Posted on

Go figure -Roundup: Birth Defects Caused By World's Top-Selling Weedkiller, Scientists Say

Via the Huffingtonpost.com

WASHINGTON — The chemical at the heart of the planet’s most widely used herbicide — Roundup weedkiller, used in farms and gardens across the U.S. — is coming under more intense scrutiny following the release of a new report calling for a heightened regulatory response around its use.

Critics have argued for decades that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup and other herbicides used around the globe, poses a serious threat to public health. Industry regulators, however, appear to have consistently overlooked their concerns.

A comprehensive review of existing data released this month by Earth Open Source, an organization that uses open-source collaboration to advance sustainable food production, suggests that industry regulators in Europe have known for years that glyphosate, originally introduced by American agricultural biotechnology giant Monsanto in 1976, causes birth defects in the embryos of laboratory animals.

Founded in 2009, Earth Open Source is a non-profit organisation incorporated in the U.K. but international in scope. Its three directors, specializing in business, technology and genetic engineering, work pro-bono along with a handful of young volunteers. Partnering with half a dozen international scientists and researchers, the group drew its conclusions in part from studies conducted in a number of locations, including Argentina, Brazil, France and the United States.

Earth Open Source’s study is only the latest report to question the safety of glyphosate, which is the top-ranked herbicide used in the United States. Exact figures are hard to come by because the U.S. Department of Agriculture stopped updating its pesticide use database in 2008. The EPA estimates that the agricultural market used 180 to 185 million pounds of glyphosate between 2006 and 2007, while the non-agricultural market used 8 to 11 million pounds between 2005 and 2007, according to its Pesticide Industry Sales & Usage Report for 2006-2007 published in February, 2011.

The Earth Open Source study also reports that by 1993 the herbicide industry, including Monsanto, knew that visceral anomalies such as dilation of the heart could occur in rabbits at low and medium-sized doses. The report further suggests that since 2002, regulators with the European Commission have known that glyphosate causes developmental malformations in lab animals.

Even so, the commission’s health and consumer division published a final review report of glyphosate in 2002 that approved its use in Europe for the next 10 years.

ADVERTISEMENT

As recently as last year, the German Federal Office for Consumer Protection and Food Safety (BLV), a government agency conducting a review of glyphosate, told the European Commission that there was no evidence the compound causes birth defects, according to the report.

The agency reached that conclusion despite almost half a dozen industry studies that found glyphosate produced fetal malformations in lab animals, as well as an independent study from 2007 that found that Roundup induces adverse reproductive effects in the male offspring of a certain kind of rats.

German regulators declined to respond in detail for this story because they say they only learned of the Earth Open Source report last week. The regulators emphasized that their findings were based on public research and literature.

Although the European Commission originally planned to review glyphosate in 2012, it decided late last year not to do so until 2015. And it won’t review the chemical under more stringent, up-to-date standards until 2030, according to the report.

The European Commission told HuffPost that it wouldn’t comment on whether it was already aware of studies demonstrating the toxicity of glyphosate in 2002. But it said the commission was aware of the Earth Open Source study and had discussed it with member states.

“Germany concluded that study does not change the current safety assessment of gylphosate,” a commission official told HuffPost in an email. “This view is shared by all other member states.”

John Fagan, a doctor of molecular and cell biology and biochemistry and one of the founders of Earth Open Source, acknowledged his group’s report offers no new laboratory research. Rather, he said the objective was for scientists to compile and evaluate the existing evidence and critique the regulatory response.

“We did not do the actual basic research ourselves,” said Fagan. “The purpose of this paper was to bring together and to critically evaluate all the evidence around the safety of glyphosate and we also considered how the regulators, particularly in Europe, have looked at that.”

For its part, Earth Open Source said that government approval of the ubiquitous herbicide has been rash and problematic.

“Our examination of the evidence leads us to the conclusion that the current approval of glyphosate and Roundup is deeply flawed and unreliable,” wrote the report’s authors. “What is more, we have learned from experts familiar with pesticide assessments and approvals that the case of glyphosate is not unusual.

“They say that the approvals of numerous pesticides rest on data and risk assessments that are just as scientifically flawed, if not more so,” the authors added. “This is all the more reason why the Commission must urgently review glyphosate and other pesticides according to the most rigorous and up-to-date standards.”

Monsanto spokeswoman Janice Person said in a statement that the Earth Open Source report presents no new findings.

“Based on our initial review, the Earth Open Source report does not appear to contain any new health or toxicological evidence regarding glyphosate,” Person said.

“Regulatory authorities and independent experts around the world agree that glyphosate does not cause adverse reproductive effects in adult animals or birth defects in offspring of these adults exposed to glyphosate,” she said, “even at doses far higher than relevant environmental or occupational exposures.”

While Roundup has been associated with deformities in a host of laboratory animals, its impact on humans remains unclear. One laboratory study done in France in 2005 found that Roundup and glyphosate caused the death of human placental cells and abnormal embryonic cells. Another study, conducted in 2009, found that Roundup caused total cell death in human umbilical, embryonic and placental cells within 24 hours. Yet researchers have conducted few follow-up studies.

“Obviously there’s a limit to what’s appropriate in terms of testing poison on humans,” said Jeffrey Smith, executive director of the Institute for Responsible Technology, which advocates for genetically modified food. “But if you look at the line of converging evidence, it points to a serious problem. And if you look at the animal feeding studies with genetically modified Roundup ready crops, there’s a consistent theme of reproductive disorders, which we don’t know the cause for because follow-up studies have not been done.”

“More independent research is needed to evaluate the toxicity of Roundup and glyphosate,” he added, “and the evidence that has already accumulated is sufficient to raise a red flag.”

Authorities have criticized Monsanto in the past for soft-peddling Roundup. In 1996 New York State’s Attorney General sued Monsanto for describing Roundup as “environmentally friendly” and “safe as table salt.” Monsanto, while not admitting any wrongdoing, agreed to stop using the terms for promotional purposes and paid New York state $250,000 to settle the suit.

Regulators in the United States have said they are aware of the concerns surrounding glyphosate. The Environmental Protection Agency, which is required to reassess the safety and effectiveness all pesticides on a 15-year cycle through a process called registration review, is currently examining the compound.

“EPA initiated registration review of glyphosate in July 2009,” the EPA told HuffPost in a written statement. “EPA will determine if our previous assessments of this chemical need to be revised based on the results of this review. EPA issued a notice to the company [Monsanto] to submit human health and ecotoxicity data in September 2010.”

The EPA said it will also review a “wide range of information and data from other independent researchers” including Earth Open Source.

The agency’s Office of Pesticide Programs is in charge of the review and has set a deadline of 2015 for determining if registration modifications need to be made or if the herbicide should continue to be sold at all.

Though skirmishes over the regulation of glyphosate are playing out at agencies across the U.S. and around the world, Argentina is at the forefront of the battle.

THE ARGENTINE MODEL

The new report, “Roundup and birth defects: Is the public being kept in the dark?” comes years after Argentine scientists and residents targeted glyphosate, arguing that it caused health problems and environmental damage.

Farmers and others in Argentina used the weedkiller primarily on genetically modified Roundup Ready soy, which covers nearly 50 million acres, or half of the country’s cultivated land area. In 2009 farmers sprayed that acreage with an estimated 200 million liters of glyphosate.

The Argentine government helped pull the country out of a recession in the 1990s in part by promoting genetically modified soy. Though it was something of a miracle for poor farmers, several years after the first big harvests residents near where the soy cop grew began reporting health problems, including high rates of birth defects and cancers, as well as the losses of crops and livestock as the herbicide spray drifted across the countryside.

Such reports gained further traction after an Argentine government scientist, Andres Carrasco conducted a study, “Glyphosate-Based Herbicides Produce Teratogenic Effects on Vertebrates by Impairing Retinoic Acid Signaling” in 2009.

The study, published in the journal Chemical Research in Toxicology in 2010, found that glyphosate causes malformations in frog and chicken embryos at doses far lower than those used in agricultural spraying. It also found that malformations caused in frog and chicken embryos by Roundup and its active ingredient glyphosate were similar to human birth defects found in genetically modified soy-producing regions.

“The findings in the lab are compatible with malformations observed in humans exposed to glyphosate during pregnancy,” wrote Carrasco, director of the Laboratory of Molecular Embryology at the University of Buenos Aires. “I suspect the toxicity classification of glyphosate is too low.”

“In some cases this can be a powerful poison,” he concluded.

Argentina has not made any federal reforms based on this research and has not discussed the research publicly, Carrasco told HuffPost, except to mount a “close defense of Monsanto and it partners.”

The Ministry of Science and Technology has moved to distance the government from the study, telling media at the time the study was not commissioned by the government and had not been reviewed by scientific peers.

Ignacio Duelo, spokesman for the the Ministry of Science and Technology’s National Council for Scientific and Technical Research [CONICET], told HuffPost in an statement that while Carrasco is one of its researchers, CONICET has not vouched for or assessed his work.

Duelo said that the Ministry of Science is examining Carrasco’s report as part of a study of the possible harmful effects of the glyphosate. Officials, he added, are as yet unable to “reach a definitive conclusion on the effects of glyphosate on human health, though more studies are recommended, as more data is necessary.”

REGIONAL BANS

After Carrasco announced his findings in 2009, the Defense Ministry banned planting of genetically modified glyphosate-resistant soy on lands it rents to farmers, and a group of environmental lawyers petitioned the Supreme Court of Argentina to implement a national ban on the use of glyphosate, including Monsanto’s Roundup product. But the ban was never adopted.

“A ban, if approved, would mean we couldn’t do agriculture in Argentina,” said Guillermo Cal, executive director of CASAFE, Argentina’s association of fertilizer companies, in a statement at the time.

In March 2010, a regional court in Argentina’s Santa Fe province banned the spraying of glyphosate and other herbicides near populated areas. A month later, the provincial government of Chaco province issued a report on health statistics from La Leonesa. The report, which was carried in the leftist Argentinian newspaper Página 12, showed that from 2000 to 2009, following the expansion of genetically-modified soy and rice crops in the region, the childhood cancer rate tripled in La Leonesa and the rate of birth defects increased nearly fourfold over the entire province.

MORE QUESTIONS

Back in the United States, Don Huber, an emeritus professor of plant pathology at Purdue University, found that genetically-modified crops used in conjunction with Roundup contain a bacteria that may cause animal miscarriages.

After studying the bacteria, Huber wrote Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack in February warning that the “pathogen appears to significantly impact the health of plants, animals, and probably human beings.”

The bacteria is particularly prevalent in corn and soybean crops stricken by disease, according to Huber, who asked Vilsack to stop deregulating Roundup Ready crops. Critics such as Huber are particularly wary of those crops because scientists have genetically altered them to be immune to Roundup — and thus allow farmers to spray the herbicide liberally onto a field, killing weeds but allowing the crop itself to continue growing.

Monsanto is not the only company making glyphosate. China sells glyphosate to Argentina at a very low price, Carrasco said, and there are more than one hundred commercial formulations in the market. But Monsanto’s Roundup has the longest list of critics, in part because it dominates the market.

The growth in adoption of genetically modified crops has exploded since their introduction in 1996. According to Monsanto, an estimated 89 percent of domestic soybean crops were Roundup Ready in 2010, and as of 2010, there were 77.4 million acres of Roundup Ready soybeans planted, according to the Department of Agriculture.

In his letter to the Agriculture Department, Huber also commented on the herbicide, saying that the bacteria that he’s concerned about appears to be connected to use of glyphosate, the key ingredient in Roundup.

“It is well-documented that glyphosate promotes soil pathogens and is already implicated with the increase of more than 40 plant diseases; it dismantles plant defenses by chelating vital nutrients; and it reduces the bioavailability of nutrients in feed, which in turn can cause animal disorders,” he wrote.

Huber said the Agriculture Department wrote him in early May and that he has had several contacts with the agency since then. But there’s little evidence that government officials have any intention of conducting the “multi-agency investigation” Huber requested.

Part of the problem may be that the USDA oversees genetically modified crops while the EPA watches herbicides, creating a potential regulatory loophole for products like Roundup, which relies on both to complete the system. When queried, USDA officials emphasized that they do not regulate pesticides or herbicides and declined to comment publicly on Huber’s letter.

A spokesman eventually conceded their scientists do study glyphosate. “USDA’s Agricultural Research Service’s research with glyphosate began shortly after the discovery of its herbicidal activity in the mid 1970s,” said the USDA in a statement. “All of our research has been made public and much has gone through the traditional peer review process.”

While Huber acknowledged his research is far from conclusive, he said regulatory agencies must seek answers now. “There is much research that needs to be done yet,” he said. “But we can’t afford to wait the three to five years for peer-reviewed papers.”

While Huber’s claims have roiled the agricultural world and the blogosphere alike, he has fueled skeptics by refusing to make his research public or identify his fellow researchers, who he claims could suffer substantial professional backlash from academic employers who received research funding from the biotechnology industry.

At Purdue University, six of Huber’s former colleagues pointedly distanced themselves from his findings, encouraging crop producers and agribusiness personnel “to speak with University Extension personnel before making changes in crop production practices that are based on sensationalist claims.”

Since it first introduced the chemical to the world in the 1970s, Monsanto has netted billions on its best-selling herbicide, though the company has faced stiffer competition since its patent expired in 2000 and it is reportedly working to revamp its strategy.

In a lengthy email, Person, the Monsanto spokeswoman, responded to critics, suggesting that the economic and environmental benefits of Roundup were being overlooked:

The authors of the report create an account of glyphosate toxicity from a selected set of scientific studies, while they ignored much of the comprehensive data establishing the safety of the product. Regulatory agencies around the world have concluded that glyphosate is not a reproductive toxin or teratogen (cause of birth defects) based on in-depth review of the comprehensive data sets available.
Earth Open Source authors take issue with the decision by the European Commission to place higher priority on reviewing other pesticide ingredients first under the new EU regulations, citing again the flawed studies as the rationale. While glyphosate and all other pesticide ingredients will be reviewed, the Commission has decided that glyphosate appropriately falls in a category that doesn’t warrant immediate attention.
“The data was there but the regulators were glossing over it,” said John Fagan of Earth Open Source, “and as a result it was accepted in ways that we consider really questionable.”

CORNERING THE INDUSTRY?

Although the EPA has said it wants to evaluate more evidence of glyphosate’s human health risk as part of a registration review program, the agency is not doing any studies of its own and is instead relying on outside data — much of which comes from the agricultural chemicals industry it seeks to regulate.

“EPA ensures that each registered pesticide continues to meet the highest standards of safety to protect human health and the environment,” the agency told HuffPost in a statement. “These standards have become stricter over the years as our ability to evaluate the potential effects of pesticides has increased. The Agency placed glyphosphate into registration review. Registration review makes sure that as the ability to assess risks and as new information becomes available, the Agency carefully considers the new information to ensure pesticides do not pose risks of concern to people or the environment.”

Agribusiness giants, including Monsanto, Dow Chemical, Syngenta and BASF, will generate much of the data the EPA is seeking as part of a 19-member task force. But the EPA has emphasized that the task force is only “one of numerous varied third-party sources that EPA will rely on for use in its registration review.”

The EPA is hardly the only industry regulator that relies heavily on data supplied by the agrochemical industry itself.

“The regulation of pesticides has been significantly skewed towards the manufacturers interests where state-of-the-art testing is not done and adverse findings are typically distorted or denied,” said Jeffrey Smith, of the Institute for Responsible Technology. “The regulators tend to use the company data rather than independent sources, and the company data we have found to be inappropriately rigged to force the conclusion of safety.”

“We have documented time and time again scientists who have been fired, stripped of responsibilities, denied funding, threatened, gagged and transferred as a result of the pressure put on them by the biotech industry,” he added.

Such suppression has sometimes grown violent, Smith noted. Last August, when Carrasco and his team of researchers went to give a talk in La Leonesa they were intercepted by a mob of about a hundred people. The attack landed two people in the hospital and left Carrasco and a colleague cowering inside a locked car. Witnesses said the angry crowd had ties to powerful economic interests behind the local agro-industry and that police made little effort to interfere with the beating, according to the human rights group Amnesty International.

Fagan told HuffPost that among developmental biologists who are not beholden to the chemical industry or the biotechnology industry, there is strong recognition that Carrasco’s research is credible.

“For me as a scientist, one of the reasons I made the effort to do this research into the literature was to really satisfy the question myself as to where the reality of the situation lies,” he added. “Having thoroughly reviewed the literature on this, I feel very comfortable in standing behind the conclusions Professor Carrasco came to and the broader conclusions that we come to in our paper

“We can’t figure out how regulators could have come to the conclusions that they did if they were taking a balanced look at the science, even the science that was done by the chemical industry itself.”

Posted on

Hot Particles From Japan to Seattle Virtually Undetectable when Inhaled or Swallowed

Original estimates of xenon and krypton releases remain the same, but a TEPCO recalculation shows dramatic increases in the release of hot particles. This confirms the results of air filter monitoring by independent scientists. Fairewinds’ Arnie Gundersen explains how hot particles may react in mammals while escaping traditional detection. Reports of a metallic taste in the mouth, such as those now being reported in Japan and on the west coast, are a telltale sign of radiation exposure

Hot Particles From Japan to Seattle Virtually Undetectable when Inhaled or Swallowed from Fairewinds Associates on Vimeo.

Posted on

The Healer Groening – A Lively Discussion in Los Lunas – Is it all True Series #187

David Weaver and his wonderful wife from the group called the “The Bruno Groening Circle of Friends,” came to the Dowser June meeting. I had never heard of this Bruno guy before, but I must say I became quite interested in him. He has a very colorful history. He was born in 1906, and at 2 and ½ years old he wondered off in the dead of a very cold German winter and was gone for a whole week before he reappeared – no worse for the wear.

After that it seems that much of his life was quite normal. He was a simple laborer, but around 1949 he became the “Miracle Doctor” although not a real conventional, and that is where his problem started. It seems that the miracle healings were a real event, witnessed by thousands. He didn’t know why it happened, just that it was a rebalance of oneself, a reconnecting to God. He did give God the full credit saying God was the greatest physician of all. His teachings were based on the belief that if you keep centered in your life, mental and physical health will return to your body. He also said being healthy is the natural way – the universe in balance.

Through what David said and through further research, I learned the following about this amazing man. Bruno would say we all burn energy, new energy is not always well absorbed and causes issues and possibly serious illnesses. So receiving the healing energy stream is Bruno’s cornerstone to a healthy, illness free body. This healing stream can be obtained simply by sitting with hands open, and arms and legs uncrossed.

The healing flow makes contact with sick parts of the body and it starts the purification process and healing happens. According to Groening no illness is incurable. The Friends of Bruno groups are worldwide and on a daily basis, everyone tunes into a healing stream. This healing stream may be what others call the Zero Point Field? This Zero Point Field is connected through our right-brain outlet and the resulting power can only be called God-like.

Sleep-tight, The Zero Point–The Bruno Groening healing force field is waiting for you to discover it. And it is so very simple, from a simple man.
MWiz.

Posted on

Why Would You Reincarnate Here? From Gail Minoque

From Gail Minoque

The Cycle of Life

Now here is a fascinating topic! The general public seldom talks to each other about reincarnation. I usually hear this type of discussion around “New Age” groupings or self-help groups. Some individuals truly believe they were some well-known person in a former life. People go to mediums and psychics and are told what or who they were in previous lives. Since nobody can prove them right or wrong, it makes good copy. It allows them to create reasons why they behave in such a way in life time. An example of this is someone believing their asthma problem in this life is caused by a smothering experience in a past life. Who knows? Sounds like imagination has taken over.

Generally speaking though, most of us haven’t a clue as to why we are here, how long we are supposed to stay and why here of all places. Why didn’t I land on Mars or some other unknown place out “there”? Did I recognize this place and say “home at last, Auntie Em, there is no place like home”. Did I just want to see what this amusement park was like? Why Los Angeles? Was I joining a bunch of angels here? Or disgruntled Dodger fans?

Reasons to Reincarnate Here

I preface the following information with the words: “It is my belief”…that there are several reasons why we reincarnate here. I will mention a few.

Balance Karma.

What is karma? This is the balancing act. If I punch you in the nose, you can be sure somebody will punch me back–sooner or later. It may not be you but someone will do the honors. If I have collected a bunch of this karma from living lives, chances are I have a bit of balancing to do. This is a great place to do it. There are no accidents on the Earth plane. Even those auto accidents are not simply accidents. We just can’t see how two complete strangers can meet each other on that road, in that spot at the same time of day. We just don’t know the history of these two individuals or the thread that was sewn many lifetimes ago.

Experience Free Will

We are given the gift of free will by our Creator. Nobody can interfere with your free will. When I speak of free will, I speak of the ability to choose how you will think about something. How you think will create decisions and actions based upon your thinking. It is a learning lesson for all of us to learn how to use our will wisely. We are not all created physically equal, but we are equal in how we are given the use of our thinking. This has nothing to do with intelligence. If we knew how powerful the mind is, we would understand that what we think eventually gets out-pictured in our world. Through our time here on the Earth plane we are given the opportunity to use our free will wisely and to eventually combine our human will with our divine will.

Experience Emotional Energy

When we are not on the Earth plane we can comprehend and intellectualize emotional energy but we cannot “feel” it. When we arrive on the Earth plane, we get to experience and “feel” all types of emotions, and through the use of our free will, learn how to respond. It is through our responses and the result of our actions that we learn to grow and evolve. This is one reason why we will re-create the same situation in our lives over and over again until we have mastered the emotions and grown from them. Lots of work for all of us in this are.

Benjamin Franklin’s Belief in Reincarnation

When writing my book “Divine Design–How You Created the Life You Are Living”, I came across the epitaph of Benjamin Franklin. He was a strong believer in reincarnation and wrote his epitaph by himself at the age of 22.

“The Body of B. Franklin, Printer, Like the Cover of an Old Book, Its Contents Torn Out and Stripped of its Lettering and Gilding, Lies Here, Food for Worms, But the Work shall not be Lost, For it will as He Believed, Appear Once More, In a New and more Elegant Edition, Revised and Corrected By the Author.”

If I don’t meet you in person in this lifetime, I look forward to meeting you in the next. Remember, you are setting the circumstances for future lives. Be wise in your behavior and decisions now.

Posted on

The Amazing Oil That Trims Women's Waistlines- and maybe Men – Via Dr Mercola

This is a great example of how many common theories on nutrition can be seriously mistaken. Saturated fat has been wrongfully vilified as the cause of high cholesterol and heart disease for the last 60 years, when in fact the converse was true all along.

The result of people following the misguided advice to replace saturated fats (like coconut oil) with polyunsaturated vegetable oils (such as soybean oil) is reflected in the statistics for heart disease today. Prior to 1920, coronary artery disease was actually a rarity. In the 1950’s, rates began to rise in step with the increased consumption of hydrogenated vegetable oils (trans fat), which replaced saturated fats like butter and lard that had been the norm in previous decades…

Today, soybean oil makes up 68 percent of the vegetable oils and fats consumed by Americans.

Double-Blind Clinical Trial Puts Coconut- versus Soybean Oil to the Test

In the featured 12-week long study, researchers evaluated the effects of coconut oil and soybean oil on the biochemical profiles and waist circumference on 40 obese women, aged 20-40. Belly fat, known as visceral fat, is the type of fat linked to heart disease, diabetes and stroke, among many other chronic diseases.

Divided into two groups of 20 participants each, the women received a daily supplement of 30ml (about two tablespoons) of either soybean oil or coconut oil. They also followed a balanced low-calorie diet, and walked for 50 minutes per day. The end result?

The coconut oil group presented:

Increased levels of HDL (good cholesterol)
Decreased LDL/HDL ratio
Reduced waist circumference/abdominal obesity
The soybean oil group presented:

Increased total cholesterol
Increased LDL (bad cholesterol)
Increased LDL/HDL ratio
Decreased HDL (good cholesterol)
No reduction in waist circumference/abdominal obesity
The authors concluded:

“It appears that dietetic supplementation with coconut oil does not cause dyslipidemia [an abnormal amount of cholesterol and/or fat in your blood] and seems to promote a reduction in abdominal obesity.”

This is exactly what I’ve been writing about for the last 15 years, and if you’ve been a long-time reader of this newsletter, you already knew that these kinds of results were to be expected.

The Truth about Soybean Oil

Polyunsaturated fats (soybean- and other vegetable oils) tend to go rancid (become oxidized) during cooking and processing, and once this happens, the free radicals created can wreak havoc in your body, attacking cell membranes and damaging DNA/RNA strands. Arterial plaque is the result of free radical damage in your blood vessels, which is the hallmark of cardiovascular- and heart disease.

Excess consumption of polyunsaturated fats has also been linked to other diseases and health problems, including:

Increased cancer risk Immune system dysfunction Liver and lung damage Damage to reproductive organs
Digestive disorders Reduced learning ability Stunted growth Weight gain
Several years ago, in response to the increased demand to reduce trans fats in food, and the mandatory labeling of trans fats, the food industry began switching over to a modified soybean oil from so-called ‘low linolenic soybeans.’ This low-linolenic oil does not require hydrogenation, a process that increases shelf life and flavor stability, but also creates trans-fat. How much of the food supply now contains this low-linolenic type of soybean oil is unknown, but I think it’s fair to guess that the prevalence would be quite high.

However, please do not be fooled, because these so-called “healthier” vegetable oils are still a disastrous choice for most people, as they can significantly distort the sensitive omega-6/omega-3 ratio that controls many delicate biochemical pathways, resulting in accelerating many chronic degenerative diseases.

Besides this traditionally-bred ‘low-lin’ soybean, over 90 percent of all soy, corn, and canola oils are made from genetically engineered seeds created to withstand otherwise lethal doses of Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer, which is yet another reason to steer clear of these harmful vegetable oils.

These genetically modified (GM) foods pose enormous hazards to human health, and according to Dr. Joseph Hibbeln at the National Institutes of Health, it’s estimated that soybeans, usually in the form of oil, account for 10 percent of the average person’s total calories in the United States! This is a double-whammy of bad news, because not only is most of this soy bean oil genetically modified, it’s also an unhealthy fat in and of itself, even if it’s organic, as you can see by the results of the featured study above.

Why Coconut Oil is “Special” Among Saturated Fats

Now on to coconut oil; a rare gem among saturated fats, with numerous health benefits. First, did you know that multiple studies on Pacific Island populations who get 30-60 percent of their total caloric intact from fully saturated coconut oil have all shown nearly non-existent rates of cardiovascular disease?

Coconut oil can be helpful for pregnant women, nursing moms, the elderly, those concerned about digestive health, athletes (even weekend warriors), and those of you who just want to enhance your overall health. One of the explanations for its broad health applications is because it’s rich in lauric acid, which converts in your body to monolaurin – a compound also found in breast milk that strengthens a baby’s immunity.

Its medium chain fatty acids, or triglycerides (MCT’s), also impart a number of health benefits, including raising your body’s metabolism and fighting off pathogens such as viruses, bacteria and fungi. Capric acid, another coconut fatty acid present in smaller amounts, is another antimicrobial component.

Coconut oil is also excellent for your thyroid. Additionally, a very exciting and recent discovery is that coconut oil may even serve as a natural treatment for Alzheimer’s disease, as MCT’s are also a primary source of ketone bodies, which act as an alternate source of brain fuel that can help prevent the brain atrophy associated with dementia.

Previous Studies Confirm: Coconut Oil Helpful for Fat Loss

Going back to the results in the featured study for a moment, previous studies have also found that the medium chain fatty acids (MCT’s) found in coconut oil promote weight loss, and are helpful for shedding adipose fat in particular. One such study showed that rats fed long chain fatty acids (LCTs, found in vegetable oils) stored body fat, while rats fed MCTs (found in coconut oil) reduced body fat and improved insulin sensitivity and glucose tolerance. Specifically, MCT’s were found to down-regulate the expression of adipogenic genes.

Another 2003 study found that MCT’s increased energy expenditure and decreased adiposity in overweight men—a similar finding as in the study above. Here, 24 overweight men consumed diets rich in either MCT or LCT for 28 days, and those consuming MCTs lost more weight and had more energy than those consuming LCTs (in this case olive oil, as opposed to soy bean oil).

Coconut Oil and Cholesterol

Most of the conventional advice relating to coconut oil and cholesterol are false and misleading. Coconut oil has been repeatedly shown to be beneficial rather than detrimental on cholesterol levels and heart health. As explained in a previous article written by Ray Pete, it’s been clearly established for over 80 years now that suppression of the thyroid raises serum cholesterol (and increases mortality from infections, cancer, and heart disease), while restoring the thyroid hormone brings cholesterol down to normal.

As mentioned earlier, coconut oil does both; it balances your thyroid and normalizes your cholesterol levels.

“As far as the evidence goes… coconut oil, added regularly to a balanced diet, lowers cholesterol to normal by promoting its conversion into pregnenolone,” he writes. “Coconut-eating cultures in the tropics have consistently lower cholesterol than people in the U.S.”

Mary Enig with the Weston A Price Foundation has also written at length about the beneficial effects of coconut oil on heart health and cholesterol levels.

Are You Ready to Make the Switch?

Generally speaking, foods that are likely to contain health-harming trans fats include deep-fried foods, processed baked goods, snack foods and processed foods, including fast foods. Aside from soybean oil, other varieties to avoid include corn and canola oil, so make sure to read the labels when shopping. If you want to avoid dangerous fats of all kinds, your best bet is to eliminate processed foods from your diet. From there, use these tips to make sure you’re eating the right fats for your health:

Use organic coconut oil for all your cooking needs. It is far superior to any other cooking oil and is loaded with health benefits. Make sure you choose an organic coconut oil that is unrefined, unbleached, made without heat processing or chemicals, and does not contain GM ingredients.
Use organic butter (preferably made from raw milk) instead of margarines and vegetable oil spreads. Butter is a healthy whole food that has received an unwarranted bad rap.
Be sure to eat raw fats, such as those from avocados, raw dairy products, and olive oil, and also take a high-quality source of animal-based omega-3 fat, such as krill oil.
Following my comprehensive nutrition plan will also automatically reduce your trans-fat intake, as it will give you a guide to focus on healthy whole foods instead of processed junk food.

mercola.com

Posted on

Montauk Project: New Film Takes On Allegations Of Mind Control, Time Travel And Alien Encounters At Military Base


In a year when a respected investigative journalist suggested that the Roswell UFO scare may have been the handiwork of Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele and Joseph Stalin, along comes another story involving space aliens and outrageous experimentation on a U.S. military base.

Montauk, N.Y. — like Area 51, written about in Annie Jacobsen’s new book — has been the center of an otherworldly conspiracy theory for decades.

Believers say that people were kidnapped at a U.S. Air Force base and subjected to mind control and time travel experiments. And extraterrestrials somehow had a hand in it all.

It’s been dubbed “The Montauk Project,” and is the subject of an upcoming docu-drama, “Montauk Chronicles,” executive produced, directed and written by independent filmmaker Christopher Garetano.

But nobody has been able to actually prove these allegations. And all that’s left of the Montauk facility — currently a state park — are the above-ground remnants of the original Air Force base. According to a document issued by the Air Force Historical Studies office, the Montauk base, known as Camp Hero, was decommissioned in the early 1980s.

4 of 9

One of several giant bunker doors sealed shut and embedded into a hill, located on the site of Camp Hero, the former Air Force military facility in Montauk, NY.
comments(1)

Total comments: 1 | Post a Comment 4 of 9
Montauk is a small seaside resort town on the tip of Long Island that draws vacationers to its shores every year. Camp Hero, located a short distance outside of Montauk, has roots as far back as the Revolutionary War, during which it was used to test military cannons. Later, during World War II, Camp Hero served as a coastal defense installation against any possible Nazi intrusions into America.

“Montauk Chronicles” follows the story of three men, Alfred Bielek, Stewart Swerdlow and Preston Nichols, who claim that Camp Hero ended up as an underground site for scientific atrocities.

Bielek, a retired electrical engineer, maintains he was part of the mysterious Philadelphia Experiment, where in 1943, the U.S. Navy allegedly tried to make a small destroyer undetectable to radar. The test ended in disastrous results, including the ship disappearing from the Philadelphia Navy yard and — purportedly — traveling through time.

According to Bielek’s story, he was transported ahead in time from Philadelphia, and extraterrestrials were responsible for the technology used in the Philadelphia Experiment. He also maintains he was recruited in 1970 to work on mind control and time travel projects at the Montauk facility.

Swerdlow’s story involves being kidnapped as a teenager from his Long Island, N.Y., home, taken to the Montauk base, and subjected to a variety of experiments.

“Beatings, a lot of torture, electrical shock, burials, near-drownings,” Swerdlow said. “They’d bring you to the point of death, and then they would save you, and the person doing this would be your rescuer or god, and would say, ‘I’m the one that saved you and remember that.’ And that became your handler — your programmer.”

Swerdlow recalls being part of some horrific experiments while at the Montauk facility.

“The walls were very damp, oozing water, so it appeared to be deep underground or even underwater. I was always on this cold, hard table. Sometimes there’d be other people around, either my age or older, and electrodes were put into me and injections.”

All three men claim to have seen extraterrestrials while at the underground Camp Hero facility.

“Well, there were quite a number of aliens at Montauk,” said Bielek. “Some were there on a semi-permanent basis. A lot of them were just visitors that came in and looked at what they wanted to see and went back home.

“There were little grays there, which I suspected were degenerated humans from out of the future. Large gray aliens (which are a different species) were also at Montauk, and they were highly intelligent.”

Nichols, like Bielek, was an electrical engineer, who says he worked with Bielek in the mind control and psychic aspects of the Montauk Project.

“There were definitely alien beings at Montauk,” Nichols said. “We had the little grays and the larger grays as well as a variety of reptilian beings. The large grays didn’t want anything to do with me because they couldn’t reach me telepathically. When I entered a room they would leave.

“They were the strangest thing that I ever saw. At that point, I was beginning to doubt my own sanity.”

And Swerdlow also saw an alien presence at Montauk. “Most of the time my interaction was with human beings, but I did come into close contact with alien beings.

“I did see, occasionally, intelligent reptilian humanoid beings as well as gray aliens who were once human beings but were physically altered as a result of degeneration and radiation toxins in their system. Most of them communicated with mental telepathy.”

Garetano shot much of his upcoming film at the actual site of Camp Hero.

“When you walk through the area now, you see this giant, imposing radar tower that still stands,” Garetano told AOL Weird News. “The park currently has strange regulations: You’re not supposed to use any radio equipment there and you are cautioned about unexploded ordnance.

“While filming my movie here, I couldn’t understand why people are allowed to walk around a park where there are still unexploded devices or why radio equipment isn’t allowed if the radar tower is now defunct and the entire base is completely non-operational.”

That question may be answered by a brochure issued in 2001 for visitors to Camp Hero which includes a section called “Unexploded Ordnance (UXO) Warnings”:

Please follow the following steps if you think you have come across Unexploded Ordnance:
Never transmit radio frequencies (walkie talkies, citizen’s band radio) near UXO.
Never attempt to touch, move or disturb UXO.
Avoid any area where UXO is located.
Garetano thinks it’s “strange that they don’t want you to use radio devices that may set off unexploded bombs, yet they allow the public to walk around a potentially high danger area!”

In addition to the giant abandoned radar tower at the Camp Hero site, there are also huge doors, or bunkers, cemented and sealed into the side of several hills in the forest area.

Also, strewn throughout the wooded park are numerous things that appear to be above-ground manhole covers.

“These are entrances that obviously go down into something,” Garetano said. “There are claims from people that these are entrances to underground tunnel systems that ran beneath the military base that allegedly would take you to the true entrance of the facility.”

Among the bizarre things claimed by the individuals who say they took part in the Montauk events was a device they called the Montauk Chair. Allegedly, a powerful psychic sat in the chair and was able to materialize objects out of thin air — manifesting them into physical reality.

After spending countless hours with the men who are the subjects of his film, Garetano says he didn’t always believe their stories.

“At first I didn’t. These men have not benefited financially — they didn’t gain anything from this. And they’ve endured ridicule as they maintain their story,” Garetano said.

To be sure, this story is filled with allegations, suppositions, unsupported claims and far-out “Stargate 1”-type movie and television science fiction. It certainly describes any typical urban legend.

The Montauk Project shows no signs of going away anytime soon.

Posted on

Our Cherished Worldview and Why It Holds Us Back- Is It all True Series #186

It holds us back from being, that is, being the new human. A primarily right-brained being, a gentler, questioning being, a being capable of massive amounts of love. Just the amount of unconditional love from one of these new humans will counter 1,000 negative beings of the old model type. So if my math is correct, we need only about seven million of these new humans to change the other 7 billion people that inhabit the earth. So this means one tenth of 1% of the world population can change it all.

I believe the timeframe for this change will be less than 6 months. Our cherished worldview will be shattered. The reign of human tyranny will end. Human beings will finally understand that working with the natural world is the only way we will survive. Just truly recognizing that fact will forever change us. Our report card will be graded on how many species of living things are not dying off.

The catalyst of this new being will be the appearance of our far future self. This will trigger a chain reaction in our inner mind, the reaction is just waiting for the signal and it is coming sooner than most think. The precursor may be symbols, tuning us for the change such as 1111 and powerful visuals such as Crop Circles.

And please don’t think of our future selves as a God or Gods, even though we can do it all; we are all creators. The New Human will harness the total force of the quantum field and use it to shape and form everything around him. The New human being will regain their past place in the Galactic Community – as the kind ones with the full emotional bodies. The tide of Human transformation is upon us. Take a very deep breath and mentally prepare for the journey. Our present worldview is the chains that keep us from being who we were meant to be – a fearless living creature whose only purpose is to create unconditional LOVE.

Sleep Tight, with no fear our new self is nearly here.

MWiz