Follow the money, Part 1

I've had a number of conversations in the last few weeks that have all led me to the same conclusion: It really does make sense to "follow the money" when it comes to evaluating the claims of various experts. It's not that an expert deliberately misleads or lies due to funding sources. Rather, the advice the expert provides may be skewed by--he or she may be rendered ignorant as a result of--funding sources (or the lack thereof).

This idea came up most recently just yesterday, at lunch.

One of my family members commented that medical doctors, in general, are ignorant about a lot of the impact of diet on health (i.e., they don't "even" recognize diseases or disease conditions caused by inappropriate diet and/or diseases or disease conditions that are only treatable by change in diet) . . . because . . . well, there is no money in it for them.

And that's not to say they are "only in it [medicine] for the money." Rather, that's to acknowledge that . . .

• The entire conventional medical (allopathic medical) approach--believed in and practiced by the doctors and their staffs, and believed in and pursued by their patients--has to do with diagnosing a condition that can be "fixed" ("healed") by a medicine and/or procedure. . . . If there is no known prescribable medicine and/or procedure, then . . . well, . . .
  
  • The doctor has failed to fulfill his patient's expectations. ("You're supposed to have a prescription for this! A nostrum! A medication! A 'magic bullet' that takes care of these kinds of problems! . . . You're supposed to be able to 'fix' me! . . . I shouldn't have to change my lifestyle in order to 'fix myself'!")
    
  • There are so many conditions for which the medical doctor does have a medication he or she can prescribe, why would he or she waste the time studying conditions that don't match that model?
    
    But even prior to the doctor's motivations and/or incentives,
    
  • What's in it for pharmaceutical companies . . . or food companies, for that matter . . . to study dietary solutions? Foods, in general, are non-patentable. So to discover that cherries, for instance, reduce inflammation: who is going to pay for the research and/or pay to ensure medical students are taught about cherries' unique healing attributes?

More or less saying what I have just said, but from a different angle:

• With no financial incentives, the pharmaceutical industry isn't going to ensure physicians are instructed about the benefits of dietary changes. Rather, their incentives are all aligned with ignoring diet and, rather, producing, distributing and marketing more drugs.
  
• Even, interestingly, the FDA--what should be a neutral "policeman" in this arena--is financially incentivized to promote drugs and ignore--or, actually, discriminate against dietary solutions to disease.
  
  How and why is this the case?
  
  Drug manufacturers have to invest millions--indeed, we are given to believe, normally hundreds of millions--of dollars to jump through all the hoops of a New Drug Application required for FDA approval of any drug "made by a different manufacturer, [that] uses different excipients or inactive ingredients, is used for a different purpose, or undergoes any substantial change" from those already on the market.
  
  And you are probably thinking, "So what does that have to do with dietary solutions to disease?"
  
  Well, as numerous companies and food trade groups have discovered to their own dismay, "If you dare discuss the health benefits of any food or natural substance while you are selling such items, you will be branded a criminal by the FDA, threatened with criminal prosecution and potentially have your company raided by the FDA along with armed law enforcement agents with guns drawn." (Check out FDA censorship of nutritional science threatens health of all Americans for a broad overview. But for more specific examples of what I'm talking about, see the story about Diamond Foods and what happened when it attempted to promote the health benefits of walnuts. Or the story of the FDA as it came against marketers of cherries who referenced and/or linked to scientific studies that described health benefits of cherries.)
  
  Because Mike Adams, the author of the articles I have just referenced, sometimes states his case in a deliberately provocative manner, let me link to a few typical warning letters from the FDA, so you can see how they phrase things.
  
  Check out, for example, this letter to Payson Fruit Growers of Payson, Utah, or to Cherry Lands Best of Appleton, Wisconsin. --Or take a look at any of the dozens of similar "Labeling and Promotional Violations" letters on the FDA website. --October 17, 2005 was a good date for cherry marketers.
  
  As the letters explain, under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, "articles intended for use in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment or prevention of disease in man are drugs" and any health claims made for any product "cause [such] product to be a drug."
  

  Because [cherries, walnuts, or whatever food are] not generally recognized as safe and effective when used as labeled, [they are] also . . . new drug[s] as defined in Section 201(p) of the Act [21 U.S.C. 321(p)]. Under Section 505 of the Act (21 U.S .C. 355), a new drug may not be legally marketed in the United States without an approved New Drug Application (NDA).

But this is not only an issue when it comes to foods--as our family was discussing yesterday.

It comes out in areas like farming and gardening as well.

Several weeks ago, one of my brothers raised questions about International Ag Labs, the soils testing and amendment recommending company whose services we have chosen as we seek to improve the soil on our prospective farm and in our garden. He referenced a post by a skeptical Extension Specialist in Urban Horticulture.

The initial post is mildly critical of IAL and, as I said, it is clearly skeptical. But it sounds relatively open-minded. As happens so often with some blogs, however, fireworks begin to explode in the comments afterward (including what the blogger herself, Dr. Linda Chalker-Scott, says).

Several IAL clients respond: "Look at the results! Here's my story!"

Chalker-Scott and other skeptics reply, "That's not science." And, as she notes (February 23, 2010):

My job - and the job of ANY university extension specialist - is to provide science-based information to the public. . . . What you won't find from university scientists, including extension specialists like myself, is a promotion of products or practices with no basis in science.

Subsequent discussion is then comprised primarily of further testimonials . . .

• "Dear Linda, I have run over 600 soil tests through IAL in the past 4 years. I have a very successful business that has been serving our community for over 55 years. We used other labs here in California with very poor results. I will say with out a doubt that the information that comes from IAL is remarkable and has help my business grow because of the results." --George Schnackenberg.
  
  Or,
  
• "I am an amateur gardener. I tried IAL last year and had the joy of tasting some of the most amazing vegetables. For example, broccoli that was actually sweet like carrots." --Nick.
  
  And,
  
• "I'm a small market farmer not a scientist. IAL's recommendations worked for me. I used the [products IAL recommended]. My pluots averaged 20-22 Brix. You can't argue with results. It is my understanding that [the materials work in the following way. However,] I don't have to know exactly how it works I just know it works." --Jeannie.
  
• Etc.

. . . and Chalker-Scott and one of her cohorts replying (in three separate comments dated February 25, 2010) with,

• "I'm sorry, but if you want me (or any other scientist) to be convinced of a particular viewpoint, then support it with published, peer-reviewed data. That's the way science works. If you don't like the accepted paradigm, then don't use it. But don't expect scientists to take you seriously.
  
• "Anecdotes, regardless of how passionately people believe them, aren't scientific data."
  
  And,
  
• "I'm happy to hear that your garden is doing well, but the fact that you followed IAL's recommendations does not prove that those recommendations are any better than the recommendations from another lab. Furthermore, it's possible that, by using IAL's recommendations, you overfertilized making your plants look good but poisoning the environment. To test these possibilities side by side studies need to be conducted. Without studies like these we're left with anecdotal evidence which carries little weight. Once again, show us the science which proves IAL gives recommendations which are better than other labs -- show us evidence supporting the wacky things they seem to be recommending -- We won't be changing our minds without that kind of data."

Things get a bit nasty (or, shall we say, at least testy) as the IAL promoters tell their stories and charge the scientists with being closed-minded and--not quite in so many words, but, in essence--being toadies to and fools for "big ag" corporations like Monsanto. And the scientists respond with increasing exasperation at what they perceive as unfair charges.

I don't want to get sidelined with a discussion about methods of "argumentation" (or, in far too many cases, presentation--since, too often, the anti-professorial disputants present no real arguments but, instead, "simply" spew venom). People like "The Justin" are merely embarrassing. And especially so when put up against Chalker-Scott's astonishingly gracious response to a wholly obnoxious and venomous diatribe.

But Chalker-Scott and her fellow Garden Professors eventually "can't take" the . . . ummmm . . . the . . . what we might call . . . anti-scientistic libels anymore.

In an October 13 post she admits, "I’m angry. Really, really angry. . . . [And] this is why I’m mad. There’s widespread perception among nonacademic types that corporate grant money “buys” results. That’s insulting. Most scientists do what they do because they love the thrill of discovery. There’s no thrill if you’ve rigged the results. Moreover, if you rig the results you’re going to be found out . . . eventually."

The next day, her co-blogger, Jeff Gillman, writes a thoughtful post about Where the Money Comes From:

After reading Linda’s excellent post yesterday I got to thinking about all of the discussions I have had over the years with people who didn’t know or understand where we (and by we, I mean my research group) got the money to do the work which we do. Oh, they thought they knew, but they were usually way, way off.

So he then lists five sources:

1. Endowment (a sizable fund whose earnings are used to underwrite a professor's salary, research expenses, etc.).
   
2. Hard ("fixed") funding from the university (to enable a professor to pursue research in line with his or her area of expertise).
   
3. Gifts (one-time presents of money).
   
4. Government Grant.
   
5. Industry Grant ("similar to a Government Grant except that it is given by an industry group, such as the Minnesota Turf and Grounds Foundation, or by a particular company, such as Bayer. Industry groups are a preferred source of income, [because] money from chemical companies, and other independent companies, does have a little bit of a stigma associated with it – it feels like you’re doing something to benefit one company instead of society as a whole. Chemical company money is not sneered at, but often you do have to conduct research that may not be at the top of your priority list").

As for conflicts of interest:

I’d like to conclude by saying that, in the case of dollars from chemical companies, I don’t personally know of any researcher who has purposefully falsified, failed to report, skewed, or selectively excluded data to make the chemical company happier with the results. Doing so would ultimately just make that researcher (and the chemical company) look like an idiot.

I have personally given data to chemical companies which shows that their stuff doesn’t work that well – they don’t like it, but they appreciate it – marketing something that doesn’t work isn’t good for anyone. I do know of a case where a researcher proposed a study to a large chemical company which would examine unseen dangers of a particular pesticide and was turned down – this was disappointing to me. I think that many companies feel that they have a duty to seek out obvious dangers and that the government has a responsibility to fund research investigating unseen or unlikely dangers – but that’s just my own opinion.

My thought: I don't think these professors--or 99.9% of all professors or researchers--engage in any purposefully misleading, fraudulent, or, as Chalker-Scott describes it, "rigged" research. They would be and/or are genuinely horrified to find themselves being charged with acting as shills for big-ag chemical companies like Monsanto.

However, I think Chalker-Scott and Gillman somehow forget the golden rule that "He who has the gold makes the rules." And the "rules" that companies like Monsanto are able to establish include prescriptions of what will be studied (not the specific results that a researcher is to arrive at, but, "simply," the subject matter itself). Companies like Monsanto have enough potential profit to make if a study turns their way, and/or, they believe they can gain enough social capital by funding certain relatively innocuous studies, that . . . it behooves them to fund such studies.

For research projects that could prove wonderfully profitable if it goes "right" (or terribly destructive to the sponsor's bottom line if it goes "wrong"), the sponsor need "merely" track the project as it goes forward. And if it appears test results are heading in the "wrong" direction for the company's interests, the company need "merely" terminate the research and/or deep-six the results.

We'll talk more about some of those kinds of situations in "Follow the money, Part 2."

Meanwhile, organizations like International Ag Labs that have no patentable products that could potentially gain traction in the marketplace if certain research projects turned out in their favor: what incentives do they have to sponsor the kind of research that Chalker-Scott and her cohorts demand?

They have none.

Microbes and Soil

As I began digging into Lynn Margulis' Kingdoms & Domains, I was struck by the diversity of microbial life she describes. And I was struck by the thought that microbes are not only invisible to the naked eye, but they are, as it were, largely invisible to our minds. We don't think about them.

Not only do we not think about bacteria and protozoa; we tend to ignore fungi, algae, worms and beetles, too.

As E. O. Wilson says in the Foreword to Margulis' book:

About 1.8 million species [of living organisms] . . . have been discovered and described [as of 2009]. that includes perhaps three-fourths of the extant hundred thousand or so vertebrates, and, at a guess, ninety percent of the quarter million species of flowering plants thought to exist. But the sixty thousand known fungi are fewer than five percent of the estimated total, and the fewer than twenty thousand named nematode worms, the most abundant animals on Earth, are probably an even smaller fraction of the whole. Moreover, all this ignorance shrinks in the dismaying presence of the "dark matter" of the eukaryotic universe--or if you prefer, the Subkingdoms (Domains) of Archaea and Eubacteria. The exploration of what could turn out to be tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of well-differentiated strains of these subvisible organisms has scarcely begun.

--Kingdoms & Domains, p. lxi

What Wilson says is one way to look at or think about the diversity of life of which we are unaware.

I would like to suggest a few other ways, too . . . for your thoughtful consideration.

1. Dr. Bonnie Bassler of Princeton University describes an amazing bacterial "social life." Yes, they actually communicate . . . in rather intricate ways. --That's the primary thrust of the following video. But she says something else, about a minute into the video, that ought to catch your attention, I think. Paraphrased: The human body has about a trillion cells in it. And those trillion cells host--either in you or on you--about 10 trillion bacteria. You have about 30,000 genes in you; the bacteria you host have about 100 times the amount of genetic material or information. "So," says Bassler, "when I look at you, I think of you as 1 or 10 percent human and either 90 or 99 percent bacterial."
   
   
   
2. Based on a study of the bacteria on 51 different people's hands, researchers found that the average person had more than 150 different species of bacteria living on his or her hands. But get this. The researchers summarize their findings in this way: "[W]e identified a total of 4,742 unique phylotypes [species of bacteria] across all of the hands examined. Although there was a core set of bacterial taxa commonly found on the palm surface, we observed pronounced intra- and interpersonal variation in bacterial community composition: hands from the same individual [i.e., the left and right hands--JAH] shared only 17% of their phylotypes, with different individuals sharing only 13%." [Emphasis added.]
   
3. "Good soil is absolutely teeming with life. . . . A mere teaspoon of good garden soil, as measured by microbial geneticists, contains a billion invisible bacteria, several yards of equally invisible fungal hyphae, several thousand protozoa, and a few dozen nematodes."
   -- Teaming with Microbes, p. 19.
4. "Remember that teaspoon of good garden soil? Perhaps 20,000 to 30,000 different species make up its billion bacteria--a healthy population in numbers and diversity."
   --Ibid., p. 24.
5. "[A]n acre of good garden soil teems with life, containing several pounds (about 1 kilogram) of small mammals; 133 pounds of protozoa; 900 pounds each of earthworms, arthropods, and algae; 2000 pounds of bacteria; and 2400 pounds of fungi."
   --Ibid., p. 28.
6. Allan Savory presents a fairly standard food-web energy pyramid in his Holistic Management book (mentioned in my Monday post, "Weird" Science #3: Soil, Part 1):
   
   
   
   
   I think this is pretty common knowledge: Animals are unable to convert solar energy into forms useful for metabolism. Therefore, in order to survive, they (we!) depend upon plants and algae to convert the energy from sunlight into organic matter--carbohydrates, fats, proteins and innumerable vitamins and phytonutrients--that we are then able to ingest and metabolize for our life needs.
   
   However, Savory pushes this energy pyramid idea forward several more steps . . . in ways I had never imagined . . . primarily due to my blindness to the world of microbes and soil:
   

   The energy pyramid also extends below ground where the energy flow greatly affects . . . a biologically active soil community that [also] requires solar energy to be conveyed underground mainly by plant roots or surface-feeding worms, termites, dung beetles, and others.

   --Holistic Management, pp. 151-152.

From here, things get really strange.

I first heard about what I am about to share in a series of lectures from Acres USA. But now I am reading all about these things, in detail, in Lowenfels and Lewis's truly wonderful Teaming with Microbes.

In the same way we humans have domesticated and now farm plants and animals for our benefit, so (say leading soils researchers) plants have established interdependent, symbiotic relationships with most of the protozoa, earthworms, arthropods, algae, bacteria, and fungi that surround their roots. The plants send food (about half of all the carbohydrates and other nutrients they produce) down to their roots . . . and then, through their roots, they exude these nutrients (in a liquid called exudate), into the soil. This exudate, in turn, feeds the bacteria and other organisms that live in the rhizosphere (the area of the roots).

Meanwhile--hang onto your hat!--the microbes in the soil protect the plants' roots. Literally. And, in many ways, they also feed the plant.

As Lowenfels and Lewis explain things: "In return for exudates, [mycorrhizal] fungi provide water, phosphorus, and other necessary plant nutrients" (p. 25). Similarly, some plants prefer nitrogen in the form of ammonium (NH₄) while others prefer it in the form of nitrate (NO₃). Well guess what? The types of nitrogenous compounds available to plants are largely controlled by the microbes in the soil: "In fungally dominated soils, much of the nitrogen remains in ammonium form." In bacterially dominated soils, certain bacteria will convert the ammonium into nitrate. . . .
******
I'm going to quit here.

. . . Oh!

No I'm not.

I wanted to show you two photographs. So let me do that and then I'll quit.

These two photos are from Teaming with Microbes, pp. 12 and 13.

I said above, "[T]he microbes in the soil protect the plants' roots. Literally."

Lowenfels and Lewis discuss many ways they do this besides what I am about to show you. But these two photos did for me what the authors say they did for them. They woke them up--and they snapped me to attention--and they caused me to think: What is going on that I am unaware of down there under the soil?

The authors explain: "[O]ne autumn, . . . a gardening friend e-mailed two stunning electron microscope pictures. The first showed in exquisite detail a nematode trapped by a single looped fungal strand, or hypha. . . ."

Continuing with the story as the authors tell it:

Wow! This was quite a picture--a fungus taking out a nematode! We had never heard of, much less seen such a thing, and it started us wondering: how did the fungus kill its prey? What attracted the blind nematode to the rings of the fungus in the first place? How did the rings work?

The second image showed what appeared to be a similar nematode, only this one was unimpeded by fungal hyphae and had entered the tomato root. . . .

The authors ask about this photo: "Why wasn't this nematode attacked, and where were the fungal hyphae that killed off the first nematode?"

Louis Pasteur and Pasteurization

This is one of those posts I have been tied up in knots over because I have simply not had enough time to study it out to the final degree I want to. But I think I have gone far enough to share it with you so, if you are intrigued, you can study it far enough to feel comfortable yourself either to affirm or deny its veracity.

If you think I may be following a primrose path to error, please feel free to correct me!
******
I had always been led to believe that Louis Pasteur was a great person, worthy of great honors. After all, it is he who developed the germ theory that led to most of the tremendous advances in late 19th and early 20th century medicine and, of course, to the process that bears his name: pasteurization, "a process of gently heating foodstuffs like milks to kill these organisms without changing the flavor or nutritional value." I have even found him held out by many conservative Christians as a model of religious rectitude.

This is what I have been taught.

Except now I am finding that nearly everything I was taught about Pasteur's science and discoveries, not to mention the value of pasteurization, may be wrong.

More specifically, I'm learning, there is quite a number of historians who claim,

• Pasteur didn't "discover" what is credited to his name. All of those "discoveries" were known before he came along. --It appears the case for this is quite strong. (See Chapter 1 of The Dream and Lie of Louis Pasteur for one source.)
  
  • Question, however: Could it be said that Pasteur "discovered" the germ theory in the same way that it can be said legitimately that Columbus "discovered" America (even though we have definitive evidence Columbus was not the first European to make it to the Americas and back)? No, Columbus was not first in the sense of absolutely no one having done it before. But, yes, he was first in the sense that it was only after Columbus went and returned that "America" came to be generally recognized for what it was. I.e., he was first in somewhat the same sense that George Washington was "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen." . . .
    
    My point: Is it possible that, while, as R. B. Pearson notes, it was proposed by many people even centuries before Pasteur that diseases are transferred by microscopic "seminaria contagionum" (Geronimo Fracastorio (1483-1553)) or "animalcula" (described in 1683 by Antonius van Leeuwenhoek) or "germs" (proposed in 1762 by M. A. Plenciz), the world really needed a Pasteur to popularize the concept and make it stick?
    
• I lack the capacity to judge one way or another on this matter, but several credible sources suggest that bacteria are not so much the causes of disease as they are the consequences. Microorganisms are, as it were, the "cleanup crew." When a macroorganism is weak, the microorganisms will come in to put it out of its misery and/or digest (and, thus, remove) the diseased parts. They say that the germ theory of disease--the theory that germs cause disease--is ill-conceived.

It was/is this latter point, really, that has put much of my blog writing on hold over the last few weeks. I have had this post semi-written (up to the words "ill-conceived") for the last month. But/and I have not been able to get far enough into the underlying literature to feel satisfied about the truth or error of the claim.

So let me share some of the sources I have perused:

The Dream and Lie of Louis Pasteur. --That, actually, was my first introduction to this set of weird ideas. It focuses primarily upon Bechamp and Pasteur. I received the link from a friend who has bought into the theory that "the [physical] terrain [of the host body] is everything; the germ is nothing."

The Lost History of Medicine. A development of the terrain/germ dichotomy with lots of links.

. . . I would like to develop this more, but I think the development will come in subsequent posts. (Be glad! 1--I'm getting this stuff published. And, 2--maybe my posts will be shorter than they used to be when I would get into this kind of stuff!)

For those who think I have jumped off the deep end, that I would even "listen" to this kind of stuff, let me acknowledge that I am finding myself extremely skeptical about the claims. But I am intrigued that, even if (as I expect), the authors of these articles--and the books and articles that they reference--are mistaken in some fundamental ways, they are probably more right than conventional medical advocates are willing to acknowledge. Put another way: Conventional medicine has some insights (but claims far more knowledge and competency than it has a right to claim), and these possible "quacks" are onto some keen insights that most of us ought to know about and utilize to our benefit. At the same time, I expect, they also claim far too much for their theories than they have a right to claim. --Just for example, "The terrain is everything," I imagine, is way overblown. So, too, I'm sure, is "the germ is nothing." But it would be extremely valuable to notice the terrain, and pay attention to the terrain, and to work on the terrain--something that conventional medicine, by and large, refuses to do; and something that the U.S. government, through its subsidies, actively undermines (a subject we will return to in subsequent posts).

So. Onward!

I hope you'll join me as we see where this leads. . . .

Frustrated! Need to change my methodology . . .

I keep reading books and articles and tell myself I need to blog what I'm reading and studying and thinking. I feel the need partially because I find I really "master" something when I am able adequately to explain it. But I rarely get around to blogging . . . perhaps because I keep wanting to ensure I've done a thorough job of hitting every fine point.

So I've decided I need to change my mentality. "Just get the basic points out on the blog. Let your readers get a glimpse of what you're thinking about and, if they are interested, let them do their own research. Give a few clues, maybe a few links, but don't worry about being completely thorough."

So that's what I hope to do . . . and hope, thereby, to break up the ice and the backlog of posts I've been wanting to write but have never gotten around to.

Sorry.

And thanks.

Beware unfermented soy foods

I've been sitting on this story for too long. I keep wanting to write long, but don't have the time. So I figure I will settle simply for providing links with brief commentary that, I hope, will pique your interest.
I saw this article by Dr. Joseph Mercola about the dangers of unfermented soy. It has been linked to brain damage, breast cancer, and more.
And what are unfermented soy products? How about . . . soy milk, soybean oil, soy protein (an additive in many foods; look also [primarily?] for "textured vegetable protein" or TVP), soy "cheese," soy "ice cream" and soy "yogurt," tofu, edamame . . . --You know, all those supposedly "healthful" foods.
All those "healthful" foods that aren't--for various reasons, including these . . . that Mercola lists and documents in his article:

• 91 percent of soy grown in the US is genetically modified (GM). For many of us, that poses no worries. After all, the U.S. government wouldn't permit the widespread introduction of harmful GM organisms into our food supply would it? (More on that in future posts.) More important: The primary reason for the GM is to make the soy resistant to the herbicide Roundup--which we will get to in the next point.
  
• You may be sure that all the GM soy is "loaded with the toxic pesticide" Roundup.
  
• Soy contains natural toxins known as "anti-nutrients" which "interfere with the enzymes you need to digest protein."
  
• Soy contains hemagglutinin, "a clot-promoting substance that causes your red blood cells to clump together."
  
• Soy contains goitrogens, substances that "block the synthesis of thyroid hormones and interfere with iodine metabolism, thereby interfering with your thyroid function."
  
• Soy contains phytates which "bind to metal ions, preventing the absorption of certain minerals, including calcium, magnesium, iron, and zinc -- all of which are co-factors for optimal biochemistry in your body."
  
• Soy is loaded with the isoflavones genistein and daidzein which "mimic and sometimes block the hormone estrogen, and have been found to have adverse effects on various human tissues. Soy phytoestrogens are known to disrupt endocrine function, may cause infertility, and may promote breast cancer in women."
  
• Soy has toxic levels of aluminum and manganese. --For example, "[s]oy formula has up to 80 times higher manganese than is found in human breast milk."
  
• Soy infant formula puts your baby’s health at risk. --Among the startling and disturbing statistics Mercola references:
  
• "[E]strogens in soy can irreversibly harm your baby’s sexual development and reproductive health. Infants fed soy formula take in an estimated five birth control pills’ worth of estrogen every day."
  
• Infants fed soy formula have up to 20,000 times the amount of estrogen in circulation as those fed other formulas!

Mercola provides links for all of these claims. You'll have to read the original article for details.

One key item. Please pay attention to the point about unfermented soy products. Fermented products (which, Mercola notes, are healthy--for reasons he explains) include . . .

• Tempeh
  
• Miso
  
• Natto

and

• Soy sauce. ("Be wary," however, Mercola notes, "because many varieties on the market today are made artificially using a chemical process.")

Land of the free? Not when it comes to food!

I touched on this about a year ago. Hate to keep beating the drum. But as I keep discovering how my own health depends on bucking the "Fast Food Nation" approach to eating, I keep bumping into the obstacles--some major, some minor--that our federal government and, now, more and more, our state and local governments, are putting in our way to basic rights--like the right to buy an egg that has not been irradiated, or milk that has not been pasteurized (i.e., heated to a point where its enzymes and helpful bacteria have been destroyed).

Want to buy fresh (raw) milk? Illegal! --Doesn't matter what kind of agreement you are willing to sign: "I take full responsibility for my own health. If I become sick from this milk, I will pay all of my own medical costs. . . ." Doesn't matter. The government is going to "save" you by ensuring that, if you have any milk at all, it has been properly denatured through pasteurization, at least.

Good luck finding un-homogenized milk (suspected of contributing to some of the blood fat issues many of us suffer). That's difficult. But buying raw milk: Wholly illegal.

And now the U.S. federal government is becoming ever more tyrannical. Check out this story about how the feds, state, local and even Canadian "law enforcement" officers are engaging in illegal intimidation tactics against private citizens seeking only to eat foods that they believe are healthy for them.

Properly mineralized agriculture better than modern medicine?

One of my new favorite magazines, Acres USA, included a striking opinion piece this month.
"Newspapers, magazines and electronic media outlets all over the world recently announced a breakthrough vaccine that will hopefully protect women against breast cancer," the author began.

He then referenced a report from CBS News (5/31/2010):

In the current study, genetically cancer-prone mice were vaccinated -- half with a vaccine containing the antigen and half with a vaccine that did not contain the antigen. None of the mice vaccinated with the antigen developed breast cancer, while all the other mice did.

Dr. Vincent Tuohy, Ph.D., the principal investigator on the project, said, "We believe this vaccine will someday be used to prevent breast cancer in adult women in the same way that vaccines prevent polio and measles in children. If it works in humans the way it works in mice, this will be monumental."

All well and good. Indeed, exciting.

But, asked the author of the Acres USA article, if this research is worthy of excitement, why have so few people heard of research conducted close to 60 years ago that produced similar results based solely on diet changes?

Specifically, why have so few of us ever heard of the pioneering work of Dr. Maynard Murray, M.D., who conducted multiple experiments from 1938 through the 1950s that showed that animals fed vegetables, fruits and grains that had been fertilized with sea minerals were able to overcome cancers that the same animals fed the very same foods grown in more conventional ways were not?

Murray first became interested in sea minerals when he realized that he had never found a sea creature suffering from cancer, even though cancers are very common in similar species that live in freshwater. "For example, fresh-water trout all develop terminal cancer of the liver at the average age of five and one-half years; cancer has never been found in sea trout. It is also known that all land animals develop arteriosclerosis, yet sea animals have never been diagnosed as arteriosclerotic." (Sea Energy Agriculture, p. 30)

So what kind of experiments did Murray do?

In 1954 he had Ray Heine and Sons Farms of Rutland Township, Illinois, grow oats, corn and soybeans--approximately half of each of these crops the normal way, and the other half exactly the same except for one difference. The experimental crops were grown in soil that received an application of 2,200 pounds of sea solids (sea salts--including whatever trace elements were present in the sea water before evaporation) per acre.

Murray was interested in how the crops grew. (The crops grown with the sea solids did better.) But then, after the crops were harvested, Murray wanted to see if these crops, now used as feed, would offer any differential benefits to the animals that ate them.

Researchers from the Stritch School of Medicine at Loyola University conducted the experiments.

They mixed up similar blends of the control grains and experimental grains--one part soybeans, two parts oats, and four parts corn--and fed them to different kinds of animals.

For example,

C₃H mice were obtained. . . . This strain of mice has been bred so all females develop breast cancer which causes their demise. The mice were two months of age when received and started on the feeding experiments. The life expectancy of this strain for females is no more than nine months which includes the production of two or three litters. The experimental and control groups both consisted of 200 C₃H mice and those fed on control food were all dead within eight months, seven days. The experimental mice that were fed food grown on the sea-solids-fertilized soil lived until they were sacrificed at 16 months; definitive examination revealed no cancerous tissue. The experimental group produced ten litters compared to the usual two to three litters and none developed breast cancer.

--Ibid., pp. 50-51

Then there were the Sprague Dawley rats: 25 controls and 25 experimentals were all injected with Jensen Carcino-Sarcoma (cancer).

All of the rats fed on the control diet died within 21 days of cancer. Nine of the rats that were fed the experimental diet died of cancer within 40 days; 16 lived five months until they were sacrificed; there were no cancer "takes" in the 16 . . . survivors that were fed experimental food.

--Ibid., p. 51

And the 24 rabbits, 12 experimentals and 12 controls. This time, both groups were fed a high cholesterol diet for six months and then fed their respective soybeans, oats and corn diets.

The control group did develop hardening of the arteries and all had died within ten months. The experimental group did not exhibit hardening of the arteries.

--Ibid., p. 52

Murray was very careful in the way he reported these results:

I want to emphasize that these feeding experiments and the results are only preliminary and it must be kept in mind that the mice, rabbits and rats used in these feeding experiments have a different physiology than human beings. The results are not definite but merely indicate an interesting trend and further research should be done to further document the findings. . . . In no way . . . do I suggest that the same results would occur in a human being due to the preliminary stage of research.

--Ibid., p. 50

Sounds like good science to me! So why don't we hear about it? Has it been disproven? Not that I've seen!

So what has become of Murray's work? What has the medical establishment done with it?

As far as I can tell, absolutely nothing.

Why?

Maybe it has to do with money . . . and the cozy relationship between the major pharmaceutical companies and the FDA. After all, the FDA can't permit people to think of foods as possessing healing qualities!

As reported by Mike Adams in Natural News back in May of this year:

[The FDA] has structured the rules to categorize anything that treats or prevents disease as a drug. So if you eat walnuts, and those walnuts lower high cholesterol (which they do), the FDA declares your walnuts to be "drugs."

Existing law dictates that if anything is advertised as providing health benefits without the FDA's approval, it's automatically considered to be an "unapproved drug", even if it's a common, everyday food like walnuts, cherries, grapes or oranges.

Amazingly, references to peer-reviewed scientific studies are not allowed to be made by companies without permission from the FDA because the agency considers this to be an illegal health claim. So if you sell walnuts, and your website merely links to published scientific studies that describe the cholesterol-lowering benefits of walnuts, then you can be threatened, arrested, imprisoned and fined millions of dollars by the FDA for selling "unapproved drugs."

If you flee the country, you can be then be listed on INTERPOL as an international fugitive wanted for "drug offenses." This is exactly what happened to Greg Caton, who was recently kidnapped from Ecuador by U.S. agents working on behalf of the FDA, brought back to the USA against his will, and sentenced to federal prison where he remains to this day. . . .

If you're skeptical that what I'm saying here is true, take a look at the warning letter the FDA sent to Diamond Food, Inc. back in February concerning the health claims the company had been making about its walnuts.

There's plenty more where that came from!

And it's enough to make me angry.

How is our federal government serving us, helping us, by engaging in this kind of behavior?

And then there was this gem from Dr. Jonathan Wright's Nutrition and Healing newsletter (received 5/8/2009):

For decades, the FDA has been a danger to you and your family's health. Nearly 20 years ago, the government's own General Accounting Office (GAO) wrote: "GAO found that of the 198 drugs approved by FDA between 1976 and 1985...102 (or 51.5%) had serious post-approval risks...the serious postapproval risks...[included] heart failure, myocardial infarction, anaphylaxis, respiratory depression and arrest, seizures, kidney and liver failure, severe blood disorders, birth defects and fetal toxicity, and blindness."

That terrible record continues into the 21st century (Vioxx is just one example that springs immediately to mind).

And to add insult to injury, while it has been busy approving all those potentially lethal patent medicines, the FDA has also been actively fighting against your right to keep yourself healthy with foods and food supplements! Picking on cherries is just one recent example. All the way back in 1949, former FDA commissioner Dr. George Larrick said: "The activities of...so-called health food lecturers have increasingly engaged our attention....[we are fighting] the good fight against dried vegetables, vitamins, and similar products."

Sure is comforting, isn't it?