There were two marketing men and a clinical research director sitting in a pub… ‘Why did the chickenpox vaccine cross the road?’ ‘To get to the mass market on the other side!’

‘Thats not funny. There is no market for chickenpox vaccine.’ ‘Oh yes there is, they just don’t know it yet…’

……………….

Now, substitute chickenpox with ‘human papillomavirus’ (HPV) and you have this year’s new mass market. And the size of that market, as we’ve said before, is every child alive now and forever. And if Merck get their way, every older woman too.

Today, girls in Scotland have been brought into the HPV vaccination programme, having been told that they will be at less risk of cervical cancer.

Schools start cancer vaccinations

Every secondary schoolgirl in the UK is to be offered the injections

Scottish schoolgirls are to become the first in the UK to be vaccinated against cervical cancer.

Schools in the Lanarkshire, Tayside, Grampian and Western Isles NHS areas are to begin vaccinating 12 and 13-year-old girls from this week.

Pupils in other areas of Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland will follow in the coming weeks.

All girls aged between 12 and 17 should have been offered the vaccine by August next year.

The immunisation programme is to get under way in Scotland before other parts of the UK because its school term has already started.

The Cervarix vaccine works by targeting HPV, the virus which causes cervical cancer. Its manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline, said it should prevent 70% of cases – saving about 70 lives a year in Scotland.

HMG chose Cervarix over Gardasil, for as yet unspecified reasons and despite Gardasil being a better choice healthwise – always assuming you want the vaccine in the first place!

The vaccine is given in three separate doses and – at about £240 for a course – is the most expensive vaccine to be routinely offered by the NHS.

£240 for every girl now and forever direct from taxpayers coffers to GSK shareholders.  “Wow! There’s the money river! Pa, bring the buckets!”

Dr McKenzie added: “They must understand that the vaccine is fantastic news for preventing cervical cancer, but it can only be combated by using cervical screening and the vaccine.

“So when they are called for screening aged 20 they really must come along whether they have had the vaccine or not.”

The number of girls aged between 20 and 25 who come forward for cervical smears is already declining.

Some fears have been expressed that the vaccination programme will cause even fewer to attend screening, while questions have also been asked about why so much money is being spent on saving the lives of less that 100 Scottish women a year.

Good fears, good questions, as yet not satisfactorily explained. There is the question about how long protection lasts, meaning boosters are inevitable at current estimates. And questions as to whether a drop in screening rates would completely abolish any success in prevention, given the small numbers of patients involved.

But really, this is all so much fluff covering the truth of modern pharmaceutical marketing techniques: by using available media, you (the gullible sheeple) can be made to fear absolutely anything. You will then buy any snake-oil BigPharma comes up with to protect you against The Fear.

This technique even has a name. ‘Astro-turfing‘.

Not only this, but BigPharma can then wine, dine and otherwise bribe your ‘elected’ officials into committing hundreds of millions of pounds worth of public funds towards the cost of Snake-Oil.

Not convinced? Try this excellent and pretty comprehensive, utterly compelling, ‘how it works’ piece from the New York Times:

One of the vaccines, Gardasil, from Merck, is made available to the poorest girls in the country, up to age 18, at a potential cost to the United States government of more than $1 billion; proposals to mandate the vaccine for girls in middle schools have been offered in 24 states, and one will take effect in Virginia this fall. Even the normally stingy British National Health Service will start giving the other vaccine — Cervarix, from GlaxoSmithKline — to all 12-year-old girls at school this September.

The lightning-fast transition from newly minted vaccine to must-have injection in the United States and Europe represents a triumph of what the manufacturers call education and their critics call marketing. The vaccines, which offer some protection against infection from sexually transmitted viruses, are far more expensive than earlier vaccines against other diseases — Gardasil’s list price is $360 for the three-dose series, and the total cost is typically $400 to nearly $1,000 with markup and office visits (and often only partially covered by health insurance).

Award-winning advertising has promoted the vaccines. Before the film “Sex and the City,” some moviegoers in the United States saw ads for Gardasil. On YouTube and in advertisements on popular shows like “Law and Order,” a multiethnic cast of young professionals urges girls to become “one less statistic” by getting vaccinated.

The vaccine makers have also brought attention to cervical cancer by providing money for activities by patients’ and women’s groups, doctors and medical experts, lobbyists and political organizations interested in the disease, sometimes in ways that skirt disclosure requirements or obscure the companies’ involvement.

…

In the United States, hundreds of doctors have been recruited and trained to give talks about Gardasil — $4,500 for a lecture — and some have made hundreds of thousands of dollars. Politicians have been lobbied and invited to receptions urging them to legislate against a global killer. And former state officials have been recruited to lobby their former colleagues.

“There was incredible pressure from industry and politics,” said Dr. Jon Abramson, a professor of pediatrics at Wake Forest University who was chairman of the committee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that recommended the vaccine for all girls once they reached 11 or 12.

“This big push is making people crazy — thinking they’re bad moms if they don’t get their kids vaccinated,” said Dr. Abby Lippman, a professor at McGill University in Montreal and policy director of the Canadian Women’s Health Network. Canada will spend $300 million on a cervical cancer vaccine program.

…And why the sudden alarm in developed countries about cervical cancer, some experts ask. A major killer in the developing world, particularly Africa, where the vaccines are too expensive for use, cervical cancer is classified as very rare in the West because it is almost always preventable through regular Pap smears, which detect precancerous cells early enough for effective treatment. Indeed, because the vaccines prevent only 70 percent of cervical cancers, Pap smear screening must continue anyway.

“Merck lobbied every opinion leader, women’s group, medical society, politicians, and went directly to the people — it created a sense of panic that says you have to have this vaccine now,” said Dr. Diane Harper, a professor of medicine at Dartmouth Medical School. Dr. Harper was a principal investigator on the clinical trials of both Gardasil and Cervarix, and she spent 2006-7 on sabbatical at the World Health Organization developing plans for cervical cancer vaccine programs around the world. […]

In television advertisements, a cast of hip people in their 20s — artists, writers and professionals — describe why they got the shots, in the language of liberation, such as, “I chose to get vaccinated because my dreams don’t include cervical cancer.” The advertisements direct viewers to gardasil.com, which includes patients’ stories, buddy icons and downloads for holding an event at sororities.

Girls of any age who have had one dose of the vaccine can ask for text-message “reminders” from Merck to get the next two shots. The offers come with another reminder: “I understand that the information I provide will be used by Merck or those working on behalf of Merck for market research purposes.”

For such efforts, Merck last May swept the 2008 Pharmaceutical Advertising and Marketing Excellence awards, and Gardasil was named Brand of the Year by Pharmaceutical Executive magazine.

The marketing helped make Gardasil one of Merck’s best sellers, with a projected sales of $1.4 billion to $1.6 billion outside Europe this year, and more from sales in Europe, where Merck sells the vaccine through a joint venture with Sanofi Aventis.

…

Gregory A. Poland, a vaccine expert at the Mayo Clinic, was a nonvoting member on the C.D.C. panel that recommended Gardasil in 2006 and has publicly defended the panel’s decision. Records show he received at least $27,420 in expenses and consulting fees from Merck from 1999 to 2007. Both the C.D.C. and Dr. Michael Camilleri, chairman of the Mayo Clinic Conflict of Interest Review Board, speaking on Dr. Poland’s behalf, said the payments complied with institutional requirements.

…

In the United States, 41 states have passed or begun considering legislation on cervical cancer, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, and 24 have considered proposals to mandate the vaccine for girls, generally in middle school…

The only state to pass a bill requiring the vaccine for school entry is Virginia; it takes effect in October, after school begins, so will first apply in 2009.

Merck has a growing economic interest in Virginia. In December 2006, Merck announced it would invest $57 million to expand its Elkton, Va., plant to make Gardasil, helped by a $700,000 grant from a state economic development agency that is part of the executive branch. Two months later, Gov. Tim Kaine, who has been mentioned as a possible Democratic vice presidential candidate, signed legislation requiring Gardasil for schoolgirls. Four months after that, Merck pledged to invest $193 million more in the plant to make drugs and vaccines, helped by a state grant of $1.5 million.

…

In Texas, Merck hired Gov. Rick Perry’s former chief of staff as a lobbyist, and contributed $6,000 to the governor and $38,000 to other legislators. Last February, Mr. Perry ordered that all schoolgirls be inoculated with Gardasil, a pronouncement that was overturned by the Texas Legislature, 181 to 3, a few months after the financial conflicts were revealed.

…

One rationale for inoculating boys is that entire populations should be vaccinated to achieve what is called herd immunity. But critics ask whether it is worth conducting a campaign on the scale of the one used against polio to eliminate a generally harmless virus.

Said Dr. Raffle, the British cervical cancer specialist: “Oh, dear. If we give it to boys, then all pretense of scientific worth and cost analysis goes out the window.”

My emphases. What a great article. Balanced, factual, well-written, undramatic. Take note, BBQ.

The anti-HPV push appears to have recruited BBQ, who try to attach a team of wild horses to your heartstrings to make sure you get the message. Embarassing and irrelevant to the real story.

So, like chickenpox vaccine before it, and who-knows-what after it, BigPharma take the population as one big cash cow and milk it, regardless of need or healthcare priorities, regardless of how better public money may be spent, regardless of fully examining any potential health hazards associated with their products.

Do you trust a vaccine created to fulfil a market created out of a need for profit?

We previously addressed the ‘encouragement’ of HPV vaccination for minors, particularly girls, with the vaccine Gardasil.

For summary, we may conclude;

1. Gardasil has not been proven to directly cause any deaths.

2. Gardasil appears to have been contrived to open a new market rather than address a pressing healthcare issue.

3. The efficacy of Gardasil (how long protection lasts and how good that protection is) is questionable and still undetermined. Available estimates indicate 3-5 year protection from 3 doses.

4. Fear-mongering works both ways.

5. While it may be hard to see the truth, it must be looked for. Merck, GlaxoSmithkline and your goverments (US and UK at least) wish you to submit your daughters (and possibly sons) to yet another injection or their say-so. Are you sure you have no questions?

Today the vaccination of Scottish girls begins, and with it a lesson in how to manipulate a population for profit, and with no regard for their health. This will be addressed shortly.

There were several comments to the initial Gardasil post, some of which were via email and were not published at the time, and which now follow below, for completeness:

PLEASE (RE-)READ THE PUBLISHED COMMENTS FIRST.
Response 5:

May I burn down that straw man?

Aspirin is safe; that is the difference between it and Guadakill. Aspirin was initially prepared from the bark of trees. It is a naturally occurring medicine, unlike Guardakill which is a man made poison.

There is *no straw man here*. Aspirin and STW are used, in my context, to denounce your point on alum, i.e. that just because you don’t understand how something works doesn’t mean it must be distrusted. One could apply this to all homeopathy, I just picked SJW at random. According to ‘the science’ SJW is no more effective than a placebo. http://nccam.nih.gov/health/stjohnswort/#science And that from the National Centre for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

St Johns Wort is also a naturally occurring plant, and is therefore much safer and preferable as a medicine. It also has a long history of safe use.

Now, HERE is a straw man. I would guess there are many more deaths from digitalis than Gardasil will ever manage, despite also being a plant with a long history of safe use. Aspirin kills 500 people in the US per year, apparently. Just a stat, and probably through misuse, but its still a killer. One can twist anything… omigoditsachemical! …. its all about context. Alum has been used for /just/ 60 years and has recently been ‘proven’ safe on paper, when anyone who has used it has known it is safe in vivo. And yes, I’ve used it and taken it. http://www.drugresearcher.com/news/ng.asp?id=49797-alum-given-clean Together we could say “Who do you trust?”. Or, “Why trust one drug and not the other?”, as someone clever once said. Now we both know the answers to /those/ questions.

Mankind is much better off living inside and with his environment. Guardakill is an unnatural medicine; the need for it is artificial, the lust behind its making is the lust for money, and while the medicine itself is not evil, the people who make it most certainly are.

I would agree with this. What I wouldn’t agree with is throwing petrol and matches on non-existant straw men. There should be enough real, substantive data and well-argued opinion (and there is) to let people come to their own conclusion… that only a fool would inject their child with ‘GovDrugX’.

Guardasil has killed people. That is a fact.

No it’s not! You can show people the reality, but you can’t make up ‘the truth’. Those FDA reports should put enough doubt in anyones mind about Gardasil, but there is no “Gardasil Kills – Fact”. If one starts sounding like the Daily Mail, credibility flies out of the window.

The rules of peer review do not extend into the coroners office, and those recorded deaths and the numbers of people damaged are *not* opinion. The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System is not going to falsely attribute death to a vaccine (I would imagine) which is where those numbers come from.

Wrong again! I read all the FDA/VAERS reports last night and not a single one attributes death to Gardasil.

Not.
A.
Single.
One.

They merely report adverse effects in anything from minutes to weeks following Gardasil vaccination. Many of the patients had other injections at the same time. Many had so long between jab and death that mentioning Gardasil seems nothing more than thoroughness.

You KNOW what [we] think of these ‘medicines’, and you know what [we] will do for our daughters. If drugs like Gardasil and chickenpox vaccine are to exposed for the fraudulent, greed-soaked tripe that they are then it must be done through strong, coherent argument and not by setting flame to reality.
——————————————————-

Response 6/7 combined:

>> Guardasil has killed people. That is a fact.
>>
>> No it’s not! You can show people the reality, but you can’t make up ‘the
>> truth’. Those FDA reports should put enough doubt in anyones mind about
>> Gardasil, but there is no “Gardasil Kills – Fact”. If one starts
>> sounding like the Daily Mail, credibility flies out of the window.
>>

>
> So you are telling me that the report that attributes the deaths of
> those girls to Gardasil is false, yes?
>
>

JudicialWatch’s conclusion that G-causes-D is OPINION based on a misinterpretation of official documents. The reports never link G and D. They are simple, clear reports which state known facts about each case.

> then what you are saying is that Judicial Watch are libeling Merc. Both
> things cannot be true at the same time.
>
> http://www.judicialwatch.org/6428.shtml says unambiguously that the
> deaths are related to Gardasil. Are you saying that they are lying?
>

Not lying per se, but distorting beyond reasonable limits. As I said previously, this does no good and leaves them looking like rabid haters without the ability to construct a strong enough argument from the available information, without resorting to screeching FEAR! EVIL! DEATH!

>
> http://www.judicialwatch.org/archive/2007/GardasilVAERSUpdatedDeaths0907.pdf
>
> ??? so the above is a forgery? Help me out here!
>
> That is a VAERS report listing Gardasil as the cause of death!
>

NO!!! Read that pdf!
Lets see…

1st page: ‘Gardasil did not cause the patients death’

P.2 ‘Cause of death was sudden death’. Other factors involved. Does not blame Gardasil.

P.3 All just hearsay! A nurse who heard from a nurse… and anaphylaxis DOES NOT occur 3 days after exposure. It’s a bit quicker than that. Ask anyone with a peanut/bee sting allergy. Does not blame Gardasil.

P.4 Hearsay! Bloodclot 2 weeks after vacc. Could have been any cause!Does not blame Gardasil.

P.5 Death 2 weeks after vacc. No direct link at all. Does not blame Gardasil.

P.6 Another 2 week gap Does not blame Gardasil.

P.7 States ‘manner of death natural’!!!! Does not blame Gardasil.

P.8 History of heart problems, died of heart problem. Does not blame Gardasil.

P.9 Viral sepsis and secondary infection. Symptoms started BEFORE last vaccine. Does not blame Gardasil.

P.10 Hearsay, no cause of death reported. Does not blame Gardasil.

Are you now seeing the difference between the official VAERS reports and the conlusions/opinions in the JudWac piece?

> then they would NEVER list Gardasil as the cause of death if they were
> not absolutely sure would they not?
>

See above Gardasil is NEVER listed as cause of death by VAERS.

Why trust one source and not another?
Just because JudWac appear to agree with our stance on BigPharma does not mean they are virtuous truth-givers. They have their agenda, just as Merck does.

We at Blogdial should know better though, and decide for ourselves.

Now, who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes? ((C) Groucho)

> What have I missed here?
>

The blindingly obvious! That Mercks clinical trial, and JudWac’s take on the VAERS reports are all spin to support a position, and somewhere under it all, crushed and splintered, lies the reality.

> I’m not sure what the reality is; VARERS says ‘death by Gardasil’ you
> say no such reports even exist.
>

VAERS NEVER EVER says death by Gardasil. See above. See the BMJ article on safety.

> The ambiguity, the complexity, everything about it screams out to me
> that it must be totally shunned. An impenetrable reality is as bad as a
> lie, and in the face of that, taking the risk is just not an option.
>

But we can find the reality, when we remember to treat JudWac with the same basic scepticism that we treat Merck. I would like to believe JudWac, but they give me no reason to do so when I look at the reality behind what they are saying.

> Then add into the mix that Justice Watch had to sue for the information,
> the case is closed; these guys are evil and their medicine is no good!
>

And JudWac are misguided, severely biased, narrow-minded, blinkered scaremongers whose stance does not stand up to the most preliminary of scrutinies. But we have found this out, and we can understand the reality. We can take each for what it is and still know that Merck is evil, and that JudWac is at least trying to stand on the right side.

Because… as someone clever once said… We Are The Best.

The modern NHS is all about choice, so we are told.  Let me give you an anonymised real example of How NHS Choice REALLY Works: a child has an undiagnosed problem, it takes 3 trips to the childs GP before the child is offered a referral to a specialist hospital clinic.

1. A letter is sent out explaining the ‘choices’: You can book your appointment online, or by phone!

2. When booking (via your choice of method) you are offered the choice of hospital X or …er, thats it.

3. You are offered the choice of date X at time Y or …. er, thats it.

So the choice is “Like it or lump it“. Which doesn’t quite fit with the guidelines of:

From April 2008, if your GP advises you that you need to see a specialist, you can choose to go to any hospital in England, including many private and independent sector hospitals. You can choose the hospital with the best reputation or shortest waiting times, or simply the one that is most convenient for you.

The NHS repeatedly says patient choice is guided by the availability of information (see links above).

But when you, the patient or carer, appraise the available information and still make The Wrong Choice, the Department of Health springs into action. Here we see BBQ fearmongering on behalf of HMG:

Experts say MMR is completely safe

The government has launched a campaign to raise MMR vaccination rates in England amid growing concerns about a measles epidemic.

The Department of Health has asked primary care trusts (PCTs) to offer the jab to all children up to the age of 18 not already fully protected.

Extra vaccine supplies and funding are being made available.

An epidemic of measles – which can be fatal – could potentially affect up to 100,000 young people in England alone.

The MMR vaccine protects against measles, mumps and rubella.

The evidence on MMR is absolutely clear – there is no link between the vaccine and autism

Experts say it is perfectly safe, but vaccination rates dipped following controversy about its safety.

This propaganda campaign follows similar localised efforts, similarly reported as ‘news’ by BBQ.

The aim of the Department of Health here is to increase uptake of vaccination. Would it not be simple, instead of trying to scare people into giving MMR to their children, to offer single vaccinations against each disease. To offer, perhaps, a choice.

Instead NeuLiebour are offering the choice (devised by the MP in charge of the party’s health manifesto for the next election) of ‘vaccinate or be excluded from school‘.

Whether its about forced vaccination, ID cards, security theatre, data protection… soon the choice will be yours.

This is an image of a girl, spinning to clockwise or anti clockwise, depending on the type of brain you have.

If you are left brain dominant, she will turn one way.

If you are right brain dominant, she will turn the other way.

A small minority of people can see her turning both directions.

The TRUTH is, that this is not a picture of a girl at all.

‘She’ is not spinning left or right.

There IS no ‘left’ or ‘right’; they are an illusion, in this optical illusion, brain fooling image.

Only a small minority understand the truth of this.

Topical!

The Telegraph seems to have a feast of articles today:

Home Office plans to create ‘Big brother’ database for phones calls, emails and web use

This appears to be either a whistleblower or a ‘feeler’ leak about yet another attempt by the Home Office to ‘store the details of every phone call made, every email sent and every web page visited by British citizens in the previous year’ – even as other countries tighten the protection of their citizens online activity.

Once again it is allegedly in the cause of fighting terrorism, so nothing to be worried about when every single piece of online activity you have made has been kept, that’s not just which website you have been to, but every unencrypted email will be available – searchable – somewhere out of your control. even if you send each of your emails encrypted you will still likely receive many unencrypted, e-receipts being the most bothersome culprit.

Out of your control? Once on a database, you can almost guarantee the data no matter how sensitive will be copied and carried across the country only to be lost who-knows-where, thusly:

NHS disc containing sensitive data lost

A computer disc containing the medical records of more than 38,000 NHS patients went missing when it was sent to a software company to be backed up – in case the records got lost.

The information, which dates back 10 years, was mislaid somewhere between London and Sandown Health Centre on the Isle of Wight.

It was given to courier company City Link in March, but the health centre only spotted it was missing in May.

A spokesman for the South Central Strategic Health Authority said the courier company – which is supposed to track every item at every stage – demonstrated a “clear failure” by losing all record of the disc once it passed into their hands.

Perhaps time to trust a ‘non-evil’ private company?

I would say not, the only people who should ‘host’ your healthcare record should be yourself or your personal doctor and it should not be networked in any way.

Finally the Conservative Party seems to be turning towards the right direction on CCTV but only partially:

Tories pledge to curb use of CCTV cameras

Unfortunately whilst looking to restrict the amount of CCTV they still echo the opinion of the Met that the solution is higher resolution CCTV rather better forms of policing i.e. more active police actually on the streets, replacing the ‘need’ for CCTV surveillance.

Am avid lurker writes:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/13/aids.hiv

The most interesting thing I read today. It has significant implications regarding scientific funding, not to mention funding of public healthcare which she implies is worthless. Furthermore, it strengthens the argument that US ‘aid’ to ‘the Africa’ – that great nation! ;-) – is merely propping up the profits of drug companies by maximising and subsidising the market for ARVs. In South Africa this has come through voluntary licensing, which means Glaxo et al still get their cut without any manufacturing costs. Then there is the whole ‘faith-based’ aid agencies… and yet again today (Lebanon and Gaza, Burma and the whole HIV-infected sphere is highlighted in just one day) we see how the US just cannot keep its interfering dirty great stinking hooter out of other peoples business.

And I quoth:

“HIV is mostly about people doing stupid things in the pursuit of pleasure or money,” declares the cover on a proof copy of the book. “We’re just not allowed to say so.” She suspects she will never work in the Aids industry again for saying so. “But it’s true.”

Pisani, 43, spent 10 years working in the field of HIV, first for Unaids and then for a non-governmental organisation (NGO) in Indonesia. As an epidemiologist, she quickly identified the risk of the virus spreading among drug injectors, gay men and the sex trade across Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe – underdeveloped countries with inadequate resources to prevent an epidemic. That placed 100 million at risk in Asia alone – equivalent to a third of the population of the Africa. But the data was clear: “HIV wasn’t going to rage through the billions in the ‘general population’. And we knew it.”

Like most of her colleagues, however, she also quickly realised that “governments don’t like spending money on sex workers, gay men and drug addicts”. So she put her skills as a former journalist to work, and began producing the sort of reports that persuaded politicians in Washington and the west that it is not “wicked people” but “innocent wives” at risk. “Aids couldn’t be about sex and drugs,” she explains. “So suddenly it had to be about development, and gender, and blah blah blah.”

The strategy was more successful than she could ever have imagined. “All these obsessively politically correct things started getting introduced.” HIV publications and conferences began devoting more time and attention to issues such as poverty, gender, development, vulnerability, leadership – what Pisani calls “sacred cows” – than to condoms and clean needles. “I’m just waiting for ‘climate change and Aids’,” she jokes sarcastically in her book – and sure enough, this week a headline appeared in an Australian newspaper: “Global warming set to fan HIV.”

[…]

As the veneer of political correctness starts to fade….

When people like this start to wake up and then go on to expose the nonsense, a large scale abandonment of brainwashing cannot be far behind.

Say goodbye to ‘hate speech’, political correctness, the surveillance mania, the terror fad, security theatre, cult environmentalism, [prefix] o phobia, [prefix] o fascism, the health and safety fad, the police state, and all the other garbage that has erupted like ear to ear scarlet acne on the beautiful face of Britain.

Wednesdays 23 of April

legalize the drug consumption in Argentina the International – (10:00 hrs.)

A court of Buenos Aires annuls thousands of cases in proceedings of defendant to have marijuana

They consider that consuming they are the factor of a chain that finishes in the narcotics trafficker The Financier in line Buenos Aires, 23 of April.

A federal court of Buenos Aires legalizeed the individual drug consumption in the Argentine capital, with which they would be annulled thousand of cases in proceedings of people accused to have small amounts of marijuana, according to the failure that publishes the press of Buenos Aires today.

The failure indicates that Room 1 of Federal Camera of Appeals declared the article unconstitutionality of the law that punishes the drug users, promulgated in 1989.

The questioned norm punishes the consumers to consider that they are the base of a chain that finishes in the narcotics trafficker. But the court considered that such single presumption generated “an avalanche of files destined to consumers without managing to ascend in the links of the chain of the drug traffic”.

The failure was applied to the case of two young people stopped by the Police by cigarette possession of marijuana and tablets of éxtasis when they went to a celebration of electronic music in Buenos Aires, in May of 2007.

Although the question must be dissolved in the Supreme Court of Justice, the failure of the court of Buenos Aires is in line with the policy of the Government of Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner in reforming the laws to legalize the drug consumption.

During the 51 Extraordinary Session of the Economic and Social Council of the UN, celebrated the month last in Vienna, Argentine minister of Justice and Seguridad, Aníbal Fernandez, noted the “absolute failure” of the policy to punish the drug users.

Of this form, and for the first time in 30 years, Argentina the consumer left his adhesion to the American position to persecute so much to the drug dealer like a. (With EFE/MVC information)

[…]

http://www.elfinanciero.com.mx/

At last, the prohibition era is starting to disintegrate.

How long will it be before other countries realize the emperor has no clothes, and abandon this absurd edict from the evil empire?

The americans have more people in prison (2006) than China (2008).

That culture, where breasts cannot be shown on television, has exported its neanderthal ideas of justice and how to deal with medical and social ills to countries that to their eternal shame, simply obeyed like sheep. The fact of the matter is, Marijuana should never have been made illegal, just as alcohol should never have been made illegal, and the same goes for all other ‘drugs’. The countries with sensible approaches to ‘drug’ taking were the most peaceful, most civilized countries, with very small prison populations and low crime rates. This evidence was ignored throughout the twentieth century and the result, in america’s case, is an exploding prison population, one of the most violent countries on earth, and a culture of criminality that stretches from the drug dealer in the street right up to the CIA

Once again, this demonstrates how important an independent judiciary is to the workings of a free country. Intelligent judges with a free hand can interpret the law correctly. In a country where the judiciary is broken or corrupt or puritanical or insane, like the the USA, the country can be destroyed.

The Guardian, once again, has a pro-corporate, pro-pharmaceutical propaganda piece in its toilet paper.

It goes like this:

Organic food ‘no benefit to health’
Eating fruit and veg is more important than whether produce is ‘green’, says expert

Jo Revill, Whitehall editor
Sunday March 30, 2008
The Observer

Parents who want their children to eat healthily should focus more on serving them extra fruit and vegetables and less on giving them expensive organic produce, according to one of the country’s leading nutrition experts.

Lord Krebs, former head of the Food Standards Agency, said families were becoming ‘deeply confused’ by conflicting messages about healthy eating.

The market for organic food reached more than £2bn last year, with most consumers from households with children under the age of 15. An average of £37m is spent each week on organic produce, mostly in south-east England.

[…]

http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/food/story/0,,2269340,00.html

Without going into wether or not Lord Krebs is corrupt or not, or is a paid liar or not, or wether or not Monsanto, GSK or any other corporation is really behind this proclamation or not, we can say one thing for sure.

Organic food is better for you than non organic food.

And I can prove it.

Lets say you are someone with an infant child.

You have two glass ten litre beakers, marked ‘A’ and ‘B’, of distilled water in front of you and your baby.

I take a container of commercially available liquid pesticide, open the lid, and dip the tip of a thin sewing needle into the surface of the pesticide. I then dip that needle into the beaker marked ‘B’ and then stir the water vigorously.

I pour some water from beaker ‘A’ into a baby’s bottle marked ‘A’, and some water from beaker ‘B’ into a baby’s bottle marked ‘B’. I pour out 90% of the water in bottle ‘B’ and then replace the missing volume with water from beaker ‘A’.

Now.

Which bottle do you give your baby to drink?

Any sane person will give their baby bottle ‘A’. No parent with a single working brain cell will knowingly give their child the water in bottle ‘B’ which has been tainted by a miniscule amount of pesticide.

This is what Organic food is about, at the most basic level. Deliberately feeding people pesticide, at any concentration IS INSANE. It is better to eat food that has not come into contact with pesticides than it is to eat food that has come into contact with pesticides.

Organic food has not been sprayed with pesticides, and so therefore, it is better for you.

And that is THAT.

Then of course, there are all of the other ramifications of spraying crops, the pesticide entering into and remaining in the soil and rivers, the animals poisoned by it, etc etc. But I digress. Anyone who tells you that pesticide in small concentrations is safe to eat either works for one of the manufacturers of these poisons, is a paid liar for them, or they are stupid or ignorant.

Exactly the same demonstration can be made about organic meat.

Organic meat has not been injected with growth hormones, steroids and all manner of unnecessary and monstrous interventions. Would you feed your child a piece of meat that has trace amounts of animal growth hormone in it, or one that has no trace of such a thing?

The choice is obvious, and anyone who says that these trace amounts of drugs is harmless is is one of the above, a liar, a paid liar, ignorant or just plain stupid.

I would love to know how much money these journalists and newspaper editors are paid to regurgitate this nonsense unchallenged. Obviously they have no morals or human decency.

Thankfully, the majority of people are now waking up to why they should be eating organic food, and no, they are not so stupid as to conflate having a balanced diet with what organic food is all about. These imbeciles can publish all the papers they like, make all the proclamations they like in whatever newspaper or media they choose; we are ignoring them. Every time they publish a new paper or make another absurd proclamation, they become further discredited, and every time a trashpaper like the Guardian uncritically reprints their lies, they too become more discredited an look more foolish.

The same, tired religious dogma is trundled out:

However, according to Krebs, an eminent scientist and principal of Jesus College, Oxford, there is still no reliable, peer-reviewed evidence to show that there is any clear health benefit to eating this ‘green’ produce.

And we do not care. We do not care about the eminence of Krebs, Jesus College, Oxford, reliable peer reviewed evidence, his proclamations or anything else these suspicious characters, charlatans and religious fanatics come up with. Their credentials are meaningless. We are not eating poison because you say it is safe to do so. We are not going to give our children pesticide to drink because there is ‘reliable, peer-reviewed evidence’ saying it is safe. We are not going to sit around and wait to be told what is or is not beneficial or what is or is not safe to eat. You have lost all credibility, all authority, and no matter how you are announced in the newspapers the slavering ‘journalists’ intoning from your sacred scroll of hierarchical science power, we do not, and will not believe what you say.

Note how when the writer of this nonsense tries to balance out her article by quoting The Soil Association, she only quotes ‘A Sopkewoman’. No list of credentials, letters, academic associations…just ‘A Spokeswoman’ not even ‘an eminent Spokeswoman’. These sorts of cheap tricks no longer work; in fact, they can never work when the initial premise is so absurd, counterintuitive and blatantly false. What is in fact happening is that the more you are associated with these discredited bodies, the LESS you are believed, thanks to the decades of lying for money, bullshit and PR.

But you know this!

Organic food is better for you, better for the environment and better for the animals that are used as food.
Organic food is bad for evil scientists, bad for pharmaceutical companies and bad for fear-mongering journalists.

And that, my friends, is a proclamation you can trust!

WordPress doesn’t like my commnt on the Breed for Greed post, maybe you do:

Civilization depends totally upon innate intelligence.

‘Civilization’ is not an entity, it does not have rights and cannot be used as a bargaining chip over individuals (that are entities and can demand rights).

Simple: the least-intelligent people are having the most children.

The less educated (and so poorer) portions of the population have always had more offspring – in the past without social welfare many of the offspring would have died in childhood. Perhaps with the ‘best of the worst’ surviving to create the next generation?

So what should society do? That’s the important question…

Although a ‘passive’ eugenecist could argue that not supplying anyone with free medical care, etc. would be the best way of ‘standing idly by’, and allowing the cream of the crop to rise (and the unfit to whither on the vine). They may also point out that poorer, less intelligent (it is about intellect, right?) people generally have shorter lives.
If they are a more active eugenecist they may reach for Plato’s Republic to show a template for ‘eugenic’ separation of certain classes of people, without the need for sterilisation.
It is of course an incredibly flawed template, in all guises throughout history. In fact the state structures for societal/state support of the ‘stupid’ would be nothing to those required for eugenic separation or selection of the population. The eugenic state has to continuously monitor its population to prevent ‘degeneration’, its people have to give up their individual corporeal rights and submit to the state approving their right to reproduce, the state selected career path, the state will need to ensure that certain sets of mind are trained to not question eugenics so political programming would be required from an early age and continue throughout life

Of course ‘society’ has no natural right to demand that certain people do not reproduce. Just as I feel those who cannot naturally reproduce have no natural right to demand state funded IVF treatment, is that so different from saying that those who cannot afford children should not have them – it seems the only the proactive nature of the intervention is different.

Again eugenecists seem to assume that their offspring will be worthy, just as those who talk of overpopulation find ways to justify their own procreation and those who don’t oppose ID cards/NIR suppose the state could never disapprove of their own actions.

So what should society do? How should it enforce that the money we provide is being used positively and not wasted in ways that get our backs up?
If the state does nothing in this type of case what happens?
– Perhaps the parent starts stealing to support their ‘lifestyle’ (but maybe we feel that our taxes are being stolen anyway) and has a wider negative impact.
– Perhaps the children can’t be looked after and suffer neglect, I would say this is what ‘society’ most wishes to avoid.
– Perhaps even the ‘parent’ is still living with their parent(s) as the state has not provided any support at all.

This was the state of the slums before the welfare state existed. Would we let civilisation slip that far back if the state no longer provided, or would we support charities to a larger degree to prevent this would explicitly charitable support be any better focussed?

One of the most insidious routes of solvent exposure and toxicity is through fingernail polish and fingernail polish remover.

Young girls are especially susceptible to the toxic and xenohormonal effects of solvent, and yet they are the ones most likely to have a dozen different shades of fingernail polish in the bedroom.

Some of the immediate effects of exposer to solvents include CNS (central nervous system) depression, which would look like fatigue or depression,; psychomotor or attention deficits, which would look like incoodination and inability to focus; brain swelling (headaches); central nervous capillary damage; and oxygen deprivation in the brain with possible permanent brain damage resulting in lowered cognitive abilities.

[…]

What your doctor may not tell you about Menopause
John R. Lee M.D.

I do not have to type any more of this do I?

It used to be that opposition to vaccines — especially vaccinating water supplies — was considered akin to walking around wearing a tin-foil hat. But concerns about vaccines have gained increasing validity in recent years. And never more so than with the publication this month of an article in Scientific American. The article, titled Second Thoughts on Vaccines, looks at the vaccines controversy, and the fact that the attitudes about vaccination among scientists are starting to shift. Mainstream scientists and experts are becoming increasingly vocal about the risks of too many vaccines.

Scientific American’s editors write: “Some recent studies suggest that over-consumption of vaccines can raise the risks of disorders affecting teeth, bones, the brain (autism) and the thyroid gland.”

The article’s author, Dan Fagin, is an award-wining environmental reporter and Director of New York University’s Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program. He writes: “There is no universally accepted optimal level for vaccines.” And according to Fagin, some of the researchers he talked to even wonder whether the ones that are currently given as routine with no apparent ill effects is too much.

The article discusses the 3-year research process of a committee at the National Research Council (NRC), which, according to Fagin: “concluded that vaccines can subtly alter endocrine function, especially in the thyroid — the gland that produces hormones regulating growth and metabolism.” In addition to the thyroid concerns, Fagin discusses expert findings regarding lowered IQ levels, autism, and other health problems linked to vaccines overexposure. The NRC report, issued in 2006, recommended that the government reduce the current numbers of available vaccines, due to the health risks to both children and adults.

You can read the beginning of the article (the full Scientific American article is available for online purchase and download), online here.

[…]

About

“I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, communist subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.”

Our new Holford Myths site is launched today – this has been developed to counteract false information about Patrick Holford.

Anyone who challenges today’s drug-based medical paradigm effectively is a likely target for attack. Notably, since the publication of Food Is Better Medicine Than Drugs by Patrick Holford and Jerome Burne, certain drug industry funded organisations and drug-oriented individuals have campaigned to discredit Patrick Holford by spreading false allegations. The main opponents have been Ben Goldacre in the Guardian, pharmacology professor David Colquhoun, the anonymous Holford Watch and certain dieticians.

The associations with the pharmaceutical industry and/or organisations funded by the pharmaceutical industry are explored in the free e-book Cultural Dwarfs and Junk Journalism: Ben Goldacre, Quackbusters and Corporate Science by Martin Walker for those who want to understand the modus operandi of the organised lobby against alternative and nutritional approaches within medicine.

Responses to false allegations about Patrick Holford plus direct links to extracts about Ben Goldacre, David Colquhoun, Holford Watch and certain dieticians from the above e-book can be found on www.holfordmyths.com

[…]

Patrick Holford is a man who owns a company that makes and sells vitamins and dietary supplements. He writes books, and sells them.

This is an affront to people like Ben Goldacre and his ilk. The only food you should be eating is the food that SCIENCE says you should be eating. The only thoughts you should be thinking are the ones that SCIENCE says you should be thinking. Anyone who eats anything else, who thinks anything else, who says anything other than what they believe, who does not swallow the dogma is ANTI-SCIENCE and is to be…

BURNED AT THE STAKE

Rational people are not frightened of Vitamin Sellers or book writers. They make their case cleanly and then STFU. If the thinking behind Bad Science is so great, then let them write a diet book, sell it, and then make people thinner…[booming voice] WITH SCIENCE [/booming voice]; what need have you to personally attack, ridicule and seek to destroy other people? What do you gain out of it? Who appointed these sub human monsters the protectors of the general public? Once again, if they have something better to offer, OFFER IT, do not pump the world full of negative vibes (man [or is that hairless monkey?]).

The fact of the matter is, none of these people have anything to offer, other than rancid bile, calls to disbelief and personal attacks. It goes like this; you have posts on your blog about UFOs, therefore, ALL your stuff is garbage. That is a stupid skeptic trick. That is junk science. I say “God does not exist” and so you are a fool to believe anything else. That is how they work; they do not have a better diet for you, or a better set of supplements, a different, greater belief to follow (except their utterly fallable, incomplete, and downright deadly dogma) the only thing they have to offer is ‘DO NOT DO THAT’ ‘DO NOT BELIEVE THAT’ ‘DO NOT EAT THAT’, and of course, there is nothing that you can DO with that negativity, and the newspaper it is printed on is fit only to light up your fire.

I can tell you something straight – anyone who writes a column like ‘Bad Science’ is on my shitlist from the first speck of ink on the paper. Anyone who runs other people down, who uses Stupid Skeptic Tricks is a TOTAL SCUMBAG.

Lets be clear:

Should they be burned at the stake? No.
Should they be stopped from writing in that RAG the Guardian or any other rag? No.
Are they the worst examples of human trash ever? Yes!

The point is, these attacks on Vitamin Sellers are direct attacks on MY LIBERTY. They are an affront to decent people everywhere, who just want to mind their own business and who do not want to be told what to do, what to think and what to eat and who to trade with.

People who are against Patrick Holford are Fascists. They want to forbid you from taking vitamins, they want the law to ban the sale of dietary supplements. They want you to not read his books; in effect, they want to censor him, and prevent the free flow of information across the world. They are as bad as the Chinese Government, or those guys who burned books in the 1930s.

All free people have the absolute right to publish what they want, and free people have the right to read what they like. Free people have the right to control what goes into their bodies; that means that they can eat whatever they like, inject whatever they like, smoke whatever they like, and it is no one’s business. It is not the business of Ben Goldacre and the corprophiliacs at The Guardian. It is not the business of Bayer, GSL, Novartis, Monsanto, Uncle Sam, HMG or anyone else.

Anyone who tries to shut down writers like Patrick Holford are on the side of Fascists and Fascism. They are against Liberty and against the freedom to read and to learn (and no, learning does not mean only learning what is ‘right’).

I am fed up to the teeth of the attacks on vitamins and food supplements. I am tired of reading about the weasel words of the corporate shills defending the indefensible, trying to take away my right to interact with whomever I want in whatever way I want.

In the end, these people must be put down like diseased dogs. Fox news is learning what it means to defy the force of Liberty unleashed. Their stock has taken a dip thanks to the boycott that is now running against all the sponsors of that evil station. This can be done to any company, and certainly, if the vitamin eaters and supplement takers decide to boycott a newspaper that is attacking them, the effects will be felt. Newspapers can publish whatever they like, and everyone has the right to buy and sell whatever they like…including stocks.

Some may say that I go in too hard on these subjects; part of the style of this blog during its nearly seven years of operation is to go in with all guns blazing if thats what you like. Nevertheless, in the past, when people tried to take away the liberty of free men the result was war and killing and that is what The Guardian, Skeptics and corporate shills are doing; literally attacking millions of free people; trying to erase their liberty, poison them and destroy their lives. That they are subjected only to some bad language and shouting is very lucky for them; in another age they would lose their lives…in any case, they have lost. More people than ever are turning away from Industrial Pharmaceutical Medicine and The Medical Industrial Complex. This is why they bring out the big guns to try and shoot down people like Patrick Holford – though in the case of Goldacre we are talking about a .22 not The Guns of Navarone… but I digress; the publishers of that garbage had better think twice about running hit pieces against people who are doing nothing but mind their own business – there could be big economic consequences for them, just like Fox is feeling right now.

For those morons out there who say that vitamin sellers are defrauding the public, that is not your business. There is plenty of legislation dealing with poisoning and poisoners to take care of people who sell things that actually harm buyers under the guise that it is medicine. We have enough law on the books to take care of almost every possible situation. It is you baying and whining morons who create the monster governments that stop at nothing to control everything that you do down to how and when you piss.

Make up your own minds, eat what you want, publish what you want, read what you want, think what you want and DOWN with the anti vitamin fascists!

UPDATE!

a lurker sends this

> this snippet should have been in your post:
>
> At this point it is perhaps worth pointing out
> that Goldacre won a British Science Writers (BSW)
> award, in 2003. At this time, the BSW was funded
> by Glaxo Wellcome and called the Glaxo Wellcome
> BSW Award, the very year that he began working
> for the Guardian. The drug AZT was made by
> Burroughs-Wellcome, now GlaxoSmithKline.
>
> and check out this book:
>
> http://www.slingshotpublications.com/dwarfs.html

What a nasty, foul and loathsome piece of work!

Karen Selick

An open letter to Rob Nicholson, Canada's Minister of Justice

Dear Mr. Nicholson,

On January 21, 2008, an extradition hearing will begin in Vancouver for Marc Emery, Canada’s pre-eminent activist for the legalization of marijuana. Marc has been charged in the U.S. with conspiring to manufacture and distribute marijuana, and conspiring to launder money. If convicted under U.S. law, he faces possible life imprisonment without parole.

Should Marc be extradited to the U.S.? The Canadian court will almost certainly say yes. It has little choice under the Extradition Act. Marc
openly admits selling marijuana seeds over the Internet to customers around the world, including the United States, for years. His conduct would have been grounds for criminal charges here, although Canadian authorities never chose to charge him. But that’s enough under the Act to make it mandatory for the judge to commit him for surrender to U.S. authorities.

That’s where you come in, Mr. Justice Minister. Once the court has ruled, the Extradition Act gives you discretion to refuse to surrender Marc if it “would be unjust or oppressive having regard to all the relevant circumstances.”
Here are some of the circumstances you might consider relevant.

From 1999 until he was arrested in 2005, Marc declared on his income tax return that his occupation was “marijuana seed vendor.” He paid $578,000 in income taxes into federal and B.C. government coffers. He gave Canada Revenue Agency access to his bank statements and explained all his cash flows to them. The CRA graciously accepted his money without ever taking any action to put a stop to all this criminal activity.

If you believe that all Canadians benefit from taxes being collected and governments spending that tax money (I don’t, but most Canadians do), then logically you will have to concede that Marc has been a huge benefactor to the Canadian people.

As for the money laundering charge, maybe all Canadians should face U.S. indictments for having conspired with Marc to transform Americans’ outlays on recreational drugs into Canadian outlays on health care, roads, schools, etc.

Marc has helped Canadians in other ways, too. When Canada was compelled in 2000 to legalize medical marijuana by the R. v. Parker decision of the Ontario Court of Appeal, confusion reigned. Although the court had said that individuals suffering the daily pain of illnesses such as epilepsy, glaucoma, multiple sclerosis, cancer and AIDS could use marijuana with their doctors’ approval, there was nowhere they could legally acquire it.

Authorized users who asked Health Canada how to get their marijuana were given the suggestion that they purchase it online from Marc Emery.
For eight years, Marc sent every federal Member of Parliament a free subscription to his magazine Cannabis Culture. Every issue included a copy
of his seed catalogue. Every single MP and all of their office staff turned a blind eye to his activities, just as Canada Revenue Agency and Health Canada had done.

The prohibition against selling marijuana seeds in Canada went unenforced for years, but the benefits of those seed sales were accepted unhesitatingly by Canadian authorities. It would be the height of hypocrisy and injustice for this country to now hand over its benefactor to a foreign government for a prosecution it declined to pursue itself.

But there’s more. Go to any internet search engine and enter “marijuana seeds.” You’ll find many seed vendors still operating without prosecution in
British Columbia and other Canadian provinces. Why is the U.S. government not seeking the extradition of these vendors? Why just Marc and his two employees Michelle Rainey and Greg Williams?

I think the answer is obvious. The so-called “BC3” have taken a principled, public stand against the U.S. government’s war on drugs. Marc in particular is a highly effective spokesman for his cause. He was never in this business primarily for financial gain, and generally kept only enough of his marijuana seed profits to live on. Instead, he has donated over $4-million and countless hours to fund court challenges, establish compassion clubs for medical marijuana users, pay medical bills for activists, sponsor conferences and protests, fund ballot initiatives, fund political campaigns and so on. For over a decade, he has been a huge thorn in the side of politicians and bureaucrats who disagree with him on the political issue of legalizing marijuana.

The Extradition Act requires you, Mr. Justice Minister, to refuse to surrender a person if the request for extradition is “made for the purpose
of prosecuting or punishing the person by reason of their…political opinion….” Please consider Marc’s long history of idealistic activism and
tell the U.S. government that you won’t let them haul this politically motivated Canadian hero off to one of their jails.

Karen Selick is a lawyer in Belleville, Ontario. kas@karenselick.com

[…]

National Post

The year starts off with a bang and a puff of smoke.

New Jersey has a thing for Eggs…only this time, its Eggs that have been fertilized and that are growing into human beings:

N.J. Orders HIV Testing For Pregnant Women
Some Groups Call Law Unneeded and Intrusive

By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 28, 2007; A03

NEW YORK, Dec. 27 — New Jersey this week launched one of the most ambitious efforts in the country to control mother-to-child transmission of HIV, making screening tests mandatory for all pregnant women in the state beginning next year.

A bill signed into law Wednesday by the Senate president, Richard J. Codey, in his capacity as acting governor, requires two tests for pregnant women, at the beginning of the pregnancy and again in the third trimester, unless the mother objects. If the mother objects, the objection will be noted and the newborn will then be tested for HIV, with the only exception being on religious grounds. Newborns will also be tested if the woman tests positive.

Just four other states have mandated testing for pregnant women, and three more– including New York — require screening of newborns. But New Jersey’s law appears to go further by requiring both.

The mandatory screening has raised privacy concerns. The American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey and the state’s chapter of the National Organization for Women both questioned whether the mandated tests violate a woman’s right to privacy and the right to make her own medical decisions.

Riki E. Jacobs, executive director of the Hyacinth AIDS Foundation, a New Jersey nonprofit helping people living with AIDS, said the law is unnecessary and comes when the state should be focused on expanding care for pregnant women. “I am adamantly opposed to this bill. New Jersey already reduced the perinatal rate of transmission with mandatory counseling of pregnant women,” she said. “The issue is getting those women who are not in prenatal care in for services and testing.

“I definitely think it is an invasion of privacy,” Jacobs said. She said women choose to test their babies in 98 percent of cases, so the new law’s mandatory provisions for testing children are not needed: “The fact that we assume women won’t choose to test is ludicrous and wrong.”

But in the end, lawmakers decided that the risk of exposing children to the infection outweighed those concerns.

While men represent the majority of new HIV and AIDS cases in the United States, women now account for an increasing share, from just 8 percent of new diagnoses in 1985 to 27 percent in 2005, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Of the estimated 1.2 million people living with HIV/AIDS in the United States in 2005, about 300,000 were women, and the vast majority of them were between 25 and 44 years old.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, among other groups, has been recommending that HIV screening become a routine part of prenatal tests. The CDC recommended HIV tests become a routine part of the battery of prenatal tests, and that there be no separate written consent required.

Mother-to-child transmission of the disease — during pregnancies and through breast-feeding — peaked in the United States in 1992, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, which reported that the number of cases since then has dropped “dramatically” because of early detection and the increased use of antiretroviral therapy, which lowers the risk of transmission to less than 2 percent.

The majority of those new cases that still occur are mostly among black Americans, reflecting the changed demographic of the epidemic since it was first identified.

According to the CDC, 100 to 200 children a year are infected by their mothers. As of 2005, the last year for which figures are available, there were 6,051 people in the United States living with HIV/AIDS who had been infected perinatally — during pregnancy or breast-feeding.

Of those, 66 percent were black and 20 percent identified as Hispanic.

In New Jersey, a June report by the state’s health department reported 78 percent of those with HIV and AIDS were members of minority groups. That report also found that New Jersey has a significant female population living with the disease, 37 percent of the total.

In signing the bill at a local hospital, Codey said, “We can significantly reduce the number of infections to newborns and help break down the stigma associated with the disease.”

He added: “For newborns, early detection can be the ultimate lifesaving measure.”

New Jersey records about 115,000 births each year. While there were no recorded mother-to-child transmissions this year, as of the June report, there were two children born infected in 2006 and seven born infected in 2005, according to the health department.

[…]

Washington Post

The state has no business mandating that anyone be tested for any disease.

What we need is a simple chart that can instantly show how a law like this is wrong to even the thickest of the lowest common denominator.

Hmmmmmmm!

And of course, all these HIV testing kits need to be paid for and replenished. I smell another scam!

The police understand intimately how reports are forged, corrupted, accusation falsely made, evidence planted and the ‘criminals’ stitched up. That is why they are shrieking like Abu Grahib inmates at the idea that their DNA should be put in the database:

PLANS to force police to give DNA samples have sparked a rebellion among rank-and-file officers.

It is understood all eight of Scotland’s police forces are about to demand that in future new recruits hand over samples to be included in a national genetic database.

This would allow any body matter, such as hair or saliva, found at a crime scene, to be compared with the DNA records of officers, so investigations are not thrown off course through accidental contamination by officers working there.

This is the same reason that they want everyone in the UK to be put on this database. What is interesting is that these police men obviously thought that as police, they would be excluded from the national DNA database. Are they in any way different from other members of the population? If everyone else is being made to go into this database, what on earth would make them think that they have an ‘opt out’?

But rank-and-file police fear that calculating criminals with a grudge against members of the force could manipulate the system to damage the careers of innocent officers.

Actually, what they think is that calculating police men with a grudge against members of the force could manipulate the system to destroy the careers of officers. There. Some substitution for you.

Members of the Scottish Police Federation believe criminals could deliberately contaminate the scene with officers’ DNA, either to implicate them in serious crimes or to give the impression that they had planted evidence. A federation spokesman said: “A point made by many of our members is that it is relatively easy for anyone so minded to obtain DNA traces of a police officer – for example from a discarded cigarette butt – and to deliberately contaminate a locus with it.

If that is the case, and police are to be exempted, then everyone in the UK who has not been convicted of a crime should also be exempted, because the same threat to the reputations and careers of ‘ordinary’ citizens exists for the man in the street and the police man.

“Apart from the suspicion which may or may not fall on the officer, it has the potential to diminish the evidential value of any DNA traces of the real perpetrator of the crime.”

If this is true of the police being on the register, then it is true for the members of the public, and even moreso, because the vectors for fraud increase exponentially when everyone in in the database; ANY cigarette butt or used condom instantly becomes a means of diverting attention away from the perpetrators of crime; every bin in the street becomes a gold mine of DNA to be sourced. If no one is in the database except criminals then this threat disappears, and in fact, when you get a match to a known criminal, the database does what it is meant to do; catch repeat offenders.

Last night the officers’ fears were dismissed as “far fetched” by a source close to the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland, which is driving the new plan forward.

But the possibility of framing police officers is an extremely sensitive issue for the force. A policewoman lost her job after being wrongly accused of leaving her fingerprint at a murder scene. All officers already have to provide fingerprints as a condition of appointment.

Former Strathclyde WPC Shirley McKie was accused of contaminating the scene of the murder of Ayrshire woman Marion Ross, who was found stabbed at her Kilmarnock home in January 1997.

McKie maintained that although she was one of the first officers to arrive at the scene, she had never been in Ross’s house.

Despite the defence argument that the murder scene had been contaminated by police incompetence, David Asbury was convicted on other fingerprint evidence and sentenced to life imprisonment. But 10 months after the conviction, McKie was charged with perjury and suspended by Strathclyde Police for allegedly lying on oath, although she was later fully acquitted.

And there you have it. A perfect example of how someone can have their lives trashed by false evidence.

Civil liberties campaigners last night voiced concerns about the DNA testing plan. John Scott, the chairman of the Scottish Human Rights Centre, said the move was “an intrusion into personal privacy”.

He said it would be easier to justify checking samples against police DNA when the need arose, rather than impose blanket DNA testing.

and the same is true for everyone in the population, not just the police.

Scott also agreed a determined criminal could attempt to frame a police officer with a stolen DNA sample. “There have been cases where it has been suspected that fingerprint evidence has been planted,” he said. “If you have access to someone’s DNA it allows greater scope for the possibility that evidence can be planted.”

The police federation also doubts whether the planned DNA database represents good value for money. It has suggested it may be cheaper simply to obtain samples as required from an individual officer if it is suspected he may have contaminated a crime scene.

Note how they are using all the attacks that the ordinary people use to get themselves off of the slippery slope towards the biometric net. This is a perfect example of ‘first they came for the communists….there was no one left to defend me’. All those police who called for universal DNA collection now have the light shined on them, and they do not like it when the horror of it is applied to them.

Typical.

But the Scottish Executive, which is prepared to change the law to allow the testing regime to begin shortly, rejected such concerns. An Executive spokeswoman said: “The creation of such a database has clear benefits in terms of providing operational, time and financial savings.”

The requirement for new recruits to provide a DNA sample as a condition of appointment has been in place south of the Border since last summer.

Under the Scottish plan, samples would be stored on a database to be searched only if a senior investigating officer had reasonable grounds to believe that innocent contamination of a scene of crime might have taken place.

Once again, special treatment for the police. Outrageous.

Supporters say because technological developments had produced highly sensitive analytical techniques, there is a risk that a DNA profile could be inadvertently contaminated – for example as a result of an officer sneezing, coughing or shedding a stray hair.

OR, deliberately, through planting of evidence.

While this may not lead to a wrongful conviction, it could delay an investigation or at worst prevent the real offender being identified.

Backers of the policy say that if investigators could quickly identify such innocent contamination using the DNA database and discard it, inquiries could proceed quicker.

A spokeswoman for Acpos confirmed that following a meeting last week, all forces had agreed to require new recruits to take a DNA test and follow the English model, although Scotland’s biggest force, Strathclyde Police, is considering requiring all its officers to provide a sample.

A source close to the association said: “The fact that you’ve got someone’s DNA at a crime scene does not mean people will believe that person is responsible.

Well, we know that is a lie don’t we?!

“It is simply an indication that the person may have been at the locus. It would merely start an investigation which would require to look for corroboration.”

[…]

http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=902562003

The key here is MAY and thanks to the way thick people (‘cumpuuta sez nooooooooooo’) treat anything coming off of an LCD as the gospel truth, there is a real problem with the perception of DNA evidence mixed with computer delivery.

One thing is for sure, there are people out there who understand how insane this is, and as the injustices mount up and the people wake up the inevitable conclusion is that the plans will be completely scrapped.

Lets hope it is BEFORE they collect the DNA and not AFTER.

Chickenpox jab should be added to MMR, scientists say

David Batty
Thursday November 8, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

All children should be vaccinated against chickenpox while receiving the controversial measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) jabs, scientists said today.

Bollocks.

Only universal vaccination against chickenpox would prevent the severe complications – including, in a few cases, death – suffered by around 100 children a year who contract the disease, according to the study published in the Archives of Childhood Diseases.

Tens of millions get chicken pox every year without serious complications, after which they have life long immunity. This vaccine is another sheep shearing operation. But you know this.

The study found 112 cases over 13 months where children suffered severe complications, which required hospital treatment for conditions such as pneumonia, blood poisoning, encephalitis, ataxia (loss of control of limbs), toxic shock and the flesh-eating bug necrotising fasciitis.

All of this is irrelevant, and also, of these people were given oral Zovirax, the symptoms would have been completely suppressed and they would have lived.

Five of the children died, although four had pre-existing medical conditions – including one case of HIV.

You see? Lies!

But the study noted that these high-risk children were not currently targeted for immunisation. An unborn baby also died in the womb during the study period.

I personally know a woman who had never contracted chicken pox, but who was pregnant. She also had other children who were attending a school where someone had chicken pox. She contracted it, and was given a big bottle of Zovirax tablets to take regularly in case she started to show symptoms. She did, and she took the Zovirax as instructed. Not only did she never develop a fever of any kind, but all the symptoms of the Chicken pox were so suppressed that you would not have known that she was even suffering from it.

The baby was born full term, absolutely normal.

THAT is the way you take care of serious cases of Chickenpox. You do NOT need to vaccinate against it!

An editorial in the Archives of Childhood Diseases proposes adding a vaccine for chickenpox to the MMR jab.

But the authors acknowledged that ongoing public anxiety about MMR – despite no scientific evidence that it is unsafe – would make it difficult to add another vaccine to the existing triple jab.

and of course, it is not needed at all, as chicken pox is a nuisance and not a serious threat.

As an alternative, they suggested that the vaccine could be offered to all teenagers who were not infected as children to prevent severe complications in adults and pregnant women.

Better yet, offer them Zovirax to suppress the symptoms and let them have an easy time of it. Far less dangerous, in fact, so harmless is Zovirax that you can give it to a PREGNANT WOMAN and there are no side effects.

Routine immunisation for chickenpox is currently only offered in the UK to healthcare workers and others who are at risk of contracting the illness or passing it on.

If you have already had Chickenpox, the vaccine is useless. The only way to do that properly is to test for immunity then and ONLY then vaccinate, either by natural contraction or by noxious concoction.

But the US, Canada, Australia and Finland have already introduced vaccination programmes for children.

only to face fierce resistance.

The government announced in September it was considering vaccinating children against chickenpox, following a recommendation by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation.

Professor Adam Finn, a co-author of both the editorial and the report, said: “Chickenpox has traditionally been viewed as an irritating but inevitable infection to be endured during childhood, a rite of passage during the preschool years.

“This benign view persists despite evidence that certain groups, including neonates, adults, pregnant women, and the immunocompromised have higher risks of severe disease.”

These groups can all be treated without vaccinations, and there is no reason why the ENTIRE POPULATION should be exposed to this threat because a very small number of people who are vulnerable MIGHT have complications from it.

That is why when there is a chickenpox party in your town, you need to get your children there so that they can catch it, acquire immunity, and then get it over with. That is called ‘good parenting’.

The study, Severe Complications of Chickenpox in Hospitalised Children in the UK and Ireland, found that 40% of the children studied had ongoing problems, most commonly ataxia or skin scarring.

The scarring can be prevented with Zovirax which stops the pox from popping up.

Most of the children were healthy before they contracted chickenpox, so would have been able to be immunised if a vaccine was available, said the researchers.

And they would have been able to fight it off with the help of that very cool drug.

It concluded: “We did not identify any additional high-risk groups that could be candidates for selective immunisation.

“Universal vaccination would therefore be the only realistic option to prevent severe complications and deaths, as few, if any, could be identified as potentially preventable under current UK policy.”

This is completely backwards logic. It is the logic of big business, of cattle herding. It is pure evil.

The authors said chickenpox rates were rising in pre-school children and for every 1,000 cases, between two and five children would be hospitalised.

The report acknowledged that immunising children might mean a greater number of elderly people developed shingles as the level of immunity waned.

You see?

Even if you vaccinate, because it is not as good as getting real immunity from the disease itself, later down the line, there is going to be more suffering, and I am told that shingles is really REALLY painful and terrible.

But it said a further vaccination might reduce this risk.

does this mean another round after the childhood round?!

People who have had chickenpox can later develop shingles as the virus stays within the body.

But those who have had chickenpox cannot catch shingles from someone else, unlike those who never contracted chickenpox as children.

http://society.guardian.co.uk/health/news/0,,2207419,00.html

Hmmm.

So if chickenpox was eradicated, then shingles would also be eradicated.

If only we could trust the motives of these people!

Sadly we cannot, and chickenpox is a small price to pay for not being rendered autistic for life by a vaccination.

‘The man who knows this stuff’ has already instructed us all about this previously.

The first BLOGDIAL post where one of the tags is a joke referring to the content of a post.

Doctor pleads guilty in fingerprint case

HARRISBURG, Pa. – A plastic surgeon who replaced the fingerprints of an alleged drug dealer with skin from the bottom of his feet pleaded guilty Thursday to a federal charge of harboring and concealing a fugitive.

Dr. Jose L. Covarrubias, a U.S. citizen who lived in the border town of Nogales, Ariz., and practiced medicine in neighboring Nogales, Mexico, faces up to five years in prison when he is sentenced Feb. 11.

A plea agreement requires Covarrubias, 49, to cooperate with prosecutors in their investigation of a Harrisburg-based drug ring. All other charges were dismissed.

The charges stemmed from surgery Covarrubias performed on co-defendant Marc George, 42, of Jamaica. The doctor replaced George’s fingerprints with skin from his feet to help him avoid apprehension, authorities said.

George, accused of being a drug and cash courier, paid the doctor about $20,000 to replace his fingerprints with skin from his feet to help him avoid apprehension, authorities said. He was still limping badly when he was arrested at the Nogales border crossing in September 2005 on a charge of money laundering.

Covarrubias’ attorney, Stephen G. Ralls, said the doctor had “a lapse of judgment” but did not know specifically what George was wanted for. The doctor had no previous criminal record, Ralls said.

Covarrubias was being held as a flight risk at the Adams County Jail in Gettysburg.

Prosecutors allege the drug ring conspired to buy marijuana from Tucson, Ariz., and elsewhere and distributed more than a ton of it in central Pennsylvania, Philadelphia and other areas between 2004 and 2006.

Assistant U.S. Attorney William Behe, the lead prosecutor, said all but one of the 35 defendants in the case have signed plea agreements and most have pleaded guilty and been sentenced. The other defendant remains at large, he said.

George has signed a plea agreement and is expected to plead guilty at a hearing next week.

[…]

Yahoo News

This is nonsense inside nonsense.

Firstly, the ‘war on drugs’ is insane. This man should not have been hounded for trying to sell dried plants. Its as stupid as arresting people for selling dried tomatoes.

Secondly, the insane biometric mania that is spreading to all four corners of the earth is a direct result and comes out of this insane ‘war on drugs’, and has created the need, Minority Report style, for people to have their fingerprints and soon, their eyes replaced by rogue doctors.

The equation is this: no ‘war on drugs’ = no organized crime = no insane laws = more freedom + less violence

Simple!