Science and Pseudo-Science

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?

June 5, 2015 Posted by aletho | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | Chemotherapy, Cornelius P. Rhoads | Leave a comment

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

June 4, 2015 Posted by aletho | Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science | United States | Leave a comment

Entire highrise engulfed in flames, no collapse

June 3, 2015 Posted by aletho | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | Leave a comment

Why The Netherlands Just Banned Non-Commercial Use Of Monsanto’s Glyphosate-Based Herbicides

By Arjun Walia | Collective Evolution | May 30, 2015

The Netherlands has just become the latest country, following Russia, Mexico, and many others, to say no to Monsanto. The sale and use of glyphosate-based herbicides (the most commonly used herbicides in the world) has just been banned for non-commercial use in the country, effective later this year. This means that people will no longer be able to spray RoundUp on their lawns and gardens and will instead have to find another (hopefully more natural) means of pest control.

This is definitely a step in the right direction.

The move comes as no surprise, considering that the number of countries around the world who are choosing to ban this product is growing at an exponential rate. Bans and restrictions are being implemented due to the fact that glyphosate (the main ingredient in RoundUp) has been directly linked to several major health issues, including: birth defects, nervous system damage, Alzheimers, Parkinson’s, various forms of cancer, and kidney failure. (Sri Lanka recently cited deadly kidney disease as their reason for banning his product. You can read more about that and access the research here.) Indeed, The World Health Organization recently acknowledged the fact that glyphosate can cause cancer, and you can read more about that here.

Not only that, there are multiple environmental concerns associated with the use of this chemical.

What’s even more disturbing is the fact that studies have shown that RoundUp herbicide is over one hundred times more toxic than regulators claim. For example, a new study published in the journal Biomedical Research International shows that Roundup herbicide is 125 times more toxic than its active ingredient glyphosate studied in isolation. You can read more about that here. The eye opening abstract reads as follows:

“Pesticides are used throughout the world as mixtures called formulations. They contain adjuvants, which are often kept confidential and are called inerts by the manufacturing companies, plus a declared active principle, which is usually tested alone. We tested the toxicity of 9 pesticides, comparing active principles and their formulations, on three human cell lines. Glyphosate, isoproturon, fluroxypyr, pirimicarb, imidacloprid, acetamiprid, tebuconazole, epoxiconazole, and prochloraz constitute, respectively, the active principles of 3 major herbicides, 3 insecticides, and 3 fungicides. Despite its relatively benign reputation, Roundup was among the most toxic herbicides and insecticides tested. Most importantly, 8 formulations out of 9 were up to one thousand times more toxic than their active principles. Our results challenge the relevance of the acceptable daily intake for pesticides because this norm is calculated from the toxicity of the active principle alone. Chronic tests on pesticides may not reflect relevant environmental exposures if only one ingredient of these mixtures is tested alone.” (source)

Equally disturbing is the fact that RoundUp has been found in a very high percentage of air and rainfall test samples. You can read more about that here.

Significant concentrations of it have also been found in the urine of people across Europe, you can read more about that here.

One recent study published in the Journal of Environmental & Analytical Toxicology has now proven that animals and humans who consume GMO foods – those that are loaded with glyphosate chemicals, the main ingredient in Monsanto’s RoundUp – have extremely high levels of glyphosate in their urine.

It’s also noteworthy to mention that there are Wikileaks documents showing how the United States planned to “retaliate and cause pain” on countries who were refusing GMOs. You can read more about that story and view those documents here.

It’s troubling to think that so many children are within proximity of and playing on lawns that have been sprayed with this stuff. Cancer is not a mystery, it is not a stroke of bad luck, it’s time for the world to wake up and realize what research has been confirming for years.

More Information on Pesticides & Herbicides Here:

**There are also multiple articles linked within the article above that provide more information**

Scientists Link Autism To These Toxic Chemicals During Fetal Development

Another Groundbreaking Study Emerges Linking Agricultural Pesticides To Autism

Scientists Can Predict Your Pesticide Exposure Based On How Much You Eat

This Is What Happens To Your Body When You Switch To Organic Food

What Parents Need To Know About Monsanto: “By 2025 One In Two Children Will Be Autistic”

Monsanto’s Glyphosate Linked To Birth Defects

Groundbreaking Study Links Monsanto’s Glyphosate To Cancer

New Study Links Gmos To Cancer, Liver/Kidney Damage & Severe Hormonal Disruption

Multiple Toxins From GMOs Detected In Maternal And Fetal Blood

Sources Used:

http://sustainablepulse.com/2014/04/04/dutch-parliament-bans-glyphosate-herbicides-non-commercial-use/#.VWcpp1xVhBd

June 1, 2015 Posted by aletho | Environmentalism, Science and Pseudo-Science | Glyphosate, Mexico, Monsanto, Roundup, Russia, Sri Lanka | Leave a comment

Climate Stupidity and Human Survival

By Denis Rancourt | Dissident Voice | May 26, 2015

The human animal has an instinct to identify potential dangers and to warn others. It is a built-in survival mechanism of any animal that lives in a group. And it is a strong and constant activity, re-enforced by environmental stressors.

This plays out on several time scales, from the immediate in the case of a potential physical assault, to the weekly in checking the weather forecast, to seasonal in preparing for winter, to life-long in planning for inevitable aging, to leaving good things for our grandchildren…

It is in our fiber to look ahead and to plan ahead, especially in the face of foreseeable or detected dangers.

The whole process can spin out of control when the danger is difficult to perceive, yet could be lethal. Think of baboons who are on the lookout for a stalking lion. The slightest shadow movement can make them scream and run for the trees. It’s a tense and highly volatile situation.

At this stage in our evolution we are faced with a pathological extension of our collective survival reflex, which is entirely fabricated by our high priests (government funded scientists and talking heads).

If these high priests were not here to tell us that the atmospheric concentration of the minor constituent CO₂ is increasing, and that “global mean surface temperature” has increased by some 0.5 C in the last 100 years, then we would never know about these imperceptible causes of our certain eventual collective death as a species.

The priests explain that our certain extinction will occur from a rising sea level and changing regional climates. That these changes will cause mass migrations, ecosystem collapses, agricultural failures, famines, and disease. They also inform us that those who will suffer most are the most vulnerable inhabitants of the planet, as though this were a new feature of the effects of natural disasters.

Therefore, they urge, we must tax carbon emissions, apply cap and trade, and create a global carbon economy to limit CO₂ in the atmosphere. And who better to coordinate it all than the World Bank, IMF, and such, given their stellar records in managing equitable development on this little rock. (Or is that economic enforcement of US regime supremacy?)

Forgive me for saying, but this all sounds rather nutso to me.

Nothing could be more like a religion than this crazy movement. We are expected to accept that an essential and growth-limiting plant nutrient (CO₂¹ ) is a toxic pollutant, that the world will be destroyed because of our collective and intrinsic wickedness of emitting CO₂, via floods no less.

Take a deep breath (exhale if you dare) and allow me to state a few facts that might help put things into perspective.

The planet has been teeming with life for billions of years.

During that time, the global mean temperature has almost always been some 10 C higher than in the present geologic anomaly,² in a manner uncorrelated with CO₂ concentration.³ That is the history of this same planet that we live on. During that time, the CO₂ concentration has typically been 10 times higher than today’s value, and it has rarely been as low as modern values, nor has it ever been lower than modern values.

Atmospheric CO2 and average global temperature

There is no reason to believe that humans would not fare well on an Earth that is 10° C warmer, never mind 1° or 2° C. Land value would increase in the polar regions, and there would be intense reforestation and forest densification of the equatorial regions, with little possibility for controlling growth where it is hot and humid.From what we know of our planet and the history of its biosphere, warming is not going to kill us off any time soon. None of the known mass extinctions (a relative term) in Earth’s history can be reliably attributed to “sustained warming,” whereas ice ages that have occurred recently (during human presence on the planet, in the last 1 M years) are expected to correspond to periods of decreased planetary life density, but saw mammals and human populations completely adapt. Basically, neither warming or cooling can kill us by any know mechanism ever observed. If anything, the opposite of “killer warmth” is observed on today’s Earth, where both human populations and living biomass are concentrated near equatorial latitudes:

World population density map

Therefore, we still have much time left to achieve human extinction by much more direct means than warming (or cooling) of any kind. We also have a lot of time and occasions to practice accommodating mass migrations caused by our wars and economic violence, in order to prepare for the “climate migrations”. Somehow there seems to be more public-opinion, political, and lobbying effort in implementing and developing the instruments of a global carbon economy than in developing the instruments to prevent wars of aggression, to cope with the consequences of natural disasters, to stop displacing and dispossessing local inhabitants, to enforce the Geneva Conventions, to stop the wholesale destruction of entire nations (Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Iran…?), to respect international law, … not to mention reparations to the survivors of recent slavery, genocide, dispossession, and crass exploitation.

Rather than widespread vehement and actuated insistence on democratic control of local resources and institutions, based on individual realities on the ground, instead we have a sizable yet ineffective population of vocal do-gooders enthralled in spasmodic incantations against atmospheric CO₂ emissions, as part of a Gaia-inspired religion perverted by the Christian concept of original sin; all of which de facto supports the carbon globalization schemes engineered by the US regime to attempt to constrain their emerging competitors and extort a development tax.

When has “globalization” ever been about justice, or about anything other than economic predation? When have good-will global efforts ever had any significant positive impact?⁴

Why pollute local struggles and liberation of the individual with tenuous claims about imperceptible dangers? And why put so much energy into insisting that the danger from CO₂ is real? This seems like a classic example of seeking an overarching religious belief “solution” to real local problems that one cannot or will not confront.

“Climate justice” needs to be “justice”. The comfortable-middle-class fetish for carbon co-opts the analysis, defuses the thrust for defending identity-tied interests, and sends legitimate demands straight into the atmosphere. Or, at best, it is simply irrelevant to real struggles.

In the main population, if all the fanatics that are screaming that the sky is falling would scream to stop the war machine that occupies every corner of the globe, then we could start moving away from the real manufactured disasters that wash over the planet continuously, which don’t require satellite spectrometers to detect.

Instead of asking whether we can detect warming, whether intense weather events are actually more frequent, whether species extinction rates can reliably be measured, and so on, why not address the obvious: Humans are exploiting and terrorizing other humans, human conditions are constantly being attacked, and natural habitat is being destroyed for corporate benefit by eliminating local sovereignty.

Why turn to sanitized and intractable up-in-the-air questions when injustice and actual destruction is all around us? And why, oh why, pretend that humans can manage global carbon fluxes, manage the radiation balance of the planet, and control climate?

It’s a planet!

If we are going to have a global religion, why not believe that justice leads to both short-term and long-term safety? Not justice that is planned and given to us, but justice that we acquire through struggle and liberation.

On the other hand if you must be irrelevant and must have your carbon fetish, then at least put it into a planetary perspective⁵ :

The present (2010) rate of fossil fuel burning (0.8 x 10^13 kg-C/y) is 8% of global primary production (GPP)
The latter plant growth (GPP) uses only 0.07% of solar light striking the planet
Thus, fossil fuel burning represents 8% of 0.07% = 0.006% of solar energy rate of input (the sun is a sun and the Earth is a planet…)
The CO₂ production from the burning of fossil fuel is approximately equal to that from human and domestic animal breathing
The combined biomass of humans and domestic animals is 0.04% of Earth’s living biomass
Ants have transformed the planet’s surface and its ecology far more than have humans
The total amount of fossil fuel burned to date (historically to 2010) by humans is 3.7 x 10^14 kg-C, less than half of the carbon contained in the atmosphere as a minor constituent gas
Dissolved CO₂ in the oceans is 50 times more than the total amount in the atmosphere
Living and dead biomass-carbon (in soils, sediments, plant-cover, etc.) is probably much greater than carbon as CO₂ in air and water
Thus, the total post-industrial fossil fuel burned to date represents less than 1% of the planet’s global bio-available and exchangeable carbon, not to mention geological sources
As such, atmospheric CO₂ is readily exchanged with and buffered by compartments of labile carbon that are much larger than the atmosphere, via flux mechanisms that science is barely beginning to understand (e.g.,¹ )

Keenan et al., “Increase in forest water-use efficiency as atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations rise,” Nature 499, 324-327 (18 July 2013); Donohue et al., “Impact of CO2 fertilization on maximum foliage cover across the globe’s warm, arid environments,” Geophysical Research Letters 40(12), 3031-3035 (28 June 2013).
Wikipedia article, “Geologic temperature record,”accessed May, 2015, see “Overall view”.
Rothman, D.H., “Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels for the last 500 million years,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 99(7), 4167-4171, (2 April 2002).
Rancourt, D.G., “Some big lies of science,” Activist Teacher (8 June 2010).
Rancourt, D.G., “Is the burning of fossil fuel a significant planetary activity?,” Activist Teacher (21 August 2010); Rancourt, D.G., “CO2 emission from fossil fuel burning is not more than from breathing,” Activist Teacher (22 August 2010)

*****

This article accompanies a 2-hour public lecture I gave at the University of Ottawa on March 27, 2015, entitled “The science and geopolitics of climate change”: VIDEO-LINK-Part-1, VIDEO-LINK-Part-2. The physics calculations of Earth’s radiation balance described in Part-1 of the talk are from this paper: Rancourt, D.G., “Radiation physics constraints on global warming: CO₂ increase has little effect,” archive.org (3 December 2011). Links to my articles and interviews about climate are here.

May 27, 2015 Posted by aletho | Science and Pseudo-Science | Leave a comment

The New Challenge to Monsanto

By COLIN TODHUNTER | CounterPunch | May 26, 2015

In a challenge delivered to Monsanto’s headquarters on May 20, 2015, US public interest attorney Steven Druker calls on that corporation to find any inaccurate statements of fact in his new book: “Altered Genes, Twisted Truth – How the Venture to Genetically Engineer Our Food Has Subverted Science, Corrupted Government, and Systematically Deceived the Public”

The thoroughly documented and referenced book exposes the substantial risks of genetically engineered foods and the multiple misrepresentations that have enabled them to permeate world markets.

Druker asserts that if Monsanto cannot prove that his book is essentially erroneous, the world will have a right to regard these controversial foods as unacceptably risky – and to promptly ban them.

‘Altered Genes, Twisted Truth’ was released in March 2015 and is the result of more than 15 years of intensive research and investigation by Druker, who initiated a lawsuit against the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that forced it to divulge its files on GM foods.

The book indicates that the commercialisation of GM food in the US was based on a massive fraud. The FDA files revealed that GM foods first achieved commercialisation in 1992 but only because the FDA covered up the extensive warnings of its own scientists about their dangers, lied about the facts and then violated federal food safety law by permitting these foods to be marketed without having been proven safe through standard testing.

If the FDA had heeded its own experts’ advice and publicly acknowledged their warnings that GM foods entailed higher risks than their conventional counterparts, Druker says that the GM food venture would have imploded and never gained traction anywhere.

He also argues that that many well-placed scientists have repeatedly issued misleading statements about GM foods, and so have leading scientific institutions such as the US National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the UK’s Royal Society.

Druker states that contrary to the claims of biotech advocates, humans have indeed been harmed by consuming the output of genetic engineering. He also explains that laboratory animals have also suffered from eating products of genetic engineering, and well-conducted tests with GM crops have yielded many troubling results, including intestinal abnormalities, liver disturbances, and impaired immune systems.

Druker says: “Contrary to the assertions of its proponents, the massive enterprise to reconfigure the genetic core of the world’s food supply is not based on sound science but on the systematic subversion of science – and it would collapse if subjected to an open airing of the facts.”

Now, in his open letter dated 19 May, Druker challenges Monsanto’s Chief Technology Officer to: “Face Up to the Extensive Evidence Demonstrating that Genetically Engineered Foods Entail Unacceptable Risks and Should Be Promptly Removed from the Market.”

Druker finishes his letter by saying:

“If by July 20th you and your allies have not been able to refute the essential factual accuracy of Altered Genes, Twisted Truth according to the terms set forth above, the world will have a right to assume that it is as sound as the experts who reviewed it have affirmed – and to conclude that GE foods are unacceptably risky and must be banned.

Access the letter in full here.

Colin Todhunter is an extensively published independent writer and former social policy researcher based in the UK and India.

May 27, 2015 Posted by aletho | Book Review, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | American Association for the Advancement of Science, FDA, Food and Drug Administration, Monsanto, US National Academy of Sciences | Leave a comment

The Ethics of Climate Change

Calls for massive reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions ignore the impacts on the poor

By Bob Lyman | Watts Up With That? | May 23, 2015

People who believe in the theory of catastrophic human-induced global warming claim that they want to “save the planet” and that this is the moral thing to do. They insist, however, that saving the planet requires stringent reductions in people’s use of fossil fuel energy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. They never talk about what that means to the poor. I think that, before people decide on the ethics of the debate, they need to consider what the impact would be of sharply reducing energy consumption on the wellbeing of world’s population, and especially on the poor.

In 2014, the International Energy Agency (IEA) issued a Special Report entitled “Modern Energy for All”. In it, the IEA stated that modern energy services are:

…crucial to human wellbeing” and to a country’s economic development.

Access to modern energy is essential for the provision of clean water, sanitation and healthcare and for the provision of reliable and efficient lighting heating, cooking, mechanical power, transport and telecommunications services.”

Today billions of people lack access to the most basic energy services. Nearly 1.3 billion people are without access to electricity and 2.7 billion people rely on traditional use of biomass (wood, charcoal and animal dung) for cooking, which causes harmful indoor air pollution.

Pause to think about that for a few minutes. Hundreds of millions of people are without the modern energy services that were available to our ancestors who lived in the nineteenth century. They get up with the dawn and go to bed close to nightfall because they have no electrical lighting. They have to go a river or well (if they are lucky) for water to drink or wash in. They have no way to power an appliance, including a refrigerator, so all food has to be eaten quickly or it may go bad. They have to walk long distances everyday to search for firewood or dried animal dung. There is no light to extend the day to provide time for reading or entertainment. They have no telephones. They have no way to pump water for irrigating crops. They have no motorized transportation, so they cannot go very far. Almost all their time is spent simply doing the simple tasks that in Canada and other advanced countries are done by machines. Worse, every day they breathe in the fumes from the dirty cooking fires, developing lung disorders. In fact, according to the IEA, every year 4.3 million premature deaths can be attributed to household air pollution resulting from the use of traditional biomass fuels for cooking.

The international community has long been aware of the close correlation between income levels and access to modern energy; not surprisingly, countries with a large proportion of the population living on an income of $2 per day tend to have low electrification rates and few motorized vehicles. The problem is spread throughout the developing world, but it is particularly severe in sub-Saharan Africa and developing Asia, which together account for 95% of people in abject energy poverty.

The latent demand for electricity is immense. An estimated 400 million people in India still lack access to electricity. A recent study looked at the expansion of electricity that would be needed on an economy-wide basis in sub-Saharan Africa to comprehensively address energy access. To reach moderate access, where electricity generation capacity is around 200-400 megawatts (MW) per million people, the region would need a total of 374 MW of installed capacity. That’s about twelve times the level of capacity in the region today. All energy sources would be needed to help provide that much capacity.

This is where aspiration runs into reality. In desperately poor countries, they do not have the luxury to spend millions of dollars on energy. Renewable energy sources like wind and solar energy can sometimes be useful where there is no electricity transmission system to take centrally-generated power to rural areas, but it is expensive and often requires technology to install and operate. Further, wind and solar are “intermittent” sources, meaning that they only produce energy when the wind blows or the sun shines respectively. Electrical energy is expensive to store and this can only be done in small amounts.

For reliable electrical energy supply for any possibility of industrial development and for transportation, developing countries need large scale power generation based on low cost, generally available fuels. In India, and in many parts of Africa, this means coal.

Coal reserves are available in almost every country worldwide, with recoverable reserves in around 70 countries. In fact, coal is the backbone of modern electricity in most parts of the world. It now provides about 30% of the primary energy and 41% of global electricity generation. It is plentiful and relatively cheap. Over the decade from 2000 to 2010, China showed the world how massive expansion of coal-fired electricity generation could modernize its economy and bring electrification to almost all parts of the country. As a result, hundreds of millions of Chinese have lifted themselves out of energy and economic poverty and dramatically improved both their income and quality of life.

Yet, coal is the most carbon-intensive of fossil fuels. It is the fuel source most despised by those who want to drastically reduce emissions. The Obama Administration in the United States has, as part of its climate change agenda, pressured the World Bank to stop lending to coal-fired electricity projects and the World Bank has complied. The U.S. Administration has also withdrawn funding from the Export-Import Bank for such projects. Fortunately for the developing countries, a new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank has been established with major funding from China, which will include funding of new coal projects.

Those pursuing the climate change political agenda are prepared to condemn the world’s poor living without modern energy to remain in their backward situation. For them, billions of blighted lives are preferable to increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

Even in the developed countries, the policies advanced for climate reasons fall heavily on the poor.

Electricity prices continue to surge in Europe where costs are often triple those in the U.S. EU governments have various schemes, taxes, subsidies, and mandates, such as Cap and Trade, feed-in tariffs, and surcharges that make Europeans pay more for power. Perhaps the best (worst?) example is Germany, where nearly 20% of families now live in “fuel poverty,” spending more than 10% of household income on energy. Germany’s energy transition (“Energiewende”) is expected to cost an astounding $735 billion, and many are demanding changes. Overall in Europe, 1.4 million more households are expected to be in fuel poverty by 2020.

In the name of climate change, governments are forcing utilities to sign long-term contracts paying as much as four times the going wholesale electricity rate for renewables. Power markets have become so distorted that wind farms in the UK and in Ontario, for instance, have been paid millions to NOT produce electricity.

Supporters of “green” energy policies keep saying that poverty will be reduced if only efficiency would improve, but that position doesn’t hold up. Energy efficiency in the EU has improved around 20% since 2005. In the UK, for instance, energy efficiency has increased nearly 30% since 2003, yet electricity prices have almost doubled and homes in fuel poverty have nearly quadrupled. Europe’s main fuel poverty problem isn’t a lack of efficiency, it’s soaring prices.

Apart from the higher prices, another meaningful measure of energy poverty in Germany is the number of supply stoppages (“power cuts”) ordered by utility companies. Basic suppliers are entitled to interrupt their electricity or gas deliveries in the event of arrears in payment of more than 100 euros after a warning notice followed by a repeated threat to terminate service. According to a survey of the German Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur), in 2013 warnings of electricity supply termination were issued to 5.7 million private households in Germany. The supply of electricity was actually interrupted to roughly 320,000 households.

There are many different moral standards to which one might refer in defining what is the most “ethical” way for people to act when considering their use of energy and other goods to improve their lives. Those environmentalists who claim that “nature” is more important than humans and that any measure, regardless of how costly, should be taken to reduce the effects of humans on the planet will never be satisfied. In my view, human wellbeing, and especially the plight of the world’s poor, deserves a prominent place in judgments about what is ethical behavior. Sharply reducing fossil fuel use means reducing economic development, condemning poor societies to remain poor, and requiring the poor people of today to sacrifice for the sake of addressing an unproven problem in a distant future — this is truly immoral.

May 24, 2015 Posted by aletho | Economics, Science and Pseudo-Science, Supremacism, Social Darwinism | Afghanistan, Africa, India | Leave a comment

Social science provides a lot of useful insight as to why logic and data are rarely convincing

By Matt Manos | Watts Up With That? | May 23, 2015

… In their latest speeches on global warming, Obama and the Pope weren’t trying to convince skeptics that Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) is real. Instead, they were sending signals to their supporters on what “all right thinking people” should be saying. This is classic in-group/out-group communication. Obama and the Pope were setting up the talking points for their in-group members to use to determine who can be considered part of the tribe and who should be rejected for being outside of it. This is a process called Othering. Othering turns political foes into non-beings. Others have no value. Others can be discounted and ignored. Others can be mocked.

Obama and the Pope are examples of bellwethers; the sheep with the bell that the other sheep follow. Bellwether is not a derogatory term, it’s a descriptive term. The job of a political bellwether is to indicate the position that their followers should take in their everyday conversations. Obama and the Pope’s latest speeches function as position papers for the delegates of all right thinking people. You meet these people at work, church, school, at the coffee house, etc. The delegates will mirror the words that the President or the Pope used to identify other in-group members, normalize beliefs and mock out-group members. One of the main themes of both speeches was shame. Shame on those who aren’t right thinking people. Shame that they aren’t as intelligent and capable as “us.”

That type of smugness is almost impossible to penetrate. When a skeptic questions a warmist’s view on global warming/climate change, the warmist hears something vastly different than what the skeptic is saying. A skeptic might say, “The models don’t match the actual measured results.” What the warmist hears is how stupid deniers are because that’s what John Stewart told him he should think. If the warmist doesn’t prove that he thinks skeptics are stupid then he might be confused for a denier! And no one wants to be identified with being a denier because they’re mocked, don’t get tenure and don’t get invited to the right parties. No amount of science can penetrate the ROI the warmist has internalized in believing in CAGW.

Many of the warmists are running on pure rational ignorance. Rational ignorance is a belief that the cost/benefit to researching every issue is so low as to be a net negative in time utilization. Thus the ignorance is rational and everyone utilizes this mental process on certain topics. People who are rationally ignorant about global warming look to bellwethers that support their gut stance. Rationally ignorant warmists would look to world leaders, mockutainers and warmist scientists for guidance on how to communicate their position on global warming.

Penetrating rational ignorance is tough because the position warmists have taken isn’t based on logic. Their position is actually based on an appeal to authority. To question the rationally ignorant warmist is to question the field of science as a whole (to be a science denier) or to question the leadership of their favorite bellwether personalities. This will cause the rationally ignorant warmist to become defensive and try to stand up for their favorite bellwether. The rationally ignorant will also point to their favorite bellwethers and say, “Who am I to doubt all these intelligent people?” It’s intellectually offshoring. It’s lazy. It’s human nature.

The scientific method rejects outright in-group/out groups, Othering, bellwethers and rational ignorance. A scientist is supposed to follow the results of an experiment even if the results don’t support his hypothesis. The scientist is clearly not supposed to rig the data to ensure he gets invited to a party with the right people or continued funding. But science has a poor track record on controversial topics. It often takes decades to accept new theories that are clear winners (e.g., continental drift).

Scientists are still social animals. Social animals follow hierarchy and incentives. If you really want to win the debate on global warming, change the opinions of the bellwethers. Change the economic incentives for the global warming scientific paper mill. Otherwise you’re stuck debating only the people who are unable to change their minds because it would cost them personally to do so. Rare is the person intellectually honest enough to bite the hand that feeds or is willing to violate social norms to speak the truth.

May 24, 2015 Posted by aletho | Science and Pseudo-Science | Obama | Leave a comment

EU drops controls on dangerous chemicals after TTIP pressure from US – report

RT | May 22, 2015

EU proposals to regulate hormone-damaging chemicals linked to cancer, fertility problems and diabetes were allegedly dropped following pressure from US trade officials amid talks on the controversial Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).

Draft EU criteria could have banned some 31 pesticides containing dangerous endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs), but according to documents obtained by Pesticides Action Network (PAN) Europe and cited by The Guardian, they were cast aside amid fears of a trade backlash by a powerful US lobby.

According to the report, a high-ranking delegation from the US Mission to Europe and the American Chambers of Commerce (AmCham) visited European Union trade officials in July 2013 in a bid to urge the EU to drop its planned criteria for identifying EDCs in favor of a new impact study. The TTIP trade deal was at stake, and the EU allegedly agreed to the US demands.

TTIP is a highly controversial proposed EU-US free trade treaty that has been criticized for its secretiveness and lack of accountability.

AmCham representatives allegedly “complained about the uselessness of creating categories and thus, lists” of prohibited substances. The US trade representatives reportedly suggested taking a risk-based approach to regulation, and “emphasized the need for an impact assessment” instead.

The secretary-general of the commission, Catherine Day, allegedly sent a letter to the environment department’s director, Karl Falkenberg, telling him to drop the draft criteria, suggesting that “as other DGs [directorate-generals] have done, you consider making a joint single impact assessment to cover all the proposals” instead.

“We do not think it is necessary to prepare a commission recommendation on the criteria to identify endocrine disrupting substances,” she allegedly wrote.

The result, according to The Guardian, was that legislation planned for 2014 was “kicked back until at least 2016, despite estimated health costs of €150bn per year in Europe from endocrine-related illnesses such as IQ loss, obesity and cryptorchidism – a condition affecting the genitals of baby boys.”

On top of this, ahead of the meeting, AmCham had allegedly warned the EU of “wide-reaching implications” if the draft criteria came to be approved. According to The Guardian, AmCham wanted an EU impact study to set looser thresholds for acceptable exposure to endocrines, based on a substance’s potency.

Bas Eickhout, a Green member of the European Parliament, told The Guardian : “These documents offer convincing evidence that TTIP not only presents a danger for the future lowering of European standards, but that this is happening as we speak.”

The Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) of the UK House of Commons is currently carrying out an inquiry into the proposed TTIP and its impacts on the environment and the developing world.

“We are very concerned that the US government has a long history of lobbying against EU action on chemicals, and that TTIP could provide a method for them to institutionalise this,” EAC wrote in January, adding that the US approach to chemicals regulation is generally acknowledged to be “outdated and ineffective.”

“Our strong belief that the inclusion of chemicals within TTIP will lower protection in the EU, and will further slowdown efforts to protect human health and the environment from hazardous chemicals,” the committee warned.

Earlier this year, CHEM Trust (a UK charity whose aim is to prevent manmade chemicals from causing long-term damage to wildlife or humans) and around 150 other civil society groups signed up to a joint statement against regulatory cooperation in TTIP.

“Civil society groups denounce ‘regulatory cooperation’ in the TTIP negotiations as a threat to democracy and an attempt to put the interests of big business before the protection of citizens, workers and the environment,” the statement said.

According to the State of the Science of Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals 2012 report, many endocrine-related diseases and disorders are currently on the rise. Global rates of endocrine-related cancers (breast, endometrial, ovarian, prostate, testicular and thyroid) have been increasing over the past 40-50 years, researchers say.

“Close to 800 chemicals are known or suspected to be capable of interfering with hormone receptors, hormone synthesis or hormone conversion. However, only a small fraction of these chemicals have been investigated in tests capable of identifying overt endocrine effects in intact organisms,” the report stated.

Scientists warn that while numerous laboratory studies support the idea that chemical exposures contribute to endocrine disorders in humans, the “most sensitive window of exposure to EDCs is during critical periods of development, such as during fetal development and puberty.”

May 22, 2015 Posted by aletho | Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals, EU, European Union, Health, Trade, Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, TTIP, United States, USA | Leave a comment

Monsanto’s Worst Fear May Be Coming True

By Jonathan Latham, PhD | Independent Science News | May 18, 2015

The decision of the Chipotle restaurant chain to make its product lines GMO-free is not most people’s idea of a world-historic event. Especially since Chipotle, by US standards, is not a huge operation. A clear sign that the move is significant, however, is that Chipotle’s decision was met with a tidal-wave of establishment media abuse. Chipotle has been called irresponsible, anti-science, irrational, and much more by the Washington Post, Time Magazine, the Chicago Tribune, the LA Times, and many others. A business deciding to give consumers what they want was surely never so contentious.

The media lynching of Chipotle has an explanation that is important to the future of GMOs. The cause of it is that there has long been an incipient crack in the solid public front that the food industry has presented on the GMO issue. The crack originates from the fact that while agribusiness sees GMOs as central to their business future, the brand-oriented and customer-sensitive ends of the food supply chain do not.

The brands who sell to the public, such as Nestle, Coca-Cola, Kraft, etc., are therefore much less committed to GMOs. They have gone along with their use, probably because they wish to maintain good relations with agribusiness, who are their allies and their suppliers. Possibly also they see a potential for novel products in a GMO future.

However, over the last five years, as the reputation of GMOs has come under increasing pressure in the US, the cost to food brands of ignoring the growing consumer demand for GMO-free products has increased. They might not say so in public, but the sellers of top brands have little incentive to take the flack for selling GMOs.

From this perspective, the significance of the Chipotle move becomes clear. If Chipotle can gain market share and prestige, or charge higher prices, from selling non-GMO products and give (especially young) consumers what they want, it puts traditional vendors of fast and processed food products in an invidious position. Kraft and MacDonalds, and their traditional rivals can hardly be left on the sidelines selling outmoded products to a shrinking market. They will not last long.

MacDonald’s already appears to be in trouble, and it too sees the solution as moving to more up-market and healthier products. For these much bigger players, a race to match Chipotle and get GMOs out of their product lines, is a strong possibility. That may not be so easy, in the short term, but for agribusiness titans who have backed GMOs, like Monsanto, Dupont, Bayer and Syngenta; a race to be GMO-free is the ultimate nightmare scenario.

Until Chipotle’s announcement, such considerations were all behind the scenes. But all of a sudden this split has spilled out into the food media. On May 8th, Hain Celestial told The Food Navigator that:

“We sell organic products… gluten-free products and… natural products. [But] where the big, big demand is, is GMO-free.”

According to the article, unlike Heinz, Kraft, and many others, Hain Celestial is actively seeking to meet this demand. Within the food industry, important decisions, for and against GMOs, are taking place.

Why the pressure to remove GMOs will grow

The other factor in all this turmoil is that the GMO technology wheel has not stopped turning. New GMO products are coming on stream that will likely make crop biotechnology even less popular than it is now. This will further ramp up the pressure on brands and stores to go GMO-free. There are several contributory factors.

The first issue follows from the recent US approvals of GMO crops resistant to the herbicides 2,4-D and Dicamba. These traits are billed as replacements for Roundup-resistant traits whose effectiveness has declined due to the spread of weeds resistant to Roundup (Glyphosate).

The causes of the problem, however, lie in the technology itself. The introduction of Roundup-resistant traits in corn and soybeans led to increasing Roundup use by farmers (Benbrook 2012). Increasing Roundup use led to weed resistance, which led to further Roundup use, as farmers increased applications and dosages. This translated into escalated ecological damage and increasing residue levels in food. Roundup is now found in GMO soybeans intended for food use at levels that even Monsanto used to call “extreme” (Bøhn et al. 2014).

The two new herbicide-resistance traits are set to recapitulate this same story of increasing agrochemical use. But they will also amplify it significantly,

The specifics are worth considering. First, the spraying of 2,4-D and Dicamba on the newer herbicide-resistant crops will not eliminate the need for Roundup, whose use will not decline (see Figure).

Predicted herbicide use to 2025 (Mortensen et al 2012)

That is because, unlike Roundup, neither 2,4-D nor Dicamba are broad-spectrum herbicides. They will have to be sprayed together with Roundup, or with each other (or all of them together) to kill all weeds. This vital fact has not been widely appreciated.

Confirmation comes from the companies themselves. Monsanto is stacking (i.e. combining) Dicamba resistance with Roundup resistance in its Xtend crops and Dow is stacking 2,4-D resistance with Roundup resistance in its Enlist range. (Notably, resistance to other herbicides, such as glufosinate, are being stacked in all these GMO crops too.)

The second issue is that the combined spraying of 2,4-D and Dicamba and Roundup, will only temporarily ease the weed resistance issues faced by farmers. In the medium and longer terms, they will compound the problems. That is because new herbicide-resistant weeds will surely evolve. In fact, Dicamba-resistant and 2,4-D-resistant weeds already exist. Their spread, and the evolution of new ones, can be guaranteed (Mortensen et al 2012). This will bring greater profits for herbicide manufacturers, but it will also bring greater PR problems for GMOs and the food industry. GMO soybeans and corn will likely soon have “extreme levels” of at least three different herbicides, all of them with dubious safety records (Schinasi and Leon 2014).

The first time round, Monsanto and Syngenta’s PR snow-jobs successfully obscured this, not just from the general public, but even within agronomy. But it is unlikely they will be able to do so a second time. 2,4-D and Dicamba-resistant GMOs are thus a PR disaster waiting to happen.

A pipeline full of problems: risk and perception

The longer term problem for GMOs is that, despite extravagant claims, their product pipeline is not bulging with promising ideas. Mostly, it is more of the same: herbicide resistance and insect resistance.

The most revolutionary and innovative part of that pipeline is a technology and not a trait. Many products in the GMO pipeline are made using RNA interference technologies that rely on double-stranded RNAs (dsRNAs). dsRNA is a technology with two problems. One is that products made with it (such as the “Arctic” Apple, the “Innate” Potato, and Monsanto’s “Vistive Gold” Soybeans) are unproven in the field. Like its vanguard, a Brazilian virus-resistant bean, they may never work under actual farming conditions.

But if they do work, there is a clear problem with their safety which is explained in detail here (pdf).

In outline, the problem is this: the long dsRNA molecules needed for RNA interference were rejected long ago as being too hazardous for routine medical use (Anonymous, 1969). The scientific literature even calls them “toxins”, as in this paper title from 1969:

Absher M., and Stinebring W. (1969) Toxic properties of a synthetic double-stranded RNA. Nature 223: 715-717. (not online)

As further evidence of this, long dsRNAs are now used in medicine to cause autoimmune disorders in mice, in order to study these disorders (Okada et al 2005).

The Absher and Stinebring paper comes from a body of research built up many years ago, but its essential findings have been confirmed and extended by more modern research. We now know why dsRNAs cause harm. They trigger destructive anti-viral defence pathways in mammals and other vertebrates and there is a field of specialist research devoted to showing precisely how this damages individual cells, whole tissues, and results in auto-immune disease in mice (Karpala et al. 2005).

The conclusion therefore, is that dsRNAs that are apparently indistinguishable from those produced in, for example, the Arctic apple and Monsanto’s Vistive Gold Soybean, have strong negative effects on vertebrate animals (but not plants). These vertebrate effects are found even at low doses. Consumers are vertebrate animals. They may not appreciate the thought that their healthy fats and forever apples also contain proven toxins. And on a business front, consumer brands will not relish defending dsRNA technology once they understand the reality. They may not wish to find themselves defending the indefensible.

The bottom line is this. Either dsRNAs will sicken or kill people, or, they will give opponents of biotechnology plenty of ammunition. The scientific evidence, as it currently stands, suggests they will do both. dsRNAs, therefore, are a potentially huge liability.

The last pipeline problem stems from the first two. The agbiotech industry has long held out the prospect of “consumer benefits” from GMOs. Consumer benefits (in the case of food) are most likely to be health benefits (improved nutrition, altered fat composition, etc.). The problem is that the demographic of health-conscious consumers no doubt overlaps significantly with the demographic of those most wary of GMOs. Show a consumer a “healthy GMO” and they are likely to show you an oxymoron. The likely health market in the US for customers willing to pay more for a GMO has probably evaporated in the last few years as GMOs have become a hot public issue.

The end-game for GMOs? 

The traditional chemical industry approach to such a problem is a familiar repertoire of intimidation and public relations. Fifty years ago, the chemical industry outwitted and outmanoeuvered environmentalists after the death of Rachel Carson (see the books Toxic Sludge is Good for You and Trust Us We’re Experts). But that was before email, open access scientific publication, and the internet. Monsanto and its allies have steadily lost ground in a world of peer-to-peer communication. GMOs have become a liability, despite their best efforts.

The historic situation is this: in any country, public acceptance of GMOs has always been based on lack of awareness of their existence. Once that ignorance evaporates and the scientific and social realities start to be discussed, ignorance cannot be reinstated. From then on the situation moves into a different, and much more difficult phase for the defenders of GMOs.

Nevertheless, in the US, those defenders have not yet given up. Anyone who keeps up with GMOs in the media knows that the public is being subjected to an unrelenting and concerted global blitzkrieg.

Pro-GMO advocates and paid-for journalists, presumably financed by the life-science industry, sometimes fronted by non-profits such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, are being given acres of prominent space to make their case. Liberal media outlets such as the New York Times, the National Geographic, The New Yorker, Grist magazine, the Observer newspaper, and any others who will have them (which is most) have been deployed to spread its memes. Cornell University has meanwhile received a $5.6 million grant by the Gates Foundation to “depolarize” negative GMO publicity.

But so far there is little sign that the growth of anti-GMO sentiment in Monsanto’s home (US) market can be halted. The decision by Chipotle is certainly not an indication of faith that it can.

For Monsanto and GMOs the situation suddenly looks ominous. Chipotle may well represent the beginnings of a market swing of historic proportions. GMOs may be relegated to cattle-feed status, or even oblivion, in the USA. And if GMOs fail in the US, they are likely to fail elsewhere.

GMO roll-outs in other countries have relied on three things: the deep pockets of agribusinesses based in the United States, their political connections, and the notion that GMOs represent “progress”. If those three disappear in the United States, the power to force open foreign markets will disappear too. The GMO era might suddenly be over.

Endnote: The report by Jonathan Latham and Allison Wilson on RNA interference and dsRNAs in GMO crops is downloadable from here. Accompanying Tables are here.

References

Anonymous (1969) Interferon inducers with side effects. Nature 223: 666-667.
Bøhn, T., Cuhra, M., Traavik, T., Sanden, M., Fagan, J. and Primicerio, R. 2014. Compositional differences in soybeans on the market: Glyphosate accumulates in Roundup Ready GM soybeans. Food Chemistry 153: 207-215.
Okada C., Akbar S.M.F., Horiike N., and Onji M. (2005) Early development of primary biliary cirrhosis in female C57BL/6 mice because of poly I:C administration. Liver International 25: 595-603.
Karpala A.J., Doran T.J., and Bean A.G.D. (2005) Immune responses to dsRNA: Implications for gene silencing technologies. Immunology and cell biology 83: 211–216.
Mortensen, David A., J. Franklin Egan, Bruce D. Maxwell, Matthew R. Ryan and Richard G. Smith (2012) Navigating a Critical Juncture for Sustainable Weed Management. BioScience 62: 75-84.
Schinasi L and Maria E. Leon ME (2014) Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma and Occupational Exposure to Agricultural Pesticide Chemical Groups and Active Ingredients: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 11: 4449-4527.

May 20, 2015 Posted by aletho | Economics, Mainstream Media, Science and Pseudo-Science | United States | Leave a comment

Nearly 200 scientists warn of cellphone health risks

RT | May 13, 2015

Biological and health scientists from Russia and Iran to the USA are calling on the UN, the World Health Organization and national governments to develop strict regulations concerning devices and cellphones that create electromagnetic fields.

The scientists are from 39 nations and have authored 2,000 peer-reviewed papers on the health and biological effects of non-ionizing radiation, which is part of the electromagnetic field spectrum. In a letter, they say that devices like cellphones pose risks of cancer, genetic damage, changes in reproductive system, and learning and memory deficits.

“Putting it bluntly they are damaging the living cells in our bodies and killing many of us prematurely,” said Dr. Martin Blank, from the Department of Physiology and Cellular Biophysics at Columbia University, in a video message.

“We have created something that is harming us, and it is getting out of control. Before Edison’s light bulb there was very little electromagnetic radiation in our environment. The levels today are very many times higher than natural background levels, and are growing rapidly because of all the new devices that emit this radiation.”

One example that was cited is the cellphone. Blank pointed to a study which showed that as cellphone usage has spread widely, the incidence of fatal brain cancer in younger people has more than tripled.

The scientists see the unregulated use of radio frequency radiation in cellphones and Wi-Fi as developing into a public health crisis. Blank said biologists and scientists are not being heard from committees that set safety standards, that safety limits are much too high and that biological facts are being ignored.

“They are not protective,” he added. “We are really all part of large biological experiment without our informed consent. To protect ourselves, our children, and our ecosystem, we must reduce exposure by establishing more protective guidelines.”

Scientists are appealing to the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) to “convene and fund an independent multidisciplinary committee to explore the pros and cons of alternative to current practices that could substantially lower human exposure to RF and ELF fields.”

They request that the deliberations be “transparent and impartial,” and involve industry players in the field. However, scientists believe industry “should not be allowed to bias the process or conclusions.” Once completed, the analysis would offer the UN and WHO a guide for precautionary action.

Questions have surfaced about the safety of EMF among the scientific community and with the public, but it is largely absent from national debate despite the ubiquitous use of devices, particularly in the United States.

“…In the United States, where non-industry-funded studies are rare, where legislation protecting the wireless industry from legal challenges has long been in place…to suggest it might be a problem – maybe, eventually, a very public-health problem – is like saying our shoes might be killing us,” wrote journalist Christopher Ketchum in a 2010 GQ article called “Warning: Your Cell Phone May Be Hazardous to Your Health.”

Ketchum said a 2008 study sponsored by the International Agency for Research on Cancer in France reported that after a decade of cellphone use, the chances of getting a brain tumor – specifically on the side of the head where you use the phone – go up as much as 40 percent for adults.

May 13, 2015 Posted by aletho | Science and Pseudo-Science | Biology, Health, Internet, Science, SciTech, UN, USA | Leave a comment

Psychiatric drugs kill 500k+ Western adults annually, few positive benefits – leading scientist

RT | May 13, 2015

Psychiatric drugs lead to the deaths of over 500,000 people aged 65 and over annually in the West, a Danish scientist says. He warns the benefits of these drugs are “minimal,” and have been vastly overstated.

Research director at Denmark’s Nordic Cochrane Centre, Professor Peter Gøtzsche, says the use of most antidepressants and dementia drugs could be halted without inflicting harm on patients. The Danish scientist’s views were published in the British Medical Journal on Tuesday.

His scathing analysis will likely prove controversial among traditional medics. However, concern is mounting among doctors and scientists worldwide that psychiatric medication is doing more harm than good. In particular, they say antipsychotic drugs have been over-prescribed to many dementia patients in a bid to calm agitated behavior.

Gøtzsche warns psychiatric drugs kill patients year in year out, and hold few positive benefits. He says in excess of half a million citizens across the Western world aged 65 and over die annually as a result of taking these drugs.

“Their benefits would need to be colossal to justify this, but they are minimal,” he writes.

“Given their lack of benefit, I estimate we could stop almost all psychotropic drugs without causing harm.”

Gøtzsche, who is also a clinical trials expert, says drug trials funded by big pharmaceutical companies tend to produce biased results because many patients took other medication prior to the tests.

He says patients cease taking the old drugs and then experience a phase of withdrawal prior to taking the trial pharmaceuticals, which appear highly beneficial at first.

The Danish professor also warns fatalities from suicides in clinical trials are significantly under-reported.

In the case of antidepressants venlafaxine and fluoxetine, Gøtzsche casts doubt over their efficacy. He said depression lifts in placebo groups given fake tablets almost as promptly as groups who partake in official clinical tests.

He also stressed the results of trials of drugs used to treat schizophrenia are disconcerting, while those for ADHD are ambiguous.

Commenting on the negative side effects of such pharmaceutical drugs, Gøtzsche argued the “short-term relief” appears to be replaced by “long term harm.”

“Animal studies strongly suggest that these drugs can produce brain damage, which is probably the case for all psychotropic drugs,” he said.

“Given their lack of benefit, I estimate we could stop almost all psychotropic drugs without causing harm – by dropping all antidepressants, ADHD drugs and dementia drugs … and using only a fraction of the antipsychotics and benzodiazepines we currently use.”

“This would lead to healthier and more long-lived populations.”

Gøtzsche says psychotropic drugs are “immensely harmful” if used for prolonged periods.

“They should almost exclusively be used in acute situations and always with a firm plan for tapering off, which can be difficult for many patients,” he adds.

Gøtzsche’s views are sharply contradicted by many experts in the field of mental health. But others, including a diverse group of medical experts and institutions affiliated with the Nordic Cochrane Centre, argue otherwise. The Nordic Cochrane Centre is an independent research hub dedicated to scrutinizing and monitoring the effects of health care.

The debate on psychiatric drugs has gathered momentum in recent times. In the discussion, published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), Gøtzsche’s arguments are contradicted by Professor of Mood Disorders Allan Young and John Crace. Crace, himself a psychiatric patient, writes for the Guardian.

Crace and Young say a broad body of research indicates the drugs are effective and that they are just as helpful as drugs for other ailments. They also argue mental health conditions are the fifth most significant contributor to disabilities worldwide.

While Gøtzsche stresses clinical trials bankrolled by pharma giants churn out skewered results, Young and Crace say the efficacy and safety of psychiatric medication continues to be monitored after research trials come to a close.

However, both Young and Crace acknowledge concern over the side effects and effectiveness of psychiatric medication.

“For some critics, the onus often seems to be on the drug needing to prove innocence from causing harm rather than a balanced approach to evaluating the available evidence,” they write.

“Whether concerns are genuine or an expression of prejudice is not clear, but over time many concerns have been found to be overinflated.”

The BMJ discussion is a preamble to the Maudsley debate at Kings College London on Wednesday. The debate takes place three times a year at the university’s Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN).

Wednesday’s debate focuses on the impacts of psychiatric medications, and poses the question of whether they prove more destructive for patients than beneficial.

May 13, 2015 Posted by aletho | Science and Pseudo-Science | Europe, Health, Science, UK, United States | Leave a comment

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China names world’s ‘hacking empire’

RT | March 15, 2022

Calling the US a “hacking empire” of the world, the Chinese Foreign Ministry urged Washington to stop “malicious” cyber activities following reports that American hackers subverted a network in China to launch attacks on Russia and Belarus.

“China is gravely concerned about cyberattacks against other countries that originate from the US and use China as a springboard,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian told reporters at a press briefing on Monday.

Zhao was commenting on recent Chinese media reports that hackers, mainly from the US but also from NATO allies Germany and the Netherlands, recently hijacked a Chinese computer network for cyberattacks, 87% of which targeted Russia.

“Against the background of the Ukraine situation, such a move may produce the negative effect of misleading the international community and spreading disinformation,” Zhao said, pointing out that “a former US senior official called publicly for launching cyberattacks on Russia not long ago.”

This appeared to be a reference to Hillary Clinton, former US secretary of state and presidential candidate, who made the calls in an MSNBC interview at the end of February. … continue

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