New Study Confirms: Sugary Drinks Kill 184,000 People Each Year
By Jake Anderson | ANTIMEDIA | June 30, 2015
According to a new study, the effects of sugary soft drinks are considerably worse than previously thought: they are directly responsible for 184,000 deaths every year. It is the first comprehensive study of the effects of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) on human health, and the results confirm what medical experts have suspected for decades.
Published in the latest volume of the American Heart Association’s Circulation journal, the research implicates sodas, sweetened iced teas, fruit drinks, and sports/energy drinks.
The study is entitled “Estimated Global, Regional, and National Disease Burdens Related to Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Consumption in 2010,” and it affirms that most of the deaths are from complications resulting from diabetes due to the consumption of “sugar-sweetened beverages” (SSBs).
The rest of the fatalities are due to cardiovascular disease and cancer, which are linked to 45,000 and 6,450 annual deaths, respectively.
The study’s author, Dariush Mozaffarian of Tufts University in Boston, says,
“There are no health benefits from sugar-sweetened beverages, and the potential impact of reducing consumption is saving tens of thousands of deaths each year.”
Further, the report states that economic disparity plays a factor, as 76% of the people who died between the years of 1980 and 2010 as a result of consuming sugary drinks lived in low-to-middle income countries.
Mozaffarian goes on to state that the research “indicate[s] the need for population-based efforts to reduce SSB consumption throughout the world through effective health policies and targeted interventions directed at stemming obesity-related disease.”
He conducted the study by comparing 62 dietary surveys from over 611,000 people in 51 countries over the course of 30 years. While the health effects of sodas, energy drinks, and other sugary beverages have long been suspected of dire health consequences, we now have definitive evidence that they are directly responsible for 184,000 deaths annually.
Does Long Term Use of Psychiatric Drugs Cause More Harm Than Good?
By Peter C Gøtzsche, Allan H Young, John Crace | British Medical Journal | May 15, 2015
We could stop almost all psychotropic drug use without deleterious effect, says Peter C Gøtzsche, questioning trial designs that underplay harms and overplay benefits. Allan H Young and John Crace disagree, arguing that evidence supports long term use.
Psychiatric drugs are responsible for the deaths of more than half a million people aged 65 and older each year in the Western world, as I show below.1 Their benefits would need to be colossal to justify this, but they are minimal.1 23 4 5 6
Summary of Article
Overstated benefits and understated deaths
The randomised trials that have been conducted do not properly evaluate the drugs’ effects. Almost all of them are biased because they included patients already taking another psychiatric drug.1 7 8 9 10 Patients, who after a short wash-out period are randomised to placebo, go “cold turkey” and often experience withdrawal symptoms. This design exaggerates the benefits of treatment and increases the harms in the placebo group, and it has driven patients taking placebo to suicide in trials in schizophrenia.8
Under-reporting of deaths in industry funded trials is another major flaw. Based on some of the randomised trials that were included in a meta-analysis of 100 000 patients by the US Food and Drug Administration, I have estimated that there are likely to have been 15 times more suicides among people taking antidepressants than reported by the FDA—for example, there were 14 suicides in 9956 patients in trials with fluoxetine and paroxetine, whereas the FDA had only five suicides in 52 960 patients, partly because the FDA only included events up to 24 hours after patients stopped taking the drug.1
For antipsychotics, I used a meta-analysis of placebo controlled trials in patients with dementia because they would be less likely to have been receiving psychiatric drugs before randomisation. The absolute death … Full article
Peter C Gøtzsche, professor, Nordic Cochrane Centre, Rigshospitalet, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark, Allan H Young, professor of mood disorders, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neurosciences, King’s College London, UK, John Crace, psychiatric patient and parliamentary sketch writer, Guardian, London, UK
There is no renewables revolution in China. Here are the numbers that show this
By Robert Wilson | Carbon Counter | June 17, 2015
Last year China installed more new wind and solar capacity than any country in history. This is a fact, and it has led some to talk of China being a “renewables powerhouse” and of there being a “renewables revolution”.
But out of context this fact can be much less impressive than it really is.
Let me put it into context using the most recent data from BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy.
Over the last decade China’s primary energy consumption grew by 1398 million tonnes of equivalent (Mtoe). Though, if history is a guide this figure will eventually be revised upwards.
The annual average increase then was 140 Mtoe. For a comparison, Britain’s annual primary energy consumption was 188 Mtoe last year.
China’s growth rate was actually higher in the early 2010s, but has slowed recently (probably due to a worsening economic situation.
But that’s the context for judging the growth of wind and solar in China: 140 Mtoe of (mostly coal) energy added per year for the last decade.
How does China’s world leading wind and solar build out compare with this?
In total, China got 42.4 Mtoe from wind and solar in 2014. In other words, the total production of energy from wind and solar energy is less than one third of a year’s of growth in primary energy consumption.
When you look at annual growth things are even clearer. Wind and solar grew by 6.97 Mtoe last year. This is a mere 5% of the average total growth in primary energy.
There is no renewables revolution in China. So, as always, I recommend that people spend some time with data sources such as the BP Statistical Review of World Energy and less time reading pundits and the instant experts of Twitter.
How EPA Faked the Entire Science of Sewage Sludge Safety: A Whistleblower’s Story
Independent Science News | June 9, 2014
US EPA’s 503 sludge rule (1993) allows treated sewage sludges, aka biosolids, to be land-applied to farms, forests, parks, school playgrounds, home gardens and other private and public lands. According to a recent EPA survey, biosolids contain a wide range of mutagenic and neurotoxic chemicals, which are present at a million-fold higher concentrations (ppm versus ppt) compared with their levels in polluted air and water (1). Biosolids contain all of the lipophilic (fat-soluble) chemical wastes that once polluted our rivers and lakes, but which now settle out at sewage treatment plants and become concentrated in sewage sludges. Most biosolids contain ppm concentrations of heavy metals, including chromium, lead, and mercury. They contain similarly high levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and semi-volatiles, such as bis (2-Ethylhexyl) phthalate, Benzo(a)pyrene), and polybrominated diphenyl ether congeners (PBDE flame retardants). Most biosolids also contain pathogenic agents and ppm levels of many common drugs, including ciprofloxacin (Cipro), carbamazepine (Tegretol, Equetro), and fluoxetine (Prozac).
While working at EPA Dr David Lewis published evidence that teenager Shayne Conner (of New Hampshire) died and other neighbors were harmed from living near land applied with sewage sludge (Lewis et al 2002). He furthermore became involved after dairy herds of two Georgia farms (McElmurray and Boyce) were poisoned after grazing on sludged land. He testified in lawsuits following each incident, against his employer (EPA), which is where many of the following depositions were obtained. The following article is an excerpt from Chapter 4 (Sludge Magic) of his new book (Science for Sale: How the US Government Uses Powerful Corporations and Leading Universities to Support Government Policies, Silence Top Scientists, Jeopardize Our Health, and Protect Corporate Profits). The lawsuits referred to are Lewis v. EPA 1999; Lewis v. EPA 2003; and USA, ex rel. Lewis, McElmurray and Boyce v. Walker et al. 2009. The depositions below piece together an unprecedented and coordinated multi-agency scientific scheme involving EPA, USDA, local and city municipalities, Synagro Technologies (a waste management company), various universities, and the National Academies of Science.
The effort was intended to misleadingly present sewage sludge as scientifically safe, to hide the evidence that it was not, to deliberately misreport the contents of municipal sludges, and smear David Lewis with a scientific misconduct charge after he blew the whistle.
From “Sludge Magic” by Dr David Lewis:
The Men Behind the Curtain
1) Alan Rubin – EPA
Alan Rubin, who was a career chemist at EPA’s Office of Water, is considered the primary author of EPA’s 503 sludge rule. He was one of a number of office scientists at EPA headquarters involved in retaliations against scientists and private citizens who reported adverse health effects associated with biosolids. Time magazine (September 27, 1999) ran a short article about Rubin mailing “death threats” on EPA and Water Environment Federation (WEF) letterhead to private citizens concerned about biosolids, saying, “Ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee!”
When deposed in my U.S Department of Labor cases, Dr. Rubin explained what motivated these attacks:
RUBIN QUESTIONED BY ATTORNEY STEPHEN KOHN (1999) (2)
Q. Are you proud of the work you did?… Do you feel, in any
way, hurt or upset to have someone like Dr. Lewis criticizing
it?… Professionally hurt, a little?
A. Somewhat.
Q. How so?…
A. Well, I think my professional reputation, to a large extent, is
based on my association with biosolids, 503 and its technical basis.
So I feel my reputation would be somewhat disparaged if the basis
of the rule, and the scientific findings were shown to be in error.
Rubin coined the term “sludge magic” when EPA’s proposed 503 sludge rule was undergoing internal peer review at EPA’s Office of Research & Development in 1992. Dr. Robert Swank, the research director at the EPA lab in Athens, Georgia, where I worked, called Dr. Rubin. When Swank asked him to explain how sewage sludge renders pollutants non-bioavailable, Rubin replied, “It’s magic.” During his deposition, Rubin deferred to USDA agronomist Rufus Chaney when questioned about scientific studies supporting sludge magic:
RUBIN QUESTIONED BY MR. KOHN (1999) (3)
Q. You called it sludge magic?
A. Yes, that is my term. “sludge magic” [means] there are unique
properties in the biosolids matrix that sequester metals, that
sequester organics. By sequester I mean significantly reduce the
mobility to move from the biosolids out to the environment,
and the matrix is really complex, and has organic material in
it, organic pollutants, I’m talking about organic materials, like
unit type materials, and carbohydrates, and manganese, and
iron, and phosphorus, and all of these work together with the
soil in a matrix to significantly reduce, if not eliminate movement
of pollutants from the biosolids out to the environment.
The processes, some of them are understood, some of them are not
that well understood, but the whole thing taken together is called
magic. So I coined the term magic.
Q. And the “sludge magic” which prevents harmful stuff that is
in the sludge escaping the sludge?
A. Moving at any significant flux or rate out to the environment
to create doses of pollutants that would harm plants, animals or
humans.
Q. … these studies [are] kept somewhere?
A. No, they are actually—well, Chaney is probably the one that
has them all, he is like a walking encyclopedia.
So, after working in EPA’s biosolids program for over thirty years, the primary author of EPA’s 503 sludge rule still couldn’t explain how biosolids prevent potentially harmful levels of pollutants from being taken up by plants, animals and humans.
2) Rufus Chaney-USDA
My attorney, Ed Hallman, deposed Dr. Rufus Chaney at USDA’s Animal Manure and By-Products Laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland. His position reflects the importance that the USDA places on protecting biosolids:
CHANEY ANSWERING MR. HALLMAN (2009) (4)
I’ve been appointed in a category which is above GS-18 called
senior scientific research service. Within that, there are no subgrades.
There is a group —there is only about ten of us in all of
my agency that have reached that level.… I would say I’m the
US Department of Agriculture’s most knowledgeable scientist
about biosolids.
Chaney further testified that EPA scientists have never understood the science he developed, which proves heavy metals and toxic organic pollutants in biosolids cannot harm public health or the environment.
CHANEY ANSWERING MR. HALLMAN (2009) (5)
EPA withdrew the original proposed rule and completely
rewrote it. Actually I played a very significant role in what
the rule became. It’s evident in the record. And even at the
end I provided comments through USDA, approved at higher
levels, saying that the rule needed a few more revisions before
it was issued. But, yes, I was heavily involved in bringing to
fore the science about biosolids that needed to be the basis for
the rule.
Chaney explained that the unique properties of sewage sludge prevent pollutants from becoming bioavailable. In other words, they can’t be taken up or absorbed by plants and animals’ and they pose little or no risk to public health or the environment no matter which pollutants are present, or what their concentrations are.
One of Rufus Chaney’s primary collaborators, Jay Scott Angle, replaced Gale Buchanan as the agricultural dean at University of Georgia (UGA) in 2005, the year we filed a qui tam lawsuit over “the Gaskin study” (Gaskin et al 2003)(6). After EPA funded this study, one of its employees, Robert Brobst, who is charged with investigating reports of biosolids-related adverse health effects, provided UGA with data fabricated by the City of Augusta, Georgia (see Figure 1.). This fabricated data was used in the Gaskin study which EPA then used to discredit any links between biosolids and cattle deaths on two Georgia dairy farms owned by local farmers, the McElmurray and Boyce families (4). President Bush appointed Buchanan under secretary of agriculture for research, education and economics the following year (7).
Two years earlier, the director of UGA’s School of Marine Programs was advised not to hire me as a faculty member “because we’re dependent on this money… grant and contract money… money either from possible future EPA grants or [from] connections there might be between the waste disposal community [and] members of faculty at the university.” (8)
Many wastewater treatment plants throughout the United States aren’t working properly, and are constantly in need of being repaired or upgraded to keep up with population growth. To help with this problem, EPA created a revolving loan program under the Clean Water Act to pump billions of dollars into the states to keep their wastewater treatments plants pumping properly. Chaney reasons that because the system as a whole is in constant need of repair, and there are still no documented cases of adverse health effects in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, “sludge magic,” as Rubin calls it, works even when waste treatment plants don’t.
Chaney further reasoned that any peer-reviewed scientific articles claiming that land application of biosolids poses a risk to public health or the environment must be false because no scientists funded by the US government and other reputable institutions have documented adverse effects from biosolids since the 503 sludge rule was passed in 1993.
In 1992, EPA’s sludge rule failed to pass a scientific peer review in EPA’s Office of Research & Development. Chaney blamed scientists in EPA’s Office of Water for this failure:
CHANEY ANSWERING MR. HALLMAN (2009) (9)
They originally proposed a rule where they even had the data
screwed up. I don’t know how much you know about that. But
the original rule would have essentially prohibited all land
application…. So there were lots of errors the first time around,
stupid errors. They didn’t—they didn’t review it with USDA or Food
and Drug Administration before they put it on the street and they
suffered and had to withdraw it and start over.
In his deposition, Chaney stated that adverse health effects from biosolids were documented in the scientific literature before 1992, and that he himself authored many of those studies.
CHANEY QUESTIONED BY MR. HALLMAN (2009) (10)
Q. And you believe that all the studies you’ve seen, including
the ones that you have coauthored and worked on, indicate that
the land application of sewage sludge in accordance with 503 is
safe… and is not a danger to human health and welfare, is that
correct, if it’s applied in accordance with those regulations?
A. I won’t disagree with that. I had advised EPA that I wanted
a lower cadmium limit…. I won the battle because pretreatment
and the universal understanding of the unacceptability of cadmium
in biosolids has led to biosolids declining to 1 to 2 ppm in
most cities in the United States. Biosolids has become remarkably
less contaminated because of what we’ve done with the 503 and
because of the publications, such as mine, which showed adverse
effects of previous practices.
The phenomenon by which biosolids have become far less contaminated with cadmium is clearly evident in the data that the City of Augusta reported to EPA and the State of Georgia. These are the same (Gaskin) data that EPA and UGA published and later used by the National Academy of Sciences to conclude that Augusta’s biosolids were not responsible for hundreds of cattle that died on two dairy farms (McElmurray and Boyce) where it was applied. The data purportedly show (Fig. 1 pdf here) that monthly cadmium levels in the city’s sewage sludge fluctuated wildly up to 1, 200 ppm from January 1980 to February 1993, the very month that EPA promulgated the 503 rule.
Chaney wants everyone to believe that cadmium, which was making people and animals sick, dropped to safe levels all across the country the moment EPA passed its sludge regulation in February 1993. No regulatory agency at the state or federal level, however, ever monitors levels of cadmium, or anything else, in biosolids (11). They simply accept whatever data the cities provide.
In Augusta’s case, we know that the city’s “sludge magic” was faked. The city’s former plant manager, Allen Saxon, confessed when deposed by Mr. Hallman.
Judge Anthony Alaimo, who ruled on a lawsuit against the USDA filed by the McElmurray family, ordered the USDA to pay for crops the family couldn’t plant because their land was too contaminated with cadmium and other hazardous wastes from Augusta’s biosolids. Judge Alaimo wrote, “In January 1999, the City rehired Saxon to create a record of sludge applications that did not exist previously.” (12)
That same year, EPA gave UGA a federal grant to publish Augusta’s data as part of the Gaskin study (Gaskin et al 2003). As soon as Mr. Saxon finished making “sludge magic” happen, all of the original data Augusta reported to the Georgia Environmental Protection Division (EPD) between 1993 and 1999 magically disappeared, and not just in Augusta. They turned up missing from the EPD records in Atlanta as well. EPA doesn’t know what happened to the data, nor does the EPD, nor the City of Augusta, nor UGA. All of the data just magically disappeared from city and state records at the same time cadmium purportedly disappeared from Augusta’s sewage sludge.
According to Rufus Chaney, it just doesn’t matter whether the data are fake or real. He explained in his deposition: (13)
CHANEY QUESTIONED BY MR. HALLMAN (2009)
Q. Ms. Gaskin could have totally made up all that data and you
would still rely on it because it was in a peer-reviewed study; is
that accurate?
A As long as it—as long as it was in general agreement with
general patterns established in hundreds of papers….
To sum up Chaney’s position, because Gaskin’s paper concluded that Augusta’s sludge did not pose a health risk, it’s valid research even if the data were fabricated. On the other hand, people should disregard scientists who report problems with biosolids, even if their work is published in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. That’s because researchers at universities funded by government and have published hundreds of papers concluding that biosolids don’t put public health or the environment at risk.
In 2004, Chaney commented on the US Composting Council’s (USCC’s) list serve about my termination by EPA acting assistant administrator Henry Longest, who developed EPA’s sludge policies in the late 1970s (14). USCC is headed by Lorrie Loder, Synagro’s product marketing director. Chaney, of course, supported Longest’s decision to end my career for publishing research that raised public concerns over biosolids (Lewis et al. 2002). He contrasted our BMC study with the Gaskin study:
CHANEY USCC (2004) (15)
The paper by Gaskin et al. [Gaskin, J. W., R. B. Brobst, W. P.
Miller, and E. W. Tollner. 2003. Long-term biosolids application
effects on metal concentrations in soil and bermudagrass
forage J. Env. Qual. 32:146-152.] reports objective measurements
on the soil metal concentrations, and metals in forages
growing on the soils….[Lewis’s] publication [Lewis D. L., D. K.
Gattie, M. E. Novak, S. Sanchez, and C. Pumphrey. 2002.
Interactions of pathogens and irritant chemicals in land-applied
sewage sludges (biosolids). BMC Public Health 2:11.] contains none
of the data from examination of biosolids exposed subjects, and lacks the
comparison with randomly selected individuals from the general
populations. It is not valid epidemiological science….
I support the whistle-blower rule and process as strongly as any
other citizen or government employee. I happen to believe that
Dr. Lewis has been treated fairly. Claims and opinions about
public health are not peer-reviewed scientific evidence. EPA and
other agencies have to base rules on the peer-reviewed papers,
and to consider the weight of evidence. Some papers are more
complete in proof of the issue tested, as I noted above regarding
proof that some source caused a specific human infection.
Our study published in BMC-Public Health had documented several cases linking Synagro’s biosolids to illnesses and deaths, including the death of Shayne Conner in New Hampshire (Lewis et al. 2002). Chaney’s statements about our study are drawn from a white paper Synagro published in 2001, which contains false allegations of research misconduct against me and my coauthors. In 2004, Synagro withdrew its allegations after EPA dismissed the allegations as meritless and not based in any facts (16). Synagro’s white paper, which Chaney parroted, states, for example:
SYNAGRO WHITE PAPER (2001) (17)
[Steps Lewis should have taken] include analysis of biosolids
composition, fate and transport of chemicals and pathogens,
determination of dose-response relationships, and methodology
for and identification of the cause of health ailments purportedly
associated with an environmental contaminant….
Such studies should involve a comparison of outcomes for subjects
who are exposed to biosolids (treatment groups) and other subjects
who are not exposed (control groups)…. The leading study,
a comprehensive multi-year study of Ohio farm families living
near land-applied fields, reported “no adverse health effects…in
either people or animals.” (Cit. 38.) While Dr. Lewis admitted
that this study was based on sound epidemiology, he refuses to
apply its techniques….
Our BMC paper does, in fact, contain this information. It includes, for example, data we obtained from the patients’ medical records, and a dose-response analysis of exposed and unexposed individuals in an area near a field treated with biosolids (Figure 2)(18). This field lay approximately 300 feet from a house where Shayne Conner suddenly died from respiratory failure. Conner’s parents, Tom and Joanne Marshall, sued Synagro, which bought out the company that applied the biosolids. EPA ethics officials approved of my serving as an expert witness for plaintiffs, and required that I donate any expert witness fees to EPA or other governmental or nonprofit organizations. By serving as an expert witness, I was able to obtain access to medical records and other critically important information tied up in Marshall v. Synagro.
In Conner’s neighborhood, we were able to gather information on symptoms from all but one family, including family members who reported no symptoms. We found:
LEWIS ET AL. BMC PUBLIC HEALTH (2002) (19)
Based on a least-squares analysis, proportions of individuals
with symptoms increased linearly from 40 to 80 h (r2 0.98) with
time exposed to wind blowing from the field; all occupants in
households with exposure ≥ 80 h reported symptoms (Fig. 2).
Proportions of individuals with symptoms also decreased linearly
with distance from the field from 130 to 320 m (r2 0.95); all
occupants in households living ≤ 130 m from the field reported
symptoms.
As reported in our BMC article, we mainly investigated the most common form of treated sewage sludges, called Class B biosolids:
LEWIS ET AL. BMC PUBLIC HEALTH (2002) (20)
County records indicated that biosolids-related complaints for
individual patients described in this study were concurrent with
land application of Class B biosolids.
As mentioned earlier, most bacterial populations that are killed back can re-establish themselves within a few days after biosolids are stockpiled, or spread on land (21). It’s like cooking the Thanksgiving turkey. Eating it fresh out of the oven is one thing, but after it’s been sitting out for a few days is a different matter. Biosolids are rich in proteins, which allow staphylococci to proliferate just as they do with turkey dinners (22).
We discovered that one out of four residents who reported irritation of the skin, eyes, or respiratory tract from exposure to biosolids had staphylococcal infections involving S. aureus or S. epidermitis. Two of the three deaths linked to biosolids were caused by S. aureus infections. Because multi-antibiotic resistant bacteria are common at wastewater treatment plants, biosolids-related infections are of particular concern (23).
During her depositions, Julia Gaskin testified that she believed Augusta’s biosolids harmed the McElmurray and Boyce dairy farms; and she pointed out that her study included ample data supporting the dairy farmers’ lawsuits.
GASKIN ANSWERING MR. HALLMAN (2009) (24)
A. Now, you have characterized that the EPA has used this
against them. There is certainly data in here that could have been
used to support them as well.
Q. What data?
A. The fact that we had high cadmium and molybdenum in three
fields that had been—and forages in three fields that had been
greater than six years. The fact we saw a reduction in copper and
molybdenum ratios with long-term biosolids application.
3) Thomas Burke – EPA
Responding to congressional hearings into EPA retaliations against me, my EPA laboratory director, and others who have questioned the science EPA uses to support its sludge rule, EPA called upon the National Academy of Sciences National Research Council (NRC) to reevaluate its scientific basis. Ellen Harrison, an NRC panel member from Cornell University, provided the panel with copies of my unpublished manuscripts and two in-press, peer-reviewed journal articles (BMC Public Health, 2002; ES&T, 2002) (25). Harrison, director of the Cornell Waste Management Institute, and her coauthors published a well-documented, peer-reviewed article concluding that EPA’s current sewage sludge regulation does not protect human health, agriculture, or the environment (26). She was also part of a group of NRC panel members selected to brief EPA on the academy’s findings when their report was electronically released on July 2, 2002. She testified in my labor case: (27)
HARRISON QUESTIONED BY MR. KOHN (2003)
Q. I’m looking for a larger-picture question here, what would
you state would be Dr. Lewis’ major contribution in terms of the
concerns he was raising to the National Academy review process?
A. David is the only scientist that to that time had raised the
scientific issues that might lead to exposure and disease and so
David’s ideas in that regard, I think, were important to sort of
framing the National Academy panel’s in recognizing that…
there are a lot of gaps here, there are plausible routes of exposures
that we haven’t assessed. So David’s role was—I mean
in my book David was a hero in this regard basically. Despite
the incredible flack he was getting, [he] put forward reasonable
scientific theories, backed by some research to suggest that
there were plausible routes of exposure and that in fact illness
might be resulting. He, I mean as far as I’m concerned, he kind
of turned the whole thing around… I think without David’s
involvement we wouldn’t be at all where we are today in terms
of looking at the safety issues anew. David raised-David gave a
legitimacy to the allegations that has made it impossible to ignore
the alleged health issues…. So I think David has probably been
the most important player in all this.
Although the report drew heavily upon my unpublished manuscripts, the electronic version only cited one paper, an ES&T article. Susan Martel, an NRC staff member, explained to Harrison that all but one reference to my work were removed from draft versions of the NRC report based on input from panel members. Then, according to Martel, the panel chair, Thomas Burke, removed the one remaining reference to my ES&T article from the final copy of the report, which is posted on the NRC’s website (28). Burke, who was Dean of Johns-Hopkins School of Public Health at the time, was recently appointed head of EPA’s Office of Research & Development by President Obama.
Burke removed the one remaining reference to our research after he and Martel received the following email from panel member Greg Kester, who was the biosolids coordinator for the State of Wisconsin: (29)
Hi Tom and Susan—In contrast to your message that the briefings
went well, I am quite disturbed by what I have heard transpired
at the EPA briefing this morning. Among other items, I
heard that EPA staff in the biosolids program were referred to
as “the usual suspects” and basically denigrated for their work in
the program. The message was also taken that their work should
be devalued and the work of David Lewis should be elevated. I
did not agree to such representation nor do I believe much of the
committee did. We specifically noted that EPA should not be criticized
for the work they did.… While EPA may not have been
moved by the criticism, there are those on the Hill who would
love nothing more than to criticize EPA.
One year earlier, Synagro VP Robert O’Dette had emailed Kester a copy of his white paper accusing me of research misconduct. Kester, in turn, forwarded it to senior officials at EPA headquarters and other EPA offices throughout the country (30). In his email, Kester stated: (31)
This paper presents many of the issues raised by Dr. Lewis in the
New Hampshire case and provides compelling refutation. It was written
by Bob O’Dette of Synagro.
The NRC panel used Synagro’s white paper in its deliberations over my research, and rewarded O’Dette by using a photo he submitted for the cover of the NRC report. Although the panel liberally borrowed from my unpublished and in-press papers without citing the source, it was careful to credit O’Dette as the source of its cover photo. Then, after removing my in- press, peer-reviewed articles documenting scores of cases of adverse health effects across the country, the NRC panel falsely reported: “There is no documented scientific evidence that the Part 503 rule has failed to protect public health.” (32)
But the fallout from what the NRC panel did wasn’t over yet. In 2008, a Nature reporter called me wanting my response to a federal judge, Anthony Alaimo, ruling that data in the Gaskin study were fabricated to cover up cattle deaths linked to hazardous wastes in Augusta’s sewage sludge. Nature, as it turned out, was putting together a two-page news article and editorial about our research at UGA, pointing out that a multi-university study in Ohio had independently confirmed our findings:
NATURE EDITORS (2008) (35)
In what can only be called an institutional failure spanning
more than three decades—and presidential administrations
of both parties—there has been no systematic monitoring programme
to test what is in the sludge. Nor has there been much
analysis of the potential health effects among local residents—
even though anecdotal evidence suggests ample cause for concern.
In fact, one of the studies used to refute potential dangers,
published in the Journal of Environmental Quality in 2003
by researchers at the University of Georgia in Athens, has been
called into question ….
Even the National Academy of Sciences seems to have been
taken in. A 2002 report from the academy cited the then unpublished
Georgia work as evidence that the EPA had investigated
and dismissed claims that sewage sludge had killed cattle, but
the study had not looked at the dairy farms in question. And
although it may be technically true that there was no documented
evidence of sludge applications causing human illness or death,
the academy also cited work by an EPA whistleblower, David
Lewis, suggesting at least an association between these factors.
If anything, recent research underscores those findings. The
Georgia citation notwithstanding, the academy did outline a
sound plan for moving forward. It recommended among other
things that the EPA improve its risk-analysis techniques; survey
the sludges for potential contaminants; begin tracking health
complaints; and conduct some epidemiological analyses to determine
whether these reports merit concern.
To read the NRC report, the Nature reporter located it on EPA’s website rather than the NRC’s website. After I filled the reporter in on what happened, Nature ran the following correction, which contained even more misinformation from the NRC in an attempt to explain why it removed the last remaining reference to our work in the final version of its report.
NATURE EDITORS (2008) (36)
Correction: The 2002 biosolids study from the National Academy
of Sciences (NAS) did not reference research into health impacts
by Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) whistleblower
David Lewis, as reported in our News story “Raking through
sludge exposes a stink” (Nature 453, 262–263; 2008). The citation
was included in a prepublication draft that is still posted on
the EPA’s internet site, but the NAS panel voted to remove the
reference before final publication. An NAS spokesman said the
panel decided the information was not relevant as the panel was
not charged with evaluating health impacts.
At least panel member Ellen Harrison got in the last word about the National Academy of Sciences removing the last remaining reference to our work:
HARRISON TO NATURE EDITORS (2008) (37)
The NAS made this change to the report without permission from
the panel. This is a violation of the NAS procedures requiring full
committee consensus on reports. I would not have approved the
removal of this reference since it was clearly relevant to the work
of the committee…. the unilateral action of NAS to remove the
reference was highly inappropriate.
4) Robert O’Dette – Synagro Technologies Inc.
EPA and Water Environment Federation (WEF) officials involved in the National Biosolids Public Acceptance Campaign systematically funded scientists who supported the 503 sludge rule while eliminating those who did not. In 2002, a Texas county commissioner invited me to speak at a public hearing about a growing number of illnesses linked to Synagro’s biosolids in his area. I agreed on the condition that he invite Synagro to have its own expert rebut my arguments. So, the commissioner wrote a letter to the company’s VP for government relations, Robert O’Dette, who had authored Synagro’s white paper containing allegations of research misconduct against me and my coauthors at UGA. In his reply, O’Dette explained how the system works: (38)
What we don’t need are more so-called scientists whose research
findings are predetermined by scientific or personal bias. These
people will find their work rightly discredited and their funding
will disappear while credible researchers continue to have
funding.
Synagro sent its own expert, Ian Pepper from the University of Arizona, to give a presentation at our conference, and it held its own conference across the street with others speaking on its behalf.
5) Tracy Mehan, III – EPA
On December 24, 2003, Tracy Mehan, Asst. Administrator for EPA’s Office of Water, issued a letter in which he used the Gaskin study to dispel any link between biosolids and cattle deaths on the two dairy farms (39) Attorney Ed Hallman read Brobst’s testimony, then questioned Gaskin:
BROBST, GASKIN QUESTIONED BY MR. HALLMAN (2009) (40, 41)
[Brobst]
We, the authors, at least Julia and I, will stand by that the study
had nothing to do with the dairy farms. I mean, we both said
that on several occasions, and I believe we will both stand by
that. And I have conveyed that to headquarters. If they choose to
not listen or choose to listen, that’s up to them. I don’t have any
say in how they make these paragraphs and how they form things
and form their conclusions. I wouldn’t have done it that way.
[Gaskin]
Q. Do you recall any conversations that you’ve had with
Mr. Brobst about the study had nothing to do with the Boyce
and McElmurray farms?
A. Yes.
Q. Tell me the substance of those conversations.
A. I, the substance of the conversations were concerns that our
study was being used, that people were citing our study as if the
dairy farms were part of what we had sampled, and they were
not. And I had concerns about that, that even though the JEQ
article clearly said beef cattle farms, that some people were not
being clear about that fact.
Q. Did you ever voice those concerns to anyone besides
Mr. Brobst?
A. I voiced those concerns to Mr. Brobst and also at one point
Ned Beecher.
Q. Who is that?
A. He is the director of the Northeast Biosolids Association.
Q. What did you tell him?
A. I told him that I was concerned that the JEQ article was
being conflated with the dairy and that our study did indicate
that there was not a widespread problem, but it did not specifically
address the dairy concerns.
5) Henry Longest, II – EPA
When Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich greeted me in his office overlooking the National Mall in 1996, he looked at me and said, “You know you’re going to be fired for this, don’t you?” “I know,” I replied, “I just hope to stay out of prison.” The speaker had just read my commentary in Nature, titled “EPA Science: Casualty of Election Politics.” It reflected the proverbial crossroads in my life. Since I was five years old, I wanted to become a scientist and have my own laboratory. Giving up my research career was not something I took lightly. It reflected my conclusion that EPA’s commitment to removing pollutants from water and concentrating them on land will eventually cause as much, if not more, harm to public health and the environment than these same pollutants caused in rivers and other aquatic systems. As soon as I turned age 55 in 2003, EPA’s Acting Administrator for EPA’s Office of Research & Development, Henry Longest, terminated me ─ the Agency’s only research scientist to ever publish first-authored research articles in Nature, Lancet and Nature Medicine. As acting deputy assistant administrator for the Office of Water in the late 1970s, Longest was the first high-ranking EPA administrator to promote land application of sewage sludges.
Science for Sale: How the US Government Uses Powerful Corporations and Leading Universities to Support Government Policies, Silence Top Scientists, Jeopardize Our Health, and Protect Corporate Profits by David Lewis can be obtained here.
References
1. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Biosolids: Targeted National Sewage Sludge Survey Report —Overview, January 2009, EPA 822-R-08-014. http://www.epa.gov/waterscience/biosolids/tnsss-tech.pdf
2. US Dept. Labor, Office of Administrative Law Judges. Case No.99- CAA-12, Deposition transcript of Dr. Alan Rubin, p. 149. Lewis v. EPA, Apr. 27, 1999.
3. Ibid, pp. 168-172.
4. USA, ex rel. Lewis, McElmurray and Boyce v. Walker et al. United States District Court, Middle District of Georgia, Athens Division. Case No. 3:06-CV-16-CDL. Deposition transcript of Dr. Rufus Chaney, Jun. 26, 2009.
5. Ibid.
6. Dendy LB, U. of Maryland administrator named dean of UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. University of Georgia, June 3, 2005.
7. University of Georgia, Bush taps former UGA dean for REE under secretary. Jan. 19, 2006.
8. Lewis v. EPA, U.S. Department of Labor, CA 2003-CAA-00005, 00006. Deposition of Robert E. Hodson, Ph.D. Jan. 31, 2003.
9. Ibid, USA, ex rel. Lewis,et al. R Chaney Deposition, p. 21.
10. Ibid, USA, ex rel. Lewis,et al. R Chaney Deposition, p.53-54.
11. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 2002. Land Application of Biosolids Status Report; Report 2002-S-000004; Office of Inspector General. Washington, DC.
12. McElmurray v. United States Department of Agriculture, United States District Court, Southern District of Georgia. Case No. CV105-159. Order issued Feb. 25, 2008.
13. Ibid, USA, ex rel. Lewis,et al. R Chaney Deposition, p. 157.
14. Chaney R, USCC Listserve, October 5, 2004.
15. Ibid, USA, ex rel. Lewis,et al. R Chaney Deposition, p. 13-17.
16. Lewis v. EPA, U.S. Department of Labor, Case Nos. 2003-CAA-6, 2003-CAA-5, Joint stipulations, March 4, 2003; USEPA, Stancil F, Branch Chief, ESD, to Russo R, Director, ERD, Apr. 22, 2003; Thomas AL, Synagro, to Adams M, President, University of Georgia, Dec. 21, 2004.
17. Synagro Technologies, Inc. Analysis of David Lewis’ Theories Regarding Biosolids, p. 4, 6, Sept. 20, 2001.
18. Lewis DL, Gattie DK, Novak ME, Sanchez S, Pumphrey C. (2002) Interactions of pathogens and irritant chemicals in land-applied sewage sludges (biosolids). BMC Public Health 2:11. www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/2/11.
19. Ibid, Lewis et al., BMC-Public Health, 2001. Results, Environmental Assessment.
20. Ibid, Lewis et al., BMC-Public Health, 2001. Methods, Assessing environmental conditions.
21. Gattie DK and Lewis DL. 2004. A high-level disinfection standard for land-applied sewage sludge (biosolids). Environ. Health Perspect. 112:126-31.
22. Khuder S, Milz SA, Bisesi M, Vincent R, McNulty W, Czajkowski K. Health survey of residents living near farm fields permitted to receive biosolids. Arch. Environ. Occup. Health 62, 5–11 (2007).
23. Reinthaler FF, Posch J, Feierl G, Wüst G, Haas D, Ruckenbauer G, Mascher F, Marth E. Antibiotic resistance of E. coli in sewage and sludge. Water Res. 2003 Apr; 37(8):1685-90; Sahlström L, Rehbinder V, Albihn A, Aspan A, Bengtsson B. Vancomycin resistant enterococci (VRE) in Swedish sewage sludge. Acta Veterinaria Scandinavica, 2009.
24. USA, ex rel. Lewis, McElmurray and Boyce v. Walker et al. United States District Court, Middle District of Georgia, Athens Division. Case No. 3:06-CV-16-CDL. Deposition transcript of J. Gaskin, p. 293-4, Jun. 20, 2009.
25. Martel S, National Academy of Sciences, to Harrison E, Mar. 27, 2002 [Email].
26. Harrison, EZ, McBride MB and Bouldin DR. Land application of sewage sludges: An appraisal of the US regulations. Int. J. Environ. and Pollution, Vol.11, No.1. 1-36. Case for Caution Revisited 2009.
27. Lewis v. EPA, U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Administrative Law Judges, Case No. 98-CAA-13, Deposition of Ellen Harrison, p. 34-35, 76, Mar. 21, 2003.
28. Harrison E, Cornell Waste Management Institute, to Lewis D, Mar. 5, 2003 [Email].
29. Ibid.
30. Kester G to EPA officials Rubin A, Hais A, Roufael A, Carkuff A, Sajjad A, Bastian R, Brobst R, Sans C, Hamilton D, Hetherington D, Gross C, Lindsey A, Home J, Ryan J, Smith J, Colletti J, Dombrowski J, Dunn J, Walker J, Fondahl L, Dominy M, Meckes M, Murphy T. Subject: FW: Dr. David Lewis, 09/24/01 [Email].
31. Ibid.
32. National Research Council. Biosolids Applied to Land: Advancing Standards and Practice, Overarching Findings, p. 4. National Academy Press. Washington, DC, 2002.
33. Burkhart J (NIH/NIEHS) to Lewis D, copied to Burleigh K (NIH/NIEHS), Subject: EHP ms 6207. May 07, 2003 [Email].
34. Ibid, Gattie, Lewis, 2004.
35. Stuck in the mud—The Environmental Protection Agency must gather data on the toxicity of spreading sewage sludge [Editorial]; Tollefson J. Raking through sludge exposes a stink. Nature, 2008, Vol. 453, p. 258, 262-3, May 15, 2008.
36. Nature editors. Correction. Nature 453; 577, May 28, 2008 doi:10.1038/453577d http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080528/full/453577d.html
37. Harrison E. Correspondence at Nature.com. June 17, 2008.
38. O’Dette R, Synagro Technologies, Inc., to Stavinoha TD, Commissioner Precinct 1, Fort Bend County, TX. Nov.18, 2002.
39. Mehan GT III. USEPA, Assistant Administrator, Office of Water, to Mendelson J III. Dec. 24, 2003 [Letter].
40. Ibid, Gaskin deposition p. 269, Jun. 22, 2009.
41. Ibid, Gaskin deposition p. 372-4, Jun. 22, 2009.
For more information go to the Bioscience Resource Project webpage on Sewage Sludge.
Solar Fossil Fueled Fantasies
By Willis Eschenbach | Watts Up With That? | June 15, 2015
Sometimes when I’m reading about renewable technologies, I just break out laughing at the madness that the war on carbon has wrought. Consider the Ivanpah solar tower electric power plant. It covers five square miles in Southern California with mirrors which are all focusing the sun on a central tower. The concentrated sunlight boils water that is used to run a steam turbine to generate electricity.
Sounds like at a minimum it would be ecologically neutral … but unfortunately, the Law of Unintended Consequences never sleeps, and the Ivanpah tower has turned out to be a death trap for birds, killing hundreds and hundreds every year:
“After several studies, the conclusion for why birds are drawn to the searing beams of the solar field goes like this: Insects are attracted to the bright light of the reflecting mirrors, much as moths are lured to a porch light. Small birds — insect eaters such as finches, swallows and warblers — go after the bugs. In turn, predators such as hawks and falcons pursue the smaller birds.
But once the birds enter the focal field of the mirrors, called the “solar flux,” injury or death can occur in a few seconds. The reflected light from the mirrors is 800 to 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Either the birds are incinerated in flight; their feathers are singed, causing them to fall to their deaths; or they are too injured to fly and are killed on the ground by predators, according to a report by the National Fish and Wildlife Forensics Laboratory.”
– David Danelski, Solar: Ivanpah Solar Described as Deadly Trap for Wildlife,” Riverside-Press Enterprise, April 8, 2014.
But of course, that’s not what made me laugh. That’s a tragedy which unfortunately will be mostly ignored by those good-hearted environmentally conscious folks suffering from chronic carbophobia.
The next oddity about Ivanpah is that despite being powered by light, it is light-years away from being economically viable. Like the old sailors say, “The wind is free … but everything else costs money”.
But being totally uneconomical doesn’t matter, because despite costing $2.2 billion to build, Google is a major shareholder, so at least they could afford to foot the bills for their high-priced bird-burner …
… get real. Google would much rather use taxpayer dollars to burn birds alive than foot the costs themselves. Being good businessmen and women they sought and got a $1.6 billion dollar taxpayer funded loan, presumably because no bank on the planet would touch the project. And if the banks wouldn’t touch it, why should you and I?
But that’s not enough for these greedy green pluted bloatocrats. Now, they are applying for a $539 million dollar GIFT of your and my taxpayer money in order to repay the money that you and I already lent them … we should give them the money to repay ourselves? Give an unimaginably wealthy company money to repay us what we have loaned them? Have I wandered into a parallel universe? This is GOOGLE, folks, and they’re trying to poor-mouth us?
And of course, that’s not what made me laugh either. That is another tragedy which unfortunately will be ignored by those who wish to see electricity prices rise … you know, folks like President Obama, who famously said:
Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket …
Of course, such an electricity price rise would mean nothing to him, like every recent President he’ll leave office a multi-millionaire. And such an energy price rise means nothing to the Google execs who are burning birds alive … but for those of us here on the ground, causing the electricity rates to skyrocket is not the moral high ground, it is a crime against the poor.
So that is no laughing matter at all.
No, the part that I didn’t know about Ivanpah (and other solar steam plants), the part that got me smiling, was that there is a problem with a solar tower that is generating steam. This is that steam turbines don’t do well at all with half a head of steam. For full efficiency a turbine needs full pressure steam in order to operate. And it has to have full pressure, not when the valves are closed to let the pressure build up, but when the turbine is actually using the steam.
And since you can’t store steam, that in turn means that Google can’t start up their you-beaut solar tower until fairly late in the morning.
Well, the solution that the good engineers hired by Google came up with was simple.
Start the sucker up using natural gas. That way, first you can heat the cool boiler water before the sun comes up. Then, as more and more solar energy comes online during the morning, you can taper off on the natural gas.
But having a solar plant that runs on natural gas, although funny, wasn’t the best part … it gets better:
One big miscalculation was that the power plant requires far more steam to run smoothly and efficiently than originally thought, according to a document filed with the California Energy Commission. Instead of ramping up the plant each day before sunrise by burning one hour’s worth of natural gas to generate steam, Ivanpah needs more than four times that much help from fossil fuels to get plant humming every morning. MARKETWATCH
These good folks have underestimated the amount of fossil fuels that the plant would need by a factor of four, and they want us to follow their lead in reorganizing the world’s energy supply? And of course, in the familiar refrain, the taxpayer is expected to foot the bill for their ignorance and their inept calculations.
So now, I find out that the Ivanpah plant runs on natural gas four hours a day, and I gotta say, I did find that funny. But in the most ironic twist of all, the above link goes on to say:
Another unexpected problem: not enough sun. Weather predictions for the area underestimated the amount of cloud cover that has blanketed Ivanpah since it went into service in 2013.
And that brought the joke all the way around. I found that hilariously ironic. Because of alarmism based on computer model predictions of rising temperatures in 100 years, we’ve built a fossil-fuel fired solar plant which is already in trouble because of failed computer model predictions of the clouds over the next few years … don’t know about you, but that cracked me up.
Now, even the best solar energy conversion devices don’t operate 24 hours a day, or even 12 hours a day. Generally, eight hours a day or even less is the norm. And that has been cut down by clouds … so at present, dreaded fossil fuels are likely providing a third of the energy to fuel the plant.
Gotta say, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry about things like the natural-gas powered Ivanpah solar power plant fiasco. On the whole I have to favor laughter … but dear heavens, the damage that environmentalists are doing in the name of the environment is appalling. Burning birds alive in the name of making energy prices skyrocket? Have we sunk this low? Really?
In any case, my best guess is that this is a self-limiting problem, or it would be without subsidies. The “levelized cost” of solar thermal is horrendous. It is the only technology which is more expensive than offshore wind, and it is the most expensive of the commonly analyzed grid-scale renewable choices. It won’t work without the kind of multi-million dollar taxpayer subsidies that the Google folks think that they deserve … me, I would never have given them the loan of taxpayer money in the first place, that’s the bank’s job, not the government’s job. More to the point, I think they deserve to pay the damn loan back themselves.
Let me close on a more optimistic note. The referenced article says:
Bird carnage combined with opposition by Native American tribes to industrial projects on undeveloped land has made California regulators wary of approving more. Last September, Abengoa and BrightSource abandoned their quest to build a solar-thermal project near Joshua Tree National Park when the state regulator told them the plant’s footprint would have to be cut in half.
In March the Board of Supervisors of Inyo County, a sparsely populated part of California that is home to Death Valley National Park, voted to ban solar-thermal power plants altogether. “Ivanpah had a significant effect on the decision making,” said Joshua Hart, the county’s planning director.
If the final end of Ivanpah is the end of any further Ivanpahs ever, I suppose that I’d say that Ivanpah was worth whatever it cost … although I’m sure the birds would have preferred a different path to that outcome. As long as Ivanpah is in operation birds will continue to be burned alive in the name of driving up electricity prices … and these monomoniacal carbophobes still think that they have the high moral ground regarding fossil fuels?
Because I rather suspect that neither the birds nor the poor would agree …
@NOAA ‘s desperate new paper: Is there no global warming ‘hiatus’ after all?
By Patrick J. Michaels, Richard S. Lindzen, and Paul C. Knappenberger | Watts Up With That? | June 4, 2015
A new paper published today by Science, from Thomas Karl and several co-authors[1], that removes the “hiatus” in global warming prompts many serious scientific questions.
The main claim[2] by the authors that they have uncovered a significant recent warming trend is dubious. The significance level they report on their findings (.10) is hardly normative, and the use of it should prompt members of the scientific community to question the reasoning behind the use of such a lax standard.
In addition, the authors’ treatment of buoy sea-surface temperature (SST) data was guaranteed to create a warming trend. The data were adjusted upward by 0.12°C to make them “homogeneous” with the longer-running temperature records taken from engine intake channels in marine vessels.
As has been acknowledged by numerous scientists, the engine intake data are clearly contaminated by heat conduction from the structure, and as such, never intended for scientific use. On the other hand, environmental monitoring is the specific purpose of the buoys. Adjusting good data upward to match bad data seems questionable, and the fact that the buoy network becomes increasingly dense in the last two decades means that this adjustment must put a warming trend in the data.
The extension of high-latitude arctic land data over the Arctic Ocean is also questionable. Much of the Arctic Ocean is ice-covered even in high summer, meaning the surface temperature must remain near freezing. Extending land data out into the ocean will obviously induce substantially exaggerated temperatures.
Additionally, there exist multiple measures of bulk lower atmosphere temperature independent from surface measurements which indicate the existence of a “hiatus”[3]. If the Karl et al., result were in fact robust, it could only mean that the disparity between surface and midtropospheric temperatures is even larger that previously noted.
Getting the vertical distribution of temperature wrong invalidates virtually every forecast of sensible weather made by a climate model, as much of that weather (including rainfall) is determined in large part by the vertical structure of the atmosphere.
Instead, it would seem more logical to seriously question the Karl et al. result in light of the fact that, compared to those bulk temperatures, it is an outlier, showing a recent warming trend that is not in line with these other global records.
And finally, even presuming all the adjustments applied by the authors ultimately prove to be accurate, the temperature trend reported during the “hiatus” period (1998-2014), remains significantly below (using Karl et al.’s measure of significance) the mean trend projected by the collection of climate models used in the most recent report from the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
It is important to recognize that the central issue of human-caused climate change is not a question of whether it is warming or not, but rather a question of how much. And to this relevant question, the answer has been, and remains, that the warming is taking place at a much slower rate than is being projected.
The distribution of trends of the projected global average surface temperature for the period 1998-2014 from 108 climate model runs used in the latest report of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)(blue bars). The models were run with historical climate forcings through 2005 and extended to 2014 with the RCP4.5 emissions scenario. The surface temperature trend over the same period, as reported by Karl et al. (2015, is included in red. It falls at the 2.4th percentile of the model distribution and indicates a value that is (statistically) significantly below the model mean projection.
[1] Karl, T. R., et al., Possible artifacts of data biases in the recent global surface warming hiatus. Scienceexpress, embargoed until 1400 EDT June 4, 2015.
[2] “It is also noteworthy that the new global trends are statistically significant and positive at the 0.10 significance level for 1998-2012…”
[3] Both the UAH and RSS satellite records are now in their 21st year without a significant trend, for example
[NOTE: An earlier version of this posting accidentally omitted the last two paragraphs before the graphic, they have been restored, and the error is mine – Anthony]
Editors of World’s Most Prestigious Medical Journals: “Much of the Scientific Literature, Perhaps HALF, May Simply Be Untrue”
Zero Hedge | June 4, 2015
Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine are the two most prestigious medical journals in the world.
It is therefore striking that their chief editors have both publicly written that corruption is undermining science.
The editor in chief of Lancet, Richard Horton, wrote last month:
Much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness. As one participant put it, “poor methods get results”. The Academy of Medical Sciences, Medical Research Council, and Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council have now put their reputational weight behind an investigation into these questionable research practices. The apparent endemicity [i.e. pervasiveness within the scientific culture] of bad research behaviour is alarming. In their quest for telling a compelling story, scientists too often sculpt data to fit their preferred theory of the world. Or they retrofit hypotheses to fit their data. Journal editors deserve their fair share of criticism too. We aid and abet the worst behaviours. Our acquiescence to the impact factor fuels an unhealthy competition to win a place in a select few journals. Our love of “significance” pollutes the literature with many a statistical fairy-tale. We reject important confirmations. Journals are not the only miscreants. Universities are in a perpetual struggle for money and talent, endpoints that foster reductive metrics, such as high-impact publication. National assessment procedures, such as the Research Excellence Framework, incentivise bad practices. And individual scientists, including their most senior leaders, do little to alter a research culture that occasionally veers close to misconduct.
***
Part of the problem is that no-one is incentivised to be right.
Similarly, the editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Marcia Angell, wrote in 2009:
It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.
In her must-read essay, Dr. Angell skewers drug companies, university medical departments, and medical groups which set the criteria for diagnosis and treatment as being rotten with corruption and conflicts of interest.
And we’ve previously documented that the government sometimes uses raw power to cover up corruption in the medical and scientific fields.
Postscript: Corruption is not limited to the medical or scientific fields. Instead, corruption has become systemic throughout every profession … and is so pervasive that it is destroying the very fabric of America.
Why Didn’t my Doctor Tell Me Chemo Kills?
By F. William Engdahl – New Eastern Outlook – 03.06.2015
In my daily research I came across a report so alarming I put aside planned writing in order to bring this to the attention of those who care about life. It has to do with one of the main treatments for cancer used in modern medicine—chemotherapy. New research has documented that chemotherapy, far from ridding anyone of cancer actually feeds the growth and spread of cancer.
Sometimes it almost seems like the drugs industry works overtime to find new ways to hurt, cripple or even kill us. Scientist Peter Nelson of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle in a write-up of a study of why cancer cells were so easy to kill in the lab but not inside our bodies, found that healthy cells damaged by chemotherapy secreted more of a protein called WNT16B which boosts cancer cell survival. “The increase in WNT16B was completely unexpected,” Nelson told AFP.
He added that,“WNT16B, when secreted, would interact with nearby tumor cells and cause them to grow, invade, and importantly, resist subsequent therapy.” That would explain why in cancer treatment, tumors often respond well initially, followed by rapid regrowth and then resistance to further chemotherapy.
The study was conducted by a team of scientists from different cancer research centers, universities as well as from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories. It was published online in August 2012 in the journal Nature Medicine. Among their alarming conclusions was that, “The expression of WNT16B in the prostate tumor micro-environment attenuated the effects of cytotoxic chemotherapy in vivo, promoting tumor cell survival and disease progression.”
Mustard Gas Toxin
While their study results were alarming enough, more alarming is the complete absence of aggressive action to reexamine the entire field of cancer treatment. Chemo’s origins go back to World War I research into the human effects of exposure to mustard gas. Scientists discovered that the gas was a potent suppressor of blood cell production. During World War II researchers at Yale University School of Medicine in further study of nitrogen mustards, reasoned that an agent that damaged the rapidly growing white blood cells might have a similar effect on cancer. Left out was how to target only cancer cells and not healthy cells. In December 1942, the scientists gave several patients with advanced lymphomas (cancers of the lymphatic system and lymph nodes), a chemotherapeutic drug intravenously. Their improvement was called remarkable. The media concentrated on the remarkable improvement and did not bother to note that soon after treatment all were dead.
The chemotherapy revolution in cancer treatment was off and running. In the 1950’s the first chemo drug used commercially was mustine or Chlormethine. Mustine under the code-name HN2 is a chemical warfare agent. Adverse effect include: “Hypersensitivity reactions, including anaphylaxis… Nausea, vomiting and depression of formed elements in the circulating blood… Jaundice, alopecia, vertigo, tinnitus and diminished hearing.”
The research and development of mustine as a possible anti-cancer chemotherapy was led by Cornelius P. Rhoads, director of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, in wartime secrecy and published in 1946 after the war. Rhoads came to Memorial Sloan-Kettering from the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research.
There during the 1930’s as part of the Rockefeller family’s obsession with eugenics, Rhoads spent six months in Puerto Rico, a stateless island often used covertly for human experimentation with new drugs.
In Puerto Rico in 1931 Rhoads wrote a letter to a friend in Boston where he stated, “Porto (sic) Ricans are beyond doubt the dirtiest, laziest, most degenerate and thievish race of men ever inhabiting this sphere. What the island needs is not public health work but a tidal wave or something to totally exterminate the population. I have done my best to further the process of extermination by killing off eight and transplanting cancer into several more.”
Rockefeller family spin doctor, Ivy Lee, launched a major damage control campaign over the scandal and managed to get Rhoads on the cover of Time as a “life-saving” hero.
Deadly consequences
The subsequent use of toxic chemotherapies on perhaps millions of cancer patients since then have hardly been encouraging. Published side effects of today’s chemo drugs, the largest share of which are made by Roche, are horrendous. They include “depression of the immune system, often by paralysing the bone marrow and leading to a decrease of white blood cells, red blood cells, and platelets. Anemia and thrombocytopenia… sepsis, or as localized outbreaks, such as Herpes simplex, shingles, or other members of the Herpesviridea.”
It gets worse. Because of the chemo resulting in immune system suppression, patients often get typhlitis, a life-threatening gastrointestinal complication of chemotherapy. Typhlitis is an intestinal infection which may manifest itself through symptoms including nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, a distended abdomen, fever, chills, or abdominal pain and tenderness. Typhlitis is a medical emergency. It has a very poor prognosis and is often fatal. It can cause infertility failure in men and ovarian failure in women. All that in addition to the well-known hair-loss, dry skin, damaged fingernails, a dry mouth (xerostomia), water retention, and sexual impotence.
In 2004 the Department of Radiation Oncology, Northern Sydney Cancer Centre, Australia, conducted a long-term investigation into the contribution of chemotherapy to 5-year survival in 22 major adult malignancies. The results were shocking: The overall contribution of curative and adjuvant cytotoxic chemotherapy to 5-year survival in adults was estimated to be 2.3% in Australia and 2.1% in the USA. The study came to the following conclusion: “..it is clear that cytotoxic chemotherapy only makes a minor contribution to cancer survival. To justify the continued funding and availability of drugs used in cytotoxic chemotherapy, a rigorous evaluation of the cost-effectiveness and impact on quality of life is urgently required.”
Chemo is massively toxic and kill any rapidly dividing cell, tumor or normal. The three best-selling cancer drugs worldwide in 2013 were all made by Roche—Rituxan, Herceptin and Avastin. For all three top chemo drugs sales totaled more than $21 billion.
And the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center now documents how chemotherapy drugs act as carcinogens—they cause cancer which is why, depending on the patient’s immune strength and dosage, within five years a staggering number die after the chemo that was to have saved them.
I was in Beijing several years ago on a speaking tour and had severe back pain after the long flight. My Chinese publisher organized a treatment from a doctor trained in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). She was also the grand-daughter of the chief TCM doctor of the Last Emperor who she said was still alive and chipper at 93 and passing his wisdom on to her and her brother. She told me at the Beijing medical university where she studied, the students were told, “One third of patients die of the psychological shock of being told by a doctor that they have cancer. Another third die from the negative effects of chemotherapy and radiation. The last third simply die.”
It would be useful for all doctors in active practice perhaps to rethink the principal ethical mandate of all physicians since the time of Hippocrates– “nil nocere” – do no harm. The evidence is overwhelming now that chemotherapy only does harm. Would the oncologists promoting chemo to their patients ever take the same were the roles reversed?
Fallacies in Modern Medicine: Statins and the Cholesterol-Heart Hypothesis
By Donald W. Miller, Jr., MD | June 4, 2015
This commentary was published in the peer-reviewed Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons Volume 20, Number 2, Pages 54-56, Summer 2015.
Modern medicine has developed striking ways to treat coronary heart disease, which feature coronary stents implanted percutaneously and coronary artery bypass grafts performed surgically with the aid of a heart-lung machine. And then there are statins to lower cholesterol.
A 70-year-old man sees a physician for a checkup. He has no history of heart disease and no risk factors for it. He does not smoke, has no family history of diabetes or heart disease, and is physically active and not overweight. His blood pressure is 130/70. A lipid panel, however, shows that his calculated low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) is 195 mg/dL. Following the most recent 2013 guidelines framed by an American College of Cardiology (ACC) and American Heart Association (AHA) task force, the physician prescribes a statin for this person, rosuvastatin (Crestor) 20 mg/day, for primary prevention of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD). [1]
Cardiologists declare that “cholesterol-containing lipoproteins are central to the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis.” [2] Statins, first approved for clinical use in 1987, are very effective in lowering cholesterol. High intensity statin therapy, rosuvastatin 20mg/day and atorvastatin (Lipitor) 40-80 mg, reduces LDL-C by 50 percent or greater. Moderate intensity therapy, rosuvastatin 10 mg, atorvastatin 10 mg, simvastatin (Zocor) 20-40 mg, and pravastatin (Pravachol) 40 mg/day, achieves a 30 to 50 percent reduction of LDL-C. [3]
Some 43 million Americans take statins. [4] In 2010, 11.6 percent of the population took them, 37 million, which includes 19.2 percent of people age 45-64; 39.6 percent, age 65-74; and 44.3 percent of people age 75 and older. [3] Following the 2013 ACC/AHA guidelines, an additional 10.2 million Americans without cardiovascular disease, like the patient above, have now become candidates for statin therapy. [5] One study concludes that 97 percent of black and white Americans aged 66 to 75, including all men in that age group should take statins. [6]
It is a multi-billion dollar business. Pfizer’s Lipitor went on sale in 1997 and became the best-selling drug in the history of prescription pharmaceuticals before its patent expired in 2011. Sales surpassed $125 billion. AstraZeneca’s Crestor was the top-selling statin in 2013, generating $5.2 billion in revenue that year.
Pfizer, in an advertisement, proclaims, “Lipitor reduces risk of heart attack by 36%,” based on the findings of a large randomized trial where 10,305 individuals were assigned to take Lipitor or a placebo (ASCOT-LLA). [7] The trial showed that 1.9 percent of people taking Lipitor suffered a heart attack while 3.0 percent of the placebo group had one. Considered in terms of “relative risk” reduction, the percentage Pfizer cites in the ad is correct. (It is calculated by subtracting 1.9 from 3 and dividing the difference, 1.1, by 3, which equals 36 percent.) But more realistically, the trial showed that Lipitor only reduced the “absolute risk” of having a heart attack by a tiny 1.1 percent (1.9 percent in the statin group compared with 3 percent in the placebo group). [7] Statin-trial investigators tout relative risk reduction (typically 20-40 percent in these trials) rather than the meager, real-world reduction in risk (1-2 percent taking statins).
Investigators cite relative risk to inflate claims of statins’ effectiveness. However, they report deleterious effects in terms of absolute risk, minimizing their magnitude. For example, if 6 percent of the statin group were to get diabetes during a trial compared to 2 percent with the placebo group, they will say that taking statins increases the risk of acquiring diabetes by 4 percent, not that there is 66 percent increased (relative) risk of suffering this adverse event.
Government and the pharmaceutical industry fund these multimillion dollar studies expecting correct results, so statin-trial researchers employ this particular kind of statistical deception to create the appearance that statins are effective and safe. [8] As one medical school professor puts it, “Anyone who questions cholesterol usually finds his funding cut off.” [9]
Eukaryotic animal cells make cholesterol through the “mevalonate pathway.” This pathway also produces, among other things, coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10), heme-A, and dolichol. CoQ10 is particularly important as it functions both as an antioxidant and, with heme-A, in aerobic cellular respiration—in the electron transport chain that generates adenosine triphosphate, the fuel that powers all living things. (Dolichol is required for synthesis of glycoproteins.) Statins inactivate hydroxymethylglutaryl‐coenzyme A (HMG-CoA) reductase, the enzyme cells use to synthesize mevalonate from HMG-CoA. This shuts down the mevalonate pathway. As a result, HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors (statins) block not only the synthesis of cholesterol but also CoQ10 and the other physiologically essential biomolecules that this pathway produces.
Lovastatin (Mevacor), the first statin, is a naturally occurring molecule isolated from a fungus named Aspergillus terreus. Newer statins are synthetic variations of these mycotoxins that fungi produce. Fungi make statins, as a “secondary metabolite,” to kill predatory microbes. They also kill human cells. In a review of How Statin Drugs Really Lower Cholesterol and Kill You One Cell at a Time by James and Hannah Yoseph, Peter Langsjoen writes:
Many practicing physicians have a healthy understanding of the current level of corruption and collusion among big pharmaceutical companies, governmental agencies such as the NIH and FDA, and major medical associations such as the American Heart Association, but the reader of this book will come away with the disturbing conclusion that it is even worse than imagined. Statins may be the perfect and most insidious human toxin in that adverse effects are often delayed by years and come about gradually. Further, statins frequently impair mental function to such a degree that by the time patients are in real trouble, they may lack the mental facilities to recognize the cause. [10]
This toxin targets brain cells and skeletal muscle. The brain makes up 2 percent of body weight but contains 25 percent of the body’s cholesterol. Its dry weight is 50 percent cholesterol. LDL-C delivers cholesterol to the body’s cells, except for the brain since this cholesterol-carrying lipoprotein does not cross the blood-brain barrier. Statins do. Brain cells, neurons and glial cells, manufacture their own cholesterol and the mevalonate pathway’s other products. [11] A broad spectrum of adverse cognitive reactions occur from taking statins. They include confusion, forgetfulness, disorientation, memory impairment, transient global amnesia, and dementia. [12]
Myopathy is the most common adverse effect of statin treatment, manifested by muscle aches and pains, weakness, instability, and easy fatigue. [8,13] The most severe manifestation of statin-induced muscle damage is rhabdomyolysis, which carries a 10 percent mortality rate. Fragments of ruptured muscle block renal tubules and cause kidney failure. [12] In one randomized trial of 1,016 healthy men and women given statins or a placebo, 40 percent of the women taking statins suffered exertional fatigue or decreased energy. [14]
Several randomized controlled trials have reported a statistically significant increase in cancer taking statins. [8,15] In most of these trials, a small reduction in cardiovascular deaths in the statin group is counterbalanced by an increase in deaths from other causes, notably cancer, with the result that there is in no significant difference in all-cause mortality between people taking a placebo and those prescribed statins. [16]
Statins can also cause diabetes, emotional disorders (depression, aggressiveness, suicidal ideation), hepatitis, cataracts, and strokes. [12,13,17] In January 2014 the FDA issued new safety information on statins, pointing out that “a small increased risk of raised blood sugar levels and the development of type 2 diabetes have been reported with the use of statins;” and it required drug companies add this information in the package insert with the drug. [18] Since then (as of August 2014), attorneys have filed more than 1,000 lawsuits against Pfizer, representing 4,000 women who say that taking Lipitor gave them diabetes.
Statin trials typically run for only 2 to 5 years. Investigators terminated the influential JUPITER trial endorsing statins for primary prevention of ASCVD after (a median) 1.9 years, far too short a time to reveal one of the worst “side effects” of long-term statin treatment: accelerated senescence. [19] Statins speed up the transition from midlife vigor to debilitated old age. [12]
Heart surgeon Michael DeBakey and his team, 52 years ago, found no correlation between blood cholesterol levels and severity of atherosclerosis in 1,700 patients undergoing surgical treatment of ASCVD. [20] I have observed the same thing with my heart surgery patients (unpublished observations). Evidence for the cholesterol-heart hypothesis, i.e., the lipid hypothesis, wilts upon close scrutiny, as is also the case with the diet-heart hypothesis, which indicts saturated fat along with cholesterol for causing atherosclerosis. Approached with an open mind and without confirmatory bias (ignoring evidence that disagrees with one’s beliefs), substantial evidence now proves beyond a reasonable doubt that these hypotheses are wrong. [21-25]
If not cholesterol, what causes atherosclerosis? My colleague, the late Russell Ross, professor of pathology at the University of Washington discovered the cause: Atherosclerosis is an inflammatory disease. [26] Initiated by endothelial dysfunction, with or without injury, and mediated by macrophages and T lymphocytes, the ensuing inflammatory response promotes proliferation and migration of smooth muscle cells. Russell demonstrated that atherosclerosis is a chronic inflammatory and fibroproliferative process that is fundamentally no different than that seen in cirrhosis, rheumatoid arthritis, and chronic pancreatitis.
The small benefit statins offer in dealing with ASCVD comes from their non-lipid-lowering anti-inflammatory effects, especially with their ability to suppress nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-kB), a transcription factor concerned with intensifying the inflammatory response. [27] But even if they had no harmful side effects, the “number needed to treat” (NNT) for statins weighs against their use. If a statin reduces the (absolute) risk of having a heart attack by just 2 percent, its NNT is 50. For every 50 people taking a statin, 1 person will benefit while 49 other people (98 percent) will not gain any benefit from taking the drug and will expose themselves to the potentially serious broad spectrum of adverse events that statins cause (carrying a risk considerably greater than 2 percent). Statins do more harm than good. (Nutraceuticals curcumin and resveratrol also quell inflammation, like statins, by suppressing NF-kB—with no side effects).
A catalog of factors that play a causal role in inflammatory ASCVD would include: 1) eating trans fats and too many carbohydrates and omega-6 vegetable oils (and not enough saturated fats); 2) deficiencies in various vitamins (vitamins A, C, D, E, K2, B6, B9-folic acid, and B12); 3) mineral deficiencies (magnesium, selenium, copper) and excess (iron); 4) lipid oxidation products; 5) possibly bacterial infection (Chlamydia pneumoniae); 6) diabetes; 7) abdominal obesity; 8) hypertension; 9) smoking; and 10) stress.
Cholesterol combats inflammation in addition to its other roles, which include maintaining cell membrane integrity (cell membranes are 50 percent cholesterol), facilitating cell signaling, and serving as the structural foundation for bile salts, various hormones, and vitamin D. Dealing with inflammation cholesterol acts as the body’s fire brigade, putting out inflammatory fires and helping repair damage. (Blaming cholesterol for atherosclerosis is like blaming firemen for the fire they have come to put out.)
Cementing this molecule’s physiologic importance, there are now more than 100 peer reviewed studies showing that low cholesterol levels lead to early death. [28] One of them is a study by Schatz and colleagues exploring the relationship between cholesterol levels and death rates over a 20-year period in 3,572 men aged 71-93 years. Those with the lowest cholesterol had a 35 percent increase in mortality compared with the highest cholesterol. [29] Another one, following 490 people aged 75 years for over 6 years, found that those with cholesterol levels below 193 mg/dL had a 52 percent increase in death rates compared to those with cholesterol levels above 232 mg/dL. Death rates rose by 18 percent for every 38mg/dL decrease in cholesterol levels. [30]
It is becoming increasingly clear that the cholesterol-heart hypothesis is a fallacy of modern medicine. In the future medical historians may liken the prescribing of statins to lower blood cholesterol with the old medical practice of bloodletting. Taking that vital substance out of the body is comparable to today’s practice of blocking production of cholesterol, an equally vital component, with drugs.
References
- Stone NJ, Robinson JG, Lichtenstein AH, et al. 2013 ACC/AHA guideline on the treatment of blood cholesterol to reduce atherosclerotic cardiovascular risk in adults: a report of the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Task force on Practice Guidelines. J Am Coll Cardiol 2014;63:2889-2934.
- Kohli P, Whelton SP, Hsu S, et al. Clinician’s guide to the updated ABCs of cardiovascular disease prevention. J Am Heart Assoc 2014;3:e001098 Available at: http://jaha.ahajournals.org/content/3/5/e001098.full Accessed March 17, 2015.
- Newsom, LD. Primary prevention of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease:Controversies and clinical considerations. Ann Pharmacother 2015;49(April): 484-493.
- Pencina MJ, Navar-Boggan AM, D’Agostino RB, et al. Application of new cholesterol guidelines to a population-based sample. N Engl J Med 2014;370:1422-1431.
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Health United States, 2013: With special feature on prescription drugs. Available at: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus13.pdf Accessed March 20, 2015.
- Miedema AMD, Lopez FL, Blaha MJ. Eligibility for statin therapy according to new cholesterol guidelines and prevalent use of medication to lower lipid levels in an older US cohort: The atherosclerosis risk in communities study cohort. JAMA Intern Med 2015;175(1):138-140.
- Sever PS, Dahlof B, Poulter NR, et al. Prevention of coronary and stroke events with atorvastatin in hypertensive patients who have average or lower-than-average cholesterol concentrations, in the Anglo-Scandinavian Cardiac Outcomes Trial-Lipid Lowering Arm (ASCOT-LLA): a multicenter randomized controlled trial. Lancet 2003;361:1149-1158.
- Diamond DM, Ravnskov U. How statistical deception created the appearance that statins are safe and effective in primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease. Expert Rev Clin Pharmacol 2015;8(2):189-199.
- Rosch P. Quote in: Cholesterol skeptics and the bad news about statins. Center for Medical Consumers, Cholesterol Skeptics: Conference Report. Available at: http://medicalconsumers.org/2003/06/01/cholesterol-skeptics-conference-report/ Accessed March 21, 2015.
- Langsjoen P. Review of How Statin Drugs Really Lower Cholesterol and Kill You One Cell at a Time by James and Hannah Yoseph. J Am Phys Surg 2013;18:30.7
- Mauch DH, Nagler K, Schumacher S. CNS synaptogenesis promoted by glia-derived cholesterol. Science 2001:294(5545):1354-1457.
- Graveline D. Adverse Effects of statin drugs: a physician patient’s perspective. J Am Phys Surg 2015;20:7-11.
- Golomb BA, Evans MA. Statin adverse effects: a review of the literature and evidence for a mitochondrial mechanism. Am J Cardiovasc Drugs 2008;8(63):373-418.
- Golomb BA, Evans MA, Dimsdale JE, et al. Effects of statins on energy and fatigue with exertion: results from a randomized controlled trial. Arch Intern Med 2012;172:1180-1182.
- Ravnskov U, Rosch PJ, McCully KS. The statin-low cholesterol-cancer conundrum. QJM 2012;105:383-388.
- Colpo A. The Great Cholesterol Con: Why everything you’ve been told about cholesterol, diet and heart disease is wrong! Lulu.com; 2006.
- Culver AL, Ockene IS, Balasubramanian R, et al. Statin use and risk of diabetes mellitus in postmenopausal women in women’s health initiative. Arch Intern Med 2012;172(2):144-152.
- FDA expands advice on statin risk. FDA Consumer Health Information/U.S. Food and Drug Administration. January 2014. Available at: http://www.fda.gov/downloads/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/UCM293705.pdf Accessed March 22, 2015.
- Ridker PM, Danielson E, Fonseca FA, et al. Rosuvastatin to prevent vascular events in men and women with elevated C-reactive protein. N Engl J Med 2008;359:2195-2207.
- Garret HE, Horning EC, Creech RG, DeBakey M. Serum cholesterol values in patients treated surgically for atherosclerosis. JAMA 1964;189:655-659.
- Iso H, Jacobs Jr DR, Wentworth D, et al. Serum cholesterol level and six-year mortality from stroke in 350,977 men screened for the multiple risk factor intervention trial. N Engl J Med 1989;320:904-910.
- Ravnskov U. The Cholesterol Myths: Exposing the Fallacy that Saturated Fat and Cholesterol Cause Heart Disease. Washington, D.C.: New Trends Publishing; 2000.
- Ravnskov U. A hypothesis out-of-date: The diet-heart idea. J Clin Epidemiol 2002;55:1057-1063,
- Taubes G. Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Sciance of Diet and Health. New York: Anchor Books; 2008.
- Evans D. Cholesterol and Saturated Fats Prevent Heart Disease: Evidence from 101 Scientific Studies. Guilford, Surrey, UK; Grosvenor House Publishing: 2012.
- Ross R. Atherosclerosis—an inflammatory disease N Engl J Med 1999; 340:115-126.
- Hölschermann H, Schuster D, Parviz B, et al. Statins prevent NF-kB transactivation independently of the IKK-pathway in human endothelial cells. Atherosclerosis 2006;185:240-245.
- Evans D. Low Cholesterol Leads to an Early Death: Evidence from 101 Scientific Papers. Guilford, Surrey, UK; Grosvenor House Publishing: 2012.
- Schatz IJ, Masaki K, Yano K, et al. Cholesterol and all-cause mortality in elderly people from the Honolulu Heart Program: a cohort study. Lancet 2001;358(9279):351-355.
- Tuikkala P, Hartikainen S, Korhonen MF, et al. Serum total cholesterol levels and all-cause mortality in a home-dwelling elderly population: a six-year follow-up. Scand J Prim Health Care 2010;28(2):121-127.
Donald Miller (send him mail) is a retired cardiac surgeon and Emeritus Professor of Surgery at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle. He is a member of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness
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Sanctions, War and the Policy of Dual Containment
By SASAN FAYAZMANESH | March 17, 2008
It is now nearly three decades since the Unites States adopted the policy of dual containment of Iran and Iraq. While much has been written about the containment of Iraq, there has been very little in-depth analysis of this policy when it comes to Iran. In a book that is going to be released on March 31, 2008, entitled The United States and Iran: Sanctions, Wars and the Policy of Dual Containment (Routledge), I attempt to address this shortcoming by investigating when and why the US policy of containment of Iran came about, how it evolved, and where it stands today.[1] To the extent that Israel has been involved in US policy making, the study will also include the role that Israel has played in the containment of Iran. Also, since the fate of Iran has been inextricably linked to that of Iraq, occasionally the investigation will overlap with the containment of Iraq.
The policy of dual containment of Iran and Iraq originated during the Carter Administration, but it was not until the Clinton Administration that the expression “dual containment” became popular. … continue
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