It’s Pink Ribbon time when we are all urged do our best to walk and talk for a “Cure”. That’s right; it’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month again. Never mind that the last thing the “cancer cure industry” wants is a cure for cancer. After all, cancer is the single most economically productive disease in the history of mankind. Never mind that valid, successful and inexpensive cures for cancer are ruthlessly suppressed by the cancer industry, including the shameful performance of my profession, organized medicine. Pink Ribbon Season means well crafted messages to maneuver women all over America to have mammograms and undergo dangerous and often unnecessary treatment for it in the common event that the diagnosis of breast cancer is wrong.
Breast Cancer is a largely preventable disease on an epidemic rise and is now the leading killer of woman between 45 and 55, according to Preventing Breast Cancer. The Story of a Major, Proven, Preventable Cause of This Disease. by Dr. John Gofinan. There is no doubt that finding and treating a malignant breast tumor early increases survival by at least 17 % according to the [highly suspect, Big Pharma dominated] American Cancer Society.
Breast Cancer Awareness Month is, simply put, a corporate strategy , sponsored by, among others, Astra Zeneca, which makes Tamoxifen. Every word, walk and wink associated with the ubiquitous pink ribbon must pass their approval process. Perhaps you have noticed that, under their guidance, “prevention” has become “early detection” and early detection means, pure and simple, mammograms.
But do mammograms detect cancer? Well, no, not particularly well. In fact, 70 to 80 percent of all positive mammograms do not, upon pathology examination, show any presence of cancer.. How’s that? After an invasive technique like mastectomy (removal of a breast), lumpectomy (removal of a lump) or biopsy (sample material removed from the area for study), the false positive rate is between 70 and 80%? Right. But the cost is anywhere between $250-$500 per woman per year. You do the math. Industry can well afford to support those “Walk for the Cure” Events. Except they should be renamed “Walk for the Profit”.
Well, when a mammogram says there is no cancer, that’s correct, isn’t it? Actually mammograms are shockingly bad at finding cancers that really are there. Dr. Samuel Epstein in his book, The Politics of Cancer, notes that the false negative rate is, according to the National Cancer Institute, about 40 percent among women ages 40-49. The National Institutes of Health says that mammograms also miss 20 percent of malignant tumors in women.
But at least they can’t do any harm, right? Wrong. Mammograms currently deliver about 1 rad per breast per screening for a glandular dose of 0.1 rad per breast or a total glandular dose of 0.2 rad.. The National Cancer Institute estimates that each rad in a woman between the ages of 35 and 50 increases the risk of breast cancer by 1% so a bilateral mammogram each year increases a woman’s rate of breast cancer by 20% over each decade of screening! This is not a negligible risk.
But wait! There’s more.
Since mammography was introduced, Ductal Carcinoma In Situ (DCIS), the most common form of breast cancer has increased by 328% and 200% of this increase may be largely caused by mammography! Radiation, like that delivered by mammography equipment, is associated with sharp increases in breast cancer. In fact, Dr. John W. Gofman, an expert on the health impact of ionizing radiation, believes that 75% of breast cancer can be prevented by avoiding ionizing radiation altogether! Now, that’s good for us, but it’s not good for the people who make mammography equipment. Prevention is, unfortunately, very bad business if you make detection equipment or treatment options for a preventable condition like breast cancer. And there are a host of studies showing that mammography is, at best, a major question and, at worst, a serious problem.
Mammography also may spread existing cancer because, during the procedure, massive, and painful, pressure is applied to the breast. This may cause existing cancer cells to spread before immune processes can kill them (which a healthy immune system does routinely).
And, if you are unlucky enough to carry predisposing genes (Oncolgene A-T, BRCA1 and BRCA2), you are particularly susceptible to even small amounts of radiation and will perhaps be among the estimated 10,000 women who will succumb this year to breast cancer directly caused by mammography.
These are not unknown, controversial facts touted by obscure researcher. Dr. Gofman analyses NCI data showing that among women under 35, mammography can induce 75 cases of breast cancer for every 15 it identifies. Canadian National Breast Cancer Study Canadian study tracking outcome showed that woman40-50 who had mammograms had a 52 percent increase in breast cancer mortality (that is, death) compared to similar woman who did not and that they were more likely to die of breast cancer if they were screened regularly than if they were not!
So what do I, as a woman, as a physician and as a health advocate suggest? First of all, I recommend finding, and using regularly, another screening technology called “thermography” which detects cancer sooner, far more accurately and with no harm at all to the body since it relies on heat emitted by your body and takes a sensitive heat picture of your body. Because malignancies grow extra blood vessels, they emit more heat so they are detectible early and without danger. So, from where I sit,
1. Women under 35 are not well served by mammograms as a screening tool and should not allow mammograms to be performed
2. Although the American Cancer Society advocates mammogram screening for woman 40-49 every two years, I suggest thermography, not mammography, for all women of all ages along with any one of several high sensitivity biochemical tests for cancer. Please note that many experts, especially those whose incomes depend, directly or indirectly, on mammography and treatment for cancers –even false positive cancers — do not agree with my conclusions. Although many experts feel that the risk of breast cancer for women under 35 is not high enough to warrant the risk of radiation exposure, many feel that for women over 55 the risk is high enough to warrant the significant risk of mammograms.
In 1997, NIH appointed a consensus panel to evaluate the risk of mammography. They found no evidence that mammograms for this age group save lives and may do more harm than good. Rather than coming to a conclusion, the panel advised women to weigh the risks with their doctors and decide for themselves.
I do not have mammograms. I also do not have the approval of the Pink Ribbon people to tell you this. (Tamoxifen is another, sad, deadly story. We’ll talk about it another time.) In the mean time, walk for a cure because exercise reduces the risk of breast cancer. Eat for a cure because sensible, natural diets reduce the risk of breast cancer. Laugh for a cure because stress and loneliness reduce immune competence. Pray for a cure because people with sincere religious convictions live longer and healthier than those without them.
Yours in radiation-free health and freedom,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
If anyone had a shred of doubt that Codex is creeping toward us on all of its loathsome legs as quickly as possible, rather like a venomous centipede, that doubt should vanish by the time you finish this blog. Each of the segments of the Codex creature may appear to be unaware of what the others are doing, but the net result is forward movement coordinated by some ganglion of control somewhere. Where? I don’t know, but I do know that the effect is one I don’t like one bit.
This week and next, the Joint House/Senate Appropriations Committee will be finalizing the 2007 Agriculture Spending Bill. Using the thinly veiled excuse of meeting the requirements of a Federal Judge who ruled in favor of an Organic Blueberry farmer in Maine in Harvey v. Veneman that the USDA organic standards violated the 1990 Organic Foods Production Act and that synthetic materials could not be added to food, the USDA is once again trying to destroy organic food purity by submitting a Draft Amendment to the Joint Committee which would BRING US ORGANIC FARMING STANDARDS INTO COMPLIANCE WITH CODEX ONES despite the fact that these standards are highly damaging to the American Organic standards. They will allow the following without labeling or identification:
– Pesticides to be used in the growing of organic food
– Synthetic materials to be included in organic foods
– Cattle can be treated with antibiotics and then administratively converted back to “organic
– Large percentage of non-organic feed for supposedly organic animals
This is the same imitative that the same USDA and the same industries attempted to bring us in 1997-78 when they wanted to use toxic sludge containing cadmium and other heavy metals as “fertilizer” for organics along with the ever-popular pesticides, herbicides (many of which contain mercury, by the way) and veterinary drugs for animals.
This is the same initiative that is leading to the attempt to undermine, gut or overturn DSHEA (by the way, if you haven’t sent your letters to Congress to protect DSHEA, please do so now). The target here, however, is yet another set of protective regulations embodied in the Organic Foods Production Act which give us the option of purchasing a reliably healthy, non-polluted, non-GMO, non-toxic food supply.
If you value your right to make meaningful choices about your health AND if you value your health AND if you see the relationship between your food and your health, NOW IS THE HOUR! Write to Congress now to impress upon them how important retaining meaningful organic food standards are to you!
You know, if I were reading this and other blogs and emails the Natural Solutions Foundation sends out I might get weary: there are so many issues, so many times I get asked to write to Congress, so many different problems. And that is exactly the point. If the issues can be fragmented and we can be driven into apathy, Codex and its organizational brethren, global control and loss of personal freedoms, win. The Bigs, who have enough lawyers and publicists and campaign managers, win. Big Pharma, Big Agribiz, Big Biotechna, Big Chema and Big Medica get to set the rules, set the standards and reap the benefits. Your illness and needless suffering and mine are not even collateral damage because they profit two Bigs on that list: Big Pharma and Big Medica.
So yes, there are a lot of letters to write and there will be more. And yes, there will be a lot of issues coming at you. And yes, this war is being fought on many fronts. Remember Jefferson, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty”. Which side would each and every one of the Founding Fathers and Mothers (yes, there were women partitions, too) have been on? Corporate greed and the apathy that allows it to flourish or the battle for our bodies and our rights under our own control?
So please contact Congress NOW! We have about 1 week on this one, perhaps less. “Urgent” does not even begin to describe this one!
Oh, two more things: don’t forget about starting a Health Freedom Meetup (go to http:.//healthfreedom.meetup.com to get started). You pick the time, date and location. Let people in your area know about it by email, word of mouth and some posters in health food stores, etc. Schedule it with me and I will do a phone visit via speaker phone and provide materials to make organizing easier. Grass roots give us the strength we need. Spreading the word is absolutely crucial. It’s a numbers game: the number of their dollars versus the numbers of our voices! If we have enough numbers, we win. If not, we loose. It’s that simple.
The other item is donation to our $10,000 fund. We are less than $800 away from our fund raising goal. If you have not yet done so, please donate generously. Think about what having dedicated health freedom warriors on your side is worth to you and share that amount with us. Consider making a monthly pledge so that we can spend our time on the battle, not on finding the resources to stay in the battle.
Thanks for you continuing active involvement. Your emails and calls are inspiring and heart warming. I learn from them every day and I appreciate the new ways of fighting this war coming from you.
Yours in health and organic freedom,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Adaptation is the process by which a stressed system attempts to regulate itself in response to a new set of factors in order to achieve balance and harmony (often called “homeostasis”). Countries adapt, plants and animals adapt, social organizations (like cultures) adapt and so do we humans.
In fact, health promoting substances called “adaptagens” (which enhance regulation) are used in natural medicine because they help the body increase or decrease whatever is out of balance.
The good news, then, is that we are, individually and collectively, wondrously adaptable. Up to a point. Please prepare yourself and click here to see a graphic and heartbreaking example of what happens when we stretch the adaptive rubber band so far that it snaps. Because that is what we are doing with our bodies by exposing them to hundreds of thousands of toxins never encountered by any living thing prior to the last hundred years including deadly pesticides, radiation at levels unknown in nature, toxic, untested chemicals, new organisms and weird DNA.
How much can an organism, a child, a gene, an organ, a marriage, a brain or a society take before its adaptive abilities are overwhelmed and the stress is greater than the compensation for the stress that the system can manage. The result? Damage to the ability of the organism to function, self protect and self correct. If the stress is great enough to show, we call it by the name of some illness or another: cancer, social decay, infertility, depression, skin eruptions, rising crime rate, looting, suicide, drought, autism, monster storms. If the damage is greater still, the result is death of the society, the child, the mind, the heart, the planet. The disorder and dysfunction (and the diagnosis) depends on the system being stressed but the principle is the same.
What can you do about it? Reduce the load. Reduce the number of stressors that the system has to adapt to and give the adaptive systems help, support and nutrition. That means Read labels!
1. Eat organic food. Yes, it costs more. Think of what your will save on co-pays and hospital bills!
2. Eat non-GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) food. We are building our new website, www.EatSafeEatSmart.info so you can come to the site for healthy alternatives to familiar choices.
3. Avoid trans fats. Use pure, unrefined organic coconut oil or extra virgin organic olive oil) for cooking.
4. Take adequate amounts of high potency, pure vitamins and minerals. Cheap one a day nutrients are not worth much (and that’s what they cost, too, because they do not compare at all to the high quality, high potency nutrients you really need.
5. Use all natural, non-toxic cleaning products for your house, your clothes and yourself.
6. Quit smoking
7. Drink adequate water and avoid carbonated beverages. Fizzy drinks will make your body more acid, setting you up for toxic events.
8. Do a supervised detoxification program with nutrients, sauna (if possible) and herbs so that you can remove the built up toxins from your body. This is not a do it yourself procedure.
9. Do not drink liquid from a plastic bottle which is soft enough to change its shape when you squeeze it. That means that it has phthalates in it. Phthalates act like unopposed estrogen and wreak havoc with the entire body of both born and unborn people.
10. If you identify contaminants or dangers in your home, office, car, etc. please take the action necessary to remover it (or remove yourself if that is the only way to protect yourself).
11. No perfume, no fragrance no matter what. In aother blog I will discuss the importance of NOT using perfumes if you are trying to reduce the toxic load of your body to give it more adaptagenic potential than it has now because of the toxic load you are carrying.
In order to get and stay healthy, there is no doubt in my mind: we need to enhance our ability to adapt by removing the things that keep us from doing well adaptively.
Remember, property and habits are much less important than health and health freedom. You can replace the first, but you can never replace the second.
Yours in irreplaceable health and freedom,
Dr. Laibow
Adaption is the process by which a stressed system attempts to regulate itself in response to a new set of factors in order to achieve balance and harmony (often called “homeostasis”). Countries adapt, plants and animals adapt, social organization such as cultures adapt and so do we humans.
In fact, health promoting substances called “adaptogens” (which enhance regulation) are used in natural medicine because they help the body increase or decrease whatever is out of balance.
The good news, then, is that we are individually and collectively wondrously adaptable. Up to a point. Please prepare yourself and click here to see a graphic and heartbreaking example of what happens when we stretch the adaptive rubber band so far that it snaps. Because that is what we are doing with our bodies by exposing them to hundreds of thousands of toxins never encountered by any living thing prior to the last hundred years including deadly pesticides, radiation at levels unknown in nature, toxic, untested chemicals, new organisms and weird DNA.
How much can an organism, a gene, an organ, a marriage a brain or a society take before its adaptive abilities are overwhelmed and the stress is greater than the compensation for the stress that the system can manage. The result? Damage to the ability of the organism to function, self protect and self correct. If the stress is great enough to show, we call it by the name of some illness or another: cancer, social decay, infertility, depression, psoriasis, rising crime rate, looting, suicide, drout, autism, monster storms. The disorder and dysfunction (and the diagnosis) depends on the system being stressed but the principle is the same.
What can you do about it? Reduce the load. Reduce the number of stressors that the system has to adapt to and give the adaptive systems help, support and
Teen Screen. Sounds friendly, helpful, upbeat, right? Well, it’s not. It is a marketing technique to addict and control our children by using bogus “suicide screening” questions and then, if a child identifies some of these universal experiences as their own, they are sucked into a vortex of procedure and misuse of professional words and ideas to make sure that huge numbers of children are doped and made dopey. Make them dopey enough, and you will make them damaged and dead, too. Oh, by the way, there is no need to have parental approval for this doping and dieing in more and more places, by the way. Object and you can loose your children to the power of the state. The list of abominations goes on and on and on here. Let me remind you that these psychoactive drugs are dangerous toxins and have never been tested for long term effects in human, especially not on the developing brains of children Six to 13 weeks is about average for a test protocol for psychoactive drugs despite the fact that these horrific substances are addictive and used for years on end on children. They are often used in combination, too, despite the absolute lack of clinical testing to assure anyone at all that these are safe procedures.
In case I did not mention it, I am a Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist by training as well as an Adult Psychiatrist. I know whereof I speak because I practiced out-patient psychiatry without drugs for more than 35 years before I closed my practice in order to take on the Body Politic: health freedom. I know first hand what these drugs do and I know first hand what is, and is not, known about the use and damage of these powerful mind altering chemicals and their impact on brains in development. I also know with the certainty of long practice that orthomolecular psychiatry, NeuroBioFeedback, clean food and psychotherapy are powerful, non-toxic, empowering tools to help with real issues of cognition, affect and attention.
I know, too, that these techniques are not very good for the biggest, and meanest, business in the world, Big Pharma. Not good at all. How much does a bottle of B3 (Niacin) cost compared to any of the dangerous doping compounds the patent medicine companies have convinced us are essential for life and health? You do the math. Or, if you’d rather look at some really interesting math done by some pretty smart people, take a look at the real story on Teen Screen and, scrolling down, take a look at the $30B which the Teen Screen poisoning of our children’s brains and bodies will result in for Big Pharma!
Here is my advice for you if you have kids: Do Not Allow Teen Screen Anywhere Near Your Child. Teach your child to resist the blandishments, the Video coupons and the Pizza Parties that are used as inducements for this diabolical program. Just Say No! and teach your kids to say “NO!”, too.
If a child is mentally ill, there are ways to screen and to help him or her that do not involve blandishments and enticements and treatments that do not involve poisoning your child’s developing brain. Love your child. Keep him/her free of mind-bending poisons with addictive and other dangerous potentials. Please.
Yours in health and freedom from profitable poisons,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director