From the dawn of agriculture to the fall of the Soviet Union, major events in human history have left marks in the DNA of the bacterium that causes tuberculosis (TB). A study of nearly 5,000 samples of Mycobacterium tuberculosis from around the world shows how a lineage of the bacterium that emerged thousands of years ago in Asia has since become a global killer that is widely resistant to antibiotic drugs.

Although M. tuberculosis probably first emerged some 40,000 years ago in Africa, the disease did not take hold until humans took to farming - with the consequent settling down - says Thierry Wirth, an evolutionary geneticist at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris and lead author of the study.

The grouping together of people in settlements made it easier for the respiratory pathogen to spread from person to person, says Wirth. A previous analysis by his team had shown that the common ancestor of all the M. bacterium strains circulating today began spreading around 10,000 years ago in the ancient Fertile Crescent, a region stretching from Mesopotamia to the Nile Delta that was a cradle of agriculture - enabling lots of people to live in close proximity. "It's basically a dream setting for a bug like TB," says Wirth.

An individual's view of health determinants is directly correlated to their sources and how they process information. Regardless of its accuracy, when something is repeated a sufficient number of times, people will start to believe it. The cancer and sunscreen industries have made it their mission to convince the world that sunlight is a primary cause of skin cancer, when it fact it has been shown to prevent it. In fact, considerable evidence shows that blocking the sun's rays from reaching our skin with, for example sunscreen, significantly decreases our uptake of vitamin D levels, leading to higher mortality, critical illness, mental health disorders and cancer itself.

The southern hemisphere is currently experiencing record temperatures raising the mercury to levels many regions have never experienced. Some climatologists have stated that the trend will continue in the northern hemisphere come July. With these hot temperature come extreme warnings from public health officials to slather on the sunscreen to prevent skin cancer and specifically protect us from melanoma.

Is melanoma deadly? It definitely can be. There are more than 70,000 cases in the US alone every year and almost 10,000 people will die of the disease yearly. Melanoma accounts for less than two percent of skin cancer cases, but the vast majority of skin cancer deaths. Of the seven most common cancers in the US, melanoma is the only one whose incidence is increasing. Between 2000 and 2009, incidence climbed 1.9 percent annually. It's also the most common form of cancer for young adults 25-29 years old and the second most common form of cancer for young people 15-29 years old.

Now what's fascinating is the claim by public health watchdogs that almost 90 percent of melanomas are attributed to exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun. They claim that regular daily use of an SPF 15 or higher sunscreen reduces the risk of developing melanoma by 50 percent. Oh really?

What's interesting is how many people never stop to think about how humans survived on this planet for thousands of years working outside for hours on end before the industrial era. There was no sunscreen. There was common sense and people were not getting skin cancer. Oh my, how did we ever make it without sunscreen, drugs, and vaccines for thousands of years and suddenly we can't survive without them? All of these artificial substances do not increase a healthy life expectancy, they increase a diseased life expectancy. People are far more sick and ill today than they ever were a century ago. Yes they are living longer, but at what expense?

By the way if you haven't read my recent article on how fear mongers depend on keeping you in a state of panic for profit, it may help clear up any confusion on their motives moving forward. The scare tactics regarding the sun and UV rays are no exception.

It's also interesting how when traveling from either pole to the equator, UV exposure increases up to 5000% whereas ozone depletion only increases UV exposure by 20%. If UVB exposure and ozone depletion were the cause of skin cancer, those populations living closest to the equator would be diagnosed with malignant melanoma at a phenomenal frequency. The opposite is true.

I don't know about the rest of you, but lately my poultry purchases at my local market have become more and more of a "hit-and-miss" situation, with more "misses," if I'm being honest. As I bite into my homemade chicken nuggets or Coq au Vin (when I'm feeling fancy) I can't help but feel that the chicken just tastes weird, stringy, just ... funny. So a few days ago, when I turned on the tube and saw the news headlines stating that the FDA has finally confirmed that chicken meat sold in the USA contains arsenic, my head, and stomach, nearly hit the roof. This cancer-causing toxic chemical, which in high doses could kill you, is actually being added to chicken feed on purpose, giving store-bought chicken the illusion of healthy coloring and plump appearance. Shockingly, this is the case with more than 70 percent of all U.S. chickens! That is just awful!

The FDA has asked Pfizer to stop manufacturing the arsenic-containing drug, Roxarsone, that was found in the livers of nearly half of all chicken tested.

According to The Wall Street Journal: "The agency said it recently conducted a study of 100 broiler chickens that detected inorganic arsenic at higher levels in the livers of chickens treated with 3-Nitro compared with untreated chickens ... Pfizer said sale of 3-Nitro would be stopped by early July in order to allow animal producers to transition to other treatments."

The Health and Wellness show on the SOTT Radio Network covers topics of health, diet, science, homeopathy, wellness culture, and more.

This week's show covers The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith, the dangers and detriments of agriculture on the earth's soil and the health detriments of a vegetarian and high carbohydrate diet. The pet health segment covers the top ten lies told by the veterinary industry.

Running Time: 01:32:00

Download: MP3

Cargill announced that "they are confident the blue, plastic foreign material recently reported in one McDonalds Chicken Nugget in Japan did not originate from Cargill's production facilities." The source of the plastic is unknown.

McDonald's Japan is having a rough start to 2015. Last week, the company apologized after a customer found plastic fragments in an order of Chicken McNuggets, which were thought to have been produced at a Cargill factory in Thailand. McDonald's pulled out nearly 1 million McNuggets from the factory in one day. The same week, a customer in Misawa found a piece of vinyl in an order of McNuggets.

Here's the not-so-sweet truth. We are killings ourselves by consuming truckloads of hidden sugar.

Sugar is the New Fat

Despite 40 years of Americans being brainwashed into thinking that fat is bad, it turns out it's sugar, not fat, that makes you sick and overweight.

The facts are in, the science is beyond question. Sugar in all its forms is the root cause of our obesity epidemic and most of the chronic disease sucking the life out of our citizens and our economy - and, increasingly, the rest of the world. You name it, it's caused by sugar: heart disease, cancer, dementia, type 2 diabetes, depression, and even acne, infertility and impotence.

The average American consumes about 152 pounds of sugar a year. That's roughly 22 teaspoons every day for every person in America. And our kids consume about 34 teaspoons every day - that's more than two 20-ounce sodas - making nearly one in four teenagers pre-diabetic or diabetic.

Flour is even worse than sugar. We consume about 146 pounds of flour a year. Think about it. That's about one pound of sugar and flour combined every day for every man, woman and child in America. And flour raises blood sugar even more than table sugar. Even whole-wheat flour.

Should we be looking for disease in people who don't have any symptoms? A large new study indicates the answer is NO.

Subject to an increasingly expansive disease screening programs, unsuspecting healthy individuals are being transformed into patients every day. Massive 'awareness raising' campaigns funded by industries that either cause disease by creating and promoting harmful products, or make profit from the diseases by diagnosing and treating them, dominate mainstream culture, with their tentacles reaching deep into both private and public (i.e. governmental) sectors. Think of KFC's now defunct "Buckets for the Cure" campaign, or Susan G. Komen's stamp of approval on a Fracking Drill bit supposed to help find a cure. Or, how about our very own Whitehouse saturating itself with Pink light during Breast Cancer Awareness Month?

What do these 'awareness raising' efforts have in common? They almost all funnel the miseducated masses into fear-driven screening programs that promise to 'save lives' by 'detecting disease early' instead of focusing on removing and/or lessening the preventable causes of disease. Why not employ real prevention and focus on root cause resolution, which is to say, dietary changes, detoxification, and various modifiable lifestyle factors such as stress reduction -- none of which, incidentally, require pharmaceutical intervention. In the case of cancer, the primary focus should be on removing exposure to cancer-causing agents (carcinogens).

Labor unions representing professionals and skilled workers from many fields have publicly opposed mandatory vaccination in written statements to a government organization. Doctors, nurses, surgeons, skilled laborers, teachers, flight attendants, manufacturing employees, energy workers, and members of many more professions have spoken out against mandatory vaccines to the National Vaccine Advisory Committee (NVAC).

This news is not new, but you probably didn't know that so many labor unions and trade groups are collectively against mandatory vaccination. These groups, representing millions of workers, include names that may surprise you.

Over two years ago, the NVAC recommended that facilities providing health care services should consider implementing mandatory flu vaccine policies as a condition of employment. Numerous labor unions and professional organizations protested against this proposal, but mainstream media failed to publicize their comments. [1]

These organizations are opposed to flu vaccine mandates

Many organizations are opposed to mandatory flu vaccination and the lack of options for exemptions, including these well-known groups:

• American Medical Association (AMA): 228,000 members [2]
• Service Employees International Union, representing health care workers (SEIU): 1,100,000 members [3]
• Association of American Physicians and Surgeons: 4,000 members [4]
• American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME): 1,300,000 members [5]
• American Federation of Teachers (AFT): 1,600,000 members [6]
• Association of Flight Attendants-Communications Workers of America (AFA): 60,000 members [7]
• The Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions: 95,000 members
• United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing, Energy, Allied Industrial and Service Workers International Union: 30,000 members

A Wisconsin newlywed started to feel sick with the flu on a Monday. By Friday, she was dead. Katie McQuestion, a 26-year-old radiology technician from Kenosha, Wisconsin, got a flu shot to comply with hospital policy and had no underlying medical conditions, but she caught the flu and developed a serious complication from it: sepsis. She died on Jan. 2.

"She was the picture of health," her mother told ABC News, adding that McQuestion was married in September. "No 29-year-old should have to bury his wife."

McQuestion complained she didn't feel well on a mother-daughter trip to a dress shop on Dec. 29, said her mother, who asked not to be named. The following day, McQuestion was sent home sick from work. Her mother said she picked up a prescription for her on New Year's Eve.

Then, on New Year's day, McQuestion called her mother and said, "Mom, I've never been this sick," her mother recalled. McQuestion's parents and husband met her in the emergency room, and doctors told them that she had a high heart rate, low blood pressure and a low temperature. They gave her anti-nausea medication and something to help her sleep, her mother said.

About 12 hours later, the hospital called McQuestion's parents and told them she had taken a turn for the worse.

"They told us sepsis had set in, and it was too late," her mother said, adding that McQuestion had suffered a heart attack. "By that time, all her organs had begun to fail. There was nothing they could do."

A new cluster of start-ups in Germany is seeking to exploit the digital revolution that is gripping the medical sector. In the future, we are likely to use apps that can measure our heartbeat or analyze potential skin conditions to augment normal healthcare.

With recent advances in technology, visits by patients to Germany's well provisioned physical therapy centers may soon become a thing of the past. Instead, they may find themselves completing their therapy at home - in front of their televisions.

The respected Fraunhofer Institute in Berlin has developed MyRehab, a form of physical therapy that enables patients to conduct their exercises at home. The system uses a special camera, a television and sensors built into a chest strap. An avatar leads the patient through the exercises and cameras and sensors monitor whether the patient has completed them correctly. The platform even makes it possible for a doctor or physical therapist to communicate with the patient using a live Internet video connection.

MyRehab is just one example of what many believe will be the next Internet revolution: the digitalization of healthcare. After smartphones transformed the ways in which we communicate, move and shop, medicine appears to be next.

Internet giants like Google are currently preparing to make large investments in the sector. In the United States alone, some $3.5 billion ($4.38 billion) is expected to be invested this year in healthcare-related start-ups. The market is no longer limited to gimmicky items like health wristbands or Bluetooth-connected tooth brushes. New applications are focusing on real medical care, from giving birth to treating cancer.


There are numerous examples in Germany of companies taking advantage of the surge in information technology, particularly the rapid proliferation of smartphones, to explore the opportunities in what many believe will become a fast-growing sector.