ANSI – American National Standards Institute. ANSI sets the standards by which organizations alike NSF and WQA certify water treatment products. For a full explanation, see “ANSI/NSF: What’s It All About?” in an earlier Occasional

DI – De ionization. An ion exchange process that removes virtually all the mineral content of water.

DBP – Disinfect ion by-product. Disinfect ion by-products are potentially toxic chemical compounds that are formed in extremely low concentrations during the disinfection of water supplies. Most often, they are the by-product of chlorination.

EPA – Environmental Protection Agency. See the full article below.

GAC – Granular Activated Carbon. Carbon prepared by a special process for water treatment.

GPD – Gallons Per Day.

GPG – Grains Per Gallon.

GPM – Gallons Per Minute.

MF – Microfiltration. Describes membrane filtration usually between the sizes of 0.1 to 10 microns (µm). It is often distinguished from nanofiltration and reverse osmosis by the fact that it does not require pressure (although pressure is often applied).

NSF – National Sanitation Foundation. A leading “third party” certifying agency for water treatment equipment. For a full explanation, see ANSI/NSF: What’s It All About? in an earlier Occasional. 

OEM – Original Equipment Manufacturer. (A term that is vague and widely misunderstood within and outside the water treatment industry. In water treatment parlance it means essentially “anyone who puts stuff together or simply buys stuff from another source and sells it to somebody else for resale to the public.”)

ORP – Oxidation-reduction potential. A measurement of the electrical potential of water for the oxidation-reduction process to occur.

PPB – Parts per billion. One ppb represents one microgram of something per liter of water. See ug/l.

PPM – Parts per million. Same amount as Mg./l. (milligrams per liter).

POE – Point of entry. Used to describe treatment devices that treat all the water entering a building. A “whole house filter.”

POU – Point or use. Used to describe treatment devices that treat water at the point of use only. An undersink filter is an example.

PVC – Polyvinylchloride.

RO – Reverse Osmosis.

SDWA. Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974. See EPA article below.

TAC – Template Assisted Crystallization. A technique of scale control used as an alternative to conventional water softening.

TDS – Total Dissolved Solids. Measurement of all “solids” (minerals or salts) dissolved in water.

TOC – Total Organic Carbon. The total amount of carbon bound in a water sample.

UF – Ultrafiltration. Crossflow filtration method that operates between microfiltration and reverse osmosis, between the 0.002 and 0.1 micron range.

UG/L – Microgram per liter. One ug/l is the same as 1 ppb (part per billion.)

UV – Ultraviolet. Water treatment for microorganisms.

VOC – Volatile Organic Compounds. Organic chemicals that turn to vapor at a relatively low temperature.

WQA – Water Quality Association. The leading trade organization for water treatment professionals.

ZZZ– Sound made by people who read too many definitions of water treatment terms.

See also Pure Water Annie’s Glossary of Water Treatment Terms on the Occasional’s website.

Barrels Provide Gardeners Savings from a Rainy Day

Barrels Provide Free Irrigation Water for Use in Dry Summer Months

by Sarah Jackson

This article is reprinted from the Pure Water Occasional for April, 2011.

In Praise of Tap Water

Adapted from the Pure Water Occasional for April, 1011.

From the press release announcing American Water’s 125th Anniversary celebration:

“The seemingly small decision to drink tap water rather than bottled water can have a major impact on the environment,” commented Dr. Mark LeChevallier, director of Innovation and Environmental Stewardship for American Water.

“Disposable plastic bottles are burdening our landfills and increasing fuel consumption through their production and delivery.” More than 1.5 million gallons of oil are used each year to produce the disposable plastic water bottles consumed in the U.S., and significant amounts of fuel are required to transport the bottles, as well.

“Additionally, consumers can realize significant savings by relying less on disposable water bottles and more on tap water in refillable bottles. Tap water is typically available from the faucet for less than a penny a gallon as a national average. Depending on the brand, bottled water costs 250 to 10,000 times more than tap water. Consumers drinking their recommended eight glasses of water a day from the tap, may spend approximately $3.65 (based on a glass of water being 8 ounces) a year. Purchasing the same amount in bottled water can add up to $1,400 annually. Ounce-for-ounce, bottled water can cost more than gasoline or even milk.” 

The Occasional’s Comment: Assuming even a five to one usage ratio, home-produced reverse osmosis water would cost (according to American Water’s figures) about $18 per year vs. $1,400 for bottled water. This puts all the “RO wastes water” concerns in a different perspective. From the environmental point of view, saying “I don’t want to waste water with a home RO unit, so I’ll drink bottled water,” ignores the water and energy used in producing the bottled water and the bottle, plus the large energy expenditure for transporting it to the consumer. Long live tap water, but make it better than bottled water by treating it in your home with a point-of-use drinking water filter or reverse osmosis unit.

Water and Trees

by Gene Franks

You’ve probably seen the charts that show how much water is contained in the makeup of everything from an orange to the human heart. Massive, solid trees are no different. Their mass is comprised of a significant amount of water. And like people, not all trees are equal in water content.

The Catalpa tree in my back yard, according to a chart supplied by the National Computational Science Leadership Program, is, by weight, 48.25% water. Trees listed range from 7% to 54% water.

These Spruce trees are, by weight, about twenty percent water.

How Much Sodium Does Softening Add to Your Water? Here’s a Simple but Very Complicated Answer.

David M. Bauman, CWS-VI, CI, CCO, is technical editor of Water Technology magazine and a water treatment consultant in Manitowoc, WI. He writes a regular column called “Professor POU/POE,” that appears in each issue of Water Technology–both print and online versions. Water Technology is a leading trade journal read by water treatment professionals. It is online at www.watertechonline.com. The information below is adapted from a previous article.

The “Professor” here addresses a frequently voiced concern about the amount of sodium that water softeners add to drinking water.

First keep in mind that there is already sodium in the untreated water. This cannot be avoided, so potential softener owners will have sodium in their water with or without softening.

Then the question is how much sodium will be added by softening the water. Frequently, the sodium added is much less than that which is in the raw water.

My favorite way to respond to this is to calculate the amount of sodium added by softening then compare it to the existing sodium and/or to the sodium in some common foods or beverages.

Since hardness is exchanged for sodium, start with the amount of hardness, and then convert it to the equivalent amount of sodium:

• GPG (grains per gallon) total hardness as CaCO3 (calcium carbonate … total hardness is always expressed as its calcium carbonate equivalent) is exchanged for an equal value of sodium as CaCO3. So, if the hardness is 20 gpg as CaCO3, the sodium added is 20 gpg as CaCO3.

• Then, multiply gpg Na (sodium) as CaCO3 x .460 (to convert Na as CaCO3 to Na as Na). 20 gpg Na as CaCO33 becomes 20 x 0.460 or 9.2 gpg Na as Na.

• To compare with the common way of expressing sodium, convert Na in gpg to Na in mg/L (milligrams per liter, same as ppm). Multiply 20 gpg Na times 17.1 to determine that there will be 157 mg/L (ppm) Na added during softening.

• To phrase this as a common volume of water multiply 157 x 0.24 to get 38 mg of sodium in 8 oz. of treated water.

• The above steps were given for educational purposes. A short-cut would be to multiply the total hardness of 20 gpg x 1.89 to get the same 38 mg per 8 oz. glass of softened water.

To compare this to common sodium levels in foods and beverages, I refer to the WQA technical paper titled “Sources of sodium in the diet.” This reveals that a slice of white bread contains 161 mg, a tablespoon of ketchup contains 204 mg and a can of Pepsi-Cola contains 38-49 mg of sodium. Given these levels, the amount of sodium added by softening seems quite inconsequential.

Here are a couple of items from Pure Water Gazette numerical wizard B. Bea Sharper to elaborate the relative significance of this added sodium:

Amount of sodium added to an 8 oz. glass of water by a water softener processing 7 grain hard water– 13 mg.

Amount of sodium in an 8 oz. glass of 7 grain hard water after it has been processed through a water softener then an undersink reverse osmosis unit– 0.6 mg.

Amount of sodium in a slice of white bread– 161 mg.

Footnote from the Occasional: I don’t want to muddy the softened waters, but you should note that there is some slight of hand taking place, The 1.89 times grains per gallon of hardness is yielding not mg per liter, the usual measurement of water constituents, but mg per 8 oz., a common water serving size. Therefore, the softener isn’t adding 1.89 mg of sodium for each grain of hardness it removes, but about four times that amount. A better multiplier would be 7.5 mg/L sodium added for each grain of hardness removed.

Here’s a clip from a nutrition website on the same subject:  (START HERE)

For most individuals, the amount of sodium present in softened water is not a health problem. If however, you are trying to maintain a low sodium diet, this can add to your difficulties.

The amount of sodium in softened water can vary. According to a paper by Yarows et al., (Sodium concentration from water softeners, Arch Intern Med. 1997 Jan 27;157(2):218-22) the sodium concentration of softened well water averaged 278 mg/L but the variation was very large. Levels from 46 to 1219 mg/L were observed. 17% of households had sodium levels above 400 mg/L. The amount of sodium that gets added depends on how hard the water is to start with. If the water is very hard then the sodium level will be higher, as shown in the table below.

Actually, the nutrition website’s figures and Professor POU’s are identical. They are just stated differently. Multiply the grains of hardness by 7.5, not 1.89, to get an accurate estimate to the sodium added by softening.

If sodium is a concern, an undersink reverse osmosis unit will remove virtually all of the natural sodium in tap water as well as the sodium added by the softener. Softeners and reverse osmosis units are perfect companions, since the RO unit removes the sodium added by the softener, and the RO unit thrives on the softened water. Sodium (as opposed to the calcium removed by the softener) is very easy on the RO membrane. RO membrane life is greatly extended when it processes either naturally soft or softened water.

Death By Coke

By Joshua Frank

22 December, 2006

published originally in

Countercurrents.org

We are a country of overweight people. Americans are tipping the scales in record numbers, with approximately 130 million who are presently considered overweight or obese. Perhaps most alarmingly of all, half of all women aged 20 to 39 in the United States are included in these figures. Many factors contribute to the growing problem, from our sedentary lifestyles to our overindulgence in high-energy, low nutritional foods. Dealing with the crisis is not easy. The marketing of energy dense foods is a multi-billion dollar industry and manufactures of such products go to great lengths to ensure their shareholders continue to profit from the sales of nutrition-less foods.

Despite the barrage of marketing to the contrary, sales pitches, and misinformation, consumption of soda has been directly linked to both obesity as well as type 2 diabetes. Soft drinks are packed full of sugar and refined carbohydrates, both of which are undeniably correlated to these factors. Type 2 diabetes is also associated with a poor diet that is laden with high-fructose corn syrup and low in fiber. Research indicates that soft drinks largely contribute to this growing epidemic, with high school and college age kids being the most likely to consume sugar laden soda beverages on a regular basis.

Sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) are bad news, according to health experts, because they contribute to the obesity epidemic by providing empty calories, that is, calories that provide little or no nutritional value. Meaning, a person who slugs down too much soda is swallowing more than their body can handle. And this added energy isn’t healthy energy — it’s energy derived from high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), i.e., highly refined sugar that has been chemically processed in order to excite your taste buds. It has been argued that too much HFCS in one’s diet may offset the intake of solid food, yet does not produce a positive caloric balance. In turn, this over-consumption contributes to the slow development of obesity because the person is consuming more calories than their body can burn. And these days, people are drinking more soda than ever before. Perhaps not surprisingly, as portion sizes for soft drinks have increased, so have American waistlines.

Too put this dangerous pattern in to perspective, one regular 12-ounce can of sugar-sweetened soda contains approximately 150 calories with close to 50 grams of sugar. If this is added to the typical American diet, one can of soda per day could lead to a weight gain of 15 pounds in one year. Currently the consumption of soda accounts for about 8%-9% of total energy among children and adults, and studies suggest that it is most certainly having a negative effect on the people who consume it in such vast quantities. So what’s so wrong with being overweight then, you ask? So what if soda has been linked to causing obesity? What’s wrong with that? Well, plenty say scores of medical, health and public nutrition experts.

For starters, obesity increases the risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, bowel cancer as well as high blood pressure. Type 2 diabetes alone can contribute to cardiovascular disease, retinopathy (blindness), neuropathy (nerve damage), nephropathy (kidney damage), and other health complications. So if type 2 diabetes is highly associated with individuals who are obese, and obesity is linked to SSBs, then type 2 diabetes is highly associated with the consumption of SSBs because the consumption of SSBs is so highly associated with causing obesity. In short, if one consumes SSBs on a regular basis, they are more at risk of developing type 2 diabetes, which itself may cause many ailments. That’s why being overweight is not a good thing for one’s health. And that’s why drinking copious amounts of sugar-sweetened beverages contributes to poor wellbeing byway of obesity and type 2 diabetes.

On top of causing one to gain unhealthy weight and spurring type 2 diabetes, SSBs may also contribute to the loss of bone density, which may cause one to be more susceptible to bone fractures. It has been argued that low bone density may be a result of high levels of phosphate, which is found in elevated amounts in sugar-sweetened cola. Such large amounts of phosphate may alter the calcium-phosphorus ratio in people whose bodies are still developing, or people who are most likely to consume SSBs, and consequently this can have a toxic effect on their bone development. If a growing individual has a low calcium intake it could jeopardize bone mass, which may then contribute to hip fractures and other bone related disorders later in life. Drinking a lot of SSBs while your body develops could have lasting, deadly effects on your health. So while it is clear that soda isn’t good for you, it is also obvious that soda is downright bad for your health. It can make you overweight, suck the calcium out of your bones, and increase risk of type 2 diabetes, a leading cause of blindness. But that’s not the kind of news the profiteers of big soda would ever want you to hear.

The marketing firms that barrage consumers with ads for their mouth-watering soft drinks hope to encourage you to drink more of their harmful products, not less of them. Indeed they have a financial incentive to do so. Their annual revenues are billions of dollars. To protect their interests, as Prof. Marion Nestle of NYU notes, the soda industry shells out tons of money to convince people to consume their products in mass quantities. In the late 1990s, Coca-Cola spent about $1.6 billion dollars in global marketing, with over $850 million spent in the United States alone. With that kind of lavish spending, it is little wonder why Coca-Cola is such a household name. Clearly, those who advocate for cutting down on the consumption of SSBs because of their negative health impacts are up against a very well financed opposition — not unlike the anti-smoking activists who take on the shenanigans and deceit of Big Tobacco.

Nevertheless, Coca-Cola, like its competitors, is extremely savvy. They have inundated schools with their products. As Michele Simon, the author of Appetite for Profit, writes, “A 2003 government survey showed that 43 percent of elementary schools, 74 percent of middle schools, and 98 percent of high schools sold food through vending machines, snack bars, or other venues outside the federally supported school meal programs … With public schools so desperate for funding, districts are lured into signing exclusive contracts (also known as “pouring rights” deals) with major beverage companies — mainly Coca-Cola and PepsiCo”.

In other words, these multinational corporations give millions of dollars to schools so that their districts and vending machines exclusively carry their goods. In reality, however, it comes down to one big clever marketing ploy: In the end these big corporations have hooked kids on their products while fooling people into believing they are virtuous corporate citizens because they support education.

Fortunately there is a growing movement across the country to ban sodas from schools. Indeed the feisty Killer Coke campaign, which focuses on the company’s labor abuses and not Coke’s negative health implications, has been successful is banning the product from over 10 major universities in the US. But it would be wise to not just focus on the company’s alleged murders in Colombia, and instead broaden the struggle against the soda industry by pointing out their complicity in the obesity epidemic worldwide. Because death truly is the “real thing”.

Gazette’s Fair Use Statement

Congratulating Ourselves

by Matt Taibbi

H.L. Mencken once said: “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.” There is a corollary to that idea. It goes like this. “No American editorial writer ever lost his job by being too patriotic.” The rule even applies to those writers who actually cheapen American traditions by recalling them in grossly inappropriate situations. Take this offering by the Christian Science Monitor, normally one of the more circumspect of America’s major papers:

“On this Thanksgiving, Americans can draw together and celebrate their triumph over adversity— not unlike what the Pilgrims must have endured their first winter.”

Pink Ribbons and Disinformation

The Truth about Breast Cancer and Mammograpy

by Steven Ransom

Women who are concerned about breast cancer need facts, not myths, to make their own decisions.–Dr. Irwin D. Bross.

In both the US and the UK, October has also become known as BCAM – breast cancer awareness month – the month that sees thousands of women  sporting their pink ribbons, all proceeds supposedly going towards finding a cure. A report from the American College of Preventative Medicine estimates that 185,000 women a year in the United States are diagnosed with breast cancer[1] and the latest Royal Marsden Hospital web-page on breast cancer reports that 28,000 women in the UK will have been diagnosed with this disease in 2002.

This article reveals the paucity of genuine information given to women on the subject of breast cancer and affords a revealing insight into the vested interests behind  the scenes of the breast cancer industry. And of course, following the Credence tradition, this article also delivers some very good news on the subject.

Interpreting those statistics

Whilst it may be correct that 185,000 women in the United State and 28,000 women per annum in the UK are diagnosed as having breast cancer, how many of those breast cancer diagnoses are actually correct? And more importantly, how dangerous are many breast cancers  anyway?  Before drawing too sharp a breath at this point, please consider the following statements. A recent report in the UK Sunday Times on breast cancer stated: “Whilst mammography detects some potentially deadly cancers, it also picks up many times more cancers that might never become symptomatic during the patients’ lifetime, or that could be treated just as easily if detection were left until the woman could feel the lump herself. Thus, for every woman saved by early diagnosis, many others receive painful and potentially dangerous treatments to destroy tumours that pose little or no threat – tumours that they might die with, not of.” [2]

And further, in a paper entitled ‘Dangers and Unreliability of Mammography; Breast Examination is a Safe, Effective and Practical Alternative’, these well-qualified authors state that the widespread and virtually unchallenged acceptance of screening has resulted in a dramatic increase in the diagnosis of ductal carcinoma-in-situ (DCIS), a pre-invasive cancer, with a current, estimated incidence of about 40,000 US citizens annually. However, say the authors, some 80 percent of all DCIS cancers never become invasive, even if left untreated.[3] Today, DCIS is generally treated by lumpectomy plus radiation or even mastectomy and chemotherapy. Were you given this information when you were treated for your DCIS?

Panic makes for easy victims

Irwin D Bross was formerly Director of Bio-Statistics at Roswell Park Memorial Institute in Buffalo NY, (Roswell Park Memorial Cancer Hospital). He wrote his thesis on breast cancer after spending some time researching the nature and outcome of the disease and discovering that more than half of those diagnosed with breast cancer had benign lesions that were unable to spread. He states:

“What most women have is a tumour which, under a light microscope, looks like a cancer to a pathologist. Chances are, this tumour lacks the ability to metastasise – to spread throughout the body – which is the hallmark of a genuine cancer…

Our discovery was highly unpopular with the medical profession. Doctors could never afford to admit the scientific truth because the standard treatment in those days was radical mastectomy. Admitting the truth could lead to malpractice suits by women who had lost a breast because of an incorrect medical diagnosis. There is no reason for women to panic when they hear ‘cancer’. Panic makes them easy victims. Women who are concerned about breast cancer need facts, not myths, to make their own decisions.” [4]

The detection of a breast ‘abnormality’ will of course be of concern, whenever it is discovered. But awareness of qualified information as to why breast lumps aren’t necessarily dangerous, and do not automatically require immediate remedial action (despite the pressure placed upon women to do otherwise), will hopefully lessen the high level of alarm surrounding this issue. And then of course, there are the growing number of false-positive diagnoses.

False positive diagnoses: if more women knew!
A report on false-positive breast cancer diagnosis was printed in The Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Included was the following:

“If more women knew how common false-positive results are, there might be less stress and anxiety while waiting to undergo further diagnostic tests, which sometimes take many weeks. Most importantly, greater educational initiatives focusing on the role of diet and lifestyle in breast cancer prevention would empower women to protect themselves rather than relying solely on early detection of the disease.” [5]

Radiation risks

Moving on to the mammogram itself, at patient level, very little information is offered concerning the dangers associated with mammography. What about the radiation risks associated with this practice? This condensed report on mammography is brought to us by Dr Joseph Mercola:

“Screening mammography poses significant and cumulative risks of breast cancer for pre-menopausal women. The routine practice of taking four films of each breast annually results in approximately 1 rad (radiation absorbed dose) exposure, about 1,000 times greater than that from a chest x-ray.

The premenopausal breast is highly sensitive to radiation, each 1 rad exposure increasing breast cancer risk by about 1 percent, with a cumulative 10 percent increased risk for each breast over a decade’s screening. These risks are even greater for younger women subject to ‘baseline screening’.

Screening all pre-menopausal women would cost $2.5 billion annually, about 14% of estimated Medicare spending on prescription drugs.”

Dr Mercola states that monthly breast self-examination (BSE), following brief training, coupled with annual clinical breast examination (CBE) by a trained healthcare professional, is at least as effective as mammography in detecting early tumours, and also safe. Dr Mercola also calls for national networks of BSE and CBE clinics to be established, staffed by trained nurses, to replace screening mammography. Apart from their minimal costs, such clinics would also empower women and free them from increasing dependence on industrialised medicine and its complicit medical institutions.[6] It might also help to free women from the constant disinformation, posing as ‘breast cancer statistics’. Readers may be interested to know that a simple and safe program of breast self-examination is included in the appendices at the back of Great News on Cancer in the 21st Century.

Mammography is a fraud

Dr John McDougall has made a thorough review of pertinent literature on mammograms. He points out that the $5-13 billion per year generated by mammograms controls the information that women get. Fear and incomplete data are the tools commonly used to persuade women to get routine mammograms. Says Dr McDougall:

“I went into medicine with the idea that I was going to save all of these lives with all the tricks and tools that medical doctors learned. And what I found was that very few of my patients got well. I often did harm to them. This was quite disturbing to me as a young doctor. What was even more disturbing was to find out that this failure had been fairly well documented in the scientific literature – but it doesn’t fit anybody’s advertising campaign.

Science says one thing and the public believes another because the public relations machine benefits the economics of the drug and medical industries. Mammography is a fraud. The 8th January 2000 issue of The Lancet carried an article stating that mammography is unjustifiable. Of the eight studies done, six of them showed that mammography doesn’t work, and yet the American public believes this is a time-honoured, definite way of saving their lives from breast cancer.” [7]

Cancer risks from breast compression

As early as 1928, physicians were warned to handle cancerous breasts with care, for fear of accidentally disseminating cells and spreading cancer.[8] Even so, mammography entails tight and often painful compression of the breast, particularly in pre-menopausal women. This may lead to a spread of malignant cells by rupturing small blood vessels in, or around small, as yet undetected breast cancers.[9] Mammograms do not prevent breast cancer. Dr Tim O’Shea warns that harmless breast cancers can be made active by the compressive force of routine mammography.[10]

Mammography offers no benefit above self-examination

Extensive studies of breast cancer histories show no increased survival rate from routine screening mammograms. After reviewing all available literature in the world on the subject, noted researchers Drs Wright and Mueller, of the University of British Columbia, recommended the withdrawal of public funding for mammography screening, because, “the benefit achieved is marginal and the harm caused is substantial.” [11]

The harm to which they are referring includes the constant worrying and emotional distress, as well as the tendency for unnecessary procedures and testing to be done based on results which can have a false-positive rate as high as 50%.[12]

A seven year study of 90,000 women by Professor Anthony Miller of Toronto University has shown that mammography had no impact on women aged between 40 – 49, and for women over 50, it has shown no benefit over and above what is detected by annual examinations by specialists and self-examination.[13]

In his book The Politics of Cancer, internationally recognised carcinogens expert, Dr Samuel Epstein, warns us:

“… the US National Cancer Institute is now agreed that large-scale mammography screening programs are likely to cause more cancers than could possibly be detected.” [14]

In Radiation and Human Health, Dr John Goffman writes:

“There will be more breast cancers induced by the procedure than there will be women saved from breast cancer death by early discovery of lesions.” [15]

But as Dr John McDougall has already stated, “… by the time a tumour is large enough to be detected by mammography, it has been there as long as 12 years! It is therefore ridiculous to advertise mammography as ‘early detection’.”

Mammography and vested interests

The American Cancer Society, the world’s most wealthy, non-profit institution (it has even made political contributions[16]), has close connections to the mammography industry. Five radiologists have served as ACS presidents. The ACS promotes the interests of the major manufacturers of mammogram machines and films, including Siemens, DuPont, General Electric, Eastman Kodak, and Piker. The mammography industry also conducts research for the ACS and its grantees, serves on advisory boards, and donates considerable funds.[17]

Pharmaceutical giant DuPont is a substantial backer of the ACS Breast Health Awareness Program. ACS sponsors television shows and other media productions promoting mammography; produces advertising, promotional, and information literature for hospitals, clinics, medical organisations, and doctors; produces educational films, and, of course, lobbies Congress for legislation promoting availability of mammography services. In virtually all its important actions, the ACS has been, and remains strongly linked with the mammography industry, while ignoring or attacking the development of viable alternatives.[18]

ACS promotion continues to attract women of all ages into mammography centres, leading them to believe that mammography is their best hope against breast cancer. According to the report, a leading Massachusetts newspaper featured a photograph of two women in their twenties in an ACS advertisement that promised early detection results “nearly 100 percent of the time.” An ACS communications director was questioned by journalist Kate Dempsey and admitted the following, in an article published by the Massachusetts Women’s Community journal Cancer:

“The ad isn’t based on a study. When you make an advertisement, you just say what you can to get women in the door. You exaggerate a point… Mammography today is a lucrative and highly competitive business.” [19]

Those ‘exciting’ breast cancer drugs!

The following BBC News item on breast cancer makes reference to the drug Tamoxifen:

Breast cancer deaths plummet: Early detection has saved lives. An unprecedented fall in the number of women dying from breast cancer has been hailed by scientists. A drug, Tamoxifen, developed in the UK, appears mainly responsible for almost a 30% drop in deaths in the UK over the last decade, reported the Lancet medical journal. It is the most sudden drop in mortality for a common cancer seen anywhere in the world. [20]

The above news item represents nothing more than the standard ‘advertorial’ we have come to expect from today’s toothless media. Everything of importance has been left out. Tamoxifen (other names include Nolvadex, Tamofen and Noltam) is an anti-estrogen drug manufactured by Astra Zeneca Pharmaceuticals and is currently prescribed for between 2 and 5 years in duration, as a single daily dose of around 20 mg.

Tamoxifen – a human carcinogen

Nowhere is it mentioned in any of the Tamoxifen promos that the World Health Organisation formally designated Tamoxifen as a human carcinogen back in 1996, grouping this treatment with around 70 other chemicals — about one quarter of them pharmaceuticals.[21] Quite shockingly, in response to WHO’s announcement, the National Cancer Institute and Zeneca Pharmaceuticals lobbied California regulators to keep them from adding Tamoxifen to their list of carcinogens. As Duncan Roades, editor of Nexus Magazine stated:

“Here is open evidence of a government agency, chartered to find a cure for cancer, flagrantly colluding with a drug company to keep a known carcinogen on the market and keep the public from learning of its dangers.… This should have been a controversy of high order; instead it was barely reported in the press and few heard about it.” [22]

The long-term safety of Tamoxifen use in healthy women has never been established. In particular, Tamoxifen can cause uterine cancer. Cancers of the liver, ovaries and gastrointestinal tract have also been reported. A study at Johns Hopkins University by Yager and Shi found that Tamoxifen is a promoter of liver cancer. When WHO announced Tamoxifen as a known carcinogen in 1996, the NCI study on this drug was abruptly curtailed, but not before 33 women taking Tamoxifen at that time developed endometrial cancer.[23]

Readers are strongly advised to research the side-effects of all chemotherapy/hormonal drugs prescribed to them for their particular condition. Further important information on Tamoxifen and other breast cancer drugs is available from Great News on Cancer in the 21st Century.

‘Male-oriented’ Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Breast Cancer Awareness Month in the US (and the pink ribbon campaigns here in the UK) is designed to raise public awareness of breast cancer. BCAM is held in October and is sponsored primarily by Zeneca (the makers of Tamoxifen and a former subsidiary of Industry giant ICI), along with the American Academy of Family Physicians and Cancer Care Inc. In the US, National Breast Cancer Awareness Month is now governed by a board consisting of 17 organisations, including the American Cancer Society, the Centers for Disease Control and the National Cancer Institute. Behind the scenes and Breast Cancer Awareness Month is nothing more than a business jamboree, with a little bit of sincerity thrown in on the side.

Male and money-oriented

The following extract is taken from the British Medical Journal ‘Selling Sickness’ debate:

“In some countries, women are invited for mammography in a letter in which the date and time of the appointment have already been fixed. This puts pressure on these women, who must actively decline the invitation if they don’t want to be screened. Sometimes, women are asked to give reasons for not attending appointments, as if it were a civic duty. In leaflets, women get simple messages – that cancer detected early can be cured, and early cancers can often be treated with breast-conserving surgery.

The data tell another story: no reliable evidence shows that breast screening saves lives; breast screening leads to more surgery, including more mastectomies; and estimates show that more than a tenth of healthy women who attend a breast screening program experience considerable psychological distress for many months.” [24]

An unnecessary climate of fear

In an article focusing on predictive (genetic) testing for breast cancer, a Dr Miryam Wahrman notes that: “… women must grapple with whether to undergo major surgery, or to watch and wait.” [25] This is diabolical position. The authority figure in the breast cancer equation – the oncologist – has now been given permission to pronounce a psychological, pharmaceutical and surgical curse upon healthy and unsuspecting patients. “You might get it. Who knows?”  That so unsound a knowledge-base is gaining such stature in society today is nothing short of criminal. Women are being treated as mere guinea pigs, being herded from pillar to post and trustingly receiving diagnoses and treatments that are causing serious psychological and physical harm, and tragically, more often than not, leading to the death of the ‘patient’.

In surveying the conventional breast cancer scene, in fact, in surveying the conventional cancer scene in general, one can only conclude that ‘death by doctoring’ is alive and well in the 21st century. No apologies are offered for the grim picture that has emerged in this article with regard to conventional breast cancer treatment and ‘care’. On the brink of the American Civil War, it was Patrick Henry who poignantly stated:

“We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of the siren till she transforms us into beasts. For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth, to know the worst, and provide for it.”

Empowering women

Were there only one side to this cancer story, then it would be a depressing read indeed. In Great News on Cancer in the 21st Century, there are numerous testimonies as to the positive effects of treating cancer without the use of conventional drugs.

Hazel had been given a virtual death sentence by her cancer doctor, telling her that although there was an 86% recovery from her type of breast cancer, she was unfortunately in the smaller category. As previously noted, Hazel’s chemotherapy was only making her feel terrible, and she decided that if she was going to die, then she would do so without further conventional treatment. Hazel began a regime of intravenously administered Vitamin C and supplements including Vitamin B17 and paid great attention to her diet.

She soon began to feel a great deal better. She regained her weight and her hair and her appetite. About nine months following the diagnosis, she was troubled with lower back pain and visited her doctor. He suggested a further scan based on Hazel’s lower back pain, which the doctor believed was possibly the result of her cancer having spread to the base of her spine.  Hazel said there was no way she was going for more chemotherapy or scans which she believes in themselves can trigger carcinogenic activity.

Instead, Hazel supplemented her Vitamin C regime with a course of Vitamin B17 kernels, as well as maintaining a sensible diet and staying away from her conventional cancer physician. The blood count taken by her GP before Christmas read as normal. She feels very healthy and feels passionately that people need to know that there are alternative cancer treatments available and speaks to groups on this subject.

There is some very good news indeed on cancer. And fortunately, it doesn’t depend on the mighty orthodoxy to deliver it! With regard to breast cancer in general, for those women facing this disease or who are worried about the prospect, the following advice is offered by natural health advocate Dr Joseph Mercola:

“Breast Cancer Awareness Month is indeed a powerful time to educate, awaken and empower women to the real causes, preventative measures and truly effective cures for breast cancer. But, let’s not be duped or compromised in the process.” [26]

References

[1]’Screening for Cancer’ at www.acpm.org/breast.htm

[2] ‘Mammography – a woman’s breast friend?’ Sunday Times Magazine, 7thJuly 2002

[3] Baum, M, ‘Epidemiology versus scare-mongering: The case for humane interpretation of statistics and breast cancer’, Breast J. 6(5): 331­-334, 2000

[4] Boss, Irwin D, ‘Breast cancer: the one scientific fact you need to know’ at

http://home.mira.net/~antiviv/issue149.htm#HOW%20TO%20STOP%20WORRYING

[5] CF Christiansen, L Wang, MB Barton et al, ‘Predicting the cumulative risk of false-positive mammograms’, Journal of The National Cancer Institute, 92:1657-66, 2000

[6] ‘More on the Dangers of Mammography’, 23rd February 2002: at www.mercola.com/2002/feb/23/mammography.htm

[7] An Interview with Dr John McDougall at www.shareguide.com/McDougall.html

[8] Quigley, D T, ‘Some neglected points in the pathology of breast cancer, and treatment of breast cancer’, Radiology, May 1928

[9] Watmough, D J, ‘X-ray mammography and breast compression’, The Lancet 340: 122, 1992

[10] O’Shea, Tim, To the Cancer Patient at www.thedoctorwithin.com

[11] The Lancet, 1st July 1995

[12] New York Times, 14th December 1997; also O’Shea, Tim, op. cit.

[13] ‘Ideas’, CBC, 1st February 1996

[14] Epstein, Samuel S, The Politics of Cancer, Doubleday, 1979

[15] Epstein, Samuel S, Bertell, Rosalie & Barbara Seaman, ‘Dangers and Unreliability of Mammography; Breast Examination is a Safe, Effective and Practical Alternative’ at www.iicph.org/docs/dangers_of_mammography.htm   See also ‘Health Concerns Related to Radiation Exposure of the Female Nuclear Medicine Patient’ at http://ehpnet1.niehs.nih.gov/docs/1997/Suppl-6/stabin.html

[16] www.preventcancer.com

[17] Epstein, Samuel S, Bertell, Rosalie & Barbara Seaman, op. cit.

[18] Ibid.

[19] Ibid.

[20] BBC News, ‘Breast Cancer Deaths Plummet’ at  http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/health/newsid_753000/753821.stm

[21] US Department of Health and Human Services Public Health Service
National Toxicology Program at http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/roc/toc9.html

[22] Sellman, Sherrill, ‘Tamoxifen – A Major Medical Mistake?’ at

www.moonlighthealth.com/library2.asp?A=45

[23] Rona, Zoltan P, ‘The Trouble With Tamoxifen’, Health Link:

www.selene.com/healthlink/tamoxifen.html

[24] Moynihan, Ray, Heath, Iona & David Henry, ‘Selling Sickness: the pharmaceutical industry and disease-mongering’, British Medical Journal Online, BMJ, 13th April  2002

[25] Wahrman, Miryam Z,’The Breast Cancer Genes’ at

http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/Judaism/breast_cancer.html

[26] Mercola, Joseph, ‘Breast Cancer Awareness Month’ at  http://www.mercola.com/2000/oct/29/breast_cancer_awareness.htm

Thanks for the memory

Experiments have backed what was once a scientific ‘heresy’, says Lionel Milgrom

Lionel Milgrom
Guardian

Thursday March 15, 2001

About homeopathy, Professor Madeleine Ennis of Queen’s University Belfast is, like most scientists, deeply sceptical. That a medicinal compound diluted out of existence should still exert a therapeutic effect is an affront to conventional biochemistry and pharmacology, based as they are on direct and palpable molecular events. The same goes for a possible explanation of how homoeopathy works: that water somehow retains a “memory” of things once dissolved in it.

This last notion, famously promoted by French biologist Dr Jacques Benveniste, cost him his laboratories, his funding, and ultimately his international scientific credibility. However, it did not deter Professor Ennis who, being a scientist, was not afraid to try to prove Benveniste wrong. So, more than a decade after Benveniste’s excommunication from the scientific mainstream, she jumped at the chance to join a large pan-European research team, hoping finally to lay the Benveniste “heresy” to rest. But she was in for a shock: for the team’s latest results controversially now suggest that Benveniste might have been right all along.

Back in 1985, Benveniste began experimenting with human white blood cells involved in allergic reactions, called basophils. These possess tiny granules containing substances such as histamine, partly responsible for the allergic response. The granules can be stained with a special dye, but they can be decolourised (degranulated) by a substance called anti-immunoglobulin E or aIgE. That much is standard science. What Benveniste claimed so controversially was that he continued to observe basophil degranulation even when the aIgE had been diluted out of existence, but only as long as each dilution step, as with the preparation of homoeopathic remedies, was accompanied by strong agitation.

After many experiments, in 1988 Benveniste managed to get an account of his work published in Nature, speculating that the water used in the experiments must have retained a “memory” of the original dissolved aIgE. Homoeopaths rejoiced, convinced that here at last was the hard evidence they needed to make homoeopathy scientifically respectable. Celebration was short-lived. Spearheaded by a Nature team that famously included a magician (who could find no fault with Benveniste’s methods – only his results), Benveniste was pilloried by the scientific establishment.

A British attempt (by scientists at London’s University College, published in Nature in 1993) to reproduce Benveniste’s findings failed. Benveniste has been striving ever since to get other independent laboratories to repeat his work, claiming that negative findings like those of the British team were the result of misunderstandings of his experimental protocols. Enter Professor Ennis and the pan-European research effort.

A consortium of four independent research laboratories in France, Italy, Belgium, and Holland, led by Professor M Roberfroid at Belgium’s Catholic University of Louvain in Brussels, used a refinement of Benveniste’s original experiment that examined another aspect of basophil activation. The team knew that activation of basophil degranulation by aIgE leads to powerful mediators being released, including large amounts of histamine, which sets up a negative feedback cycle that curbs its own release. So the experiment the pan-European team planned involved comparing inhibition of basophil aIgE-induced degranulation with “ghost” dilutions of histamine against control solutions of pure water.

In order to make sure no bias was introduced into the experiment by the scientists from the four laboratories involved, they were all “blinded” to the contents of their test solutions. In other words, they did not know whether the solutions they were adding to the basophil-aIgE reaction contained ghost amounts of histamine or just pure water. But that’s not all. The ghost histamine solutions and the controls were prepared in three different laboratories that had nothing further to do with the trial.

The whole experiment was coordinated by an independent researcher who coded all the solutions and collated the data, but was not involved in any of the testing or analysis of the data from the experiment. Not much room, therefore, for fraud or wishful thinking. So the results when they came were a complete surprise.

Three of the four labs involved in the trial reported a statistically significant inhibition of the basophil degranulation reaction by the ghost histamine solutions compared with the controls. The fourth lab gave a result that was almost significant, so the total result over all four labs was positive for the ghost histamine solutions.

Still, Professor Ennis was not satisfied. “In this particular trial, we stained the basophils with a dye and then hand-counted those left coloured after the histamine- inhibition reaction. You could argue that human error might enter at this stage.” So she used a previously developed counting protocol that could be entirely automated. This involved tagging activated basophils with a monoclonal antibody that could be observed via fluorescence and measured by machine.

The result, shortly to be published in Inflammation Research, was the same: histamine solutions, both at pharmacological concentrations and diluted out of existence, lead to statistically significant inhibition of basophile activation by aIgE, confirming previous work in this area.

“Despite my reservations against the science of homoeopathy,” says Ennis, “the results compel me to suspend my disbelief and to start searching for a rational explanation for our findings.” She is at pains to point out that the pan-European team have not reproduced Benveniste’s findings nor attempted to do so.

Jacques Benveniste is unimpressed. “They’ve arrived at precisely where we started 12 years ago!” he says. Benveniste believes he already knows what constitutes the water-memory effect and claims to be able to record and transmit the “signals” of biochemical substances around the world via the internet. These, he claims, cause changes in biological tissues as if the substance was actually present.

The consequences for science if Benveniste and Ennis are right could be earth shattering, requiring a complete re-evaluation of how we understand the workings of chemistry, biochemistry, and pharmacology.

One thing however seems certain. Either Benveniste will now be brought in from the cold, or Professor Ennis and the rest of the scientists involved in the pan-European experiment could be joining him there.

Gazette Fair Use Statement

Consulting Firm Ranks the Nations of the World According to “Water Security”

by Hardly Waite

A British consulting firm called Maplecroft issued a “risk assessment” in the summer of 2010 which attempted to rank the nations of the world according to the security of their water supplies.

A “water security risk index” of 165 nations found African and Asian nations had the most vulnerable supplies, judged by factors including access to drinking water, per capita demand and dependence on rivers that first flow through other nations.

Somalia, where just 30 percent of the population has clean drinking water, topped the list, and then came Mauritania, Sudan, Niger, Iraq, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Egypt, Turkmenistan and Syria.

Iceland, Norway, and New Zealand, in that order, were ranked as having the most secure water supplies.

Climate change is expected to provoke conflict for water supplies as water becomes more scarce.

Shifts in monsoon rains and melting of glaciers, for instance, could disrupt supplies with the potential to cause cross-border conflicts. Construction of hydropower dams or more irrigation, for instance, can disrupt supplies down river.

The study said irrigation accounted for 70 percent of freshwater consumption across the globe. Industry uses another 22 percent.

While “water stress” is especially a problem for poorer nations, nations like Australia, the United States, and some European countries are also at risk.

Bulgaria ranked 47 on the list, Belgium 50, Spain 68, Australia 95 and the United States 104.

More Information.