by: Jonathan Benson

(NaturalNews) Amid all the controversy over genetically-modified (GM) crops and their pesticides and herbicides decimating bee populations all around the world, biotechnology behemoth Monsanto has decided to buy out one of the major international firms devoted to studying and protecting bees. According to a company announcement, Beeologics handed over the reins to Monsanto back on September 28, 2011, which means the gene-manipulating giant will now be able to control the flow of information and products coming from Beeologics for colony collapse disorder (CCD).

by Sayer Ji

Sesame (Sesamun indicum) is one of the oldest cultivated plants in the world, prized as an oilseed for at least 5,000 years.  While it is beginning to regain favor due to its exceptionally high calcium and magnesium content, few realize it is also one of the most potent medicinal foods still commonly consumed today.

by Sayer Ji

There are many things that drive cancer. Poor diet, chemical and radiation exposures, and certain infections, figure prominently in the process. Stress, however, is a major contributing factor that is often completely overlooked.

Immune Booster Protocol
Tryptophan

What is A Drug Company’s Principle Responsibility? New research, however, sheds light on just how critically important the physiological consequences of stress are on cancer cell progression.
Adrenaline Increases Cancer Malignancy

Published this month in the journal Cancer Genetics and Cytogenetics and entitled "Adrenaline induces chemoresistance in HT-29 colon adenocarcinoma cells," researchers found that the stress hormone adrenaline induces multidrug resistance in colon cancer cells.1

Adrenaline is released during times of stress and participates in what is known as the fight-or-flight response of the sympathetic nervous system.  The study investigated the cellular consequences of adrenergic activation (adrenaline activation), which included a dose-dependent increase in the expression of the cancer-associated gene (oncogene) known as ABCB1 gene and its gene product, P-glycoprotein, which is known to protect cancer cells from anticancer compounds.  

When adrenaline-induced P-glycoprotein levels increase within cancer cells, they become more effective at excreting drugs that may do them harm, e.g. chemotherapy. P-glycoprotein is used to transport xenobiotics out through what are known as ATP-dependent efflux pumps. These are highly expressed in the epithelial cells of the gastrointestinal tract, kidney, liver, and capillaries of the brain, testes, and ovaries, and normally defend healthy cells against toxicants in the environment.  In cancer, however, a wide range of oncogenes are upregulated and tumor suppressor genes downregulated, resulting in assemblages of cells (tumors) that can do great harm to the body as a whole.
Stress Is As Real A Threat To Health As A Heart Attack

Stress Reduction Techniques

This study raises a very important issue in conventional cancer treatment: often the psychological health, attitudes, expectations and feelings of patients diagnosed with cancer are considered secondary or merely "subjective" factors, merely an afterthought in juxtaposition to clinically verifiable, or so-called "objective" signs, e.g. tumor markers, genetic tests, etc.  This "Cartesian" division between mind (the "ghost in the machine") and the body ("the machine"), is at the root of the conventional medical model of disease treatment, and could itself be considered an inherently dis-eased or pathological system of thinking.

Indeed, recent research published in the New England Journal of Medicine confirmed that the very stress associated with being diagnosed with cancer is as lethal as the cancer itself, and sometimes far more so. After analyzing over 500,000 people who were diagnosed with cancer, it was discovered that the risk of suicide was 12 times higher and the risk of heart-related death 6 times higher during the first week following cancer diagnosis versus those who were cancer free.2

If these findings are correct, and stress hormones are capable of transforming normal cancer cells into a multi-drug resistant ones, or in increasing the risk of heart attack 6-fold, then stress reduction techniques, and other "intangible" factors, e.g. whether the doctor has a positive or negative attitude or expectation (i.e. the "placebo" and "nocebo" effect), should be given the same weight as the type of chemotherapy that is chosen, or the results of cytopathology or histopathology reports.
Can Simply Smelling Essential Oils Reduce Stress?

Aromatherapy reduces stress

Simple techniques can be employed to reduce the cancer-promoting effects of elevated adrenaline in invariably stressed and anxious cancer patients.  As we reported a few months ago, researchers have found that the simple inhalation of patchouli and rose oil may reduce sympathetic nervous activity by up to 40%, with rose oil reducing adrenaline concentrations by 30%.

A few other ways to reduce stress include:

    Chocolate: If taken over a 2 week period, daily consumption of 40g of dark chocolate can reduce urinary excretion of stress hormones cortisol, and catecholamines, while reducing other metabolic indicators of stress.

    Qigong: Qigoing can reduce blood pressure and catecholamine levels of patients with essential hypertension.

    Yoga: Yoga can reduce anxiety, depression, perceived stress, cortisol levels in breast cancer outpatients undergoing adjuvant radiotherapy.

    Tryptophan : Dietary tryptophan reduces plasma cortisol and noradrenaline concentrations in animals.

I admit, there was a time when I bought the comforting image of a drug industry that had your and my best interests in mind. I just assumed that every new breakthrough drug gave each of us a better chance of living longer healthier lives.

But that was a long, long time ago — long before I started writing about health care.

Over the past decade the Big Pharma curtain has been pulled back, and what a revelation it’s been! Disastrous fiascos (Vioxx, Avandia), trusted names, crashing and burning (Johnson & Johnson, Merck), and the unsettling realization that drug factories are often mismanaged — all of this has combined to make many consumers as jumpy as cats in a hurricane when it comes to using newly-approved drugs.

So with trust in pharmaceuticals at an all-time low, who is the last person drug companies would want to hear from?

Someone like Donald Light, Ph.D., who states it plainly: The drug industry is a “market for lemons.”

Ask your doctor if lemons are right for you

Specifically, Dr. Light calls the drug industry a “two-tier market for lemons.”

In tier one, drug companies overstate a new drug’s benefits and downplay or even hide details about serious side effects.

Tier two: Doctors are given misleading information that they pass along to their patients.

And a lot of patients go home with a lot of lemons.

In an analysis he presented at a meeting of the American Sociological Association, Dr. Light ticked off three key reasons why the drug industry produces lemon after lemon:

1) New drugs are tested by drug companies
2) Drug companies put up complex walls of legal protection to hide information about possible harm or lack of effectiveness
3) A new drug doesn’t actually need to be very effective to get FDA approval

Hmmm…I wonder if Dr. Light’s been reading the HSI e-Alert?

He’s also been poring over research. And he found this gem: In a study that examined more than 100 drug applications, about 40 percent didn’t have adequately randomized trials, nearly 40 percent were short of evidence to support efficacy, and only about half recognized serious adverse side effects.

Yeah…that sounds about right.

But here’s the best part: the drug industry rebuttal.

A senior VP of PhRMA (an industry advocacy group) told The Pharma Letter that Dr. Light’s analysis is “insulting to patients.” And you can imagine the gist of his defense: Many billions of dollars are devoted to R&D each year, lives are improved and extended, it’s difficult to bring a drug to market, etc.

And on the topic of safety: “To allege a lack of transparency about the risks of medicines is flatly incorrect.”

How in the world did he manage to say that without bursting out laughing? A lack of transparency is a drug industry art! Even the CIA doesn’t do lack-of-transparency as well as drug companies do.

In the end, I thought Dr. Light’s analysis was best summed up by this comment from Dr. Max Pemberton, a columnist for The Telegraph: “A drug company’s principle responsibility is to its shareholders, not to the patient.”

There you go. Once you get that, everything else is transparently clear.

by Sayer Ji

Could a cure for advanced, chemotherapy and radiation resistant cancer have already been discovered as far back as 1967? Could this curative substance have been so close to us for all this time, as to be part of our own blood and a constituent of our own urine?

Immune Booster Protocol

As crazy as it may sound to conventionally-minded folks in both the general public and medical professional spheres, the discovery of powerful anti-cancer peptides secreted by our own bodies only adds to hundreds, if not thousands of already extant natural and/or naturally-derived anti-cancer treatments, some which scientists have known about for over a century, e.g. turmeric has been proven to have therapeutic potential in over 100 cancers, but which threaten the financial and political hegemony of far more toxic and less effective therapies, e.g. chemotherapy and radiation.

Dr. Burzynski's Cancer Cure

Antineoplastons are a group of naturally-occurring peptides and amino acid derivatives which control tumor growth, and have been proven in clinical studies on a number of advanced cancer cases to be highly effective and non-toxic, relative to chemotherapy.

First identified by Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski  in human blood in 1967, he observed  "[T]here were significant differences in the peptide content in the serum of cancer patients as compared with the control group."

Owing to the fact that similar peptide fractions are found in human urine and can be purified as a bulk source of antineoplastons, Dr. Burzynski began a research program "for the identification of antineoplastic peptides from urine" known as the Burzynski Research Institute (BRI), which was incorporated under the laws of the State of Delaware in 1984.[i]

The discovery that urine contains therapeutic compounds is not novel. According to Dr. Burzynski:

"Medicinal use of urine and urine extracts has been known for centuries in ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, India and North and Central America. In modern times, the first study of growth-inhibiting substances in urine was conducted in 1937. The research on urinary peptides has a long history and was initiated by a Polish researcher, S. Bondzynski, in 1897."[ii]

Dr. Burzyinski’s research lead to the discovery of five different peptide fractions which he named Antineoplaston A1, A2, A3, A4 and A5. The first active component was identified as 3-phenylacetylamino-2,6-piperidinedione and was named Antineoplaston A10. Two synthetic derivatives of Antineoplaston A10 were named Antineoplaston AS2-1 and Antineoplaston AS2-5.

GreenMedInfo.com has done an exhaustive index of the research on the topic as found on the National Library of Medicine, which can be found on its Antineoplastons research page. The information found there indicates the preventive and/or therapeutic value of antineoplaston therapy in up to 30 diseases.

by NWV News Writer Jim Kouri

Americans’ Food Supply and Freedoms in Jeopardy

In an unprecedented private property grab, Governor Rick Snyder's Michigan Department of Natural Resources issued an Invasive Species Order (ISO) that allows his agents to forcibly commandeer and destroy heritage breed pigs on thousands of family farms in that state.

Citizens groups and conservative organizations are complaining that Governor Snyder's DNR is actively taking action to destroy these pigs, the farms and the farmers' liberties. In fact, the DNR teams have been likened to out-of-control SWAT teams.

"They are blatantly trampling civil liberties and natural rights and doing it to the great benefit of some very powerful lobbyists," said Tony DeMott, State Coordinator of the non-profit, non-partisan Michigan Campaign For Liberty.

"The actions of Governor Snyder's DNR are so dangerous that it is very important for you to understand the details," DeMott stated.

"The local food movement is under attack in Michigan. In a brazen power grab threatening the livelihood of small farmers across the state, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is using the state Invasive Species Act to expand its jurisdiction beyond hunting and fishing to farming operations," stated Pete Kennedy, an attorney with Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund.

According to several sources, Governor Snyder ordered the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, in total violation of the Fourth Amendment (Illegal search and seizure) to conduct armed raids on pig farmers in that state.

The DNR chose two farms to start their purge: one in Kalkaska, MI, the other in Cheboygan.

According to several sources, including Brad Roon, who is collecting signatures for a petition to stop this Gestapo-like slaughter of farm animals, "The Michigan Pork Producer Association pigs are magically alright. If left in the woods (as the killed pigs are NOT) the inbred pigs would be just as damaging as the alleged "feral" pigs had they actually been allowed to run wild."

INVASIVE SPECIES ORDER

On April 1, 2012, an Invasive Species Order (ISO) that DNR issued in 2010 went into effect.

The ISO prohibits the possession of specified breeds of swine and the Michigan DNR stated that the order was necessary "to help stop the spread of feral swine and the disease risk they pose to humans, domestic pigs, and wildlife as well as their potential for extensive agricultural and ecosystem damage."

On April 4th, DNR issued a press release stating that it had begun active enforcement of the order.

The ISO allows DNR to seize and destroy heritage breeds of pigs raised by Michigan farmers. To add insult to injury the DNR refuses to reimburse farmers for the pigs they destroy.

The law also stipulates that possession of prohibited swine after April 1 is a felony with penalties of up to two years in jail and $20,000 in fines.

'In other words, the Michigan anti-pig 'storm-troopers' will raid a farm, kill livestock and on top of that arrest and prosecute farmers as felons. The state of Michigan — a state full of radical Islamists — is criminalizing farming and planning to imprison them for doing what they're supposed to be doing. Farmers are now joining pro-life activists as extremists in this era of Obama," states political strategist and attorney Mike Baker.

BROAD INTERPRETATION OF THE LAW

Michigan's governor's understanding of the law dictates that any pig in Michigan whether wild or domestic could be prohibited. Instead of using common sense in limiting the order to feral hogs that roam in wild and unfenced public and private lands, DNR is basing its interpretation as to what constitutes a prohibited swine on eight physical characteristics listed in its Declaratory Ruling issued on the swine ISO in December 2011.

The Ruling lists a ninth "characteristic" consisting of "characteristics not currently known to" DNR. The characteristics include ones involving underbelly fur, tail structure, ear structure, and skeletal appearance. Using these characteristics, any pig in the state could be prohibited under the ISO.

Mark Baker, a hog farmer in Marion, is one of four people who have filed lawsuits to stop the implementation of the ISO. As pointed out in Baker's complaint, "There is nothing inherently vicious or unhealthy about the breeds of pigs targeted by the ISO. Any pig, whether used in 'domestic hog production' or not, will exhibit the same problematic behaviors if allowed to become feral, that is, to live outside the husbandry of humans. It is the state of being feral which causes the problems identified by the DNR in the ISO and declaratory ruling, not any particular breed of pig." (Note: Mark Baker is not related to attorney Mike Baker.)

There are two political agendas at work behind the issuing of the ISO. According to Baker's complaint, DNR has tried unsuccessfully for many years to have the legislature eliminate hunting preserves and estates. In these facilities, privately owned pigs and other animals live in a contained natural environment where customers pay for a chance to hunt and harvest these animals. Further the DNR does not collect licensing fees from these contained private preserves which they do get from hunters on public and other private land.

The other agenda at work is that of the Michigan Pork Producers Association (MPPA) who has publicly supported the ISO. "The small farmers I have talked to wonder why the DNR is singling out their pigs and is joining forces with the Michigan Pork Producers Association on this issue."

Implementation of the ISO will deny farmers their property rights and the right to make a living. It will reduce or eliminate customer access to heritage breed pork, a product that has become increasingly popular in restaurants across the state.

The ISO will impact farmers and consumers around the nation; the National Pork Producers Association and government agencies in other states are watching to see whether DNR can get away with enforcing the ISO.

EPA ATTACK ON FARMERS

The state of Michigan is not the only place in the U.S. unfriendly towards farmers. The Obama Environmental Protection Agency's plan to initiate a so-called greenhouse gas tax on privately owned dairy farms and livestock has farmers up in arms.

The EPA has instituted new rules and regulations to control greenhouse emissions by farm animals. During this tough economic time, it is unfair and irresponsible to levy such a tax on family farms, according to conservatives.

Under Title V of the Clean Air Act, farmers would pay a hefty permit fee for animals that emit 100 tons of greenhouse gasses annually, affecting the vast majority of the nation's livestock operations. Any farm with more than 25 dairy cows, 50 beef cattle or 200 hogs would have to obtain a permit to operate, which, according to the United State Department of Agriculture, would cover 99 percent of New York dairy production, 95 percent of its hog production and 90 percent of beef production.

According to one organization, the New York Farm Bureau, the new permits would cost farmers well over $110 million a year, dramatically impacting the agricultural sector and economy. The tax is estimated at $175 per dairy cow, $87.50 per head of beef cattle and $20 per hog. The added financial burden on already-struggling farmers could force many family farms out of business and lead to a raise in food prices.

While greenhouse gas contributes to global warming — according to some scientists and liberal-left politicians — not all emissions are equal. Under this federal proposal, livestock is held as accountable as the industrial and transportation sectors, which is simply illogical. That's essentially saying that a living, breathing cow is as detrimental to the environment as a coal-powered machine.

"The Obama Administration and the EPA officials fail to understand how important family farms are to our upstate rural communities. I don't support any tax that hurts farms and I am appalled with this permit requirement which could shut down our agricultural sector, causing catastrophic consequences the American economy," said political strategist Mike Baker.

"I would advise Americans to buy skis because we are in the precipice of a very slippery slope. The federal government will now begin to dictate what farmers may own and what they must do on their own property."

In addition, the Environmental Protection Agency has told Maryland's poultry farmers it intends to enforce for the first time federal pollution rules governing chicken manure — a crackdown that has surprised and angered growers while pleasing environmentalists who've long complained about agricultural runoff fouling up the invironment.

At meetings between EPA officials and farm associations, attendees were told that hundreds of farmers must get federal pollution-discharge permits if any manure from their flocks are washing off their land into drainage ditches and streams. More than half of the state's 800 poultry farmers have filed notices to get the permits, state officials say, but most observers are not confident of being successful unless the case goes to the US Supreme Court and before President Obama has an opportunity to nominate more leftist SCOTUS justices.

The federal permits are tougher in key respects than what Maryland has so far been unable to establish for its poultry farmers. State regulations and permit requirements developed last year to cover about 200 of the largest chicken farms are on hold because of appeals filed both by environmentalists and farmers.

People with higher intakes of vitamin D may be at a lower risk of developing Alzheimer's disease, suggests new data from France. The highest average intakes of the sunshine vitamin were associated with a 77% decrease in the risk of Alzheimer's, report researchers in the The Journal of Gerontology: Medical Science.

Vitamin D3-5

by: Ethan A. Huff

(NaturalNews) Many people still think of hospitals as places where the sick become healthy, and where disease is nursed into wellness — but these notions could not be further from the truth. Besides being cesspools of antibiotic-resistant "superbugs" and filth in many cases, dozens of U.S. hospitals, including children's hospitals, continue to serve McDonald's fast food to guests in their cafeterias and lobbies, a telling indictment of Western medicine's prevailing lack of discernment and knowledge in the area of proper nutrition.

Detox Protocol

by: Jonathan Benson

(NaturalNews) The Coca-Cola Company is currently embroiled in an investigation involving a New Zealand woman who allegedly died as a result of drinking too much of the company's sugary beverage. According to reports, Natasha Marie Harris had been consuming a steady diet of roughly two gallons a day of Coca-Cola in the years before her untimely death at the young age of 30.

Membrane Complex