Death by medicine

Nathan Batalion, Global Health Activist, Healingtalks Editor

(Healingtalks) Modern allopathic medicine is base, lock-stock-and-barrel on the mechanical vision of nature – and thus our bodies. Machines are made of separate parts, designed mathematically…because math symbols abstract universal separation. Machines model or represent the result of applying a mathematical vision to its heights. What’s wrong with machines?

Two main contentions

A) Failure of mechanical/math-based view

I contend machines do not model or represent the essence of nature. It is pretty obvious to see this since machines never, not once, occur naturally anywhere in nature, unless man-made. This implies mathematics does not represent the essence of nature left alone and not imposed upon. This implies separative consciousness (left-brain dominant consciousness which is separative) does not really fathom or penetrate into nature’s depths. Mathematics is the left-brain’s highest organizing symbolism, the the universal symbols of separation,One reason the vision fails is because one cannot connect a vision of nature consistently and rationally using abstractions of separation. Its irrational an impossible Had I been around in the 17th century, I would have totally demolish and made mince-meat of the arguments of Newton, Galileo and Descartes that so grossly mislead us into our modern eco-challenged or non-sustainable world – arguments and ideas that anchor and justify all of modern medicine’s foundation. It is a quicksand foundation.

B) Success of life/consciousness based view

Imagine that at the core of nature is what we experience inwardly as life and that at the core of life is consciousness – and as the universal relationship of connection. If this is true, and in my experience it is, then the mathematical/mechanical vision points systematically to and materializes not just machines made of separate parts, unconsicous and dead, but overall death in nature.

A system of medicine based on that vision thus offers not the keys to healing, but death by medicine. Non-emergency surgery is a perfect example. We cut the body apart like a machine, which accelerates death. When such practices make a marriage with commercial interests ($ signs being math symbols applied socially/environmentally), where consciousness is corrupted (separated apart) powerful in these dark directions.

Iatrogenic death

Iatrogenic means caused by a physician or the doings of a doctor. The statistics of death as well as life-long illnesses caused directly by the artificial interventions of modern medicine is daunting. Many of these statistics are provided in the video below.

Hospitals raking it in for unnecessary surgery for dying seniors

My own dad was subjected to two surgeries in his 90s, without even the approval of his medical surrogate (the doctors taking away that license) and he immediately died. His operations were not just unnecessary by a criminal act, as far as I was concerned. Only doctors and policemen can kill you legally and get away with it.

To make matters worse, doctors and hospitals in the US have a financial incentive to perform such surgery and on dying seniors because Medicare is guaranteed to pay for it, even though if and when most of the procedures fail to improve the patients’ lives. Again separative technologies go against the very essence of healing. The double negative of removing something toxic or ill or not the same as a positive in the direction of healing. It is a removal of symptoms.

Statistics of death by medicine

Statistics show that modern medicine is the overall leading cause of preventable death in the US. See references below for a backup on this statement. A case in point is the following. Harvard School of Public Health recently reported that 1.8 million Medicare beneficiaries age 65 or older died in 2008, and over 34% were operated on during their last year, 25% in their last month, and 10% in their last week of life. If the surgery was a causal element, then approximately 600,000 seniors (1/3rd of 1.8 million) died as a result.

As cynical as it sounds, doctors routinely perform unnecessary surgery for financial benefits. It becomes necessary to maintain their lifestyles, their mercedes and the like. There is a conflict of interest in caring about the lives of seniors, past the deceptive white coat purity appearance,  when guaranteed financial rewards follow assembly-line unnecessary surgeries.

Supposedly there is no other way – what bunk

The Medicare website for reporting unnecessary and inappropriate surgery describes it as being an operation for a condition that could effectively be treated with medication or physical therapy.  Typically, there is nothing listed about nutrition or natural healing. Mentioning natural remedies can endanger a doctors license to practice medicine. The FDA outlaws any natural remedy from claiming it can cure a disease, so the general public still believes surgery and chemotherapy are the only true options.

Arguments against “death by medicine

The argument against our thesis that modern medicine is the leading cause of death in the US is presented in a blog post by Steve Novella, MD on his site Science Based Medicine (hiding behind the cloak of “superior science,” as the 17th century mechanical/death-centered view claimed their view was superior, and providing a deeply false justification). He substitutes the word food for medicine as being the leading cause of deaths in the US. This is a common distortion, that was is natural and truly healing is what is to be feared. I have offered some of the arguments opposing that view in many blog posts, including 27 years, zero deaths from vitamins, 3 million from prescription drugs.

$-driven, illusionary worldview-driven, three-prong and deadly short-sightedness

Doctors in the United States are trained to do mainly three general procedures for the sick and dying which also connect with making money. They operate, administer chemotherapy/radiation or prescribe pharmaceuticals to mask and seemingly relieve symptoms or pain. The effort to remove cancer that surrounds or invades organs is a most surgical procedure. Unfortunately, clipping off the “tops of weeds” doesn’t get at the taproot and since the chemicals in food and overall bad nutrition fuel ill health and disease – this is the best of all worlds financially for the “disease-care industry.”

Surgery works against the connective essence of life and supports the mechanical view, the death centered. Thus not surprisingly surgery can be painful, debilitating, and life-time weakening – accelerating death.  The most popular chemotherapy drug is Gemcitabine, which claims to only help about 25% of patients. So the rest either undergo useless surgery or are sent home to die with no nutritional advice. Cancer is a chemically driven disease, and chemotherapy is toxic, deprives all cells of oxygen. Often surgery also causes internal bleeding which spreads the cancer. I can’t count how many I have lost to the ravages and insanities of allopathic medicine – to death by medicine.

Resources

Occurpy modern medicine – the political revolt against corporate, profit-driven disease care

Modern medicine as the leading cause of death in US

“Death by Medicine” Groundbreaking statistical summary and analysis written by Gary Null, PhD; Carolyn Dean MD, ND; Martin Feldman, MD; Debora Rasio, MD

Statistical update on Null’s “Death by Medicine” – the assault continues to get worse

Keywords

death by medicine, dead by medicine, mecola quack, allopathic doctors, iatrogenic, iatrogenesis, iatrogenic death, iatrogenic deaths, iatrogenic disorders, iatrogenic diseases, iatrogenic injury, iatrogenic infection, iatrogenic disease, meaning of iatrogenic, definition of iatrogenic.

Health Care vs Sick Care

Real health care means:

Slogans for a

Real

Healthcare Revolution

Occupying The Citadels

of Disease-Care

By Nathan Batalion, Global Health Activist, Editor Healingtalks.com

$ – Stop Wallet-Vacuuming and Brainwashing Patients,

$ – Medical Treatments – The Number  One Killer In The US,

$ – Chemical Drugs Don’t Heal,

$ – Harming, Killing Side-Effects Are Main Effects of Drugs,

Go Organic – Detox To Get All Artificial Chemicals Out of Your Body,

$ – Stop Hiding the Truth – Modern Medicine Is a Shambles,

Cancer, Diabetes, Arthritis, Asthma – All Curable Naturally,

$ – Medicine to Harm 99.9% With Drugs to Profit the .1% Elite,

$ – Radiation Kills,

Healing is Connection to Wholeness; Surgery Dismembers, Accelerating Death,

We Are Living, Whole Organisms Not Meant To Be Disassembled Like Machines,

$ – Stop Honoring the Death-Centered Mechanical Vision of Nature,

$ – Don’t Be Fooled By Fraudulent Chemotherapy Science,

$ – Most Toxic Drugs That Cause Cancer Can’t Cure Cancer,

$ – Stop Making Our Seniors Into Zombies With Drugs,

Occupy the $- Profit Citadels of Disease-Care,

$ -Stop Poisoning Our Children With Psychotropic Drugs and Justified By Contrived Diagnoses,

$ – top Creating Autism with Toxic, Unproven and Dis-proven Vaccinations,

$ -Stop the Religious-like Ritual of Doctors Rounds To Just Dispense Drugs As Big Pharma Frontmen,

Educate Organic, Real and True Healing Lifestyle Changes,

$ – Stop Religiously Revering Newtonian Physics – Treating Living Organisms Like Dead Machines,

$ – Stop Calling the Killing Arts “Healthcare” – Surgery, Radiation, Chemotherapy, “Anti-biotics,”

Video on the number one killer In America, more than all of our wars combined.

“According to JAMA, Journal of the American Medical Association, over a million people a year are injured in hospitals annually.”

 Resources:

Thugs, Bugs and the War on Bugs

Confessions of a Medical Heretic

America Conned: Psycho Pharma Empire Under Fire

America Conned: Psycho Pharma Empire Under Fire

by Monica G. Young
Email this author

Is America truly stricken with widespread mental illness? Do tens of millions need mind-altering drugs? A recent flurry of media articles lead readers to a realization that Big Pharma and the “mental health” industry have deceived Americans on a grand scale.

The “New York Review of Books” two-part article by Dr. Marcia Angell, Senior Lecturer at Harvard Medical School and former Editor in Chief of The New England Journal of Medicine, summarizes it extremely well. She analyzes three books by authors Irving Kirsch, Robert Whitaker, and Daniel Carlat. Each deconstructs the apparent mental illness epidemic and theory that mental disorders stem from brain chemical imbalances which can be corrected by drugs.

Dr. Angell’s review has sparked a host of other journalists to applaud her and fuel the fire. An article in Forbes even concludes, “psychopharma is looking like an idea whose time has passed.”

Overview of how Big Pharma conned America

• 10% of Americans over age six take antidepressants.
• Antipsychotic drugs, once reserved for schizophrenics, have become the top-selling class of drugs in the US, with over $14 billion in sales in 2009.
• ADHD, bipolar and autism diagnoses have exploded in the past two decades with at least 5 million US kids now on psychiatric drugs.
• 10% of boys take drugs for ADHD.
• Half a million kids take antipsychotics, including preschoolers.

The Chemical Imbalance Theory

This rose to fame when Prozac hit the market in 1987, accompanied by massive hype that it corrected a chemical deficiency in the brain. In the years that followed, the number of people prescribed drugs for mental illness skyrocketed. Today, “treatment” for mental disorders is synonymous with psychoactive (mind-altering) drugs.

Tracing the origin of this theory shows it wasn’t that chemical imbalances were discovered in the mentally ill and then drugs were devised to correct the imbalance. Instead, drugs created for other purposes were incidentally found to also affect brain chemicals and blunt mental symptoms. Drug companies, hungry for new markets, and psychiatry, eager to build stature in the medical arena, leapt on this. They conducted a vast campaign to popularize chemical imbalances as the cause of mental disturbance and push drugs as the answer.

As Dr. Angell writes, “instead of developing a drug to treat an abnormality, an abnormality was postulated to fit a drug.” “Or similarly,” she says, “one could argue that fevers are caused by too little aspirin.”

Many scientific studies disprove the chemical imbalance theory.

• After fifteen years of research, Irving Kirsch – psychologist and author of “The Emperor’s New Drugs” – concludes, “It now seems beyond question that the traditional account of depression as a chemical imbalance in the brain is simply wrong.” Research studies show psychoactive medications actually disrupt brain chemistry and causes the brain to function abnormally.

• This year prominent neuroscientist, Dr. Nancy Andreason, announced proof that antipsychotics shrink the brain.

• Studies also demonstrate that long-term recovery rates are higher for non-medicated patients. For instance, the World Health Organization conducted an investigation in fifteen cities around the world and out of 740 depressed individuals studied, those that weren’t on psychiatric drugs had the best long term outcomes.
• In the pre-medication era, it was known that with time, people usually recovered from depression. If kids had tantrums, were unruly or shy, they were apt to outgrow it.

Today, individuals branded with disorders are likely to receive long-lasting diagnoses, endless prescriptions and the poorer ones tend to remain on disability for life.

Big Pharma manipulation

Dr. Marcia Angell says the author of each of the three books agrees on “the disturbing extent to which the companies that sell psychoactive drugs – through various forms of marketing, both legal and illegal, and what many people would describe as bribery – have come to determine what constitutes a mental illness and how the disorders should be diagnosed and treated.”According to IMS Health, an information and consulting company, pharmaceutical companies spent $6.1 billion in 2010 in marketing to US doctors.

• Another $4 billion was spent on direct-to-patient advertising.
• The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual – the psychiatric bible of mental disorders, used in prescribing drugs – Dr. Angell points out “in all of its editions, it has simply reflected the opinions of its writers.” The majority of the psychiatrists involved in creating the current edition had financial ties to drug companies.
• Drug trials, used to bring a drug to market, are funded by drug companies, heavily biased and misleading. Companies may sponsor as many trials as they like until they have just two positive ones to submit to the FDA. Great care is taken to hide negative trials. The highly positive results of placebo trials are downplayed: a high percentage of patients recover on a fake drug (like a sugar pill) – proving that the more a person believes he will benefit from a treatment, the more likely he will experience a benefit.
• Author Daniel Carlat points out that “psychiatrists consistently lead the pack of specialties when it comes to taking money from drug companies.”

Big Pharma’s crime against humanity

And where has the “mental health” industry and “drug therapy” brought our nation?

As Americans line up at their local pharmacy, documented side effects are legion: weight gain, deadened emotions, diabetes, heart problems, liver damage, stunted growth in kids, shortened life spans and on and on. Those prescribed one psychoactive drug are commonly prescribed another to address side-effects, with many on daily cocktails of meds.An estimated 2.2 million Americans are hospitalized each year for adverse drug reactions.

• Over 100,000 die from them.
• Instead of decreasing, the number of adults on disability pay for mental illness has soared 250% since 1987.
• For kids it’s a 35X increase.

The greatest crime to humanity is the mass drugging of children. Yet it’s perpetrated within schools, doctor offices, foster homes and juvenile facilities daily.

There is good news. In the past few years, drug companies have faced a rise of multi-billion dollar class action suits. The key popularizer of childhood bipolar and antipsychotics for kids, Dr. Joseph Biederman, was publicly sanctioned by Harvard Medical School for failing to report $1.6 million he pocketed from drug companies. Some drugmakers are steering away from pursuing new psychoactive drugs.

Big Pharma Telling A Big Lie

Nazi chief propagandist Joseph Goebbels once said, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

This chemical-imbalance/drug therapy lie has been told big enough and repeated enough, that much of America believes it. Isn’t it time we all put a stop to it?

Key articles:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/arc…

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/arc…

Additional sources include:

http://www.pri.org/health/big-pharm…

http://english.aljazeera.net/indept…

http://www.catholicculture.org/news…

http://blogs.forbes.com/greatspecul…

http://www.businessinsider.com/zypr…

http://blogs.forbes.com/investor/20…

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maril…

Signs Mainstream Medicine Is Failing To Heal Us

In our culture, nowadays, we have been increasingly treating what are growing health pandemics. We can count among these diabetes, arthritis, cancer, obesity, heart disease, various forms of mental illness, autism, kidney and skin disorders, and so on.

Paying More And Getting Less
Americans pay more for health care than almost any other nation on the planet and the percentage of GNP spent on healthcare costs keeps rising.  Then why are we also among the sickest nations? A recent article by Naturalnews says that “It’s an indictment of the mainstream medical system that’s been running a monopoly medical racket in America for roughly the last hundred years…[and] has taken a nation that was once relatively healthy and turned it into a disease dystopia where patients are actually taught that nutrition doesn’t work and that they must submit to patented chemicals in order to be “normal” or healthy. The article cited ten signs of the failure of so-called mainstream medicine:

- Scientific Fraud With Drug Experiments
If mainstream goodies really worked, why are fraudulent trials perpetually uncovered?

- Censoring and Outlawing Natural Remedies
If drug companies goodies really worked, they wouldn’t have to fear and suppress competition

- Paying More For Health and Related Health Insurance Costs
If modern medicine really worked, health care costs and health insurance premiums would be falling, not soaring.

- Failing to Set A Global Example
If modern mainstream medicine really worked, we would not be failing to set a global example.  The results, given the costs, are a disgrace.

- Drug Companies and Doctors Thriving
When drug companies and doctors thrive, amid a worst recession,  it’s a sign few are getting healed and many are treated.

- Kickbacks
If  modern medicine really worked, drug companies would not be giving kickbacks to nursing homes to push more drugs.

- Among Largest TV/Print Advertisers
If modern medicine really worked, pharmaceutical companies would not have to resort to manipulative advertising bits, with fake- looking models trying to convince people they need drugs that are unnatural, and that also highlight isolated symptom relief while diverting attention from the  whole. Healing is about becoming whole so nothing could be worse. Calling a spade a spade, this can simply be termed: systematic and systemic mass deception.

- Forcing Medications And Imprisonment On Disbelievers
If conventional medicine really worked, it would not be necessary to legally enforce chemotherapy upon teenagers and threaten arrest and imprisonment of parents. Everyone would instead be lining up for this counter-intuitive treatment. Chemicals cause cancer.

- It Doesn’t Work
The blatant truth, and for very deep reasons, is that, except emergencies, allopathic medicine doesn’t work – looking past the authority-building white coats, stethoscopes and diplomas on the walls. Healing is connection and reconnection to wholeness. Thus cutting the body apart (via surgery) is the opposite of a healing modality except in double-negative uses – cutting out what is not healing. But a double-negative is never a deep positive.  Chemical drugs also are artificially math-designed. Mathematics abstracts separation, not connection. Thus drugs are symptom modulators and by their very nature cannot heal!  Let me repeat that. Synthetic, math-designed drugs, by their very nature, cannot heal. If you want to test the overall mathematical order in nature (the only objective stance is to test the whole not parts in isolation) try throwing a large random mix of chemicals in a compost heap. all life therein dies. It does not heal!

- To Push What Makes Healthy People Sick
Yes they can help in certain emergencies but with chronic, systemic ailments they further undermine health by their very nature. The unwary find this out after its too late, with rarely any legal appeal rights or compensation for the harm. To push what makes healthy people sick upon those who are ill is ultimately unconscionable – but self-deception in the medical field is the norm as is a disguised  practicing so-called “objective science” based on fraudulent mechanical principles, and which  turns sickness into profits rather than ill patients into cured and whole human beings.

Our health care delivery system really is a wholesale shambles and our children suffer the most as a result.  Rarely do you find physicians promoting natural healing and preventive measures because that’s not where the money is. Our children are the fall-guys and  as adults they also reap the harvest of life-long chronic disease. Here are some of the main health statistics to back up this statement

CHILDREN WITH CHRONIC AILMENTS
The number of children with chronic diseases has nearly quadrupled since the time when some parents were children. In the 1960’s 1.8 % of children reported a chronic ailment. In 2004 it was 7.0. In 2006 it was 7.3% so that these statistics seem to keep rising.

CHILDREN WITH DIABETES
One in three children born this century will have diabetes. Diabetes is a life-long debilitating illness that yields more heart disease, blindness and neuropathy – yet diabetes is really preventable and reversible.

CHILDREN WITH CARDIOVASCULAR RISK FACTORS
By the age of 12, 70% will have signs of the hardening of arteries. Between the ages of 5-10, 60% have at least one risk factor associated with cardiovascular disease; 20% have two or more.

CHILDREN OVERWEIGHT OR OBESE
1 in 4 children will be obese or overweight in the past three decades. Nearly 50% of  the obese and overweight children will remain so in their adult life. One 1 out of 4 children are on food stamps buying mostly processed, high-sugar junk foods.

CHILDREN WITH CANCER
Cancer is the leading cause of death by disease among children. Incident rates have risen about 25% over the last 30 years.

ADULTS OVERWEIGHT OR OBESE
Two-thirds of all adult Americans are now overweight.

ASTHMA
We have twice the asthma rates since the 1980’s. 9% of children have asthma.

ADHD AND LEARNING DISABILITIES
7-8% of school age children are diagnosed with ADHD or attention deficit disorder. Also 8% will have signs of a learning disability. ADHD was not on the radar in the 1960’s. About 2-3% of children are on medications for these conditions.

CHILDREN ON RITALIN
In 1990 the number of children on Ritalin was approximately 900,000 and has in two decades risen to 4-5 million.

ADULT CANCER
One in two men and one in three women will develop cancer in their lifetime.

TAKING DRUGS
Otherwise half of Americans have a chronic health problem (asthma and arthritis included) whereby they are taking prescription drugs every week.

HIGH CHOLESTEROL
100 million Americans have high cholesterol.

RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS
There has been a 50% rise in rheumatoid arthritis among women in the past two decades.

MULTIPLE CHRONIC DISEASES
More Americans are being diagnoses with multiple chronic diseases.

MOST ON THE RISE
The main chronic diseases in the US are on the rise, especially Alzheimer’s, diabetes, mental illness and obesity.

CANCER AND CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASES
There has been no real progress in bringing down the death rate from cardiovascular disease or cancer. Since the year 1900 cancer rates have at least tripled.

Our expensive medical system does not focus on low-cost prevention means but rather on expensive, profit-generating medical and drug treatment. The system is really broken and needs to be overhauled. Physicians should be paid in relationship to keeping people healthy not for prolonged sick care. Our children suffer the greatest brunt of this mess. It is  hugely tragic. None of this has really been tackled or grabbed by the horns with our currently proposed government healthcare reforms.

The latest Senate vote was a big win for the drug, hospital and biologics companies and their lobbyists. They get billions more on their books while millions of Americans are unconstitutionally forced to buy allopathic insurance of relative low quality.

What’s wrong with the Senate’s overall?

NO ALTERNATIVES OFFERED OR QUALITATIVE CHANGE
No reimbursement for alternative health care or the use of a naturopath.

MAIN DISASTER NOT ADDRESSED
Our medical system is a qualitatively disaster and this was not at all addressed. Most doctors get 20 hours or less in nutrition training in their college training. With no effective nutritional guidance for the public:
a) One in three children born this century will have diabetes
b) By the age of 12, 70% will have signs of the hardening of arteries.
c) One in four children will be obese and one in three overweight.
d) Nearly 50% of  the obese and overweight children will remain so in their adult life.
e) Two-thirds of all adult Americans are now overweight.
f) 7% of school age children are diagnosed with ADHD .
g) One in two men and one in three women will develop cancer in their lifetime.
h) Otherwise half of Americans have a chronic health problem (asthma and arthritis included) whereby they are taking prescription drugs. Half!
i) Many chronic diseases are on the rise, especially Alzheimer’s.
j) There has been no real progress in bringing down the death rate from cardiovascular disease or cancer.

Our expensive medical system is broken. It is a shambles and its tragic. None of this was really addressed.

NO PUBLIC OPTION
There is no public option to bring down costs

NO SINGLE PAYER
There is no single payer system, the most powerful way to bring down costs

NO DRUG RE-IMPORTMENT
Drug re-importment is missing to bring down costs

NO RIGHT TO CHOOSE
A woman’s right to chose was thrown under the bus

LACK OF EFFECTIVE REGULATION
Instead of reigning in private insurance companies, it enriches and empowers them. The new regulations have weak enforcement provisions

FORCED PARTICIPATION
Many are forced to buy expensive lowest quality private insurance that is still basically unregulated.

POOR FOUNDATION

The bill is not a good foundation for the future. It is more likely to be repealed by future Republican legislators the first chance they get. The bill, on the positive side, will cover 15 million more people on Medicaid because the private companies didn’t want them.

MISGUIDED TAX
It creates new and poorly-designed tax that will make enemies of medical reform.

BOTTOM LINE
The bill is a shame. What a discredit to the whole progressive movement which the late Senator Kennedy championed. No we have, in the Senate version, a vastly unworkable reform – qualitatively and quantitatively. Harshly said, but this is likely to be a step backwards as it entrenches allopathic medicine, enriches private insurance company profits, not offers but forces poor insurance, and without adequate reigning in of costs and policies.

REAL SOLUTIONS
This bill is such a sad  product of our modern era’s vicious cycle of corrupt lobbying, campaign contributions and corporate giveaways.  We need instead to have public funding of elections to Congress in order to sweep out this corruption and then it will be possibe to have real and qualitative/quantitative overhauls of our medical care delivery system.

I am thinking of visiting my local House representative, as there is still time to have a voice. You should too!

CALL FOR ACTION BY NATUROPATHS
I have been looking for weeks for a site that broaches the subject of real health care transformations. I finally found a site of the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians which has a call to action page. On that page you can write to your local Senator and ask them that all licensed healthcare professionals be covered – including naturopaths, OMDs, homeopaths, colon therapists or other alternative and complementary holistic practitioners and healers.

NOT RIGHT
How can we rightly ask/force most all Americans to pay for a failing allopathic medical care system - including those like myself who will almost never turn to poisonous drugs, debilitating surgery and cancer-causing radiation – as their choice of healing modalities.

LINK
Here is the link for the call for action page. Or you can make up an email or letter direct. Mailed correspondence has more force.A visit to your local legislator has even more impact.

LETTER TO LEGISLATOR
Here also is a copy of the letter sent to my Senators to ask them to include naturopaths and other licensed professionals

Dear _____________,

We respectfully request your support for inclusion of the Senate Health,
Education, Labor and Pension Committee’s non-discrimination clause, §2713
of the Affordable Health Choices Act, in the final version of Senate
health care legislation.  This “Every Category of Provider” clause will
ensure the American people have access to the services of a variety of
licensed health care practitioners, and prevent insurance companies from
denying coverage of licensed providers.  Furthermore, in the many areas of
the nation where primary care medical doctors are scarce or overextended,
this non-discrimination clause will provide Americans with access to other
types of qualified and licensed primary care professionals, including
naturopathic physicians.

Naturopathic physicians are licensed in 15 states, the District of
Columbia, and two US territories, but are largely excluded from
participation in health insurance plans.  Yet naturopathic physicians can
provide cost-effective care particularly in the field of primary care,
where the nation is lacking an adequate supply of providers.  In
Washington state, which mandated coverage of all licensed health care
providers in 1995, a 2004 study found that alternative services cost
approximately $0.19-$0.20 per member per month in HMO and PPO plans and
impact on premiums was modest, generally less than 2%.  Furthermore, under
the care of a naturopathic physician, patients generally reduce usage of
expensive pharmaceuticals and through healthy lifestyle, decrease their
chances of needing hospitalization, surgeries, and other costly procedures.

Please ensure that the American people continue to have access to all
licensed state providers by including §2713 of the HELP Committee’s bill
in final health care legislation.  Doing so will allow Americans to see
the provider of their choice, increase the supply of primary care
providers, and reduce overall health care costs.

Sincerely,

Scotts Letter

On Roundup

Here is a copy of the Scotts Company LLC letter. Scotts has had the exclusive right to sell Monsanto’s Roundup in the US and much of Europe since 1998. The company also has over a billion in total dollar sales annually. Previously they worked with Monsanto on developing a Roundup-ready genetically-modified turf grass.

Scotts Company LLC Letter

November 11, 2009 Addressed to Mike Mahler, D28 Merchant

Thank you for making us aware of the recent information you received regarding Roundup branded herbicides. I sincerely appreciate your letting me know about your concern. This level of communication is a strong testament to the partnership that exists between our two companies.

Does Roundup Biodegrade?

I am very sorry for the confusion this issue has caused. We take great pride in trying to make certain using our products are as simple as possible and it is clear that this ruling confused what is a very straight forward  issue, “Does glyphosate biodegrade in the soil?”

The simple answer to this question is resoundingly yes. It is a scientific fact that has been independently verified that glyphosate binds with the soil shortly after it comes in contact with it and that soil microorganisms over time break glyphosate down into carbon dioxide and other naturally occurring products.

EPA Roundup Comfort Label 

To give you some perspective, the US EPA has determined that this product only needs to carry the “caution” classification on its label. This is the most favorable “signal word” that a product can have. Based on the decades of research that has been conducted, we have complete confidence that when used as directed Roundup branded products poses no undue risk to the environment.

French Roundup Court Case

The case in France was about the use and possible interpretation of language in a specific advertisement and in no way questions the safety of Roundup brand herbicides or the benefits to our customers. The issue was on how the government defined “biodegradable” and the amount of time it took to biodegrade. In this case, France used a different criteria than what is used by other governments. As a result, the French courts have required our company to remove this reference from any materials used in their country. The good news is that this was done many years ago and there is no impact on any recent inventory.

Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention. I hope I addressed your concerns sufficiently . If you have any questions please call me personally at 937-644-7059. We take the issue of the environment very seriously and are very open to addressing any lingering concerns you may have.

Sincerely
Ed Billmaier
Director Scotts Consumer Service