March 24th, 2010
With the signing of the Healthcare Reform Bill, millions of Americans of Americans (47 million uninsured, not 32 as has been tossed around in the final throes of the process) now have some measure of hope for medical care, and all of us have some added sense of security.
The noose of the insurance companies has been removed from our necks. Our insurance coverage cannot be canceled because we’ve reached the maximum payable due to a catastrophic illness. If you’re alive and over 20 yo you probably have pre-existing conditions—it will take four years before that limitation is removed for adults—but immediately youngsters cannot be denied coverage for pre-existing conditions.
And our young adults entering the workforce, many earning minimum wages or in jobs not providing health insurance, can remain on their parents’ policy until age 26. The group ages 19-29 have been one-third of the population without insurance coverage; many will be helped by this new law.
Despite all the posturing and rhetoric in the Capitol, having protection for our health isn’t a matter of which party you vote for. When you have to declare bankruptcy because you cannot pay the medical bills, nobody asks whether you’re Democrat or Republican. And medical expenses are the biggest cause of bankruptcies. Health care is a universal right, even in nations with far less resources than the United States.
Necessary to Improve How we do Health
With the insurance industry being reined in, it should now be in everybody’s interest—the patients, government, and the even the for-profit insurance industry—to improve how Americans do health. And very few health consumers/patients are knowledgeable or responsible in managing their own health.
Just 11 percent of Americans over age 50 are not using daily doses of pharmaceutical drugs. In senior communities I’ve observed, visits to various physicians two and three times/week seems to be the social calendar. Yet a friend in her 30s, who seeks natural routes of practicing health, reports that her colleagues are all regularly using pharmaceuticals and are surprised that their (one) colleague isn’t “taking anything”.
Americans haven’t been taught any methods of taking care of their health, other than pharmaceuticals, and neither have our M.D.s. Here’s my recommendations on reforming how we do health:
Consumer/patient education & responsibility
The foundation of the WMB reform is to educate the consumer/patient and hand them responsibility for their well-being. Good health—wellness—requires a wide variety of healing modalities, and few Americans know anything except pharmaceutical drugs. “Ask your doctor if any/every drug is right for you.” That’s what heavy daily television advertising has been telling us since 1998. And we do ask—or demand! In a survey of MDs, 37 percent complained that their patients insisted on prescriptions—and they usually relented whether or not it was advisable.
Ban Drug Advertising to Consumers
If we’re going to improve the population’s health and dramatically lower costs, reliance on pharmaceuticals must be reduced—dramatically. With the exception of New Zealand, the U.S. is the only country that allows direct-to-consumer drug advertising. Being a part of the British Commonwealth, New Zealanders already use homeopathy, herbs, and a wide variety of medical treatments. For the past decade Americans have been told there’s a drug for every twitch, inconvenient menses and—the latest—to improve our eyelashes. Earlier in this decade 40 percent of broadcast advertising revenue was from pharmaceutical advertising. At least two bills have come up in Congress to end it, but to no avail. Perhaps with new cost figures on the nation’s health bill, Congress will see that this advertising folly has to end. But the advertising works! (And higher drug prices pay for it.) We’re four percent of the world’s population using 50 percent of the world’s drugs.
Are we any healthier than others with this reliance on drugs? On the contrary, the latest World Health Organization (WHO) survey of nation’s health outcomes didn’t even consider the U.S. among the 19 industrialized nations. We’re ranked 37th in the world, two notches above Cuba and below such countries as Colombia (22nd), Morocco (29th), and Dominica (35th). Congressmen proclaiming on TV during this health reform debate, “We have the greatest healthcare system in the world” are about 25 years behind in their facts.
Public Health Promotion on Natural Medicines
Maybe this is “counter advertising” paid for by Big Pharma if Congress can’t muster the votes to ban drug advertising. The ideal would be to ban drug advertising, and to broadcast public health messages as Public Service Announcements (PSAs) required by the Federal Communication Commission for stations to maintain their licenses. Television advertising of cigarettes was banned decades ago due to the impact on the public’s health. The annual death toll of 100,000 due to pharmaceuticals and 700,000 visits to America’s ERs due to contraindications of drugs should qualify as a public health menace worthy of banning advertising of the substances.
Reform Medical Education
As many other nations do, the government should provide free medical education for primary care physicians (in return for n years of service). Eliminating the quarter million dollar debt for the medical students should influence medical students’ choice of whether to specialize (and make more money to pay off the school debt) and reduce the nation’s shortage of primary care physicians.
Expand medical education to include nutrition (more than the current one course); according to the CDC, 73 percent of deaths are diseases of (nutritional) deficiency. Our doctors need to learn more about nutrition. Introduce homeopathic treatments to medical students; in the European nations 20 to 40 percent of MDs refer patients to homeopathic doctors or recommend homeopathic remedies (prescriptions aren’t necessary for routine treatment).
These reforms won’t be welcome by Big Pharma. You can bet funds for buildings, programs, departments will be withheld from medical schools if curricula are revised to teach any healing modalities besides pharmaceuticals. Great!
To improve the nation’s health, we need the pharmaceutical companies TO GET OUT of medical education. One university is changing its name from Faculty of Medicine to Faculty of Health! Presently, over 90 percent of continuing education seminars/workshops of the nation’s doctors are sponsored by drug companies. They’re not teaching nutrition, herbs or homeopathy!
Limit Medical Malpractice Awards
A significant cost of medical care based upon drugs is liability insurance for all the death and harm the chemical medicines cause. Healthcare practitioners not using drugs (Naturopaths, Homeopaths, Traditional Chinese Medicine doctors) don’t have the legal liability issues of members of the AMA because they’re not using deadly medicines.
Vola! With patients educated on ALL OPTIONS of treatment and physicians trained in healing modalities other than drugs, the patient (and her family) takes more responsibility in making choices.
Since this is a proposal not accountable to political or business interests, I will add a single-payer system as the most efficient mode of health delivery (Office of Budget Management studies have already shown this to be true). Electronic medical records and patient medical diaries (they’re now responsible for their own health) will reduce costs and improve efficiency.
In the end, the WMB mantra, “You’re an Experiment of One (with anything you take) and the Only One that Matters” is always true.
Salud!
Beverly A. Jensen, Ph.D.
President, www.WomensMedicineBowl.com
Posted in Politics and Medicine, US healthcare system, Uncategorized, advertising and medicine, economics of medicine, ethics of medicine, media and health, medicial science, nutrition and politics, science, technology and health | Comments Off
February 1st, 2010
Now there are going to be millions who refuse to believe that there were any intentions other than the public’s best interest behind the World Health Organization’s calling the H1N1 (swine) flu a PANDEMIC. Americans don’t like being deceived, lied to, and put in danger, so we scream, ”Say it isn’t so.”
German epidemiologist and chair of the health committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg has watched closely the evolution of the H1N1 virus since its “introduction” last March. The motion on the EU’s agenda for an urgent degate on “Faked Pandemics–a Threat to Health” was signed by 14 members from ten countries represented on the Health Committee.
Redefining “Pandemic”
The Europeans are angry that governments have spent scarce resources on a contrived pandemic, accusing makers of flu drugs and vaccines of influencing the WHO’s decision to declare a pandemic. There are two kickers here–before the safety and effectiveness of vaccines are even considered.
First, governments have contracts in place with pharmaceutical companies to produce vaccines should any government agency claim”pandemic”. In the U.S. these contracts also shield the drug companies from liability should the vaccines cause harm (the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program). And due to the urgent nature, they’re rarely tested adequately and often do have dire consequences.
Second–the clincher–is that the WHO changed its definition of pandemic in May 2009 when the body count from the new flu wasn’t happening. A pandemic has always been commonly understood to mean heavy loss of life. Since that wasn’t happening, the WHO dropped six words from the definition: enormous numbers of deaths and illness. Now all that it took for a pandemic was a virus spreading across borders to which people had no immunity. (Question–wouldn’t a measure of immunity be the number of deaths and infections?)
CDC halts tracking H1N1 cases
Two months later, in July 2009, our own Centers for Disease Control and Prevention knew that there was no pandemic and advised the state health officials to stop testing patients for H1N1 and to stop counting cases of the influenza. When CBS News asked the CDC to explain this, there was no response. CBS checked with state health officials directly and learned that the cases of H1N1 were one or two percent of the flu cases tested. Regardless, the vaccines had been ordered, so roll up those sleves for the fall flu season!
But with WHO yelling, “Pandemic!” the floodgates were opened for the drug companies to open those sealed contracts and start cranking out vaccines (even bringing out stored Tamiflu and Relenza–and extending their expiration dates!) and raking in the mega bucks and euros. Who was behind this decision at WHO is what the Europeans will be asking.
The motion brought to the full Parliament reads:
“In order to promote their patented drugs and vaccines against flu, pharmaceutical companies have influenced scientists and offical agencies responsible for public health standards, to alarm governments worldwide. They have made (governments) squander tight health care resources for inefficient vaccine strategies and needlessly exposed millions of healthy people to the risk of unknown side-effects of insufficiently tested vaccines.
“The ‘birds-flu’ campaign (2005/06) combined with the ’swine-flu’ campaign seem to have caused a great deal of damage not only to some vaccinated patients and to public health budgets, but also to the credibility and accountability of important international health agencies.”
Needless to say, the WHO response is, basically, ”irresponsible hogwash”. But the committee hasn’t even raised the question of the origin of the hybrid virus that has elements of strains of varied viruses that have never formed in nature. So, if it’s not found in nature, it was most likely generated in a laboratory. Being a very unstable virus that could unravel and mutate in any host body, the effects of this hybrid virus on the populace’s health is unknown.
We’ll watch what happens in Europe. In the U.S. only the Iowa state senator Chuck Grassley is asking federal authorities questions about the H1N1 vaccine. Americans really don’t cope with lies and deceit from our government–point of fact, half of Americans believe (erroneously) that we DID find WMD in Iraq, the reason we were led into war.
Salud!
Beverly A. Jensen, Ph.D.
President, www.WomensMedicineBowl.com
Posted in Politics and Medicine, US healthcare system, Uncategorized, economics of medicine, ethics of medicine, global health, medicial science, planetary health, science, technology and health | 1 Comment »
January 12th, 2010
In the first days of 2010, the U.S. media has swamped us with predictions and prophecies of the world to come in this new decade. Specifically, all attention is on post-2012.
The first time I heard of the Mayan calendar, and its ending date of 2012, was at the Kitt Peak Observatory about 90 miles from Tucson, in winter 2004. Several American universities have their telescopes aimed at the stars on the top of Kitt Peak in this isolated Sonoran desert location, but the park guide was telling us what was happening on earth with the Mayan calendar in stone on the ground before us. He smiled and claimed, “We don’t know why it ends in 2012.”
Not many were paying attention in 2004, but it turns out several ancient civilizations marked 2012 as a date of significant change on planet earth. What will be the event that turns the earth into the next phase? Scientists, authors, seers, and prophets predict calamitous events including an asteroid hitting earth, global warming bringing on another ice age (after this week’s weather across the U.S. and Europe, this is altogether plausible), the earth tilting on its axis, etc. Take your pick.
Skills required for survival, useful anytime
Humanity survived the last ice age 10,000 years ago, and if the species is to survive the predicted calamity of 2012, we will have to revert to our agrarian, self-sufficient habits and skills that have been fairly forgotten in just the last 50 years–in the U.S. particularly.
One of the programs in the History Channel’s week of the apocalypse concerned how the individual family would survive. In brief, forget about driving our SUVs (the oil companies are gone) and forget about telecommunications other than ham (amateur) radio. No more internet surfing. Our driving is reduced to driving the horse pulling the plow so we can plant the only food we’ll be eating. And there’s no Novartis or Bayer corporation to manufacture the medicines we’ve become dependent upon. In fact, a lead character in the program dies from infection caused by a small cut on the hand.
In the U.S, unless your “tribe” of survivors includes recent immigrants who know herbal treatments from their homeland, Americans are doomed. The expert quoted on the show was totally unaware of traditional herbal medicine which would be all that’s available in such a scenario. Americans will be more likely than any other nationality to become extinct. If this had been filmed in Europe, Africa, any area of Asia, or any other country in the Western Hemisphere, there is widespread, common knowledge of the medicinal use of botanicals. Canadians will do well (though it might be colder!).
We will be on a path of simpler times. This website was launched with the inspiration of the role of women in carrying the herbal medicine bowl. For thousands of years women’s role has been that of healer, and that meant learning and passing down the generations knowledge of medicinal herbs.
A friend of mine, who immigrated from Hungary in 1937, told the story of her father (in the homeland) cutting a gash in his hand, and “he went into the garden and pulled a leaf off a plant, wrapped the leaf tightly over the wound, and in a few days it was healed.” No rush to the ER, no antibiotics, no stitches. It is possible to take care of ourselves.
We’d better learn what plant that was. Ironically, or by design, many of the medicinal botanicals have been labeled “weeds” by the chemical corporations and the “modern” farmers they have spawned. My mother laughed uproariously when I told her that I used burdock root to help overcome pneumonia. “When I was a kid I earned 25-cents a day to hoe down burdock.” Milk thistle is another “weed” in the American farmland, but in Turkey I saw acres of this beautiful purple bloom grown for the herbal industry; it’s a healing botanical for the liver.
Self-sufficiency has been strong trait of the American character since the earliest settlers began moving West. In the 1830s homeopathic kits and first-aid guidebooks were best-sellers as we migrated West from the Eastern seaboard. Herbal medicine and homeopathic remedies (made from medicinal plants) were our medicines. We need to reconnect with Mother Earth and become reacquainted with our roots–physically and spiritually.
Happy New Year! Salud!
Beverly A. Jensen, Ph.D.
President, www.WomensMedicineBowl.com
Posted in Uncategorized, economics of medicine, ethics of medicine, food supply, media and health, planetary health, science, spirituality, technology and health | 2 Comments »
November 2nd, 2009
The ERs at hospitals across America are reporting overcrowding as panic over H1N1 flu spreads this fall. As I watched the TV news report of the crunch on the hospitals in Tucson—and runs on the ERs are happening everywhere– my first thought was that for the sake of the public’s health, the ER staffs should be handing out packets of Oscillococcinum by Boiron, instructing the patients on how to take homeopathic medicine (dissolve the medicine under the tongue) and sending them home.
That my imagined scenario isn’t being played out during in any U.S. hospitals is a good indicator of much of what is wrong with American health care. People run to the doctor for any and every ailment, and Americans (and their physicians) know of no medical system except pharmaceuticals. Homeopathic flu medicines never, ever fail to cure the flu. It’s takes only a day or two to completely recover, and there’s never been nasty (much less toxic or fatal) side effects with use of homeopathic medicine in 200 years of use. Most other nations of the world know this—except Americans.
Not having to win the votes of Congressional representatives or to fend off the lobbyists of vested interests trying to preserve their profits, my proposed health plan is simpler. Focusing on patient education, the WMB health reform plan reduces dependence on MDs and makes drugs the medicine of last resort (the “alternative”). Surely the results will be a healthier population and at considerably less cost than the nation is spending now.
Consumer/patient education & responsibility
The foundation of the WMB reform is to educate the consumer/patient and hand them responsibility for their well-being. Good health—wellness—requires a wide variety of healing modalities, and few Americans know anything except pharmaceutical drugs. “Ask your doctor if any/every drug is right for you.” That’s what heavy daily television advertising has been telling us since 1998. And we do ask—or demand! In a survey of MDs, 37 percent complained that their patients insisted on prescriptions—and they usually relented whether or not it was advisable.
Ban Drug Advertising to Consumers
If we’re going to improve the population’s health and dramatically lower costs, reliance on pharmaceuticals must be reduced—dramatically. With the exception of New Zealand, the U.S. is the only country that allows direct-to-consumer drug advertising. Being a part of the British Commonwealth, New Zealanders already use homeopathy, herbs, and a wide variety of medical treatments. For the past decade Americans have been told there’s a drug for every twitch, inconvenient menses and—the latest—to improve our eyelashes. Earlier in this decade 40 percent of broadcast advertising revenue was from pharmaceutical advertising. At least two bills have come up in Congress to end it, but to no avail. Perhaps with new cost figures on the nation’s health bill, Congress will see that this advertising folly has to end. But the advertising works! (And higher drug prices pay for it.) We’re four percent of the world’s population using 50 percent of the world’s drugs.
Are we any healthier than others with this reliance on drugs? On the contrary, the latest World Health Organization (WHO) survey of nation’s health outcomes didn’t even consider the U.S. among the 19 industrialized nations. We’re ranked 37th in the world, two notches above Cuba and below such countries as Colombia (22nd), Morocco (29th), and Dominica (35th). Congressmen proclaiming on TV this summer, “We have the greatest healthcare system in the world” are about 25 years behind in their facts.
Public Health Promotion on Natural Medicines
Maybe this is “counter advertising” paid for by Big Pharma if Congress can’t muster the votes to ban drug advertising. The ideal would be to ban drug advertising, and to broadcast public health messages as Public Service Announcements (PSAs) required by the Federal Communication Commission for stations to maintain their licenses. Television advertising of cigarettes was banned decades ago due to the impact on the public’s health. The annual death toll of 100,000 due to pharmaceuticals and 700,000 visits to America’s ERs due to contraindications of drugs should qualify as a public health menace worthy of banning advertising of the substances.
Reform Medical Education
As many other nations do, the government should provide free medical education for primary care physicians (in return for n years of service). Eliminating the quarter million dollar debt for the medical students should influence medical students’ choice of whether to specialize (and make more money to pay off the school debt) and reduce the nation’s shortage of primary care physicians.
Expand medical education to include nutrition (more than the current one course); according to the CDC, 73 percent of deaths are diseases of (nutritional) deficiency. Our doctors need to learn more about nutrition. Introduce homeopathic treatments to medical students; in the European nations 20 to 40 percent of MDs refer patients to homeopathic doctors or recommend homeopathic remedies (prescriptions aren’t necessary for routine treatment).
These reforms won’t be welcome by Big Pharma. You can bet funds for buildings, programs, departments will be withheld from medical schools if curricula are revised to teach any healing modalities besides pharmaceuticals. Great! To improve the nation’s health, we need the pharmaceutical companies TO GET OUT of medical education. One university is changing its name from Faculty of Medicine to Faculty of Health! Presently, over 90 percent of continuing education seminars/workshops of the nation’s doctors are sponsored by drug companies. They’re not teaching nutrition, herbs or homeopathy!
Limit Medical Malpractice Awards
A significant cost of medical care based upon drugs is liability insurance for all the death and harm the chemical medicines cause. Healthcare practitioners not using drugs (Naturopaths, Homeopaths, Traditional Chinese Medicine doctors) don’t have the legal liability issues of members of the AMA because they’re not using deadly medicines.
Vola! With patients educated on ALL OPTIONS of treatment and physicians trained in healing modalities other than drugs, the patient (and her family) takes more responsibility in making choices.
Since this is a proposal not accountable to political or business interests, I will add a single-payer system as the most efficient mode of health delivery (Office of Budget Management studies have already shown this to be true). Electronic medical records and patient medical diaries (they’re now responsible for their own health) will reduce costs and improve efficiency.
In the end, the WMB mantra, “You’re an Experiment of One and the Only One that Matters” is always true.
Salud!
Beverly A. Jensen, Ph.D.
President, www.WomensMedicineBowl.com
Tags: health care reform, health care reform bill, health reform bill, obama health care plan
Posted in US healthcare system, Uncategorized, advertising and medicine, economics of medicine, ethics of medicine, food supply, media and health, medicial science, nutrition and politics, science, technology and health | 2 Comments »
October 25th, 2009
It was when the banana liquified inside its skin and oozed a pale slime out onto the fruit basket that I decided it was time to look for organic vegetables and fruits. But this banana had traveled from Central America to Dubai where I was living. Standards for what is “organic” aren’t consistently defined in the U.S.–forget about it internationally!
Giving up bananas was my only option, and I always selected produce that had traveled the shortest distances, vegetables and fruits from Jordan, Syria, and Iran were preferable to U.S., European or Australian imports. (This is a desert nation where virtually all food is imported.) The conditions of the soils and use of chemicals in growing food in other nations was unknown, but in the “processed” department the foreign operations were far superior to American. Fruit juice contained–vola! the fruit–only! No high fructose corn syrup to sweeten it up and fatten us up.
High fructose corn syrup–everywhere!
Barbara Kingsolver writes in Animal,Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life that the average American daily diet has an extra 700 calories through the addition of high fructose corn syrup into many processed food products. Is it any wonder that the whole nation has pudged up with the dominance of prepared and processed foods on our plates?
We easily understand the relation between nutrient content of the vegetables and fruits and the soils they’re grown in, but it takes another mental leap to realize that the nutrient content of the animal products we eat is determined by what the chickens and cows are fed and their living conditions! A chicken that’s spent its entire life in a cage has stress hormones that effect the eggs it lays and the meat we roast.
This isn’t the place for a treatise on soils, but I recommend the book Secrets of the Soil by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird . The updated edition in 1998 reports the alarming statistics on the use chemical fertilizers worldwide. In the 1930s, a University of Missouri soil scientist said, “The wealth of a nation is determined by its top six inches of soil.” This is an eternal truth, for the soil grows the nation’s food, which determines our health. An unhealthy nation doesn’t prosper–we have plenty of examples worldwide.
Before chemical fertilizers were manufactured (beginning in the 1950s) the soil on family farms was tended and supported by rotating crops and using the livestock manure. It was the natural cycle of decomposition, renewal, and life. Now with huge corporate farms growing single crops (70 percent of U.S. farmland is in corn and soy beans–as Kingsolver says, “we’re one pathogen away from famine”) and heavy use of synthetic fertilizers the soil can’t support the life of organisms in the soil. The result is nutrient-poor soil.
Nutrients of 1950s produce and today’s
Donald R. Davis, Ph.D., at the Biochemical Institute of University of Texas-Austin, compared the data of nutrients in vegetables and fruits collected by the USDA in 1950 and again in 1999. Six out of 13 nutrients had declined, and seven showed no significant reliable change. As reported in a 2005 issue of Food Technology, the minerals phosphorus, iron and calcium declined between 9-16 percent. Protein was down 6%, riboflavin 38%, and ascorbic acid down 15%.
What does this mean to you and me? Well, you’d have to eat half a dozen peaches today to gain the nutrient content of ONE 1950 peach! Revitalizing the soils is the only solution, and family run farms are trying to do this. Growing evidence links organic production with higher levels of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. A study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry (2007) reported a 10-year study comparing organic tomatoes with conventional tomatoes. As organic matter accumulated in the plots, the nutrients in the organic produce rose to 79% higher levels of quercetin and 97% higher level of kaempferol, on average, above the conventionally grown crop.
The eggs in my refrigerator now are from hens raised without hormones and free-range (no cages), fed grains with no animal by-products. Their shells are thin, irregular in shape and color, but they have 25% less cholesterol than caged fowl, and they taste better! Organic milk misses the traces of 200 antibiotics found in ordinary milk. Even M.D.s are advising that if you buy only one item ORGANIC, make it milk. Meat and milk from pasture-raised, grass-fed animals cotain greater levels of beneificial fatty acids including omega-3, alpha-linolenic acid, and conjugated linoleic acid. The animals live better, and so do we!
Salud!
Beverly A. Jensen, Ph.D.
President, www.WomensMedicineBowl.com
Tags: fruit nutrition facts, nutrition, nutrition facts, why is nutrition important
Posted in Uncategorized, food supply, nutrition and politics, organic food, planetary health, science, technology and health | 2 Comments »
October 3rd, 2009
Doctors often neglect to tell us patients the full scoop on our medical problem or the potential consequences of taking a particular drug. Sometimes they’re honestly clueless–in areas such as nutrition or methods of healing other than drugs–but sometimes they know info on a “recommended treatment” that leads them to decide THEY’RE NOT TAKING THIS MED, even if they’re pushing it on their patients.
This is the case with this season’s H1N1 flu vaccine. The government’s alarms this year–since March–bolstered by the irresponsible media frenzy was brought on by the World Health Organization very early declaring this hybrid flu strain a pandemic. No such pandemic is happening, and several reports now indicate that this seasonal flu will be not much different than other seasons’. Reports of 36,000 deaths “from flu” in an ordinary flu season are misleading; all but less than 2,000 of that number are attributed to pneumonia, an opportunistic infection caused by the flu virus.
Facts about the flu vaccine
Each season’s flu vaccine is a re-mix of previous years’ formulas. This year’s strain is somewhat different in that it’s a genetic mix of swine, avian, and human flu, a hybrid never seen in nature and suspected of having been developed in a lab. (The lab that announced a vaccine for this hybrid the same week that the flu was “discovered” in Mexico.)
Because the influenza virus mutates through the season and in varying locales, the vaccine–every year–is credited with being effective only about one-quarter of the time. The elderly, usually a prime target for vaccination campaigns, haven’t benefited statistically. While the number of elderly vaccinated has climbed steadily during the past quarter of a century, their flu-related death rate has held steady (Archives of Internal Medicine, Feb. 14, 2005) Now, in fairness, a government agency disputed this study’s method, but their statistics weren’t any better–just get your shot anyway, they advised!
Poisons in that Flu shot
The vaccine contains chicken embryo injected with live flu viral strains. Then it has to be treated: formaldehyde is added to kill the viruses, thimerosal (a mercury derivative banned in every other vaccine but flu) is the preservative, aluminum is added to promote antibody response, ethylene glycol (bought as antifreeze for your auto) and phenol are disinfectants in the formula. And these poisons are suppose to keep you well! While the season’s virus will keep mutating through the months so that the vaccine can’t provide viral protection, these toxins will surely make you ill!
Government has Vaccine stocks to Push
Maybe due to the WHO predicting a pandemic, and governments’ financing stockpiles of drugs for the event, state and local governments have ordered their health care professionals to take the flu shot or be fired. Only about half of health care professionals routinely get annual flu shots, but when they’re being threatened with the shots, the positions of the professionals become known. And they’re balking–they’re not going to get this shot.
Half of Hong Kong’s health care workers said they would refuse the H1N1 vaccine due to doubts about its efficacy and concerns about side-effects. The same reasons the rest of us should have! Physicians in England are declining to be vaccinated. With New York city and state ordering health care professionals to be vaccinated or be fired, union reactions should be expected.
With the panic to produce enough vaccine, safety trials are truncated, and neither will drug companies be held liable for injuries or deaths due to the vaccine. However, in this age of the Internet and much more public discussion of all issues, the US government is also revving up a “defense databank” to counter claims of the (expected) side-effects of the vaccine.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is racing to compile a list of the usual numbers of health events: 25,000 heart attacks weekly, 14-19,000 miscarriages weekly, etc. In another government-sponsored project, the Harvard Medical School is linking large insurance databases that cover up to 50 million people; the project will check whether people who’ve had the vaccine go to a doctor in the weeks after a flu shot and why. At Johns Hopkins University the Institute for Vaccine Safety will direct emails to at least 100,000 vaccinated individuals to track how they’re feeling, including complaints that may not lead to a doctor’s visit.
Perhaps the Internet–and the new media’s very public discussions- have driven the government’s new-found concern for public safety as we launch a new season of vaccine experimentation. There is even a campaign to Wash Your Hands frequently, a public health message that is elementary, effective for disease prevention, not profitable for any company, and rare in government health campaigns.
Strong Immunity is only good defense
Instead of vaccination, the emphasis for the individual’s and public’s health in face of flu season should be stregthening one’s immunity. The most elementary rules for supporting your immunity to ward off disease are what your mother always told you: get plenty of sleep; eat sensible balanced meals (we have to add REAL FOODS, not packaged or processed foods or drinks); and exercise regularly. Since our foods don’t the nutrient value they did years ago, nutritional supplements are necessary to boost immunity; vitamins C & E (d-alpha, NOT dl-alpha, a synthetic), beta-carotene. The herb echinacea and isatis root (Ban Lan Gen) bolster the immune system tremendously.
Ban Lan Gen, a Chinese herbal tea, Young Living’s Oil of Thieves, and Pflueger’s Immuno-Support product (in the WMB Shop) are my family’s favorites. Whenever I’m in a crowd, and especially on airplanes, I’m sniffing Oil of Thieves. Ban Lan Gen is great for adjusting to seasonal weather changes, and Pflueger’s Immuno-Support puts an end to on-going struggle with sniffles and every other lingering ailment.
During the flu season, the each member of the family has her own vial of Influenzium 30c and takes a dose once a month for flu prevention, and another dose/s if flu symptoms occur. Another homeopathic flu medicine that works miracles is Boiron’s Oscillicoccinum, knocking off a flu attack in less than 24 hours.
Strengthen your immunity and use herbs and homeopathy to stay well through this autumn and flu season. It’s a safer route than a flu shot.
Salud!
Beverly A. Jensen, Ph.D.
President, www.WomensMedicineBowl.com
Tags: swine flu, swine flu info, swine flu symptoms, swine flu vaccines
Posted in Politics and Medicine, US healthcare system, Uncategorized, economics of medicine, ethics of medicine, media and health, medicial science, science, technology and health | 7 Comments »
September 15th, 2009
In Washington’s culture of revolving doors, Michael R. Taylor has rotated between employment at the FDA and Monsanto since beginning his career in 1976. Until President Obama appointed him the new “food safety czar” he was most recently the vice president for public policy at Monsanto.
Maybe the President’s decision on this appointment was effected by eating too many chemically-sprayed vegetables before the crop came up in Michele’s organic garden, which a Monsanto spokesman actually claimed was “dangerous and irresponsible”. Yes, organic gardening and farming, Monsanto claims, is dangerous–those pests and fungi could run rampant, though they already are rampant despite the chemical companies’ efforts for decades.
Revolving doors–FDA to Monsanto and back
Taylor’s major contributions to FDA policies/Monsanto’s interests include getting bovine growth hormone approved for use in the dairy industry. The rBGH hormone is suspected of fostering cancerous tumors but what is certain, is that safety tests haven’t been done, and the nation’s general health is declining. Many organic food activists consider Taylor the FDA administrator most responsible for FDA approval of the genetically modified rBGH–and, incidentally, it’s made by Monsanto.
Then as attorney for Monsanto–the doors revolved again–Taylor advised Monsanto on suing states or companies that wanted to tell the public that their products were free of Monsanto’s drug. He has, however, reversed his earlier stance regarding genetically-modified seeds and foods; Taylor now admits that genetically engineered foods should be labeled and go through safety testing. Now there’s a point for public safety.
In his duties in the new position–now back at the FDA–Taylor will be planning implementation of new food safety legislation. God help us–the fox is in charge of the henhouse.
Imminent threat to food safety
One has to wonder who–really–is drafting the legislation effecting our food supply. Quite possibly staffers from Monsanto, Con Agra, Dow Chemical and similar corporations wrote House bill 2749 and found a “receptive” representative in Congress to sponsor it.
HR2749 gives the FDA tremendous power in dictating every aspect of growing food in American (HR875 reported April 2009 in this blog appears to have stalled in committee, but never mind, HR2749 has similar tyranical coverage of our food supply). The bill doesn’t address underlying causes of food safety problems, but it gives the FDA sweeping powers to tell small farmers how to raise and harvest crops, and diminishes existing judicial restraints on FDA actions.
Threats to Organic Farming
The Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009 will treat family farms the same as multinational corporations, giving the FDA the power to
- Quarantine and halt all movement of food in a geographic area,
- Regulate how crops are raised and harvested –could this mean requiring use of GMO seeds and requiring chemicals in soils and on plants?
- Oversee on-farm production activities
- Search business records without a warrant
- Force farmers to use a costly tracing system
- Impose criminal and civil penalties and a $500 annual registration fee
Swept through the House like a tornado
The bill, HR2749, was a stealth bill brought into the House of Representatives just before the August recess and voted by oral call, usually reserved for noncontroversial bills. Three versions of the bill were introduced on Wednesday, July 29 at 12:15 am, 9:36am and 10:50am, and a vote requiring a two-thirds majority didn’t pass on the 29th. But the next day, House Resolution 691 dispensed with reading HR2749, limited debate to one hour, granted an opportunity for one amendment to the bill (was offered by ONE representative who’d actually read the bill, but no action taken). On 30 July by a SIMPLE MAJORITY, the bill passed 283 to 142.
What was the rush? The bill was pushed through like a farmer trying to bring in the crop with a storm on the horizon. The BigAg lobbyists have a stronghold on our Congressional reprentatives, and now their man is leading the FDA’s office of food safety. There is a storm on the horizon. Monsanto intends to rid the White House of Michele’s organic garden.
What you can do
To tell your Senator to READ this bill and to protest this stanglehold on the nation’s food supply, visit the website of Farmer-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, www.ftcldf.org and sign their petition. Buy locally grown foods, which is more nutritious for you and puts seven times the money into your local economy by supporting area farmers instead of international shippers/marketers.
Salud!
Beverly A. Jensen, Ph.D.
President, www.WomensMedicineBowl.com
Posted in CODEX, Uncategorized, food supply, nutrition and politics, planetary health, science, technology and health | 3 Comments »
August 29th, 2009
The most common argument against the “alternatives” to what is deemed by the AMA to be “legitimate” treatment is that nothing else is “evidence-based.” When the U.S. is, at last, considering overhauling the health care system to reduce costs and improve health outcomes, this premise of “evidence-based” medicine needs to be carefully examined.
What evidence is there for the medicines and methods practices by the AMA? Whose evidence is considered? The following is from WMB’s Articles “Research & Regulation” section; nothing much has changed since this was written in 2002.
“Editors of the New England Journal of Medicine (September 1998) and Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA, November 1998) have both proclaimed that there cannot be two kinds of medicine–conventional and alternative, that there is only medicine that has been adequately tested and medicine that has not been tested. The imminent physicians aruge, in effect, that only orthodox medicine has been tested and proven effective.
In reality, only an estimated 10 to 20 percent of all conventional medical intervention have been proven empirically according to reports of the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment in 1978, again in 1990, and it is true today. The editor of the British Medical Journal also found about 15 percent of medical interventions to be supported by solid scientific evidence. The only known controlled test of the effectiveness of surgery was recently done by a Houston surgeon, Dr. Bruce Moseley, who “pretended” to perform knee surgery on a number of patients; the outcome was that there was no difference in satisfaction (patient reports of improvement) whether knee surgery had actually been performed or not. (Reported in New England Journal of Medicine, July 2002)
Threatened by a proposed law to make vitamins and supplements controlled by prescription in the early 1990s, an outraged American public pushed Congress to pass the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) of 1994, which essentially eliminated the FDA from regulating herbs and vitamins. While we do not need the government (i.e., the FDA, AMA and pharma companies) granting us permission to take care of our own health, this law abdicated all responsibility from the FDA for the public’s health regarding actual product ingredients. The law prohibits medicinal claims not approved by the FDA and bans warnings about possible side effects. The result has been in the US “no rules, no standards, no analyses, and no oversight,” as reported by Joe and Teresa Graedon in The People’s Pharmacy.
Other countries, such as Germany, Australia, and Canada, treat healing herbs differently. In Germany, the production of herbs is standardized and regulated by the government. The German government accepts traditional medicinal claims of herbs and requires only cautionary labeling about potential side effects. As a result, mainstream German physicians are as likely to prescribe valerian-based sleep aids as pharmaceutical sleeping pills. Canada has established a Natural Health Products Directorate; over 50 percent of Canadians consume traditional herbal products, vitamins and mineral supplements, traditional Chinese, Ayurvedic and other medicines, and homeopathic preparations.”
Expand Research Sources
The sources for “evidence” of the usefulness of herbs and supplements needs to be expanded to beyond American shores. Other nations carry out double-blind studies of the efficacy of the traditional medicines their populations use, and we need to track their research. The U.S. government–rather than pharmas–should sponsor research on supplements and herbs, and the researchers should know the difference between natural and synthetic vitamins (such as E)!
Educating the public to take better care of themselves cannot be training them to “ask your doctor” about another drug. The data on the value of nutrition and herbs IS KNOWN, despite the FDA disclaimers, and public knowledge of these “alternatives” to take care of their health needs to be expanded. Improving our nation’s health (and reducing costs) absolutely requires using alternatives to the drugs. With nearly one million Americans every year either killed or sent to ERs due to use of pharmaceuticals, our lives and our national well-being depends on knowing and using alternatives.
Until then, the WMB mantra is so very true: You are an Experiment of One with everything you take, and you are the Only One that matters!
Salud!
Beverly A. Jensen, Ph.D.
President, www.WomensMedicineBowl.com
Tags: evidence-based medicine
Posted in Politics and Medicine, US healthcare system, Uncategorized, economics of medicine, ethics of medicine, media and health, medicial science, science, technology and health | 4 Comments »
August 1st, 2009
Years ago on a radio talk show regarding health, the host asked the guest, an M.D., “What is pain?” The doctor’s response, “Whatever the patient says it is.”
Hallelujah! Only the patient is experiencing the pain and knows his/her body. Likewise, only the patient, that is you and me, know–or at least have a clue–when we’re well or not, in other words if we’re feeling “healthy.”
H. Gilbert Welch, a professor of medicine at Dartmouth, wrote an essay in the NY Times this week (7/28/09) on the need to redefine what is “health”. Professor Welch, who is an MD, writes that what constitutes “health” for years has been defined by health professionals who have a financial interest in the answer.
These are health professionals who are invested in or are on the payroll of the pharmaceutical companies, biotech firms, manufacturers of medical devices and diagnostic technologies, labs, surgical centers, clinics, hospitals, etc. The editor of The New England Journal of Medicine labeled this some 30 years ago as the “medical-industrial complex”. I will call the band of them MIC.
This band, MIC, now defines health as the absence of abnormality as ever-new technologies are developed and ready to measure us. Dr. Welch writes that people use to seek health care because they were sick. Now MIC seeks patients so every little ache or twitch should be checked out and “labs are needed”.
Doctors and public only know drugs
A major contributor to drawing in the patients has been direct-to-the-consumer (DTC) advertising, especially on television. There were years of heavy pharmaceutical ads, and who couldn’t eventually identify some little twitch or pain they could use that drug for? New Zealand is the only other country that allows DTC advertising of drugs, but the education of our MDs in drugs being the sole healing modality and the American public’s lack of alternatives to drugs has resulted in our four percent of the world’s population using 50 percent of the world’s pharmaceuticals.
But MIC also defines what is “normal” so this potential patient can fit into the “abnormal” category, of course. When I was having my children in my thirties, as many Boomers did, my obstetrician commented that the statistics of “high-risk age” for maternity would be changing with my generation. And it’s these statistics of what is “normal” that MIC manipulates. If over half the population is living quite well with blood pressure above the “norm” of 120/80, common sense would indicate the statistics should be revised. Since cancer cells are our own cells gone haywire, couldn’t we all be labeled by MIC as in pre-cancer condition? And if those babies were born a hefty 8 pounds plus or you have an extra 10 pounds, you’re surely pre-diabetic. (Following this logic, we’re all pre-deceased!)
Tests are costly and ineffective
This definition of health only serves the financial interests of MIC. The irony is that often the tests they do use–and then prescribe drugs to treat the phantom ailment–aren’t measuring anything significant. If half of those who have heart attacks have normal cholesterol, then what does managing cholesterol have to do with cardiovascular risk and why would you take a drug to reduce cholesterol? A new radiology test that captures internal views of every blood vessel in the body has found patients with lifelong very high cholesterol didn’t have a pinhead of plague in their vessels. (It’s dislodged plague that causes cardiovascular “events”.)
For the most part, the tests done by MDs don’t measure excesses or deficiencies until we’re in critical condition. They fail to keep us even close to optimal health. A friend who has occasional wakes-me-up pain in the kidney (and she’s had kidney stones so she knows PAIN) and scant blood in urine (she’s a nurse so observes things), went to the doctor for tests. His test indicated “everything’s normal”, and to quit complaining was his advice. She needs to seek nutritional and herbal support for her kidneys.
Another individual did just that. A complete physical and blood tests didn’t indicate causes for slightly swollen ankles or lower than normal energy. That was the MD’s assessment. “Everthing’s fine,” was the diagnosis. The TCM naturopath, in a 90-minute visit vs. 10-minute exam, through examining the six pulses and the tongue, saw that her heart was sluggish. With a herbal complex prescribed, within two days the ankles were no longer swollen and energy levels boosted so that an afternoon nap wasn’t a necessity.
Open system to all practitioners
So while the MDs and the medical-industrial complex manipulate the definition of health, and resulting costs have skyrocketed, their medical devices and lab tests also fail to detect non-optimal health conditions. To improve individuals’ and the nation’s health all the varied health practitioners must be brought into the health system. The education of our MDs has to be expanded beyond pharmaceuticals, and the population needs education in nutrition, herbs, and medical systems other than drugs.
The WMB mantra stands: You are (indeed) an Experiment of One with everything you take, and you are the only one that matters!
Salud!
Beverly A. Jensen, Ph.D.
President, www.WomensMedicineBowl.com
Posted in Politics and Medicine, US healthcare system, Uncategorized, advertising and medicine, economics of medicine, ethics of medicine, media and health, medicial science, nutrition and politics, science, technology and health | 1 Comment »
July 15th, 2009
Giving birth in Germany is like entering an altered universe. Imagine having a midwife counsel you through the months of pregnancy, guide you in making decisions before the birth in case of emergency, deliver the baby, then make home visits daily as long as necessary.
Healthier Outcomes with Midwives
Midwifery in the U.S. has been so hounded by state legislators (who were besieged by AMA lobbyists) and eventually banned in many states so that we don’t even know what this health practitioner does. And we should know. All the research shows that births conducted by midwives have a more positive outcome for maternal and infant health, physical and emotional, than do MD-directed, in-hospital births. Other nations’ healthcare policy-makers know this.
In Germany, where I have been for the past few weeks, the law requires a midwife to attend to every mom and to deliver the babies. Having an M.D. present in the delivery room is optional, though some hospitals have them stop by “to witness” the birth.
Training of Midwives
Women training to be midwives have three years’ of classes and residency in a university hospital. The training focuses on gynecology and obstetrics, and they’re paid for their training. The German professional midwives association, with about 18,000 members, is organized by the 15 states or provinces. The majority of midwives work in hospitals and are paid similarly to nurses, and about 80 percent of moms only work with midwives after the birth.
My niece is one of the 20 percent of German moms who chose to work with an independent, consultant midwife (not associated with a hospital) who counsels the mom (and dad) throughout the pregnancy and through the first year of the newborn’s life. And private insurors pay 100 percent of the costs.
“You have so many questions, and the doctor has no time. Most important to me was the midwife’s emotional support. The doctor can do much of the other (exams, etc), but not the emotional support,” Danya said. Having her first child at 42, she was considered medically high-risk only due to her age. Knowing that, the midwife discussed with Danya and her husband contingency plans in case of complications. There were none, but having made the decisions in advance created a more relaxed delivery environment.
With phone consultations with the midwife being usual, Danya called her when contractions started. The move to the hospital was put off for several hours because home is a more comfortable environment, emotionally and physically. She had used a homeopathic remedy to facilitate an easier delivery, and she checked into the hospital two hours before the birth.
Midwives’ services
Massaging the abdomen to realign organs displaced by the fetus? Only a midwife provides such care. Danya’s midwife, a mom of a 2-yo herself, made home visits twice daily after Mom and baby returned home (2-day hospital stay). She gave instructions in breast feeding, showed Dad how to give the newborn a bath, answered questions of all manner of emotional and physical issues.
When his two-week (paid) paternity leave ended and her husband returned to his job, and Danya was having a tearful day, the midwife assured her this was the usual helplessness all moms felt on this day. After the first week the midwife’s visits were daily for about another week. When the baby wasn’t gaining enough weight, she directed the new parents to add formula to his diet and to pump breast milk so that the amount he ate could be measured.
After the first month a scheduled visit to the home is made every three months. Wearing only a shirt, baby is put into a small, white sheet with straps that is hung onto a hand-held scale (picture the stork’s delivery sack). Reflexes are tested. Any other concerns of Mom are discussed. Periodic visits to the pediatrician are made, but the midwife will be called first about a rash.
The best health care brings into the practitioners’ arena all manner of health modalities that focus on wellness. And these practitioners–midwives, chiropractors, herbalists, body treatments such as Bowen and shiatsu, nutrition counselors–will improve the health of Americans AND lower costs.
Other German friends were complaining that insurance wasn’t paying 100 percent of a three-week spa stay for an elderly woman who was the sole caregiver for her husband suffering from alzheimer’s. Insurance was paying for a one-month stay (perhaps longer) for him in a nursing home, and giving the caregiver/wife a health treatment at the spa in the nearby mountains. I just shook my head in disbelief that they were disgruntled with this care, which is unheard of in the U.S.
This is wellness for all, and it’s the expectation of the Germans and the French.
Salud!
Beverly A. Jensen, Ph.D.
President, http://www.WomensMedicineBowl.com
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Posted in Politics and Medicine, US healthcare system, Uncategorized, economics of medicine, ethics of medicine, medicial science, science | 4 Comments »
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