Guest Post by Steven Miller

(This is the 1^st of three guest blogs by Steven Miller about Obama’s BRAIN Initiative and Wall Street’s broader agenda of privatizing all aspects of medical treatment and research. In this post, Miller describes a parallel process in which Big Pharma used their relative monopoly on anti-retrovirals to exclude third world countries who were the most severely impacted by AIDS. )

On April 2, President Obama announced the next step in research of the human brain. This is the BRAIN Initiative – Brain Research through Advanced Neurotechnologies. The US government will finance research into the next generation of technology to map the human brain with $100 million in seed money. The next step is to develop new electrical, optical, computer-assisted technology to investigate how the brain works at the level of neurons to determine how they work and how they link up in neural networks.

The current level of brain research is already pretty amazing. Without invading the skull, scientists can map the areas of the brain, and even neural pathways, that respond to specific stimuli. For example, a given area of the brain will respond to stimulus by increasing the blood flow when it is being used. This area radiates more heat, which is easily detected.

When someone is shown a picture of their pet dog, for example, science can detect exactly which part of the brain activates. Scientists are thus able to detect which brain structures are involved when you dream, when you drive the car, when you fall in love or when you do your taxes. The brain, however, is perhaps the most complex thing in Nature. It has 10 billion cells that make 100 trillion connections. Getting down into the individual neurons and connections themselves offers the possibility of actually determining the structures of the mind, human personality and memory.

 These amazing advances will all be privatized. Corporations intend to claim parts of the brain as private property and sell access for a price. The privatization trend has been rampant in biology and medicine for 30 years.

Can You Own the Sun?

Polio epidemics swept the United States every summer in the early 1950s, terrifying families and entire communities. Sometimes whole birthday parties of kids would be affected, since bodily fluids in swimming pools could spread the virus. At the peak, in 1952, there were 58,000 new cases of children who were crippled or paralyzed.

 Dr Jonas Salk became an international hero in 1955 by proving that a killed virus could easily be made into medicine that could immunize people against the disease. By 1957, 100 million doses had been administered in the US. Treatment on a similar scale spread rapidly across the industrial world. In 2002, over 500 million children were immunized in almost 100 countries. Today the Americas are polio free and the disease is close to extinction around the world.

Salk was asked, in a television interview, who owned the patent. His famous response was, “There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?”

This response would be impossible today. Equally impossible would be the massive immunization rapid-response by the public. The single thing that prevents this sort of public health response is that corporations now control the development of science and medicine through patents. And, yes, they do intend to patent the sun!

 Fast-forward 40 years to the 1990s. Consider what happened with the next modern scourge, AIDS. After fighting the disease for 15 years, scientists had developed the cocktail of anti-viral drugs that would prolong life indefinitely by containing the virus. This time however the patents were all controlled by Big Pharma, the cartel of drug-makers like Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKlein. By that time, drugs now were the considered private property of corporations; thus they were protected by international treaties over intellectual property enforced by the United States.

 The public no longer had the right to use the anti-virals without paying billion-dollar corporations for them. As AIDS swept across Africa, India and Asia, these corporations, demonstrating once again their great concern for the improvement of humanity, offered them for sale for a mere $15,000 a year. They claimed that the drugs were expensive to manufacture. Besides, they reported, Africans could not use them effectively. Maybe that was because they lived on less than $2 a day.

In India, Dr Yusuf Hamied broke the patents and began manufacturing the anti-virals so easily that they were available for only $350 a year. Big Pharma responded with the true compassion that only corporate-persons can evince. They used their political power to force governments across the world to criminalize anyone who dared to distribute the inexpensive drugs. Some ten million people died as a result.

The response of the public to these police actions was so massive that the governments of Brazil and India were forced to declare that they would break the patents. Corporations could no longer control the distribution of generic AIDS drugs. Thousands of lives were saved. Big Pharma still works actively today to prevent the distribution of life-saving generic drugs today. (1) They innocently strive to maximize profit, even at the expense of human life.

 This is a terrible crime against humanity, one committed by corporate-persons against real persons. Such crime is inevitable when corporations control the resources of health, medicine, science, research and, in fact, any and all forms of technology.

NOTES

1) Democracy Now, “Fire in the Blood”, January 13, 2013

Steven Miller has taught science for 25 years in Oakland’s Flatland high schools. He has been actively engaged in public school reform since the early 1990s. When the state seized control of Oakland public schools in 2003, they immediately implemented policies of corporatization and privatization that are advocated by the Broad Institute. Since that time Steve has written extensively against the privatization of public education, water and other public resources. You can email him at nondog2@hotmail.com

photo credit: krischall via photopin cc

Crossposted at  Daily Censored

According to the co-author of a recent New England Journal of Medicine study, mammograms are largely ineffective in preventing deaths from breast cancer. What the retrospective study by Drs H Gilbert Welch and Dr Archie Bleyer revealed, in essence, was that the mortality benefit of mammography is much smaller, and the harm of overdiagnosis much larger, than previously recognized.

As Dr H. Gilbert Welch wrote in a recent New York Times oped, the effect of three decades of mammogram screening has been the diagnosis of 1.5 million women with early stage breast cancer. While this number might seem impressive, mammography has only reduced the number of women presenting with late-stage (fatal) breast cancer by 0.1 million. What this means, in other words, is that aggressive efforts by public health officials to coerce women to undergo routine mammograms only slightly reduce their risk of dying of breast cancer.

Dr Welch blames the discrepancy on an epidemic of overdiagnosis: his study revealed more than a million women who underwent mammograms were told they had early stage cancer. In most cases this led to unpleasant, invasive and unnecessary treatment (surgery, chemotherapy or radiation) for a non-lethal “cancer.”

In his editorial, Dr Welch laments the misleading statements issued by the Komen Foundation and public health officials that early screening (by mammography) saves lives. The message they should be giving women is that they have a choice. While no one can dismiss the possibility that screening may help a tiny number of women, there’s no doubt that it leads many, many more to be treated unnecessarily for non-lethal cancers. Women have to decide for themselves about the potential benefit and risks. One serious potential risk Dr Welch doesn’t mention is the burden of radiation exposure from a lifetime of unnecessary mammograms.

He recommends instead of screening all women with mammography, health professionals should only target women with a strong family history or genetic predisposition to breast cancer.

Read more here

photo credit: windsordi via photopin cc

Crossposted at Daily Censored

If video fails to play, go to Resonance – Beings of Frequency

(This is Part II of a two part film review of the 2012 documentary by British filmmaker James Russell. The first described the link between cell phone technology and the growing cancer epidemic.)

Honey Bees and Migratory Birds

Colony collapse disorder (CCD) is a phenomenon in which previously healthy worker bees from a beehive or bee colony simply vanish. First recognized in 2006, it represents a true agricultural emergency, as all food production depends, either directly or indirectly, on insect pollinators. There has been a lot of debate about the cause, with many environmentalists blaming the high levels of insecticide that have accumulated in the ecosystem. The film presents some fascinating research about the magnetite-containing cells honeybees use to navigate the earth’s magnetic fields in finding their way to and from the hive. Other research shows that direct exposure to microwave radiation disrupts their ability to detect these fields. In other words, bees abandon their hives because they can’t find their way back.

Shore birds and songbirds also use the earth’s magnetic fields to migrate vast distances, via a slightly different mechanism involving cryptochromes. These are magnetically sensitive cells found in all plants, animals and human beings. In humans, the cryptochromes in the pineal gland control melatonin production. Ornithologists are extremely alarmed at the sudden rate of decline of numerous populations of songbirds and shorebirds that migrate. The scientists in the film believe, that as with honeybees, excessive microwave smog interferes with their ability to use the earth’s magnetic fields to navigate.

A Public Health Problem of Mammoth Proportions

As Resonance – Beings of Frequency points out, there are currently four billion mobile phone users and five million cell phone masts globally. Because this technology is in wide use on all seven continents, there is really nowhere people can go to escape it. In Sweden, patients diagnosed with electrosensitivy syndrome can get government support in insulating their homes against EMR (with tinfoil no less). As yet they are the only country in the world to recognize the condition and subsidize its management.

The filmmakers acknowledge that the sheer magnitude of the problem, given numerous other sources of EMR pollution (such as high tension power lines), means there is no easy or immediate way to reduce or eliminate this major environmental carcinogen. Among other potential remedies, they make a strong case for establishing a truly independent international body to monitor microwave-related health risks, unlike the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection. At present the ICNIRP is totally dominated and controlled by the telecommunications industry. As they point out, a truly independent body would issue safe Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) levels appropriate for children, who generally begin using cell phones at age eight. ICNIRP was forced to adopt maximum SAR levels after the World Health Organization came out with research linking cell phones and brain tumors. Skull thickness is very important in establishing a safe SAR, as the skull protects the brain from microwaves produced by cell phones. Although children have much thinner skulls, for some bizarre reason has calculated SAR based on the average skull thickness of US military recruits.

The scientists in the film also urge telecommunication companies to be more forthcoming with their own research linking microwave exposure to cancer and other health problems. Although imminent reduction in the numbers of cell phones and cell phone masts is highly unlikely, there is a potential for slowing the growth of this technology. Moreover making the information publicly available allows individuals to make informed choices about limiting their exposure.

If video fails to play, go to Resonance – Beings of Frequency

(This is Part I of a two part film review of the 2012 documentary by British filmmaker James Russell)

Resonance – Beings of Frequency is an informative, well-researched film about the growing number of health and environmental problems linked to cell phones, wi-fi and cell phone masts. The title refers to  “Schumann resonances,” named after German physicist Winfried Schumann. It refers to natural low frequency electromagnetic radiation emitted by planet Earth. The beginning of the film, which delves in depth into Schumann’s obscure discovery, is likely to be off-putting for people with no physics background. Electromagnetic radiation (EMR) is tough enough to get your head around, much less the concept of wave pulses and frequency. I sincerely hope people will ignore or fast forward the first few minutes. The rest of the film is well worth watching and discusses an alarming body of research about a potentially dangerous technology that was widely implemented without any testing of its potential effect on human health.

In my view, the only physics people need to understand the film is 1) that the microwaves produced by cell phones and cell phone masts, like light and radio waves, are a form of non-ionizing (i.e. non-radioactive) electromagnetic radiation 2) that by definition, EMR are intertwined electrical and magnetic fields that travel as waves and 3) that all life forms produce it. The scientist who explains electroencephalograms (EEGs) and electrocardiograms (EKGs) later in the film puts this across quite clearly. In higher animals, the presence or absence of life is measured by their ability to give off EMR. An EEG measures the EMR given off by the brain. When the EEG flat lines, the patient is considered brain dead. It’s game over when the EKG, which measures EMR emitted by the heart, flat lines.

The film mainly focuses on research linking the staggering increase of man made EMR in the environment and the sudden onset of global bee colony collapse syndrome; the sharp decline in migratory bird species and the current epidemic of breast and other cancers. Obviously the cancer link will be most concerning for most viewers. There are now several dozen studies of the cancer clusters found in people living in close proximity to cell phone masts. The film features an interview with a breast cancer survivor living near a mast who surveyed all neighbors within 0.5 km of the mast. Seventy percent of them had developed breast, prostate or other cancer, leukemia or some other fatal or debilitating illness.

The Link Between Microwave Exposure and Breast Cancer

The link between breast cancer and exposure to toxic endocrine disruptors (found mainly in insecticides, cosmetics, plastics and diets high in animal fat) was established nearly ten years ago. However it remains very troubling that large numbers of women with no genetic history or lifestyle exposures are developing breast cancer as young as thirty-five or forty. The film suggests many of these cases relate to a far more insidious lifestyle factor. With more than 500 million cell phone masts scattered all across the planet, electromagnetic smog is an environmental exposure that is virtually impossible to avoid.

Resonance – Beings of Frequency presents some very convincing research about the negative effect of microwave radiation (the type produced by cell phones and cell phone masts) on Melatonin production and the essential role this hormone plays in immune function. This is the first time I have seen a mechanism proposed to explain how wireless technology might be increasing cancer rates.

A lot of people are aware of melatonin’s role in promoting sleep – that low light levels cause the brain to produce melatonin and that this is the hormone that sends people off to sleep. Studies showing that it’s also an antioxidant (i.e. a vitamin or hormone that destroys free radicals) even more powerful that Vitamin C or Vitamins less well publicized. However it’s well recognized that the main cause of aging and most forms of cancer can be traced to free radicals attacking the nucleus of normal cells.

Recent research suggests that the pineal gland (the part of the brain that produces melatonin) can’t distinguish between light waves and other forms of EMR – that this explains why people exposed to high levels of microwave radiation produce less melatonin. Presumably this makes their body less efficient in destroying the free radicals that cause cancer. Studies showing that patients with breast and prostate cancer have lower Melatonin levels tend to validate this hypothesis.

(To be continued with a discussion of the link between cellphone technology and bee colony collapse disorder, which is decimating bee populations worldwide.)

GMO Ticking Time Bomb is a fantastic fifteen minute video which helps explain why California polls show overwhelming support for Prop 37 on the November ballot. If passed by voters, the citizens initiative would require mandatory labeling for genetically modified foods.

The film starts by briefly explaining how genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are created. It goes on to talk about scandalous corporate interference that put a once and future Monsanto executive in charge of a 1992 FDA decision that GMO crops and foods are safe and don’t require testing for potential health hazards.

Filmmakers reveal a recent recommendation by the American Academy of Environmental Medicine (medical doctors who specialize in environmental medicine) that all doctors prescribe non-GMO foods for all their patients. This is based on a wealth of private – and government – studies showing that GMO foods interfere with reproductive and immune function; cause accelerating aging, GI distress and organ damage and interfere with cholesterol and insulin regulation.

The US is one of a handful of industrialized countries that don’t require labeling for GMO foods.

Monsanto’s main argument for opposing mandatory labeling: consumers are too dumb to know the difference.

Red Button Studios

September 23, 2012

Free download at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aseiCqEx9BQ

Film Review

On Fukushima Beach is an hour long brilliantly constructed documentary that uses a montage of mainstream and Internet media clips to unpack the Fukushima disaster. In addition to providing a painless scientific overview of radiation health issues, it outlines the ongoing radiation risks faced by all residents of the northern hemisphere.

There are simple measures people everywhere (except the Japanese – they need to be evacuated asap) could be taking to protect themselves. Yet in their eagerness to promote and support the nuclear power industry, the Obama administration, the Japanese government and the international agencies charged with monitoring and addressing similar health issues (such as the UN, the International Atomic Energy Agency and World Health Organization), have remained stubbornly silent on what promises to be the most serious health crisis of the 21^st century.

Relying heavily on the technical expertise of highly prominent and credible medical professionals and scientists (including Australian pediatrician Dr Helen Caldicott and Japanese-American theoretical physicist Dr Michio Kaku), the film stresses the following essential points:

• Despite being “shut down,” all four Fukushima reactors continue to release dangerous radioactive nucleotides, both to the atmosphere and the Pacific Ocean. There is a self-perpetuating chain reaction occurring in Reactors 1-3, in which core meltdowns have occurred. Continuing radiation release can only be stopped by encasing them in a concrete shell, as the Soviets did at Chernobyl. Extremely high radiation levels make it too hazardous for workers to begin construction of this shell (even though an organization of several hundred elderly retired engineers have volunteered to sacrifice themselves to undertake the clean up -Retired Fukushima engineers. Tokyo Electric Power Co., aka TEPCO, has rebuffed their offer, fearing negative publicity.)
• Since meltdowns have already occurred (there was an explosion but no meltdown at Chernobyl), high levels of radiation have entered the subsoil below the containment chamber, as well as the groundwater. Halting radiation leakage into the groundwater would require installation of an impermeable barrier between the reactor and the water table. TEPCO has refused to even consider such a barrier, claiming it would be too expensive and “affect stock prices.”
• The Japanese government was criminally negligent in refusing to evacuate Tokyo (238 km or 148 miles from Fukushima), owing to their reluctance to create public “panic.” Abundant evidence suggests they were well aware Tokyo’s 30 million residents were at risk. Recent random sampling reveals that Tokyo children are being exposed to five times the acceptable does of radiation. Many are already showing evidence of radiation poisoning (hair loss, lethargy, rashes, joint pains, tiredness and rings under their eyes). While government clinics are diagnosing them with psychiatric conditions, pregnant women are undergoing abortions to prevent their infants from being born with birth defects.
• Despite claims from the nuclear power industry that no human beings have ever died from industry-related radiation poisoning, careful documentation by Russian scientists indicate that there were approximately one million deaths (mainly from cancer and leukemia) directly related to Chernobyl. The time lag between exposure and death (three to four years for leukemia and lung cancer and fifteen years for solid cancers) make it easier for the nuclear industry to deny the connection. However there are clear statistical links that can’t be explained any other way.
• Prevailing wind patterns mean that Americans, even those on the East Coast, and Europeans have been exposed to dangerous levels of airborne radiation. Studies of ocean currents reveal that high radiation levels have spread throughout the entire North Pacific. Tuna and other species caught on the West Coast reveal dangerous levels of radioactive cesium. No one, no matter where they live, should be eating Pacific seafood sourced north of the Equator.
• There are 1,535 spent MOX (combined uranium/plutonium) fuel rods stored in open cooling pools on the roof of Reactor 4. According to TEPCO, they can’t be moved before 2015-2016. Another earthquake could potentially expose them to the air, forcing evacuation of the entire northern hemisphere.

The filmmakers also attempt to explain the conspiracy of silence around the ongoing Fukushima disaster and the extreme threat it poses to literally billions of people in the northern hemisphere. They blame the insane power of the nuclear power industry, which ironically is one of the most spectacularly unprofitable industries in modern times. The companies that build and operate nuclear power plants rely on massive government subsidies in the construction phase, as the revenue they earn from selling electricity can’t possibly cover their costs. Apparently nuclear power – known as “atoms for peace” in the 1950s – was dreamed up as a public relations ploy to de-stigmatize nuclear weapons in the public mind.

The film stresses that nuclear power and weapons production have always been joined at the hip. It also reveals that General Electric (GE), the powerful defense contractor (and owner of NBC network) which manufactures nuclear weapons – is the same company that designed and built the Fukushima reactors. Interesting how the Obama administration, which has approved massive subsidies for new nuclear power plants, has exerted major pressure on Japan to conceal GE’s involvement in Fukushima.

GM wheat has special dangers for unborn kids

According to Natural News, Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) has developed a novel variety of genetically-modified (GM) wheat that contains an altered protein and enzyme-suppressing mechanism that some scientists believe could cause serious problems for the human liver. A recent report compiled by several acclaimed experts in the field of genetics says that children born to parents who consume this GM wheat variety are at risk for liver failure and death. Another great reason for Californians to vote “yes” on Proposition 37, which would make GMO labeling mandatory in California.

Since the technology directly inhibits an enzyme in wheat that is very closely linked to glycogen, a polysaccharide produced in the liver, the genetic alteration could potentially be passed to children. If the technology blocks the enzyme in humans, as it does in the wheat, these children could be born with a systemic defect in glycogen metabolism, resulting in liver failure and death by age five.

Adults missing this enzyme just “kind of get more and more sick, and more and more tired, until they get very, very ill indeed.”

Learn more here: Natural News

Addendum:

I want to clarify several points not made clear by the Natural News article. Obviously the mother has a greater risk of passing the gene defect to her infant than the father. However the risk is present even if she eats the GM wheat prior to becoming pregnant. This is due to the risk of “horizontal” gene transfer to the bacteria in her intestine, as the mother’s native gut bacteria is a major determinant in the bacteria the baby will carry in their own gut.

As medical researchers are discovering, gut bacteria, also known as the “microbiota,” is actually a vital organ. When this is deranged, it can lead, not only to bowel disease  (such as ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s Disease and irritable bowel syndrome) but autoimmune diseases, such as multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis. There are also studies linking it to a condition known as “metabolic syndrome” or “insulin resistance.” Middle aged people with the condition often gain a lot of weight, despite consuming a normal caloric intake.

There are numerous studies showing that genetically engineered DNA isn’t digested by the stomach, as claimed by Monsanto and government agencies that promote GMO crops and foods – that it’s actually taken up by intestinal bacteria and in certain instances can pass into the blood. Here are links to  a small sampling:

Horizontal gene exchange in environmental microbiota

Horizontal gene transfer in genetic engineering

British study on gut gene transfer

17 studies on horizantal GMO transfer in the gut

Also an interesting study about improving Multiple Sclerosis symptoms by transplanting new gut bacteria:

Cutting edge MS research

And one about the link between gut bacteria and metabolic syndrome/insulin resistance:

Metabolic syndrome and altered but microbiota

On November 6^th, California voters will have the opportunity to pass into law a “right-to-know” initiative that would make it mandatory for all genetically modified (GMO) foods to be so labeled. Proposition 37 would also ban the fraudulent, but highly lucrative practice, of many food manufacturers of labeling foods tainted with GMO ingredients as “natural.”

Recent polls show Proposition 37 leading by a 3 to 1 ratio. This is despite $22 million Monsanto and major food manufacturers have spent on publicity opposing the citizen’s initiative. The Organic Consumers Cooperative is calling for a boycott against all the food companies (see below) that oppose consumers’ right to know what is in their food. In contrast, the “Yes on 37” campaign has only raised $3 million.

Despite mounting scientific evidence linking GMO foods with cancer, birth defects and serious food allergies, nearly 80% of non-organic processed foods, including so-called “natural” foods, contain genetically engineered bacteria, viruses, antibiotic-resistant genes, and foreign DNA. Yet none of these foods are labeled.

Mislabeling GMO Foods as Natural

Health-minded and environmentally conscious consumers buy more products marketed or labeled as “natural” ($50 billion a year) than they do “organic foods” ($32 billion), in large part because they don’t understand the major difference between “organic” and “natural” foods. Two-thirds of the foods sold in Whole Foods Market or Trader Joe’s aren’t “organic,” but rather “natural.” Polls indicate that consumers are confused about the qualitative difference between organic and natural products, with a near majority believing that “natural” means “GMO-free” and “almost organic.” As a result 70% of Americans are totally unaware that they’re regularly consuming GMO-containing processed foods.

Prop 37 organizers call for an end to the massive fraud of mislabeled, so-called “natural” foods. They believe mandatory labeling laws in California, the eight largest economy in the world, would result in GMO labeling across the US and Canada. Food manufacturers are highly unlikely to use separate packaging in other jurisdictions. In fact many companies are expected to follow the example of food processors in Europe, where GMO labeling has been mandatory for ten years, and where consumers consistently choose non-GMO or organic foods. Many European manufacturers simply removed GMO ingredients from their foods, rather than risk tarnishing their brand image with a GMO label on their packaging.

How California Law Affects the Other States and Canada

From the massive amounts they are spending to defeat Prop 37, Monsanto and Food Inc would appear to share this view – that mandatory GMO labeling will greatly decrease consumption of GMO foods.

Monsanto, which holds the patent on most GMO crops, has donated $4 million to the “No on 37” campaign.

Ironically all the major food manufacturers trying to defeat Prop 37 have organic/natural food lines, as health-conscious consumers place a high premium on “organic” and “natural” foods. This is why the Organic Consumers Cooperative is so keen to expose their hypocrisy in trying to defeat an initiative that would force them to disclose the GMO ingredients in their processed foods. They urge health-minded consumers to boycott all the brands listed below, as well as commenting on their Facebook pages about their rank hypocrisy.

In the past few weeks Kashi/Kellogg and Muir Glen/General Mills have been deluged with complaints on their Facebook pages. Most of these companies also have consumer lines. People who aren’t on Facebook need to call them to complain.

A TSA Grope

While being sexually groped by Transportation Security Administration (TSA) personnel at the airport, can be both painful and humiliating, it sure beats getting cancer. I was curious to read in the recent Association of Natural Health (ANH) that an increasing number of doctors refuse (as I do) to go through the full body scanners due to the radiation risk. They quote two really prominent physicians, including former Representative Gabrielle Gifford’s neurosurgeon. According to Dr. Dong Kim, “There is really no absolutely safe dose of radiation. Each exposure is additive, and there is no need to incur any extra radiation when there is an alternative.” Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, also refuses to go through a scanner when he travels.

The ANH also reveals that the Department of Homeland Security has defied a court order issued a year ago to “promptly” undertake a formal rulemaking process and open up a public “notice and comment” period to discuss and justify the need for the scanners.

Meanwhile two congressional committees have been sharply critical of this extremely expensive and questionably effective technology – since it fails to detect powder explosives.

The ANH cites the Department of Homeland Security’s own report found that the scanners break down frequently and that many aren’t correctly calibrated to ensure radiation safety. They also quote a ProPublica investigative report estimating that up to 100 US passengers could get cancer from them every year.

Read more here

According to Natural News, the refusal of federal and state governments to require mandatory labeling of genetically modified foods has led a US grassroots network calling themselves “Label it Yourself” to take matters into their own hands. They have started their own campaign to affix warning labels on processed and non-organic food products that likely contain genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

Anyone with a computer and printer can join. Download GMO warning stickers at Label It Yourself. Print them out on Avery 5164 labels (4.25 x 3.33 in). No need to join a group or attend boring meetings. It’s more fun, of course, to do it with friends.

Choosing Foods to Label

Natural News reports that GMOs have become so prevalent throughout the US food supply that most non-organic foods sold in stores today, particularly those that are processed, contain them. It’s estimated that roughly 80 percent of all conventional, processed foods sold in the US contain GMOs.

The most common culprits are conventional foods that contain canola, corn, cotton, soy, or sugar, or any derivatives of these. Some common ingredients to look for that are likely to include GMOs include:

• high fructose corn syrup / corn syrup
• corn starch / corn oil / corn meal
• soybean oil / soy protein / soy lecithin / soy protein isolate / textured vegetable protein
• cottonseed oil
• canola oil
• fructose / dextrose / glucose
• aspartame
• xanthan gum
• yeast extract / monosodium glutamate
• vegetable oil
• food colorings
• sugar / brown sugar

Learn more about the “Label Itself Campaign” at GMOs Label It Yourself

Learn more about serious human health problems associated with GMOs at Spilling the Beans

(GMOs in New Zealand – Owing to strong consumer resistance, no GM crops are grown commercially in New Zealand. GM foods sold in New Zealand must be labeled ‘genetically modified’ if they contain DNA or protein from a GM source or they have altered characteristics compared to their non-GM counterpart such as a changed fatty acid profile – see MfE website)