Friday, July 30, 2010

What Are PFO's and How To Prevent Them?

The foramen ovale is a small opening located on the atrial septum that is used during fetal circulation to speed up the travel of oxygenated blood through the heart. When in the womb, a baby does not use its own lungs to oxygenate blood; it relies on the mother to provide oxygen rich blood from the placenta through the umbilical cord. Normally the foramen ovale closes at birth when increased blood pressure on the left side of the heart forces the opening to close.

If the atrial septum does not close properly, it is called a patent foramen ovale. This type of defect generally works like a flap valve, only opening during certain conditions when there is more pressure inside the chest. This increased pressure occurs when people strain while having a bowel movement, cough, or sneeze.


How does a PFO affect the body?

If the pressure is sufficient, blood may travel from the right atrium to the left atrium. If there is a clot or particles in the blood traveling in the right side of the heart, it can cross the PFO, enter the left atrium, and travel out of the heart to the brain (causing a stroke) or into a coronary artery (causing a heart attack).

A stroke occurs when circulation to a part of the brain is blocked. The resultant lack of oxygen can cause problems that range from death to permanent or temporary affects on muscle control and body function.

A PFO does not cause a stroke, but its presence may be a pathway for a stroke to occur by allowing blood to flow from the venous system to the arterial system without going through the lungs first. One of the important functions of the lungs, in addition to oxygen exchange, is to filter acidic debris from the venous blood returning to the heart. If this acidic debris goes to the arterial circulation, it can lodge in an artery serving the brain, heart, or other major organ causing an arterial embolization. When it lodges in the brain, a stroke occurs. If the effects of the stroke last less than 24 hours, the stroke is called a Transient Ischemic Attack (TIA). If the symptoms persist longer than 24 hours, it is termed a stroke.


The best treatment to prevent and/ or reverse a possible heart attack or stroke is an alkaline lifestyle and diet, as outlined in our new book, The pH Miracle Revised and Revisited, that will prevent bowel congestion and constipation, reduce or prevent allergic reactions to environmental toxins, reduce cellular acidic debris, prevent thrombosis, and keep the blood clean and flowing throughout central and peripheral blood circulation.

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Symptoms of COPD (Epoc)

After seeing this health blog which is the time, plays in a little in order to analyze the early stages of the disease. Thus we seek what are the symptoms of COPD, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.


There are times when the symptoms are very obvious, and can be seen very easily, while at other times barely visible, or do not appear.

Basically, the period is characterized by inflammation of the bronchi, so that symptoms arising therefrom pass through breathing difficulties, something that usually does the patient. This is compounded by the lack of breath or wheezing, as most characteristic symptoms.

Similarly we can add another symptom cough as, but a cough that is usually accompanied by mucus (called sputum) from the lungs.

This makes the feeling of fatigue is a constant and other symptoms of COPD. This feeling of fatigue is compounded even when the physical is not very pronounced, ie, for example, climbing stairs or walking a little faster than normal and can appear moments of fatigue and tiredness, which may be symptomatic insist, for Epoc.

Continuing with the problems caused by difficulty breathing, another symptom of COPD is difficulty sleeping, which is invaded because the patient suffering Epoc wakes breathless and sometimes coughing.

Finally, it should be noted that COPD is a chronic and progressive, so that the patient must be patient suffers and which is also poorly reversible. Take life more calmly is one of the few things you can do.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

The Scientific Nonsense and Dis-Information of A Retired Chemistry Teacher - Stephen Lower

Stephen Lower is a text book retired chemistry teacher that just needs updated information. There are 100's of published scientific articles that validate the efficacy of drinking alkaline water and eating alkaline food. May I suggest the following articles after a few brief comments.

Distilled water is electrically neutral and provides no benefit to the body unless infused with electrons. Water is a catalyst for delivering electrical energy to all the anatomical elements of the body that make up all cells. You deliver electrical energy to the body by increasing the electron concentration of that water. The body runs on electricity NOT food or calories. Food is just one source for electrical energy. Another great source for electrical energy to run the body is the sun. The point here is water is a catalyst for delivering electrical energy in the form of electrons or alkaline water that is transported to every cell via a matrix of sodium.

According to Stephen Lower at the Simon Fraser University drinking alkaline water is of no value because it will be minimized by the hydrochloric acids of the stomach. That's exactly the point Stephen! You want to minimize the hydrochloric acid residues in the stomach!!!! Of course what Stephen does not explain is the biochemistry that every molecule of hydrochloric acid produced in the stomach an equal amound of sodium bicarbonate is produced by the cover cells. The equation is as follows: NaCl + H20 + Cl = NaHCO3 + HCL. The stomach pulls sodium, chloride, water and carbon dioxide to make sodium bicarbonate, an alkalizing compound with a waste product of hydrochloric acid. The stomach will always produce sodium bicarbonate to alkalize the food we eat or the liquids we drink to prepare the food and drink for biological transformation into stem cells in the crypts of the small intestine. The more acidic the food or drink the more sodium bicarbonate will be produced to buffer the acids of the food or drink. This of course leaves you with a belly full of acid which leads to all sorts of stomach disorders including the acidifying of the blood and then tissues. The stomach does not need to produce any sodium bicarbonate when we are eating or drinking alkalizing foods or drinks. The key here to remember is the stomach is NOT an organ of digestion but an organ of contribution and its main contribution is to alkalize the food and drink we ingest. You want to drink alkaline water to neutralize or buffer the hydrochloric acid in the stomach. The stomach is NOT an organ of digestion but an organ designed to alkalize the acids from food and metabolism. Bottom-line the best thing you can do to support the stomach is to drink alkaline water with a pH of at least 9.5 or better. You will be preventing serious stomach disorders and preparing the food and drink for its ideal pH in the small intestine at 8.4.

Stephen is also confused about the biochemistry of the blood which has a very narrow range of 7.365 to 7.4. Any acid introduced into the bloodstream via diet or metabolism must be eliminated through the four channels of elimination, i.e. urination, perspiration, defecation, and respiration. If one or more of these four channels of elimination are congested or damaged then the blood goes into compensated acidosis and will eliminate any acid into the connective tissue, Pishinger spaces and the fatty tissues to maintain the delicate pH of the blood at 7.365. If this process continues acids wiill build up in the tissues leading to latent tissue acidosis and eventually an inflammatory or degenerative condition. If the symptoms of tissue acidosis or latent tissue acidosis is not corrected this will then lead to decompensated acidosis in the blood and then eventual death.

I would suggest those who are interested in why it is important to drink alkaline water and eat alkaline food read The pH Miracle Revised and Updated and the following articles at http://www.articlesofhealth.blogspot.com/:



Friday, July 23, 2010

Autism and the Homefirst Practice

The Age of Autism: 'A pretty big secret' By Dan Olmsted UPI Senior Editor

CHICAGO, Dec. 7, 2005 (UPI) -- It's a far piece from the horse-and-buggies of Lancaster County, Pa., to the cars and freeways of Cook County, Ill.


But thousands of children cared for by Homefirst Health Services in metropolitan Chicago have at least two things in common with thousands of Amish children in rural Lancaster: They have never been vaccinated. And they don't have autism."


We have a fairly large practice. We have about 30,000 or 35,000 children that we've taken care of over the years, and I don't think we have a single case of autism in children delivered by us who never received vaccines," said Dr. Mayer Eisenstein, Homefirst's medical director who founded the practice in 1973. Homefirst doctors have delivered more than 15,000 babies at home, and thousands of them have never been vaccinated.


The few autistic children Homefirst sees were vaccinated before their families became patients, Eisenstein said. "I can think of two or three autistic children who we've delivered their mother's next baby, and we aren't really totally taking care of that child -- they have special care needs. But they bring the younger children to us. I don't have a single case that I can think of that wasn't vaccinated."


The autism rate in Illinois public schools is 38 per 10,000, according to state Education Department data; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention puts the national rate of autism spectrum disorders at 1 in 166 -- 60 per 10,000."


We do have enough of a sample," Eisenstein said. "The numbers are too large to not see it. We would absolutely know. We're all family doctors. If I have a child with autism come in, there's no communication. It's frightening. You can't touch them. It's not something that anyone would miss."


No one knows what causes autism, but federal health authorities say it isn't childhood immunizations. Some parents and a small minority of doctors and scientists, however, assert vaccines are responsible.


This column has been looking for autism in never-vaccinated U.S. children in an effort to shed light on the issue. We went to Chicago to meet with Eisenstein at the suggestion of a reader, and we also visited Homefirst's office in northwest suburban Rolling Meadows. Homefirst has four other offices in the Chicago area and a total of six doctors.


Eisenstein stresses his observations are not scientific. "The trouble is this is just anecdotal in a sense, because what if every autistic child goes somewhere else and (their family) never calls us or they moved out of state?"


In practice, that's unlikely to account for the pronounced absence of autism, says Eisenstein, who also has a bachelor's degree in statistics, a master's degree in public health and a law degree.


Homefirst follows state immunization mandates, but Illinois allows religious exemptions if parents object based either on tenets of their faith or specific personal religious views. Homefirst does not exclude or discourage such families. Eisenstein, in fact, is author of the book "Don't Vaccinate Before You Educate!" and is critical of the CDC's vaccination policy in the 1990s, when several new immunizations were added to the schedule, including Hepatitis B as early as the day of birth. Several of the vaccines -- HepB included -- contained a mercury-based preservative that has since been phased out of most childhood vaccines in the United States.


Medical practices with Homefirst's approach to immunizations are rare. "Because of that, we tend to attract families that have questions about that issue," said Dr. Paul Schattauer, who has been with Homefirst for 20 years and treats "at least" 100 children a week.


Schattauer seconded Eisenstein's observations. "All I know is in my practice I don't see autism. There is no striking 1-in-166," he said.


Earlier this year we reported the same phenomenon in the mostly unvaccinated Amish. CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding told us the Amish "have genetic connectivity that would make them different from populations that are in other sectors of the United States." Gerberding said, however, studies "could and should be done" in more representative unvaccinated groups -- if they could be found and their autism rate documented.Chicago is America's prototypical "City of Big Shoulders," to quote Carl Sandburg, and Homefirst's mostly middle-class families seem fairly representative. A substantial number are conservative Christians who home-school their children. They are mostly white, but the Homefirst practice also includes black and Hispanic families and non-home-schooling Jews, Catholics and Muslims.


They tend to be better educated, follow healthier diets and breast-feed their children much longer than the norm -- half of Homefirst's mothers are still breast-feeding at two years. Also, because Homefirst relies less on prescription drugs including antibiotics as a first line of treatment, these children have less exposure to other medicines, not just vaccines.


Schattauer, interviewed at the Rolling Meadows office, said his caseload is too limited to draw conclusions about a possible link between vaccines and autism. "With these numbers you'd have a hard time proving or disproving anything," he said. "You can only get a feeling about it."


In no way would I be an advocate to stand up and say we need to look at vaccines, because I don't have the science to say that," Schattauer said. "But I don't think the science is there to say that it's not."


Schattauer said Homefirst's patients also have significantly less childhood asthma and juvenile diabetes compared to national rates. An office manager who has been with Homefirst for 17 years said she is aware of only one case of severe asthma in an unvaccinated child."Sometimes you feel frustrated because you feel like you've got a pretty big secret," Schattauer said. He argues for more research on all those disorders, independent of political or business pressures.


The asthma rate among Homefirst patients is so low it was noticed by the Blue Cross group with which Homefirst is affiliated, according to Eisenstein.


"In the alternative-medicine network which Homefirst is part of, there are virtually no cases of childhood asthma, in contrast to the overall Blue Cross rate of childhood asthma which is approximately 10 percent," he said. "At first I thought it was because they (Homefirst's children) were breast-fed, but even among the breast-fed we've had asthma. We have virtually no asthma if you're breast-fed and not vaccinated."


Because the diagnosis of asthma is based on emergency-room visits and hospital admissions, Eisenstein said, Homefirst's low rate is hard to dispute. "It's quantifiable -- the definition is not reliant on the doctor's perception of asthma."


Several studies have found a risk of asthma from vaccination; others have not. Studies that include never-vaccinated children generally find little or no asthma in that group.


Earlier this year Florida pediatrician Dr. Jeff Bradstreet said there is virtually no autism in home-schooling families who decline to vaccinate for religious reasons -- lending credence to Eisenstein's observations.


"It's largely non-existent," said Bradstreet, who treats children with autism from around the country. "It's an extremely rare event."


Bradstreet has a son whose autism he attributes to a vaccine reaction at 15 months. His daughter has been home-schooled, he describes himself as a "Christian family physician," and he knows many of the leaders in the home-school movement.


"There was this whole subculture of folks who went into home-schooling so they would never have to vaccinate their kids," he said. "There's this whole cadre who were never vaccinated for religious reasons." In that subset, he said, "unless they were massively exposed to mercury through lots of amalgams (mercury dental fillings in the mother) and/or big-time fish eating, I've not had a single case."


Federal health authorities and mainstream medical groups emphatically dismiss any link between autism and vaccines, including the mercury-based preservative thimerosal. Last year a panel of the Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academies, said there is no evidence of such a link, and funding should henceforth go to "promising" research.


Thimerosal, which is 49.6 percent ethyl mercury by weight, was phased out of most U.S. childhood immunizations beginning in 1999, but the CDC recommends flu shots for pregnant women and last year began recommending them for children 6 to 23 months old. Most of those shots contain thimerosal.


Thimerosal-preserved vaccines are currently being injected into millions of children in developing countries around the world. "My mandate ... is to make sure at the end of the day that 100,000,000 are immunized ... this year, next year and for many years to come ... and that will have to be with thimerosal-containing vaccines," said John Clements of the World Health Organization at a June 2000 meeting called by the CDC.


That meeting was held to review data that thimerosal might be linked with autism and other neurological problems. But in 2004 the Institute of Medicine panel said evidence against a link is so strong that health authorities, "whether in the United States or other countries, should not include autism as a potential risk" when formulating immunization policies.


But where is the simple, straightforward study of autism in never-vaccinated U.S. children? Based on our admittedly anecdotal and limited reporting among the Amish, the home-schooled and now Chicago's Homefirst, that may prove to be a significant omission.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

What Causes the Elevation of Cholesterol Levels In the Blood?

After all, what causes the elevation of cholesterol levels in blood?

The following are some suggestions from the medical literature about factors, beyond the famous but wronged and simplistic idea that foods based on saturated fats cause the development of atherosclerosis (1, 22), suggesting that stress, high carbohydrate diets (sugar acid) and smoke may raise total cholesterol and low density lipoproteins levels:

1. Stress increases metabolic acids
a) Anxiety and cholesterol elevation (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11)
b) Hostility and cholesterol elevation (12, 13, 14)
c) Extreme physical exertion and cholesterol elevation (15)

2) High carbohydrate diets or the acid sugar and cholesterol elevation (16, 17, 18).

3) Smoke and cholesterol elevation (19, 20).
It is interesting to notice that specially in stress conditions and in high carbohydrate diets there is a significant elevation in blood lactic acid, with paralleling elevation of cholesterol levels in blood which represents in my view, a healing response of the body to the vascular endothelial lesions caused by the lactic acid. (21)

As Dr. Malcolm Kendrick, from the International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics (THINCS), use to say: "Do cigarettes contain fat? No, not at all. So, how can smoking a cigarette, containing no fat or cholesterol, end up depositing fat and cholesterol in the artery walls. What is the mechanism for that?" The answers is easy. When you smoke your are breathing in burnt acid sugar and tars of which the body binds up with cholesterol to protect the artery walls.

Note:

A recent meta-analysis of prospective epidemiologic studies during 5–23 years of follow-up of 347,747 subjects showed that there is no significant evidence for concluding that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of CHD. Consideration of age, sex, and study quality did not changed the results (22)

1. Uffe Ravnskov, Cholesterol Myths at http://www.ravnskov.nu/cholesterol.htm

2) Changes in plasma lipids with psychosocial stress are related to hypertension status and the norepinephrine stress response. Wirtz PH, Ehlert U, Bärtschi C, Redwine LS, von Känel R. Metabolism. 2009 Jan;58(1):30-7.

3. Effects of hemoconcentration and sympathetic activation on serum lipid responses to brief mental stress, Elizabeth A. Bachen, Matthew F Muldoon et al, Psychosomatic Medicine 64:587-594 (2002)

4. Serum lipids, neuroendocrine and cardiovascular responses to stress in healthy Type A men, Fredrikson M, Blumenthal JA, Biol Psychol. 1992 Oct;34(1):45-58

5. Factors associated with the development of panic attack and panic disorder: survey in the Japanese population Kaiya H et al. Psychiatry Clin Neurosci. 2005 Apr;59(2):177-82a

6. Changes in mental well-being, blood pressure and total cholesterol levels during workplace reorganization: the impact of uncertainty, Taylor & Francis V15, N1 January 1, 2001: 14-18

7. Examination stress: changes in serum cholesterol, triglycerides and total lipids. Agarwal V, Gupta B, Singhal U, Bajpai SK. Indian J Physiol Pharmacol. 1997 Oct;41(4):404-8.

8. Wives of patients with acute myocardial infarction are at an increased risk of developing coronary artery disease, Papamichael Ch et al, J Cardiovasc Risk. 2002 Feb;9(1):49-52

9. Lipid reactivity to stress: I. Comparison of chronic and acute stress responses in middle-aged pilots, Stoney CM et al, Health Psychol. 1999 May;18(3):241-250

10. Associations between acute lipid stress responses and fasting lipid levels 3 years later, Andrew Steptoe and Lena Brydon, Health Psychology 2005, Vol. 24, No. 6, 601-607

11. Effect of preoperative stress on serum cholesterol level in humans. Sane AS, Kukreti SC, Experientia. 1978 Feb 15; 34(2): 213-4

12. Prevalence of hostility in young coronary artery disease patients and effects of cardiac rehabilitation and exercise training, Lavie CJ, Milani RV, Mayo Clin Proc. 2005 Mar;80(3):335-42

13.Richards JC, Hof A, Alvarenga M. Serum lipids and their relationships with hostility and angry affect and behaviors in men.Health Psychol. 2000 Jul;19(4):393-8.

14. Hostility-related differences in the associations between stress-induced physiological reactivity and lipid concentrations in young healthy women.Suarez EC, Harralson TL. Int J Behav Med. 1999;6(2):190-203.

15. Changes in lipoprotein profiles during intense military training. B. L. Smoak, J. P. Norton, E. W. Ferguson and P. A. Deuster. Journal of the American College of Nutrition, Vol 9, Issue 6 567-572

16. Metabolic effects of dietary fructose in healthy subjects.Swanson JE, Laine DC, Thomas W, Bantle JP. Am J Clin Nutrition 1992;55:851-6

17. Blood lipids, lipoproteins, apoproteins, and uric acid in men fed diets containing fructose or high-amylose cornstarch. Reiser S. Powell AS, Scholfield DI. Panda P. Ellwood KC. Canary II. Am J Clin Nutr 1989:49:832-9.

18. Hallfrisch J, Reiser 5, Prather ES. Blood lipid distribution of hyperinsulinemic men consuming three levels of fructose. Am J Clin Nutr 1983:37:740-8.

19. The Relationship Between Smoking, Cholesterol, and HDL-C Levels in Adult Women
Bert H. Jacobson; Steven G. Aldana; Troy B. Adams; Michael Quirk; Haworth, Women & Health, Volume 23, Issue 4 July 1996 , pages 27 - 38

20. Smoking and smoking cessation -- the relationship between cardiovascular disease and lipoprotein metabolism: a review. Chelland Campbell S, Moffatt RJ, Stamford BA. Atherosclerosis. 2008 Dec;201(2):225-35

21. Carlos ETB Monteiro, Acidic environment evoked by chronic stress: A novel mechanism to explain atherogenesis. Available from Infarct Combat Project, January 28, 2008 at http://www.infarctcombat.org/AcidityTheory.pdf

22. Meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies evaluating the association of saturated fat with cardiovascular disease, Patty W Siri-Tarino, Qi Sun, Frank B Hu, and Ronald M Krauss. Am J Clin Nutr doi: 10.3945/ajcn.2009.27725. First published ahead of print January 13, 2010

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

The pH Miracle for Weight Loss!



Dear Dr. Young,

The following are the before and after pictures of 25.5 pounds lost, thanks to the pH Miracle Lifestyle and Diet. I would also like to send you my blood test result later this week when I get them. Granted they, have no barring on the true results in how we see our ideal health outcome, none-the-less, they are highly recognized by societies known measurement of success, as taught by their M.D.'s.

As for now, the before picture is taken in May of 2009, when our son Ryan left for his mission to Argentina. (Location: Sundance) The after picture is taken July, 19, 2010 (Location: Chagrin River Park in Ohio)

May I also thank you for taking interest. To me these pictures are amazing even to me. I knew I was heavy on the weight, but to see this Wow! Goodbye weight, Hello Me!

I am so glad for this change! Thank You! Thank You Very Much! You are free to publish these weights below. And use the difference from any weight you choose. They are all true!
WEIGHT4/9/2004 -166 lb 12 oz
4/13/2004 - 166 lb
4/26/2005 - 170 lb 14.4 oz
5/3/2005 - 167 lb 8.8 oz
7/12/2005 - 167 lb 11.2 oz
8/26/2005 - 164 lb
7/2/2007 - 173 lb
5/30/2008 - 167 lb
6/4/2008 - 165 lb
7/7/2008 - 162 lb
10/16/2008 - 169 lb
7/13/2009 - 165 lb 6.4 oz
8/10/2009 - 164 lb
7/19/2010 - 143 lb From last years physical from being on The pH Miracle Plan.

8/10/09, I weighed 164 to 7/19/2010 of 143 on the same physicians scale. (Although the weight reflects 164, it rose to 167 (home scale) subsequent to the my physical in August. - The colder months drove me to eating comfort foods. July 18, 2010 my home scale displayed 141.5- clothes add the difference.) :-D

I bought my first pH Miracle book in November 2009. Then bought The pH MIracle for Weight Loss and then The pH Miracle for Diabetes (Just to know how it was applied in more complicated illnesses). I applied it little by little through the holidays, then got serious with it once the snow melted. My family, friends and neighbors have voluntarily commented on the noticeable weight loss. I am grateful this transformation has occurred. I am grateful for the science of the your "New Biology" as it is published for us today. All it took was doing it!

Kindest of Blessings,

Teresa Chapman

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Latent Tissue Acidosis or Sympathetic Over-Acidity From Cigarette Smoking

Latent tissue acidosis or sympathetic overactivity seems, in our point of view (1), to be the key factor in cigarette smoking as responsible for the development and progression of atherosclerosis.

Cigarette smoking increases latent tissue acidosis and efferent sympathetic nerve traffic acutely, as well norepinephrine and epinephrine release. The adverse effects of cigarette smoking are related to the mixture of chemicals, including nicotine that has been largely accused for many of the adverse effects of smoking on the cardiovascular system, including autonomic imbalance, endothelial dysfunction and coronary blood flow dysregulation. The acute sympathoexcitatory effects of smoking on the cardiovascular system are partially mediated by catecholamine release, muscle sympathetic nerve excitation and peripheral chemoreceptor sensitivity increase, consecutive to nicotinic receptor stimulation in the autonomic nervous system (2).

Both active smoking and exposure to enviromental tobacco smoke are associated with the progression of atherosclerosis as indexed by intimal-medial thickness of the carotid artery assessed by ultrasound. (7)

It is interesting to notice about the results from a study published in 2006 revealing that sublingual administration of a 4-mg tablet of Nicotine Replacement Therapy exerts acute deleterious cardiovascular effects and sympathetic activation (3).

Also interesting is the high sugar or acid content (up to 20% - including high fructose corn syrup - a toxic acid) of the popular brands of cigarettes (4,5).

Acidic sugars and other high-carbohydrate diets, particularly in the form of high-glycemic index carbohydrate, may also contribute for keeping the sympathetic nervous system overactive. (6)

1. Carlos ETB Monteiro, Acidic environment evoked by chronic stress: A novel mechanism to explain atherogenesis. Available from Infarct Combat Project, January 28, 2008 at http://www.infarctcombat.org/AcidityTheory.pdf

2. Adamopoulus D, van de Borne P and Argacha JF, New insights into the sympathetic, endothelial and coronary effects of nicotine. Clin Exp Pharmacol Physiol 2008; 35(4): 458-63

3. Najem B et al. Acute cardiovascular and sympathetic effects of nicotine replacement therapy. Hypertension 2006; 47:1162-67 Full free text at http://hyper.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/full/47/6/1162

4. Elson LA, Betts TE, Passey RD, The sugar content and the pH of the smoke of cigarette, cigar, and pipe tobbacos in relation to lung cancer. International Journal of Cancer, V 9, I 3; 666-675, 1972

5. Stavanja et al. Safety assessment of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) as an ingredient added to cigarette tobacco. Exp Toxicol Pathol, 57(4): 267-81, 2006

6. Koop W. Chronically increased activity of the sympathetic nervous system: our diet-related “evolutionary” inheritance. The Journal of Nutrition, Health & Aging Volume 13, Number 1, 2009

7. Howard G et al, Cigarette smoking and progression of atherosclerosis: The Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) Study. JAMA, 1998 Jan 14;279(2):119-24. Full free text at http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/reprint/279/2/119.pdf

Saturday, July 17, 2010

Lactic and Hydrochloric Acid Causes Atherosclerotic Lesions, and Plaque Leading To Hypertension and Heart Disease




Follows a summary about 2 studies from the beginning of the last century showing that acid-fed rabbits and dogs may develop atherosclerotic lesions:


1) Experiments from Oswald Loeb, a well-known professor in pharmacology and scientist from the University of Gottingen - Germany, have demonstrated in study published in 1913, that lactic acid-fed rabbits and dogs have resulted in atherosclerotic lesions in these animals (2). The book “Arteriosclerosis and hypertension, with chapters on blood pressure" (3), by Louis M Warfield, M. D. (Johns Hopkins), showed the following commentary about the experiments from Oswald Loeb:“Oswald Loeb produced changes in the arteries of rabbits by feeding them sodium lactate (lactic acid). His controls fed on other acids became cachectic, but showed no arterial changes. He further found that in 100 gm. of human blood there was normally from 15 to 30 mg. of lactic acid. After heavy work, he found as much as 150 gm. He considers that after adrenalin or nicotin injections, the function of the liver is so disturbed that lactic acid is not bound. The arteriosclerosis is actually due to the presence of free lactic acid in the circulation. He succeeded, also, in producing lesions of the intima in a dog fed for a long time on protein poor diet, plus lactic acid and sodium lactate.”


2) I. Adler, M.D., from the Laboratories of the New York Board of Health, told in his paper entitled “Studies on Experimental Atherosclerosis” (4), published in 1913, that a casual remark by Dr. P. A. Levene have suggested the simple procedure of adding dilute hydrochloric acid to the dog's food and thus producing a chronic hyperacidity. This led Adler to include acid-fed dogs in his experiments. He told in his paper that though only two dogs have thus far been fed with hydrochloric acid, presenting sclerotic affections, the possibility can not be denied, especially in view of the numerous negative results with other methods, that these positive results are not mere coincidences, but are probably due to the hydrochloric acid. Referring at the end of his paper about the acid-fed dogs presenting atherosclerotic lesions he stated “that the work is being continued, and definite conclusions would at this stage be premature; but perhaps it may be permitted, even now, to venture the statement that in all probability the theory which bases atherosclerosis on a purely mechanical etiology will not prove tenable. Whether mechanical factors come into play at all, and if so, to what extent, remains to be seen. It seems almost certain, at least in our present state of knowledge, influences, subject possibly to more or less nerve control, are dominant factors in the etiology of atherosclerosis. Perhaps it may be discovered also that cholesterin and its various modifications and combinations, while undoubtedly an element of importance in atherosclerosis of the rabbit and human beings, may not be the sole predominant etiological factor. “He finished telling that “If it should turn out that so simple a procedure as adding a certain proportion of hydrochloric acid to the food of dogs is sufficient to produce lesions of the blood vessels closely analogous, if not wholly identical with human atherosclerosis, a revision of our present theories will become necessary."

Carlos Monteiro


1. Carlos ETB Monteiro, Acidic environment evoked by chronic stress: A novel mechanism to explain atherogenesis. Available from Infarct Combat Project, January 28, 2008 at http://www.infarctcombat.org/AcidityTheory.pdf


2. Loeb, O., Ueber experimentelle Arterienveraender ungen mit besonderer Beruecksichtigung der Wirkung der Milchsaeure auf Grund eigener Versuche, Deutsch. med. Wchnschr., 1913, xxxix, I819


3. Louis M Warfield, M. D., Third Edition, C. V. Mosby Company, 1920, with full free text at http://www.archive.org/stream/arteriosclerosis00warfuoft/arteriosclerosis00warfuoft_djvu.txt.


4. I. Adler, ‘Studies in Experimental atherosclerosis - A preliminary report’, The Journal of Experimental Medicine, 1913. Free full text at http://jem.rupress.org/content/20/2/93.full.pdf

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Acids Associated With Atherosclerosis


Studies around the world have consistently shown that both short and long term exposures to Particulate Matter (PM) air pollution are associated with a host of cardiovascular diseases, including myocardial ischemia and infarctions, heart failure, arrhythmias, strokes and increased cardiovascular mortality.


Very recently it was published a study in humans confirming the association of the exposure to ambient air pollution and atherosclerosis through the progression of carotid artery intima-media thickness (1).


In an interesting recent paper by Robert Brook (2) he states that there are three putative ‘general’ pathways to explain the biological mechanisms whereby PM exposure may be capable of mediating cardiovascular events: 1) autonomic mechanisms: parasympathetic nervous system withdraw and/or sympathetic nervous system activation; 2) the release of circulating pro-oxidative and/or pro-inflammatory mediators from the lungs (e. g. cytokines and activated immune cells) into the systemic circulation following PM inhalation that, in turn, indirectly mediate CV responses; and; 3) nano-scale particles and/or soluble PM constituents translocating into the systemic circulation after inhalation that then directly interact with the CV system.


According to Robert Brook, chronic actions of PM and the enhancement of atherosclerosis, are most likely to be induced by the generation of a chronic pro-inflammatory state (pathway 2).


Taking in view the results of studies in humans showing that particulate air pollutants continuous exposition decreases the heart rate variability (3,4) and may lead to an impaired autonomic control with potential acceleration in the progression of atherosclerosis (5,6,7), with the due respect, I feel obliged to differ from Brook’s opinion regarding the biological mechanism related to chronic PM exposure and atherosclerosis. In our view the sympathetic over activity may start the whole process of atherosclerosis which ends in the inflammatory state as hypothesized in the acidity theory of atherosclerosis (8) and discussed in our last article in this blog (9)Carlos Monteiro


1. Nino Kunzli, Michael Jerrett, Raquel Garcia-Esteban, Xavier Basagana, Bernardo Beckermann, Frank Gilliland, Merce Medina, John Peters, Howard N. Hodis, Wendy J. Mack. "Ambient Air Pollution and the Progression of Atherosclerosis in Adults." PloS ONE 5(2): e9096. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0009096, February 8, 2010. Full free text at http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0009096


2. Brook RD, Cardiovascular effects of air pollution. Clinical Science (2008) 115, (175–187) Full free text at http://www.clinsci.org/cs/115/0175/1150175.pdf


3. Duanping Liao, Yinkang Duan, Eric A. Whitsel, Zhi-jie Zheng, Gerardo Heiss, Vernon M. Chinchilli, and Hung-Mo Lin. Association of Higher Levels of Ambient Criteria Pollutants with Impaired Cardiac Autonomic Control: A Population-based Study, Am J Epidemiol 2004;159:768–777


4. C. Arden Pope III, Matthew L. Hansen, Russell W. Long, Karen R. Nielsen, Norman L. Eatough, William E. Wilson, and Delbert J. Eatough. Ambient Particulate Air Pollution, Heart Rate Variability, and Blood Markers of Inflammation in a Panel of Elderly Subjects. Environmental Health Perspectives, V 112; N 3: March 2004


5. Heikki V. Huikuri; Vesa Jokinen; Mikko Syvänne; Markku S. Nieminen; K. E. Juhani et al, Heart Rate Variability and Progression of Coronary Atherosclerosis. Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology. 1999;19:1979-1985.


6. Anders Gottsäter , Åsa Rydén Ahlgren, Soumia Taimour and Göran Sundkvist, Decreased heart rate variability may predict the progression of carotid atherosclerosis in type 2 diabetes Clinical Autonomic Research Volume 16, Number 3 / June, 2006


7. J. C. Longenecker, M. Zubaid, K.V. Johny, A.I. Attia, J. Ali, W. Rashed, C.G. Suresh, M. Omar. Association of low heart rate variability with atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease in hemodialysis patients. Med Princ Pract 2009;18:85-92


8. Carlos ETB Monteiro, Acidic environment evoked by chronic stress: A novel mechanism to explain atherogenesis. Available from Infarct Combat Project, January 28, 2008 at http://www.infarctcombat.org/AcidityTheory.pdf


9. Sympathetic predominance: a primary factor in the cascade of events leading to the atherogenic spiraling, Carlos Monteiro, Monday, February 22, 2010 at http://aciditytheory.blogspot.com/2010/02/sympathetic-predominance-primary-factor.html

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Hey All You Alkalarians!


Hey All you Alkalarians! Summer is here in a BIG WAY and it’s time to think about those great Barbeques, Parades, Parties, and Picnics.

First of all think of your skin and the protection you’ll need during those hours out in the scorching July sun. Staying hydrated with your four liters of Doc Broc Power Plants Greens and pHour Salts will do wonders to prevent parched dry skin. Also it’s paramount that you include plenty of good oils in your diet like our pH Miracle Avocado Oil which comes in 3 flavors, garlic, lime and plain. Also all veggies that are high in silica like bell peppers and cucumbers are natural skin fortifiers so munch away! Remember beautiful skin, like good health, is created from the inside out.

Next, always protect your skin on the outside with our great skin care products like:

our cleanser: pHresh and Clean
our toner: re-pHresh
our moisturizer: sopH skin
our sunscreen: Young pHorever Sun pHilter
our skin masks: Doc Broc Power Plants Greens make a great refreshing skin beauty treatment. Just pour ¼ to ½ cup into a bowl and add water until it is a good poltice consistency. Spread on face liberally and let sit until almost dry. Rinse off and cleanse with pHresh and Clean. Terra pHirma is also a great skin mask but more for extracting skin impurities and acids from the skin. Make the same politce and spread on skin liberally. Let sit until almost dry and rinse. Both masks help with exfoliating dead skin cells will leave your skin porcelain smooth.

Find all these products and more on our website www.pHmiracleliving.com

Now let’s talk about your summertime FEASTS! It’s time to celebrate our country’s birthday by staying in tip-top alkaline shape by keeping close to the pH Miracle diet and lifestyle. That doesn’t mean you have to give up good flavor, it means you give up highly acidic food choices in turn for the best, delicious Alkaline feast you can imagine. Here are some great and easy recipe suggestions to keep you HEALTHY, WEALTHY and WISE this Summer.

Bon Appetite!

All page numbers for recipes are from our newly
Revised and Updated
The pH Miracle Book


For a Summer Brunch:
Serve: Seed Pancakes with Coconut Whipped Topping page 356
Or if it’s really hot and you just want something cool and refreshing:
Serve: The Limey Love Shake page 267

For that Barbeque, Family Party, or Pic-Nic:

Serve: Very Veggie Barley Burgers spiced with The Zip from Spice Hunter Spices page 325

OR place some oily fish on the barbeque like salmon fillets spiced with lemon, salt and The Zip (get all your Spice Hunter Spices direct from The pH Miracle Center www.pHMiracleliving.com)

Rainbow Salad (with fireworks colors of shredded veggies) page 286
topped with Spicy Pecan Croutons page 374 and
Sesame Soy Dressing page 299

and for sides serve:
Sweet Carrot Butter page 314
Sprinkled with
Dehydrated Red Bell Pepper Powder page 317
with veggie crudités

for dessert:
Shelley’s Soy Pudding page 377
(do ginger/lime variation)

Bon Appetite!

From all of us at the pH Miracle Center,
Have a happy, healthy and safe Summer!!!

Will Cell Phones Become The Next Cigarette


The great cosmic joke would be to find out definitively that the advances we thought were blessings — from the hormones women pump into their bodies all their lives to the fancy phones people wait in line for all night — are really time bombs.

Just as parents now tell their kids that, believe it or not, there was a time when nobody knew that cigarettes and tanning were bad for you, those kids may grow up to tell their kids that, believe it or not, there was a time when nobody knew how dangerous it was to hold your phone right next to your head and chat away for hours.

We don’t yet really know the physical and psychological impact of being slaves to technology. We just know that technology is a narcotic. We’re living in the cloud, in a force field, so afraid of being disconnected and plunged into a world of silence and stillness that even if scientists told us our computers would make our arms fall off, we’d probably keep typing.

San Francisco just became the first city in the country to pass legislation making cellphone retailers display radiation levels. The city’s Board of Supervisors voted 10 to 1 in favor. The one against, the Democrat Sean Elsbernd, said afterward: “It’s a slippery slope. I can go on Google right now and find you a study that says there’s a problem with the Starbucks you’re drinking.”

Different phone models emit anywhere from 0.2 watts per kilogram of body tissue to 1.6 watts, the legal limit. The amount of radio frequency energy seeping into the body and brain is measured by a unit called the Specific Absorption Rate (SAR).

“You see all these kids literally glued to their phones,” Gavin Newsom, the mayor of San Francisco, told me. “And candidly, my wife was pregnant and on her cellphone nonstop. So I dusted off some studies and started doing research.

“That’s when I discovered that companies who make cellphones are already required to disclose that information to the federal government, and that it exists but somewhere on someone’s Web page on the 88th page.” Why not underscore it, he thought, by alerting consumers at the store, putting the SAR level in the same font as the phone price?

His alarmed advisers, accustomed to seeing the sleek Newsom diving into bold stands without calculating the potential blowback — as with gay marriage — told him to focus on jobs and the economy.

“They said: ‘There you go again. They’re going to mock you. It’s going to be another sideshow,’ ” he recalled. But stroking his baby daughter’s soft head and reading new studies on the vulnerability of children’s thinner skulls to radiation, he persevered.

One Swedish study that followed young people who began using cells as teenagers for 10 years calculated a 400 percent increase in brain tumors. But as Nathaniel Rich recently pointed out in Harper’s, studies about cellphones’ carcinogenic potential all contradict one another, including those involving children.

When Newsom proposed the bill, telecommunications lobbyists went to the mattresses, as did hoteliers, who feared losing convention business.

He said that lobbyists from Washington made it clear that they would invoke “the nuclear option” and come down “like a ton of bricks.”

“This is tobacco money, oil money,” he said. “But these guys from D.C. do not know me because that has exactly the opposite effect. Shame on them, to threaten the city. It’s about as shortsighted as one could get in terms of a brand.”

Months before the bill passed, he read me part of a letter that Marriott sent him: “CTIA — The Wireless Association, which is scheduled to hold a major convention here in October 2010, has already contacted us about canceling their event if the legislation moves forward. They also have told us that they are in contact with Apple, Cisco, Oracle and others who are heavily involved in the industry, as you know, about not holding future events in your city for the same reason.”

Sure enough, when the bill passed Tuesday, CTIA issued a petulant statement that after 2010, it would relocate its annual three-day fall exhibition, with 68,000 exhibitors and attendees and “$80 million” in business, away from San Francisco.

“Since our bill is relatively benign,” Newsom said, “it begs the question, why did they work so hard and spend so much money to kill it? I’ve become more fearful, not less, because of their reaction. It’s like BP. Shouldn’t they be doing whatever it takes to protect their global shareholders?”

So now we have Exhibit No. 1,085 illustrating the brazenness of Big Business.

They should be sending Mayor Newsom a bottle of good California wine for caring about whether kids’ brains get fried, not leaving him worried about whether they’ll avenge themselves in his campaign for lieutenant governor.

He’s resigned to that possibility, just as he is to his own addiction. “I love my iPhone,” he said cheerfully.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/opinion/27dowd.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

Monday, July 12, 2010

Is The Radiation From Cell Phones Killing Honey Bees

A recent study has found that radiation from cell phones may be killing the honey bee population.
In a recent report in the journal Current Science, scientists are claiming that mobile phones are behind the disappearance of honey bees in Europe and North America.

They say radiation from cell phones is getting in the way of honey bees' navigation senses, making them so confused they lose their way home.

This new research may explain why the bee population has declined for years in what's being called Colony Collapse Disorder.
NBC 25 talked with Gary Briggs, a local beekeeper who says something needs to be done about this, because it's becoming harder and harder to keep his bees alive.

"If we keep losing bees, pretty soon we are going to lose our food supply. So it's a serious deal, and the sooner they can find out what's causing it or what culmination of affects, is what I think we need to get to," said Beekeeper Gary Briggs.

Biologists are saying that the signal coming from cell phones and their towers can be modified so that it doesn't produce the frequency that disrupts a bees’ navigation.

And while Briggs says cell phone radiation may play a role, he's convinced an increased use of insecticides is also contributing.

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Who Are The Real Quacks?

"Mainstream medicine has hit a new low in its war against physicians who have become alternative healers. The battle has been going on for decades, but lately, in bully-like fashion, pharma’s minions are ramping up the vilification. They’re now discrediting any healing method not based in their version of accepted science - excuse me, I meant their religion of pharmaceutical belief which has been misnamed as “science”.

They demand explanation and evidence when we reject their drugs, yet they never serve up true evidence or proof that drugs do more good than harm. They insist with religious fervor that vaccines are safe, effective and keep people healthy. They preach as gospel that antibiotics are better or safer than homeopathy, herbs, colloidal silver, vitamin D and natural support for non-life threatening infections, despite the fact that antibiotic adverse effects are common and well documented.

Serious effects such as anaphylaxis (inflammatory shock), kidney failure, liver failure, Stevens-Johnson syndrome (a life threatening condition where the epidermis separates from the dermis), Clostridium difficile colitis (commonly referred to as C-diff), and the creation of drug resistant super-bacteria are but a few examples. And now, they’ve recruited some very bright (but not necessarily wise) minds to attack alternative practitioners. Their latest weapon is name calling - most notably, labeling them “quacks”.

“Quack”, as per the Random House dictionary:

1. A fraudulent or ignorant pretender to medical skill;

2. A person who pretends, professionally or publicly, to skill, knowledge, or qualifications he or she does not possess; a charlatan.

But from its current usage, I’d say they’ve added a new definition:

3. A physician or medical healer who does not profit from creating and maintaining disease, but rather respects the natural tendency of the body to heal itself; one who helps the body eliminate whatever toxins are causing illness, be they environmental, emotional or pharmaceutical; one who uses primarily non-toxic, non-surgical means for routine care, and uses pharmaceutical and surgical medicine as a last resort.

Who Gets on the List?

Physicians who see that the popular medical-pharmaceutical construct endangers its recipients with marginally tested drugs of questionable efficacy, but with well documented adverse effects, are labeled as quacks. A physician who recognizes the significant conflicts of interest, and resultant corruption in the circle of influence that comprises the nation’s government/ public health officials, lobbyists for the pharmaceutical industry, and in many instances his or her own colleagues is considered a quack.

As a matter of fact, it seems a quack is apparently anyone in the healthcare industry who does not believe in and support the unharnessed proliferation of the pharmaceutical industry, with its virtually unlimited profits from its worldwide distribution of toxic medications and vaccines. When a physician has the ethical fortitude to reject these massive operations and label them as destructive, s/he will be considered a quack. And most definitely, any physician who no longer wishes to be a mercenary for the pharma-backed junta that has taken over medical schools and medical institutions will be tagged “quack”.

I noticed, when Googling the names of some of our most prominent alternative healers, they all earn the title of “quack”. This new, disparaging label seems to have appeared at a time when there was a growing tension in the world about the necessity, efficacy and safety of vaccines and pharmaceutical drugs. Most physicians who believe that the current childhood vaccination program is not safe or is unnecessary are automatically thrown onto the list, regardless of their accomplishments, backgrounds, or well-established reputations prior to uttering an opinion that vaccines may be dangerous.

Some of my favorite “quacks” as defined by #3:

Sherri Tenpenny, DO: published author, scholar on a long list of topics, especially the problems caused by vaccines.

Russell Blaylock, MD: neurosurgeon and outspoken advocate of health freedom.

Andrew Wakefield, MB: published author, formerly respected surgeon until he stepped on the toes of big pharma with a groundbreaking monkey study involving the Hepatitis B vaccine, a study that never got published. That research would have ultimately exposed the ravages of the entire childhood vaccine program.

Mayer Eisenstein, MD, JD, MPH: published author, attorney, and outspoken natural health advocate, who happens to have more than 20,000 non-autistic, unvaccinated children in his group medical practice.

Garry Gordon, MD, DO, MD(H): innovator, heavy metal detoxification expert, and living example of vibrant aging.

Joseph Mercola, DO: outspoken natural health advocate who uncovers and exposes corruption and inaccuracies in conventional medicine through his widely viewed website.

Lawrence Palevsky, MD, FACP: conventionally trained, board certified pediatrician, who has publicly expressed disagreement with conventional drugs and vaccines and offers a holistic pediatric option.

Why do I support these physicians and why am I qualified to lash out at pharma, "science-based medicine" bloggers, "Quackwatch"?

I am a Medical Doctor with a bachelor’s degree in physics, certifications in Internal Medicine and Nephrology. I have no malpractice suits on my record and I have always been well regarded by my colleagues. However, the respect I have enjoyed for more than 15 years as a physician may well start to crack, as a result of speaking openly about my view on vaccines, which, when administered without fully informed consent, are a violation of patient trust and a threat to their health.

Expanding List of Quacks

The growing crowd of physician-quacks comes armed with determination. Once they realize what vaccines have done – and continue to do - to their patients, and that no one involved is accountable or responsible, they are compelled to take a deeper look. However, they are vulnerable to the whims of an industry backed by billions of dollars and supported by a mesmerized, deceived medical culture. Doctors are under the spell of a media that censors the truth and limits access to any information that contradicts the vaccination paradigm. They take risks when they speak out; they do this to support a trusting, under-informed and vulnerable humanity. Their rewards come in the form of the many thanks from the millions of parents and patients who are grateful that there are physicians who support their personal beliefs and acknowledge their often tragic observations.

The truth is dark and complicated, and not readily visible to the physician who starts to question convention because he can no longer live with the apparent contradictions. If he dares to question the problems of the vaccination program, he must then critically examine the entire system, one that turns a blind eye to the deterioration of health after someone receives a vaccine. Doctors should be asking questions such as, What are the underlying causes of our national epidemic of chronic illnesses that fill our sick care institutions? What are the incestuous, revolving-door relationships between government/public health, pharma and the insurance companies, and why is this a problem? Why have so many infants and children developed so many formerly unheard of illnesses in their age group? Why is the link to vaccination uniformly dismissed as non-causal? Sadly enough, few physicians question the current paradigm. Few want to risk being labeled as “quacks”. It is much simpler- and safer- to remain comfortably within the status quo, no matter how sordid it has become.

As this avaricious machine tramples on life, there are people being cured of cancer, healed of supposed chronic degenerative diseases, discarding their unnecessary medications and making themselves well by exiting the System that gave them few options and offered little hope.

Doctors providing “alternative” methods of healing are scoffed at, challenged by their state medical boards, belittled by their colleagues. And they are called quacks.

This word “quack” has been turned into a weapon, unleashed on those who notice the scores of patients spiraling to their death at the hands of FDA-approved, CDC-sanctioned medical interventions of big pharma and their affiliated institutions. The self proclaimed authorities of “science-based-medicine,” the paid pharma bloggers, "Quack Watchers" and many others who proselytize the message of drug companies and attempt to discredit the time-tested healing methods used by alternative practitioners, are destined to fail. I take comfort in the fact that the masses are becoming increasingly disgruntled with the results of their conventional medical options. The public trust and confidence in what pharma and conventional medical doctors have to offer is, thankfully, dying.The day will come when doctors will freely combine their scientific medical education with time-tested alternative treatments to build a new paradigm. The future of medicine will utilize the healing arts passed down through generations and adopted from other cultures, tools that are nearly defunct from disuse and systematic attack. Physicians will make a living by maintaining health rather than from treating disease and creating new sickness. The physicians listed on my personal “quack list” will be heroes and known for taking huge risks to change the course of healthcare in this country and beyond. These physician “quacks” already have thousands of patients who can attest to the fact that their doctor’s unconventional medical innovations, combined with their conventional medical knowledge, enriched and healed their lives, without prescription drugs and they remained healthy without vaccines.Those who have attempted to warp our reputations by calling us “quacks” will not succeed. The primal wisdom of the masses is more powerful than all the propaganda promoted by the misnamed “science-based medicine” and “quack watchers.” The pillars that support the sick-care industry are cracking and its architects are getting desperate. In due time, the Yellow Pages will be abundant in so-called quacks. Quack watchers really should watch carefully. The revolution has begun."

By Suzanne Humphries, MD [medical doctor]
July 5, 2010
International Medical Council on Vaccinationwww.imcv.info

The Fish Bowl Metaphor

OUR BODIES WERE DESIGNED TO BE HEALTHY, slender and energetic. We were intended to have smooth, supple skin and a quick, alert mind. Instead we are overweight - tired and sluggish. WHY?

The New Biology™Dr. Robert O. Young's New Biology™, most simply stated, is that the over-acidification of the body is the single underlying cause of all disease. In contrast, the old biology, based on the work of Louis Pasteur in the late 1800s, stems from the idea that disease comes from germs which invade the body from the outside. Dr. Young has found that when the body is in healthy alkaline balance, germs are unable to get a foothold. Think of your body as a fish tank. Think of the importance of maintaining the integrity of the internal fluids of the body that we "swim" in daily. Imagine the fish in this tank are your cells and organ systems bathed in fluids, which transport food and remove wastes. Now imagine we back up a car and put the tailpipe up against the air intake filter that supplies the oxygen for the water in the tank. The water becomes filled with carbon monoxide, lowering the alkaline pH, creating and acidic pH environment, and threatening the health of the "fish," your cells and organs. What if we throw in too much food or the wrong kind of food (acid-producing food like dairy, sugar, and animal protein) and the fish are unable to consume or digest it all, and it starts to decompose and putrefy? Toxic acid waste and chemicals build up as the food breaks down, creating more acidic byproducts, altering the optimum alkaline pH. Basically, this is a small example of what we may be doing to our internal fluids every day. We are fouling them with pollution, smoking, drugs, excessive intake of food, over-consumption of acid-forming foods, and any number of transgressions which compromise the delicate balance of our internal alkaline fluids. Some of us have fish tanks (bodies) that are barely able to support life, yet we somehow manage to struggle from day to day, building more sever imbalances until there is the inevitable crash and debilitating chronic, disturbing and disorganizing symptoms to deal with. The pH level (the acid-alkaline measurement) of our internal fluids affects every cell in our bodies. Extended acid imbalances of any kind are not well tolerated by the body. Indeed, the entire metabolic process depends on a balanced internal alkaline environment. A chronically over-acidic pH corrodes body tissue, slowly eating into the 60,000 miles of veins and arteries like acid eating into marble. If left unchecked, it will interrupt all cellular activities and functions, from the beating of your heart to the neural firing of your brain. In summary, over-acidification interferes with life itself leading to all sickness and disease!

How do you know if you're overly acidic?

Fat is an Acid Problem!Perhaps one of Dr. Young's most well known discoveries is his theory of the cause of overweight. He has shown that fat is actually an over-acidification problem. What does that mean? The body creates fat cells to carry acids away from your vital organs, so these acids literally don't choke your organs to death. Fat is saving your life! Fat is actually a response from the body to an alarming over-acidic condition.The solution? Alkalize and Energize™ beginning with SuperGreens and Prime pH. What about Underweight?

At the other end of the health spectrum, the yeast and fungus produced within an overly acidic body can feed on your nutrients and reduce the chemical and mechanical absorption of everything you eat by as much as 50%. This causes many people to become excessively thin, which is no healthier than becoming overweight. Without protein, your body cannot rebuild new tissues or produce enzymes, hormones, or hundreds of other chemical components necessary for cell energy and organ activity. Fatigue, illness, and body weight changes are the results. An underweight person may loose a little more weight as their body chemistry stabilizes. As their body normalizes, they will begin to gain towards their ideal weight. Healthy bodies are not overweight or underweight. A healthy body naturally maintains its own ideal weight. You can begin to restore health, balance, and harmony to your body with InnerLight Brand products (Dr. Young's Balance Pack). As alkalizing and oxygenation begins to take place, the body naturally begins to seek its own ideal weight.

Allergies

The toxins produced within an overly acidic, oxygen deprived body may contribute significantly to what are often called the symptoms of allergy. In addition, the absorption of undigested proteins is a major cause of allergy conditions. The digestive system is weakened, which prevents the total breakdown of amino acids - often causing food allergies. This alone may produce a wide spectrum of severe allergic reactions. SuperGreens with Prime pH and InnerLight products introduce oxygenating and alkalizing elements into your body - helping to balance the conditions that may lead to hypersensitivities.

Fatigue

Fatigue is probably the major symptom or complaint of an overly acidic body. The toxins produced in an acidic body environment reduce the absorption of protein and minerals, which in turn weakens the body's ability to produce enzymes and hormones. This also interferes with the reconstruction of cells and other necessary components of energy production. The result is fatigue, poor endurance, an inability to add muscle tone, and general weakness. SuperGreens with Prime pH is formulated to bring you vital nutrient elements and easily digested protein. This alkalizing, energizing, and nourishing formula begins oxygenating your body. Alkaline

Water

The most important thing you must learn is to hydrate the body with alkalizing water. Like the earth on which we live, our bodies are 70% water. Food cravings are often the body's cry for water. A thirst for water will begin as one begins to hydrate with water. A diet high in acid foods such as meat, dairy grains, high sugar fruits and bread, causes acid wastes to build up in the body. When acid wastes enter our blood stream, the blood system will attempt to dispose of these wastes in liquid form through the lungs or the kidneys. If there are too many wastes to handle, they are deposited in various organ systems like the heart, pancreas, liver, colon, and other locations. The breakdown of this disposal process of acid waste could also be called "the aging process". To slow down and reverse this process, one must begin by removing this over-acidification of the blood and tissues by including liberal amounts of alkaline water in the diet. Alkaline water has a pH between 9 and 11, and will neutralize harmful stored acid wastes and gently remove them from the tissues.

(All of the above material is available on Dr. Young's website)http://www.phmiracleliving.com/

CAN WE TRUST THE "SCIENTIFIC" ARTICLES IN MEDICAL JOURNALS?

(NaturalNews) Documents unsealed as part of a lawsuit against drug giant Wyeth Pharmaceuticals reveal that the company used ghostwriters to prepare at least 40 medical journal articles promoting the use of its hormone-replacement drug Prempro.

Hormone replacement therapy drugs such as Premarin and Prempro were widely popular in the 1990s among women seeking to avoid the symptoms of menopause. The drugs became some of Wyeth's best sellers, raking in more than $2 billion for the company until a 2002 study showed that they significantly increased women's risk of invasive breast cancer, heart disease and stroke. Later research also implicated the drugs in an increase dementia risk among the elderly.

Use of hormone replacement therapy plummeted, with a corresponding drop in breast cancer rates. Since then, approximately 8,400 lawsuits have been filed against drugmakers Wyeth and Pfizer by more than 10,000 women affected by side effects. More than 8,000 of these lawsuits have been consolidated into a single case, before U.S. District Judge William Wilson in Arkansas. Wilson ordered Wyeth's ghostwriting documents unsealed in response to a request by the defendants, the journal PLoS Medicine and the New York Times. The documents reveal that between 1997 and 2005, Wyeth paid medical communications firms to ghostwrite at least 40 articles that promoted hormone replacement for treatment of not just menopause symptoms, but also other conditions such as Parkinson's disease. These articles, many of them reviews of prior studies, played up the benefits of the hormone drugs while downplaying their risks. The communications firms also secured doctors to put their names on the studies as authors.

The articles were published in 18 different medical journals. Neither Wyeth nor the studies' purported authors informed the journals that the company had funded the studies and employed their writers.The case of DesignWrite Inc. is indicative of Wyeth's larger ghostwriting practices. Wyeth hired the firm in 1997, at which time DesignWrite proposed a two-year plan to promote the company's hormone drugs by securing the publication of 30 different articles. In 2003, the company drafted a 14-page outline of one article, with the author listed as "to be determined." This outline was sent to Dr. Gloria Bachman of the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in July, and she agreed to put her name on the study. She was sent a draft of the completed article in September and replied, "I had only one correction which I highlighted in red." The article, which was published in The Journal of Reproductive Medicine in 2005, disparaged non-hormonal treatment for hot flashes, referring to hormone replacement therapy as the "gold standard."

Wyeth paid Design Write $25,000 for the production of the article. The Prempro case is not Wyeth's first ghostwriting scandal; the company was previously forced to pay $21 billion in lawsuits over the diet drug fen-phen, which was also marketed using ghostwriters. Indeed, the new documents suggest that ghostwriting journal articles is a standard practice for many pharmaceutical companies, raising concerns that doctors might have their prescribing habits influenced by articles that were actually produced as part of corporate marketing campaigns."

The filter is missing when the reader does not know that the germ of an article came from the manufacturer," said attorney James Szaller, representing many of the plaintiffs.Medical journal publisher Elsevier has announced an investigation into ghostwriting practices, and some journals have started requiring full disclosure of each author's role in producing a paper, as well as any conflicts of interest. Many journals, however, do not require this disclosure, and the extent of ghostwriting practices remains unknown."

It's almost like steroids and baseball," said Joseph S. Ross, of Mount Sinai School of Medicine. "You don't know who was using and who wasn't; you don't know which articles are tainted and which aren't."
Sources for this story include: http://www.philly.com;/ http://www.nytimes.com/.

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Political Science! - The Politics of Medical Science and Research

The Politics of Science (Part 1)

The following last chapter in Robert O. Becker's book, The Body Electric" should give some insight into the politics of science. How and why some researchers and their research gets funded while others don't. Maybe, it will explain why many researchers in CFS continue to bark up the wrong tree and will not dare delve into truth of the matter - into the Big Lie - since this might very well cut their funding, ruin their reputations, and even end their careers. This has happened to many honorable and brilliant scientists such as Dr. Antione BeChamp, Dr. Livingston Wheller, Dr. Royal Rife, Dr. Gunther Enderlien, Dr. Duesburg, Dr. Robert Becker, Dr Nassens and finally Dr. Robert O. Young.

Postscript: Political Science

An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out and that the growing generation is familiarized with the idea from the beginning.-Max PlanckDispassionate philosopher inquiring into nature from the sheer love of knowledge, single-minded alchemist puttering about a secluded basement in search of elixers to benefit all humanity - these ideals no longer fit for most scientists. Even the stereotype of Faust dreaming of demonic power is outdated, for most scientists today are overspecialized and anonymous - although science as a whole is somewhat Mephistophelian in its disregard or the effects of its knowledge. It's a ponderous beast, making enormous changes in the way we live but agonizingly slow to change its own habits and viewpoints when they become outmoded.

The public's conception of the scientist remains closest to its image of the philosopher - cold and logical, making decisions solely on the basis of facts, unswayed by emotion. The lay person's most common fear about scientists is that they lack human feelings. During my twenty-five years of research I've found this to be untrue yet no cause for confort. I've occasionally seen our species' nobler impulses among them, but I've also found that scientists as a group are at least as subject to human failings as people in other walks of life.It has been like this throughout the history of science. Many, perhaps even most, of its practitioners have been greedy, power-hungry, prestige-seeking, dogmatic, pompous asses, not above political chicanery and outright lying, cheating, and stealing. Examples abound right from the start. Sir Francis Bacon, who in 1620 formulated the experimental method on which all technical progress since then has been founded, not only forgot to mention his considerable debt to William Gilbert but apparently plagiarized some of his predecessor's work while publicly belittling it. In a similar way Emil Du Bois-Reymond based his own electrical theory of nerve impulse on Carlo Matteucci's work, then tried to ridicule his mentor and take full credit.


Many a genius has been destroyed by people of lesser talent defending the status quo. Ignaz Semmelweis, a Hungarian physician who practiced in Vienna during the mid-nineteenth century, demanded that his hospital colleagues and subordinates wash their hands, especially when moving from autopsies and sick wards to the charity childbirth ward he directed. When the incidence of puerperal fever and resultant death declined dramatically to well below that of the rich women's childbirth ward, proving the importance of cleanliness even before Pasteur, Semmelweis was fired and vilified. His livelihood gone, he committed suicide soon afterward.


The principle figure who for decades upheld the creed that dedifferentiation was impossible was Paul Weiss, who dominated biology saying the things his peers wanted to hear. Weiss was wrong, but along the way he managed to cut short a number of careers.


For many years the American Medical Association scorned the idea of vitamin-deficiency diseases and called teh EEG electronic quackery. Even today that august body contends that nutrition is basically irrelevant to health. As the late-eighteenth-century Italian experimenter Abbe Alberto Fortis observed in a letter chiding Spallanzani for his closed-minded stance on dowsing, "... derision will never help in the development of true knowledge."In the past, these character flaws couldn't wholly prevent the recognition of scientific truths. Both sides of a controversy would fight with equal vehemence, and the one with better evidence would usually win sooner or later. In the last four decades, however, changes in the structure of scientific institutions have produced a situation so heavily weighted in favor of the establishment that it impedes progress in healthcare and prevents truly new ideas from getting a fair hearing in almost all circumstances. The present system is in effect a dogmatic religion with a self-perpetuating priesthood dedicated only to preserving the current orthodoxies. The system awards the sycophant and punishes the visionary to a degree unparalleled in the four-hundred-year history of modern science.


This situation has come about because research is now so expensive that only governments and multinational corporations can pay for it. The funds are dispensed by agencies staffed and run by bureaucrats who aren't scientists themselves. As the system developed after World War 2, the question naturally arose as to how these scientifically ignorant officials were to choose among competing grant applications. The logical solution was to set up panels of scientists to evaluate requests in their fields and then advise the bureaucrats.


This method is based on the naive assumption that scientists really are more impartial than other people, so the result could have been predicted decades ago. In general, projects that propose a search for evidence in support of new ideas aren't funded. Most review committees approve nothing that would challenge the findings their members made when they were struggling young researchers who created the current theories, whereas projects which ponder to these elder egos receive lavish support. Eventually, those who play the game beome the new members of the peer group, and thus the system perpetuates itself. As Erwin Chargaff has remarked, "This continual turning off and on of the financial faucets produces Pavlovian effects," and most research becomes mere water treading aimed at getting paid rather than finding anything new. The intuitive "lunatic twinge," the urge to test a hunch, which is the source of all scientific breakthroughs, is systematically excluded.


There has even been a scientific study documenting how choices made by the peer review system depend almost entirely on whether the experts are sympathetic or hostile to the hypothesis being suggested. True to form, the National Academy of Sciences, which sponsored the investigation, suppressed its results for two years.


Membership on even a few review boards soon establishes one's status in the "old boys' club" and leads to other benefits. Manuscripts submitted to scientific journals are reviewed for validity in the same way as grant requests. And who is better qualified to judge an article than those same eminant experts with their laurels to guard? Publication is accepted as evidence that an experiment has some basic value, and without it the work sinks without a ripple. The circle is thus closed, and the revolutionary, from whose ideas all new scientific concepts come, is on the outside. Donald Goodwin, chairman of psychiatry at the University of kansas and an innovative researcher on alcoholism, has even put it in the form of exasperation: "If it's trivial, you can probably study it. If it's important, you probably can't."Another unforeseen abuse has arisen, which has lowered the quality of training in medical schools. As the peer review system developed, academic institutions saw a golden opportunity. If the government wanted all this research done, why shouldn't it help the schools with their overhead, such as housing, utilities, bookeeping and ultimately the salaries of the researchers, who were part of the faculty? The influx of money corroded academic values. The idea arose that the best teacher was the best researcher, and the best researcher was the one who pulled down the biggest grants. A medical school became primarily a kennel of researchers and only secondary a place to teach future physicians. To survive in academia, you have to get funded and then get published. The epidemic of fraudalent reports - and I believe only a small percentage of the actual fakery has been discovered - is eloquent testimony of the pressure to make a name in the lab.There remain today few places for those whose talents lie in teaching and clinical work. Many people who don't care about research are forced to do it anyway. As a result, medical journals and teaching staffs are both drowning in mediocrity.


Finally, we must add to these factors the buying of science by the military. To call it a form of prostitution is an insult to the oldest profession. Nearly two-thirds fo the 47-billion 1984 research budget was for military work, and in the field of bioelectricity the proportion was even higher. While military sponsors often allow more technical innovation than others, their employees must keep their mouths shut about environmental hazards and other moral issues that link science to the broader concerns of civilization. In the long run, even the growth of pure knowledge (if there is such a thing) can't flourish behind this chain link fence.


If someone does start a heretical project, there are several ways to limit this threat. Grants are limited, usually for a period of one or two years. Then the experimenter must reapply. Every application is a volumous document filled with fine-print forms and meaningless bureaucratic jargon, requiring many days of data compilation and "creative wriiting." Some researchers may simply get tired of them and quit. In any case, they must run the same gauntlet of peers each time. The simplest way to nip a challenge in the bud is to turn off the money or keep the reports out of major journals by means of anonymous value judgements from review committees. You can always find something wrong with a proposal or manuscript, no matter how well written or scientifically impeccable it may be.


Determined rebels use guerrilla tactics. There are so many funding agencies that the left hand often knoweth not what the right hand doeth. A proposal may get by an obscure panel whose members aren't yet aware of the danger. The snowstorms of paper churned out by the research establishment have required the founding of many new journals in each subspecialty. Some of these will accept papers that would automatically be rejected by the big ones. In addition, there's an art to writing a grant proposal that falls within accepted guidelines without specifying exactly what the researchers intend to do.


If these methods succeed in prolonging the apostasy, the establishment generally exerts pressure through the schools. Successful academics are almost always true believers who are happy to curry favor by helping to deny tenure to "questionable" investigators or by harassing them in a number of ways. For example, in 1950 Gordon A. Atwater was fired as chairman of the American Museum of Natural History astronomy department and curator of the Hayden Planetarium for publicly suggesting that Immanuel Velikovsky's ideas should receive a fair hearing. That same year Velikovsky's first book, Worlds in Collision, was renounced by his publisher (MacMillan) even though it was a best seller, because a group of influential astronomers led by Harvard's Harlow Shapley threatened to boycott the textbook department that accounted for two thirds of the company's sales. No matter what one may think of Velikovsky's conclusions, that kind of backstairs persuasion is not science.As the conflict escalates, the muzzled freethinker often goes directly to the public to spread the pernicious doctrines. At this point, the gloves come off. Already a lightning rod for the wrath of the Olympian peers, the would-be Prometheus writhes under attacks on his or her honesty, scientific competence, and personal habits. The pigeons of Zeus cover the new ideas with their droppings and conduct rigged experiments to disprove them. In extreme cases, government agencies staffed and advised by the establishment begin legal harrassment, such as the trial and imprisonment that ended the career and life of Wilhelm Reich.


Sometime during or after the battle, it generally becomes obvious that the iconoclast was right. The counterattack then shifts toward historical revision. Establishment members publish papers claiming the new ideas for themselves and omitting all references to the true originator. The heretic's name is remembered only in connection with a condescending catchphrase, while his or her own research programs, if any remain, are defunded and the staff dispersed. The facts of the case eventually emerge, but only at an immense toll on the innovator's time and energy. To those who haven't tried to run a lab, these may seem like harsh words, unbelievable, even paranoid. Nevertheless, these tactics are commonplace, and I've had personal experience with each and every one of them.


I got a taste of the real world in my very first foray into research. After World War 2, I continued my education on the GI Bill, but those benefits expired in 1947. I'd just married a fellow student named Lilian, who had caught my eye during our first orientation lecture, and I needed a summer job to help pay expenses and set up housekeeping. I was lucky enough to get work as a lab assistant in the NYU School of Medicine's surgical research department.I worked with Co Tui, who was evaluating a recently published method for separating individual amino acids from proteins as a step toward concentrating foods for shipment to the starving. Dr. Cok, a tiny man whose black, spiky hair seemed to broadcast enthusiasm, inspired me enormously. He was a brilliant researcher and a good friend. With him I helped develop the assay technique and began to use it to study changes in body proteins after surgery.


I was writing my first scientific paper when I walked to work one morning and found our laboratory on the sidewalk - all our equipment, notes, and materials in a junk pile. I was told neither of us worked there anymore; we were welcome to salvage anything we wanted from the heap.


The head secretary told me what happened. This was during a big fund drive to build the present NYU Medical Center. One of the society surgeons had lined up a million-dollar donation from one of his patients and would see that it got into the fund, if he could choose a new professor of experimental surgery - now. As fast as that, Co Tui and his people were out. I vowed to Lilian: "Whatever i do in medicine, I'm going to stay out of research."I'm happy that I wasn't able to keep my promise. The research itself was worth it all. Moreover, I don't want to give the impression that I and my associates were alone against the world. Just when hope seemed lost, there was always a crucial person, like Carlyle Jacobson or the research director's secretary to help us out. However, right from my first proposal to measure the current of injury in salamanders, I found that research would mean a constant battle, and not only with administrators.Before I began, I had to solve a technical problems with the electrodes. Even two wires of the same metal had little chemical differences, which gave rise to small electrical currents that could be misinterpreted as coming from the animal.


Also, the slightest pressure on the animal's skin produced currents. No one understood why, but there they were. I found descriptions in the older literature of silver electrodes with a layer of silver chloride applied to them, which were reported to obviate the false interelectrode currents. I made some, tested them, and then fitted them with a short length of soft cotton wick, which got rid of the pressure artifact. When I wrote up my results, I briefly described the electrodes. Afterward I received a call from a prominent neurophysiologist who wanted to visit the lab. "Very nice," I thought. "Here's some recognition already." He was particularly interested in how the electrodes were made and used. Some months later, dammed if I didn't find a paper by my visitor in one of the high-class journals, describing this new and excellent electrode he'd devised for measuring direct-current potentials.


A couple of years later, while Charlie Bachman and I were looking for the PN junction diode in bone, I was asked to give a talk on bone electronics at a meeting in New York City. The audience included engineers, physicists, physicians, and biologists. It was hard to talk to such a diverse group. The engineers and physicists knew all about the electronics but nothing about bone, the biologists knew all about the bone but nothing about electronics, and the physicians were only interested in therapeutic applications. At any rate, I reviewed some bone structure for the physicists and some electronics for the biologists, and then went on to describe my experiments with Andy Bassett on bone piezoelectricity.


I probably should have sat down at that point, but I thought it would be nice to talk about our present work. The rectifier concept was tremendously exciting to me, and I thought wwe might get some useful suggestions from the audience, so I described the experiments showing that collagen and apatite were semiconductors, and discussed the implications. After each talk, a short time was set aside for questions and comments, generally polite and dignified. However, as soon as I finished, a well-known orthopedic researcher literally ran up to the audience microphone and blurted out, "I have never heard such a collection of inadequate data and misconceptions. It is an insult to this audience. Dr. Becker has not presented satisfactory evidence for any semiconducting property in bone. The best that can be said is that this material may be a semi-insulator."


Semiconductors are so named because their properties place them between conductors and insulators, so you could very well call them semi-insulators; the meaning would be the same. My opponent was playing a crude game. Where saying these derogatory things about me, he was actually agreeing with my conclusion, merely using a different term.This man's antagonism had begun a couple of years before. When Andy Bassett and I had finished our work on the piezoelectric effect in bone, we wrote it up, submitted it to a scientific journal, and got it accepted. Unbeknownst to us, this fellow had been working on the same thing, but hadn't gotten as far in his experiments as we. Somehow he learned of our work and its impending publication. He called Andy, asking us to delay our report until he was ready to publish his own data. Andy called me to talk it over. What counts in the scientific literature is priority; he was asking us to surrender it. There was no ethical basis for his request, and I would never have thought of asking him to delay had the situation been reversed. I said, "Not on your life." Our paper was published, and we'd acquired a "friend" for life.


Now there he was at the microphone trying to scuttle my presentation with a little ambiguous double-talk. I thought, "He must be doing the same work as we are again. If he wins this encounter, I'll have trouble getting my data published, and he'll have a clear field for his." Instead of defending the data, I explained that semi-insulator and semiconductor were one and the same. I said I was surprised he didn't know that, but appreciated his approval of my data! Someone else in the audience stood up in support of my position, and the crisis was past. The lab isn't the only place a scientist has to stay alert.In 1964, soon after the National Institutes of Health approved the grant for our continuing work on bone, I received the VA's William S. Middleton Award for outstanding research. That's a funny story in itself. The award is given by the VA's Central Office (VACO), whose members had already decided on me, but candidates must be nominated by regional officers, and the local powers were determined I shouldn't get it. Eventually, VACO had to order them to nominate me.


The award put me on a salary from Washington instead of Syracuse, and due to the pressure from VACO I was soon designated the local chief of research, replacing the man who signed all the papers at once. I was determined to put the reseach house in order, and I instituted a number of reforms, such as public disclosure of the funding allocations, and productivity requirements, no matter how prominent an investigator might be. Many of the reforms have been adopted throughout the VA system. They didn't make me popular, however. Over the next several years there was continuous pressure from the medical school to allocate VA research funds for people I felt were of little value to the VA program itself; thus the money would have constituted a grant to the school. I knew that if I didn't deliver I would eventually be removed from my position as chief of research. In that case, I would go back on a local clinical salary and my research program would again be in jeopardy. Therefore, at the beginning of 1972 I applied for the position of medical investigator in the VA research system, a post in which I would be able to devote up to three fourths of my time to research. I was accepted. The job was to begin a few months later; in the meantime I continued as chief of research.


Apparently, my new appointment escaped the notice of my local opponents. I'd accepted several invitations to speak at universities in the South and combined them all into a week's trip. I left the office a day early to prepare my materials and pack. While I was still home, my secretary called. She was crying, and said she'd just gotten a memo firing me as chief or research and putting me to work as a general-duty medical officer in the admitting office. This not only would have closed our lab, but also would have kept me from practicing orthopedic surgery.


It was a nice maneuver but, fortunately for me, it wasn't legal. As medical investigator, I could be fired only by Washington, and the local chief of staff soon got a letter from VACO ordering him to reinstate me. Soon I began to get on some "enemies lists" at the natinal level too. In December 1974 I got word that our basic NIH grant (the one on bone) hadn't been renewed. No reasons were given. This was highly irregular, since applicants normally got the "pink sheets" with at least the primary reviewer's comments, so they could find out what they'd done wrong. Instead I was told I could write to the executive secretary for a "summary" of the deliberations.


The summary was half a page of double-spaced typing. It said my proposal had been lacking in clarity and direction, and that the experimental procedures hadn't been spelled out in enough detail. The main problem seemed to be that I was planning to do more than the reviewer thought I could do with the money I was requesting. In addition, my report on the perineural cell research with Bruce Baker was criticized as "data poor." The statement concluded: "On the other hand, there are some areas which appear to be worthy of support and are reasonably well described, e.g., bone growth studies, regenerative growth, and electrical field effects."


I was, to say the least, puzzled. The subjects "worthy of support" were precisely the main ones we were working on. It didn't make any sense until I reflected that this was just after I'd helped write the first Sanguine report and had begun to testify about power line dangers before the New York Public Service Commission. Perhaps the Navy was pressuring the NIH to shut me up.If someone at the federal level was trying to lock me out as early as 1974, he forgot to watch all the entrances, for my proposal of that year on acupuncture was approved. I'd originally tacked this on to the main NIH application, where is was criticized as inappropriate. I merely sent it off to a different study section, which funded it. After a year we had the positive results described in Chapter 13, and I presented them at an NIH acupuncture conference in Bethesda, Maryland. Ours was the only study going at the problem from a strictly scientific point of view, that is, proceeding from a testible hypothesis, as opposed to the empirical approach of actually putting the needles in and trying to decide if they worked. To the NIH's basic question - is the system of points and lines real? - our program was the only one giving an unequivocal answer: yes.


Nevertheless, when the grant came up for approval in 1976, it, too, was cut off. The stated reasons were that we hadn't published enough and that the electrical system that we found didn't have any relation to acupuncture. The first was obviously untrue - we'd published three papers, had two more in press, and had submitted six others - and the second was obvious pettifogging. How could anyone know what was related to acupuncture before the research had been done? I happened to know the chairman of the NIH acupuncture study section, so I wrote him a letter. He said he was surprised, because the group itself had been pleased with our report. By then it was obvious that something was up.As of October 1976 we would have no more NIH support. As the money dwindled, we juggled budgets and shaved expensese to cover out costs, and with the help of Dave Murray, who was now chairman of the orthopedic surgery department at the medical school, we kept the laboratory intact and enormously productive. We actually published more research than when we hadn't been under fire.Early in that same year, however, my appointment as medical investigator had expired, and I had to reapply. Word came back that my application had been "deferred," that is, it had been rejected, but I had the option of reapplying immediately. In her accompanying letter, the director of the VA's Medical Research Service wrote, "While your past record and strong letters of support [the peer reveiws of my application] were considered favorable, the broad research proposal with sketchy detail of technique and methodology was not considered approvable." Now, the instructions for medical investigator applications clearly stated that I was to spell out past accomplishments and indicate future directions only in broad outline. Instead, the director was applying the criteria for first-time grant applications just entering research. She invited me to resubmit the proposal in the other format. But that would not have helped. Even if the second application was approved, the money would arrive six months after the lab had been closed and we had gone our separate ways.


There was another strange thing about the rejection. By that time all federal granting agencies had to provide the actual reports (with names deleted) of the peers who had done the reviewing. Three out of the four were long, detailed, well-thought-out documents in the standard critique format; they'd been neatly retyped, single spaced, on "reviewers's report" forms with an elite typewriter. One was absolutely lavish in its praise, saying that the VA was fortunate to have me and that the proposed work would undoubtedly make great contributions to medicine. Another was almost as laudatory.One name had inadvertently been left on one page of the third review. It was the name of a prominent orthopedic researcher with whom I had disagreed for years about commercialization of bone-healing devices. Since our mutual disregard was well known in the orthopedic service, I feel it was indefensible for the director to ask him to review my application in the first place. Perhaps she expected a more damaging critique from him. He did complain that the proposal was insufficiently detailed. However, his appraisal was quite fair and even said my proposed work was of "fundamental importance to the field of growth and healing." It obviously led up to a recommendation for approval, but the last sentence of that paragraph had been deleted.The last review was half a page of vague objections, typed double-spaced on a pica machine with no semblance of the standard format. There was a revealing mistake ("corrective" tissue instead of connective tissue) that showed the writer had glanced at my proposal for cues but really didn't know what it was about. Strangest of all was the phrasing of this pseudoreview: "[Becker's proposal] is broad and sweeping in scope and contains little documentation for technique and methodology. However, in view of his past record and strong letters of support, a decision should be deferred..." The director had used it almost word for word in her letter.


She certainly had no motive for such conduct herself. I'd met her briefly a few years before. In 1966 she'd been appointed chief of research at the Buffalo VA Medical Center and had visited Syracuse to see how I'd organized the program there. Our conversation was pleasant but quite innocuous....