The United States is a consumption monster when it comes to prescription drugs. And while we are beginning to see their effects on our health and our wallets, we often don't consider their effects on the environment and the world around us. What's more, we don't even know how present these drugs truly are, especially when considering how big pharma has been putting pharmaceuticals in water across the nation for years.

Pharmaceuticals in Water Thanks to Big Pharma

In 2002, federal scientists discovered that such pharmaceutical drugs are being dumped into the sewer systems and potentially finding their ways back into the drinking water.

According to MSNBC, the presence of pharmaceuticals in water at sewage treatment plants downstream from drug manufacturing facilities are much higher than the levels at plants where there are no drug makers upstream. These drugs include opiates, tranquilizers, and barbiturates, among many other active pharmaceutical ingredients.

Pharmaceutical companies are quick to say their wastewater doesn't pollute the water systems around them, but this analysis would suggest that (like in many other situations), they aren't being completely honest.

One drug was detected in levels "hundreds of times higher than the level at which federal regulators can order a review of a drug's environmental impact." That drug was the muscle relaxer metaxalone.

But the Drugs are Removed During Water Treatment, Right?

You would think that wastewater treatment plants would remove the pharmaceuticals in water along with other contaminants, but, another study from the Environmental Protection Agency, found that an antibiotic which was going down the drains at a Pfizer, Inc. factory in Kalamazoo, Mich. was still detectable after the water had been treated.

This drug, lincomycin, was found in a 2008 study to make human cancer in kidney cells and fish liver cells "proliferate" when combined in minute concentrations with other drugs. Other studies found lincomycin to act as a mutagen, actually changing the genes within algae, bacteria, fish, and microscopic aquatic animals.

At the time of these studies, Pfizer spokesman Rick Chambers admitted that they didn't test wastewater leaving the facilities, assuring the media, however, that they were in compliance with the laws.

Many of us know the dangers of the drugs pumped into the sick and often-unaware citizens of this country. As a result of this knowledge, many of us avoid pharmaceuticals except for in extreme and emergency situations.

But, what if these substances that we work so hard to avoid, have found their way into our bodies regardless? Seeing as pharmaceuticals in water is a growing problem, it is evident that these drugs are indeed finding their way.

Though pharmaceutical companies may be following all of the "laws", the laws don't mandate any ethical accountability, and it's obvious Big Pharma hasn't written any into their policy manuals either.

Additional Sources

Gallery.usgs.gov
NY Times

Last week I went to the beach to take in the immense biodiversity of the marine sanctuary that is the Monterey Bay. While looking for frolicking dolphins, I noticed a number of young people with their eyes glued to their phones. It led me to reflect on how our personal time has been altered by computers and science. I recently learned that the same holds true for genetic engineering. New breakthroughs with computers and DNA strands are occurring rapidly and raising the very nature of genetic engineering to a new level. This leads me to a question I'd like to explore in this post: What in the world is Synthetic Biology?

Diabetes and obesity rise in the East as China consumes more Western junk food.

China has been called "The Middle Kingdom," and Napoleon famously referred to the country as "The Sleeping Giant." Maybe China should be renamed "The Processed Kingdom" and its people "The Eating Giants."

China will soon overtake the United States in a rather dubious category: It's poised to become number one in the consumption of processed foods.

Euromonitor International estimates that in terms of volume, the Chinese market for packaged processed food like ready-made meals, and junk items like cookies, chips, and soda will surpass America's by 2015 - 107 million tons of packaged food in China, compared to 102 million tons in the US.

The moment I knew internet pornography had cast its dark shadow over the lives of millions of ordinary British teenagers will live with me for ever.

I was sitting in the smart drama hall of a specialist sports college in the North of England with a fantastic reputation.

Before me were a group of 20 boys and girls, aged 13-14. Largely white, working class children, they were well turned-out, polite, giggly and shy.

As the presenter of a Channel 4 documentary called Porn On The Brain, airing next Monday at 10pm, I'd been invited to sit in on a forward-thinking class led by sex education consultant Jonny Hunt, who is regularly asked into schools to discuss sex and relationships. To establish what these kids knew about sex - including pornography - he had asked the children to write an A-Z list of the sexual terms they knew, no matter how extreme.

Most of these children had just hit puberty and some were clearly still children: wide-eyed, nervous, with high-pitched voices.

Kate and David clasp each other and their son Jamie, circled, after being told he did not survive the birth. They were given the child to say their goodbyes but then, miraculously, two hours later he began to show signs of life

After decades of passionate debate, parents probably missed the repeated admissions by drug companies and governments alike that vaccines do in fact cause autism. For concerned parents seeking the truth, it's worth remembering that the exact same people who own the world's drug companies also own America's news outlets. Finding propaganda-free information has been difficult, until now.

Dr. Andrew Wakefield

At the center of the fifteen-year controversy is Dr. Andrew Wakefield of Austin, Texas. It was Dr. Wakefield that first publicized the link between stomach disorders and autism, and taking the findings one step further, the link between stomach disorders, autism and the Measles Mumps Rubella (MMR) vaccine.

For that discovery way back in 1996, and a subsequent research paper published by the doctor in 1998, Andrew Wakefield has found himself the victim of a world-wide smear campaign by drug corporations, governments and media companies. And while Dr. Wakefield has been persecuted and prosecuted to the extent of being unable to legally practice medicine because of his discovery, he has instead become a best-selling author, the founder of the Strategic Autism Initiative, and the Director of the Autism Media Channel.

But in recent months, courts, governments and vaccine manufacturers have quietly conceded the fact that the Measles Mumps Rubella (MMR) vaccine most likely does cause autism and stomach diseases. Pharmaceutical companies have even gone so far as to pay out massive monetary awards, totaling in the millions, to the victims in an attempt to compensate them for damages and to buy their silence.

More than sixty years ago, a Cleveland dentist named Weston A. Price decided to embark on a series of unique investigations that would engage his attention and energies for the next ten years. Possessed of an inquiring mind and a spiritual nature, Price was disturbed by what he found when he looked into the mouths of his patients. Rarely did an examination of an adult client reveal anything but rampant decay, often accompanied by serious problems elsewhere in the body such as arthritis, osteoporosis, diabetes, intestinal complaints and chronic fatigue. (They called it neurasthenia in Price's day.) But it was the dentition of younger patients that gave him most cause for concern. He observed that crowded, crooked teeth were becoming more and more common, along with what Price called "facial deformities"--overbites, narrowed faces, underdevelopment of the nose, lack of well-defined cheekbones and pinched nostrils. Such children invariably suffered from one or more complaints that sound all too familiar to mothers of the 1990s: frequent infections, allergies, anemia, asthma, poor vision, lack of coordination, fatigue and behavioral problems. Price did not believe that such "physical degeneration" was God's plan for mankind. He was rather inclined to believe that the creator intended physical perfection for all human beings, and that children should grow up free of ailments.

Price's bewilderment gave way to a unique idea. He would travel to various isolated parts of the earth where the inhabitants had no contact with "civilization" to study their health and physical development. His investigations took him to isolated Swiss villages and a windswept island off the coast of Scotland. He studied traditional Eskimos, Indian tribes in Canada and the Florida Everglades, South Seas islanders, Aborigines in Australia, Maoris in New Zealand, Peruvian and Amazonian Indians and tribesmen in Africa. These investigations occurred at a time when there still existed remote pockets of humanity untouched by modern inventions; but when one modern invention, the camera, allowed Price to make a permanent record of the people he studied. The photographs Price took, the descriptions of what he found and his startling conclusions are preserved in a book considered a masterpiece by many nutrition researchers who followed in Price's footsteps: Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. Yet this compendium of ancestral wisdom is all but unknown to today's medical community and modern parents.

On September 7, 2013 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said to the 125th session of the International Olympic Committee, the following:

Some may have concerns about Fukushima. Let me assure you, the situation is under control. It has never done and will never do any damage to Tokyo.

This will surely be remembered as one of the great lies of modern times. In Japan some people call it the "Abesolute Lie". Believing it, the IOC decided to bring the 2020 Olympics to Tokyo.

Japanese government spokespersons defend Abe's statement by saying that radiation levels in the Pacific Ocean have not yet exceeded safety standards.

This recalls the old story of the man who jumped off a ten-storey building and, as he passed each storey, could be heard saying, "So far, so good".

In my last post I outlined how gluten triggered an immune reaction and damaged the gut cells in genetically predisposed people.

In this post I will look at studies that show gluten grains are not the only food to cause problems for those with celiac:

• Casein and dairy products can inflame the gut
• Non gluten grains and pseudo-grains have been confirmed to trigger the same anti-bodies as gluten grains
• Refractory Celiac disease type 1 (Severe celiac disease, that does not resolve with a gluten free diet) goes into remission with a paleo type diet.

Up to 30% of people with celiac disease do not go into remission on a gluten free diet, that is they continue to show anti bodies to gliadin and transglutaminase, and / or have on-going gut inflammation.

One study showed after a gluten free diet for 6 months only 8% of individuals showed complete normalisation of villous architecture (the gut cells, and all the folds).

A subset of those with celiac disease continues to suffer severe gut inflammation and on-going deterioration of the villous architecture. This is called refractory celiac disease, type 1 (mild), and type 2 (severe).

Is it possible that a species of bacteria that commonly causes colds, sinus infections, bronchitis, asthma or pneumonia can also be a silent cause of atherosclerosis?

Atherosclerosis (also known as arteriosclerotic vascular disease or ASVD) is a specific form of arteriosclerosis in which an artery wall thickens. Many people are familiar with the common term, hardening of the arteries.

Atherosclerosis is the leading cause of heart attacks, stroke, and peripheral vascular disease.

The bacteria linked to heart disease is chlamydia pneumoniae.

The medical research has shown that this bacteria can live quietly in the body for decades without causing any problems.

Unfortunately, we also now know that chlamydia pneumoniae has been found to be a cause of a silent infection leading to coronary arterial inflammation.

In one breakthrough study, chlamydia pneumoniae was found in 79% of people with carotid artery plaque vs. 4% in people with no plaque!