Mercola RePost: Bad Science / Bad Medicine Pedaled as Good Deeds

From time to time, I like to offer these reprints from the mercola.com website because I agree with Dr. Mercola's analyses of health, fitness, and medical politics. His articles are well-researched and logical. And, like me, Dr. Mercola doesn't simply take the word of the "powers that be" concerning what constitutes good and bad science and medicine. 

Ghost in the Machine, Part 5 — Lies, Denial, Deceit and Manipulative ‘Research’

Turmeric, Coconut Cream and Ginger

• 
  
• December 31, 2017 

Have You Ever Wondered Why Your Blood Is Red?

Nourishing Beef Broth With 

Story at-a-glance

• Vaccines are Big Pharma's new profit center, which has caused an onslaught of manipulative, dishonest “research”
• The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation enriches pharmaceutical corporations and wealthy institutions with its questionable overseas vaccination agenda
• To fight a growing number of people questioning the safety and effectiveness of vaccines, the drug industry discredits vaccine injury statistics and has rolled out an aggressive and shocking ad campaign

By Dr. Mercola

In the last decade, vaccines have become Big Pharma's biggest profit center. A report published by MarketsandMarkets estimates the global vaccine market, currently valued at $34.30 billion a year, will grow to an astounding $49.27 billion by 2022.1

Why the boom? As blockbuster drugs like Lipitor, Viagra, Seroquel, Zyprexa, Singular and Concerta have gone off patent, vaccines prove a lucrative replacement. Not only are they priced much higher than pills, governments and NGOs shamelessly help market vaccines to huge swaths of the world's population.

These unethical partnerships, using taxpayer or NGO money, advance misleading research intended to frighten the public. Worse, they discredit vaccine critics who raise legitimate safety and efficacy questions and even discredit the families and victims of vaccine injuries themselves. To cash in on vaccine profits Big Pharma, governments and NGOs have characterized all vaccines as "life-saving." One of the clearest examples is the attempt to present vaccines against the HPV virus as vaccines "against cancer."

"Science" articles warn that as many as 90 percent of adults, especially baby boomers, silently harbor the HPV virus much like articles that warn many baby boomers are infected with the Hepatitis C virus.

In both cases, the drug industry is trying to "grow" the market for its products by inflating the amount of estimated sufferers. Reporters either wittingly or unwittingly help in the effort by repeating the drug industry supplied "facts." The truth is more than 90 percent of HPV infections are cleared by the body2 without symptoms and only 20 percent of HPV infections are the high-risk type that could develop into cancer if not identified and treated.3

Big Pharma's misleading advertising is not working, though. Many families of adolescent boys and girls targeted by HPV vaccine marketing by drug companies and government health officials are refusing the vaccine.4

Reacting to the HPV vaccine dropouts, Big Pharma launched an offensive "shame" campaign last year in which young adults with cancer blame their parents for not vaccinating them when they were adolescents. The ads were so over-the-top even supporters of the vaccine complained. Twitter remarks accused the company of trying to guilt-trip parents to bolster corporate profits.5

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Promotes Vaccines and Their Profits

One of the world's leading funders of vaccine development and promotion is the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (B&MGF).6 In 2002, it began buying billions in drug stocks7 and subsequently added huge amounts of Monsanto stock.8 Two of the B&MGF's research heads were hired right out of Pharma — one from GlaxoSmithKline, with whom the B&MGF had a long-standing collaboration, and the other from Novartis.9

Even more shocking, it hired the former president of product development at Genentech to serve as its current CEO, Dr. Susan Desmond-Hellmann.10 This is how health writer Ruben Rosenberg Colorni describes the true nature of the foundation:11

"The Bill & Melinda Gates 'Foundation' is essentially a huge tax-avoidance scheme for enormously-wealthy capitalists who have made billions from exploiting the world’s people. The foundation invests, tax free, money from Gates and the 'donations' from others, in the very companies in which Gates owns millions in stocks, thus guaranteeing returns through both sales as well as intellectual-property rights.

To add insult to injury, the system perpetuates the spread of disease rather than aids in their eradication, thus perpetually justifying his endeavors to “eradicate” them (solving a problem they are creating)."

In a 2011 Forbes interview, Bill Gates admitted the new profitability of vaccines.12 "Ten or 15 years ago, nobody in the drug business would have held up vaccines as profit centers," he said, conceding that "vaccines are so tough, particularly because of liability issues." But now, "people are making money in the vaccine business," he noted.

Questions About Overseas Vaccination Programs

Questions about the ethics of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's overseas vaccination programs have swirled for years, specifically a study aimed at validating a low-cost way to screen for cervical cancer in India.13 This summer, STAT News reported that "new evidence of ethical lapses" has been published.14

"Dr. Eric Suba, a pathologist at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in San Francisco and co-author of the paper, provided STAT with a copy and links to supporting documents. In an interview, he described the Mumbai study, which ended in 2015, in stark terms: 'catastrophic, 'monumentally unethical, and a radical departure from normal scientific procedures’ …

"Critics of the 18-year trial said that U.S.-funded Indian researchers used ineffective screening that endangered thousands of poor women in Mumbai. They were told the test could help prevent cancer, but far fewer pre-cancerous lesions were found than expected, suggesting that some lesions were missed — possibly leading to an unknown number of deaths."

In 2015, judges in India's Supreme Court heard a challenge claiming the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation failed to obtain the informed consent of the children or their parents and demanded answers about juvenile deaths from the vaccine trial.15

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Is a Big Investor in Monsanto and Promoter of GMOs

In 2012, Bill Gates announced he would try to end world hunger by growing more genetically modified (GM) crops. He had already invested $27 million into Monsanto. At the time, I said Gates was leading the pack as one of the most destructive "do-gooders" on the planet and that his views on addressing poverty and disease in poor countries were short-sighted and misinformed.

Shortly thereafter, a team of 900 scientists funded by the World Bank and United Nations determined the use of GM crops is not a meaningful solution to the complex situation of world hunger. The Seattle Times also called Bill Gates' support of GM crops as a solution for world hunger unsound science. It's an undisputed fact that the introduction of genetically engineered crops lead to diminished biodiversity — the direct opposite of what the world needs.

To save the planet and ourselves, small-scale organic and sustainable farming not only must prevail but flourish, and GM crops do not help; rather, they threaten their existence. Seeds have always been sold and swapped freely between farmers, preserving biodiversity, and without that basis, you cannot have food sovereignty. With fewer farmers, "feeding the hungry with GM crops" is nothing but a pipe dream.

A clear example of the false promise of GM crops is seen with the GM Golden Rice designed to bring beta-carotene to the diets of people in poor countries and supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's donation of $20 million. The GM crop was ill conceived for two reasons. People eating the low fat, poor diets seen in poor countries generally cannot convert beta carotene to the vitamin A and it was estimated that someone would have to eat 16 pounds of Golden Rice a day to receive the benefits.

Unethical Vaccine Marketing Only Tells Half the Story

As I said earlier, marketing of the HPV vaccine relies on half-truths, scare tactics and alarmist advertising. By manipulatively presenting it as a "vaccine against cancer," which all but neglectful parents would give to their children, vaccine makers hope to occlude the real questions about safety and documented injuries.16,17 A few years after the vaccines were launched, questions about research and transparency had already arisen, according to the Huffington Post.18

"Critics ask why the primary endpoint in trials was not cervical cancer, but lesions that could become malignant and why placebo data was spun to make the vaccine look more effective ... There are also transparency questions. Why did former First Lady Laura Bush work with Merck-funded citizen front groups to promote the original vaccine and why are governors like Texas’ Rick Perry trying to mandate vaccination of all girls?

University of Queensland lecturer Dr. Andrew Gunn was silenced by his university when he dared to question the vaccine and ordered to apologize to the vaccine maker, CSL, according to the Courier Mail. Dr. Gunn expressed doubts about the vaccine’s 'marketing as a solution to cancer of the cervix when at best it’s expected to prevent about two-thirds of cases and 'the incorrect and dangerous perception that it might make Pap smears unnecessary'...

And one of Gardasil’s and Cervarix’s [two HPV vaccines] original developers, Dr. Diane Harper, a consultant to the World Health Organization, also questioned the vaccine’s lack of safety and effectiveness ... only to appear to retract her remarks later."

‘Herd Immunity’ Incorrectly Used to Sell Vaccines

Vaccine makers and the governments and NGOs that help their marketing use the concept of "herd immunity" to sell mass vaccination — the idea that the vaccination rate in a given community must be kept high so that those who have not been immunized do not endanger others.

But of course, HPV, which is a sexually transmitted disease (STD), is not spread through mere close proximity to another person like non-STD diseases. You can’t transmit or get HPV infection in a public setting, like in a classroom or crowded elevator. Maybe that is why the "cancer prevention" angle is pushed.

Purveyors of the herd immunity theory never seem to be able to explain why the majority of outbreaks of diseases targeted by vaccines occur in communities thought to have already achieved herd immunity status, i.e., where the majority of people are fully vaccinated and transmission of infection "should" not occur.

In fact, health officials appear to deliberately confuse the public. Natural herd immunity certainly exists but artificial vaccine-acquired herd immunity, which is temporary at best, is a misnomer. Vaccination and natural exposure to a given disease produce two qualitatively different types of immune responses.

Vaccine Injuries Dismissed and Downplayed

Vaccine injuries are well documented and the HPV vaccine is a case in point. Here is what the Indian Medical Journal of Medical Ethics reported in 2017.19

"The human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine has been linked to a number of serious adverse reactions. The range of symptoms is diverse and they develop in a multi-layered manner over an extended period of time. The argument for the safety and effectiveness of the HPV vaccine overlooks the following flaws:

(i) no consideration is given to the genetic basis of autoimmune diseases, and arguments that do not take this into account cannot assure the safety of the vaccine; (ii) the immune evasion mechanisms of HPV, which require the HPV vaccine to maintain an extraordinarily high antibody level for a long period of time for it to be effective, are disregarded;

and (iii) the limitations of effectiveness of the vaccine. We also discuss various issues that came up in the course of developing, promoting and distributing the vaccine, as well as the pitfalls encountered in monitoring adverse events and epidemiological verification."

Yet vaccine makers, government regulatory agencies and doctors administering vaccines continue to insist the many injuries seen after vaccination are mere coincidences and not caused by the vaccines. Controlled clinical trials have found no causal association between HPV vaccination and different adverse effects, say the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.20

In addition to inflating the number of people suffering from diseases such as HPV, vaccine promoters inflate the effectiveness of their vaccines. The HPV vaccine has cut infections by up to 90 percent in the past 10 years, brags one science website, as if cutting infections and cutting the incidence of cancer were the same thing. It is especially irresponsible because the cancer rates cannot be determined until years or decades after the vaccine is given.21

Here is more damning evidence against Monsanto and their anti-scientific tactics to sell products that are KILLING YOU and YOUR FAMILY and YOUR PETS!  This article is a reprint from Dr. Mercola's website:

By Dr. Mercola

A common corporate tactic, well-honed by the tobacco industry, is to use “third-party experts” to bring the industry’s message to the public under the cloak of independent opinion or expertise. The idea is that academic types are far more credible than industry employees when it comes to defending the industry’s position.

Over the years, I’ve written about many of these so-called “independent experts” that turned out to be anything but. Among them is Henry Miller, who was thoroughly outed as a Monsanto shill during the 2012 Proposition 37 GMO labeling campaign in California.

Henry Miller Outed as Monsanto Puppet — Again

The industry-funded “No on Prop 37” placed Miller front and center of its campaign, breaking all sorts of rules in the process. As the Los Angeles Times1 reported at the time, a No on 37 advertisement had to be pulled off the air because Miller was fraudulently identified as being part of the Stanford University faculty. Behind him in the shot was Stanford’s recognizable vaulted campus walkway.

Alas, not only is Miller not a Stanford professor (he’s a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank that just happens to be housed on the Stanford campus), Stanford also has a policy to not take positions on candidates or ballot measures, and does not allow political filming on campus.

Aside from promoting genetically engineered (GE) foods (he was actually the founding director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Biotechnology), Miller also has a long history2 of defending toxic chemicals such as neonicotinoid pesticides, DDT and cigarettes.

He’s even penned articles suggesting radioactive fallout might be beneficial for health, while claiming “Organic agriculture is to the environment what cigarette smoking is to human health” — apparently momentarily forgetting he’s defended the safety of cigarette smoking.3

Miller is also a friend of the infamous industry front group American Council for Science and Health (ACSH), which has defended everything from fracking and pesticides to bisphenol-A and GE foods. Now, Miller has made less than flattering headlines yet again — this time for being fired by Forbes Magazine for submitting articles ghostwritten by Monsanto.

Unethical Ghostwriting More Common Than You Might Suspect

Monsanto isn’t feeding the world as they claim, but they sure are spoon-feeding scientists, academics and journalists. This shameful practice is far more common than anyone would like to think. Fortunately, Forbes had the integrity to do something about it this time.

That doesn’t always happen. The evidence4 against Miller emerged during the court-ordered discovery process of a class action lawsuit against Monsanto by people who claim they developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma as a result of glyphosate exposure (the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, used by farmers and home gardeners alike).

The documents, more than 700 pages in all, were posted online by the law firm Baum Hedlund Aristei Goldman,5 which states the documents “allow people to see what is happening ‘behind the curtain’ of secrecy that normally shrouds ongoing litigation … These documents tell an alarming story of ghostwriting, scientific manipulation, collusion with the Environmental Protection Agency, and previously undisclosed information about how the human body absorbs glyphosate.” As reported by The New York Times:6

“Documents show that Henry I. Miller … asked Monsanto to draft an article for him that largely mirrored one that appeared under his name on Forbes’s website in 2015 … A similar issue appeared in academic research.

An academic involved in writing research funded by Monsanto, John Acquavella, a former Monsanto employee, appeared to express discomfort with the process, writing in a 2015 email to a Monsanto executive, ‘I can’t be part of deceptive authorship on a presentation or publication.’ He also said of the way the company was trying to present the authorship: ‘We call that ghost writing and it is unethical.’”

Miller Fired for Submitting Ghostwritten Material 

While there’s controversy about the legality of the release of these internal emails by plaintiff’s attorneys to the public,7 Forbes’ response was swift. Faced with evidence they’d published material under Miller’s name that was in fact ghostwritten by Monsanto, Forbes not only fired Miller but also removed all of his work from their site.

The article in question, published in 2015, attacked the findings of the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a branch of the World Health Organization, which had classified glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen. Email correspondence reveals Monsanto asked Miller if he’d be willing to write an article on the findings, to which he replied “I would be if I could start from a high-quality draft.”

The subsequent article, which was near-identical to Monsanto’s draft, was published in Millers name, with no mention of Monsanto involvement.8 Forbes’ site expressly states that “opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own,” which in this case clearly was not true. Mia Carbonell, a Forbes spokeswoman, told The New York Times:  

“All contributors to Forbes.com sign a contract requiring them to disclose any potential conflicts of interest and only publish content that is their own original writing. When it came to our attention that Mr. Miller violated these terms, we removed his blog from Forbes.com and ended our relationship with him.”

Correspondence Reveals Internal Knowledge of Roundup Dangers

The released email correspondence also reveals Monsanto executives are clearly aware there are safety concerns with Roundup as a formulation, and its main ingredient, glyphosate, and have been for well over 15 years. As noted in the featured article:9

“‘In a 2002 email, a Monsanto executive said, ‘What I’ve been hearing from you is that this continues to be the case with these studies — Glyphosate is O.K. but the formulated product (and thus the surfactant) does the damage.’

In a 2003 email, a different Monsanto executive tells others, ‘You cannot say that Roundup is not a carcinogen … we have not done the necessary testing on the formulation to make that statement.’ She adds, however, that ‘we can make that statement about glyphosate and can infer that there is no reason to believe that Roundup would cause cancer.’”

Proof of Industry Involvement in Retraction of Damning Research 

The documents also show Monsanto pressured A. Wallace Hayes, then-editor of the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology, to retract a damning animal study by professor Gilles-Eric Séralini, which showed Roundup and GE corn caused cancer and early death. Hayes, it turns out, had entered into a contract with Monsanto shortly before the coordinated retraction campaign began.

While Hayes denies Monsanto had anything to do with his controversial and widely criticized decision to retract Séralini’s study, the email correspondence suggests otherwise.10 As noted by GM Watch:11  

“Back in 2012, GMWatch founder Jonathan Matthews exposed the industry links of the supposedly independent scientists who lobbied the journal editor to retract the Séralini paper. Now we have first-hand proof of Monsanto’s direct involvement …  [Monsanto scientist David] Saltmiras ... writes of how ‘Throughout the late 2012 Séralini rat cancer publication and media campaign, I leveraged my relationship [with] the Editor i[n] Chief of the publishing journal …

Another Monsanto employee, Eric Sachs, writes … about his efforts to galvanize scientists in the letter-writing campaign … Sachs writes: ‘I talked to Bruce Chassy and he will send his letter to Wally Hayes directly and notify other scientists that have sent letters to do the same. He understands the urgency …

I remain adamant that Monsanto must not be put in the position of providing the critical analysis that leads the editors to retract the paper’ … Sachs is keen to ensure that Monsanto is not publicly seen as attempting to get the paper retracted, even though that is precisely what it is doing. Sachs writes to Monsanto scientist William Heydens: ‘

There is a difference between defending science and participating in a formal process to retract a publication that challenges the safety of our products. We should not provide ammunition for Séralini, GM critics and the media to charge that Monsanto used its might to get this paper retracted. The information that we provided ... makes a strong case that the paper should not have passed peer review.”

Forbes Has Many Shills

Ironically, as recently as November 2016, Miller delivered a critical salvo against a New York Times article in which Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Danny Hakim argued that GE agriculture is a failure because it has neither reduced pesticide usage nor led to increases in yields. Miller was one of the “independent experts” contacted for rebuttal by Forbes contributor Kavin Senapathy. She writes:12

“… Miller tells me via email that ‘[t]he senior management at the Times takes valid criticism seriously, especially when it contains terms like 'bias,' 'dishonesty', and 'inaccuracy.’ He expects there will be an avalanche of complaints to the Times public editor at public@nytimes.com.”

 You can contact Forbes to let them know how you feel about the biased stable of writes they hire by emailing them at readers@forbes.com. You can find similar bias in other articles at Forbes.13 14 15,16

If Forbes really wants to clean up its act, its editors would take a moment to investigate any contributing author relying solely on information from these and other known industry shills and/or industry front groups. It’s a pretty close-knit group of individuals, so the worst actors are not hard to identify based on their associations.

Besides the Genetic Literacy Project and the ACSH, both with ties to Monsanto,17 there are many other industry front groups and websites specializing in astroturfing while pretending to be independent and science oriented. That includes but is certainly not limited to the following.18

Science 2.0	Science Codex
GMO Answers	Center for Consumer Freedom
Independent Women’s Forum	Center for Inquiry

Once you start to investigate these front groups, you’ll find the same names appearing again and again, co-writing articles, interviewing each other and referring to each other’s work back and forth.

Aside from those already mentioned, well-known contributors speaking for the industry include Kevin Folta, professor and chairman of the Horticultural Sciences Department at University of Florida — who, incidentally, was also contacted by Senapathy for comment on her Forbes piece against Hakim’s “hack job on GMOs,” and Keith Kloor.19

Why Lack of Trust in Science Is Warranted

It’s bad enough that most published research findings turn out to be false due to poor design or bias, organizations such as these willfully promote flawed or flat-out manufactured science to support industry goals, while attacking research that conflicts with their aims — no matter how well done that research is. Complaints have been raised that many are “losing faith” in science and just don’t trust it anymore. Considering the evidence, this makes perfect sense, as so much of it IS false.

As noted in a 2005 paper20 titled, “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False,” published in PLOS Medicine, John Ioannidis notes: “Simulations show that for most study designs and settings, it is more likely for a research claim to be false than true. Moreover, for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias.”

While science in general fails to hit the truth squarely on the head even under the best of circumstances, the chances of an industry-funded study being wrong is FAR greater than one done by independent researchers, who tend to be less vested in the outcome. There’s really no disputing this.

Not only has funding bias been repeatedly demonstrated in studies looking at funding and study outcomes, if it weren’t true, the industry would not go to such great lengths to secretly hire academics, researchers and journalists to pretend as if they’re speaking as independent experts. Nor would any of these front groups exist — groups pretending to be grassroots efforts by concerned citizens or organizations by science-loving academics, and so on. They wouldn’t be necessary if industry-backed science were trustworthy.

Illegitimate Science and Fake Journalism Are a Real Threat

The fact of the matter is, these front groups and paid lackeys are not dealing in legitimate science or journalism. To hide that fact, they try to intimidate and shame people as “science-deniers.” Regardless of how this class action lawsuit against Monsanto pans out, it has done a great public service, revealing just how far companies like Monsanto will go to deceive, and the amount of human suffering they’re willing to cause in the name of profitability with nary a thought of remorse.

With the evidence before us, why should anyone trust them, or anyone involved in their scheme? As the old adage goes, “fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” Some of the released emails reveal Monsanto has not properly tested its chemical formulations, and that they are in fact terrified of doing so, for fear of what might be found.

In document No. 28, Monsanto regulatory affairs manager Stephen Adams states, “With regards to the carcinogenicity of our formulations we don’t have such testing on them directly…”

This email was dated December 10, 2010. In an email dating all the way back to 2001, Mark Martens — a former Monsanto employee with a Ph.D. in pharmaceutical sciences — addresses the issue of formulation testing, saying, “I don’t know for sure how suppliers would react — but if somebody came to me and said they wanted to test Roundup I know how I would react — with serious concern. We have to really think about doing formulations even if they are not on the market …”21

According to the plaintiff attorneys, “This document is relevant and reasonably likely to be used in this litigation as it contains explicit concerns by Monsanto regarding the biological plausibility of the formulated product to cause cancer.”

Emails written by a Monsanto toxicologist also show the company did not want to conduct any kind of safety studies on glyphosate, surfactant ingredients or the formulations. Ignorance is bliss, they say, but when a company chooses to remain ignorant of its product’s dangers in order to absolve itself from responsibility for its effects, all the public gets are woes.