HSUS’s Ongoing War Against Animal Agriculture Suffers Another Significant Loss:

  “Pork, The Other White Meat” Lawsuit

WASHINGTON, D.C., Sept. 26, 2013 – After spending significant amounts of donor dollars, the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) was dealt a significant loss in U.S. District Court on Wednesday. In what was considered to be a futile legal challenge and a very personal attack on U.S. pork producers, a U.S. district judge Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit filed by HSUS over the National Pork Board’s purchase of the “Pork, The Other White Meat” trademark from the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC).

HSUS, which was joined in the suit by a lone Iowa pork producer and the Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) – and Secretary Tom Vilsack – over approval of the trademark purchase and the Pork Board’s annual payments to NPPC. HSUS argued that the sale and payments were unlawful since the Pork Board is prohibited from using checkoff dollars to influence legislation.

The court dismissed the HSUS case, ruling that the plaintiffs lacked standing and that no one had suffered any injury from the Agriculture Secretary’s actions.

NPPC applauded the Secretary’s willingness to defend the case and pork producers across this country. The Secretary’s actions should send a strong signal to HSUS supporters that frivolous lawsuits will not be tolerated and should not be pursued.

“If I were a donor to HSUS, I would be very disturbed that my money was wasted on yet another expensive lawsuit that had nothing to do with improving the welfare of farm animals,” said NPPC President Randy Spronk, a pork producer from Edgerton, Minn.

 “This is clearly a vendetta against the U.S. pork industry by the leadership of HSUS, which has made their mission to permanently end animal agriculture very clear. It was frivolous and a waste of the taxpayers’ money and the court’s time. HSUS donors deserve better than that.”

For more information regarding the case of HUMANE SOCIETY OF THE UNITED STATES et al v. VILSACK, click her

Unprecedented concentration of sea creatures near shore in California; escaping radiation?

MONTEREY, Calif. — It began with the anchovies, miles and miles of them, their silvery blue bodies thick in the waters of Monterey Bay.

Large numbers of whales have congregated off Monterey Bay to the delight of camera-wielding whale watchers like the ones aboard Nancy Black’s Sea Wolf II.

Sea lions have also been attracted by an enormous late bloom of anchovies.

Enlarge This Image

Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Guests on the Sea Wolf II examined a piece of the filter system in a whale’s mouth.

Then the sea lions came, by the thousands, from up and down the California coast, and the pelicans, arriving in one long V-formation after another. Fleets of bottlenose dolphins joined them.

But it was the whales that astounded even longtime residents — more than 200 humpbacks lunging, breaching, blowing and tail flapping — and, on a recent weekend, a pod of 19 rowdy orcas that briefly crashed the party, picking off sea lions along the way.

“I can’t tell you where to look,” Nancy Black, a marine biologist leading a boat full of whale watchers last week, said as the water in every direction roiled with mammals. “It’s all around.”

For almost three months, Monterey and nearby coastal areas have played host to a mammoth convocation of sea life that scientists here say is unprecedented in their memories, inviting comparisons to African scenes like the wildebeest migration or herds of antelope on the Serengeti. 

Humpback whales, pelicans and sea lions are all common summer sights off the Monterey coast, with its nutrient-rich waters. But never that anyone remembers have there been this many or have they stayed so long, feeding well into November. 

“It’s a very strange year,” said Baldo Marinovic, a research biologist with the Institute for Marine Sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz. 

What has drawn the animals is a late bloom of anchovies so enormous that continuous, dense blankets of the diminutive fish are visible on depth sounders. The sea lions, sea birds and humpbacks (which eat an average of two tons of fish a day) appear to have hardly made a dent in the population. Last month, so many anchovies crowded into Santa Cruz harbor that the oxygen ran out, leading to a major die-off. 

Marine researchers are baffled about the reason for the anchovy explosion.

“The $64,000 question is why this year?” said Dr. Marinovic, who noted that anchovies had been unusually scarce for the last five or six years and that when they do thrive, they usually appear in the spring and early summer. 

He and other scientists speculated that a convergence of factors — a milder than usual fall, a strong upwelling of colder water, the cycling of water temperatures in the bay — have created what Dr. Marinovic called “the perfect storm.” 

“Now they’re all kind of concentrating on the coast,” he said of the anchovies. “They seem to seek out Monterey Bay because the water tends to be a little warmer and the eggs will develop quickly.” The fish, he said, “are providing a feast for all these things that feed on them.”

The frenzy has been a boon for whale-watching companies like Monterey Bay Whale Watch, of which Ms. Black is the owner, and for their customers. 

In a normal season, passengers are lucky to see one or two humpbacks and a single whale breaching. On the trip last week, more than 60 whales were spotted feeding in the deep water of the canyon offshore, and the breaches were almost too numerous to count — in one case, two whales arced their bodies out of the water in unison, like competitors in an Olympic synchronized swimming event.

 Foul-smelling whale breath occasionally permeated the air. Ms. Black said that for the first time this year — she has studied whales here since 1986, specializing in orcas — she has seen evidence that the humpbacks are feeding cooperatively with groups of thousands of sea lions. 

The sea lions dive simultaneously, surfacing a few minutes later. They herd the anchovies into tight balls, called bait balls, and the whales scoop them up, several hundred in a mouthful. Food is plentiful enough that the giant cetaceans — an adult male humpback measures 45 to 50 feet in length, Ms. Black said, and weighs a ton per foot — can afford to take breaks to play. 

The humpback population off the California coast, once rapidly decreasing, has rebounded with restrictions on hunting, to about 2,000, experts say. Many whales and sea lions have been congregating to feed near the rim of the Monterey Submarine Canyon offshore. Bottlenose dolphins — groups of 100 or more have been spotted this year — feed closer in. 

In most years, the humpbacks would have departed for Mexico weeks ago and the pelicans flown south. But with the anchovies still in abundance, no one is sure how long they will stay. They could remain through December, scientists said, or depart any day.

“I hope it doesn’t end,” Ms. Black said. “But it will.”

Fukushiima Radiation Headed Toward SoCal Beaches

Not a lot of good news has been coming out of Japan lately. This week at the United Nations COP 19 climate talks meeting in Warsaw it was announced that Japan will renege on its carbon emissions pledge. This means that instead of lowering its emissions of greenhouse gases by 2020 its emissions will actually increase based on 1990 levels. The reason Japanese officials give is because of the shutdown of its fifty nuclear power plants, which will mean more reliance on fossil fuels to meet its energy needs.

Of course, the shutting down of the nuke plants is not a bad thing, especially in light of the Fukushima disaster which until very recently seems to have been suffering from a bit of a news blackout by the mainstream corporate media. This is especially troubling given the imminent passage of a new censorship law in Japan that could make reporting news about Fukushima a crime in the name of protecting state’s secrets (gee, sound familiar?).

How much you know about the situation on the ground at the crippled Daiichi plant depends on how much you are intentionally seeking the information. Many people I talk to still don’t seem to fully comprehend the scope of the problem, likely because it hasn’t dominated the evening news. There is a lot to know but the most troubling facts are

1), that 300 tons of radioactive water have been spilling into the Pacific Ocean every day and is seeping into the groundwater; 2) the clean-up process is so risky that it continues to be delayed and has been called the world’s It’s also been called “the potentially the biggest ticking time bomb in human history.”

The crisis is obviously bad enough for the Japanese, but what keeps me awake at night is the radioactive plume making its way across the Pacific. It worries me because I live in a Southern California beach community, and as surfers committed to a healthy lifestyle, my family and I spend a lot of time in the ocean. I think also of the many Native nations in the US and Canada whose ancient ways of life depend on the “big waters” of the Pacific and this is just the newest threat to those ways.

Perceptions of the seriousness of the radioactive plume (to say nothing of the radiation being released into the atmosphere) seem to, not surprisingly, run along ideological lines between those who support nuclear energy and those who don’t. On the anti-nuclear side, high profile experts such as Helen Caldicott and David Suzuki mince no words about the danger it poses, especially to the North American west coast, to say nothing of all the life in the ocean. Other more conservative industry experts tend to downplay the seriousness of the radioactive plume, saying the ocean will dilute the radioactive particles to negligible levels. Naturally, they are critical of the anti-nuke voices.

The proliferation of nuclear energy is a symptom of the insanity of Western-based modern science. It is reflective of a people who have so little respect for life that they are willing to sacrifice their own grandchildren’s generation to satisfy today’s desires for wealth, all in the name of progress and the betterment of humanity.

That is what happens when you deem acceptable a technology that produces a waste byproduct so toxic and dangerous that not only is it impossible dispose of safely, but it remains life threatening for tens of thousands of years.

Although Japan was victimized by America's use of nuclear weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it has fully embraced the values and technology of Western (i.e. Euro-American) culture. But in Fukushima’s wake a growing chorus of Japanese intellectuals is denouncing Japan’s attachment to nuclear power. Professor Mitsui Murata, former Japanese Ambassador to Switzerland, said in a video widely circulating the internet that “the Japanese people realize from experience that nuclear energy generates unacceptable calamities…Japan must assume the historic role of promoting denuclearization, both civilian and military.”

In another fascinating documentary which highlights two of Japan’s top philosophers, Fukushima is characterized by the renowned Takeshi Umehara as a “civilization disaster,” because “civilization” as we know it is based on Western philosophic ideas. “Humanity cannot survive with Western philosophy,” Umehara declares.

 He calls for Japan to turn to its ancient ways of thinking to escape the “dead end of Western philosophy” and build a new civilization. Inspired by ancient Buddhist concepts and those from Japan’s indigenous Ainu people, Umehara embraces principles very similar to the principles of indigenous peoples in the US. For example, the concepts emphasize a nature-centered existence where everything in nature has a spirit and humans and nature are interconnected. It also stresses that recognizing the continuity with an enduring past translates to a reverence for nature that is required in order for life to go on.

To me this sounds an awful lot like our concept of thinking ahead 7 generations in order to take right action today. Humanity’s addiction to nuclear power, like its addiction to fossil fuels, must end. And this is the number one lesson from Fukushima.

Dina Gilio-Whitaker (Colville) is a freelance writer and Research Associate at the Center for World Indigenous Studies. She was educated at the University of New Mexico and holds a bachelor’s degree in Native American Studies and a master’s degree in American Studies.

New Fukushima Radiation Release Estimates

Combined Air & Sea Releases

This is one of the questions we are asked the most, “how much radiation was released from Fukushima”.

Many of the estimates out there are old initial estimates of the meltdown phase and do not include radiation releases over the years.

In our effort to answer this question we found a wide variety of research and estimates.

 With time researchers were able to use other tools and testing to create a better idea about how much has been released.

These estimate ranges are presented to give an idea of the broad range of official estimates and are not a specific scientific study. What these widely divergent estimates show is that there is a need for more honest and accurate study of this issue.

Fukushima Vs. Chernobyl

We looked at these two disasters since they are frequently compared to each other. The extremely high levels, all in petabecquerels are problematic even if there is a considerable difference between the two.

Fukushima Releases To The Air

These numbers were established by using the range of estimates that were either “all radiation”  or at least included cesium 137 and iodine 131 for the initial phase of the disaster. The estimates for the years following the accident are based on TEPCO’s admitted hourly release rates. These totals are for the time period through December 12, 2013

Air high:   16886 Pbq
Air low:         900 Pbq

Fukushima Releases To The Sea

These numbers include initial releases and also over time releases based on oceanography institute estimates. These totals are for the time period through December 12, 2013

Sea high:     960 Pbq
Sea low:       520 Pbq

*does not include radiation that escaped via air but fell into the sea or that washed out to sea via rivers.

Fukushima Combined Releases To Sea & Air

Combined high: 17846 Pbq (74.5% of total inventory at the plant)
Combined low:     1420 Pbq (5.9% of total inventory at the plant)

Chernobyl Release Estimates

The release estimates provided by UNSCEAR were used for comparison.
Air:               8385 Pbq
Sea:                 20 Pbq
Combined:  8405 Pbq

NOTE:  There is much more data available on this site, linked in Post Subject. 

 March 25, 2011 Dr Helmut Hirsh of Greenpeace Germany released a statement that, according to analysis of radiation released to date, has reclassified Fukushima at Level 7, comparable to Chernobyl.

April 11, 2011 TEPCO reluctantly admitted that Fukushima was now a Level 7, the worst possible.  However, nobody disputes that it is multiple times worse than Chernobyl, yet there isn't any higher measurement.  If TEPCO had admitted it sooner, would people have taken other precautionary measures?

The total amount of radionuclides iodine-131 and caesium-137 released since the start of the accident until March 23rd 2011 is so high that they are equal to three class 7 accidents.  and it continues until stopped.

Chernobyl had one nuclear reactor and only 3 months of radiation while Fukushima has failures at four nuclear reactors which hold about 1,000 times more radiation than the bombs at Hiroshima, and 40 years of improper nuclear storage and numerous smaller nuclear events.  All federal agencies that regulate radioactive exposures agree that any radiation exposure raises the cancer risk.  But it isn't JUST cancer, RADIATION EXPOSURE  effects your entire health profile.

Chernobyl took aggressive action after only 10 days of burning out of control.  They dumped tons of sand and Boron and began entombment procedures.  TEPCO worsend the nuclear disaster by adding salt water!  Are they that incompetent, do they believe the laws of chemistry cease to exist in Japan, or is there something more deliberate going on?  Is this really about protecting future profits?

You can know what radiation is in your food, soils or environment by checking with Geiger Counters and Dosimeters

Or assume, as I do, that everything is potentially contaminated and will be for thousands of years.  Why not take every health precaution possible to minimize radiation effects?

 

Beaver Anal Secretions In Natural Flavors?

Yes, it's true. Millions of people across the globe are eating "beaver butt" and don't even know  that they're consuming such a substance. It's called "castoreum," and it's emitted from the castor sacs within the animal's anus.  For a beaver, this slimy brown substance is used to mark its territory, but for us  humans, it's used as an additive that is often labeled as "natural flavoring" in  the foods we eat - vanilla, strawberry and raspberry probably being the most  common. Why is castoreum used? The most notable characteristic (after being processed) has  to be  the smell of castoreum. Instead of smelling horrible, like most people would  expect from an  anally produced secretion, it has a pleasant scent, which supposedly  makes it a perfect candidate  for food flavoring and other products. The question that many people put forth would have to be "who in their right mind  actually made this odd discovery?" Another industry that utilizes castoreum is the fragrance world. For decades, perfume manufactures have been using it to make various types of fragrances. These anal  secretions are said to contain around  24 different molecules, many of which act as  natural pheromones. From perfumes to air fresheners,  castor sacs are quite versatile within the fragrance industry. Is it natural? Sure it's natural, but does "being natural" make it right to use or consume? Many disgusting substances are considered "natural," yet eating them may not be the best idea. The act of labeling something so vulgar and disgusting as "natural flavoring," should be illegal in many people's eyes, but the FDA views it all in a different light. Having the anal secretions from a beaver take the place of a strawberry in something  like strawberry ice cream hardly seems like an efficient process. Why go through the process  of harvesting "anal secretions" when a strawberry is much easier to pick? It hardly seems like a better option... The food industry is a tricky business to figure out, and it will continue to boggle the minds of  many on issues exactly like this. Much like with other additives that have raised concern over  the years (aspartame, high fructose corn syrup and food colorings), castoreum is proving to be  just as questionable. It's the deceptive labeling that seems to be the root of the problem. Instead of stating what  castoreum truly is, the FDA has allowed it to be labeled as something that sounds pleasant  and healthy. As with many questionable additives in today's food market, the power lies within the people.  Read your labels thoroughly if you wish to subtract these types of ingredients from your diet. In all honesty, castoreum is probably safe to consume, being that is derived from an animal,  but who\really wants to eat a beaver's anus? For further information on castoreum, be sure to check out the sources section below. Sources for this article include: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov http://beauty.about.com http://www.encyclopedia.com MORE INFO:  But the anal sacs are removed from beavers raised for their fur; it’s the second most valuable part of the animal.    Food use In the United States, castoreum is considered to be a GRAS food additive by the Food and Drug Administration.[10] It is often referenced simply as a "natural flavoring" in products ' lists of ingredients. While it is mainly used in both foods and beverages as part of a substitute vanilla  flavour,[11] it is less commonly used as a part of a raspberry or strawberry flavoring.[12] The annual industry consumption is very low, around 300 pounds,[13] whereas vanillin is over 2.6 million pounds annually.[14]

Teach Your Dog To Speak Before You Teach QUIET

Teaching your dog to speak on cue isn't just a cute trick; your dog needs to know the speak command before he can learn to be quiet when asked. Training your dog to "speak" and be "quiet" can be a great behavior management tool. If you haven't heard your dog's voice before you might be surprised, some are surprisingly LOUD!

Teach Your Dog To Stop Barking

Want To Train Your Cat To Use The Toilet?

A toilet-trained cat may seem like something only Hollywood could dream up, but you really can teach your cat to use the potty — and say goodbye to kitty litter forever. Inspired by a scene in the Ben Stiller film Meet the Parents, Jo Lapidge created the Litter Kwitter after she grew tired of cleaning up her cat’s litter. The potty training system is so effective that Lapidge claims it takes less time to toilet train a cat than a child.

Cats bury their waste in their litter largely to get rid of the smell. The Litter Kwitter works on the odor-elimination concept by giving cats the same satisfaction of hiding elimination smell by using the toilet, rather than burying their waste in the litterbox. Although cats can be trained to use the toilet without the Litter Kwitter, its step-by-step system is the simplest way to gradually introduce your cat to the toilet.

The Litter Kwitter

The Litter Kwitter is ideal for people looking to end litterbox woes of gritty floors and frequent cleanings. Bold, confident cats 3 months of age and up are ideal candidates for potty training.
But potty training isn’t the right fit for every kitty. Fearful kitties, arthritic felines or cats who already have difficulty using the litterbox are not the best candidates for toilet training.

 Going to the bathroom outside the litterbox is one of the top reasons cats are surrendered to shelters, so teaching your cat to consistently go in a designated area — either a litterbox or a toilet — is much more important than eliminating litter from your cat's routine.

Curious about how toilet training a cat works?

 Wondering if it could work for your cat?

Here’s the step-by-step process to get your cat reigning on the porcelain throne with the Litter Kwitter. (It does everything but teach your cat to flush!)

How the System Works

The Litter Kwitter system consists of four color-coded training trays that fit over the rim of a standard toilet. The first tray is a white rim that fits over the toilet seat and anchors the other trays. The second tray is red and has no hole but holds four to five cups of litter just like a regular litterbox; it hooks onto the white tray.
 
Start by placing the red tray (which has no hole) inside the white tray; put them both on the floor of the bathroom. Show your cat the litter and place her inside the tray. Put the regular litterbox away so her only choice is the Litter Kwitter system.

Clean the tray regularly throughout the day with non-ammonia-based cleaners. After meals or playtime, or when your cat wakes up, she should be taken to her bathroom area and praised for proper elimination. If you have more than one cat, you will need to get them used to sharing one litterbox before expecting them to share the Litter Kwitter and, eventually, one toilet.

Your cat should only move to the next level of training once she has made a habit of using the first tray without any accidents. If you have multiple household cats, progress at the pace of the slowest learner.

The next step is to get your cat to hop up onto the toilet seat. Practice at first with the lid down; set treats on the lid to lure your cat up. Most cats can easily jump onto the toilet, but for cats with any difficulty, a step stool can be used. Once your cat is comfortably hopping up onto the toilet, move the first Litter Kwitter tray from the floor to the porcelain rim of the toilet and clip it in place. The toilet seat can be left in either the up position or down on top of the Litter Kwitter.

Eliminating the Litter

Once your cat is comfortably going over the hole (this typically takes at least a couple of weeks), you’re ready for the green stage. The green tray has a large hole with a narrow recess into which you scatter only half a cup of litter. Gradually decrease the amount of litter in the tray, as your cat continues to successfully use the toilet.

Once the cat is reliably using the green tray without any litter in it, you can remove the Litter Kwitter system so there’s only a toilet seat left. At this point, celebrate! Your feline is officially potty trained and you have bragging rights galore. Just be ready to wait your turn when the kitty gets to the bathroom first.

Ensure that the bathroom door always stays open so your cat can easily access the potty whenever needed. If your cat eliminates outside the Litter Kwitter system, never punish her; this will just make her anxious. Instead, reward your feline for proper elimination with a treat or praise.

If needed, go back to an easier step such as the red stage — cats rarely learn new skills in a straight line, so going backward and forward during the training is perfectly natural.

NOTE:  Don't forget your doggy family members too.  If you don't like where they go potty, then this  Pee Post helps keep the pee where it should be!  Or this simple Pheromone Treated Yard Stake
will also help direct your pet, and maybe your husband or son, to where you want them going potty outside!

Teach Your Dog The Leave It Command

There are many temptations for dogs, from a chicken bone on the street to a baby bottle on the floor to the household cat. The leave it command can help your dog avoid danger or a potentially messy situation.

Sometimes, some dogs are particularly stubborn and will insist on negotiation or campaign contributions before they'll leave something of great value. That's not a problem, just bargain with them. If you want that cooked bone from them and they don't want to LEAVE IT, give them something of greater value, that could be different things to different dogs. Sometimes a ball, sometimes a different type of treat, maybe another command works, like SIT. Anything to disrupt their focus on what they have so you can nab it the second they drop it.

Realistically, not all dogs will always respond to their training, so in those cases, negotiate, you still come out the winner and you've saved your dog from the dangerous object.

Training Your Cat To Come When Called

Teaching your cat to come when called is not only handy but could save his life. If he escapes outside, you can call him back home.

You can also call him when inside the house to make sure he's accounted for before leaving the house, or to gather him up for a trip to the veterinarian.

If he's an indoor and outdoor cat, you can call him inside before you leave the house. You can call him to walk with you when your hands are full and the door is open.

And you can just call him to you when you want to visit with him. Even if he's an outdoor cat, you can call him home if a storm or other danger is looming.

Teach Your Cat to Come on Command

Your cat probably already comes when called — only he comes to the call of the electric can opener or the ping of dry cat food hitting his bowl. It's just one step to go from that to coming to the call of your voice or to a whistle — whistles aren't just for dogs!

Just as the sound of a can opener signals good food is on its way, your come command should also signal that good food comes to those who come. You should teach him that when called, it's not just good food, but wonderful food. Experiment to see what your cat really likes — tuna, cat treats, sardines — and reserve it only for those times you've called.

Although you could just play a recording of the can opener, that would be inconvenient, so instead, decide how you will call your cat. Use something you don't otherwise say during the day. "Here, kitty, kitty, kitty" is a favorite, or you could use a whistle.

Don't, however, simply use the cat's name. His name is just to get his attention; it should be followed by a cue to actually come. Everyone in the house should use the same way of calling.

A deaf cat can be trained to come to vibrations, such as thumping your foot on the floor, or to visual cues, such as a light flicking on and off.

NOTE:   This works so easily you might be surprised.  When feeding outdoor "guest" cats I would do so at the same time as I would feed the horses.  My lack of creativity didn't stop the kitties from quickly learning me singing MEOW, MEOW, MEOW, MEOW, MEOW meant yummy food was being delivered and they'd come running from across the pastures, out of the barn, down from trees.

The amusing part was that the horses also learned that it would mean their hay was also being delivered, so they'd come charging down from distant places, running, kicking up their heels to arrive snorting at their feeding area.

Teaching your animals to come is also a good way if you want to move their feeding location, just use your consistent CALL, and they'll show up.

Now, we have several areas of guest cats.  Some are fed over by the barn and others are fed on our South Porch.  Those on the south porch are triggered by dogs leaving the area.  The instant the last dog paw leaves the area, the cats start prancing up the stairs for their meal.  They learned the sequence of events based on the dogs activities.

7 Things Pet Owners Do That Drive Veterinarians Crazy

It’s a tough subject to tackle. After all, veterinarians do plenty of annoying things, too. But this particular post is all about you — well, not you, but the annoying yous among you. Not that most of you deserve this, but some of you just might! So without any further hedging, let me launch into the most annoying things pet owners do.

1. Answer Their Cells

Need I say more? Is there anything more annoying and disrespectful than answering a phone call while your vet is delivering her state-of-your-pet’s-health address? OK, it might be worse if you dug out your phone to initiate a call midexam, but only by a smidge. They’re both just plain rude.

2. Bring Their Kids

I dearly love children (mine mostly, but yours can also be cool), but very young or badly behaved children are an unnecessary liability in a veterinary environment. It’s hard enough to keep pets safe — much less kids. So unless your children are old enough and/or chill enough to hang out in a vet setting, they should probably stay home.
One exception: If your pet has an emergency and you have no one to care for your kids, you are most definitely excused. We’ll understand. Call ahead and we may even assign an employee to keep tabs on them so you can concentrate on what’s wrong with your pet.

3. Let Their Dogs Run Amok

This is not the dog park. And, for the record, retractable leads should remain in the shortest, locked position for the duration of your visit. After watching an innocent human get taken down in the lobby by an overlong retractable line, I decided there should be a law against these in vet hospitals.

4. Carry Their Cat

I've never been able to fathom why some owners insist upon bringing their cats to the vet hospital without carriers. Some will use harnesses, which won’t help them when faced with a truly motivated dog. And, honestly, I’d never blame a dog for attacking a cat in a veterinary hospital environment. After all, these cats are probably giving off cornered prey vibes that some dogs can't ignore.

Remember my post on cats in carriers? Cats are more comfortable in uncertain environments when they’re enclosed.

5. Deny, Deny, Deny

It drives us crazy. These clients effectively employ us to be their experts, then they put up roadblock after roadblock: No, my pet is not fat. No, my pet’s teeth are not rotting. No, he’s too old for surgery. No, her claws are not too long. It’s exasperating!
I can understand why you might (and should!) question your veterinarian about health care issues that are important to you, but why come to the vet if you’re unwilling to have an open dialogue about what your pet needs and doesn’t need?

6. Refuse to Pay

It happens more often than you’d think. Pet owners agree to hospitalization and procedures — and later refuse to pay. Sometimes they say that they forgot their checkbooks. Other times they claim to have misunderstood the payment policy, even though there’s a sign in almost every veterinary hospital in the United States that explains payment is expected when services are rendered. I even had a client cancel her Amex payment after we saved her anemic cat’s life with a blood transfusion.

7. Don’t Follow Through

There’s no shame in admitting that you can’t medicate your difficult cat or trim your unruly dog's toenails. Veterinarians are pet owners, too. We absolutely understand why you might not be able to manage these not-so-simple tasks.

But you’ve got to let us know if you can’t, don’t or won’t do what we say. After all, we have plenty of alternatives to offer. And there are few things more frustrating to a veterinarian than failing to treat a patient who could have been helped if only the vet were able to employ some ingenuity.
Want to give your veterinarian the best holiday gift ever?

 Resolve to be a more honest, open, conscientious, cat box-carrying, child care-finding, cell phone-shirking client. For my part, I promise to offer you a New Year’s post on my personal mea culpa. It’s a fair trade, don’t you think? That is, as long as I do as I say and follow through.

Five Out-of-Fashion Dog Breeds This Vet Misses

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The popularity of a dog breed can change faster than you can say “Yo quiero Taco Bell.” One day Chihuahuas are feisty, fun little dogs you’d see only occasionally; the next day (or so it seems), you have three of them back-to-back on your appointment calendar, and your local shelter is running a special on Chihuahua adoptions because there are so many looking for homes.

I see a lot of Chihuahuas over the exam room table these days, along with Labradoodles, Pit Bulls, Bulldogs and the eternally popular Labrador Retriever. I love them all, but I have to admit I do miss seeing some of the dogs who used to be in my waiting room, pets I rarely see now that they’ve lost the cachet they once enjoyed.

  Five Breeds That Used to Be More Popular

Here’s my list of five dog breeds I used to see a lot of, and miss seeing now.

1. Irish Setters: I used to see a lot of these bouncy red dogs in my practice. I know the rub is that they’re too energetic and not the brightest bulb on the light string, but the ones I used to know were great family dogs who loved to be around people and really wanted to please. I miss their smiling faces and the feathered tails that never stop wagging.
2. Scottish Terriers: These stylish, strong-minded dogs can be difficult to handle, since they are terriers through and through. In my family we’ve loved a lot of terriers, including our forever-missed Wire-Haired Fox Terrier, Scooter, so I understand some of the challenges. These days I’m more likely to see a Scottie on a Monopoly board than on an exam table. Too bad, because these high-style pups really know how to make an entrance.
3. Collies: When Lassie is in, so are Collies. Otherwise, their size and the challenges of their massive, beautiful coat no doubt put many people off. And that’s a shame, because a good Collie, while not likely to be saving Timmy from the well every day, is a great family dog — smart, loving and always keeping an eye on his flock.

 Anyone Need a Great Little Hunter?

4. Brittanys: I suspect that as hunting has become less common as a sport, the breeds so closely associated with the pursuit have fallen out favor. And that’s unfortunate, because the Brittany is a dog that can do more than just hunt. The Brittany's compact size makes him a good match for an active family, and he's a natural at modern-day canine sporting events such as agility.
5. Cocker Spaniels: These little bird dogs were top of the heap for decades, the most sought-after of all purebred dogs. Their reign at the top of the American Kennel Club rankings finally ended with a wave of Poodles. I still see a fair number of Poodles — and even more Poodle-oodle mixes — but Cockers are relatively rare. And that’s a shame, because like the Irish Setter, these dogs are sweet, beautiful and full of fun.

Make no mistake: I love all the dogs — and cats — I see whether on the street or over the exam room table, and I live to help them all be healthier and happier. But I do miss some of the dogs who used to be so popular. I know, however, that they’re only one hit TV show, movie or commercial away from being popular again.

Your dog is 10,000 years older than scientists thought

 


The domestic dog originated from wild European wolves in the Stone Age before the development of farming, when humans hunted and gathered their food, according to a genetic analysis of ancient canine remains.


Scientists have long puzzled over how domestic dogs came into existence and their efforts have centred on the grey wolf, their closest living relatives of dogs, but there is conflicting evidence on when and where wild wolves were first tamed.

Earlier studies suggested that wolves may have been domesticated by the first farmers about 10,000 years ago in the Middle East or Asia, possibly to guard livestock. However, the latest study has found that it began much earlier in Europe, long before the development of agriculture.

Professor Robert Wayne of the University of California at Los Angeles said that an ancient European lineage of grey wolf, which has since gone extinct, is the most likely direct ancestor of the first domesticated dogs based on similarities in genetic sequences.

"We found that instead of recent wolves being closest to domestic dogs, ancient European wolves were directly related to them. This brings the genetic record into agreement with the archaeological record - Europe is where the oldest dogs are found," Professor Wayne said.

The study, published in the journal Science, analysed the mitochondrial DNA of ten ancient "wolf-like" animals and eight "dog-like" canines, mostly from Europe. The age of the remains ranged between 1,000 and 30,000 years old.

These DNA sequences were compared with the DNA from present-day dogs and wolves. This showed a clear relationship between modern dogs and ancient European wolves, but not between modern dogs and modern wolves, Professor Wayne said.

"None of those [modern] wolf populations seemed to be closest to domestic dogs. We thought one of them would be, because they represent wolves from the three possible centres of dog domestication, but none was. All the wolves formed their own group, and all the dogs formed another group," Professor Wayne said.

However, modern dogs were found to be closely related to the ancient wolves that had lived in Europe before they became extinct. The scientists reckoned that the domestication must have occurred about 20,000 or 30,000 years ago.

"If domestication occurred in association with hunter-gatherers, one can imagine wolves first taking advantage of the carcasses that humans left behind - a natural role for any large carnivore - and then over time moving more closely into the human niche through a co-evolutionary process," Professor Wayne said.

Previous studies showing a link between domestic dogs and wolves living in the Middle East may have been confused by interbreeding between ancient domesticated dogs and wild wolves living in that region, he said. "It does not necessarily suggest an origin in the Middle East," he added.

"This alternative hypothesis, in retrospect, is one that we should have considered more closely. As hunter-gatherers moved around the globe, their dogs trailing behind probably interbred with wolves," Professor Wayne said.

Further genetic studies based on the DNA of the chromosomes rather than the mitochondria, could finally confirm the European origin of the domestic dog, he added.

Fukushima plume headed to West Coast isn’t just going to pass by like smoke, plant continues to spew into ocean; Pacific to be full of contamination, it’s a gigantic experiment — Host: Amazing how many people are in denial

Date:	11-09-13
Host:	John B. Wells
Guests:	Arnie Gundersen, David Blume, Dr. John Apsley, Steven Starr

John B. Wells was joined by four experts, Arnie Gundersen, David Blume, Dr. John Apsley and Steven Starr, for a discussion on the seriousness and scope of the Fukushima situation.

"There's an enormous amount of radiation getting into the ocean and it's not going to go away for years," Gundersen said, noting that the crippled nuclear power plant continues to leak cesium and strontium into the sea. A radioactive plume containing Cesium-137 and Cesium-134 is moving across the Pacific and will likely hit the U.S. West Coast within six to twelve months, he warned.

 Fish at the top of the food chain are getting contaminated, Gundersen continued, pointing to the bluefin tuna caught near California five months after accident that tested positive for cesium. He also talked about Japan's plan to construct an underground ice wall to prevent additional contaminated water from flowing into the ocean.

David Blume expounded on how radiation from Fukushima will affect biological systems, citing the Chelyabinsk incident in the former Soviet Union involving the explosion of buried radioactive waste. Over 300 square miles of land were initially contaminated but the radiation continued to spread over the next decade via the food chain, he reported.

According to Blume, Fukushima may be much worse off because the hundreds of steel storage tanks holding contaminated water are so radioactive that no one can get near them now. "It's the same kind of scenario as Chelyabinsk where the more we handle this stuff the more problems we have and the farther it spreads," he said. Blume recommended putting an end to the risk by replacing nuclear power with an alternative that is safe for the environment. Electric turbines can be run on alcohol produced from crops with no pollution as they are doing in Brazil, he noted.

Dr. John Apsley spoke about the effects of radioactive iodine exposure on thyroid function. Once radioactive iodine hits the thyroid its function is permanently impaired which in turn suppresses the immune system, he explained. CDC data shows a significant increase in death rates attributable to radioactive iodine given off by the Fukushima disaster, he added.

Apsley is concerned that moving unit 4 may cause another criticality event involving radioactive iodine. Should this happen the West Coast will be hit in six days followed by the East Coast within nine days, he cautioned, noting that increase deaths in infants and the elderly will follow wherever rain dumps the radioactive iodine.

 Apsley also revealed how a relatively inexpensive assortment of dietary supplements can quench the effects of radioactive particles.

Steven Starr spoke about the poor design of the Fukushima nuclear facility, with reactors placed too closely together. "A serious accident at one [reactor] could make the rest of the site unapproachable," he said, presenting a worst case scenario based on the proximity of the reactors to one another.

According to Starr, if the fuel pool in unit 4 collapses, it will release enough gamma radiation to kill anyone within 500 feet and effectively prevent anyone from accessing another pool where older spent fuel rods are stored. That pool could then boil off causing another radioactive release of Cesium-137, he said.

 There is a potential that at some point you would not be able to get to any of the Fukushima reactors and you'd eventually have to evacuate all of Tokyo, Starr warned.

• fairewinds.org
• alcoholcanbeagas.com
• doctorapsley.com
• nucleardarkness.org

Surprising Foods with More Sugar Than a Krispy Kreme Doughnut

 

by Dr. Mercola

A major new report by Credit Suisse Research Institute¹ explores the impact of sugar and sweeteners on humans' diets, with some shocking revelations and statistics.
Worldwide, the average person consumes 70 grams of sugar and high-fructose corn syrup per day (that's 17 teaspoons), up 46 percent from three decades ago.

Yet, in countries like the US, Brazil, Australia and Mexico, sugar consumption is actually much higher, averaging 40 teaspoons per person per day for Americans (compared to just seven for those living in China).

And when children younger than 4 are removed from the mix, sugar consumption in the US rises by another 5-10 percent! It's a shocking amount of sugar, but what is even more startling is the potential damage it can do to your health.

9 Foods With More Sugar Than a Doughnut

While you may consider yourself savvy when it comes to spotting sugar-laden foods, the report revealed some real sugar shockers. Before we get into just how troublesome all of this excess sugar may be, let's first look at how stealthily it is hidden in some seemingly healthful foods.

The following nine foods all have more sugar than a Krispy Kreme doughnut (which, for comparison, contains 10 grams of sugar):

1. Luna bar: 11 grams of sugar
2. Grande Starbucks latte: 17 grams
3. Subway 6" sweet onion teriyaki chicken sandwich: 17 grams
4. Tropicana orange juice, 8 ounces: 22 grams
5. Yoplait original yogurt: 27 grams
6. Vitamin Water, 20 ounces: 33 grams
7. Sprinkles red velvet cupcake: 45 grams
8. California Pizza Kitchen Thai chicken salad: 45 grams
9. Odwalla superfood smoothie, 12 ounces: 50 grams

Added Sugars Represent 17 Percent of the Average US Diet

… but when all forms of sugars are included, the data suggests that sugar makes up 38 percent of the typical US diet.
Among added sugars, 43 percent come from sweetened beverages, which is concerning since it's now known that calories in liquid form are processed differently by your body than those consumed in solid form. The report noted:²

"Mattes et al³ demonstrated that ingesting a beverage did not impact the amount of calories that were ingested during a subsequent meal or in the 24-hour period after the beverage was consumed.
When a solid food was given, however, the number of calories that were ingested in the following meal and in the following 24-hour period was reduced, suggesting the solid calories that had been ingested were processed in a different way, either in the intestine or in the central nervous system, so that the body appropriately adjusted its subsequent calorie intake.

With calories from liquids, however, the body does not seem to compensate and the calories are "added on" to what the person would have ingested anyway."

In all, the major sources of added sugars in the typical US diet are as follows:

• Regular soft drinks (33 percent)
• Sugars and candy (16.1 percent)
• Cakes, cookies, pies (12.9 percent)
• Fruit drinks (9.7 percent)
• Dairy desserts and milk products (ice cream, sweetened yogurt and sweetened milk) (8.6 percent)
• Other grain-based products (cinnamon toast and honey-nut waffles) (5.8 percent)

Is There a Human Sugar Threshold?

Health conditions such as obesity, diabetes and metabolic syndrome have all been rising with rates of sugar consumption, leading many to assume that there is a dose-response relationship, i.e. the more sugar you consume, the greater your risk of health problems becomes.

The report noted an interesting alternative theory, which is that the linear dose-response model may be too simplistic. Instead, there may be a threshold level in the body for sugar below which it causes little or no harm … but once you pass it, health problems may emerge. Consuming small amounts of sugar may not be a problem, but consuming sugar by the pound certainly is.

"While medical research is yet to prove conclusively that sugar is the leading cause of obesity, diabetes type II and metabolic syndrome, the balance of recent medical research studies are coalescing around this conclusion.

Advances in understanding the negative effects of refined carbohydrates on blood sugar regulation and cholesterol, and the metabolic impacts of fructose, are undermining the traditional view that all calories are the same," the report stated.

Indeed, the notion that "a calorie is a calorie" has been firmly debunked by science. Not all calories count equally. And the "calories in, calories out" hypothesis for maintaining weight has equally been shown to be incorrect. It is in fact FAR more important to look at the source of the calories than counting them if you're trying to lose weight.

In short, you do not get fat because you eat too many calories and don't exercise enough. You get fat because you eat the wrong kind of calories. At the end of the day, your consumption of carbohydrates, whether in the form of grains and sugars (especially fructose), will determine whether or not you're able to manage your weight and maintain optimal health. This is because these types of carbs (sugar, fructose and grains) affect the hormone insulin, which is a very potent fat regulator. Fats and proteins affect insulin to a far lesser degree.

Why Calories From Fructose May be Especially Detrimental – The Fat Switch

Fructose is in fact far worse than other carbs because the vast majority of it converts directly to FAT, both in your fatty tissues and in your liver. And this is why counting calories does not work ... As long as you keep eating fructose and grains, you're programming your body to create and store fat.

Research by Dr. Richard Johnson, chief of the Division of Renal Diseases and Hypertension at the University of Colorado and author of The Sugar Fix and The Fat Switch, demonstrates that large portions of food and too little exercise are NOT solely responsible for why you are gaining weight. Rather it's fructose-containing sugars that cause obesity – not by calories, but by turning on your "fat switch," a powerful biological adaptation that causes cells to accumulate fat in anticipation of scarcity (or hibernation). According to Dr. Johnson, based on his decades of research:

"Those of us who are obese eat more because of a faulty 'switch' and exercise less because of a low energy state. If you can learn how to control the specific 'switch' located in the powerhouse of each of your cells – the mitochondria – you hold the key to fighting obesity."

This Isn't Only About Weight Gain – Other Potential Health Effects of Excess Sugar

Excessive refined fructose consumption leads to insulin resistance, and insulin resistance appears to be at the root of many if not most chronic disease. Insulin resistance has even been found to be an underlying factor in the initiation and promotion of cancer. The research is quite clear … for instance, mice fed a diet containing 25 percent sugar – the equivalent of three cans of soda daily – were twice as likely to die as mice fed a similar diet without sugar.⁴

Refined fructose, in particular, also raises your uric acid levels – it typically generates uric acid within minutes of ingestion, which in turn can wreak havoc on your blood pressure, insulin production, and kidney function. So far, scientific studies have linked fructose to about 78 different diseases and health problems. For example, fructose may:⁵

Raise your blood pressure	Lead to insulin resistance / Type 2 diabetes	Be associated with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD)
Raise your uric acid levels, which can result in gout and/or metabolic syndrome	Accelerate the progression of chronic kidney disease	Contribute to intracranial atherosclerosis (narrowing and hardening of the arteries in your skull)
Exacerbate cardiac abnormalities if you're deficient in copper6	Have a genotoxic effect on your colon7	Promote metastasis in breast cancer patients
Cause tubulointerstitial injury (injury to the tubules and interstitial tissue of your kidney)	Promote obesity and related health problems and diseases	Promote pancreatic cancer growth

Where Else is Sugar Hiding?

You probably already know that table sugar, fruit juice and candy are high in sugar. But did you know that the following foods are also quite high in sugar also?

• Tomato sauce
• Granola bars
• Salad dressing
• Canned fruit
• Dried fruit

Manufacturers often label their products deceptively, claiming they are fat-free to distract you from a high sugar content, for instance. Check out the infographic below for even more shocking amounts of sugars in common foods.

Breaking Your Sugar Habit (Addiction)

When you eat sugar it triggers the production of your brain's natural opioids – a key initiator of the addiction process. Your brain essentially becomes addicted to stimulating the release of its own opioids. The intensity of this effect is experienced on the same level as morphine or heroin, and preliminary research in animals indicates that the pharmacological effects of sugar include dopaminergic properties, as it has recently been shown to be more addictive than intravenous cocaine.⁸

Researchers have speculated that the sweet receptors (two protein receptors located on your tongue), which evolved in ancestral times when the diet was very low in sugar, have not adapted to the seemingly unlimited access to a cheap and omnipresent sugar supply in the modern diet.

Therefore, the abnormally high stimulation of these receptors by our sugar-rich diets generates excessive reward signals in your brain, which have the potential to override normal self-control mechanisms, create tolerance and withdrawal symptoms, thus leading to addiction.

According to Dr. Robert Lustig, it is virtually impossible to exert enough cognitive willpower to overcome this 24/7 biochemical drive! That said, limiting or eliminating your sugar intake is the most effective way to break free from this disease-causing cycle. If you still want to use a sweetener occasionally, the sweet herb stevia makes a good, non-addictive sugar substitute.

(It is important to avoid ALL artificial sweeteners, which can damage your health even more quickly than sugar.)

If you currently eat sugar, there's a good chance you're struggling with sugar addiction.

So I highly recommend trying an energy psychology technique called Turbo Tapping, which has helped many "soda addicts" kick their sweet habit, and it should work for any type of sweet craving you may have. Remember that in order to minimize your sugar intake, you need to avoid most processed foods, as most contain added sugar. As mentioned, even savory foods like salad dressing, soup, and bread often contain sugar.

For optimal health, eat natural whole foods primarily, and limit your fructose consumption to below 25 grams per day, including that from fresh fruit. A couple of other tricks to try to kick your sugar cravings:

• Exercise: Anyone who exercises intensely on a regular basis will know that significant amounts of cardiovascular exercise is one of the best "cures" for food cravings. It always amazes me how my appetite, especially for sweets, dramatically decreases after a good workout. I believe the mechanism is related to the dramatic reduction in insulin levels that occurs after exercise. Additionally, if you do eat sugars or fruits if you do so around the time of the exercise your sugar levels will not rise as it will metabolized for fuel
• Organic, black coffee: Coffee is a potent opioid receptor antagonist, and contains compounds such as cafestrol – found plentifully in both caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee – which can bind to your opioid receptors, occupy them and essentially block your addiction to other opioid-releasing foods.^{9 10} This may profoundly reduce the addictive power of other substances, such as sugar.

How Vaccine Policy & Law Threatens Parental Rights in America

By Dr. Mercola

"THE GREATER GOOD looks behind the fear, hype and politics that have polarized the vaccine debate in America today.
The film re-frames the emotionally charged issue and offers, for the first time, the opportunity for a rational and scientific discussion on how to create a safer and more effective vaccine program."

This film recently received the 2nd annual "Koroni Award for a documentary feature addressing an issue of importance to public health" at the Sidewalk Film Festival.
It also received the Cinematic Vision Award at the 2011 Amsterdam Film Festival. From my point of view, this film couldn't be more timely and, if you have any interest in the vaccine controversy, is a must see.

I sincerely hope you will share this article with family, close friends and social networks, and urge everyone you know to take the time to watch it.
Barbara Loe Fisher summarizes the purpose of the film rather succinctly when she says that the issue of vaccines, "has become so polarized – you're either pro-vaccine or you're anti-vaccine."

"When you take a centrist position, like the National Vaccine Information Center, you are automatically put into the category of being anti-vaccine. But the truth is, we're just trying to make vaccine policies and vaccines safer."

Individual Rights versus Politics

The Greater Good "weaves together the stories of families whose lives have been forever changed by vaccination," and shows how modern medicine, especially when driven by politics and big business, can rob you of some of your most basic rights. The results of such politically- and financially-driven policies can be devastating and one movie reviewer, who saw the groundbreaking documentary, commented:

"What's being said is staggering, especially if you don't know too much about the science of, and politics behind, vaccines." – LA Weekly

But this film is focused on analyzing what can be done to create positive change and reduce irrational fears so parents and doctors can work together to minimize vaccine risks vaccine risks to individuals and our population.

The film seeks to open the channels of communication between parents, doctors, and policy makers to listen and learn from each other in order to begin a rational discussion about vaccine safety. After all, don't all of us want our kids to be healthy and safe from unnecessary harm?

In order to ensure the safety of as many children as possible, we cannot continue to ignore the signs that maybe we've taken vaccines as our primary disease prevention strategy too far; to the point that we're now seeing too many people being hurt.

Unlike many other TV programs and documentaries on this topic, The Greater Good takes care to acknowledge both doctors and scientists, who advocate for mass, mandatory vaccination policies as well as those, who question the science, policy and ethics of current vaccine policies.

From my point of view, there can be little doubt that we need to review the safety and effectiveness of the current vaccination program in the U.S., and this review needs to include methodologically sound investigative science. If we don't do that now, we may not be able to stop further damage to the health of future generations of children.

Incomplete Science Shapes US Vaccination Policies

Public health officials have long insisted that vaccines are the best way to protect the public health. As a result, the number of doses of vaccines included in the childhood vaccination schedule has tripled over the past 30 years, from 23 doses of seven different vaccines in 1980 to 69 doses of 16 different vaccines in 2010.

However, alongside the rise in administered vaccines, we've also seen a significant rise in children with chronic disease and disabilities. For whatever reason, our kids are getting sicker. Infant mortality has also risen. In 1960, America ranked 12th in infant mortality among all nations of the world. By 2005, we ranked 30th.

Furthermore, more full term babies die before their first birthday in the US¹ than in most European countries, and the US gives its infants more vaccines than any other country in the world.

So, could it all be a coincidence?

The truth is, we don't know.

No one has formally and independently studied the health outcomes of vaccinated versus unvaccinated children, and this is something that needs to be done not just for each individual vaccine, but also for multiple vaccine combinations.

The research is INCOMPLETE, and that is a major part of the problem. How can you claim a pharmaceutical product like a vaccine is safe for everyone and that using multiple vaccines from day of birth throughout childhood is a wise public health policy when that policy has not been adequately studied? As a nation, the U.S. is gambling the health of its citizens on assumptions.
As stated in the film:

"The certainty is not scientific."

Vaccines are currently approved based on the research submitted to the government by the drug companies that have developed the new vaccine and funded the pre-licensure studies. Many of the studies drug companies conduct do not use true placebos and have only a few hundred or a few thousand healthy people enrolled, who do not match the health profile of the millions of people told to get the vaccine after it is licensed.

The safety of vaccine policies are primarily based on the word of the companies that produce and profit from vaccines and enjoy a liability shield from vaccine injury lawsuits in civil court that was given to them by Congress and the Supreme Court.
Is this wise?

Furthermore, the mass vaccination program takes a one-size-fits-all strategy approach. It does not acknowledge that we are all individuals with different predispositions and health status, which can play a significant role in how we react to vaccines or prescription drugs. For example, research by Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride indicates that children with compromised gut flora are particularly prone to vaccine damage.

Currently there is almost no individual screening done by most doctors to assess whether an individual is at high risk for having a vaccine reaction that can end in serious health problems or even death. Wouldn't it make sense to do everything possible to minimize vaccine risks?

After all, while increasing numbers of parents opt to delay vaccinations or opt out of vaccines for their children, there are many parents who want to vaccinate their children and they deserve to have confidence that everything possible is being done to minimize vaccine risks for their child.

Being able to easily and inexpensively decrease a child's chances of experiencing an adverse reaction should be embraced and encouraged by all health officials and doctors rather than conveniently dismissing the legitimate vaccine safety concerns of parents as "anti-vaccine" and "anti-establishment."

Why We Should Urge Our Daughters to Be One Less Victim of Gardasil

In 2006, Merck released Gardasil, a vaccine designed to protect young girls and women against being infected with four strains of human papillomavirus (HPV). The idea was that if HPV infection, which is cleared asymptomatically within two years by more than 90 percent of those who get it, is that HPV associated cervical cancers in women would be prevented.

One of the three vaccine injury cases featured in The Greater Good movie is that of Gabi Swank, a 15-year-old honors student who decided to get the Gardasil vaccine after seeing a "Be One Less" Gardasil vaccine advertisement on TV. Like so many young girls, she wasn't warned about any possible side effects when she got the shots, which are given as a series of three injections.

Gabi is now a Gardasil injury statistic, a young girl permanently disabled by the vaccine.

At the time the documentary was filmed, she had already suffered two strokes and experienced partial paralysis. She also lost part of her vision and today suffers frequent seizures. When she was in high school, many days she had to use a wheelchair to get around school due to muscle pain and chronic fatigue.

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, recently issued an update on adverse reaction reports relating to Gardasil.² The documents obtained from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) detail 26 new deaths reported following HPV vaccination between September 1, 2010 and September 15, 2011. That's 26 deaths of young, previously healthy girls in just one year. Other serious side effects reported during that time frame included:

Seizures	Paralysis	Blindness	Pancreatitis
Speech problems	Short term memory loss	Guillain-Barre syndrome	Ovarian cysts

Between May 2009 and September 2010, 16 deaths occurred after Gardasil vaccination. For that time frame there were also 789 reports of "serious" adverse reactions, of which 213 resulted in permanent disability and 25 resulting in a diagnosis of Guillain Barre Syndrome, Judicial Watch reported.³

When Politics and Vaccine Safety Collide… You Usually Lose

According to Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton: "These reports raise additional concerns about Gardasil's questionable safety and provide ample reason to end the push to give it young girls and boys. And the CDC's continued caginess on reported deaths is disturbing. Federal, state, and local officials need to stop promoting this vaccine for children."

Unfortunately, many elected officials are doing just the opposite. Texas Governor Rick Perry is a perfect example. In 2007, he signed an Executive Order mandating all 11- and 12-year-old girls in Texas to get the HPV vaccine.⁴ Fortunately, the law was overturned two months later, after a firestorm of opposition. Many have now connected the dots and exposed his too-cozy ties to Merck,⁵ the maker of Gardasil. More recently, California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill allowing minors to be given Gardasil vaccine (and other vaccines for sexually transmitted diseases) without their parents' knowledge or informed consent.

Annual PAP Test Now Discouraged. Why?

According to recently updated guidelines by the federal Preventive Services Task Force,⁶ women over 21 are now to be dissuaded from annual PAP smears. Instead the panel recommends that women between 21 and 65 get a PAP smear test every three years, stating that "evidence is still insufficient to weigh harms and benefits of tests screening for human papillomavirus (HPV)."

Other cancer groups agree. As reported by Reuters:⁷ "'Everybody agrees on almost everything: Let's get rid of regular annual Pap testing, let's get rid of teenage screenings, let's screen women who aren't getting screened,' said Debbie Saslow, the American Cancer Society's director of breast and gynecologic cancer."

The problem with this stance is that PAP smears prevent cervical cancer deaths far more effectively than the HPV vaccine ever will. And it's hard to compare the potential side effects of the HPV vaccine with the potential side effects of PAP tests.

I've never heard of anyone dying or becoming paralyzed from a PAP smear…
Now, I don't necessarily disagree with their recommendation to reduce the frequency of PAP testing, but I question the double standard that is so readily visible here. Why are cancer groups recommending getting rid of a safe and effective screening method, which we know saves lives, while vigorously advocating the clearly risky HPV vaccine? For example, the National Cervical Cancer Coalition offers the following response to the question about Gardasil's safety:

"The FDA has licensed the vaccine as safe and effective. This vaccine has been tested in thousands of females (9 to 26 years of age) around the world. These studies have shown no serious side effects. The most common side effect is brief soreness at the injection site."

It does not even hint at the many thousands of serious adverse events reported after Gardasil vaccinations to the government's Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) since its approval, including 26 deaths in the past 12 months alone!

Furthermore, the death rate from cervical cancer in the United States is a mere 3 per 100,000. Your daughter has a much higher risk of dying in a car accident than she does dying from cervical cancer. Cervical cancer rates are even lower in some European countries. The reason why the mortality rate is so low is because the immune system's of the vast majority of women are usually strong enough to clear up this kind of infection on its own, and does so in more than 90 percent of all cases. The CDC even admits to this fact on their website.

For the 'Greater Good' – At What Price?

Rigidly maintaining the assumption that one-size-fits-all mass-vaccinations are necessary and "for the greater good" fails to take into account the possibility that there is harm being done to an increasing number of people, who are not being counted when vaccine benefit and risk calculations are done by health officials.

Keep in mind that to this day, we have NO reliable data indicating just how many children are truly being harmed by any particular vaccine, as adverse event reporting is completely voluntary. Many people are still unaware that the CDC's Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) even exists, or that you can file a report yourself if your doctor fails to make a report.

The CDC itself admits that only a small fraction of hospitalization, injuries and deaths after vaccination are ever reported. In one 1993 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, former FDA Commissioner David Kessler estimated that fewer than one percent of all doctors report injuries and deaths following the administration of prescription drugs. This estimate may be even lower for vaccines. According to Barbara Loe Fisher, one survey conducted by the NVIC in New York in 1994 revealed that only one doctor in 40 reported to VAERS.⁸

In an ideal world scenario, any and all adverse events would be reported following vaccination, and health outcomes would be evaluated long-term. Today, many doctors and health authorities simply dismiss adverse events as "unrelated" to the vaccine. But on what do they base their conclusions?

I urge you to take the time to watch The Greater Good, and start to think about some of the profound questions raised in the film. What we need is an open, intelligent, civil dialogue about how we can ensure the health and well-being of our children, and that doesn't mean it has to be all or nothing!

Everyone should be allowed to exercise voluntary, informed consent to vaccination and that means you should be able to use every recommended vaccine, some vaccines or no vaccines at all. We should all have the legal right to make informed, voluntary decision about any drug or vaccine or medical procedure that carries risk to our health or the health of our children.

When our government recommends doctors give children 69 doses of vaccines and many of those vaccines are mandated, safety MUST become the FIRST priority for public health officials, and doctors giving vaccines. It is essential that the appropriate studies be done to find out if the current vaccine schedule is doing far more harm than good.

Money and Ideology Influencing Vaccine Policy & Law: How Parental Rights Are Being Threatened in America

There's ample evidence showing that the US government, through the CDC, has an enormous, well-coordinated plan to mass-vaccinate with as many vaccines as possible.⁹ This plan has been ongoing for years, and has grown exponentially. They've covered all their bases by enjoining numerous legislative groups, such as Women In Government¹⁰ (whose sponsors¹¹ include Merck, Eli Lilly, and GlaxoSmithKline), and physicians' groups like the American Academy of Pediatrics. These are just two examples – there are literally dozens, and possibly more, groups and individuals that are collectively pushing vaccines.

Churches are one of the latest additions to the ever-growing list of organizations to be pulled into the fold of vaccine pushers. For example, last year, the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, along with the U.S. Health and Human Services, the Office of Minority Health, and the CDC, began reaching out to faith-based organizations, urging them to sponsor flu clinics with Walgreens.

The reason they're doing this, health officials said, is that they've found that non-traditional settings such as worship services can be highly effective in influencing people's decisions...

Pushing matters even further, in Indiana, a law now requires churches with day care centers to make sure each child has received "age appropriate" vaccines as determined by the state department of health¹² – effectively removing a parent's right to change their child's vaccine schedule. The old law only required parents to inform the church day care center that they objected to vaccines for religious reasons.

It did not make churches the enforcers of the state vaccine schedule.

When you follow the money, you realize that vaccine makers are the ones pulling the political strings to eliminate vaccine exemptions. Eliminating this right nationwide would be a major coup de gras in terms of making sure everyone is vaccinated with as many vaccines as possible.

Make no mistake about it, it's the Pharma-funded medical trade associations and state and federal health agency employees that are lobbying in state legislatures for non-medical vaccine exemptions to be removed, and it has everything to do with maximizing profits, and nothing to do with protecting people's health from every disease under the sun. The (ultimately unsuccessful) efforts to strip citizens in Vermont of their right to non-medical exemptions earlier this year is but one example of what is happening, and what the ultimate plan for the entire nation is...

Profit Before Safety

Naturally, there's BIG money driving all this. The pharmaceutical industry and its cohorts have been really creative about how to influence vaccine uptake. Positive and negative reinforcement strategies are simultaneously employed, from strong-arming physicians with the threat of a bad health grade if they fail to have a good vaccine rate in their practice, to monetary gifts and other ego-boosting incentives.¹³

Another strategy to increase vaccination rates and coverage is to push combination vaccines.¹⁴ This saves money and increases vaccination rates at the same time. Never mind the fact that most drug company pre-licensure studies do not study new combination vaccines given simultaneously with all the other vaccines licensed and recommended to demonstrate that giving children multiple doses of vaccines at the same time is actually safe.

The government is heavily funding the vaccine plan, in a number of different ways. As just one example, the federal government had $1,575,000 in grants available through June 15, 2012 to "increase adult immunization rates through healthcare provider partnerships."¹⁵ And then there's the "317 grant program," which funnels hundreds of millions of dollars toward vaccinations. As stated on the Coalition's website:¹⁶

"...in 2005, CDC awarded $431 million in federal grants to state, local, and territorial health agencies for program operations and vaccine purchase. Currently there are 64 grantees: all 50 states, six large cities, and eight territories and former territories."

At the same time, the CDC is now accepting handouts from, and encourages "partnerships" and "sponsorships" between vaccine makers and private physicians – which really is a form of conflict of interest – to further boost vaccine coverage. To that end, incentives such as cash and grocery gift cards have also been designed to give to parents so they'll want to vaccinate without any fuss.¹⁷ In 1994, the CDC also formed a foundation that that has numerous vaccine programs, many of which are sponsored by major pharma funds.¹⁸

And then there's Big Pharma's lobbying, which seems almost small compared to the "big incentive guns" that the CDC has pulled out in this effort... It all ties in to the Health and Human Services (HHS) updated National Vaccine Plan.¹⁹

What You Can Do to Make a Difference

While it seems "old-fashioned," the only truly effective actions you can take to protect the right to informed consent to vaccination and expand vaccine exemptions, is to get personally involved with your state legislators and the leaders in your community.

THINK GLOBALLY, ACT LOCALLY.
Mass vaccination policies are made at the federal level but vaccine laws are made at the state level, and it is at the state level where your action to protect your vaccine choice rights can have the greatest impact.

Signing up for NVIC's free Advocacy Portal at www.NVICAdvocacy.org not only gives you access to practical, useful information to help you become an effective vaccine choice advocate in your own community, but when national vaccine issues come up, you will have the up-to-date information and call to action items you need at your fingertips to make sure your voice is heard.

So please, as your first step, sign up for the NVIC Advocacy Portal.

Contact Your Elected Officials

Write or email your elected state representatives and share your concerns. Call them, or better yet, make an appointment to visit them in person in their office. Don't let them forget you!

It is so important for you to reach out and make sure your concerns get on the radar screen of the leaders and opinion makers in your community, especially the politicians you elect and are directly involved in making vaccine laws in your state. These are your elected representatives, so you have a right and a responsibility to let them know what's really happening in your life and the lives of people you know when it comes to vaccine mandates. Be sure to share the "real life" experiences that you or people you know have had with vaccination.

Share Your Story with the Media and People You Know

If you or a family member has suffered a serious vaccine reaction, injury or death, please talk about it. If we don't share information and experiences with one another, everybody feels alone and afraid to speak up. Write a letter to the editor if you have a different perspective on a vaccine story that appears in your local newspaper. Make a call in to a radio talk show that is only presenting one side of the vaccine story.

I must be frank with you; you have to be brave because you might be strongly criticized for daring to talk about the "other side" of the vaccine story. Be prepared for it and have the courage to not back down. Only by sharing our perspective and what we know to be true about vaccination will the public conversation about vaccination open up so people are not afraid to talk about it.

We cannot allow the drug companies and medical trade associations funded by drug companies to dominate the conversation about vaccination. The vaccine injured cannot be swept under the carpet and treated like nothing more than "statistically acceptable collateral damage" of national one-size-fits-all mass vaccination policies that put way too many people at risk for injury and death. We shouldn't be treating people like guinea pigs instead of human beings.

Internet Resources Where You Can Learn More

I encourage you to visit the following web pages on the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) website at www.NVIC.org:

• NVIC's Quick Fact Information on Diseases & Vaccines: Learn more about the 16 diseases and vaccines licensed and recommended by doctors for children and adults. Find out what the vaccine manufacturers, government and medical trade groups say, along with independent analyses and live links to references, so you can do your own research.
• NVIC Memorial for Vaccine Victims: View descriptions and photos of children and adults, who have suffered vaccine reactions, injuries and deaths. If you or your child experiences an adverse vaccine event, please consider posting and sharing your story here.
• If You Vaccinate, Ask 8 Questions: Learn how to recognize vaccine reaction symptoms and prevent vaccine injuries.
• Vaccine Freedom Wall: View or post descriptions of harassment by doctors or government officials for making independent vaccine choices.

Connect with Your Doctor or Find a New One that Will Listen and Care

If your pediatrician or doctor refuses to provide medical care to you or your child unless you agree to get vaccines you don't want, I strongly encourage you to have the courage to find another doctor. Harassment, intimidation, and refusal of medical care is becoming the modus operandi of the medical establishment in an effort to stop the change in attitude of many parents about vaccinations after they become truly educated about health and vaccination.

However, there is hope.

At least 15 percent of young doctors recently polled admit that they're starting to adopt a more individualized approach to vaccinations in direct response to the vaccine safety concerns of parents. It is good news that there is a growing number of smart young doctors, who prefer to work as partners with parents in making personalized vaccine decisions for children, including delaying vaccinations or giving children fewer vaccines on the same day or continuing to provide medical care for those families, who decline use of one or more vaccines.

So take the time to locate a doctor, who treats you with compassion and respect and is willing to work with you to do what is right for your child.