I've taken a straw poll of my professional colleagues and it draws disbelief that people would do this.”
When the five-year data were factored in, there was evidence that stents were causing more deaths than bypass surgery. According to Newsnight, “[T]he unpublished data that used the universal definition to measure MI [myocardial infarction] showed that ‘80% more patients with stents had heart attacks than those who had surgery.’”7 BBC News further reported that there were doubts even after three years:8
“Newsnight has seen information shared between people involved with the safety of the trial that suggested things were starting to look worse for people with stents after three years. More people were dying than those who had had surgery. Emails from the trial's safety committee warned that all the data about deaths should be viewed by the researchers and published.
‘It might be very concerning if in the future, suspicions were raised that already available information on mortality was withheld from the cardiology and thoracic surgery community,’ Dr Lars Wallentin, the head of the safety committee, wrote to the researchers in 2017.”
European clinical guidelines for treatment of left main coronary artery disease were drawn up based on the Excel trial, but the European Association of Cardio-Thoracic Surgery (EACTS) withdrew its support of the guidelines following the investigation.9 A statement from EACTS secretary-general, Domenico Pagano, says:10
“The reported outcomes of the EXCEL trial were one of the major clinical trial results used to inform the joint 2018 EACTS-ESC Clinical Guidelines for Myocardial Revascularisation. We recognise that if the data and the analysis Newsnight has carried out are correct, as they appear to us to be, patients have been subjected to an increased risk of death.
That is why the EACTS Council voted unanimously to withdraw our support for the guidelines on left main disease with immediate effect. We urge our members to disregard the guidelines relating to left main disease for the time being.”
The study’s authors have stated that Newsnight was supplied with “fake” data and stand behind their methodology. And a follow-up study, which includes five-year outcomes, also states that PCI is equivalent to CABG with regard to the rate of death, stroke or heart attack, although it states in the results, “Death from any cause occurred more frequently in the PCI group than in the CABG group (in 13.0% vs. 9.9% … ).”11 According to Cardiovascular News:12
“A week later [after the follow-up study was published], cardiothoracic surgeon David Taggart (University of Oxford, John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, UK) told delegates at the European Association for Cardio-Thoracic Surgery meeting (EACTS 2019; 3–5 October, Lisbon, Portugal) that the definition of MI in EXCEL was incorrect, leading to the wrong conclusion that PCI is non-inferior to CABG at five years for the management of selected patients with left main disease.
He was an EXCEL trial investigator but said that he withdrew his name as an author because of his view on the conclusion.”
A number of surgical organizations and others have called for an independent review of the raw data used in the trial, and the researchers have agreed, but there is concern that the reviewers may not be truly independent.
“Various names have been put forward by the researchers and the European Society of Cardiology about who is doing the analysis. All have ties to the researchers, guidelines process or medical device industry,” BBC News reported.13
Results from ISCHEMIA, a $100-million study funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute that looked into the use of stents versus medical therapy and lifestyle changes in preventing heart attack in patients with heart disease, has added further questions surrounding the use of stents.14
The study, which involved 5,179 participants, revealed that people with stable heart disease who are treated with medications and lifestyle changes are no more at risk of heart attack or death than those who undergo invasive surgical procedures like stent placement or cardiac bypass surgery.15
This wasn’t true for those who also had angina, or chest pain caused by restricted blood flow to the heart. In that case, stents or bypass surgery helped to improve symptoms. However, the study suggests that for many people with heart disease, surgery may be unnecessary.
The results, which were presented at the 2019 American Heart Association Scientific Sessions in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, are likely to change practice guidelines, according to commentators.16
In still other research published in The Lancet, researchers from Imperial College London investigated the difference between patients who had received a stent for stable angina and those who underwent a placebo intervention.17
The researchers recruited 200 participants with severe single vessel blockage from five sites across the U.K.18 During the initial six weeks, all patients underwent an exercise test followed by intensive medical treatment.
At that point they were randomly assigned to two groups. The first underwent a PCI during which coronary angioplasty was performed and a stent was placed. The second group also underwent a PCI procedure with an angiogram but without a balloon angioplasty or stent placement.
For the following six weeks, neither the patient nor the physician knew if the patient received the stent. At the conclusion of the six weeks, patients again underwent an exercise test and were questioned about their symptoms. The researchers found both groups experienced nearly identical improvements in exercise tolerance and no difference in reported improvements of their symptoms.
Even though the PCI procedure may improve blood flow through the blocked artery, it did not improve symptoms or exercise tolerance in study participants. Meanwhile, angioplasty is not without risk. At least one serious side effect has occurred in 7.6% of those undergoing angioplasty, according to one study.19
If you find out you have a blockage in an artery, the knee-jerk response may be that you need to unblock it using invasive procedures, but there are alternatives. A noninvasive alternative treatment covered by Medicare and used in university and specialty clinical settings like Cleveland Clinic20 is enhanced external counterpulsation (EECP).
This is a painless treatment used to help develop collateral circulation in your heart muscle. If you have blockage in your left anterior descending artery the procedure is not recommended. During the treatment, long inflatable cuffs are wrapped around your legs and buttocks. An electrocardiogram is used to time the inflation of the cuffs with the rhythm of your heart.
While your heart is at rest between beats, the cuffs inflate and squeeze blood from your legs toward your core. Physicians use this procedure to treat stable and unstable angina, chronic heart failure, coronary artery disease and ischemic cardiomyopathy. The additional pressure from the treatment triggers your body to form new blood vessels and thereby improve collateral circulation in your heart.
In the video above, Dr. Thomas Cowan, family physician and a founding member of the Weston A. Price Foundation, also discusses the function of your heart and circulatory system in a way that may change the way you understand heart disease. Meanwhile, foundational principles to improve your heart health include positive nutritional choices, quality sleep, pure, fresh water and exercise.
These principles — diet, exercise, stress reduction and heart-based connections — actually alter gene expression involved in the development of heart disease, and to greatly reduce your risk, including the need for stent placement or other related surgery, read about my top lifestyle changes to build a better heart.
Eating enough protein is not just for athletes or would-be Schwarzenegger types. It is necessary for a healthy immune system and required for organs like your heart, brain, and skin to function properly. The nutrient is also touted for its ability to help control appetite and enhance muscle growth.
How much protein you need typically depends on your exercise routine, age, and health. And whether to supplement protein intake with a protein powder has become a common query.
To make such supplements, protein is extracted from animal or plant-based sources, which range from cow’s milk and eggs to peas, rice, and soy. During processing, naturally occurring carbohydrates, fats, minerals, and fiber are often removed, while supplementary nutrients, herbs, and even sweeteners may be added.
Anyone considering protein powder should understand that it is classified as a dietary supplement, which means it is not regulated in the same way as food or medicine. Responsibility falls on manufacturers to ensure that their products are not hazardous, though many companies do not test for safety or efficacy before their offerings hit shelves. Though the FDA created Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs) to help minimize adverse issues, compliance with these procedures remains a concern. In 2017, roughly a quarter of supplement-manufacturing companies whose products were tested received citations related to purity, strength, and ingredient content.
That said, there are accredited organizations, like NSF International, that independently test supplements, including protein powders. NSF’s “Certified for Sport” designation ensures that contents match what is on the label, and that the product is GMP-registered and does not contain unsafe levels of toxic metals like arsenic and mercury.
How much protein you need is another crucial consideration when deciding whether you might benefit from supplementing your diet. The amount thought to be adequate for most healthy people, called the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA), is set at 0.8 grams per kilogram. For someone who weighs 150 pounds, this translates to roughly 55 grams of protein; a 200-pound person requires about 70 grams of protein. Certain athletes undergoing intense training may enhance their progress by consuming more than double the RDA, but this doesn’t apply to most of us.
One egg, one half-cup of chickpeas, or a small handful of nuts all provide roughly 6 grams of protein. A piece of chicken or fish the size of a deck of cards offers about 30 grams.
For many people, it is relatively easy to reach recommended amounts through their usual diet. On average, Americans consume 65 to 90 grams of protein each day. (Young women under the age of 19 and seniors older than 70 are more likely to be at risk for low protein intake.)
Research suggests older adults and exercisers looking to support muscle growth may benefit from eating one-and-a-half to two times as much protein as the RDA. As we age we lose muscle, and research shows boosting protein may help increase strength and lean body mass. But unless you have a restricted diet, such as a strict plant-based or vegan regimen, this increase is often still achievable through food.
Though pregnant women have slightly elevated protein needs, they should consult an obstetrician or dietitian if considering protein supplements, as companies sometimes add potentially unsafe ingredients like ginkgo or papain to protein powders. Also, individuals with kidney disease often benefit from consuming marginally less protein than the RDA, and should talk to a healthcare provider before supplementing with protein.
If you are a healthy adult considering supplementation, you should determine whether your goal is to improve muscle mass, as most research is centered on enhancing muscle growth and strength. Older adults may benefit from increasing protein slightly, regardless of their exercise routine; however, for most of us, resistance training is more effective than simply supplementing with protein.
For those looking to enhance the muscle growth that typically occurs with exercise, evidence supports consuming 20 to 40 grams of protein at a time (roughly the amount found in a can of tuna). Larger quantities simply contribute calories and can actually reduce muscle-building potential. So, having several scoops of protein powder at once is unlikely to be helpful. Plant-based powders often have less protein, but shouldn’t be discarded as an option. Rice and pea protein, for example, have been shown to stimulate muscle growth similar to whey, a milk-based protein touted for its high quality and quick absorption.
Unless you are an older adult with a limited appetite, have a restricted diet, or are a trained professional athlete, chances are you can adjust your food intake to get what you need. Protein from food is often cheaper, less risky, and naturally includes beneficial nutrients.
If increasing protein the old-fashioned way is not an option, taking a supplement can be both effective and convenient. But most of us don’t need to channel our inner Mr. Olympia by using a protein powder.
The post The scoop on protein powder appeared first on Harvard Health Blog.
Every news outlet seems to be talking nonstop about the new coronavirus, which is causing an illness called COVID-19. Many parents understandably are sharing concerns, too — at least among friends and families. Even at school, children are hearing about this new virus and registering that some adults seem worried.
Given all the discussion about coronavirus, your children might have heard about it and have questions for you. Below are some tips on how to respond to their questions. A separate post will address tips for talking with teens about the questions they might have.
Try to strike a balance between answering questions well enough without fueling the flame of anxiety. Children have elaborate imaginations that may lead them to create unnecessarily catastrophic stories in their minds if parents do not talk at all, or enough, about a topic like this. At the other end of the spectrum, providing too much information may create extra alarm.
So what can you do? Think about what your child absolutely needs to know to understand what the virus is and what to do about it. If you have your own questions about the coronavirus, check reliable sources, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which offers a range of information about the virus. The World Health Organization’s myth busters page can help you give correct answers to some surprising questions and misinformation that is spreading.
Before you start, ask what your child knows so far in case you need to clarify anything, and find out what questions your child has. Below are four common questions your child might ask and suggested responses.
What is the coronavirus? The coronavirus is a kind of germ that can make people feel sick. Remember how the flu made (you/your classmate/anyone your child knows) feel? It can be a lot like getting the flu. Some people feel just a little bit sick. Some people get a fever and a cough. Sometimes, the cough can make it hard to breathe easily.
How do you catch the coronavirus? The virus spreads like the flu, or a cold or cough. If a person who has the coronavirus sneezes or coughs, germs that are inside the body come outside of the body. That’s because sneezes and coughs can send tiny drops carrying germs into the air.
There is a lot of traveling those germs would have to do to get inside another body, though, and make someone else sick. A healthy person would need to touch those germs that came out of the sneezes and coughs, and then touch their mouth, eyes, or inside their nose. Those are places where the germs can get inside the body.
Kids and grownups can try their best to stay healthy by continuing their usual activities and practicing these healthy behaviors:
Why are some people wearing masks? Should I wear a mask? Masks are for people who are sick to wear so that they don’t share germs. The masks also are for medical staff, like doctors and nurses, to wear so they can help people who have the virus. You do not need to wear a mask.
Can you die from the coronavirus? Most people who have caught the virus have not died, just like with the flu. Doctors are working really hard to keep an eye on anyone who is feeling sick. They want to make sure everyone gets the help they need and to keep the virus from spreading.
What is important is that you keep doing what you love to do and not let worries about the virus boss you around. If you’re doing what you love while practicing healthy behaviors like sneezing into your elbow and washing your hands after you go to the bathroom, then you’re showing the virus and the worries who is boss instead!
Even though you may be concerned yourself, it is important to model calmness when talking about the virus. Children will look to you to see how afraid they should be. Think about flying on an airplane when there is turbulence. A flight attendant that appears terrified may make you think there is something really wrong and you should worry. If a flight attendant calmly offers you a beverage with a smile, you might think there’s just some windy weather that will pass soon.
Although the news can be helpful by keeping everyone informed, sometimes news stories can use wording that is strong and scary for children. Try to limit news-viewing to the hours after children go to sleep, or read the news independently so that children do not hear the stories.
It’s natural for children to ask questions, particularly about something that is new to them. Sometimes, though, a child’s anxiety seems to be asking the questions, prompting a behavior called reassurance seeking. It may look like a child repeatedly asking the same or similar questions, yet the child’s distress increases no matter how many times you answer the questions. If you notice repeated reassurance seeking (repeated asking of the questions above, for example), then it might be helpful to seek support to help your children manage anxiety. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can offer your family strategies for handling and easing reassurance-seeking behaviors. Ask your doctor to recommend mental health professionals who practice CBT and have experience working with children struggling with anxiety.
Remember, everyone is working hard to manage the virus. You can show your children that you, too, can continue to do what is important to you while practicing healthy behaviors.
For additional information, see our blog post on what parents should know and do about the coronavirus and our Coronavirus Resource Center.
The post How to talk to children about the coronavirus appeared first on Harvard Health Blog.