AIDS Inc. – The Greatest Threat

Today, the area of HIV/AIDS has evolved into the largest single disease-oriented component of the bloated conventional medical Establishment.

It is simply incredible – that the biggest part of the $2 trillion-a-year business of American medicine (in terms of government-funded research and public and private infrastructure) is HIV/AIDS-related, particularly when one considers that AIDS, according to government figures, currently accounts for about 15,000 deaths a year in the U.S. (versus over 500,000 from cancer and almost 700,000 from heart disease). In fact, AIDS isn't even on the list of the top ten causes of death in the United States. Yet, federal spending on HIV/AIDS dwarfs the amounts of money spent on cancer and heart disease – not to mention lower profile diseases like diabetes, which kills at least five times as many Americans every year as AIDS.

When the apocalyptic predictions in the late 1980s that AIDS would spread into the general population and kill millions of Americans by the 1990s never materialized, AIDS Inc. shifted much of its focus abroad, to Africa and the Third World. The health problems afflicting millions of people in Africa, especially sub-Saharan Africa, and elsewhere in the underdeveloped world, were no longer to be associated with poverty and malnutrition or a lack of sanitation, clean water, or infrastructure, but instead with HIV and AIDS. Millions of Africans, clearly living lives of suboptimal health, didn't need to have their environments attended to or their overall health care improved; rather, they required guaranteed access to antiretroviral drugs, considered by orthodoxy to be the best treatments for HIV and AIDS.

Used in various combinations, these same drugs, highly toxic and immunosuppressive, and exorbitantly priced at $10,000 or more per patient per drug per year in the developed countries, had been credited with cutting the death toll from AIDS in the West. Now, with the potential of a new, exponentially larger market for the drugs emerging in the countries of the Third World, the pharmaceutical companies could be convinced to lower their prices for people in poor countries (from $10,000 to, say, around $600 per patient/per drug/per year). This change made sense to Big Pharma in light of the fact that the market for HIV/AIDS drugs would go overnight from a few hundred thousand people (mostly homosexuals) in the West to potentially scores of millions of customers, primarily heterosexuals, abroad. Meanwhile, AIDS drug prices in the West would remain high.

Wayne Dyer on Starting an Inspiration Practice -- Beliefnet.com

Wayne Dyer on Starting an Inspiration Practice -- Beliefnet.com: "
Starting an Inspiration Practice
Five ways to live each day 'in Spirit.'
By Wayne Dyer

Excerpted from "Inspiration: Your Ultimate Calling," with permission of Hay House, Inc. These daily practices will help you move toward Spirit in your thoughts and actions.

1. Commit to at least one daily experience where you share something of yourself with no expectation of being acknowledged or thanked. For example, before I begin my daily routine of exercise, meditation, or writing, I go to my desk and choose my gift for that day. Sometimes it’s just a phone call to a stranger who’s written to me, or perhaps I order flowers or send a book or present to someone who has helped me in a local store. On one occasion I wrote to the president of the university I graduated from to start a scholarship fund, on another day I took a calendar to the yard man, on another I sent a check to Habitat for Humanity, and on another I sent three rolls of postage stamps to my son who’d just started his own business. It doesn’t matter if this activity is big or small—it’s a way to begin the day in-Spirit.

2. Become conscious of all thoughts that aren’t aligned with your Source. The moment you catch yourself excluding someone or having a judgmental thought, say the words “in-Spirit” to yourself. Then make a silent effort to shift that thought to match up with Source energy.

3. In the morning before you’re fully awake, and again as you’re going to sleep, take one or two minutes of what I call “quiet time with God.” Be in a state of appreciation and say aloud, “I want to feel good.”

4. Remind yourself of this statement: My life is bigger than I am. Print it out and post it strategically in your home, car, or workplace. The “I” is your ego identification. Your life is Spirit flowing through you unhindered by ego—it’s what you showed up here to actualize—and is infinite. The “I” that identifies you is a fleeting snippet.

5. Dedicate your life to something that reflects an awareness of your Divinity. You are greatness personified, a resident genius, and a creative master—regardless of anyone’s opinion. Make a silent dedication to encourage and express your Divine nature.


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karlanthony.com

Pray to Heal Everyone

Mind-Blowing Poisoning Of US By American 'Industry' - 24 BILLION Pounds Yearly

Mind-Blowing Poisoning Of US By American 'Industry' - 24 BILLION Pounds Yearly: "A new report release Thursday finds that U.S. industry releases enough neurological and developmental toxins to fill railroad cars stretching from New York City to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Every year, U.S. industry releases about 24 billion pounds of toxic substances that are believed to cause developmental and neurological problems in children.

That amount could fill a string of railroad cars stretching from New York City to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and yet there are no emissions standards for these harmful chemicals.

This alarming finding is one of many in:
Polluting Our Future: Chemical Emissions in the U.S. that Affect Child Development and Learning, a joint report released Thursday by the National Environmental Trust, Physicians for Social Responsibility and the Learning Disabilities Association.

'That is the most startling thing,' said Jeff Wise, policy director for NET. 'The amount and how little we know about the chemicals.

Assemblage Point

Assemblage Point: "I have found my life runs more smoothly when I turn the tables, when I assume that life is constantly providing me with a mirror, a reflected image of my own mind and heart, in everything I encounter. The basic premise is that I attract things in my outer world that are a match to my inner world at the moment. It's a sort of homeopathic spiritual principle, rather than my previous approach which I could compare to an allopathic approach.

In allopathic (traditional western) medicine, the idea is that we must use substances (usually drugs) to suppress the symptoms of the illness, and that is what makes us better. In contrast, homeopathic medicine believes that the symptoms of 'illness' are actually the body's strategy for re-establishing health. In homeopathic wisdom, you take a histimine (rather than an anti-histimine) to support the body's strategy of flooding the sinus cavities with mucus, and take things that induce a fever to support the fever started by your body to maintain stasis. Again, its a reversing of cause and effect, and what we assume about the relationship about correlated events in our experience. "

The Theosophical Society

The Theosophical Society: "A primary idea is the essential oneness of all beings. Life is everywhere throughout the cosmos because all originates from the same unknowable divine source. Consequently, everything from the subatomic to plants, animals, humans, planets, stars, and galaxies is alive and evolving. Each is divine at its root and expresses itself through spiritual, intellectual, psychological, ethereal, and material ranges of consciousness and substance. Evolution reflects this emerging self-expression of faculties which differentiates into material forms; develops spiritual and conscious aspects; and, over cosmic time-periods, returns to the divine source. The life of the individual, of humanity, and of the entire earth is part of this cosmic process.

Exhibiting this fundamental oneness, altruism and compassion are human expressions of cosmic and planetary realities. Humanity is more closely joined inwardly than physically, and our thoughts and feelings have a potent impact on others. By following our highest inner promptings as best we can, we benefit our immediate surroundings and humanity as a whole. The ideal is to put the welfare of humanity and all that lives ahead of one's own progress."

With Drug Studies, Read Between the Lines

With Drug Studies, Read Between The Lines

News flash: When the drug industry pays for research on new drugs, the findings are more likely to be favorable than when the same sorts of studies are funded by those with no financial ties to the industry, such as Cochrane Collaboration reviews. This was the conclusion of a recent "study of studies" (called a meta-analysis) by the British Medical Journal. Researchers compared reviews from the Cochrane Collaboration -- an international, not-for-profit, independent body that critiques health-care outcomes -- with industry-supported studies. It may not be that the findings that were supported by industry were falsified or otherwise tampered with, but rather that critical information on methodology limitations and other aspects of the study design and certain results were less likely to be included in the published report -- and that's a potentially dangerous problem since it is here that knowledgeable experts are likely to see red flags that raise important questions.

HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN?

A meta-analysis of this kind comes along every few years, says Jay S. Cohen, MD (www.medicationsense.com), author of What You Must Know About Statin Drugs & Their Natural Alternatives (Square One) and Over Dose: The Case Against the Drug Companies (Tarcher/Penguin). In his expert view, the results come as no surprise. Always anxious to introduce and sell new drugs, pharmaceutical companies seem to persistently slant the research their way, maximizing the positive aspects of its exciting new products and minimizing those of concern, he says. "It should be called the drug sales industry, not the drug industry," muses Dr. Cohen. We talked more about the inherent conflict of interest, and why it is so important for consumers to know about it.

AN OBVIOUS CONFLICT OF INTEREST

Drug companies clearly have a vested interest -- hundreds of millions of dollars worth -- in developing, receiving approval for and marketing a new drug. As brand-name drugs that drug companies had exclusive rights to market go "off patent" and become available in cheaper generic versions, the ability to develop "new" drugs -- even though many of these drugs differ little from earlier drugs -- enables Big Pharma to continue to pull in the mind-numbing profits that dwarf those of most other industries. Not surprisingly, it is believed there is considerable pressure on drug-company-paid researchers to accentuate the positive results and minimize the negative ones, even though this demonstrates an obvious conflict of interest.

In contrast, the Cochrane Collaboration reviews are conducted without industry support from drug companies, and its reviews and database are considered a gold standard for analyses by the medical establishment. Studies by such independent groups, in general, are more likely than industry-sponsored research to identify and address the issue of bias. Using this more systematic and critical approach, independent reviews are not apt to simply rubberstamp products. (Unfortunately, Big Pharma's tentacles extend into doctors' offices and their affiliated medical schools, with promises of free samples, seminars in exotic locales and academic grants, resulting in a large number of independent doctors with links to drug companies.)

PLAYING DODGEBALL WITH LIFE-THREATENING DRUG RISKS

Dr. Cohen points out that this over-reliance on industry-sponsored studies has already had serious and harmful consequences. There's the case of the arthritis drug, Vioxx (rofecoxib), which was withdrawn from the market in 2004 because of increased risk of heart attack and stroke. In 2005, a New York Times article reported that manufacturer Merck was well aware of increased cardiovascular risks, yet covered them up... documents that emerged during trial revealed that Merck scientists were concerned about increased heart risks as far back as 1997, two years before Vioxx was even approved. However, the drug giant downplayed these negative studies, and one marketing document even advised sales reps to play "Dodgeball" -- that is, dodge questions from doctors concerned about Vioxx's risks. In another egregious instance, Merck funded and approved the design of the study of Vioxx at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital, only to discredit researchers' conclusions (and insist that a Merck employee remove her name from the study) when the research revealed increased heart attack risk. Months later, the company was finally compelled to remove Vioxx from the market due to safety concerns and an increase in cardiovascular events.

Dr. Cohen is also worried about a recent study of a best-selling drug, Lipitor (atorvastatin). Pfizer has significantly raised its profits by aggressively promoting high-dose Lipitor -- which costs one-third more than the low dose -- along with new uses for this cholesterol-lowering statin. A Pfizer-sponsored study reported in The New England Journal of Medicine (August 10, 2006) suggests that Lipitor should be taken by people at risk of a second stroke, or a stroke after a transient ischemic attack (TIA), even if they don't have heart disease. But, notes Dr. Cohen, in this study overall mortality stayed the same, whether they took Lipitor or not. While it's true that cardiovascular deaths dropped in the study, other deaths rose, so despite Pfizer's positive spin on the research -- which earned them front-page headlines across the country -- it didn't really connote success. This raises serious concerns about safety, says Dr. Cohen, since Lipitor -- especially at high doses -- is a potent drug with powerful side effects. Authors of this study had financial ties to Pfizer, and several were Pfizer employees, facts that raise red flags about potential conflicts of interest.

GREATER TRANSPARENCY REQUIRED ACROSS THE BOARD

Interestingly, while I was writing this story, a news report came out on a similar study revealing the same research bias in the food industry. In a review of 24 industry-backed studies of soft drinks, milk and juices, 21 (88%) had results favorable or neutral to food manufacturers. Of 52 independent studies without industry financing, only 32 (62%) were favorable or neutral, and 20 (38%) were unfavorable.

What should you do with all this information? The Cochrane Collaboration recommends that doctors and consumers learn to view industry-supported studies with greater caution. In particular, always examine study author's company affiliations, advises Dr. Cohen. Take into account whether researchers are affiliated with or paid by the manufacturer of the drug being studied. Because of recent concerns, medical journals increasingly require this information of contributors and share it with readers. For greater reliability, Dr. Cohen urges greater transparency overall, including more information on methodology and estimated effects of drugs. And, whenever possible, it is wisest to base health-care decisions on unbiased studies without industry sponsoring.

Note: To read about more practical strategies for safe and effective use of drugs (exercise health skepticism about new drugs, ask about generics, etc.), see the Daily Health News article from February 2, 2006.