Category: Recommended

Healthy teenagers have been hospitalized,1 and at least one death in a teen has been reported,2 following experimental COVID-19 vaccinations being distributed under an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) granted to vaccine manufacturers by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The adverse events are especially tragic since COVID-19 has a 99.997% survival rate among children and teens,3 making the necessity of vaccination highly questionable.

One of the risks of receiving an experimental medical procedure like a COVID-19 vaccine is that each person who participates is part of the experiment. Unexpected adverse reactions can and do occur, even with vaccines that have been in use for decades.

Often, the reactions may be mild, including symptoms such as headaches, muscle pain, chills and fever, but in other cases, the reactions may be severe, debilitating and even deadly.

As of April 30, 2021, 3,837 reports of death were submitted to the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).4 Past investigations have shown only between 1%5 and 10%6 of adverse reactions are ever reported to VAERS, which is a passive, voluntary reporting system, so the actual number could be much higher. One study funded by the U.S. government and published in 2011 found that less than 1% of vaccine adverse events are ever reported to VAERS.7

After Shot, Healthy Teen Develops Blood Clots in the Brain

April 21, 2021, 17-year-old Everest Romney of Draper, Utah, received a COVID-19 vaccine. The next day, his neck became swollen and he developed severe headaches, which persisted for days. “He could not move his neck without the assistance of his hands,” his mother, Cherie Romney, told ABC 4 News.8

Everest’s pediatrician initially said the neck symptoms were due to a pulled muscle, but Everest also developed a fever, prompting his mother to push for answers.

The pediatrician prescribed antibiotics and a neck brace, suggesting it may be due to an injury from the basketball Everest plays, but Cherie pushed for a CT scan after migraines continued for more than a week, which revealed two blood clots in his brain and a third on the outside of his brain.

After spending time in the intensive care unit, Everest was discharged but swelling persisted in his eyes and they’re not sure what the future will bring. “The hardest thing was I let him get that shot. And he was healthy and well before,” Cherie said. “But you question it, you can’t help but question it when it all goes wrong … It was pretty awful.”9

18-Year-Old Hospitalized With Blood Clots After COVID Shot

Emma Burkey, an 18-year-old from the Las Vegas area, also developed blood clots in her brain following a COVID-19 vaccine. She received the Johnson & Johnson/Janssen vaccine March 20, 2021, and was put into a medically induced coma within two weeks due to seizures and blood clots in her brain.

She is making a recovery in a rehabilitation center, but Bret Johnson, Burkey’s minister who was asked to act as spokesman, told Fortune, “We don’t know what’s going to happen with Emma, how long it will it take for her to return to a normal life.”10

April 13, 2021, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced it would pause the use of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine in the U.S. following reports of six cases of rare and severe blood clots called cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) combined with low blood platelet levels (thrombocytopenia). One death was reported as a result.11

Together, the condition is known as thrombosis-thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS). At least nine more cases were reported to VAERS between April 13 and April 23, 2021, all in women between the ages of 18 and 59.12

The experimental Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine uses a human adenovirus vector to deliver double-stranded DNA for the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein into cells, similar to the AstraZeneca/Oxford University experimental COVID-19 vaccine, which uses a chimpanzee adenovirus vector.13

May 10, 2021, an expert panel in Norway recommended that both AstraZeneca’s and Johnson & Johnson’s COVID vaccines be dropped from the country’s vaccination campaign due to the risk of blood clots.14

Denmark has also rejected Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine for the same reason,15 while in the U.S. the FDA and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) lifted the pause on the shot and recommended use of the vaccine should resume, stating, “At this time, the available data suggest that the chance of TTS occurring is very low, but the FDA and CDC will remain vigilant in continuing to investigate this risk.”16

However, they did add a warning of the risk in their “Fact Sheet for Recipients and Caregivers,” which states:17

“Blood clots involving blood vessels in the brain, abdomen, and legs along with low levels of platelets (blood cells that help your body stop bleeding), have occurred in some people who have received the Janssen [Johnson & Johnson] COVID-19 Vaccine. In people who developed these blood clots and low levels of platelets, symptoms began approximately one to two-weeks following vaccination.

Most people who developed these blood clots and low levels of platelets were females ages 18 through 49 years. The chance of having this occur is remote. You should seek medical attention right away if you have any of the following symptoms after receiving Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine:

Shortness of breath
Chest pain
Leg swelling
Persistent abdominal pain
Severe or persistent headaches or blurred vision
Easy bruising or tiny blood spots under the skin beyond the site of the injection

These may not be all the possible side effects of the Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine. Serious and unexpected effects may occur.”

COVID Vaccine-Related Death of Teen Reported to VAERS

Another devastating report in VAERS states that a 15-year-old boy from Colorado, with no preexisting conditions or allergies, died from cardiac failure two days after receiving Pfizer’s experimental mRNA COVID-19 vaccine.18

In an interview with Yahoo News, Tom Shimabukuro, deputy director of the Immunization Safety Office at the CDC, was quick to brush off the report, stating:19

“Anyone can make a report, and the information is not verified. If classified as serious, the CDC follows up to get medical records. Some of these reports might be true adverse reactions that are caused by the vaccine, and some of these reports are coincidental health events and not related to the vaccine at all … The benefits of vaccination far outweigh any risks from vaccination.”

At least five deaths have been reported to VAERS following COVID-19 vaccination in the 6- to 17-year-old category.20 Thirteen additional reports of life-threatening injury or permanent disability have also been reported in this age group.21 Despite the unknown and potentially deadly risks, COVID-19 vaccines are being tested on children as young as 6 months old.22

Researchers at Yale School of Medicine are leading Moderna’s clinical trial of a COVID vaccine for children 6 months to 12 years old, which is being conducted on 6,750 children at 90 sites in the U.S. and Canada. But as noted by Dr. Inci Yildirim, associate professor of pediatrics (infectious diseases) at Yale School of Medicine:23

“A clinical trial for a children’s COVID-19 vaccine requires the consideration of many additional factors. Children are not little adults. As children grow and develop, their immune system grows and develops. A 16-month-old is not the same as a 16-year-old. They are both children, but their capacity to respond to the vaccines is not the same.”

Victims Looking for Help With Medical Bills, Unlikely to Get It

Burkey, the teen who ended up in an induced coma after vaccination due to blood clots and seizures, has medical bills of $513,000, and that’s just the first round.24 In the U.S., COVID-19 vaccine makers already have something of a “free pass” when it comes to vaccine injury liability and lawsuits under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act, passed in 2005 and amended in 2020.25

In 1986, the U.S. Congress created a federal no-fault vaccine injury compensation program (VICP) as an administrative alternative to a lawsuit for injuries and deaths caused by vaccines recommended by the CDC for children in the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act.26

Over a period of 30 years, that law was weakened with congressional amendments and federal agency rulemaking, as well as a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2011 that effectively removed all liability from vaccine manufacturers.

Contested vaccine injury claims filed under the 1986 Act are adjudicated by special masters in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington, D.C., and there is a trust fund out of which claims are paid, sparing insurance companies representing vaccine makers and vaccine providers from costly payouts for vaccine injuries and deaths.27 Only injury claims for vaccines routinely recommended by the CDC may be heard in this “vaccine court” created in the 1986 Act.

However, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims will not be involved in ruling in contested COVID-19 vaccine injury claims. The previously mentioned PREP Act, which was passed by Congress in 2005 and amended in 2020 with plenty of pharmaceutical industry influence, will separately deal with COVID-19 vaccine injury claims routed through the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program. As noted by Fortune:28

“The Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program, run by an obscure office within the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, covers medical costs and lost wages not paid by insurance. Some 445 claims had been filed as of April 26 for adverse reactions to either vaccines or treatments, according to the Health Resources and Services Administration [HRSA], which runs the program.”

Of these 445 COVID-19 related claims, about one-quarter are linked to vaccines, and so far no payouts have been received. While HRSA stated that no claims have been compensated because they don’t have all of the required information, the program has a notoriously low rate of compensation.

In the last decade, only 39 of nearly 500 claims filed under the PREP Act have received federal compensation, most often from reactions caused by the H1N1 vaccine.29 The bottom line, sadly, is this, as noted by Barbara Loe Fisher of the National Vaccine Information Center:

“Already wealthy drug companies were given at least $9 billion from the government to develop experimental COVID vaccines in record breaking time,30 shaving five to 10 years off the normal vaccine development, testing and licensing process.31,32

But that wasn’t enough. Congress also handed companies a liability shield from lawsuits whenever the product government paid them to produce fails to work as advertised or a person is hurt by using it.33

If you or a loved one dies or is permanently injured by an experimental or soon-to-be FDA licensed COVID vaccine, you cannot sue the drug company who made it, even if there is evidence the company could have made it less reactive or more effective.”
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/05/18/teens-severe-reactions-to-covid-vaccine.aspx

Type 2 diabetes is a metabolic condition that is affected by several factors, including the foods you eat and the amount of exercise you get. There are several significant consequences of Type 2 diabetes, including neuropathy, loss of sight, kidney disease and heart disease.1 Recent data2 show people who eat sardines may lower their risk of Type 2 diabetes.

Risk factors for Type 2 diabetes3 include being overweight, having a family member with Type 2 diabetes, being physically inactive and having been diagnosed with gestational diabetes (diabetes during pregnancy).

People with metabolic syndrome also have a higher risk of being diagnosed with diabetes. You may be diagnosed with metabolic syndrome if you have three of the five health conditions associated with the syndrome.4 These include high blood sugar, high blood pressure, high triglycerides, low levels of high-density lipoproteins (HDL) or a large waist circumference.

Prediabetes is a condition in which your blood sugar level is too high, but not high enough for Type 2 diabetes.5 Nearly 88 million adults in the U.S. have prediabetes, and a vast majority of those do not know they have it. Prediabetes also increases your risk of heart disease and stroke.

According to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases,6 there are an estimated 34.2 million people in the U.S. with diabetes. This is 10.5% of the population. Nearly 7.3 million of those do not know they have diabetes. You may help reduce your potential risk of developing this condition by making dietary and exercise changes.

Two Sardines a Day May Keep Diabetes at Bay

One simple dietary change that may have a positive impact on your risk for diabetes may be adding sardines to your daily regimen. According to a 2021 study published in Clinical Nutrition,7 eating sardines consistently may have a protective effect against developing Type 2 diabetes.

The researchers enrolled 152 people who had a diagnosis of prediabetes and were at least 65 years old.8 In this study, they defined pre-diabetes as glucose levels between 100 and 124 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL). The whole group was placed on a nutritional program to help reduce the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes.

They were then randomized into a control group and an intervention group, members of which consumed approximately two cans of sardines in olive oil each week. The participants were given instructions to eat the entire sardine without removing the bones and were given a list of recipes.

At the end of the year-long intervention, the researchers compared the risk of developing diabetes from the beginning of the study and the end of the study. In the control group, 27% were at high risk of developing Type 2 diabetes at the start of the study, which dropped to 22% at the end of one year with nutritional changes.9

However, in the sardine group, 37% were at high risk of developing Type 2 diabetes before the intervention began. At the end of one year, this dropped to 8%. The researchers also found there were other measurable parameters that improved in the group that consumed sardines each week.

These included a reduction in insulin resistance, a rise in HDL cholesterol and an increase in adiponectin, a hormone that accelerates the breakdown of glucose. They also measured a decrease in blood pressure and triglycerides.10

The study’s lead researcher believes sardines should be recommended as a food as opposed to separating the nutritional benefits from the fatty fish, which are rich in omega-3 fatty acids, calcium, vitamin D and taurine. She said:11

“Not only are sardines reasonably priced and easy to find, but they are safe and help to prevent the onset of Type 2 diabetes. It is easy to recommend this food during medical check-ups, and it is widely accepted by the population.

As we get older, restrictive diets (in terms of calories for food groups) can help to prevent the onset of diabetes … the results lead us to believe that we could obtain an equally significant preventive effect in the younger population.”

Sardines Are High in Omega-3 Fat

Sardines are a fatty fish, high in omega-3 fatty acids. After the data analysis, researchers stated they plan to study how sardines may affect the gut microbiome.12 Eating a diet high in omega-3 fats has demonstrated a protective effect on other health markers as well.

The rise in chronic inflammatory diseases in the past decades is likely associated with the introduction and current ubiquitous use of vegetable oils and processed foods high in omega-6 fatty acids.13 Although omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids are essential for good health, a correct balance is required to be your healthiest.14

Many people consume far too many omega-6 fatty acids found in everything from french fries to frozen meals and salad dressings. Ideally, you want to maintain a ratio of 4-to-1 of omega-6 and omega-3 fats or less.15 Yet, this can be nearly impossible if you are regularly eating processed foods or restaurant fare.

In my view, one of the most hazardous fats in the human diet is omega-6 linoleic acid (LA). Processed vegetable oils are a primary source of LA, but animal foods such as chicken from concentrated animal feeding operations and farmed salmon also have a high amount thanks to the food they are fed, which is high in LA-rich grains.

As I discuss in “Why You Need More Omega-3,” there is evidence to suggest that an excessive amount of LA plays a role in many chronic diseases. Omega-3 fats are found in both plants and marine animals. However, they are different types of omega-3 and they are not interchangeable.16

Plant-based omega-3 fats are found in walnuts, leafy green vegetables, flaxseed and chia seeds.17 They contain short-chain alpha linoleic acid (ALA) and do not have the long chain docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) found in marine animal-based omega-3.

Although ALA is a precursor to EPA and DHA, it requires an enzyme to convert. In most people, the conversion rate is exceptionally small, typically less than 1%.18 While the small amount of ALA you may eat is converted into the long-chain omega-3 fats your body requires, the process is highly inefficient and cannot supply nearly as much as consuming marine-based omega-3 fats high in DHA and EPA.

It is also important to carefully select your fish since only cold-water fatty fish have high levels of omega-3. Some examples include wild-caught Alaskan salmon, sardines, anchovies, mackerel and herring. It’s best to avoid farmed fish altogether for three reasons: first, because there’s an exaggerated potential for contamination;19 second, most farms feed the fish genetically engineered corn and soy;20 and third, the omega-6 fats fed to these fish are about 90% dangerous LA fat.

In other words, consuming these fish does not correct a high omega-6 to omega-3 ratio. In fact it contributes to it, since farmed salmon have only half the omega-3 of wild salmon21,22 and more than 5.5 times the amount of omega-6.23,24

Omega-3 Protects Your Lungs and Mitochondria

In addition to a protective effect against diabetes, omega-3 fatty acids help to protect your lungs and mitochondria. Researchers followed first responders after the September 11, 2001, attack on the Twin Towers in New York25 during which firefighters and paramedics were exposed to 10 million tons of caustic material released as the towers were reduced to rubble.26

Researchers from New York University School of Medicine undertook an analysis to determine if there were indications that some first responders may have had a greater risk than others of respiratory problems that occurred after exposure.

They measured metabolites,27 which are a natural byproduct of the breakdown of fat, protein and carbohydrates, and found there were 30 specific metabolites in first responders who had a lower incidence of obstructive airway disease. They also found those with lower levels of the metabolites had a higher risk of developing pulmonary disease.

One group of metabolites associated with a lower risk of lung injury were lipids.28 The researchers found that EPA in particular acts as a precursor for reducing inflammatory response and immune response to any injury and may have helped reduce the damage in first responders triggered by exposure to toxins.29

Another study in children living in Baltimore City30 also found evidence those who ate more foods with omega-3 had a lower asthmatic response to particulate matter pollution than children with lower levels of omega-3s. Conversely, children with higher levels of omega-6 had a higher percentage of neutrophils in response to pollution, which is a white blood cell marker of inflammation.

Your omega-3 levels may also affect mitochondrial function.31 Some of the more profound effects of mitochondrial disease are evident in the brain and muscle, including the heart. Your mitochondria are important in energy production and calcium signaling, as well as apoptosis and autophagy.

One animal study demonstrated there was a positive effect on mitochondrial function and neuroprotection with the administration of omega-3 fats.32 Another lab study showed omega-3 fat exposure to cells induced metabolic rate, thus increasing mitochondrial content in comparison to control cells.33

One of the signs of advancing age is remodeling of the cell membranes in the heart.34 An impact from this remodeling is mitochondrial function, which plays a role in sustaining energy production. Changes in the mitochondrial membrane are exacerbated by the presence of omega-6, but increasing omega-3 fat can help affect aging and facilitate mitochondrial energy production.

Your Omega-3 Index May Predict Mortality

A deficiency in EPA and DHA can leave you vulnerable to chronic disease. Optimizing your omega-3 levels is a foundational component to good health. However, there is no good way to know your omega-3 level without getting an Omega-3 Index test.

Your target Omega-3 Index is 8%.35 This is the typical level of people living in Japan where you’ll find the lowest rate of sudden heart death in the world. The highest risk is in people whose Index is 4% or lower. At this point there is no evidence to suggest the measurement is different for men, women or for different ages.

One study,36 published in January 2021, evaluated 100 individuals’ Omega-3 Index and compared them against their COVID-19 outcomes. The primary outcome measurement was death. When the overall data were analyzed, the researchers found only one death in the group with the highest quartile of Omega-3 Index.

The research data also confirmed past results that demonstrated the average person in the U.S. has an Omega-3 Index near 5%,37 which is well below the measurement that has demonstrated protective effects on overall mortality.38 The data from this group showed an average index of 5.09% and a median of 4.75%.39

One study40 published in 2018 confirmed omega-3 fat can reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease, coronary heart disease and all-cause mortality. The researchers measured Omega-3 Index in 2,500 participants and found those in the highest quintile had a total mortality 34% lower than those in the lowest quintile.

The Many Benefits of Omega-3 Fats

In addition to protecting your heart, lungs and mitochondria, omega-3 fats have more health benefits, including:

Reducing inflammation — This can be helpful for those with rheumatoid arthritis by reducing stiffness and pain.41 Women who suffer from menstrual pain may also experience milder pain.42,43

Optimizing muscle growth and bone strength — Omega-3 fats help your body build healthy muscle mass, including in people suffering from cancer who may experience cachexia.44 They can also help improve your bone strength by improving the utilization of calcium in your body. This may lead to a reduction in the development of osteoporosis.45

Improving metabolic syndrome46 and insulin resistance.47

Improving mental health and behavior — Evidence shows benefits for children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), including reduced aggression, hyperactivity,48 impulsivity,49 oppositional behavior50 and restlessness.51

Omega-3 is associated with lowered risk for other neurological/cognitive dysfunction as well, including memory loss, brain aging, learning disorders and ADHD,52 autism and dyslexia.53

Protecting your vision — DHA is a major structural element in your eyes and brain.54 Low levels of DHA may increase your risk for age-related macular degeneration.55

Reducing your risk of kidney disease56 and colon cancer.57

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/05/17/sardines-and-diabetes.aspx

1 Which of the following is an accurate description of utilitarianism?

Utilitarianism is a social system where everyone is treated equally

Utilitarianism is built on the principle of equity, where everyone ends up in the same place, regardless of opportunity

Utilitarianism is based on a mathematical equation that some individuals can be sacrificed for the greater good of the majority

Utilitarianism, which is now being increasingly promoted, is a discredited pseudo-ethic that has repeatedly been used to justify horrific human rights abuses. It is based on a mathematical equation that some individuals can be sacrificed for the greater good of the majority. Learn more.

Utilitarianism is a health care system where people’s access to care is based on their ability to recover

2 Which of the following is part of the climate agenda?

Forcing conventional ranchers to transition into regenerative farming

Encouraging people to use less energy by lowering prices on electric cars and solar panels

Providing everyone with free energy from solar panels and wind turbines

Forcing people to cut or eliminate beef consumption

Forcing people to cut or eliminate beef consumption is part of the climate agenda. Gates spells this out in his book, and the EAT Forum, which collaborates with nearly 40 governments around the world to transform the food system, works closely with imitation meat companies, including Impossible Foods. Learn more.

3 The CDC recently lowered the PCR cycle threshold from 40 to 28. Why?

To minimize false positives in people who have received the COVID-19 vaccine, thereby minimizing the recorded number of vaccine failures

Now, as nearly 100 million Americans have been vaccinated against COVID-19 and the CDC is starting to monitor vaccine failure, they’re trying to minimize the recorded number of breakthrough cases by lowering the CT, which will minimize the number of false positives. Learn more.

To increase false positive rates and catch potential signs of vaccine failure

To fraudulently minimize the number of COVID-19 cases among unvaccinated people
To increase false negative rates and fraudulently make it look like the pandemic is over

4 WHO was created to end human suffering and save lives, but instead it’s been:

Praised for its role in helping the environment

Infiltrated by industry from the very start

It appeared to be a promising start, intended to end human suffering and save lives but, according to Robert Parsons, a journalist based in Geneva, Switzerland, where the WHO headquarters are based, “It was infiltrated by industry from the very start.” Learn more.

Unfairly ridiculed over minor mishaps

An exemplary model of economics

5 The Great Reset is about:

Dividing the world’s wealth equitably and evenly

Ensuring environmental sustainability by transitioning into all-organic farming and other proactive strategies

Transferring global wealth and ownership rights to the technocratic elite, and giving them the power to control the world’s nations

The Great Reset is about transferring global wealth and ownership rights to the technocratic elite, and giving them the power to control the world’s nations. Digital vaccine passports will form the foundation of an unprecedented surveillance and control platform upon which the success of the Great Reset may depend. Learn more.

Making everyone currently alive immortal

6 A key part of staying healthy is to avoid linoleic acid, which is linked to chronic degenerative disease. To do so, you’ll need to:

Eat a strictly plant-based diet

Drink lemon water before your meals

Wear a mask while outdoors

Eliminate processed foods from your diet

To avoid LA, which is linked to chronic degenerative disease, you need to avoid all vegetable oils and eliminate virtually all processed foods and restaurant foods from your diet. Learn more.

 
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/05/17/week-182-health-quiz.aspx

In previous articles, I’ve discussed the central role false advertising played in the creation of the opioid crisis.1
To recap, a single paragraph in a 1980 letter to the editor2,3 (not a study) in The New England Journal of Medicine — which stated that narcotic addiction in patients with no history of addiction was very rare — became the basis of a drug marketing campaign that has since led to the death of hundreds of thousands of people, or four times the number of Americans killed in Vietnam.
Between September 2019 and September 2020 alone, opioid overdoses killed a staggering 87,000 Americans — a new record-high.4
Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, used this letter to the editor as the basis for its claim that opioid addiction affects fewer than 1% of patients treated with the drugs. In reality, opioids have a very high rate of addiction, have not been proven effective for long-term use5 and, in fact, fail to control moderate to severe pain any better than over-the-counter pain relievers.6
Various court cases have demonstrated how Purdue systematically misled doctors about OxyContin’s addictiveness to drive up sales, resulting in an avalanche of opioid addiction and subsequent deaths.7
Unethical to the core, Purdue also cashed in on the addiction trend it manufactured by secretly founding Rhodes Pharma to manufacture generic opioids,8 and getting into the business of creating overdose treatments.9,10
Facing an estimated 2,600 lawsuits11,12 relating to its role in the opioid epidemic, Purdue filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in September 2019,13 as a way to avoid litigation losses. Just over a year later they pleaded guilty to three federal criminal charges, including violating a federal anti-kickback law, conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government and violating the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act.14,15
The company agreed to pay $8.3 billion in fines, forfeiture of past profits and civil liability payments to settle the charges,16 but short on cash — having transferred more than $10 billion of the company’s funds into family trusts and offshore accounts17 — the company was dissolved and its remaining assets used to erect a “public benefit company” owned and controlled by the U.S. government.18 Future earnings will supposedly be used to combat the opioid crisis.
Purdue’s PR Company Sued for Deceptive Marketing

While Purdue’s owners, the Sackler family, got off scot-free, states struggling with the exorbitant cost of opioid addiction aren’t ready to bury the hatchet just yet. Instead, some are going after the PR firm Purdue hired to run their deceptive marketing campaigns.
As it turns out, that PR firm is none other than Publicis, a partner of the World Economic Forum, which is leading the call for a Great Reset. As detailed in “The Web of Players Trying to Silence Truth,” Publicis appears to be coordinating the global effort to suppress information that runs counter to the technocratic narrative about COVID-19, its origin, prevention and treatment — suppression and censorship that has been repeatedly aimed at this website specifically.
At the beginning of May 2021, the Massachusetts attorney general filed a lawsuit19 against Publicis Health, accusing the Publicis subsidiary of helping Purdue create the deceptive marketing materials used to mislead doctors into prescribing OxyContin.20,21,22,23 As reported by Yahoo! News:24

“The lawsuit alleges that Publicis ‘engaged in myriad unfair and deceptive strategies that influenced OxyContin prescribing across the nation,’ a statement by Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey’s office said. Those strategies were carried out through dozens of contracts between 2010 and 2019, worth more than $50 million …

Tactics included combatting doctors’ ‘hesitancy’ to prescribe the medication, and persuading them to prescribe OxyContin over lower-dose, short-acting opioids, thus increasing the risk of addiction. Massachusetts is asking that Publicis Health pay ‘compensatory damages’ of an unspecified amount for having ‘created a public nuisance.’”

Publicis Knowingly Promoted Over-Prescription

Publicis Health argues that its work for Purdue was entirely lawful and limited to “implementing Purdue’s advertising plan and buying media space.” Publicis also claims the specific activities listed in the lawsuit fall outside the statute of limitations.
Some of those activities included placing illegal advertisements for OxyContin in the electronic medical records of patients, creating training materials for Purdue sales reps on how to combat doctor’s objections to the drugs, developing strategies to counter opioid guidelines issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and creating “patient stories” to “humanize” the OxyContin brand and counter negative press about addiction risks.25,26
According to the lawsuit, one patient vignette featured a 40-year-old man who had his dose increased from 10 milligrams a day to 20 mg in just three weeks. It also claims Publicis was responsible for creating and sending thousands of deceptive emails to doctors, encouraging them to not only increase patients’ dosages but also to prescribe the drug to patients who were already on less dangerous pain meds.27
By design, Publicis’s schemes worked to counter public health measures intended to reduce unnecessary opioid use, because more opioid use generated more profits for Publicis’s opioid clients.
Publicis also instructed Purdue to target doctors who were already writing out dangerously high numbers of prescriptions, even in the midst of a raging opioid epidemic,28 all while agency executives gleefully discussed the record fees they’d collect from the Purdue account. A March 2016 email exchange reveals the Publicis subsidiary was expecting to make up to $12.28 million from Purdue that year alone.
Publicis Also Represented Addiction Center

According to the complaint:29

“Publicis helped create a public nuisance of opioid use disorder, overdose, and death. By design, Publicis’s schemes worked to counter public health measures intended to reduce unnecessary opioid use, because more opioid use generated more profits for Publicis’s opioid clients.”

Like Purdue, Publicis also cashed in on the opioid addiction it helped create by pitching its services to organizations working to end addiction. As reported by Forbes,30 the agency “won the account to work on drugfree.org after touting how it’s been ‘immersed in the evolving national opioid medication dialogue going on between pharma companies, the government and FDA, and the public via inside access as a trusted and informed consulting partner.’”
In an interview cited by Courthouse News, Amanda Pustilnik, a senior fellow on law and applied neuroscience at Harvard Law School who also teaches at the Center for Law, Brain & Behavior at Massachusetts General Hospital, noted that:31

“The story of the opioid epidemic is often misrepresented as a story of irresponsible patients and over-prescribing doctors. This prosecution gets at the heart of the matter.

Patients and doctors were not, on average, irresponsible. They acted under the influence of a concerted plan of misinformation and over-promotion orchestrated up and down the supply chain for these medications.”

Publicis Admits Role in Censorship Push
As mentioned earlier, Publicis appears to be playing an important role in the global censorship of information relating to COVID-19, and Publicis Health admitted its involvement in this agenda as recently as April 27, 2021. In a tweet,32 the agency announced its partnership with NewsGuard, “to fight the ‘infodemic’ of misinformation about COVID-19 and its vaccines.”
In short, Publicis Health is dedicated to suppressing any information that hurts its Big Pharma clients, which include Lilly, Abbot, Roche, Amgen, Genentech, Celgene, Gilead, Biogen, AstraZeneca, Sanofi, GlaxoSmithKline and Bayer, just to name a few.
Publicis is more than a partner with NewsGuard, however. NewsGuard actually received a large chunk of its startup capital from Publicis, as detailed in “New Thought Police NewsGuard Is Owned by Big Pharma.” NewsGuard, a self-proclaimed arbiter of truth, rates websites on criteria of “credibility” and “transparency,” ostensibly to guide viewers to the most reliable sources of news and information.
In reality, however, NewsGuard ends up acting as a gate keeper with a mission to barricade unpopular truth and differences of opinion behind closed gates. Its clearly biased ranking system easily dissuades people from perusing information from low-rated sites, mine included.
Extensive Propaganda Network Works Against the Public
As detailed in “The Web of Players Trying to Silence Truth” (hyperlinked above), Publicis is part of an enormous network that includes international drug companies, fact checkers and credibility raters like NewsGuard, Google and other search engines, Microsoft, antivirus software companies like Trend Micro, public libraries, schools, the banking industry, the U.S. State Department and Department of Defense, the World Health Organization and the World Economic Forum.
Mind you, this is not a comprehensive review of links. It’s merely a sampling of entities to give you an idea of the breadth of connections, which when taken together explain how certain views — such as information about COVID-19 and vaccines — can be so effectively erased.
To understand the power that PR companies such as Publicis wield, you also need to realize that PR has, by and large, replaced the free press. In decades past, pro-industry advertising stood in stark contrast to the free press, which would frequently expose problems with products and industries, thereby serving as a counterbalance to industry propaganda.
When a free press with honest reporting based on verifiable facts actually does its job, ineffective or toxic products are driven off the market. All of this changed in the late 20th century, when media outlets started relying on advertisers for the bulk of their revenues.
As intended, journalists quickly came under the control of advertisers, who suddenly had the power to kill stories they didn’t like. Today, news organizations simply won’t run reports that might harm the bottom line of its advertisers and, not surprisingly, the drug industry is among the top-paying advertisers.
By further partnering with the “big guns” of media — such as the Paley Center for Media, which is composed of every major media in the world33 — Publicis and its industry clients have been able to influence and control the press to virtually eliminate your ability to get the truth on many important issues, including COVID-19.
Seeing how Publicis represents most of the major pharmaceutical companies in the world and funded the creation of NewsGuard, it’s not far-fetched to assume Publicis might influence NewsGuard’s ratings of drug industry competitors, such as alternative health sites. Being a Google partner,34,35 Publicis also has unprecedented ability to simply bury undesirable views that might hurt its clientele. 
NewsGuard’s health-related service, HealthGuard,36 is also partnered with the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) — a progressive U.K.-based cancel-culture leader37 with extensive ties to government and global think tanks that has labeled people questioning the COVID-19 vaccine as “threats to national security.”
The CCDH has also published a hit-list of 12 groups and individuals it wants Big Tech to bury, deplatform and ban for disseminating COVID-19 information that runs counter to status quo propaganda. Not surprisingly, Mercola.com is on that list, and a ramp-up of personal threats that cannot be defended against in a court of law recently forced me to delete many of the articles discussing alternative treatments for COVID-19 from my website.
The Crime of the Century
If you get the chance, I recommend watching Alex Gibney’s HBO documentary “The Crime of the Century,” which details how the opioid epidemic was manufactured. In a Wall Street Journal television review, John Anderson writes, in part:38

“In Mr. Gibney’s two-part ‘Crime of the Century’ … the cinema is as exhilarating as the journalism is exhaustive. Still, the style remains in service to the story: how big pharma lied and bribed its way into billions of dollars while leaving death and devastation behind, through a seemingly conscience-free crusade to sell stronger and stronger opiates to more and more people.

It’s a success story, from the industry’s point of view. It’s also a story of villainy, with a catalog of villains — not just the Sackler family of Purdue Pharma, but their sales representatives; the U.S. congressmen to whom they made outsize donations … former prosecutors hired as lobbyists … and officials of the Justice Department and the Food and Drug Administration …

‘The business of criminal cartels and pharmaceutical companies are connected,’ Mr. Gibney says in voiceover — the very obvious example being the drift to heroin by addicts thwarted by the increased expense and reduced availability of opioids. The director then goes about establishing how and why that is so.

The default argument of Purdue Pharma and its defenders is that drug users, not drug makers, are responsible for addiction. But as the miniseries points out, the information that was fed to doctors and on which patients based the use of prescriptions — including the claim that delayed-action OxyContin wasn’t addictive — was simply untrue.”

Unethical Behavior Is Par for the Course
While Publicis is trying to downplay its role in what has been described as the crime of the century, the lawsuit against it will hopefully result in a reevaluation of marketing ethics. The agency, knowing full well there was an epidemic of opioid abuse underway, resulting in tens of thousands of premature deaths each year, took on the job of increasing Purdue’s profits by making that lethal trend worse.
Publicis claims they were just doing what advertising agencies do — they created promotional materials that boost client revenue. However, this argument circumvents any notion of ethics and concern about public health. They’re basically admitting that it’s all about making money, regardless of the cost.
So, even if their actions were within legal limits (which the Massachusetts case will eventually establish), their actions were immoral and clearly undermined public health.
They now want you to believe they are protecting public health by supporting COVID-19 censorship, but this too is working against the public good. How can you possibly make an educated decision about whether or not to participate in this gene therapy experiment if you’re not allowed to hear anything about the risks?
What Publicis calls “misinformation” is simply information that contradicts the propaganda being put out by the hands that feed it, i.e., the drug industry. History tells us companies driven by profit interest make poor truth tellers, as negative information will clearly have a detrimental impact on their bottom line. So, they lie and obfuscate. It’s that simple.
Public relations firms like Publicis are mere arms of these notoriously untruthful industries. They do their bidding because that’s what they’re paid to do. To think that Big Pharma and paid propagandists are looking out for anyone but themselves is dangerously naïve.
It is ironic doublespeak that Publicis claims to defend against misinformation that puts the public at risk, while being clearly guilty of crimes against humanity, having played a crucial role in one of the deadliest health care schemes involving lies and deceit.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/05/17/publicis-health-sued-for-deceptive-opioid-marketing.aspx

Based on estimates from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) in 2005, the total prevalence of diabetes was estimated at 20.8 million people, or 7% of the population.1 This rose dramatically by 2018, when the American Diabetes Association2 reported 34.2 million people in the U.S. had diabetes. This represented 10.5% of the total population.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention3 estimates 1 in every 3 people in the U.S. has prediabetes, which numbered 88 million people in 2019. Diabetes is a metabolic condition in which your body develops insulin resistance.

Risk factors associated with Type 2 diabetes that are not modifiable include your age and family history. However, there is also a list of risk factors over which you do have some control. Some include weight, nutritional intake, high blood pressure, history of gestational diabetes, inactivity and a history of heart disease or stroke.4

Unfortunately, Type 2 diabetes is an epidemic in the U.S. Coincidentally, it is also a comorbidity that can increase your risk of contracting and even dying from COVID-19.5 Both high blood pressure and Type 2 diabetes have been implicated as underlying factors that increase your risk of serious illness with COVID. Yet, both can often be reversed by making healthy diet choices and lifestyle changes.

The nutritional choices you make are not always about what you cut out of your diet. Sometimes it is about what you add. Consider these next five herbs and spices that can help lower your blood sugar, four of which add flavor and punch to food.6

Cinnamon: The Scent of Fall

The Farmer’s Almanac calls cinnamon the “star spice of the fall season.”7 This spice has been used for thousands of years in cooking, as a fragrance and in medicine. However, it’s important to be aware that there are over 250 different species of cinnamon,8 and they’re not all created equally.

Most of the cinnamon found in the grocery store is known as Chinese cinnamon or cassia cinnamon. It tends to be less expensive and contains higher levels of coumarin. This is a powerful anticoagulant with potential carcinogenic and toxic properties.9

On the other hand, Ceylon cinnamon is less common, slightly more expensive and, importantly, has lower levels of coumarin. It is native to Southern India and Sri Lanka and claimed to be a “richer spice.”10 Cassia cinnamon is a reddish-brown color while Ceylon cinnamon is tan. While they can be used interchangeably, when used in larger amounts it is safer to use Ceylon cinnamon.

A diet high in net carbohydrates can lead to blood sugar levels higher than normal. This can progress to a condition known as prediabetes and then to Type 2 diabetes. A systematic review of literature11 evaluating the use of cinnamon in people with diabetes was unable to find sufficient evidence to support its use to lower fasting blood glucose levels or A1c.

However, the lead researcher of a study in the Journal of the Endocrine Society12 believed the issue was likely an interference between cinnamon and the medications people take to control their diabetes.13 For this reason, his group chose to focus only on people with prediabetes who were not yet taking medication.

When cinnamon supplements were given to the intervention group, they experienced improved fasting glucose levels after receiving a 500 milligram (mg) supplement of cinnamon for 12 weeks.14 Another study15 engaged 109 participants with Type 2 diabetes to measure whether cinnamon supplements plus usual care could lower patients’ hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) better than usual care alone.

The results showed those taking cinnamon had lower HbA1c by 0.83% as compared to those who underwent usual care. The researchers concluded this was statistically significant and may be useful in helping to lower HbA1c, which is a measurement of long-term blood sugar control.

A 2021 paper published in Frontiers in Plant Science16 reviewed past clinical studies using Ceylon cinnamon. Although there are no specific studies evaluating the effect it may have on the cytokine storm common in severe COVID-19, they hypothesized that “the strong anti-inflammatory properties of Ceylon cinnamon may mitigate this complication.”17

Additionally, the writers cite past research that concluded, “Our results demonstrate no significant side effects and toxicity of CZ [Cinnamomum zeylanicum], including hepatotoxicity and anti-coagulation properties.”18

A Powerful Punch From Ginger

Ginger (Zingiber officinale) is a spice commonly used in Indian and Chinese cooking; historically, the root was also used as a tonic to treat common ailments.19 Ginger is a herbaceous perennial plant with a slight biting taste that is often ground to flavor sauces, curry and ginger ale.20 The root can also be used to make tea.

The plant grows just over 2 feet high and produces a cone-like flower with yellow edges. However, it is the underground rhizome or stem that is prized for its medicinal and flavor properties. Several studies have demonstrated the effect ginger has on improving insulin sensitivity and reducing fasting plasma glucose and HbA1c.

In one study published in 2014,21 researchers enrolled 70 Type 2 diabetic patients who received either 1,600 mg of ginger or a placebo for 12 weeks. Those who received the ginger showed improved insulin sensitivity and improved some fractions of their lipid profile.

A second study in 201522 demonstrated similar results with 41 Type 2 diabetic patients who received 2 grams of ginger powder supplement per day for 12 weeks. Those getting the ginger supplement significantly reduced their HbA1c and fasting blood sugars as well as other serum measurements.

An animal study23 demonstrated ginger was effective in reducing blood sugar and reversing diabetic proteinuria. In women with gestational diabetes,24 ginger tablets lowered fasting blood sugar but did not influence their serum blood sugar measured two hours after a meal.

Compounds found in ginger are effective in reducing the inflammatory response. Several studies25 have demonstrated the antioxidant and immunomodulatory effects of ginger that may help prevent and treat several types of cancer.

These include breast, gastrointestinal26 and ovarian cancers,27 primarily by inducing apoptosis, inhibiting proliferation of cancer cells and sensitizing tumors to radiotherapy and chemotherapy.28

However, the most common and well-established use of ginger is to alleviate symptoms of nausea and vomiting. Ginger root performed as well as other drugs prescribed for seasickness in one study,29 and was more effective than a placebo in preventing postoperative nausea and vomiting in another.30

Lower Your Blood Sugar and Boost Your Brain With Rosemary

Rosemary is a fragrant, aromatic herb that’s easily grown in your backyard or as an indoor herb garden. It’s long been used as a medicinal herb that helps improve digestion and increase circulation.31

Carnosic acid is a bioactive compound found in rosemary extract that demonstrated the ability to reduce the risk of obesity and metabolic syndrome in an animal study.32 Over 12 weeks, the mice fed a dietary supplement of rosemary extract showed a significant reduction in body weight, percent of fat and improved insulin levels, among other improved metabolic measurements.

In a human trial33 using 48 adult men and women, participants were given 2 grams, 5 grams or 10 grams of rosemary leaf powder per day for four weeks. Blood samples were analyzed at the beginning and end of the study for glucose levels, lipid profile and antioxidants.

The researchers found there was a significant decrease in blood glucose levels in a dose-dependent manner, with the greatest significant difference in those given 10 grams of rosemary leaf powder per day. Total cholesterol and triglyceride levels also were lower.

An extensive review of the literature34 also documented the effects rosemary has against obesity, metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Another study35 found supplementing with rosemary had a significant effect on HbA1c and fasting blood glucose in patients with and without Type 2 diabetes.

Interestingly, rosemary also significantly improved levels of vitamin B12 in both groups. A second exciting benefit from the herb is the effect it has on improving cognition, even at lesser amounts you might use while cooking.36

Researchers from Iwate University in Japan found that carnosic acid activates a signaling pathway that protects brain cells from free radicals and is activated by the free radical damage, which means it is not active until it’s needed.37,38

Maple Scented Fenugreek Reduces Blood Sugar

Fenugreek is a plant from the peanut family. The seeds and leaves are used in cooking to flavor foods, beverages and tobacco.39 Several studies have evaluated the effects fenugreek seeds may have on fasting blood sugar. In one study,40 researchers found it had a synergistic effect with the diet to lower fasting blood sugar and HbA1c.

When evaluated in patients who used an oral hypoglycemic agent or insulin with diet and exercise to control Type 2 diabetes, the researchers found adding 10 grams of seeds soaked in hot water each day had the effect of lowering fasting blood sugar and HbA1c.

However, this effect was not noticeable until the fifth month for fasting blood sugar and the sixth month for HbA1c. Past studies had suggested the high fiber content in fenugreek led to a reduction in blood sugar, but the delayed effect in this study suggested there may be another mechanism at work.

A small study41 with 18 participants using powdered fenugreek did not demonstrate a significant change in fasting blood sugar. However, those taking the seeds soaked in hot water showed a 25% reduction in fasting blood sugar and a 30% reduction in triglycerides.

Historically, fenugreek seeds have been used to stimulate lactation. In one study,42 mothers using fenugreek increased milk output pumped each day by 2.47 ounces. Dr. Jack Newman, Canadian pediatrician, first published a prescribed protocol for women who wanted to breastfeed their adopted children.43

The Surprising Benefits of Cannabis

The surprise in this group of herbs that help manage your blood sugar is cannabis. I have written about the history of cannabis and several articles about the many benefits to your health from the phytochemicals found in cannabis. These benefits include the treatment of epilepsy, tumor growths, inflammatory bowel disease and how it may even affect those infected with COVID-19.

Another area where the phytochemicals in cannabis offer great hope is in the treatment of pain. Cannabinoids often work where pharmaceutical drugs have failed, including in the treatment of pain from cancer44 and chronic nerve pain.45 A report46 released in 2010 on 14 clinical studies using marijuana in the treatment for pain revealed that it not only controlled pain but, in many cases, did it better than pharmaceutical alternatives.

The 2018 Farm Bill47 included a section that legalized the production of hemp. This is also a source of cannabidiol (CBD) and a variety of other phytochemicals. The botanical name for hemp and marijuana is Cannabis sativa. The difference is in the amount of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) that produces the psychoactive effects. Under the Farm Bill, hemp contains less than 0.3% THC.48

Hemp and marijuana are known by the name cannabis. One published study49 evaluated data from the NHANES from 4,657 adult men and women. Marijuana use was assessed, and fasting insulin and blood sugar was measured.

The researchers found of the 579 current users and 1,975 past users, current use lowered fasting insulin levels by 16% and insulin resistance by 17%. Additionally, there was a significant link between use and a smaller waist circumference.

There is growing interest on analyzing the effect of cannabis on diabetes. Research from the American Alliance for Medical Cannabis suggested it may help with stabilizing blood sugar, preventing nerve inflammation and lowering blood pressure.50

One published study51 postulated that tetrahydrocannabivarin and cannabidiol, two non-psychoactive phytocannabinoids found in cannabis, may affect glucose metabolism in an animal model.

The results demonstrated that tetrahydrocannabivarin significantly reduced fasting plasma glucose and was well tolerated by the subjects. For more strategies to help manage your blood sugar, see these articles:

Fasting Prevents and Halts Diabetes
Tips to Avoid Diabetes
Why Intermittent Fasting Is More Effective Combined With Ketogenic Diet

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/05/14/herbs-and-spices-that-help-lower-blood-sugar.aspx

Dr. Mercola Interviews the Experts
This article is part of a weekly series in which Dr. Mercola interviews various experts on a variety of health issues. To see more expert interviews, click here.

Dr. Robert Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist and Professor Emeritus at the University of California, San Francisco, has written a number of excellent books about health. His latest, “Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine” goes deep into the details of how changes in our food supply have damaged our metabolic health. (The created term “metabolical” is actually a portmanteau of the words “metabolic” and “diabolical.”)

“I wrote it because nothing else has worked,” Lustig says. “Part of the problem is this is such a complicated issue. There are too many stakeholders and you have to find a method for making everyone happy. Until you do, you can’t solve it.
There is a way to actually solve this, [but] every stakeholder, whether it be the patient, the doctor, the food company, the insurance industry, the medical profession, Wall Street and Congress … has to understand the same thing. They all have to be working off the same set of facts. You see what happens when you don’t work off the same set of facts.
So, my job was to put all of this in one volume so that everyone had access to the same information, and then we can go from there. I lay out in the book what the argument for fixing the entire food system is, and how everyone can benefit from it, even the food industry.”

The Two Primary Keys
In summary, it boils down to two primary key issues or problems. The first is that the medical establishment doesn’t want you to know that drugs were never intended or designed to treat the foundational cause of chronic disease. They merely treat the symptoms.

“In the book, I make it very clear that modern medicine has two factions, two paradigms,” Lustig says. “One is treatment of acute disease, and for the most part, they’ve gotten it reasonably right. I was part of that system for 40 years and was comfortable within it.
But for chronic disease, Type 2 diabetes, hypertension, lipid problems, cardiovascular disease, cancer, dementia, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, polycystic ovarian disease — all of which are chronic metabolic diseases, all of which are mitochondrial diseases — we don’t have anything. We have symptomatic relief only.
So, we have LDL lowering agents — and if LDL were the problem, that would be fine — except LDL is NOT the problem. LDL is a symptom of the problem. It is a manifestation of the metabolic dysfunction. Same thing with hyperglycemia.
Same thing with hypertension. Same thing with osteoporosis. Same thing with autoimmune disease. All of these, we have symptomatic treatments. We don’t cure or reverse the disease; we just treat the symptoms. And so the disease gets worse.
The way I describe it in the book is, it’s like giving an aspirin to a patient with a brain tumor because they have a headache. It might work today, but it’s not going to solve the problem. And that’s what modern medicine is throwing at people with chronic disease, and it is, of course, breaking the bank.”

The other problem is that the food industry doesn’t want you to know that virtually all foods are intrinsically good for you until they’re processed, and processed foods make up a majority of the foods people eat.
Food is medicine, but processed food is poison, and there’s no medicine that can undo the damage of processed food. ~ Dr. Robert Lustig
As noted by Lustig:

“The point I make in the book is that just because they call it processed food, doesn’t make it food. Calling it a processed food suggests that it is a subset of food. Michael Pollan [calls it] palatable food-like substances. The fact of the matter is, processed food is poison. Food is medicine, but processed food is poison, and there’s no medicine that can undo the damage of processed food.”

Indeed, once you understand the molecular pathways, when you understand the transcription factors and the actual mechanisms of action of various diseases, and the various drugs used to treat them, you can easily see that they do not treat the underlying problem. And that’s why people don’t get well.

“What I’m trying to do in this book is to separate food from processed food and explaining that processed food is the problem, and we will not solve the health care crisis or the environmental crisis until we solve processed food,” Lustig says.

The History of Medicine
In his book, Lustig does an excellent job of presenting the history of our food and medical systems, and the various pressures that led us down the path to where we are today. For example, a significant part of why medical doctors are so clueless about health today is because Big Pharma was placed in charge of their education. The drug industry, in turn, was a distinct profit-making scheme from its inception.
In 1910, Abraham Flexner, an educator, wrote the Flexner Report, which turned out to be a turning point in terms of creating evidence-based modern medicine, while simultaneously eliminating many health-related factors, including nutrition and preventive medicine. His brother, Simon Flexner, a pathologist and pharmacist, was the first president of Rockefeller University.
One of the reasons the Flexner Report eliminated certain aspects of medicine was because John D. Rockefeller, president of Standard Oil, was also in the pharmaceutical business. He was trying to sell coal tar, a byproduct of oil refining, as a treatment for a range of ailments.
So, Rockefeller was seeking new profit avenues. “He basically said we have to get drugs and especially coal tar into the hands of physicians who can prescribe it,” Lustig says. The only way to do that was by overhauling the medical system and shifting the focus to pharmaceuticals.

“So that was the start of Big Pharma. That’s not the story they want to tell, but that is in fact the case,” Lustig says. “Same thing with dentistry. Weston Price, perhaps the most famous of all dentists, knew this back in the 1920s and ’30s and actually said that sugar was the primary driver of chronic oral disease, whether it be periodontitis or dental caries.
Everything was going in that direction until 1945 with the advent of fluoride, and then promptly everything Weston Price had developed up to that point got deep-sixed. In fact, the dentists even said that if we got rid of dental caries, how are we going to make money? So, his work was basically forgotten.
The same thing in dietetics. It turns out that Lenna Cooper, co-founder of the American Dietetic Association, back in 1917, was the apprentice of John Harvey Kellogg. She didn’t even have a dietary degree … Kellogg was very much against meat. He was a Seventh-Day Adventist, and it turned out that the American Dietetic Association adopted the entire Seventh-Day Adventist religious paradigm.
To this day, we still see it in terms of vegan diets. So, people talk about vegan diets being appropriate for health, and they can be, but they are not by any means exclusive. They also talk about it being important for environmental health to try to reduce the methane from the cows.
It turns out the cows didn’t spew methane until we started giving them antibiotics, because we killed off the good bacteria in their guts and now they have quadruple the amount of methane compared to what they did in 1968 before the animal antibiotic craze got started. So, it’s not the cows, it’s what we do to the cows. All food is inherently good. It’s what we do to the food that’s not, and that’s what I show in the book.”

The adulteration of our food can actually be traced back to around 1850. In Great Britain, the industrial revolution was a turning point where two things happened at the same time.
One, people in sweatshops worked long days and didn’t have time to cook proper meals, so they ended up eating processed biscuits laden with sugar, which had become available from other British colonies like Barbados. This undernourished them in terms of antioxidants, fatty acids and other important nutrients. The second big dietary change was canning, which exposed people to lead poisoning as the cans were made of lead.
Why You Shouldn’t Focus on Food Labels
By now, you’ve probably trained yourself diligently to read food labels. The problem is that the label will not tell you what’s been done to the food. “This is one of the reasons why nobody’s getting better because there’s nothing to learn from the label that will actually help you,” Lustig says. According to Lustig, a food is healthy if it satisfies two criteria:

It protects your liver
It feeds your gut

A food that does neither is poison, and any food that does only one or the other, but not both, is somewhere in the middle. Real food, because it has fiber, protects your liver and nourishes your gut. Processed food is fiberless, and the reason for this is because fiber decreases shelf life. By removing the fiber from the food, it prevents it from going rancid, but it also makes it inherently unhealthy.

Essentially, “in an attempt to try to increase availability, decrease wastage, we turned our entire food supply on its head in order to create commodities rather than make food available,” Lustig says.
Then, in the 1970s, Richard Nixon told the U.S. agriculture secretary, Earl Butts, to come up with a plan to decrease food prices, as fluctuating food prices were causing political unrest. The result was the start of monoculture and chemical-driven farming.

“Now, we have nitrogen runoff destroying our environment and antibiotics in the feed in order to keep the animals alive, but basically killing off their own bacteria and ours, and also creating chronic disease and destroying the environment as well.
It’s basically built into our Western food system. And we’re not going to solve health care, we’re not going to solve chronic disease, we’re not going to solve the economics [or] the environmental problems until we recognize what the problem is,” Lustig says.
Refinement Makes Everything Worse

While Lustig argues that the refinement of carbohydrates is the primary culprit that makes processed food so bad for your health, I believe processed fats may be an even bigger contributor.
Omega-6 linoleic acid (LA), in particular, is a pernicious metabolic poison. In 1850, the LA in the average diet was about 2% of total calories. Today, it’s between 20% and 30%. While we do need some omega-6, since your body does not make it, the point is we need nowhere near the amount we’re now getting.

“I agree that omega-6s are a problem,” Lustig says. “No. 1, they’re proinflammatory by themselves and No. 2, they have enough unsaturated double bonds so that if you heat them high enough, you flip them and end up making trans fats. That’s the problem of all of these polyunsaturated fats. They’re not meant to be heated beyond their smoking point, and we do.”

In addition to those issues, polyunsaturated fats such as LA are highly susceptible to oxidation, and as the fat oxidizes, it breaks down into harmful sub-components such as advanced lipid oxidation end products (ALES) and oxidized LA metabolites (OXLAMS). These ALES and OXLAMS also cause damage.

One type of advanced lipid oxidation end product (ALE) is 4HNE, a mutagen known to cause DNA damage. Studies have shown there’s a definite correlation between elevated levels of 4HNE and heart failure. LA breaks down into 4HNE even faster when the oil is heated, which is why cardiologists recommend avoiding fried foods. LA intake and the subsequent ALES and OXLAMS produced also play a significant role in cancer. 
HNE and other ALES are extraordinarily harmful even in exceedingly small quantities. While excess sugar is certainly bad for your health and should typically be limited to 25 grams per day or less, I believe LA is far more damaging overall. As explained by Lustig:

“We have a metabolic burden of reactive oxygen species (ROS) that are doing damage if you can’t quench them. That’s why we have antioxidants in our body — glutathione, vitamin E — [they’re] basically the sink for those reactive oxygen species. The fact of the matter is our mitochondria are making ROS every single minute of every single day.

It is a normal byproduct of metabolism. The point is we’re supposed to be able to quench them. You can only quench them if you get the antioxidants into you.
The problem is as soon as you’ve taken the germ out of the grain kernel, you’ve basically reduced your antioxidant consumption by tenfold. So, we are antioxidant deficient because of food processing, which then leaves us vulnerable to the ravages of ROS from multiple sources including our own mitochondria.”

Real Food Is the Answer
The key, then, is to eat whole food, which is naturally rich in fiber and low in sugar. On a side note, free radicals are not all bad. They’re also biological signaling molecules, and if you indiscriminately suppress them, which is the danger you run into when using very high amounts of antioxidant supplements, it can backfire.

The best way is to get your antioxidants from your food, and real food not only provides antioxidants, but also doesn’t create excessive ROS, so you get help from both ends, as it were. As for the type of diet you choose, any diet can work, provided it’s right for your metabolism. The only diet that does not work for anyone is a processed food diet.
Solutions, Solutions
Now that you know the root problems, what solutions does Lustig suggest? For starters, education alone is not enough, he says. We need education plus implementation. And that requires a different societal response.

“The way I describe it is that there’s personal intervention, which for the lack of a better word we can call rehab, and societal intervention, which for lack of a better word we can call laws. Rehab and laws for everything that is a hedonic substance — you need both.”

The first step of personal intervention is figuring out if you’re sick. “And don’t ask your doctor because they don’t know how to figure it out,” Lustig says. In Chapter 9 of his book, he lists clues that can help you self-diagnose.

In terms of addressing your health problems, your primary “treatment” will be to make, possibly significant, changes to how you shop and eat. As a general, easy-to-follow rule, if it has a label, don’t buy it. Real food does not have ingredient labels. Lustig’s book also includes guidance on how to read food labels in cases where you might not have an option.

“We also need societal intervention. The problem is the food industry doesn’t want any societal intervention because this is their gravy train. So, the question is, how do you do this?

Normally we would do it through legislation, but the food industry has completely co-opted the entire legislative branch; 338 out of 535 congressmen take money from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and agriculture is their fourth [largest] contributor after petroleum, tobacco and pharma.”

Barring legislative success, we’re left with litigation. Already, there are a number of lawsuits in the works, several of which Lustig is a part of. Ultimately, we must restructure the entire food system so that all stakeholders benefit. “And we have to demonstrate to them how they can benefit,” Lustig says.
Subsidies Are the Biggest Hindrance to Change

Can the food industry make money selling real food? Lustig believes the answer is yes, and in his book, he details how real food makes both financial and ecological sense. The key is to remove subsidies, which currently grease the wheels of the processed food industry.

“The subsidies are the single biggest blockade,” Lustig says. “They’re the single biggest obstacle to being able to fix the food supply because that’s what’s making processed food cheap. The Giannini Foundation at UC Berkeley did a back of envelope calculation several years ago.
What would the price of food look like if we got rid of all food subsidies? It turns out that the price of food would not change. People say it would go up. No, it wouldn’t. It would not change except for two items. Two items would go up: Sugar and corn [used for high-fructose corn syrup]. So, basically, that would reduce consumption of the primary toxin in our diet that’s causing the most trouble …
The food industry … can make more money doing the right thing provided we get rid of the subsidies or make the subsidies for real food so that they can make money selling the right thing. This requires government. There’s no way around it. That’s why this book is complete. It’s laid out for all the stakeholders, including government, as to what has to happen and why.
I wrote this book for everyone to understand the same principles all at once, so that we can actually have an argument and a debate and hopefully come to the table about the facts, because until we do that, there will be no solving this problem. If everyone comes to the table, honestly, and admits to what the issue is, what the problem is, we can, in fact, solve it.”

To learn more, be sure to pick up a copy of Lustig’s book, “Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine.” You can also find a wealth of information on his website, RobertLustig.com, including media appearances, audio recordings, video lectures, books, articles and upcoming events where you can hear him speak. 
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/05/16/food-as-medicine.aspx

The World Health Organization was created in 1948, founded by 61 member states and financed from their contributions. It appeared to be a promising start, intended to end human suffering and save lives but, according to Robert Parsons, a journalist based in Geneva, Switzerland, where the WHO headquarters are based, “it was infiltrated by industry from the very start.”
Parsons is just one expert interviewed in “TrustWHO,” a documentary film produced by Lilian Franck that delves into the corruption behind the preeminent organization that’s being trusted with public health. It started in the 1950s, a time when the scientific evidence on the harms of smoking was emerging, and has continued through nuclear disasters and at least two pandemics — swine flu in 2009 and COVID-19 in 2020.
Tobacco Industry Infiltrated WHO

It’s well known that the tobacco industry launched a public relations campaign to undermine the emerging science and keep cigarettes in a favorable light with the public.1 In its first decades, WHO did little to oppose it. As late as 1994, tobacco heads testified before U.S. congress, saying nicotine is not addictive.

Gradually, tobacco companies were required to publish their internal documents, which revealed their strategies to combat WHO. Among them was the Boca Raton Action Plan, which was developed by Philip Morris executives.2 In regard to WHO, it stated, “This organization has extraordinary influence on government and consumers and we must find a way to diffuse this …”3
WHO, put under pressure, released a report in 2000 stating that the tobacco industry worked for many years to subvert WHO efforts to control tobacco use, noting, “The attempted subversion has been elaborate, well financed, sophisticated and usually invisible.”4
WHO special envoy Thomas Zeltner was among those who investigated the tobacco industry, finding that it founded institutes and bought scientists to represent their position without disclosing their industry ties.
One prominent name in the scandal is Paul Dietrich, a U.S. lawyer with close ties to the tobacco industry. While claiming to be an independent expert, Dietrich advised the tobacco industry, spoke at conferences and wrote articles against WHO. While receiving a monthly retainer from British American Tobacco, he was appointed to the development committee of the Pan American Health Organization, which serves as the WHO’s regional office for the Americas, a BMJ report noted.5
While serving in this role, he convinced the Pan American Health Organization to focus on vaccines and cholera instead of tobacco control.6 Frank Sullivan is another example. He worked as a tobacco company consultant and, while challenging data that tobacco smoke was harmful, was also advising WHO.7
In 2000, the documentary notes, Sullivan’s collaboration with the tobacco industry became public, but he still continued to advise WHO. Franck requested to see Sullivan’s conflict of interest forms, which should have been on file, but they were never provided.
WHO’s Swine Flu Pandemic Plan Influenced by Big Pharma

The pharmaceutical industry has a similar history with the WHO, which became a glaring conflict during the 2009 H1N1 (swine flu) pandemic. Secret agreements were made between Germany, Great Britain, Italy and France with the pharmaceutical industry before the H1N1 pandemic began, which stated that they would purchase H1N1 flu vaccinations — but only if a pandemic level 6 was declared by WHO.
The documentary shows how, six weeks before the pandemic was declared, no one at WHO was worried about the virus, but the media was nonetheless exaggerating the dangers. Then, in the month leading up to the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, WHO changed the official definition of pandemic, removing the severity and high mortality criteria and leaving the definition of a pandemic as “a worldwide epidemic of a disease.”8
This switch in definition allowed WHO to declare swine flu a pandemic after only 144 people had died from the infection worldwide, and it’s why COVID-19 is still promoted as a pandemic even though plenty of data suggest the lethality of COVID-19 is on par with the seasonal flu.9
Kracken interviewed Marie-Paule Kieny, a French virologist who at the time was WHO’s assistant director-general but is now leading the organization’s Health Systems and Innovation cluster,10 asking her why severity was deleted from the criteria to declare a pandemic. She said:

“There was a series of meetings between experts in order to arrive at objective criteria for declaring a pandemic. It’s always difficult to talk about the severity of a disease, especially at the beginning.
The severity depends on the state of health of those who are infected. So the experts thought it would be better to proceed from objective criteria. Objective criteria mean that it can be proven whether transfer within the community is taking place and in how many countries this happens.”

WHO Drug Industry Ties Influenced Decision-Making

Before working at WHO, Kieny worked at the French pharmaceutical company Transgene S.A., not unlike many of the scientists advising WHO officials, who also had conflicts of interest with the industry. Transparency was a major problem, even for those on the inside.
In the documentary, German Velasquez, former WHO director in the public health department, stated that he and most of his colleagues were excluded from a meeting between the director-general and prospective vaccine manufacturers:

“I was head of department in the WHO and one of the Director-General’s closest associates — an important member of staff in the organization … Even though I was a leading official at the WHO responsible for an important topic that was under discussions there, I wasn’t allowed to enter. That demonstrates that there wasn’t enough transparency about what was being negotiated.”

The lack of transparency was investigated by the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly, which concluded there was “overwhelming evidence that the seriousness of the pandemic was vastly overrated by WHO,” and that the drug industry had influenced the organization’s decision-making, “resulting in a distortion of public health priorities.”11
The Council of Europe demanded changes, but even though the WHO was found to have had serious conflicts of interest with the drug industry, nothing has actually changed since then. WHO can operate in clandestine ways because there’s no accountability.
In another example of WHO acting as little more than a Big Pharma front group, in 2019 a report — “Corrupting Influence: Purdue & the WHO”12 — produced by U.S. Reps. Katherine Clark, D-Mass., and Hal Rogers, R-Ky., concluded Purdue Pharma had influenced WHO’s opioid guidelines.13
WHO Works Closely With the Nuclear Industry

In 1959 WHO signed an agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which is “promoting peaceful use of atomic energy,” making it subordinate to the agency in relation to ionizing radiation. The grassroots organization IndependentWHO is calling on WHO to revise the agreement and protect people who are victims of radioactive contamination.14
WHO has downplayed the health effects caused by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, stating that only 50 deaths were directly caused by the incident and “a total of up to 4,000 people could eventually die of radiation exposure” from the disaster.15
Ian Fairlie, an independent radiation biologist, published “The Other Report on Chernobyl” (TORCH),16 and estimated that 30,000 to 60,000 excess cancer deaths could occur, in addition to other health effects like cataracts, cardiovascular diseases and heritable effects that could influence future generations.
Keith Baverstock, a former radiation adviser for WHO, published a study in 1992 that linked a rise in thyroid cancer in children to Chernobyl.17 WHO told him to withdraw the paper, and threatened that his career would be shortened if he didn’t.
WHO’s response to the Fukushima radiation disaster in 2011 was also criticized, with evidence of a high-level coverup.18 WHO once again downplayed the risks, stating “the predicted risks are low and no observable increases in cancer rates above baseline rates are anticipated.”19
WHO Is a Slave to Its Funders

When it was founded, WHO could decide how to distribute its contributions. Now, 70% of its budget is tied to specific projects, countries or regions, which are dictated by the funders. It’s not a coincidence, then, that Bill Gates said of WHO, “Our priorities, are your priorities,” as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation became the biggest funder of WHO when Donald Trump stopped the U.S. funding of WHO. (The Biden administration has since reinstated the funding.)
Whether he comes in first or second in funding, Gates’ priorities are the backbone of WHO. “Humankind has never had a more urgent task than creating broad immunity for coronavirus,” Gates wrote on his blog in April 2020. “Realistically, if we’re going to return to normal, we need to develop a safe, effective vaccine. We need to make billions of doses, we need to get them out to every part of the world, and we need all of this to happen as quickly as possible.”20
Gates has even stated he “suspect[s] the COVID-19 vaccine will become part of the routine newborn immunization schedule”21 and has gone on record saying the U.S. needs disease surveillance and a national tracking system22 that could involve vaccine records embedded on our bodies (such as invisible ink quantum dot tattoos described in a Science Translational Medicine paper).23,24
WHO COVID-19 Investigation Is Corrupt

WHO’s investigation into COVID-19 origins is also blatantly corrupt, as China was allowed to hand pick the members of the WHO’s investigative team, which includes Peter Daszak, Ph.D., who has close professional ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).
The inclusion of Dazsak on this team virtually guaranteed the dismissal of the lab-origin theory from the very start, and, wouldn’t you know, WHO has now officially cleared WIV and two other biosafety level 4 laboratories in Wuhan, China, of wrongdoing, saying these labs had nothing to do with the COVID-19 outbreak.25
Molecular biologist Richard Ebright, Ph.D., laboratory director at the Waksman Institute of Microbiology and member of the Institutional Biosafety Committee of Rutgers University and the Working Group on Pathogen Security of the state of New Jersey, called out the members of the WHO-instigated investigative team as “participants in disinformation.”26
An open letter signed by 26 scientists is now demanding a full and unrestricted forensic investigation into the origins of the pandemic.27
In response to growing critique, and in a similar move as occurred with Big Tobacco, WHO has now entered damage control mode with Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, while 13 other world leaders have joined the U.S. government in expressing “frustration with the level of access China granted an international mission to Wuhan.”28
Given the strong and ongoing evidence that WHO is heavily influenced, if not outright controlled, by Bill Gates and industry, WHO’s usefulness as a guardian of public health needs to be reevaluated.
Decentralized pandemic planning — moving from the global and federal levels to the state and local levels — makes sense, as both medicine and government work best when individualized and locally oriented. As it stands, however, the opposite global agenda is being applied.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/05/14/trust-who.aspx

How do you market and implement a financial system that nobody would want if they understood its full ramifications — a change so huge that it not only would mean the end of currency as we know it, but a total revision of sovereignty and individual rights?

In the interview above, which is part of the full-length documentary “Planet Lockdown,”1 Michael Yeadon, Ph.D., a life science researcher and former vice-president and chief scientist of allergy and respiratory research at Pfizer, shares his views on the COVID-19 pandemic, fast-tracked COVID-19 “vaccines,” the issue of mutated virus variants and the need for booster shots, and how this manufactured crisis is being used to strip us of our civil liberties.
Are You Putting the Pieces Together?

Yeadon has a degree in biochemistry and toxicology and a research-based Ph.D. in respiratory pharmacology. He’s spent 32 years of his career working for large pharmaceutical companies, and 10 years in the biotechnology sector.

“I’m in favor of all modes of new medical treatments, whether they’re biologicals or vaccines, small molecules, creams, sprays, ointments, whatever, but I’m fervently against unsafe medicines or medicines used in an inappropriate context,” Yeadon says.
“Some of the things I’m going to say are not favorable to the current crop of gene-based vaccines and it’s [because] they’re being inappropriately used. I don’t think they have a sufficient safety profile to be used as a sort of wide-spectrum public health prophylactic …
A few things have allowed me, I think, to spot what’s going on in the world at the moment. One, I’ve loved biology since I was little. I’ve been continuing to learn and to apply biology broadly, whether it’s pharmacology, biochemistry, molecular biology [or] toxicology. I’ve got a very broad grounding in all things to do with life science, in terms of health and disease.
[Secondly], one of my former supervisors said that I had a remarkable facility that stood out above the sort of ordinary things you’d have to do to be a vice president or a CEO. He said I was able to spot patterns in sparse data earlier than my peers. So, when there’s not enough data for most people to judge what was going on, I would often be able to see it.
I could see a pattern forming when there wasn’t quite enough information … On this occasion, it allowed me, quite quickly, to work out that what we were being told about this virus and what we needed to do in order to stay safe was simply not true.”

A Massive Fraud Has Been Perpetrated

Yeadon starts out by highlighting the “enormous changes” made in the U.K.’s attribution of causes of deaths. If you die within 28 days of testing positive for SARS-CoV-2, you are counted as a COVID-19 death, regardless of other underlying conditions. The same thing was done in the U.S. As noted by Yeadon:

“We’ve never had anything as absurd as the rule that is now used. It’s not just a matter of disagreeing professionally. It’s just complete nonsense.”

The shutdown of businesses and forcing healthy people to self-isolate also makes no sense. Yeadon points out that only people who are ill, who have discernible symptoms of a respiratory infection, pose any health risk to others:

“To be a good, efficient source of infection, you have to have a lot of virus. And if you have a lot of viruses attacking you, you are fighting back. That process produces symptoms, inevitably, not just occasionally. It must always happen …
And those people are not people who are walking around in the community, because if you’re full of virus and symptomatic, you are also ill, and ill people tend to stay at home or in bed.”

Asymptomatic spread, which has no sound basis, was used to justify lockdowns, which never had any basis in fact or science either. Lockdowns were implemented for entirely other reasons, namely to get you used to giving up your freedoms and your normal way of life, and to make you psychologically dependent on an outside source telling you when it’s OK to do what.
It’s obedience training and a tool to get the population of the world to go along with the intentional decimation of the global economy and old way of life, thereby justifying the Great Reset, which is about transferring global wealth and ownership rights to the technocratic elite, and giving them the power to control the world’s nations.

“Basically, everything your government has told you about this virus, everything you need to do to stay safe, is a lie,” Yeadon says. “Every part of it … None of the key themes that you hear talked about — from asymptomatic transmission to top-up vaccines [i.e., booster shots] — not one of those things is supported by the science.
Every piece is cleverly chosen adjacently to something that probably is true, but is itself a lie, and has led people to where we are right now. I don’t normally use phrases like this, but I think we are standing at the very gates of hell … It’s all about control …
The reason I’m commenting is because I believe it’s not just about my life. More importantly, [it’s the lives] of my children and grandchildren that are being stolen … by a systematic process of fear and control that’s going to culminate in, I think, some very horrible times, and I’m desperate to wake you up …
We’re probably quite used to politicians occasionally telling white lies, and we kind of let them, but when they lie to you about something technical, something that you can check, and they do it [with] many, many elements of the whole event, then please, you’ve got to believe me, [they’re] not telling the truth.
And if they’re not telling the truth, that means there’s something else. And I’m here to tell you that there is something very, very bad happening. If you don’t pay attention, you will soon lose any chance to do anything about it.”

Science Has Been Turned on Its Head
Yeadon rightly notes that everything we’ve known about virology and infectious disease has been turned upside down during this pandemic. None of the standard responses known to protect people from infectious disease was followed. Normally, you quarantine the sick to contain the infection.

Locking down entire societies has never been done and has no foundation in science or the history of epidemic control. Similarly, mass testing people without symptoms is without precedence. It simply isn’t done, and for good reason. It’s a waste of resources because as Yeadon explained earlier, we know how viruses spread. This isn’t our first rodeo. We’ve dealt with infectious epidemics before.

We know how viruses work in the body. When you have an active infection, you develop symptoms as your body mounts its defense. Without symptoms, your viral load is too low to pose a threat, either to yourself or others. The myth about asymptomatic spread has been a fear tactic.
T-Cell Immunity Is Far More Important Than Antibodies
Yeadon goes on to review how we’ve been misled about immunity and how your body fights off viruses. You’ve probably heard that the thing that gives you immunity against SARS-CoV-2 is SARS-CoV-2-specific antibodies.

The entire vaccination campaign is built around the premise that by injecting a synthetic piece of viral RNA into your cells, your body will start producing the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, in response to which your body will produce specific antibodies that recognize that protein. This is also known as humoral immunity.

However, while antibodies are important, especially in bacterial infections, antibodies are not the only part of your immunity. More importantly, immunity against viruses — opposed to bacteria — actually does not depend on antibodies. Yeadon explains:

“Viruses are really tiny, and their business is to get as quickly as they can inside your cells. So, they bind to a receptor on the surface and inject themselves into your cell. So, they’re inside. Antibodies are big molecules and they’re generally outside your cells.
So just think about that for a moment. Antibodies and viruses are in separate compartments. The virus is inside the cell, the antibodies outside the cell. I’m not saying antibodies have no role, but they’re really not very important. This has been proven. There are some people in whom a natural experiment has occurred.
They have a defect and they actually don’t make antibodies, but they’re able to fight off COVID-19, the virus SARS-CoV-2, quite well. The way they do that is, they have T-cell immunity, cellular immunity. [T-cells] are cells that are trained to detect virus-infected cells and to kill those cells. That’s how you defend yourself against a virus.
So, all of these mentions of antibody levels, it’s just bunk. It is not a good measure of whether or not you’re immune. It does give evidence that you’ve been infected, but their persistence is not important as to whether you’ve got immunity …
We’ve known this for decades. We’ve known about T-cells for decades. They were clearly in my undergraduate textbooks. And we’ve known about their importance in defending you against respiratory viruses since probably the 1970s, certainly the 1980s. So, don’t believe anything where people suggest to you that their role is uncertain. We’ve known for a very long time that they are absolutely central.”
Antibodies Are Not the Answer to Variants

The central role of T-cell immunity, or cellular immunity, becomes particularly pertinent when discussing the threat of variants, mutated forms of SARS-CoV-2. As mentioned, your immune system is a multifaceted system that allows your body to mount defenses against all sorts of threats. Parasites, fungi, bacteria and viruses are the main threat categories.
Each of these invades and threatens you in completely different ways, and your immune system has ways of dealing with all of them, using a variety of mechanisms.

“You’ve got four or five different arms of the immune system: innate immunity, mucosal, antibody, T-cells and compliment[ary systems],” Yeadon says.
“There are all of these different wonderful systems that have integrated, one with another, because it needs to defend you against all sorts of different threats in the environment. What I’m telling you is that the emphasis on antibodies in respect of respiratory viral infections is wrong, and you can establish that quite easily by doing some searching.”
In essence, what Yeadon is saying is that whether you’re going to be susceptible to variants has very little to do with whether or not you have antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, because antibodies are not your primary defense against viruses. Your T-cells are the ones doing the heavy lifting.

What this means then, is that getting booster shots for different variants is not going to help you. It will not solve the problem, because these shots do not strengthen your T-cell immunity.
Carefully Rethink Need for Booster Shots
Of all the lies we’ve been told over the past year, the ones that worry and frighten Yeadon the most are the lies about virus variants and booster shots. In fact, he believes not buying into these lies may be key to your very survival, and here’s why:

“It’s quite normal for RNA viruses like SARS-CoV-2, when it replicates, to make typographical errors. It’s got a very good error detection, error correction system so it doesn’t make too many typos, but it does make some, and those are called ‘variants.’
It’s really important to know that if you find the variant that’s most different from the sequence identified in Wuhan, that variance … is only 0.3% different from the original sequence.
I’ll say it another way. If you find the most different variance, it’s 99.7% identical to the original one, and I can assure you … that amount of difference is absolutely NOT possibly able to represent itself to you as a different virus.”
He explains how, earlier in the pandemic, scientists obtained blood from patients who had been sickened with the SARS virus 17 or 18 years ago. SARS-CoV-1, responsible for that SARS outbreak, is 80% similar to SARS-CoV-2.
They wanted to know if the immune systems of these patients would be able to recognize SARS-CoV-2. They did. They still had memory T-cells against SARS-CoV-1, and those cells also recognized SARS-CoV-2, despite being only 80% similar. Now, if a 20% difference was not enough to circumvent the immune system of these patients, why should you be concerned with a variant that is at most 0.3% different from the original SARS-CoV-2? 

“When your government scientists tell you that a variant that’s 0.3% different from SARS-CoV-2 could masquerade as a new virus and be a threat to your health, you should know, and I’m telling you, they are lying,” Yeadon says.
“If they’re lying, and they are, why is the pharmaceutical industry making top-up [booster] vaccines? You should be terrified at this point, as I am, because there’s absolutely no possible justification for their manufacture. And the world’s medicines regulators have said, ‘Because they are quite similar to the original vaccines … we won’t be asking them to do any clinical safety studies.’”

Are We Seeing a Mass Depopulation Agenda in Action?

Yeadon stresses that variants simply aren’t different enough to represent a threat, which is why you don’t now, and won’t in the future, need one or more booster shots. Yet they’re already being made, and regulators are giving them a free pass when it comes to safety and efficacy studies.

“I’m very frightened of that. There’s no possible benign interpretation of this,” Yeadon says. “I believe they’re going to be used to damage your health and possibly kill you. Seriously. I can see no sensible interpretation other than a serious attempt at mass depopulation.
This will provide the tools to do it, and plausible deniability. They’ll create another story about some sort of biological threat and you’ll line up and get your top-up vaccines, and a few months or a year or so later, you’ll die of some peculiar inexplicable syndrome. And they won’t be able to associate it with the vaccines.
That’s my belief — that they’re lying to you about variants so they can make damaging top-up vaccines that you don’t need at all. I think they will be used for malign purposes … We know that the people [SARS-CoV-2] injures and kills are only people who are elderly and or ill, usually both, so we’re talking about less than 0.1% [of the population] …
Given that this virus represents, at worst, a slightly bigger risk to the old and ill than influenza, and a smaller risk [than influenza] to almost everyone else … it was never necessary for us to have done anything. We didn’t need to do anything. [We didn’t need] lockdowns, masks, mass testing, vaccines.
There are multiple therapeutic drugs that are at least as effective as the vaccines are. They’re already available and cheap. Inhaled corticosteroids that are used in asthma reduced symptomatology by about 90%.
An off-patent drug called ivermectin, one of the most widely-used drugs in the world, is also able to reduce symptoms at any stage of the disease, including lethality by about 90%. So, you don’t need vaccines and you don’t need any of the measures that have been introduced at all.”
Key Safety Concerns of mRNA ‘Vaccines’
In December 2020, Yeadon filed a petition2 calling on the European Medicine Agency to halt Phase 3 clinical trials of the Pfizer mRNA vaccine until they’ve been restructured to address critical safety concerns. Of course, those trials were not halted. The four key safety concerns Yeadon specified in his petition3 were:

1. The potential for formation of non-neutralizing antibodies that can trigger an exaggerated immune reaction (referred to as paradoxical immune enhancement or antibody-dependent immune amplification) when the individual is exposed to the real “wild” virus post-vaccination.

Antibody-dependent amplification has been repeatedly demonstrated in coronavirus vaccine trials on animals.4 While the animals initially tolerated the vaccine well and had robust immune responses, they later became severely ill or died when infected with the wild virus. Put plainly, the vaccine increased their susceptibility to the virus and made them more likely to die from the infection.

2. Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine contains polyethylene glycol (PEG), and studies have shown 70% of people develop antibodies against this substance. This suggests PEG may trigger fatal allergic reactions in many who receive the vaccine.

Indeed, within days of the vaccine’s release, reports started coming in of people having life-threatening anaphylactic reactions,5 leading to warnings that people with known allergies should not take the Pfizer vaccine.6 Since then, anaphylactic reactions have been reported by recipients of the Moderna mRNA vaccine as well.7

3. The mRNA vaccine triggers your body to produce antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, and spike proteins in turn contain syncytin-homologous proteins that are essential for the formation of placenta. If a woman’s immune system starts reacting against syncytin-1, then there is the possibility she could become infertile.

This is an issue that none of the vaccine studies is looking at specifically. Mass vaccinating women of childbearing age against COVID-19 could potentially have the devastating consequence of causing mass infertility if the vaccine triggers an immune reaction against syncytin-1.

4. The studies are far too brief in duration to allow a realistic estimation of side effects. Depending on what those effects end up being, millions of people may be exposed to unacceptable risk in return for a very minor benefit. 

Health Freedom Undermined in the Name of ‘Emergency’
Even more fundamental than any particular safety concern is the fact that a vaccination campaign of this magnitude, using an entirely novel technology, sets a most dangerous public health precedent. By drumming up unnecessary panic, many are now willing to forgo all manner of freedom in the name of responding to a global health emergency.
One of these core freedoms is your right to refuse an experimental medical procedure. This freedom was acknowledged in the Nuremberg Code of 19478 and enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which states that “no one shall be subjected without his free consent to medical or scientific experimentation.”9
Yet despite that, and despite the fact that clinical vaccine trials are still two years out from being completed, governments around the world are talking about making these vaccinations mandatory, or blackmailing people to take them against their will by encouraging private businesses to restrict access to vaccinated-only.
As noted by Yeadon and many others, the implementation of vaccine passports has nothing to do with protecting public health and everything to do with setting into place a surveillance, tracking and control mechanism that can easily be expanded into all other areas of life, thereby controlling your every move.

“[Vaccine passports] are not required at all,” Yeadon says. “What they provide, though, is complete control over your movements to whoever controls the database that your vaccination status is connected to. I hope you grasp this because this is not optional.
This is what’s going to take over your life in a way that George Orwell in ‘1984’ didn’t even dream of. Imagine you’ve been vaccinated and you’ve been awarded a vaccine passport on an app. It’s going to be the world’s first database that contains your name, a unique digital ID in the same format as absolutely everybody else on the planet on the same database.
It’ll have like an editable health-related flag that will say [whether] you’ve been vaccinated. If you haven’t been, the algorithm that rules that works out what you can do … That’s what’s going to control the rest of your lives until you die.”

Vaccine Passport Is a Ticket to Tyranny, or Worse

Indeed, I’ve written several articles detailing how the tracking of vaccination status will usher in a surveillance apparatus greater than anything we’ve ever experienced before.
The precedent being set up right now is one that, in the future, will grant health authorities the “right” to force any number of experimental drugs, vaccines and technologies upon us in the name of public health. If the right to refuse an experimental medical procedure is not upheld now, the entire population of the earth will be available for experimentation without recourse. 
I’m absolutely terrified that the combination of vaccine passports and top-up vaccines is going to lead to mass depopulation, deliberate execution, potentially of billions of people. ~ Michael Yeadon, Ph.D.

But that’s not all. This initial vaccine surveillance system will ultimately be tied into other digital systems, such as all other medical records, biometric ID and an all-digital banking system.
The implementation of a Google-based social credit system, similar to that implemented in China in 2018, is also highly likely. Under a social credit system, points are awarded or subtracted for certain types of behavior. When your score falls below a certain point, punishment is meted out in the form of travel restrictions or the inability to obtain a loan, for example.

“Don’t allow their system to come into force,” Yeadon says. “It’s going to be used to coerce you. I believe if you allow a vaccine passport to come into force, you’ll be pinged one day and it’ll advise you to go to the medical center to have your top-up vaccine.
If you choose not to get your vaccine, your passport validity will expire, which means you won’t be able to enter a shop. You may not be able to use your bank card. All somebody needs to do is set a rule that says ‘After a given a date, before any bank card can be used, a vaccine passport has to be [validated] …
I’m absolutely terrified that the combination of vaccine passports and top-up vaccines is going to lead to mass depopulation, deliberate execution, potentially of billions of people.
You can stop it once you’ve heard what I’m saying. Even if you like the idea of vaccine passports, put the thing in place using written records or something … but do not allow it to be on an interoperable global fixed-format database, because that will be the end of human freedoms. And I just see no way of recovering from that.”

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/05/15/planet-lockdown.aspx

I recently had the opportunity to be a guest on Mikhaila Peterson’s “Opposing Views” on the topic of COVID-19. Open debate and sharing of information from all sides is so important, especially now that censorship of certain groups, organizations and individuals — in direct violation of Constitutional law — is rampant.
The other guest featured was Jeremy Kamil, Ph.D., an associate professor of microbiology and immunology at LSU Health Shreveport, who has studied the herpes virus for two decades and has a passion for studying how viruses work. Peterson said she emailed 20 doctors to get views from the conventional medical community on COVID-19 — and Kamil was the only one who agreed to be on the show.
I encourage you to watch the video in full and make up your own mind about what you hear, but as I didn’t get a chance to respond to Kamil’s statements directly, I’d like to do that now, as well as provide a recap of some of the most important take-away points from the interview.
A Trial Run for COVID-19, a Lab-Engineered Virus

When talking about COVID-19, it’s important to start at the beginning — not the start of the pandemic but Event 201, which took place in October 2019.
Representatives from the World Economic Forum, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Johns Hopkins University Population Center, the World Bank, the Chinese government and vaccine maker Johnson & Johnson were among those at the event, which was organized by Bill Gates and, too coincidentally, simulated a worldwide pandemic triggered by a novel coronavirus.1,2
Mirroring what is now occurring, social media censorship was a prominent strategy used at the event to protect the dissemination of vaccine propaganda and the narrative surrounding the global event. If you are considering brushing this off as “conspiracy theory,” you can read about Event 201 for yourself at its official site.3 
Peterson and I discussed a bit about Gates, and you may be wondering why I’m bringing him up. It’s part of understanding the immense power and control being wielded by private individuals and the ultimate goal of technocratic tyranny. When the U.S. withdrew funding from the World Health Organization in 2020, Gates became the biggest funder of the WHO.
The two — Gates and the WHO — have been instrumental in pushing for a global vaccination campaign, and Gates has a great deal of money invested in these vaccines. The WHO is the tool that was used to implement a global shutdown — a catastrophe — in 2020, with the end goal being wealth transfer, economic destruction and societal reformation.
It is also interesting that Gates and company have restricted access to this highly profitable vaccine only to countries that can afford it. The patents have not been shared with other countries so they could get this “lifesaving” vaccine, which clearly emphasizes that the primary purpose of this vaccine is not to save lives but to make large profits.
Gates isn’t the only player — there are many others, including Google and founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum (WEF) Klaus Schwab, who first started circulating the idea of The Great Reset. Kamil said he wasn’t familiar with the term, which is something I’d urge him to read up on as he formulates his opinions.
I also touched briefly on the overwhelming evidence suggesting that SARS-CoV-2 is an engineered virus that leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), which was conducting gain-of-function research on coronaviruses, funded by Dr. Anthony Fauci.4 It’s a lot to take in, I know, especially if this is the first you’re hearing about it, but as the pieces of the puzzle come together, it becomes obvious what is really going on.
No Flu Cases Because ‘Masks Are Really Effective’?

When asked about the mysterious disappearance of flu during the 2020-2021 season, Kamil stated it’s because “masks are really effective [at] suppressing viral transmission.” If that’s the case, then why didn’t COVID-19 cases similarly disappear? The next rational question is, were flu cases and deaths simply reallocated as COVID-19 deaths?
Up until around July 2020, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) counted flu and pneumonia deaths separately, but then began reporting a combination of pneumonia, flu and COVID deaths, under a new category listed as “PIC” (Pneumonia, Influenza, COVID), via their COVIDView webpage.5
February 12, 2021 — toward the end of peak flu season in the U.S. — COVIDView was replaced with the COVID Data Tracker Weekly Review, which no longer appears to mention flu and pneumonia.6
As for the effectiveness of masks — and the absurdities surrounding their use during activities like swimming — there’s a wealth of evidence that masks are ineffective. Only one randomized controlled trial has been conducted on mask usage and COVID-19 transmission, and it found masks did not statistically significantly reduce the incidence of infection.7
A working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research8 found that nonpharmaceutical interventions, such as lockdowns, quarantines and mask mandates, have not significantly affected overall virus transmission rates.9
Proper Response ‘Must Be Driven by Case Numbers’
When asked what the “proper” response to the pandemic would be, Kamil said, “It has to be driven by case numbers.” This sounds good in theory, provided the case numbers you’re basing recommendations on are accurate — and the resulting recommendations are in line with the severity of the disease and individual risk assessments. But, in the case of COVID-19, they most often were not.
What evidence is there that the case numbers were manipulated? PCR tests recommended by the WHO used to be set to 45 cycle thresholds (CTs),10 yet the scientific consensus has long been that anything over 35 CTs renders the test useless,11 as the accuracy will be a measly 3%, with the other 97% being false positives and artificially driving up case numbers.
Then, one hour after Joe Biden’s inauguration as the 46th president of the United States, January 20, 2021, the WHO — suddenly and out of the blue — lowered the recommended PCR CT,12 which automatically guaranteed that the number of “cases,” i.e., positive PCR test results, would plummet.
And this isn’t even getting into how the CDC changed how COVID-19 is recorded on death certificates in March 2020, de-emphasizing preexisting conditions and comorbidities, and basically calling all deaths in which the patient had a positive SARS-CoV-2 test a COVID-19 death.
‘Look to People Who Aren’t Making a Buck Off It’

Another one of Kamil’s points was to avoid getting data from “someone trying to sell you something.” I would agree, only Kamil used the example of someone “selling a health supplement online,” ignoring the fact that the real profiteers in this pandemic are not people selling supplements online but billionaires who are only getting richer.

Stéphane Bancel, CEO of Moderna, now has a net worth of $5.3 billion,13 to give one example. He joined the billionaires club April 2, 2020, when news that phase 2 trials of Moderna’s COVID vaccine were set to begin, driving up its stock.14
Meanwhile, Pfizer’s COVID vaccine has already generated $3.5 billion in revenue in the first three months of 2021,15 and the company said it expects “durable demand” for the vaccine to continue in coming years, similar to flu vaccines. Estimates suggest revenue will reach $26 billion for Pfizer’s COVID vaccine by the end of 2021.16
So, following Kamil’s own advice, Pfizer and Moderna would be among those to not trust, based on their making billions, which is exponentially more than any supplement manufacturer is making. But even putting profits aside, as I told Peterson, one point that should give anyone pause before trusting a company would be if it has a criminal history of fraud and selling dangerous products — of which both Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson can attest to.
Myth: It’s ‘Impossible to Die From COVID’ After Vaccination

Kamil made some statements that I strongly disagree with, one of them being that if you get a COVID-19 vaccine “it’s almost 100% impossible for you to die from COVID — even if you caught like the scariest variants we know of.” This is simply not true. As of April 26, 2021, there have been 9,245 reported cases of COVID-19 in fully vaccinated individuals, including 132 deaths.17 This is from the CDC’s own data.
There’s also a risk of death from the COVID-19 vaccine. According to the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), as of April 23, 2021, there have been 3,544 deaths reported following COVID-19 vaccination.18 Past investigations have shown only between 1%19 and 10%20 of adverse reactions are ever reported to VAERS, which is a passive, voluntary reporting system, so the actual number could be much higher.
Kamil also suggested that if you’re healthy, it makes no difference in terms of getting sick from COVID-19 because “viruses like healthy cells” and “they love a healthy [cell] just like a person might, if you’re a carnivore, might like a juicy steak.”
This seriously undermines the power that you have to take control of your health, because, in reality, it’s well known that people who are unhealthy, with underlying conditions, are far more likely to contract and die from COVID-19. Your state of health absolutely matters.
Kamil also seems to be seriously misguided about health organizations like the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, stating that it doesn’t “make a dollar more” by approving a vaccine and describing it as “one of the best organizations, like, as far as protecting your health and watching out for, like, Americans.”
While the FDA itself does not accept corporate money, it does receive money funneled via a nonprofit foundation, which in turn receives money from other nonprofits funded by private interests. It’s really all a façade because the end result is the same. Those donating the money ultimately end up with the ability to pull strings, when needed. The FDA’s conflicts of interest and failures to act on behalf of Americans’ best interests are also well noted.
Fear Is the Most Powerful Emotion to Drive Human Behavior

The pandemic has succeeded in generating fear and controlling human behavior, and anything that counters its final solution of vaccination is being censored — this is a clue that shouldn’t be overlooked. Vaccine passports are also being offered as part of this solution, as a tool to get your freedom back, but it’s at the price of — your freedom.
Imagine a world in which you cannot travel, go to a sports event, enter your workplace or even a grocery store unless you have the proper credentials. If it sounds like history repeating itself in the most horrific way, you’re not far off. Even open debate is being silenced, and it’s impossible to give informed consent to vaccination if you only know one side. When you only have one side to the story, then that’s propaganda, not real information.
What Should You Do to Stay Healthy Against COVID?

Peterson asked me one very important question, which was what should people be doing to stay healthy. One key strategy is to be metabolically flexible, and my No. 1 recommendation to do so is to remove linoleic acid from your diet.
Omega-6 linoleic acid (LA) is a pernicious metabolic poison that is highly susceptible to oxidation, and as the fat oxidizes, it breaks down into harmful subcomponents such as advanced lipid oxidation end products (ALES) and oxidized LA metabolites (OXLAMS). These ALES and OXLAMS also cause damage. To avoid LA, which is linked to chronic degenerative disease, you need to avoid all vegetable oils and eliminate virtually all processed foods and restaurant foods from your diet.
Other strategies to build immunity include optimizing vitamin D. My peer reviewed study, published in the journal Nutrients in October 2020,21 demonstrates the clear link between vitamin D deficiency and severe cases of COVID-19.
I also recommend familiarizing yourself with nebulized hydrogen peroxide, which can be used not only to improve symptoms but as a routine maintenance strategy to support optimal health. You can hear the rest of the interview in its entirety, including the unique risks posed by mRNA vaccines, by watching the video above.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/05/16/mikhaila-peterson-the-truth-about-covid-19.aspx

N-acetylcysteine (NAC) has made the news, not because scientists discovered a new health benefit, but because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration decided after 57 years of over-the-counter sales the compound is now a medication that requires a physician’s prescription.

Like ibuprofen (Advil)1 and acetaminophen (Tylenol),2 NAC has been available botantioxidant compound h over the counter and in prescription form.3 Doctors prescribe ibuprofen, acetaminophen and NAC in the hospital for specific uses. Historically, people could purchase all three over the counter.

Recently, the FDA decided that, unlike ibuprofen and acetaminophen, NAC should be removed from public sale. Glutathione is an antioxidant compound made up of three amino acids — glutamic acid, glycine and cysteine.4

However, N-acetylcysteine is available only in supplement form and cannot be found as such in foods. But the precursors to NAC can be found in foods high in cysteine, including pork, beef, chicken, eggs, swiss cheese and sunflower seeds.5 NAC is valued as a precursor to glutathione, also called the “master antioxidant.”6

NAC is useful in the treatment of acetaminophen poisoning, helping to lower the risk of mortality and liver damage. Despite a long history of concurrent use as an over-the-counter supplement and prescription medication in the hospital, the FDA has not been interested in removing the status as a dietary supplement — not, that is, until recently when NAC showed promise in the fight against COVID-19.7

FDA Invokes a Legally Questionable Drug Exclusion Provision

The law defines dietary supplements specifically. In the U.S. code Title 21,8 the law uses specific definitions of what a dietary supplement is and is not. According to experts, the actions of the FDA in banning the sale of NAC and finding it a “medication” is illegal under the law.

Attorney Dan Soper9 writes that under Title 21 §321 paragraph (ff)(3)(b)10 the actions of the FDA do not meet the Drug Exclusion Provision. In the code, it defines what a dietary supplement is not. Specifically, it says that a dietary supplement (article) does not include:

An article approved as a new drug, certified as an antibiotic, or licensed as a biologic under specific sections of the title.
An article authorized for investigation as a new drug, antibiotic or biologic for which there have been substantial clinical trials and for which the existence of all of these investigations has been made public.

In addition, the article was not before approved, certified, licensed or authorized, marketed as a dietary supplement or as a food “unless the Secretary, in the Secretary’s discretion, has issued a regulation, after notice and comment, finding that the article would be lawful under this chapter.”

According to Soper,11 the exclusion provision has only been invoked a few times, specifically when used to keep red yeast rice, vitamin B6 and cannabidiol (CBD) from being sold as supplements. In each of these cases there was a potential pharmaceutical financial loss that triggered the assertion the supplement was illegal.

In the case of red yeast rice, it contains a naturally occurring substance that acts in a similar manner to Lovastatin, a statin medication.12 In 2005, drug manufacturer Biostratum filed an investigational new drug (IND) application with the FDA to use vitamin B6 in the treatment of diabetic kidney disease.

Their argument was there was “no evidence that it was marketed as a dietary supplement or food prior to its IND and Phase II investigations.”13 In 2009 the FDA declared vitamin B6 was not a dietary supplement despite documentation that it had been sold as such before the IND application.

The FDA has also invoked the Drug Exclusion Provision against CBD, warning that it is not a legal dietary supplement since there was no meaningful evidence it was marketed as such before drug investigations were approved for Sativex and Epidiolex, which are drugs that contain CBD.

After the 2018 Farm Bill was signed legalizing hemp, then-FDA secretary Scott Gottlieb made the statement that it was illegal to introduce CBD into the food supply or market it as a supplement.14 Soper postulates15 that the use of the Drug Exclusion Provision against CBD may have opened the door for the FDA to use it against NAC.

Others Hold the FDA Is Using a ‘Legally Invalid’ Position

In 1994, Congress enacted the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA).16 This gave the FDA regulatory authority and enforcement tools to protect consumers. The Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN) supports enforcement of the law,17 but the recent FDA move against NAC appears to step well beyond the letter and intent of the Act.

December 4, 2020, the CRN wrote an open letter18 to Steve Tave, director of the FDA’s office of dietary supplement programs, and sent a copy to Douglas Stearn, deputy director for regulatory affairs. In the eight-page letter, the CRN outlined why they believe the position the FDA has taken is “legally invalid.”19

In December 2020, a journalist from Natural Products Insider20 outlined the arguments CRN used in their letter to Tave, stating why the FDA’s actions were not legally defensible. The points the CRN made included:

• Through a Freedom of Information Act request, CRN learned the FDA’s claim that NAC had been approved as a drug in 1963 was nothing more than a handwritten notation. The CRN notes this raises questions about the reliability of the record, true approval date and who made the notation.

• The 1963 handwritten notation was for an inhalation drug. However, the code clearly states the chemical cannot be called a dietary supplement if the “article” is the same as the drug. In this case, the FDA is asserting an inhaled drug is the same as an oral supplement. Steve Mister, president and CEO, and Megan Olsen, CRN associate general counsel, wrote:21

“Further, a dietary supplement, by definition, must be “a product that … is intended for ingestion.” Because of this limitation, a dietary supplement would, by its very nature, differ significantly in the route of administration and dosage form from an inhaled drug.

Such significant differences, which will affect a substance’s impact on the human body, must preclude an inhaled ingredient from being considered the same “article” as an orally ingested ingredient.”

• The CRN found records to suggest that NAC was not approved for drug use until 2016, “well after dietary supplement companies had been marketing NAC as a supplement.”22

• The FDA’s interpretation of the law also conflicts with “the presumption against statutory retroactivity,” which Mister and Olsen go on to say, “Even if FDA records reliably demonstrated drug approval before 201(ff)(3)(B)(i) was enacted, it is a well-established canon of statutory interpretation that legislation shall not be read to have a retroactive effect on private rights unless Congress expresses a clear, unambiguous intent to the contrary.”23

The CRN also argues that the FDA failed to explain the policy change before sending warning letters to several NAC manufacturers in July 2020. Mister and Olsen wrote:24

“In response to the extensive history of NAC being treated by FDA as a dietary supplement, manufacturers have invested substantial resources to develop hundreds of such products, and thousands of consumers have come to rely on such products to meet their daily nutritional needs.

Now, FDA has decided to not only change its decades-long policy, but to do so through the issuance of warning letters that fail to provide any reasonable explanation for this consequential policy shift.”

• Lastly, the CRN maintains the FDA cannot enforce the policy because they exhibited a lack of diligence, writing:25

“First, FDA’s decades-long delay in bringing enforcement action against manufacturers of dietary supplements containing NAC indisputably resulted from a lack of diligence by FDA, rather than an unawareness that these products were on the market.

In fact, there is ample evidence that FDA has long been aware that these products are on the market, and that FDA has actively considered — and failed to object to — structure/function and qualified health claim petitions regarding products containing NAC. Thus, FDA’s long-delayed enforcement against these products resulted from the Agency’s own lack of diligence.”

In an email to Natural Products Insider, Mister said:26

“CRN is firmly committed to protecting our members’ interest in this matter to sell a lawful ingredient. FDA’s warning letters on NAC issued earlier this year are not final agency actions, but rather should be viewed as the opening salvo, inviting those with sound legal arguments to respond and present an opposing point of view, which we are doing.

CRN is optimistic that FDA will closely consider the legal argumentation we have laid out and evaluate its initial position regarding NAC in light of these arguments.”

Why Is the FDA Taking Aim at NAC?

Using the Drug Exclusion Provision on CBD may have opened the door for the FDA to make similar claims against NAC, but there is still the question of timing. Why has the FDA chosen to target NAC now? In the past the provision was used inappropriately in three instances to protect the finances of pharmaceutical companies, and it is likely the motivation to ban NAC as a supplement has the same roots.

As pulmonologist Dr. Roger Seheult succinctly explains in this MedCram video, NAC is a crucial chemical compound necessary to reduce the oxidative stress associated with severe COVID-19 infections and thus may significantly impact the sales of antiviral drugs. And, without severe disease, is there truly a need for a vaccine?

Nine months after the FDA issued warning letters with their position that NAC supplements could not legally be sold, Amazon began removing products containing the supplement.27 In 2020, Amazon adopted polices to improve the quality of the supplements sold on their platform after knock-off dietary supplements were found28 and NOW Health Group identified inferior quality supplements from third-party lab tests.29

Amazon did not respond to Natural Products Insider30 to explain why the products were being removed from the platform. One long-time public relations professional in the industry postulated it may have been a result of significant turnover in Amazon’s regulatory staff that prompted the move if the new staff believed selling NAC made the company vulnerable.

More Health Benefits of N-acetylcysteine

NAC supplements are well absorbed and can effectively increase levels of glutathione in the body.31 Glutathione deficiency is a key contributor to oxidative stress.32 In turn, oxidative stress contributes to the pathogenesis of several diseases such as liver disease, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, cancer, heart attack and diabetes.

NAC contributes cysteine, which one study33 found is inversely associated with the risk of stroke in women. Two papers34,35 concluded that NAC shows promise in the treatment of psychiatric conditions, including addiction, compulsive disorders, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. The treatment may benefit those whose condition has not responded to drugs and medication.

One team of scientists36 presented a review on different applications NAC may have in a variety of health conditions. This includes reducing insulin resistance and providing a therapeutic approach in the treatment of polycystic ovary syndrome.

Based on evidence, they hypothesized that NAC may reduce the number of premature births and recurrent pregnancy losses by exerting an anti-inflammatory effect in women who have bacterial vaginosis, a risk factor of preterm delivery and low birth weight.

They found there were positive influences that NAC exerted in patients who have ulcerative colitis, including decreasing oxidative stress, lowering cell apoptosis and improving recovery in the colon. Lab studies and animal models have demonstrated NAC can protect normal cells from radiation therapy and chemotherapy but does not protect cancer cells.

NAC has preventive effects against airway hyperresponsiveness in animal studies using acute exacerbation of asthma. In their review, they found NAC was “safe and well tolerated” without considerable side effects.37
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/05/15/nac-banned.aspx