Bt Cotton Falls Short of Expectations

THIRD WORLD NETWORK BIOSAFETY INFORMATION SERVICEDear Friends and colleagues,

RE: Bt Cotton Falls Short of Expectations in Kartanaka, India

A new report shows that Bt cotton in India has not lived up to the many claims and promises. The report, which looks at the experience of Kartanaka between 2002-2009, demonstrated an increased use specifically of insecticide on cotton while findings indicate the emergence of pests like mirid bugs in cotton which is causing heavy losses in certain districts. (Item 1)

Further, cost of production per quintal of cotton in the state of Kartanaka continues to show an erratic trend, as they were before the introduction of Bt cotton. In fact, costs were even lower before Bt cotton entered the scene, according to official data.

The problem of pests among Bt cotton is also experienced among cotton growers in China, where mirid bugs, once minor pests, have now become the main pests in Northern China. There is now concern that pesticides use will increase dramatically as growers increase their use to fight the pest problem. (Item 2)

The conclusions of the report "An overview of Bt Cotton experience in Karnataka: 2002 to 2009" is reproduced below. The full document is available for download at: http://www.biosafety-info.net/article.php?aid=740

With best wishes,
Third World Network
131 Jalan Macalister,
10400 Penang,
Malaysia
Email: twnet@po.jaring.my
Website: www.biosafety-info.net and www.twnside.org.sg
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Item 1

CONCLUSIONS:

1. Claims made in support of Bt Cotton either in terms of pesticide usage or yields or economics do not hold as the data presented in this brief review shows.

2. Insecticide usage in Karnataka in cotton crop has actually increased as per the official NALMOT data presented in this review. This belies the rationale for bringing in Bt Cotton.

3. Secondary data shows that Bt Cotton was working well only in irrigated conditions whereas a majority of cotton cultivation in Karnataka is in unirrigated conditions.

4. Cost of cultivation per quintal of cotton in Karnataka show fluctuating trends as was the case even before the advent of Bt Cotton. In fact, lower costs were present before Bt Cotton entered the scene, as official data from the recent past shows.

5. Other data on various Bt Cotton hybrids right now in the market from CICR shows that non-Bt Cotton's average lint yield is higher than the average of the Bt Cotton hybrids studied.

6. In the top five cotton growing districts of Karnataka, the picture with yields is that of dramatic fluctuations and variability across years and districts.

We conclude that Bt Cotton has not delivered on its claims and promises and it is important that the Government of Karnataka takes up an official review to look at the situation, given that field visits are pointing out to lack of supply of any other seeds, leaving very little choices for the farmers of the state.
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Item 2

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100513/full/news.2010.242.html

GM crop use makes minor pests major problem

Pesticide use rising as Chinese farmers fight insects thriving on transgenic crop.

Jane Qiu

Growing cotton that has been genetically modified to poison its main pest can lead to a boom in the numbers of other insects, a ten-year study in northern China has found.

In 1997, the Chinese government approved the commercial cultivation of cotton plants genetically modified to produce a toxin from the bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) that is deadly to the bollworm Helicoverpa armigera. Outbreaks of larvae of the cotton bollworm moth in the early 1990s had hit crop yields and profits, and the pesticides used to control the bollworm damaged the environment and caused thousands of deaths from poisoning each year.

More than 4 million hectares of Bt cotton are now grown in China. Since the crop was approved, a team led by Kongming Wu, an entomologist at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Beijing, has monitored pest populations at 38 locations in northern China, covering 3 million hectares of cotton and 26 million hectares of various other crops.

Numbers of mirid bugs (insects of the Miridae family), previously only minor pests in northern China, have increased 12-fold since 1997, they found. "Mirids are now a main pest in the region," says Wu. "Their rise in abundance is associated with the scale of Bt cotton cultivation."

Wu and his colleagues suspect that mirid populations increased because less broad-spectrum pesticide was used following the introduction of Bt cotton. "Mirids are not susceptible to the Bt toxin, so they started to thrive when farmers used less pesticide," says Wu. The study is published in this week's issue of Science1.
"Mirids can reduce cotton yields just as much as bollworms, up to 50% when not controlled," Wu adds. The insects are also emerging as a threat to crops such as green beans, cereals, vegetables and various fruits.

Rise of the mirids

The rise of mirids has driven Chinese farmers back to pesticides - they are currently using about two-thirds as much as they did before Bt cotton was introduced. As mirids develop resistance to the pesticides, Wu expects that farmers will soon spray as much as they ever did.

Two years ago, a study led by David Just, an economist at Cornell University at Ithaca, New York, concluded that the economic benefits of Bt cotton in China have eroded2. The team attributed this to increased pesticide use to deal with secondary pests.

The conclusion was controversial, with critics of the study focusing on the relatively small sample size and use of economic modelling. Wu's findings back up the earlier study, says David Andow, an entomologist at the University of Minnesota in St Paul.

"The finding reminds us yet again that genetic modified crops are not a magic bullet for pest control," says Andow. "They have to be part of an integrated pest-management system to retain long-term benefits."

From the ashes

Whenever a primary pest is targeted, other species are likely to rise in its place. For example, the boll weevil was once the main worldwide threat to cotton. As farmers sprayed pesticides against the weevils, bollworms developed resistance and rose to become the primary pest. Similarly, stink bugs have replaced bollworms as the primary pest in southeastern United States since Bt cotton was introduced.

Along with genetically modified crops, says Andow, farmers need effective systems for responding to changes in pest abundance. This needs to be based on research into the timing, dosage and frequency of pesticide use needed to tackle new pests. "When farmers decide how to control pests, they tend to overuse pesticides," he says.
Wu and his colleagues are seeking the most effective way to use pesticide, and trying to reduce mirid damage to cotton by growing crops the pests prefer nearby. Meanwhile, Chinese researchers are trying to develop cotton plants that kill both bollworms and mirids.

Wu stresses, however, that pest control must keep sight of the whole ecosystem. "The impact of genetically modified crops must be assessed on the landscape level, taking into account the ecological input of different organisms," he says. "This is the only way to ensure the sustainability of their application."

References
1. Lu, Y. et al. Science advance online publication doi:10.1126/science.1187881 (2010).
2. Wang, S., Just, D. & Pinstrup-Anderson, P. Int. J. Biotechnol. 10, 113-120 (2008). | Article | OpenURL

Pesticide spraying affects students

Saturday, 27 November 2010

Pesticide spraying affects students By Lakna Paranamanna

Following several incidents of students falling sick in several estate
schools in the Central province due to pesticide spraying, the
provincial Education Ministry has taken measures to conduct awareness
programmes on pesticide spraying, for the people in the area.

Central Province Education (Tamil) Minister Mrs. Anushya Siwarajah
speaking to Daily Mirror said that a team of officials from the
Agriculture Ministry conducted several awareness programmes on
pesticide spraying for the parents and estate workers in the areas
during the past few days.

Three days ago, some 90 students from a school in Walapane, Nuwara
Eliya were admitted to hospital suffering from nausea and shivering,
while 50 students of the Nawalapitiya Westoll estate school were
hospitalised yesterday suffering with similar symptoms. “Both these
incidents were suspected to be results of pesticide spraying in
adjoining land plots during school hours,” Mrs. Siwarajah said.

“I have already spoken to the Health ministry and requested them to
intervene in the matter.

http://print.dailymirror.lk/news/news/28400.html

Wi-Fi Makes Trees Sick, Study Says

Wi-Fi Makes Trees Sick, Study Says
By René Schoemaker , IDG News

Radiation from Wi-Fi networks is harmful to trees, causing significant variations in growth, as well as bleeding and fissures in the bark, according to a recent study in the Netherlands.

All deciduous trees in the Western world are affected, according to the study by Wageningen University. The city of Alphen aan den Rijn ordered the study five years ago after officials found unexplained abnormalities on trees that couldn't be ascribed to a virus or bacterial infection.
Additional testing found the disease to occur throughout the Western world. In the Netherlands, about 70 percent of all trees in urban areas show the same symptoms, compared with only 10 percent five years ago. Trees in densely forested areas are hardly affected.

Besides the electromagnetic fields created by mobile-phone networks and wireless LANs, ultrafine particles emitted by cars and trucks may also be to blame. These particles are so small they are able to enter the organisms.

The study exposed 20 ash trees to various radiation sources for a period of three months. Trees placed closest to the Wi-Fi radio demonstrated a "lead-like shine" on their leaves that was caused by the dying of the upper and lower epidermis of the leaves. This would eventually result in the death of parts of the leaves. The study also found that Wi-Fi radiation could inhibit the growth of corn cobs.

The researchers urged that further studies were needed to confirm the current results and determine long-term effects of wireless radiation on trees.

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/211219/wifi_makes_trees_sick_study_says.html

U.S.-backed pesticide spraying in Guatemala draws fire.

U.S.-backed pesticide spraying in Guatemala draws fire

Submitted by SHNS on Fri, 11/19/2010 - 12:48 By MATTHEW CREELMAN, SHNS contributing correspondentinternational ShareThis

GUATEMALA CITY - For most of three decades, the U.S. has financed massive aerial spraying of pesticides over a large part of Guatemala in an attempt to eradicate the Mediterranean fruit fly, but common precautions to limit exposure to the toxic chemicals are not being followed.

In the 1980s and 1990s, malathion was sprayed from aircraft over thousands of acres of Guatemala's forests and farmlands. More recently the U.S.-financed program has been spraying Spinosad GF 120 Naturalyte Fruit Fly Bait, produced by Dow Agrosciences.

According to Guatemalan government data, the U.S.-backed program has applied more than 6 million liters of GF-120 since 2002, equivalent to more than 5,000 tons of this pesticide-bait.

Dow scientists say that Spinosad is highly toxic to beneficial insects and aquatic species, and that precautions should be taken to avoid daytime spraying and avoid bodies of water.

However, in Guatemala, spraying occurs during the day and over water. In contrast, in California, which is also waging an ongoing battle with medflies, the use of Spinosad sprays to control the pests is carefully regulated, and residents and farm workers are warned prior to spraying to keep out of sprayed zones for at least four hours.

This is not the case in Guatemala.

The U.S. has spent $266 million on the fruit-fly eradication program since 1976. The original purpose of the program was to create a barrier that would keep the Medfly from "migrating" to California fruit farms about 2,200 miles away.

But the characterization of the medfly as a destructive "illegal alien" is challenged by Dr. James Carey, an entomologist with the University of California, Berkeley, who has concluded from DNA tests that the medfly is a permanent resident of California, detected in 167 municipalities --one third of the state -- since 1975.
Carey is recognized as a pre-eminent expert on the medfly, who served on the California Department of Food and Agriculture´s Medfly Scientific Advisory Panel from 1987 to 1994.

Campesinos, beekeepers, environmentalists, coffee growers and others who work the land and study it have opposed the program for years.

Israel Gramajo, the mayor of San Antonio, Suchitepequez, in southern Guatemala, is currently leading an effort to remove a Mosca Del Mediterraneo (or MOSCAMED) quarantine post from his town and prohibit aerial spraying. The medfly larvae develop in fruit such as coffee berries, oranges and mangos. The quarantine posts are set up on highways to keep potentially contaminated fruit from entering into regions considered free of the medfly. Ironically, the quarantine in San Antonio has been designed to keep contaminated fruit from entering a region already infested by the fruit fly.

Guatemala is the only Central American country using massive aerial spraying of pesticides to control the medfly. According to medfly program protocol, the plane sprays up to seven times each area treated, for a total of 500 droplets per 10 square feet.

According to a 2009 medfly report by a Mexican scientist working with the MOSCAMED Program, 1,650 square miles were infested with the Medfly in Guatemala, and another 5,600 square miles were subject to "suppression".

Guatemalans complain of damages to their crops, along with allergic reactions and conjunctivitis. MOSCAMED authorities deny the charges and say they provide important support to beekeepers, along with baking classes and medical campaigns in towns where the program is active.

When scientific studies in the 1980s and 1990s began raising concern regarding the potential environmental and human risks from massive aerial spraying of malathion, the MOSCAMED program sought out alternative pesticides, and began using GF-120. In 2002 the Guatemalan government requested an environmental impact study, to assure that the spraying is benign.

But that study, approved by the Guatemalan Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources in 2005, heavily relied on data from Dow Agrosciences and the U.S. and Guatemala agencies involved in the MOSCAMED program.

And the consultant who directed the study, Ricardo Santa Cruz Rubi, only months earlier had been vice minister of agriculture, responsible for approving aerial aspersions by the MOSCAMED program in Guatemala. Once the study was completed he was rehired by the ministry.

The study's conclusion was highly favorable regarding the use of Spinosad to control the fruit fly, even though the consultants reported that "there is a lack of information regarding the situation under field conditions and we recognize the limitations in our analysis due to this circumstance."

Over the years aerial spraying has covered a broad swath of Guatemala´s coffee-growing regions, in an attempt to create a barrier from the southwest to the northeast of the country. In recent years the program has focused on spraying in five departments in western Guatemala. The spraying is followed by the aerial release of sterile male Mediterranean fruit flies to mate with females, thus interrupting the fruit flies´ reproduction cycle.

Just as medfly outbreaks continue to recur in California, outbreaks were recorded as recently as September in southern Mexico and in northern regions of Guatemala´s Peten department, or state, both of which have been declared by MOSCAMED as "medfly free areas".

Spinosad is described in MOSCAMED documents as "environmentally friendly." A repellent in GF-120 is designed to keep beneficial insects from consuming the pesticide. However, scientists have warned against daytime applications and spraying over bodies of water, since active bees and aquatic species are unable to avoid contact with the substance.

In the 1980s, more than 264,000 gallons of malathion had been sprayed from aircraft covering an area of more than 4,000 square miles.

Beekeepers reported major losses in hive populations and honey production. "There were mounds of dead bees on the ground in front of the hives," said Julio Juarez, a beekeeper and environmental activist from San Antonio, Suchitepequez.
With Spinosad, there are no longer mounds of dead bees in front of the hives, possibly because of its sub-lethal impacts, which according to Canadian biologist Lora Morandin, undermine foraging ability and causes disorientation. Morandin reported these concerns in a 2005 study, "Lethal and Sublethal effects of Spinosad on Bumblebees."

But in spite of the Dow scientists' warnings regarding Spinosad´s toxicity to bees, the Guatemalan environmental study did not discuss alternatives to daytime aerial spraying as a means of controlling the fruit fly.

Nor did the evaluators address the issue of possible contamination when poisoned fruit flies become food for birds and other animals in a country home to numerous endangered species of birds and insects.

Instead, the mass spraying was advocated largely because of cost issues. It is far less expensive to massively spray a region than it is to apply site specific measures. And in Guatemala the MOSCAMED budget is a windfall for the resource-starved ministry of agriculture.

(Matthew Creelman is a free-lance journalist and political analyst who has reported from Guatemala since 1984. E-mail Creelman at Matthew_creelman(at)hotmail.com)

Controversial pesticides linked to 'total ecological collapse' of insects and birds

Controversial pesticides linked to 'total ecological collapse' of insects and birds
Dearbhla Crosse and Tom Levitt

16th November, 2010

Widespread use of insecticides affecting bee populations but also causing decline in numbers of birds, butterflies and moths, warns Dutch toxicologist
A new book is blaming the significant decline of bird and bee numbers across Europe on the use of certain pesticides in agriculture.

In The Systemic Insecticides: A Disaster in the Making, toxicologist Dr Henk Tennekes suggests that dangerous insecticides known as neonicotinoids are seriously affecting bird and insect life, and their continued use could result in an ‘environmental catastrophe’.

Neonicotinoids are often used as seed-dressing for maize, sunflower and rapeseed. However, Tennekes says as well as spreading throughout the entire plant and into the nectar and pollen, they also have a high leaching potential and seep into soils and groundwater. Even low concentrations of the pesticide may be more deadly then previously thought due to their high persistence in soil and water, he adds.

In a study published in the journal Toxicology earlier this year, Tennekes had suggested this could be a factor behind declining bee numbers across Europe. He now believes bees are not the only victims.

‘Any insect that feeds on the crop dies. Any bee or butterfly that collects pollen or nectar from the crop is poisoned. Neonicotinoids behave like carcinogens, and easily contaminate ground and surface water. There could be dire long-term consequences of environmental pollution with these insecticides, and my fears were confirmed by extensive research,’ says Tennekes.

In his book, Tennekes writes that even minute traces of these pesticides could be fatal to insects, as continued use affects food availability for birds, a lack of weeds resulting in a loss of insects, as well as seeds. This decline is also linked to a lack of larger insects upon which chicks depend for their survival, which in turn affects breeding.

‘An ecological collapse is already taking place before our eyes,’ Tennekes told the Ecologist. ‘Numerous bird species do not find enough food for their chicks as insects are being exterminated by pesticides. Insects are vital in ecosystems. In fact, we need them for human survival.’

The Soil Association, which along with Buglife and Pesticide Action Network UK has previously called for neonicotinoid pesticides to be banned, says the decline in bee numbers alone should serve as an early warning.

‘In the UK alone, beekeepers [have in the recent past] reported a loss of one in three bee colonies,’ said a spokesperson. ‘This has serious consequences for worldwide food security, because bees are our most important pollinators and play a vital role in the food chain – it is estimated that one-third of human food supplies depend on bee pollination. Bees are therefore like the "canary in the coal mine" – their deaths are a warning to us all that the health of the planet is under threat.’

http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_round_up/684945/controversial_pesticides_linked_to_total_ecological_collapse_of_insects_and_birds.html

Scientists Unlock How Trans Fats Harm Your Arteries

Scientists Unlock How Trans Fats Harm Your Arteries

Scientists have discovered the method by which dietary trans-fats cause hardening of the arteries. A study on mice suggests that high levels of trans-fats cause atherosclerosis by reducing the responsiveness of a key protein, transforming growth factor (TGF)-beta, that controls growth and differentiation in cells.
The findings of the study reinforce research that has linked the predominantly man-made fat with a range of health problems.

Food Navigator reports:

"Trans-fats are attractive for the food industry due to their extended shelf life and flavor stability, and have displaced natural solid fats and liquid oils in many areas of food processing.

But scientific reports that trans-fatty acids raise serum levels of LDL-cholesterol, reduce levels of HDL-cholesterol, can promote inflammation can cause endothelial dysfunction, and influence other risk factors for cardiovascular diseases (CVD), has led to a well-publicized bans in New York City restaurants, and other cities, like Chicago."

Mice fed a diet high in trans-fats had a four-fold increase in markers of early lesions of atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries, which in turn increases your risk of heart attack and stroke.

The fats appeared to suppress the responsiveness of TGF-beta, a protein that controls growth and differentiation in cells. This is likely one of many ways in which trans-fats harm your heart health.

If you value your heart function, check all of the foods you eat on a regular basis and make sure trans-fats are NOT a part of them. Even the Institute of Medicine said your intake of trans-fats should be "as low as possible." They were given the opportunity to establish a "safe upper limit," but declined doing so because, quite simply, there isn't one!

Why Trans-fats Should Not be in Your Diet

There are only a handful of foods and beverages that I recommend you NEVER eat … and foods with trans-fats are among them.

Trans-fats are formed when hydrogen is added to vegetable oil during food processing in order to make it solidify. This process, known as hydrogenation, makes fats less likely to spoil, so foods stay fresh longer, have a longer shelf life and also have a less greasy feel.

Trans-fats are common in fried foods like French fries, fried chicken, and doughnuts -- as well as cookies, pastries and crackers. In the United States, French fries typically contain about 40 percent trans-fatty acids and many popular cookies and crackers range from 30 percent to 50 percent trans-fat. Doughnuts have about 35 percent to 40 percent trans-fatty acids.

These completely unnatural man-made fats cause dysfunction and chaos in your body on a cellular level. Studies have linked trans-fats to:

Cancer: They interfere with enzymes your body uses to fight cancer.
Diabetes: They interfere with the insulin receptors in your cell membranes.
Decreased immune function: They reduce your immune response.
Problems with reproduction: They interfere with enzymes needed to produce sex hormones.
Obesity
Heart disease: Trans-fats can cause major clogging of your arteries. (Among women with underlying coronary heart disease, eating trans-fats increased the risk of sudden cardiac arrest three-fold!)
Trans-fat is also known to increase blood levels of low density lipoprotein (LDL), or "bad" cholesterol, while lowering levels of high density lipoprotein (HDL), or "good" cholesterol. Trans-fats even interfere with your body's use of beneficial omega-3 fats, and have been linked to an increase in asthma.

Beware of Trans-fat Labels or You Will Be Fooled!!

The negative health effects of trans-fats are so widely known that in recent years many food manufacturers have removed them from their products, while several cities, like New York City and Chicago, have implemented citywide bans.

The fats are also listed on labels, but there's an important caveat you should know … the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allows food manufacturers to round to zero any ingredient that accounts for less than 0.5 grams per serving.

So while a product may claim that it does not contain trans-fats, food manufacturers have lobbied to allow the food to contain up to 0.5 grams per serving.

The key here is the serving size. What is the serving size of a box of cookies? There is no hard and fast rule and if they decide that one small cookie is a serving size and not the "typical" quantity most people eat, you could wind up with up to 10 grams or more of trans-fat, which is clearly going to be associated with health complications.

So to truly avoid trans-fats, you need to read the label and look for more than just 0 grams of trans-fat. Check the ingredients and look for partially hydrogenated oil. If the product lists this ingredient, it contains trans-fats and pay careful attention to the serving size.

Know How to Avoid This Similar Trans-fat Replacement

While pulling trans-fats from foods is a great move, the food industry has been widely replacing trans-fats with intersterified fat, another unnatural fat that you'd be wise to avoid.

The interesterification process hardens fat, similar to the hydrogenation process, but without producing oils that contain trans-fats. The end product, like trans-fat, is less likely to go rancid and is stable enough to use to fry foods.

However, like hydrogenation, which generates unnatural trans-fats, interesterification also produces molecules that do not exist in nature.

The highly industrialized process of interesterification may result in a product that is trans-fat-free, but that product will still contain chemical residues, hexanes, and other hazardous waste products full of free radicals that cause cell damage.

These fats are in virtually all the foods that trans-fats are, so by avoiding trans-fat, and processed foods in general, you will also avoid interesterified fats. If a processed food product is labeled "0 grams trans-fats" or "no trans-fats" but is made from vegetable oils, you can be certain it contains either interesterified fats or fully hydrogenated vegetable oils, both of which you'll want to avoid.

Have You Been Eating Trans-fats for Years?

Not long ago, the FDA estimated that up to 95 percent of cookies, 80 percent of frozen breakfast foods, and 100 percent of crackers contained trans-fats. Most pizza dough is also loaded with trans-fat.

So if you've eaten these processed foods in the past, there's a good chance you've also eaten trans-fats. Even now, although many food manufacturers have removed them, they still exist widely in baked goods. And since it's not always possible to check labels, such as in foods at restaurants, schools, cafeterias, etc., it can be difficult to detect them.

Generally speaking, foods that are likely to contain trans-fats include deep-fried foods, processed baked goods, snack foods and processed foods, including fast foods.

However, even if you know trans-fats have been in your diet, don't panic. By switching to a healthier diet now you may be able to make up for some of the damage.

In the mice study, in fact, when the animals switched from a high trans-fat diet back to their regular diet, markers of atherosclerosis began to decrease and even return to normal.

So the take-home message is, if you've been consuming trans-fats for years with no ill effects, count yourself lucky but don't press your luck. The sooner you switch to a healthier diet, the better.

If you want to avoid dangerous fats of all kinds, your best bet is to eliminate processed foods from your diet. From there, use these tips to make sure you're eating the right fats for your health:

Use organic butter (preferably made from raw milk) instead of margarines and vegetable oil spreads. Butter is a healthy whole food that has received an unwarranted bad rap.
Use coconut oil for cooking. It is far superior to any other cooking oil and is loaded with health benefits.
Be sure to eat raw fats, such as those from avocados, raw dairy products, and olive oil, and also take a high-quality source of animal-based omega-3 fat, such as krill oil.

Following Dr. Mercola's comprehensive nutrition plan will also automatically reduce your trans-fat intake, as it will give you a guide to focus on healthy whole foods instead of processed junk food.

Pesticides make for resilient pests.

Pesticides make for resilient pests

For anyone hoping there's a quick, easy treatment for bedbugs in the near future, take note of the hesitation in Coby Schal's response.

Schal is a North Carolina State University urban entomologist — the academic title for a guy who studies cockroaches and, of late, bedbugs — and he gets asked all the time whether a miracle might soon hit the market to stem growing infestations of the blood-sucking pests.

"I wish I had a short-term answer to that," he says. Another pause. "But I don't."

And the pessimism among leading bug scientists is nothing compared to the downer from exterminators, who now rank bedbugs among their worst and most prevalent problems.

Donnie Shelton, owner of Triangle Pest Control in Raleigh, said his bedbug business has increased 400-fold — just this year.

He bought a dog, named Scout, who is specially trained to sniff out bedbug infestations. Next month Shelton will offer a heat-based eradication system, which uses industrial heaters to roast the bugs dead in their tracks.

Pesticides, he says, are increasingly ineffective.

"They become more resistant every single day," Shelton says. "They're insane. You can't do anything with them. Everything in the arsenal isn't working."

Overuse of pesticides has likely contributed to the bedbugs' resurgence, and that exact process is one of the mysteries Schal's team at NCSU is trying to figure out.

Until only recently, bedbugs seemed to be a scourge of the past, but their comeback has been a triumph of selective resilience that would be a marvel if it wasn't so creepy.

"Bedbugs just drive people mad," Shelton says. "The thought of an insect coming out and biting you when you're sleeping — it makes people crazy."

Schal suspects the bugs that are now infesting the United States hitchhiked here from Africa or South America, where pyrethroid-based insecticides have been sprayed liberally to eradicate mosquitoes that carry malaria and so-called kissing bugs that transmit Chagas disease.

When poisons are used over and over again, the vulnerable bugs die, while the hardy ones live and breed, creating a master race that is impervious to the toxins.

Mike Waldvogel, another NCSU entomologist, says there are steps people can take to prevent infestations in the first place. People who travel should unpack in the bathtub, where they're more likely to see a hitchhiking bug, and immediately wash and dry all their clothes. He also recommends sequestering the suitcase outside or in the garage.

http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/article/20101114/GPG04/11140582/Pesticides-make-for-resilient-pests

16 of the Dumbest Things Americans Believe -- And the Right-Wing Lies Behind Them.

16 of the Dumbest Things Americans Believe -- And the Right-Wing Lies Behind Them By Sarah Seltzer

We’ve gone beyond Stephen Colbert's "truthiness" into a "truth-be-damned" environment. - November 13, 2010

Americans are often misinformed, occasionally downright dumb, and easily misled by juicy-sounding rumors. But while the right wing is taking full advantage of this reality, the left worries that calling out lies is "rude."

Remember when Congressman Joe Wilson stood up during Obama’s State of the Union address to falsely shout “you lie?” He was chastised soundly by the pundit class. But mostly he drew heat for being impolite, and was
compared to Kanye West and other famous “interrupters.”

Revisiting Wilson's foolish tirade underscores the state of our upside-down political world. He shouted “you lie” in the face of truth, but President Obama is hesitant to speak up when he’s being slandered with bald, glaring untruths. The dark irony will continue as the Republicans take over the House this winter and the rumors and insinuations from extremist right-wing pundits keep circulating. It feels like no one with a loud enough megaphone has the courage to call a spade a spade, or more accurately a lie a lie.

We’ve gone far beyond Stephen Colbert’s “truthiness” into a more “truth-be-damned” environment, what Rick Perlstein described in the Daily Beast as a “mendocracy. As in, rule by liars.”

Here are some examples of recent ways that we have made inroads in ignorance:

* Polling data during and after last week’s midterm elections suggested that many Americans genuinely believe Obama has raised their taxes -- even though the reality is that our president actually lowered them for most of us. This means that people trust pundits like Rush Limbaugh, a major force behind spreading that lie, over the numbers on their own tax returns.
* Another recent phenomenon? Half of new Congressmen don’t believe in the reality of global warming. It’s not that they don’t just disagree on the source or the severity of the problem. They flat out don’t think that the world is getting warmer--despite evidence outside their windows.
* The new Congress will probably try to restore millions of dollars of funding for scientifically-inaccurate, largely disastrous abstinence-only curriculum in schools, many of which have been shown to spread lies like "condoms don't work" and "abortion causes cancer."
* News outlets picked up a wildly inflated and completely outlandish claim that Obama’s trip abroad cost $200 million dollars a day from an Indian blog--and listeners have swallowed it. (In this case, the White House flat-out denied it.)

The scary thing is, these kinds of rumors have a way of taking root in the popular consciousness. Just as the election season began heating up earlier this year, Newsweek published a list of “Dumb Things Americans Believe.” While some of them are garden-variety lunacy, a surprising number are lies that were fed to Americans by our leaders on the far Right. This demonstrates that media-fed lies can easily become ingrained in the collective memory if they’re not countered quickly and surely. Newsweek’s list included the following twelve statistics taken from very
recent and semi-recent polls and surveys. The first half are directly related to right-wing rumormongering.

* Nearly one-fifth of Americans think Obama is a Muslim (or is that Muslin?). Thanks, Fox news, for acting like this was a matter of opinion, not fact.
* 25% of Americans don’t believe in Darwin’s theory of evolution while less than 40% do. Consider the fact that several of our newly elected officials, specifically newly-elected Kansas Governor Sam Brownback, share that belief.
* Earlier this year, nearly 40% of Americans still believed the Sarah Palin-supported lie about “Death Panels” being included in health care reform.
* As of just a few years ago, about half of Americans still suspected a connection between Saddam Hussein and the attacks of September 11th, a lie that was reinforced by none other than Dick Cheney.
* While a hefty amount of this demonstrable cluelessness gets better as the respondents get younger, all is not well in the below-30 demographic. A majority of “young Americans” cannot identify Iraq or Afghanistan--the places their peers are fighting and dying--on a map.
* Two out of five Americans, despite the whole separation of church and state being a foundation of our democracy thing, think teachers should be able to lead prayer in classrooms. So it seems that those right-wingers clamoring to tear down the wall between church and state aren’t the only ones who don’t know their constitutional principles.
* Many Americans still believe in Witchcraft, ESP and other supernatural phenomena. Does that explain why Christine O’Donnell was so quick to deny her “dabbling”?
* Speaking of antiquated religious beliefs, about a decade ago, 20% of Americans still believed that the sun revolves around the earth. That's just sad, considering that even the Vatican has let Galileo off the hook for being right.
* Only about half of Americans realize that Judaism is the oldest of the three monotheistic religions. Other examples of wild misunderstanding about religion and the separation of church and state can be found in this fall’s Pew survey on Americans’ religious knowledge.
* This one made a huge splash when it appeared. In 2006 more Americans were able to name two of the “seven dwarves” than two of the Supreme Court justices. And that was before Kagan and Sotomayor showed up. To be fair, “happy and sleepy” are easy to remember.
* More Americans can identify the Three Stooges than the three branches of government--you know, the ones who are jockeying over our welfare..

So what to do in a political and cultural landscape in which well-told lies have more validity than fact-based truth? Perlstein explained how this environment gets created by explaining what happened on election day this year:

“...by a two-to-one margin likely voters thought their taxes had gone up, when, for almost all of them, they had actually gone down. Republican politicians, and conservative commentators, told them Barack Obama was a tax-mad lunatic. They lied. The mainstream media did not do their job and correct them. The White House was too polite—"civil," just like Obama promised—to say much. So people believed the lie.”

We’ve entered a bizzarro world in which calling out lies is considered rude, says Perlstein, so liars are allowed to sit tight dominate the discourse. This gels with Bill Maher’s critique of the Rally for Sanity, that calling for “balance for balance’s sake” ignores two important aspects of news reporting: facts and evidence.

Blaming Americans for being ignorant unwashed masses--or taking potshots at an education system that doesn’t teach critical thinking-- would be the easy answer to this conundrum.

But the reality is that if messaging has such a big effect on Americans, then messaging matters. Folks on our end have to counter the lies with well-told, unabashed unironic, truth-telling. And we have to demand that our media, and our politicians, call out the other side. As Perlstein notes, “When one side breaks the social contract, and the other side makes a virtue of never calling them out on it, the liar always wins. When it becomes "uncivil" to call out liars, lying becomes free.” Even worse, once lies begin to spread, they become more than rumors--they become permanent beliefs.

Sarah Seltzer is an associate editor at Alternet, an RH Reality Check staff writer and a freelance journalist based in New York City. Her work can be found at www.sarahmseltzer.com.

The Completely Curable Disease Your Doctor is Treating All Wrong...

The Completely Curable Disease Your Doctor is Treating All Wrong...

A new federal report projects 1 in 3 American adults could have diabetes by 2050. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that the number of Americans with diabetes may double or triple over the next 40 years.

People with diabetes face medical costs more than twice that of those without the illness. The total costs of diabetes is about $174 billion annually. Currently, roughly 24 million Americans, or 1 in 10 adults have the disease.

The Boston Herald reports: “The CDC report ... gives a range for the predicted increase -- from 1 in 3 to 1 in 5 [people] by 2050 -- to reflect differing assumptions about how many people will develop diabetes, and how long they will live after developing the disease.”

It is definitely not a disease to be taken lightly. It increases your risk of heart disease and brings on fatal and non-fatal heart attacks, strokes and other cardiovascular events 15 years earlier than in those without diabetes, as well as significantly shortens your lifespan.

Rising diabetes rates exponentially increase other serious diseases, one of which is Alzheimer's disease. As I've discussed before, some are even referring to Alzheimer's as "type 3 diabetes," due to the links between the two diseases.

Diabetes also fosters numerous other health complications, including:

Heart disease and stroke
High blood pressure
Blindness
Kidney disease
Nervous system disease
Amputations
Dental disease
Pregnancy complications
Diabetics are also increasingly being misled to take statin drugs to prevent heart disease (which is strongly associated with diabetes), which adds further insult to injury.

Statin drugs have been shown to actually cause heart failure and are not the right treatment for most people. These drugs offer a "cure" that is far worse than the disease, yet vast numbers of people are being manipulated into taking them as "preventive medicine" once they're diagnosed with diabetes.

The truly insane part of all this is that type 2 diabetes is virtually 100 percent preventable, and most people can successfully reverse the condition without any drug intervention at all.

The problem is that the conventional advice for preventing and managing this disease is incorrect, which is why most doctors' advice causes diabetics to die. Even the CDC is clueless here, stating in their report that "intervention can reduce, but not eliminate, increases in diabetes prevalence."

Dr. Mercola firmly disagrees.

The High Cost of Diabetes
Again, type 2 diabetes is virtually 100 percent preventable and treatable with common-sense lifestyle changes that cost little to nothing. Meanwhile, the conventional treatment of diabetes is VERY expensive.

As reported by the Boston Herald:

"People with diagnosed diabetes have medical costs more than twice that of those without the disease.

The total costs of diabetes are an estimated $174 billion annually, including $116 billion in direct medical costs, according to the CDC."

I shudder to think about the enormous ramifications to health and the health care system should we fail to turn this disease trend around.

Fortunately, there is plenty of room for hope, because all we need to do is inform people about the truth about this disease. This is why I ask you to keep sharing this vital information with everyone you know.

These large numbers of people with diabetes are simply unnecessary, because as you'll see below, avoiding diabetes is a fairly simple and straight-forward affair. However, it does require you to take control of your diet and your lifestyle.

According to the Boston Herald:

"... [A]bout 15 percent of families don't want dietary counseling because their insurance company will deny the fee."

First of all, the advice you get from conventionally-trained nutritionists may or may not be accurate and helpful, and secondly, the information you need to make the correct lifestyle changes are available for FREE!

So please, always avoid allowing the lack of insurance coverage to prevent you from taking control of your diet.

My website contains nearly 8,000 pages of free information about diabetes alone! The best way to access this free information is to visit our diabetes index page.

Why are Diabetes Cases Surging?The latest statistics on diabetes in the US are a very sad commentary and a major clue that conventional medicine has it all wrong; their standard diabetes recommendations -- both in terms of medication and nutrition -- are incorrect.

At best, they simply do not work. At worst, they're aggravating your problem and speeding up the deteriorating disease process.

There's no doubt in my mind that if government agencies and the medical community would stop catering to the greedy demands of the sugar, grain and pharmaceutical industries, and start issuing recommendations that actually promote health rather than deteriorating it further, this modern epidemic would be curbed in fairly short order.

But again and again, you'll find the ludicrous advice that consuming starchy carbohydrates, and even added sugar "in moderation," is okay for diabetics, as long as you use blood glucose lowering tools to balance out their effects.

Just ONE Soda a Day Can Raise Your Diabetes Risk by 25 Percent!
A recent meta-analysis concluded that drinking just ONE soda -- or other sweetened drink, including Vitamin Water -- per day can raise your risk of developing diabetes by 25 percent, compared to drinking just one sugary drink per month.

According to U.S. News & World Report:

"Previous studies have shown that sugar-sweetened beverages are strongly associated with weight gain…

They identified eight studies with enough data to let them check for a link between sugary drinks and type 2 diabetes and three similar studies of metabolic syndrome.

The largest diabetes study, which followed more than 91,000 American women ages 24 to 44 for eight years, made the strongest case for a relationship, and it wasn't just because higher consumption of sweetened drinks added excess calories that turned into pounds.

While weight gain is a known diabetes risk factor, the diabetes-beverage link persisted even after adjusting for that."

Considering the fact that the number one source of calories consumed in the US is in the form of soda, it's not hard to see the correlation between inappropriate dietary choices and the meteoric rise of diabetes.

Why Conventional Diabetes Recommendations are almost all WRONGIt's vitally important to understand that type 2 diabetes is NOT a blood sugar disease like you've likely been led to believe.

Type 2 diabetes is a disease caused by insulin resistance and faulty leptin signaling, both of which are regulated through your diet. Every diabetic needs to understand that the number one way to avoid and control this disease is to severely restrict or eliminate sugars (particularly fructose) and starchy carbs like breads and cereals – more or less the complete opposite of conventional recommendations.

Until this concept becomes well-known in both the medical community and by the public at large, the misconception about what diabetes is and the appropriate way to treat it will continue to be promoted.

Conventional treatment that is focused on fixing the symptom of elevated blood sugar, rather than addressing the underlying disease, is doomed to fail in most cases. Treatments that concentrate merely on lowering blood sugar while raising insulin levels can actually worsen rather than remedy the actual problem of metabolic miscommunication.

It just trades one evil for another.

Since most treatments for type 2 diabetes utilize drugs that either raise insulin or lower blood sugar, the tragic result is that the typical, conventional medical treatment for diabetes contributes to the additional diseases and the shortened lifespan that diabetics' experience.

Diabetics Must Become Aware of the Function of Leptin
The two hormones insulin and leptin work hand-in-hand when it comes to diabetes.

Insulin -- When your blood sugar becomes elevated it is a signal for insulin to be released to direct the extra energy into storage. A small amount is stored as a starch called glycogen in your body, but the majority is stored as your main energy supply -- fat.

Thus, in this regard insulin's major role is not to lower sugar, but to take the extra energy and store it for future times of need. Insulin lowers your blood sugar as a side effect of directing the extra energy into storage.

This is why treatments that concentrate merely on lowering blood sugar for diabetes while raising insulin levels can actually worsen rather than remedy the actual problem of metabolic miscommunication.

So, please, understand that if you only implement strategies to treat your blood sugar level, you are destined for premature death. Taking insulin is in fact one of the WORST things you can do, as it will actually make your insulin and leptin resistance worse over time.

Leptin -- Leptin is largely responsible for the accuracy of insulin signaling, and whether you become insulin resistant or not.

Leptin is a hormone produced by your fat cells. It helps regulate your appetite and tells your body and brain how much energy it has, and what to do with that energy.

Two of the most important organs that influence whether you develop (type 2, insulin resistant) diabetiesor not are your liver and your brain, and it is their ability to "hear" the leptin signals that determines this.

Once you become leptin resistant, the part of leptin's message that would normally reduce hunger and fat stores, and increase fat burning, does not get through to your brain -- so you stay hungry and store more fat, rather than burning it.

It's a vicious cycle, where a high sugar/grain diet increases fat storage and promotes leptin resistance, which in turn drives insulin resistance and obesity, which eventually leads to full-blown diabetes.

If You Want to Prevent or Reverse Diabetes, IGNORE the Following "Health" Agencies
American Dietetic Association
American Heart Association
American Diabetes Association
For the last 50 years, many people have been following the nutritional recommendations from these agencies, which advise a high complex carbohydrate, low saturated fat diet.

Clearly, these recommendations are NOT working.

Again, it's imperative to understand that if you have diabetes, you need to avoid sugar/fructose, grains (even organic, whole grains) and other starchy carbs like rice, potatoes and cereal, to get healthy.

Most Diabetics Can be Cured with Lifestyle ChangesThe good news is, you do NOT need to become another statistic!

Rest assured that nearly 100 percent of type 2 diabetics can be successfully treated – eliminating the symptoms of diabetes, or the high risk of developing health complications -- if you are willing to implement the following recommendations:

Exercise

Exercise is an absolutely essential factor, without which you're highly unlikely to get this devastating disease under control. It is clearly one of the most potent ways to lower your insulin and leptin resistance.

Typically, you'll need large amounts of exercise, until you get your blood sugar levels under control. You may need up to an hour or two a day. Naturally, you'll want to gradually work your way up to that amount, based on your current level of fitness.

For more information and guidelines for an optimal exercise program, please see this article where I explain the superior benefits of Peak 8 exercises.

Eliminate sugar/fructose, artificial sweeteners and grains
For the last 50 years, people have been following the nutritional recommendations dictated by conventional health agencies, which advise a high complex carbohydrate, low saturated fat diet. The end result has been a 700 percent increase in diabetes in the same time frame and many have come to view diabetes as an incurable chronic disease…

Our current diabetes statistics are the inevitable result of seriously flawed dietary recommendations. Also artificial sweeteners are not a good substitute for sugar and will actually cause you to gain more weight than sugar.

Instead, you'll want to eliminate foods that your body will react to by creating insulin, which includes all types of sugars and grains. This also means avoiding most processed foods of all kinds as they are loaded with fructose. You may even need to avoid fruits until your blood sugar is under control.

Eat right for your Nutritional Type


Exercising and avoiding grains and sugars might not be enough unless you balance your protein, carb and fat ratios for your unique and specific genetic biochemistry.

This is so important, I now offer the entire online nutritional typing test for free. Please do take advantage of this free offer as we previously charged $29 to take the same test.

Monitor your fasting insulin level


This is every bit as important as your fasting blood sugar. You'll want your fasting insulin level to be between 2 to 4. The higher your level, the worse your insulin receptor sensitivity is.

The recommendations mentioned above are the key steps you need to achieve this reduction.

Optimize your vitamin D levels


Interestingly, optimizing your vitamin D levels can not only help improve type 2 diabetes if you have it, but can likely eliminate the risk of type 1 diabetes in your children if you are pregnant. It's also vital for infants to receive the appropriate amounts of vitamin D in their early years for these same reasons.

Ideally, you'll want to do this by exposing a large amount of your skin to appropriate amounts of sunshine (or a safe tanning bed) on a regular basis, year-round. Your body can safely create up to 20,000 units of vitamin D a day this way.

However, if neither of these options are available, you may want to use an oral vitamin D3 supplement. But remember, if you choose to take an oral supplement it's essential that you get your levels tested regularly by a proficient lab to make sure you're not reaching toxic levels, and are within the therapeutic range.

Maintaining your vitamin D levels around 60-80 ng/ml can significantly help control your blood sugar.


These are the basic steps you need to take, starting today, if you have type 2 diabetes.

Doing so will virtually guarantee that your diabetes will disappear. And if you want to make sure you are not one of the millions impacted by the coming diabetes epidemic, these same steps will help you to stay healthy and diabetes-free.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/11/12/new-study-predicts-one-in-three-in-us-will-have-diabetes.aspx

Mass Extinction - Are we next?

Only when the last tree has died and
The last river has been poisoned and
The last fish has been caught,
Will we realize that
We cannot eat money"
19th Century Cree Proverb

All of our water, food and air is now contaminated with numerous man-made chemicals and the level of that contamination increases daily. A billion people or more are already in dire straits - they are dying for lack of water, food, and/or shelter. A significant percentage of humanity is already at death’s door. Even in the richest country on the planet, over 40 million people in the USA are already on food stamps.

The latest Fed money-printing scheme is causing the value of our dollar to fall, increasing the prices of every thing that is valuable and is triggering a bond price meltdown! Since talk of new money-printing first surfaced a few weeks ago, 30-year bond yields have jumped sharply higher — from 3.46% to 4.32%. That's a 25% surge in borrowing costs!

The BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico this summer tragically demonstrated the hidden costs of our nation’s reliance on fossil fuels. But despite this ongoing catastrophe, some major corporations—including Safeway and Walmart—are fueling their trucking fleets with tar sands oil, the dirtiest oil in the world. Tar sands oil is even more destructive to human health and the environment than conventional oil. Turning tar sands oil into fuel requires the destruction of fragile forest ecosystems, wastes three barrels of water to extract one barrel of oil, and consumes almost as much energy as it produces. This dirty and inefficient product currently makes up just 4 percent of the crude oil we use, but your tax dollars are already subsidizing pipelines and refineries that would allow oil companies to quadruple that amount.

Human beings are currently causing the greatest mass extinction of species since the extinction of the dinosaurs. If present trends continue one half of all species of life on earth will be extinct in less than 100 years, as a result of habitat destruction, pollution, invasive species, and climate change. For several years now, scientists have been sounding alarms about a devastating fungus, White-Nose Syndrome (WNS), which has literally decimated bat populations in the Northeastern U.S. The fungus leaves a white substance on the bat’s nose, wings and body, and disrupts the bat’s hibernation patterns, forcing it to burn through its fat reserves, which quickly leads to starvation. Earlier this year, a survey of the bat population in New Jersey estimated that 90 percent of that state’s bats had been killed off. “This is on a level unprecedented, certainly in mammals,” says Rick Adams, a biology professor at the University of Northern Colorado and a renowned bat expert. “A mass extinction event, a thousand times higher than anything we’ve seen. It’s going through [bat colonies] like wildfire, with 80 to 100 percent mortality.” Experts believe many species of bats may vanish, and like with bee colony collapse, the disappearance of these species will bring profound and long-term changes to the environment and agriculture across North America. A bat eats 60 to 100 percent of its body-weight in insects every day. Adams says one colony of Mexican free-tailed bats in Colorado’s San Luis Valley, an important agricultural region, “pulls about 100 metric tons of insects out of the air in a year.” And having bats in agricultural areas, he says, tends to move insects out of those areas, creating less need for dangerous and expensive pesticides. And like honey bee colonies—which have also been facing massive die-offs in recent years—some bats are important pollinators and seed-distributors. Adams says bats are crucial to the reproduction of tropical fruits like mangos, papayas, figs, and wild bananas. And in Arizona, bats are the primary pollinators for three large cactus species that support much of the region’s ecosystem. Almost a quarter of the world's mammals face extinction in 30 years, according to the United Nations report on the state of the global environmnent. A new global study has concluded that only 10% of the big ocean fish remain. Total extinction of all speciess is coming!

The United States makes up less than five percent of the population on earth, yet easily consumes over 30 percent of its resources. Human consumption and growth can cause extinction of many species through overharvesting, pollution, habitat destruction, introduction of new predators like manmade viruses and antibiotic resistant bacteria, pesticides and other destructive influences. Explosive, unsustainable human population growth is an essential cause of the extinction crisis in other species and we are presently threatening our overall way of life with our neglect of all these basic concerns. Humans are going through their own special type of mass extinction event in terms of chronic disease.

A presidential commission’s leaders proposed a $3.8 trillion deficit-cutting plan that would cut Social Security and Medicare, reduce income-tax rates and eliminate tax breaks including the mortgage-interest deduction. The co-chairmen of the panel appointed by President Barack Obama suggested reducing Social Security spending by raising the retirement age to 68 in about 2050 and 69 in about 2075. The plan also would slow the rate at which benefits grow. The savings would come between 2012 and 2020. “This country’s out of money and we better start thinking,” said co-chairman Erskine Bowles. Without “tough choices,” he said, “we’re on the most predictable path toward an economic crisis that I can imagine.”

Before we die we get sick. We are now seeing: 1 in 6 children with specific learning disabilities; 12-15% children with attention deficit disorder;1 in 87 with autism spectrum – a 1700% increase over ten years; 1% sudden infant death; 40 deaths and 15,000 substantive adverse Gardasil reactions; 1 in 15 over 65 with dementia; 1 in 8 over 85; Chronic fatigue syndrome; Fibromyalgia; Seizure disorders; Global developmental delay; 1 in 450 with type 1 diabetes and hundreds of millions of type 2; 1 in 2 men and 1 in 3 women to develop cancer over a lifetime. There is no doubt in my mind that over the next few years we are going to be witnessing and participating in a human downdraft of stupendous proportions as human suffering, illness and premature death go off the Richter scale.

Have you even looked at what is already happening—the political confusion and stupidity and the potential for war and all the nuclear weapons that are in the hands of madmen at the Pentagon. They use depleted uranium weaponry routinely now in far away battlefields not calculating one bit the billions of years the resultant nuclear pollution/contamination and the negative health effect it will have on their own children. What can we say about these people? They love war and if push comes to shove - many of us believe they will not hesitate to use nuclear weapons that kick up big mushroom clouds that will turn the entire world into a sea of glass!.

It is not easy to think about billions of tortured souls crying out and perishing from lack of water and food but avoiding these thoughts and images paralyzes us and prevents us as individuals from taking evasive action. In the mainstream news we read: “Yields are not keeping up with a world growing hungrier. Crops are stunted in a world grown warmer. A devastating fungus, a wheat ‘rust,’ is spreading out of Africa, a grave threat to the food plant that covers more of the planet’s surface than any other. In Chicago, London, and other money centers, the wheat market is so roiled by bad news and speculators that rising prices may put bread out of reach for millions more of the world’s poor.” This is a picture of selective mass extinction with the poor getting the boot first. And those who can afford all the food they can eat - will only have Monsanto (who just bought out the biggest security mercenary firm in the world) and many other companies ready to "feed them" their most terrible toxic engineered frankenfoods! — it truly will be a wonder if anyone survives.

We are in a worsening economic diaster right now and it will only get worse.

The USA is facing economic disaster on a scale few nations have ever experienced. Most people are unaware of the easily observable signs of this emerging crisis. While we persist in our superpower mentality, we have quietly become a second-class country in many respects.

We no longer produce what we need to sustain ourselves, we import much more than we export, and we are selling off our assets and taking on massive debts to sustain a standard of living we can no longer afford. Not only was this not the way we became a superpower but it is a sure way to lose this status.

Foreign countries are using the funds earned through our trade deficits to buy many of our strategic companies. Over the past 10 years, foreign interests have purchased an unprecedented $8 Trillion worth of USA assets.

The game plan of our international competitors is to render us completely dependent on foreign production, innovation, and financing. In losing domestic self-sufficiency, national security and leverage in foreign affairs will suffer greatly.

We are failing even to acknowledge predatory foreign trade practices undermining US industry. Instead we encourage US manufacturers to design, engineer, and produce in third world markets like Mexico and China.

Currently, 44 million people are on food stamps and 20 Million people are employed either by the state or federal govenments - more than 60 million people in the USA depend on the state for either their income or their food. (These figures do not count those incarcerated, on welfare or on social security.)

There are only 81 million households in the USA - so, something on the order of two-thirds of all the families in the USA already depend on the government for their food or their income and our government is clearly broke already. The total government debt in the USA per taxpayer is now in excess of $122,000 and that is just to pay off the current debt. Will you be able to pay your "share' today? No, well these governmental debts are now so large we shortly will no longer be able to borrow money to finance them.

There really is no free lunch. After years of sloganeering against taxes, the Republicans have made this an American mantra. Civilized nations pay with taxes for what they get, e.g. free medical care. Lest we forget, 145,000 or more Americans will die this year for lack medical insurance, and, thus, medical care as needed. Presumably the Republicans would like to increase that death figure in order to save budget expenses and to cut more taxes.

Watch the prices of anything that is useful in the USA that is priced in dollars go straight up! Gas went up 50 cents a gallon a few days after the election. Inflation and depression will hit the USA at the same time! Oh my!

Are you ready to see the results of over 14 trillion dollars in unpaid debt that the Republicans are saying was all caused by Obama? I was glad to see the newly elected Republicans (the party of no) boast that there will be no compromise on the Bush-era tax cuts. Do you really think you will be better off in two years than you are now?

Want to stop the POISONING of America?

If you really want there to be legal, safe pest control alternaitves - Dr. Robert K. Simon wrote Ann Mason in Florida.

1. Yes Steve Tvedten's list/book on alternatives is very good and should be used.
2. The basic problems are:
2.1. The USEPA FIFRA law prohibits EPA from recommending or requiring IPM alternatives.
2.2. PCOs get their "use instructions" from the manufacturers/distributors/state DOA's to use chemicals.
2.3. Dow/Chevron/Scott/etc companies promote their products as "safe" for use (including by PCOs).
2.4. The end result is that a) all PCOs, b) too many homeowners, c) most organizations (maintenance workers, janitors, lawn care workers), d) most cities, states, DOAs, schools, etc know nothing about IPM and alternatives.

Suggestion
1. Invite the new Sen Rubio to address your Florida group on this subject.
2. You need a representative in Congress who can start the process of changing the FIFRA law so that IPM (Steve's alternatives) are legally required BEFORE any pesticide/herbicide, etc can be used.
3. This is the only approach that will require change.

RK Simon
http://www.thebestcontrol2.com

Most-Pesticide-Laden Fruits and Veggies List Under Attack.

Most-Pesticide-Laden Fruits and Veggies List Under Attack -— By Kiera Butler

You know the Environmental Working Group's super-helpful list of the most-pesticide-laden fruits and veggies? Well, there's a Big Ag lobby group called the Alliance for Food and Farming that's trying to debunk it. And the USDA just gave the lobbyists $180,000 to aid their smear campaign, reports The Atlantic.

So exactly who's behind the Alliance for Food and Farming? According to SourceWatch, its board of directors includes honchos from the California Strawberry Commission, the California Tomato Farmers, the Produce Marketing Association, and the California Association of Pest Control Advisors, among other industry groups. The AFF's main argument: "Promotion of the 'Dirty Dozen' list actually makes the work of improving the diets of Americans more difficult because it scares consumers away from the affordable fruits and vegetables that they enjoy."

Riiiight. Considering that the EPA freely admits that pesticides can cause "birth defects, nerve damage, cancer, and other effects," it's totally boneheaded to suggest that raising consumer awareness about pesticides is making Americans less healthy. What's more, it's not like the Environmental Working Group is suggesting you give up on produce entirely and stock your fridge with Mountain Dew instead. In fact, EWG explicitly states that the list isn't meant to discourage people from eating their veggies. From the FAQ:

Do all these pesticides mean I shouldn’t eat fruits and vegetables?

No, eat your fruits and vegetables! The health benefits of a diet rich in fruits and vegetables outweigh the risks of pesticide exposure. Use EWG's Shopper's Guide to reduce your exposures as much as possible, but eating conventionally grown produce is far better than not eating fruits and vegetables at all.

The bottom line: The more you know about your food, the better. Period.

Chinese Urbanites Bring Organic Farming to the Countryside

Chinese Urbanites Bring Organic Farming to the Countryside

(Beyond Pesticides, November 8, 2010) After numerous scandals involving China’s industrialized food supply, a new movement is afoot in the world’s most populous nation toward local, organic, and sustainable food. According to a promising Washington Post report, “Young Chinese farmers sowing seeds for organic revolution,” many of the organic farmers working to meet the growing demand are urban professionals seeking an escape from fast paced city life.

The overuse of pesticides in industrialized agriculture has created numerous problems for people and the environment. Pesticide use has been linked to many diseases including numerous types of cancer, Parkinson’s, and learning disabilities. In addition pesticides are also dangerous to wildlife. Pesticides often kill non-target organisms that may be beneficial to farmers, such as predatory insects.

Organic agriculture is an ecological approach to farming that does not rely on or permit toxic pesticides, chemical fertilizers, genetically modified organisms, antibiotics, sewage sludge, or irradiation. Instead of using these harmful products and practices, organic agriculture utilizes techniques such as cover cropping, crop rotation, and composting to produce healthy soil, prevent pest and disease problems, and grow healthy food and fiber.

Just as in the United States, demand for local and organic food is growing in China, and organic agriculture in China faces a unique set of challenges. For centuries, farming in China was viewed as work for impoverished peasants. Despite the fact that under Chairman Mao Zedong, farming was elevated to a noble profession, today it is once again considered one of the worst jobs in the country. When Shen Hui and her husband Chen Shuaijun decided to start farming, they were ridiculed by their neighbors and were furious to hear of their son’s plan to quit his job in the Shanghai banking sector to return to farming. Once they started the farm, things didn’t get much easier. Mr. Chen insisted on farming without any chemical pesticides or fertilizer, and many people scoffed at their methods. The work is incredibly physically demanding for the couple, and making things more difficult, since the farm has not turned a profit, the two still maintain their office jobs.

Several organic farmers in China also find it a challenge to deal with rampant pollution. While organic farmers do not rely on synthetic chemical fertilizers or pesticides, their soil or water supply may be laced with all kinds of pollutants. A government report found pollution makes 43 percent of state monitored rivers are unsuitable for human contact.

Marketing organic crops is another difficulty in China. Regulation of organic certification is weak at best and farmers say some agencies will certify anything for a price. As a result many organic growers don’t bother to certify their products, and instead just call them natural. The regulatory aspect of this is a huge issue, particularly in light of recent scandals with the food supply that have left many around the globe concerned about the safety of their food. In 2008, over 1200 babies became sick from milk powder formulated with the cheap industrial compound melamine. Other scandals involved vegetables infected with dangerous bacteria, fish poisoned by pollution, and cooking oil tainted with sewage.

Despite the difficulties of organic, farmers have plenty of reasons to be persistent. For organic grower Shen Hui the biggest draw of farming was the food safety: she wanted to know where her food came from, and what went into it. Organic food is also a luxury trend. China’s new super-rich consume organic food, because it has become a status symbol. Shen Hui and Chen Shuaijun also state that the simple joys of escaping city life and eating the produce they grow outweigh the challenges.

Source: The Washington Post

Traditional Medicines to Become Illegal in Europe.

Traditional Medicines to Become Illegal in Europe

Posted By ANH-USA On November 2, 2010 @ 3:40 pm In Food & Drug Administration (FDA),

It sounds like a bad April Fool’s joke, but it’s not. On the first of April next year, thousands of products associated with traditional medicine will become illegal throughout the European Union.

April 1, 2011, is the date the Traditional Herbal Medicinal Products Directive (THMPD) comes into force throughout Europe. Many herbal products—including those already sold safely as food supplements—will need to be registered under THMPD if they are to be made available. But registration involves a series of eligibility and technical challenges as well as prohibitive costs, so a large number of traditional medicines will be prevented from being registered [1]. This is especially true if the medicines are made by smaller companies with low annual sales volumes—a fairly common occurrence with traditional medicines.

A related concern is that laws and regulations that are enacted in Europe often influence US policy—and a negative outcome over there is a dangerous precedent that could be adopted here at home. So preserving access in the EU is absolutely critical to our own health freedoms.

Our colleagues at the Alliance for Natural Health International [2] (ANH-Intl), together with the European Benefyt Foundation [3] (EBF), have established a joint working group to coordinate their response to this issue. They plan a three-pronged attack [1]:

1.Force a judicial review of THMPD as being an unsuitable vehicle for assessing traditional medicines. Not a single Ayurvedic or traditional Chinese medicine product has been registered under it. This will be expensive—please see below about how you can help with a gift.
2.Change the EU food supplement regulations. The current regulations say that herbal products previously sold as food supplements are to be reclassified as medicines; a food or herb preparation is considered “novel” (and thus banned from sale) if it cannot be proved that one or more of its ingredients had been used significantly in the EU before May 1997; and health claims made by many herbal products are banned, limiting consumer choice.
3.Facilitate a new regulatory framework for traditional medicinal products to replace THMPD and expand its scope. This would regulate not only over-the-counter herbal medicines, but practitioner-prescribed and pharmacy-dispensed supplements as well. The European Benefyt Foundation has been working to develop such a framework for over a year.
In order for this work to proceed, they desperately need additional funding. We invite you to read their Call to Action [4], but even more importantly, we ask you to send a donation in support of ANH-Intl’s efforts. Just go to this page [5] to make your donation, and we will forward to them every penny you give.

Remember—your financial support of our European colleagues not only benefits the millions of Europeans who use natural supplements and medicines, but could make a huge difference in the way US supplement policy is shaped in the future. Please give today [5].


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Article printed from Alliance for Natural Health – USA: http://www.anh-usa.org

URL to article: http://www.anh-usa.org/traditional-medicines-to-become-illegal-in-europe/

URLs in this post:

[1] a large number of traditional medicines will be prevented from being registered: http://www.anh-europe.org/files/100831-ANH-Benefyt-THMPD-position-paper.pdf

[2] Alliance for Natural Health International: http://www.anhinternational.org/

[3] European Benefyt Foundation: http://www.benefyt.eu/

[4] Call to Action: http://www.anh-europe.org/files/101021-Call_to_Action_Herb_Challenge.pdf

[5] this page: http://aahf.convio.net/site/Donation2?2143.donation=form1&df_id=2143

Stay Away From Chemotherapy and Radiation.

Stay Away From Chemotherapy and Radiation By Dr. James Howenstine, M.D.

For many years it has been known to well informed individuals within the medical community that chemotherapy and radiation were quite toxic and essentially worthless in the management of malignancies. This information is carefully covered up by our controlled media so that these two methods of therapy are regarded by lay persons as the proven therapy for malignancies. Like lemmings going over a cliff the general public lines up for these therapies and nearly all treated persons proceed to die.

To the person who inquires how can an essentially worthless therapy continue to be used the answer is simple. It is all about money. Chemotherapy drugs bring in more than a trillion dollars annually to the pharmaceutical industry. Oncologists frequently make $1000 from every injection administered to a patient. There are 40 National Cancer Institute Centers scattered across the USA. Each of these employs thousands of employees. Curing cancer would be devastating for the economy and must not be allowed to occur. Research programs whose alleged purpose is to cure cancer see their funds steered into harmless areas where no cancer cures will ever result. Less than 1% of research funds are spent finding methods to prevent the spread of cancer. which is the cause of fatal cancer cachexia which kills 90% of cancer victims..

Preventing unfavorable chemotherapy results from being seen by the public in TV, radio, and newspaper reporting is combined with malicious quackery charges and actual death threats to practitioners who have legitimate cancer cures. I am aware of at least a dozen cancer cures since 1900 that have been ignored or suppressed. Several persons with bonafide cancer cures have been so vilified they died alcoholics or committed suicide. Prominent physician Dr Milbrook Johnson was poisoned the night before he was scheduled to speak on a national radio network in the 1940s about the ability of Dr. Royal Rife’s electronic equipment to cure cancer and infections.

Both chemotherapy and radiation have such toxic effects on the human body they must be stopped before they kill the patient. In the early days of chemotherapy drugs it was noted that skeptical patients who refused to take chemotherapy usually lived longer than patients treated with chemotherapy.

Radiation therapy directed toward a bone containing cancer might initially seem innocuous but actually has effects throughout the body. Circulation of blood through areas of ionizing radiation being delivered to bone is able to transport this radiated blood to distant sites where it can injure bone marrow production of killer lymphocytes, red blood cells, macrophages and platelets. Loss of appetite and nausea can be seen. Conventional radiation to the abdomen and other areas may be followed by permanent injury to the small intestine(diarrhea, pain) and arteriosclerosis of arteries in any field of radiation.

A suspected cancer patient had xray films showing numerous lucent identical sized masses overlying brain and spinal cord tissue. The films were misread as metastasis from a prior malignant melanoma instead of echinoccocal cysts spread from the family dogs. Massive radiation of brain and spinal cord tissue caused complete loss of appetite with no food intake and death in 8 days in a previously well 26 year old woman.

What are results of chemotherapy drugs? Associate Professor Graeme Morgan of Australia was the lead researcher on an article titled “The contribution of cytotoxic chemotherapy to 5 year survival n adult malignancies.” This research showed that chemotherapy improved 5 year survival by less than 3% in adults with cancer. In 1987 Dr. Lana Levi of the University of California wrote “most cancer patients in this country die of chemotherapy. It does not eliminate breast, colon, or lung cancer. This fact has been known for over a decade. Women with breast cancer are likely to die faster with chemotherapy than without it.”

Dr. Ralph Moss Ph.D relates that “Conventional Cancer therapy is so toxic and dehumanizing that I fear it more than I fear death from cancer. Yet most alternative therapies regardless of potential or proven benefit, are outlawed, which forces patients to submit to the failures that we know don’t work because there is no other choice. Dr. Moss was employed as a science writer for Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Chemotherapy drugs are cellular poisons so they are quite toxic. They are also quite expensive. In his book The Cancer Industry he documents how the close links between the pharmaceutical industry and the cancer establishment enables an inadequate therapy like chemotherapy to become promoted and established as standard care”.

In a 1995 interview Dr. Moss related that chemotherapy was effective in only 2 to 4 % of all malignancies(Hodgkin’s Disease, Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia, childhood leukemia, testicular cancer and Choriocarcinoma.)

The package inserts for chemotherapy drugs admit that taking a course of chemotherapy drugs can increase your risk of subsequently developing a new cancer by about 10%. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health(NIOSH) warns that the powerful drugs used in chemotherapy can cause cancer in employees who handle them(nurses, pharmacists, cleaning personnel). If continued too long these drugs are fatal. The damage to white blood cell , killer lymphocyte and red blood cell production makes the patient vulnerable to overwhelming infection which is the cause of death in many patients on chemotherapy and radiation. It never made sense to me why administering toxic substances that cause major side effects could possibly heal a serious illness like a malignancy.

Dr. William Campbell Douglass II, MD “To understand the utter hypocrisy of chemotherapy, consider the following: The McGill Cancer Center in Canada, one of the largest and most prestigious cancer treatment centers in the world, did a study of oncologists to determine how they would respond to a diagnosis of cancer. On the confidential questionnaire, 58 out of 64 doctors said that all chemotherapy programs were unacceptable to them and their family.

In 33 years of conventional medical practice I referred all patients with malignancies to oncologists. The only survivor was a Chinese man with a low grade lung cancer. He responded every five years or so to a few doses of radiation.

In my opinion one of the most important verses in the Bible is Proverbs 14:12 There is way that seems right unto man but its end is the way of death. Drug company owners and executives, politicians, world leaders and media executives have unbelievable wealth and power in this world. However, they face a tortured eternity following death. This seems to be a very unwise tradeoff.

Anyone reading this article has my permission to copy or publish this information. Hopefully, some individuals will be made aware that there are safe effective alternatives to chemotherapy and radiation in the treatment of malignancies.

© 2009 Dr. James Howenstine - All Rights Reserved

Here's another doctors opinion:

“When people tried to treat infectious disease 150 years ago, they had no clue what the cause was – namely that there were these nasty micro organisms that caused the disease. They were just shooting in the dark. That’s what we still do. Doctors of the future will look on our medicine with ”bemusement and horror”.......they’ll sit around saying ‘Can you believe they gave poisons to people to kill their cancers?’ And that is the reward we’ll get – we will be considered medieval.”


-- Eric Lander in 2005, founder of the Whitehead Institute / MIT Center for Genome Research, a Rhodes scholar and one of the country's leading molecular geneticists researching in cancer.

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Read more about the toxic side effects of chemo in this important new research -
http://www.naturalnews.com/027600_chemotherapy_testicular_cancer.html

Painkillers cause cancer tumors to grow more rapidly! Why is this bad? Because doctors treat cancer pain with these exact painkillers, making the cancer spread more quickly:
http://www.naturalnews.com/027596_pain_drugs_cancer.html

Want to read my updated free Chapter 41 on How to Cure Cancer and other Diseases? Please see:
http://www.stephentvedten.com/41_How_to_cure_disease.pdf

HC concern on use of banned pesticides.

The Delhi High Court on Tuesday expressed concern over rampant use of banned pesticides to enhance the size and colour of fruits and vegetables saying it caused health hazards. Taking suo motu cognisance of media reports on such practise by farmers and traders, the court sought a response from the Centre as well as the state government within a month.

A division bench of chief justice Dipak Misra and justice Manmohan said: "It is difficult to perceive how the community would react to such a situation when it is asserted that there has been an authentic research which shows that the vegetables and the fruits have become highly toxic because of the process of growing and preservation."

The court directed the government to issue a notice to NGO Consumer Voice, which has conducted a study, to assist the bench. According to the NGO, the farmers apply pesticides such as chlordane, endrin and heptachor that can cause serious neurological problems, kidney damage and skin diseases.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/HC-concern-on-use-of-banned-pesticides/Article1-621458.aspx

Vitamin D.

Vitamin D

Vitamin D has been a necessary vitamin since the beginning - 90% of vitamin D is derived from solar ultraviolet-B (UVB) irradiance. Vitamin D helps both to prevent and to treat chronic diseases including many types of cancer, cardiovascular disease (coronary heart disease, stroke, etc.), congestive heart failure, diabetes mellitus (types 1 and 2), osteoporosis, falls, and fractures. It is also effective against infectious diseases including both bacteria and viral infections: bacterial vaginosis, pneumonia, dental caries, periodontal disease, tuberculosis, sepsis/septicemia, Epstein-Barr virus, and influenza type A such as A/H1N1 influenza. The autoimmune diseases include asthma, type 1 diabetes mellitus, multiple sclerosis, and perhaps rheumatoid arthritis. Pregnancy outcomes are also adversely affected by low serum D levels. Studies have shown that with sufficient Vitamin D mortality rates could be reduced by about 15%.

Supplements represent an efficient way to obtain sufficient vitamin D. African-Americans should consider taking 3000 International Units (IU) per day while White-Americans should consider taking 2000 IU/day. The current dietary guideline, approximately 400 IU/day, was based on the amount of vitamin D in a spoonful of cod liver oil, which prevented rickets.

There are few adverse effects of vitamin D. With whole-body exposure to the sun, one can make at least 10,000 IU/day in a short time. Adverse effects such as hypercalcemia have been found in general only for 20,000-40,000 IU/day for very long periods. However, those with certain diseases such as adenoma of the parathyroid gland, granulomatous diseases, lymphoma, sarcoidosis, and tuberculosis, should limit their vitamin D intake or production due to the fact that the body's innate immune system produces too much 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D in the serum, which can raise serum calcium levels too high.

During pregnancy and lactation, women should be taking about 6000 IU/day. The current US "Adequate Intake" recommendation is a mere 200 IU/day. Bruce W. Hollis and Carol L. Wagner, Medical University of South Carolina, recently completed a randomized controlled trial vitamin D supplementation for pregnant and nursing women and found that even 2000 IU/day was inadequate, and that there were no adverse effects with 6000 IU/day. For the text of a Vitamin D Scientists' Call to Action, please go to http://www.grassrootshealth.net .

Bentonite Clay - Healing with Mother Earth

Bentonite Clay - Healing with Mother Earth

Because mercury and many other dangerous chemicals like lead and halogenated hydrocarbons (halocarbons) are now everywhere we live and breathe, it is virtually impossible for humans to avoid exposure to a growing list of pollutants that are now blending together and contaminating our blood streams and cells. We now need safe and effective detoxification protocols and/or chelation protocols to help us eliminate these toxic burdens.

The use of bentonite clay both for internal and external applications uses natural materials so pure they yield health benefits without the dangerous side effects of most medicines.

There is nothing that has a stronger pulling power on the toxins and impurities in the body then bentonite clay has. When you are stung by a scorpion or a wasp - wet bentonite clay will work quickly to draw the venom out. You can use bentonite clay packs on your eyes as you sleep to bring soothing relief to the stress caused by cataracts.

If you suffer from gingivitis, toothaches or any other infection or decay in the mouth - putting moistened bentonite clay into your mouth for an hour each day for four days will not only relieve the pain but the infection will also be drawn out by the clay.

Healing clays including bentonite clays have been used by man before recorded history, and these healing clays still provide us with safe, inexpensive and effective healing today. On every continent there are people who eat healing clays. "The Native Americans call it "Ee-Wah-Kee" meaning "The-Mud-That-Heals". Parrots, cattle, rats, elephants and chimpanzees also ingest healing clays.

Bentonite clay maintains its molecular integrity; it does not break down and assimilate into the body. It maintains a molecular whole as it passes through the body acting like a vacuum cleaner or sponge carrying poisons out of the body. Since clay is not digested and assimilated as it passes through the alimentary canal, the clay and the absorbed positively charged ions are both eliminated together. It also pulls toxins through the skin when applied topically in clay baths.

Bentonite clay's immediate internal action upon the body is directly on the digestive channel. This involves the clay actually binding with the toxic substances and removing them from the body with the stool. It performs this job with every kind of toxin including those that occur naturally as by-products of the body's own health processes, such as metabolic toxins.

Bentonite clay assists the body's eliminatory process by acting as a bulking agent, similar to psyllium fiber, sweeping out the old matter that doesn't need to be there. It is not digested in the same manner as food as it passes through the alimentary canal. Instead, it stimulates intestinal peristalsis, the muscular contractions that move food and stool through the bowels. The clay and the adsorbed toxins are both eliminated together. This keeps the dangerous toxins from being reabsorbed into the bloodstream.

Many naturopaths recommend ingesting bentonite clay on a daily basis to maintain optimal health. Generally, it is suggested that one to two teaspoons of clay mixed in water be taken daily. It is recommended to take the clay on an empty stomach first thing in the morning for best results. If you cannot take it first thing in the morning, at least make sure that it is in on empty stomach. If you're taking any medication, it is recommended to wait 1-3 hours before ingesting clay, but please check with your physician, as medications vary in time release and content.

Monsanto's Roundup-Ready crops increasing herbicide use.

Monsanto's Roundup-Ready crops increasing herbicide use
By Dennis Keeney, Think Forward
November 02, 2010

In 2003, at an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) conference in Indianapolis, I presented a paper entitled "GMO's and IPM: are they compatible?" One focus of the discussion centered on the question of whether GMO's will increase or decrease pesticide use over time. I, and others - especially Chuck Benbrook - predicted that over time pesticide use will actually increase as pest resistance develops. I also covered this issue recently in a previous Think Forward blog.

The broad-spectrum herbicide glyphosate (Roundup, until recently manufactured exclusively by Monsanto), when used with corn or soybeans containing a transgenic gene resistant to the effects of the herbicide has provided excellent control of both grass and broadleaved weeds. This permitted more use of no-till and narrow row farming, and increased the acreage that can be managed per farm unit. Thus, it has indirectly contributed to yield and to profits. In short, it has been a major contributor to large-scale industrial agriculture that has decimated the countryside. As Andrew Wargo III, president of the Arkansas Association of Conservation Districts, states in a New York Times article, "It (Roundup) is the single largest threat to production agriculture that we have ever seen."

Chuck Benbrook estimates that it takes about 12-15 years to develop resistance to a pharmaceutical in a general population, which fits the time frame that is occurring for Roundup-resistant weeds (Roundup-Ready soybean was first introduced in 1996). Dr. Mike Owen, the Extension Weed Scientist at Iowa State University, calls this "Darwinian evolution fast forwarded." Owen, in a "Stewardship Tips" fact sheet from ISU Extension, recommended timely weed control, knowing the weed issues in the field, using a pre-followed post herbicide system to control weeds and using full labeled rates of glyphosate. These recommendations were in general ignored. Many publications have been available over the years giving the facts behind the occurrence of resistance. Yet now Roundup resistance is a big problem and growing bigger.

Why? Basically it was overused and poorly managed.

Benbrook wrote "glyphosate herbicide and genetically engineered corn, soybeans and cotton (are) the most stunning and profitable market success story in the history of the pesticide and seed industry." Dr. Owen points out that while it is logical to blame GMO crops, the real blame lies with the cropping and weed control system that has come out of the Roundup-Ready marketing and promotion efforts, coupled with the convenience and simplicity of the Roundup-based systems. He also faults the aggressive marketing by industry that downplayed the risks involved. And after going off patent, glyphosate prices dropped, encouraging farmers to increase herbicide rates to kill the more resistant weeds. Of course, this only encouraged the weeds to fight back with increased resistance. It has becoming a losing arms race, or what Willard Cochrane called - years ago - the "Technology Treadmill." Chemical companies are delighted with the new business opportunities; now they can revive old chemistry.

The most persistant problems have been seen in only a few weed species. Among these are pigweed (Palmer amaranth), horseweed and giant ragweed. Even though only about 7 to 10 million acres are currently impacted, resistant weeds will spread rapidly as forces such as birds, dirty combines and wind and soil erosion spread resistant weed seeds from field to field.

While Monsanto spent precious years in denial, it now recognizes the problem and realizes that if the effectiveness of glyphosate is diminished, farmers will be reluctant to pay the premium for Roundup-Ready seeds. Recently, Monsanto became aggressive, actually subsidizing the use of alternate herbicides that control the Roundup-resistant weeds in cotton, where the problem first surfaced and is the most severe. In 2010, they began paying farmers to use these alternatives as well as developing crops that have resistance to other herbicides.

The herbicide subsidy program by Monsanto has been extended in 2011 to corn and soybeans. This is admittedly an effort to extend the use of glyphosate, but also likely has a financial return because Monsanto is forming partnerships with chemical companies such as Sumitomo Chemical and Valent that produce the alternatives. Valor, a herbicide made by Monsanto, has also been approved but it is a very toxic herbicide. Warrant is another subsidized herbicide (made by Monsanto) which is particularly effective for pigweed control in soybean.

Of course, these subsidy programs fall back into the old pattern; the overuse of glyphosate has lead to the use of more herbicides and these are more toxic. And while Monsanto and other companies are racing to develop crops resistant to alternate herbicides, no silver bullet has emerged. While farmers might think a new magic herbicide-GMO combination is in the works, it is not likely.

Still with the high and rising demand for soybeans worldwide (The October 28, 2010 Chicago Board of Trade Price was $12.25) growers will be looking for all the ways possible to maintain their current soybean production systems. Industry will benefit but farmers will be paying higher input costs.

As long as the free market reigns supreme and corporations control agriculture's destiny, there will be no way to halt the development of even more pest resistance and more dominance by the chemical/seed industry. Will the loss of the ability to control weeds cripple agriculture's economy? Some think so. And they may be right. Remember, Bt insect control through GMOs has greatly expanded recently. The clock is ticking.

http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/blog/iatp/monsantos-roundup-ready-crops-increasing-herbicide-use