It is time to shed some long overdue light on serious and avoidable chemical exposures facing the majority of infants today.

Due to the fact that only 11% of newborns in the US are exclusively breast milk during their first six months of life, it is safe to say that most newborns today are exposed to the ingredients found in infant formula.

Owing to the fact that infant formula is being used during the first year of life, which is the most critical developmental period of the human life cycle (outside embryogenesis itself), it behooves us to make sure that what we are feeding them is truly nourishing, and at the very least, not harming them. Correct?

So, what exactly is being put into the infant formulas millions believe is the closest facsimile to human breast milk available?

We will take a more forgiving approach, and avoid the more obviously lower quality mass market infant formula brands, which use genetically modified products and high fructose corn syrup, to name but a few obvious red flags. Instead, let's look to a so-called "organic" product, like Earth's Best Organic Infant Formula, as the assumption here is that it is "Earthy," "Organic," and as the label proudly displays: "Produced Without the Use of Potentially Harmful Pesticides." Did you get that, by the way? "Potentially Harmful Pesticides," because you know that some pesticides are not actually harmful to infants, right? This strange qualification will take on a clearer, far more chilling meaning in just a moment...

Drug industry corruption, scientifically unreliable diagnoses and pseudoscientific research have compromised the values of the psychiatric profession.

Why do some of us become dissident mental health professionals?

The majority of psychiatrists, psychologists and other mental health professionals "go along to get along" and maintain a status quo that includes drug company corruption, pseudoscientific research and a "standard of care" that is routinely damaging and occasionally kills young children. If that sounds hyperbolic, then you probably have not heard of Rebecca Riley, and how the highest levels of psychiatry described her treatment as "appropriate and within responsible professional standards."

Before the American Indian culture was shattered, the Indians used an unprocessed tobacco in pipes ceremoniously and for healing. Yes, healing lung disorders.

Indian tobacco is known as Lobelia inflate or lobelia, which some herbalists, unafraid of being politically incorrect for using an herb once banned by the FDA, use medicinally today. Not necessarily to smoke, but dispensed as tinctures or tablets.

Lobelia for asthma and other lung/bronchia disorders was a topic of another article from this author. This article will focus on lobelia as the most effective smoking cessation agent without side effects today.

A recent pharmaceutical smoking cessation product on the market drove many mad enough to commit suicide, murder or both. Few knew the severity of this smoking cessation drug's side effects until an independent found a major flaw with the company's adverse report papers.

The economist Milton Friedman was an outspoken proponent of unregulated markets. He opposed regulation not so much in theory as in practice, based on the near-universal observation that we tend to take a keen interest in any organization that can affect our prosperity. Just as surely as night follows day, he maintained, regulatory agencies would come to be controlled by the very people they were intended to regulate.

The primary mission of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is advocacy, not regulation, but the entities most affected by its activities have taken a keen interest nevertheless.

Established in 1862, a much more innocent time in agriculture, the USDA's original mission was "...to acquire and to diffuse among the people of the United States useful information on subjects connected with agriculture in the most general and comprehensive sense of that word, and to procure, propagate, and distribute among the people new and valuable seeds and plants."

Obstetricians and primary care physicians throughout the world will no-doubt be lauding the result of a recent publication, "Neonatal outcomes after influenza immunization during pregnancy: a randomized controlled trial," which can be downloaded free at the time of this publication HERE, and the abstract can be viewed HERE. This study will be cited by doctors, advisory panels, and pharmaceutical drug reps. as they work to increase vaccination rates and sales using pregnant mothers as receptacles.

Expectant mothers will be told that getting a flu shot while they are pregnant is not only safe, but will protect from one of the possible consequences of influenza while pregnant - low birth weight.

How many doctors will ever read the abstract, let alone the full text? In the hectic environment of medical practice, they will take someone else's word for it, and reassure unsuspecting mothers that the vaccine is the way to go.

There are several serious problems with this study, the least of which is that it was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation and several pharmaceutical companies. Bill did, after all declare this the "decade of vaccination," after delivering a check in the amount of 10 Billion dollars to make it happen. Much of his donation is hitting India and Africa in order to purchase oral polio vaccines and vaccine delivery trucks to reach remote villages. Now, influenza vaccines for pregnant mothers is on the way into the pipeline. Rumor has it that he is a candidate for a NOBEL PRIZE, for providing millions of infants and children with live oral polio vaccines. Well, it seems the fetus is now on his radar and this new article displays the misinformation typical of the rally to inject pregnant mothers with untested vaccines. This article references the main study, which was also funded by his foundation.

Before too many doctors take the infotainment in this study at face value, let's review some of the issues in design and interpretation.

With all the ongoing and seemingly never-ending debate in the paleo/low carb world about the likes of safe starches, low-carb paleo vs. high-carb paleo, and so on, I admit I get a bit frustrated by it all. We hear examples of how people have supposedly followed a certain protocol, meeting with either with great success or with the wheels coming off their health in spectacular fashion. Despite people trying to dial carbohydrate intake in to the nth degree, juggling 5 grams here and 5 grams there (remember when we played the same game with fat in the 90′s?), we are slowly but surely seeing an increase in the number of people reporting that "paleo/low carb didn't work for them".

Amongst the many possible reasons as to why these strategies might not have worked, one of the ones that I see most commonly is a failure to compensate for pushing carbohydrate intake down by pushing fat intake up. For some, this might be completely unintentional - they just don't know how to get fat intake up. They have spent so many years trying to get fat out of the diet that they really have no reference point for how to load it back in again - they don't know how much is not enough. Others, who may have limited gut capacity to digest and absorb a lot of long-chain fats, may find that making such a big jump in their fat intake makes them feel unwell and so they struggle to get enough in.

The Institute for Responsible Technology (IRT) and The Non-GMO Project have created a Non-GMO Shopping Guide that's free and available for download.

It's About Giving You a Choice

The Non-GMO Project is a non-profit organization, created by leaders representing all sectors of the organic and natural products industry in the U.S. and Canada, to offer consumers a consistent non-GMO choice for organic and natural products that are produced without genetic engineering or recombinant DNA technologies.

The US does not currently require labeling of food products made with genetically modified ingredients (GMOs).
Made with Non-GMO Ingredients logo icon

How can you make an informed choice if GM ingredients aren't clearly listed on the label? Look for the Non-GMO Project verified seal.

The guiding mission of the Non-GMO Project is the belief that consumers in North America should have access to clearly labeled non-GMO food and products in the marketplace.

The Non-GMO Project offers North America's only independent verification for products made according to best practices for GMO avoidance. The Project was conceived by retailers, who wanted an easy, consistent way to help shoppers see which products were committed to non-GMO ingredients. Prior to the Project, there was no consistency in non-GMO labeling claims. Manufacturers made claims according to their own internal criteria, which ranged from rigorous to meaningless and either way offered no transparency to the consumer.

Unlike many "absence claims" made about GMO content (e.g. "GMO free"), the Non-GMO Project offers a truthfully worded claim, "Non-GMO Project Verified." This claim and seal offers a true statement acknowledging the reality of contamination risk - stating simply that the product in question has been "verified" by the Project.

A brand's enrollment in the Project gives them a way to share their diligence in producing food according to consensus-based best practices for GMO avoidance, including testing of risk ingredients with you in a valid, meaningful way

England: Parents should be allowed to have their newborn babies killed because they are "morally irrelevant" and ending their lives is no different to abortion, a group of medical ethicists linked to Oxford University has argued.
The article, published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, says newborn babies are not "actual persons" and do not have a "moral right to life". The academics also argue that parents should be able to have their baby killed if it turns out to be disabled when it is born.

The journal's editor, Prof Julian Savulescu, director of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, said the article's authors had received death threats since publishing the article. He said those who made abusive and threatening posts about the study were "fanatics opposed to the very values of a liberal society".

The article, entitled "After-birth abortion: Why should the baby live?", was written by two of Prof Savulescu's former associates, Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva.

They argued: "The moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a fetus in the sense that both lack those properties that justify the attribution of a right to life to an individual."

Rather than being "actual persons", newborns were "potential persons". They explained: "Both a fetus and a newborn certainly are human beings and potential persons, but neither is a 'person' in the sense of 'subject of a moral right to life'.

Certain chemicals cause epigenetic changes that foster illness in rats' offspring

Exposure to certain pollutants early in a rat's pregnancy can foster disease in her offspring during their adulthood as well as in subsequent generations, a new study shows. A wide range of pollutants elicited such lasting effects, despite future generations never encountering the triggering pollutant.

Some chemicals tested led to premature puberty among great-granddaughters, with an increased risk of disease in reproductive tissues. In some tests, the chemicals disrupted ovarian function, something that in humans could lead to infertility or premature menopause. And another chemical exposure caused premature death of sperm-forming cells in the great-grandsons, researchers report online February 28 in PLoS ONE.

Millions of people with metal on metal hip replacements may have been exposed to dangerously high levels of toxins that seeped into their bloodstreams, warned the researchers behind a British Medical Journal and BBC Newsnight investigation.

The investigation into the implants found that chromium and cobalt ions from this type of artificial hip can seep into the surrounding tissue to destroy muscle and bone and spread to the lymph nodes, spleen, liver and kidneys, potentially causing damage. The researchers were also concerned the ions could affect a person's chromosomes, resulting in genetic changes.