Category Archives: Perspectives…

A wide range of lessons and commentary about many health related issues. Many are point-blank op-ed pieces based upon personal experiences by the writers (as patients or witnesses IE, spouses, children…) – or even by some doctor’s and other medical practitioners, who actually have a conscience – in addition to some spiritual issues addressing our well-being..

The Sad Truth About Bad Bulbs

STUDY: CFLs are bad for you. Daily Caller reports:

Scientists concluded that CFL light bulbs can be harmful to healthy skin cells.

“Our study revealed that the response of healthy skin cells to UV emitted from CFL bulbs is consistent with damage from ultraviolet radiation,” said lead researcher Miriam Rafailovich, Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Stony Brook University, in New York, in a statement. “Skin cell damage was further enhanced when low dosages of TiO2 nanoparticles were introduced to the skin cells prior to exposure.”

According to Rafailovich, with or without TiO2 (a chemical found in sunblock), incandescent bulbs of the same light intensity had zero effects on healthy skin.

The scientists found that cracks in the CFL bulbs phosphor coatings yielded significant levels of UVC and UVA in all of the bulbs — purchased in different locations across two counties — they examined.

I was an early adopter of CFLs, but have since removed almost all of them from our house. Not because of reports like this one, or because of the potential for expensive cleanups after a broken one, or any of the other many problems the screwy little bulbs create. Continue reading →

The Impending Collapse of American Medicine

Just as is every issue in the US, Obamacare and the wider question of the state of American health care are obscured by propaganda and disinformation. In the article below, Dr. Robert S. Dobson looks back on a lifetime of medical practice and provides facts and insights that might help us to understand our situation.

The US medical system is the most expensive on earth without being the best and without providing full coverage. One-sixth of the American population has no medical coverage.

There are two main reasons that US medicine is so expensive. One is that profits are piled upon profits. In addition to wages and salaries for doctors, nurses, and medical personnel, the American health care system has to provide profits for private hospitals, diagnostic centers, insurance companies, and for the accountants, attorneys and management consultants made necessary by the enormous litigation and regulatory compliance cost. American medicine is the most regulated in the world and the most criminalized.

What “Obamacare” does is to divert Medicare and Medicaid monies to the profits of private insurance companies. Instead of providing medical care to those in need, the taxpayers’ money will provide bonuses for insurance executives and profits for their shareholders. It is the height of folly for Obama worshipers to defend a law written by the private insurance companies that uses public revenues to provide insurers with 50 million more customers and to add yet another layer of profits to the cost of American medicine. (PCR) Continue reading →

The Cause to Never Mix Natural Substances with Government – Part III

“The medical establishment works closely with the drug multinationals whose main objective is profits, and whose worst nightmare would be an epidemic of good health. Lots of drugs MUST be sold. In order to achieve this, anything goes: lies, fraud, and kickbacks. Doctors are the principal salespeople of the drug companies. They are rewarded with research grants, gifts, and lavish perks. The principal buyers are the public – from infants to the elderly – who MUST be thoroughly medicated and vaccinated…at any cost!” – Dr. Guylaine Lanctot, M.D., author of The Medical Mafia How To Get Out of It Alive and Take Back Our Health and Wealth.

~ Part A – Reflections ~
Can this be – that the worst nightmare for the medical establishment would be an epidemic of good health? Does this not mean that the medical establishment promotes and propagates bad health? If so, how can this be?

After all, do we not have a Congress and all officials that protect our individual rights? Isn’t it the goal of “…a President of the United States of America” (Constitution’s proper title) to assure no agency or Congress or any other body politic allows intentional dangerous substances used on our people?

Do we not, for example, have organizations led by the Food and Drug Administration (F.D.A.) that assures all substances taken in by our people are safe?

Is it not the alleged purpose of the Drug Enforcement Agency (D.E.A.) to assure damaging drugs do not stay available for use by the public? Is it not part of its duty to assure no organization makes these dangerous drugs available for use by the public?

Or, are these stated goals purely a myth with true intent disguised? Continue reading →

‘Scandal?’ The FDA’s Just Doing Its Job

It’s gradually emerged in recent months that the Food and Drug Administration not only spied on its employees, but did so on a massive scale — collecting tens of thousands of employee emails to one another, as well as to journalists, members of Congress and congressional staff workers. The FDA also intercepted draft statements to the Office of Special Counsel, which investigates complaints of whistleblower harassment and reprisal. This monitoring, authorized by the agency’s chief counsel, was clearly a deliberate policy of the highest levels of FDA leadership.

So what problem was all the surveillance directed against? Embezzling? Sexual harassment? No. The FDA was out to punish whistleblowers for talking out of school about dangerous radiation levels in medical imaging devices approved by FDA for mammograms and colonoscopies.

That’s right. FDA leadership was out to prevent employees from talking to members of Congress — which the civics books tell us safeguards the public safety and welfare by, among other things, creating regulatory agencies like the FDA — about the very kinds of concerns the FDA was allegedly created to address. Continue reading →

Energy-efficient CFL bulbs cause skin damage, say researchers

New research funded by the National Science Foundation has scientists warning consumers about the potentially harmful effects energy-saving CFL light bulbs can have on skin.

The warning comes based on a study conducted by Stony Brook University and New York State Stem Cell Science ­ published in the June issue of Photochemistry and Photobiology ­ which looked at whether and how the invisible UV rays CFL bulbs emit affect the skin.

Based on the research, scientists concluded that CFL light bulbs can be harmful to healthy skin cells. Continue reading →

American Medicalcare: It’s Terminal

The final nail has been driven into the coffin of America’s medical care system (note it’s not healthcare because the system has nothing to do with health).

With the Supreme Court decision last week on ObamaCare, the US has taken its failed venture into socialized medicine, i.e., Medicare, and foisted it upon the general public, most of whom really believe they are going to get something for nothing.

It is as if the US government doesn’t understand that doubling down on a losing bet doesn’t make it a winner. And let’s not forget that Medicare, which came to America as part of Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society,” has been a tragic, unmitigated failure.

US medicalcare is the most expensive care in the world. Some say that is because it is the best. Nonsense. Continue reading →

Asking the Government for Permission to Live

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has gone to court to prevent the Colorado-based firm Regenerative Sciences from using stem cells developed in one part of your body (bone marrow) to repair damage in other parts of your body, such as joints. The FDA objects to the fact that these cells are chemicals, the use of which they have the power to regulate even though the cells are taken from your body to later be injected back into your body.

The FDA is accustomed to the process by which it requires that many years and millions of dollars be spent to approve drugs developed in a laboratory before anyone is allowed to use them. Regardless of clinical results that show use of stem cells to be highly effective, the FDA finds it intolerable to let you use the cells in your own body without prior approval by a vast and expensive bureaucracy.

It is a shame that no one told all of those who would benefit from stem cell research that the benefits of such research would not actually be available to patients. Treatment of individuals does not comply with the FDA’s regulatory paradigm. Personalized medicine may work new miracles, but care for the individual must be subordinated to supervision by a multitude of administrators. Continue reading →

Sugar: The new tobacco?

Attention SCOTUS: Arguments against Obamacare start and end with the notion that if it becomes a permanent law, government will have license to meddle in American’s daily lives beyond anything previously imagined.

Case in point; sugar. Since we have a health problem with obesity (and we do), the argument is being advanced that government must take control of dispensing sugar because so much of our excess weight is due to the fact we consume more sugar per capita than any other nation in the world.

Sugar is in almost all processed food, not to mention our huge consumption of chocolate and other candies. Continue reading →

How to Get Washington out of Health Care

The experience of the last fifty years proves that the United States government cannot solve the problem of how to provide high-quality healthcare to all its citizens at a price the country can afford — at least not without rationing, lowering the quality of care, and destroying the medical profession as a profession. Only the ingenuity of the private sector can create the healthcare system the public desires, but this can’t happen until the federal government’s iron grip on healthcare is broken.

Until passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA, aka ObamaCare), the rationale for almost five decades of federal intervention in the health care marketplace was largely cost-containment. To that goal, ObamaCare added rationing via the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), the elimination of the private insurance market, the redistribution of wealth via health insurance subsidies, and the reorganization of healthcare delivery into entities easily controlled from Washington called Accountable Care Organizations (ACO). The regulatory regime for the complete socialization of healthcare is now in place and in process. Continue reading →

U.S. warns workers on cancer-causing mineral erionite

Federal health officials are calling for protective measures at job sites where workers may be exposed to erionite, a cancer-causing mineral similar to asbestos that is found in rock and soil in at least a dozen western states.

An advisory published Tuesday by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health recommended a series of steps to prevent employee exposure to eronite fibers at sites such as gravel quarries and road projects. The NIOSH alert noted that erionite was responsible for “remarkably high” rates of mesothelioma, a lethal form of cancer that devastated several Turkish villages where erionite was concentrated in rock and soil. Continue reading →

Jobs’ fight against pancreatic cancer was ‘admirable’

NOTE: Although we do not fully agree with some of the statements made within this column, it is noteworthy, that a personage such as the brilliant Steve Jobs, chose to handle his malady with conventional medicine, as opposed to the options available today. (Ed.)

Steve Jobs was a billionaire, a famous problem solver, and according to one medical expert familiar with the form of cancer he suffered from, a man who fought an “admirable” battle against the disease.

If anyone was equipped with the resources to mount a serious fight against cancer it was the Apple co-founder. Nonetheless, Jobs lost his battle yesterday (October 5, 2011) when he passed away at the age of 56.

His family has not disclosed the cause of death but medical experts have long speculated about what might have occurred based on what Jobs revealed about his health in recent years. Continue reading →

RED ALERT: FDA Set to Ban Your Supplements

Foods containing ‘good’ fats, such as nuts, are key to helping reduce inflammation in the body

The FDA has issued a proposed mandate that represents the greatest threat to dietary supplements since 1994. Back in the early 1990s, consumers were so alarmed by FDA bullying that they staged a massive revolt. The result was that Congress passed a law prohibiting the FDA from banning popular nutrients (as the agency had threatened to do).

There was, however, a loophole in the 1994 law. The FDA was given authority to regulate ingredients introduced after October 15, 1994.

It has been 17 years, but the FDA just issued draconian proposals as to how it intends to regulate what it now calls “new dietary ingredients“. You can find the FDA Draft Guidance on New Dietary Ingredients (NDI’s) here. If implemented, some of the most effective nutrients you are taking will be removed from the market. This includes many fish oil formulas and natural plant extracts. A detailed analysis of the FDA Draft Guidance is available here.

These oppressive rules are exactly what the 1994 law (DSHEA) sought to prevent. The FDA is using its authority in direct violation of Congressional intent. Continue reading →

EPA Warns Public About Mercury Hazards in CFL Light Bulbs

First EPA News Brief Summary: “WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today updated its guidance on how to properly clean up a broken compact fluorescent lamp (CFL). Included with the guidance is a new consumer brochure with CFL recycling and cleanup tips…CFLs contain a small amount of mercury sealed within the glass tubing. When a CFL breaks, some of the mercury is released as vapor and may pose potential health risks. The guidance and brochure will provide simple, user friendly directions to help prevent and reduce exposure to people from mercury pollution…“

In switching from incandescent light bulbs to fluorescent light bulbs and CFLs our elected officials opened the door to a massive mercury pollution problem across the United States threatening landfills and drinking water supplies. Our elected officials have been derelict in making this information available to the public and providing the necessary hazardous waste sites available for their recycling and disposal in every local community . And there should have been a massive public education campaign to inform the public about these hazards. It is too late for the fluorescent and CFL bulbs that have already been tossed into dumpsters and landfills. We now can change this process through education and laws regarding the hazardous material disposal of these bulbs. Continue reading →