FDA Changes its Story on BPA After More Tests
January 19, 2010
Washington Post
by Lyndsey Layton
The Food and Drug Administration has reversed its position on the safety of Bisphenol A, a chemical found in plastic bottles, soda cans, food containers and thousands of consumer goods, saying it now has concerns about health risks.
Growing scientific evidence has linked the chemical to a host of problems, including cancer, sexual dysfunction and heart disease. Federal officials said they are particularly concerned about BPA’s effect on the development of fetuses, infants and young children.
“We have some concern, which leads us to recommend reasonable steps the public can take to reduce exposure to BPA,” said Joshua Sharfstein, FDA’s deputy commissioner, in a conference call to reporters Friday.
Regulators stopped short of banning the compound or even requiring manufacturers to label products containing BPA, saying that current data are not clear enough to support a legal crackdown. FDA officials also said they were hamstrung from dealing quickly with BPA by an outdated regulatory framework.
Sharfstein said the agency is conducting “targeted” studies of BPA, part of a two-year, $30 million effort by the administration to answer key questions about the chemical that will help determine what action, if any, is necessary to protect public health. The Obama administration pledged to take a “fresh look” at the chemical.
BPA, used to harden plastics, is so prevalent that more than 90 percent of the U.S. population has traces of it in its urine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Researchers have found that BPA leaches from containers into food and beverages, even at cold temperatures.
The FDA’s announcement came after extensive talks between federal agencies and the White House about the best approach to an issue that has become a significant concern for consumers and the chemical industry.
One administration official privy to the talks said the FDA is in a quandary. “They have new evidence that makes them worried, but they don’t have enough proof to justify pulling the stuff, so what do you do?” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “You want to warn people, but you don’t want to create panic.”
The FDA had long maintained that BPA is safe, relying largely on two studies funded by the chemical industry. The agency was faulted by its own panel of independent science advisers in 2008, which said its position on BPA was scientifically flawed because it ignored more than 100 published studies by government scientists and university laboratories that raised health concerns about BPA. Recent data found health effects even at low doses of BPA — lower than the levels considered safe by the FDA.
Anxiety Vaccine? What Next?!
October 23, 2009
Natural News
By Mike Adams
There’s a new vaccine for nicotine addiction, and another one for drug addiction. There’s an AIDS vaccines (which doesn’t work) and a vaccine for cervical cancer that’s been approved for use on boys (boys don’t have a cervix). Through the pharmaceutical industry, the big push for vaccines is on!
But why, exactly? Is there suddenly a new rash of epidemic disease requiring vaccine treatments? No, not really. What’s new is the way Big Pharma is latching on to these diseases as new opportunities to sell more drugs.
There’s a huge shift underway from drugs designed for sick people to a whole new class of drugs manufactured for healthy people. The new paradigm is that people need drugs before they get sick, as a sort of “protection” against sickness. Drugs, in essence, are being positioned as nutrients — things the human body needs in order to be healthy. And from the moment you’re born, you’re considered deficient in these drugs. That’s why babies are injected with vaccines within minutes after being born. There’s a strong belief in the medical industry that babies are born deficient in vaccines and that such deficiencies must be “corrected” as soon as possible.
This simple but powerful shift in the marketing strategy of Big Pharma has expanded the potential customer based from a subset of the population (people who are sick) to the entire world population. Now, everybody needs a vaccine for something say the drug companies. All that’s necessary for the financial success of these scheme is to convince sick people that they need more drugs (or vaccines), and that’s easily accomplished through disease mongering campaigns (like the current fear push over H1N1 swine flu).
Bypassing the need for scientific evidence
There’s another important shift taking place alongside the big vaccine push: A shift away from “evidence-based medicine” to a new medical paradigm of “dogmatic belief.”
Medicines that treat sick people, you see, have to be proven to work. There have to be clinical trials, and some percentage of those sick people (only 5% or so, typically) have to show some sort of improved response after taking the medicine. This is the so-called “gold standard” of modern medicine. But with vaccines, no proof of efficacy is required. No placebo-controlled studies need to be conducted at all. Vaccines can be openly marketed and prescribed without any evidence that they actually work.
This is the new “free pass” for Big Pharma — a class of medicine that requires no proof! They merely need to be injected into a few hundred people who are observed for as little as two weeks to see if anybody died or collapses into a coma. That’s all the testing that’s required (and sometimes even less). No long-term safety tests are required or pursued, and, importantly, there is no requirement that the vaccine proves it actually works to reduce flu infections (or HPV infections, etc.).
In essence, by pushing for a vaccine approach to virtually everything, including nicotine addictions, the pharmaceutical industry has transformed itself from a small industry that only served sick people with scientifically-proven medicines to a huge global industry that sells vaccines to everyone and needs no proof that they even work. By any assessment, it’s a brilliant strategy for increasing pharmaceutical profits.
The Kevin Trudeau Show: 10-6-09
Today, Kevin is back in the studio LIVE to explain how the media is diverting your attention from the real stories out there:
The Flu Cure
The Roman Polanski Controversy
A Rise in Autism
Vaccination Facts
Birth Control Danger
Plus, the co-founder of EMC², Stephen Lewis, joined Kevin to explain the miracle that is the AIM Program.
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