Vitamin D Deficiency Becoming an Epidemic
March 15, 2010
Natural News
By Mike Adams
There is an epidemic of vitamin D deficiency sweeping across our modern world, and it’s an epidemic of such depth and seriousness that it makes the H1N1 swine flu epidemic look like a case of the sniffles by comparison. Vitamin D deficiency is not only alarmingly widespread, it’s also a root cause of many other serious diseases such as cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis and heart disease.
A new study published in the March, 2010 issue of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism found that a jaw-dropping 59 percent of the population is vitamin D deficient. In addition, nearly 25 percent of the study subjects were found to have extremely low levels of vitamin D.
Lead author of the study, Dr. Richard Kremer at the McGill University Health Center, said “Abnormal levels of vitamin D are associated with a whole spectrum of diseases, including cancer, osteoporosis, and diabetes, as well as cardiovascular and autoimmune disorders.”
This new study also documents a clear link between vitamin D deficiency and stored body fat. This supports a theory I’ve espoused here on NaturalNews for many years: That sunshine actually promote body fat loss. Vitamin D may be the hormonal mechanism by which this fat loss phenomenon operates.
The research findings on vitamin D, by the way, get even better…
Activator for the immune system
Recent research carried out at the University of Copenhagen has revealed that vitamin D activates the immune system by “arming” T cells to fight off infections.
This new research, led by Professor Carsten Geisler from the Department of International Health, Immunology and Microbiology at the University of Copenhagen, found that without vitamin D, the immune system’s T cells remain dormant, offering little or no protection against invading microorganisms and viruses. But with vitamin D in the bloodstream, T cells become “armed” and begin seeking out invaders that are then destroyed and carried out of the body.
Vitamin D, in other words, acts a bit like the ignition key to your car: The car won’t run unless you turn the key and ignite the engine. Likewise, your immune system won’t function unless it is biochemically activated with vitamin D. If you’re facing the winter flu season in a state of vitamin D deficiency, your immune system is essentially defenseless against seasonal flu. That’s why all the people who get sick are the ones who live indoors, work indoors and exist in a chronic state of vitamin D deficiency.
That’s also why virtually all the people who died from H1N1 were chronically deficient in vitamin D. They had virtually no immune system protection at all and were thus easy targets for the swine flu.
These findings about vitamin D “arming” the immune system were published in Nature Immunology. Commenting on the findings, the researchers said, “Scientists have known for a long time that vitamin D is important for calcium absorption and the vitamin has also been implicated in diseases such as cancer and multiple sclerosis, but what we didn’t realize is how crucial vitamin D is for actually activating the immune system — which we know now.” (UK Telegraph, source below).
It seems the CDC and WHO remain utterly ignorant about this research or they would have been recommending vitamin D to fight the recent H1N1 pandemic rather than vaccine shots. Vitamin D would have been a far more effective (and less costly) defense against the pandemic than vaccine shots, especially given that even vaccines don’t work unless there is an immune response, and that immune response requires the presence of vitamin D!
And while vaccine shots have undesirable side effects such as causing severe neurological damage in a small number of vaccine recipients, vitamin D’s only significant “side effect” is that it prevents 77% of all cancers, too.
The common denominator for disease
What’s becoming increasingly clear from all the new research is that vitamin D deficiency may be the common denominator behind our most devastating modern degenerative diseases. Kidney failure patients are almost universally deficient in vitamin D and diabetes patients are usually in the same category. People suffering from cancer almost always demonstrate severe vitamin D deficiency, as do people with osteoporosis and multiple sclerosis.
Click here for the full report
Doctors Wonder Why the Flu Season Has Fizzled
March 2, 2010
Wall Street Journal
By Betsy McKay
This has been a flu season like few others.
Normally at this time of year, influenza is rampant in the U.S., prompting hundreds of thousands of people to stay home in the dead of winter with fever, aches and pains.
Now, after raging through college campuses and communities last summer and fall, cases of the new H1N1 swine flu virus have dwindled to a trickle, and run-of-the-mill seasonal flu has barely made an appearance. Not one state reported widespread flu illness to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the week ended Feb. 20, the latest data available. The percentage of all doctors’ visits by patients with influenza-like symptoms has dropped from a high of 7.8% in late October—the largest peak since the agency began surveillance in 1997—to 1.8% in late February, well below the norm for flu season.
Doctors and flu experts say the lull is unusual. “This is typically the peak of flu,” said James Turner, executive director of the University of Virginia’s department of student health. He said the Charlottesville, Va., student health center usually sees as many as 130 students a week complaining of flu symptoms this time of year. Recently, no more than three to five students a week have been coming in with fever, cough or other signs of flu, he said.
It is not clear why there is so little flu, particularly swine flu, going around, experts say. “Surely there’s a sufficient number of people who haven’t been infected or vaccinated,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.
Many scientists say the answer probably has to do with how the flu virus progresses. Influenza comes and goes in waves, normally running from October through May. But pandemic viruses—new viruses that emerge and spread quickly around the globe—often move to a different rhythm, and can reach their busiest stage at unusual times like summer and early fall, although the reason for this isn’t understood. Flu has peaked in late February or early March in 20 of the past 26 flu seasons, said Lyn Finelli, the CDC’s chief of flu surveillance and outbreak response. But the latest swine flu wave started in August, and peaked in late October, before waning.
Widely publicized preventive measures such as hand washing, and the large national vaccination effort thus far, may also have played a role in the sharp drop off in H1N1 infections, but it is not clear by how much, said Anthony Fiore, a medical epidemiologist with the CDC’s influenza division.
By mid-January, swine flu had sickened about 57 million people in the U.S. and killed roughly 11,700—mostly young adults and children—from the time it emerged in late April through mid-January. Young people who ordinarily fight off flu easily ended up in intensive care units on advanced life support. Pregnant women, children, and other people at risk of flu complications stood in line for hours for vaccine, as slow production and delays prompted limited supplies.
In past years, when seasonal flu was the big worry, influenza has typically sickened about 25 million people a year, and directly killed about 8,000, according to the CDC.
To continue reading this report, click here.
WHO: Pandemic Has Yet to Peak
February 24, 2010
comcast.net
The pandemic of H1N1 swine flu has not yet peaked, a committee of experts advised the World Health Organization on Tuesday.
“The committee advised that it was premature to conclude that all parts of the world have experienced peak transmission of the H1N1 pandemic influenza and that additional time and information was needed to provide expert advice on the status of the pandemic,” WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl said by e-mail.
WHO planned a news conference for Wednesday.
The United Nations agency declared last June that the new virus was causing the first influenza pandemic in more than 40 years after it spread around the world from Mexico and the United States in just six weeks.
Under WHO rules the emergency committee, composed of 15 experts and headed by Australian John MacKenzie, makes confidential recommendations to WHO director-general Dr. Margaret Chan.
She is then required to inform the health ministries of WHO’s 192 member states and the Vatican of her decision. The WHO’s decision will be announced formally by the WHO’s top flu expert Dr. Keiji Fukuda on Wednesday at 1000 GMT.
WHO has confirmed the virus has killed 16,000 people but notes this is a gross underestimate, as hardly any patients are diagnosed or tested. It will take a year or two after the pandemic ends to establish the true death toll, the WHO says.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does projections based on testing and patterns of disease reports and projects that H1N1 has killed up to 17,000 people in the United States alone, and put as many as 370,000 into the hospital with serious illness.
In contrast, seasonal influenza kills 250,000 to 500,000 people globally but most are frail and elderly. H1N1 has attacked young adults and children.
SUBSTANTIAL OUTBREAKS
The pandemic sparked a race to develop new vaccines by drug makers including GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi-Aventis but has proved to be of moderate severity, and many people failed to take the new vaccine.
Previous influenza pandemics have had waves of disease activity spread over months, meaning the post-peak period could last quite a while, according to the WHO.
The final stage, called the post-pandemic period, is when disease activity returns to levels normally seen for seasonal influenza, it says.
“There is no on and off switch for a pandemic. It’s not a single event. What we have to see is that the behavior of the H1N1 virus becomes like the behavior of other seasonal viruses,” Hartl said earlier on Tuesday.
“At the moment, it is still causing substantial outbreaks of disease outside the normal influenza seasons and affecting groups who are not normally affected by seasonal influenza. So as long as that continues, it does not behave like seasonal influenza.”
Younger people, especially those with chronic medical conditions, and pregnant women continue to be at a higher risk of infection and viral pneumonia from the H1N1 virus, Fukuda told reporters last week.
The WHO has cautioned that the H1N1 virus could still mutate or mix with the more deadly bird flu virus, which remains endemic in poultry in many Asian countries.
Click here for the full report
H1N1 Shot Blamed For Rare Disorder
February 23, 2010
AOL News
A Calgary woman regrets getting the H1N1 shot after her doctor told her it likely caused a rare and painful disorder.
Norma Goldring said she felt compelled to get an H1N1 vaccine because she is diabetic and has had a heart attack, two factors that Alberta Health noted as putting people at higher risk for serious complications from swine flu.
But soon after getting the shot last winter, Goldring felt ill.
“My body was aching and I was throwing up. Then I developed a spot on my leg,” she said.
The rash spread quickly and Goldring ended up in hospital on Christmas Day. “By the time I got to emergency, it spread pretty bad and turned to blisters.”
Her kidneys were shutting down. Doctors eventually diagnosed it as vasculitis, an inflammation that destroys blood vessels.
Her doctor, who asked not to be named, concluded it was probably connected to the H1N1 shot. Goldring, according to her doctor, is one of only 31 people since 1974 to have had this type of reaction to a flu shot.
Won’t get shot again, says Goldring
Now, even using a walker to get from her living room to her kitchen causes her excruciating pain. She is on pain killers and steroids.
“It was like I was put through a fire. It was like someone lit me on fire,” she said.
Goldring said she won’t get a flu shot again. Desmond Fordyce, her partner, said he is worried the vaccine wasn’t tested properly before widespread public vaccinations began.
“I think they’re killing you more than giving you something for making you better,” he said.
Dr. Glen Armstrong, head of the microbiology and infectious diseases department at the University of Calgary, said the H1N1 vaccine is safe. “It’s very clear that the benefits of having people get vaccinated, far, far outweigh the risks of the very small number of adverse reactions to the vaccine.”
So far, 25 million doses of the vaccine have been distributed across Canada. Nearly 6,000 H1N1 shots resulted in an adverse reaction, of which more than 200 were considered serious. Health officials are investigating 13 post-shot deaths.
Alberta health officials told CBC News they have talked to Goldring’s doctor and will continue to investigate what happened in her case.
The province has seen 1,276 people hospitalized with H1N1 since April 2009 and 71 deaths have been connected to the virus.
Click here for the full report
Influenza Vaccine Has No Effect
February 10th, 2010
The Local
There is no evidence to support the contention that the influenza vaccine administered to the over 65s is of any more use than opening the windows and washing hands, a new study from the Cochrane Collaboration claims, according to a report in the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper.
•Sweden evaluates swine flu response (17 Jan 10)
•Swine flu named year’s top Swedish news story (30 Dec 09)
•Sweden’s swine flu response wins EU praise (4 Dec 09)
The Cochrane Collaboration, an international not-for-profit organization providing up-to-date information about the effects of health care, has compiled data from 40 flu seasons worldwide.
The institute has concluded from the studies that there is no clear evidence to suggest that the flu jab offers any more protection than cheaper, hygiene-based methods such as hand-washing.
“Our analysis is compiled using millions of data from 40 seasons worldwide. What we have seen is that the influenza vaccine can at best have a very small effect,” said Thomas Jefferson, one of the authors of the report, to the newspaper.
The Swedish Welfare Board (Socialstyrelsen) has for the past 40 years advised all those over 65-years-old to take an annual dose.
Most local health authorities in Sweden pay for the flu jab at a cost to the taxpayer of 25-30 million kronor ($3.5 million) per annum.
This is not the first time the Cochrane Collaboration has sounded the alarm over the paltry effects of the vaccine with a report published four years ago drawing the same conclusions, according to the newspaper.
The institute has now selected the best 75 of the available studies for this latest review of the evidence. While conceding that the studies are not of the best research quality, it concludes there is little evidence to suggest that the flu vaccine has any real effect.
The institute thus recommends a larger international, state-financed study to examine the vaccine and existing healthcare recommendations.
Click here for the full report
CDC Says Swine Flu Killed 17,000 in U.S.
February 15th, 2010
infowars.com
By Neka Sehgal
According to new estimates by the U.S. heath authorities, the dreaded H1N1 pandemic, which has shown sustained human-to-human transmission since its outbreak in April may have killed close to 17,120 people.
The new report released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provides an assessment of infections, hospitalizations and deaths from H1N1 since its emergence in April until mid January.
It estimates 57 million citizens have been infected by the virus since the outbreak and the total could be as high as 84 million.
Younger generation hit hard by virus
Unlike the regular flu that strikes the elderly more viciously, the report shows the circulating virus targeted the younger generation, comprising kids, teens and adults.
Click here for the full report
CDC: Swine Flu Epidemic is Dying
February 10, 2010
Press TV
While swine flu is still circulating around the world, no major activity has been detected in the US for the past four weeks, health officials report.
Latest figures revealed that some 80 million Americans, including the 11,000 fatal cases, have been infected with swine flu. US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officials reported that the virus has claimed the lives of nine more children in the past week.
“Many people believe the outbreak is over and I think it is too soon for us to have that complacency,” said Anne Schuchat of the CDC, stressing that the number of affected cases has declined everywhere.
Some 70 million of the US population, however, have been vaccinated against the disease, indicating that many Americans have underestimated the ongoing outbreak and therefore have ignored the vaccine.
“We don’t seem to be seeing the disappearance of this virus, and we haven’t seen the emergence of the seasonal strain … so I think this virus is going to be finding susceptible people,” said Schuchat, urging more people to get vaccinated.
Click here for the full report.
Swine Flu Pandemic Was a Hoax
February5, 2010
Infowars
By Paul Joseph Watson
Appearing on The Alex Jones Show, outgoing Chair of the Council of Europe’s Sub-committee on Health Wolfgang Wodarg said that his panel’s investigation into the 2009 swine flu outbreak has found that the pandemic was a fake hoax manufactured by pharmaceutical companies in league with the WHO to make vast profits while endangering public health.
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, a 47 nation body encompassing democratically elected members of parliament, began hearings last month to investigate whether the H1N1 swine flu pandemic was falsified or exaggerated in an attempt to profit from vaccine sales.
Wodarg said that governments were “threatened” by special interest groups within the pharmaceutical industry as well as the WHO to buy the vaccines and inject their populations without any reasonable scientific reason for doing so, and yet in countries like Germany and France only around 6 per cent took the vaccine despite enough being available to cover 90 per cent of the population.
Wodarg said he was alarmed when the WHO cited early cases in Mexico as a threat and quickly moved to pandemic status, despite the fact that the cases were relatively mild and the virus was not new.
“This was the mildest flu ever and the people were much more clever than the government so we have to find out what was going on with WHO – why did they do this pandemic alarm,” asked Wodarg, noting that pharmaceutical interests within the World Health Organization were instrumental in creating the panic and reaping the financial dividends.
“We don’t know what really happened, we only know that they changed the definition of a pandemic, which was a very dangerous thing before and now is just a normal flu, and this is why business for pharmaceutical companies was open,” said Wodarg, adding that select pharmaceutical companies were handed a monopoly on creating the vaccine.
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
“It is their trick that they always try to monopolize this and we pay much more like this,” said Wodarg, noting that if patents were left open, vaccines would be produced much quicker and far cheaper.
Wodarg said there was “no other explanation” for what happened than the fact that the WHO worked in cahoots with the pharmaceutical industry to manufacture the panic in order to generate vast profits, agreeing with host Alex Jones that the entire farce was a hoax.
He also explained how health authorities were “already waiting for something to happen” before the pandemic started and then exploited the virus for their own purposes.
Wodarg said that the investigation was likely to recommend an end to the undue influence of pharmaceutical companies on public health institutions in Europe.
However, Wodarg pointed out, “There is no law for WHO, there is no one who punishes those people in WHO, we only have national law, so this is very important that we collect the information and on the national level we try to find those people responsible and we try to punish them.”
“Have investigations, have a deep look, we cannot tolerate such a development, we cannot have this next winter again, we don’t want such fake pandemics,” concluded Wodarg.
Wodarg said that vast quantities of unused vaccines were now being dumped on the third world and that other countries were simply trying to push ahead with vaccination programs even though the virus has proven not to be a major threat.
“The Japanese bought vaccines for 110 million people and they cannot return from this vaccine contract so they are in a very big political dilemma now and they already have problems because the Japanese people already know it wouldn’t be necessary to get vaccinated,” Wodarg told The Alex Jones Show.
WHO Scientist: Swine Flu Pandemic Was “Completely Exaggerated”
February 3, 2010
Info Wars
By Steve Watson
A scientist with the World Health Organisation has testified, during ongoing hearings in Strasbourg, France, that the swine flu pandemic was part of an overblown “angst campaign”, devised in conjunction with major drug companies to boost profits for vaccine manufacturers.
Professor Ulrich Keil, director of the WHO’s Collaborating Centre for Epidemiology, slammed the organization and its flu chief, Dr Keiji Fukuda while giving evidence before The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).
“With SARS, with avian flu, always the predictions are wrong…Why don’t we learn from history?” Keil said. “It [swine flu] produced a lot of turmoil in the pubic and was completely exaggerated in contrast with all the really important matters we have to deal with in public health.”
The WHO adviser on heart disease, added that the decision had led to a “gigantic misallocation” of health budgets.
“We know the great killers are hypertension, smoking, high cholesterol, high body mass index, physical inactivity and low fruit and vegetable intake,” he said. “In spite of all these facts, governments instead wasted huge amounts of money by investing in pandemic scenarios whose evidence base is weak.”
PACE, a 47 nation body encompassing democratically elected members of parliament, will determine whether a “falsified pandemic” was declared by WHO in June 2009 on the advice of medical advisors, many of whom have close financial ties to the very pharmaceutical giants – GlaxoSmithKline, Roche, Novartis, – that produced the H1N1 vaccines.
It will also look into the controversy surrounding the fact that two shots were initially advised when it was later revealed that one dose was entirely suitable, as well as investigating concerns over hastily developed vaccines containing adjuvants.
Pharmaceutical companies are thought to have made a profit of somewhere in the region of $7.5-$10 billion on H1N1 vaccines, recouping the billions they had invested in researching and developing pandemic vaccines after the bird flu scares in 2006 and 2007.
The worldwide death toll from H1N1 is thought to be around 13,500, just over a third of the number who die from regular flu every year in the U.S. alone.
Heading the hearings is the former chairman of the Health Committee of PACE, Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg. A former German lawmaker, a medical doctor and epidemiologist. Wodarg has referred to the swine flu pandemic as “one of the greatest medical scandals of the century.”
Wodarg has pointed out that the WHO softened the definition of a pandemic from an outbreak in several continents at once with an above-average death rate, to one where the spread of the disease is constant.
Just one month after changing the definition, and with just 144 people having died from H1N1, the flu was given the highest threat classification possible, a “stage-six pandemic alert”. By comparison, the mildest 20th Century pandemic killed a million people.
“I have never heard such a worldwide echo to a health political action,” Wodarg, an epidemiologist who formerly led the health committee for the Council of Europe, said at Tuesday’s hearing.
“It was stated in panic- stricken terms that this was a flu that could threaten humanity and a great number of humans could fall ill. This is why billions of dollars of medications were bought.” Wodarg said.
He added that the the change in definition “made it possible for the pharmaceutical industry to transform this opportunity into cash, under contracts which were mainly secret.”
“In my view, the WHO undertook an incomprehensible action, which cannot be justified by scientific evidence. The Council of Europe should investigate this to see how WHO can undertake this kind of dangerous nonsense,” said Dr Wodarg.
WHO’s flu chief, Dr Fukuda, insisted that its swine flu scientists do not have conflicts of interest owing to close links with pharmaceutical companies.
“Let me state clearly for the record – the influenza pandemic policies and responses recommended and taken by WHO were not improperly influenced by the pharmaceutical industry.” Fukuda told the inquiry.
He said those calling the epidemic fake were wrong and irresponsible.
PACE’s findings are expected to be announced January 29 and will likely be followed by an in-depth study and recommendations to European governments.
Click here for the full report.
WHO: H1N1 Pandemic Easing, But Risks Remain
January 25, 2010
Reuters
By Stephanie Nebehay
The H1N1 flu pandemic appears to be easing, but a third wave of infections could yet strike, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Monday.
“Pandemic infections are occurring in many countries but overall the pattern is decreasing,” Keiji Fukuda, the WHO’s top flu expert, said at the start of a week-long meeting of the organisation’s Executive Board.
He warned, however, that a new wave of infections could hit the northern hemisphere in late winter or early spring, saying: “This is probably the biggest speculation. We simply do not know.”
The H1N1 virus, also known as swine flu, emerged last April and caused the first influenza pandemic in 40 years.
It initially sparked widespread concern about antiviral and vaccine supplies, especially in developing countries, but many nations have cut back their vaccine orders recently because the pandemic has not turned out as deadly as originally feared.
WHO director-general Margaret Chan told the meeting that the effects of the pandemic had been moderate and were probably closer to outbreaks experienced in 1957 and 1968 rather than the far more deadly 1918 version.
The 1918 pandemic, known as the Spanish flu, swept around the world at the end of World War One, killing some 40-50 million people.
Chan said H1N1 appeared to be easing in the northern hemisphere, but cautioned that it was too soon to say what would happen once the southern hemisphere entered winter and the virus became more infectious.
Fukuda said the majority of people infected with H1N1 recovered without complications or special treatment, but children were being hospitalised at about twice the rate of adults.
Most deaths occurred in people with underlying conditions, including pregnancy, asthma, heart or lung disease, or diabetes. A total of 265 million doses of the vaccine had been distributed and 175 million of those administered to people, Fukuda said.
14,000 DEATHS
Chan, a former health director of Hong Kong, said nearly 14,000 official deaths had been reported by more than 200 countries since the virus emerged in North America last April.
But it will take at least 1-2 years after the pandemic ends to establish the true toll and WHO experts say the actual death rate could be much higher than the number of laboratory-confirmed cases so far.
Chan defended her organisation against accusations from some politicians that it exaggerated the dangers of the virus under pressure from drug companies.
“I believe we would all rather see a moderate pandemic with ample supplies of vaccine than a severe pandemic with inadequate vaccine,” she said.
Her United Nations agency has announced that it will launch an evaluation of how it handled the pandemic crisis and Chan said it would “withstand this scrutiny.”
A committee including independent experts will start to review the response to the pandemic of the agency and global community by May and present initial findings to health ministers that month.
This would include a review of the WHO’s pandemic alert scale and whether that should be broadened to reflect the severity of an attack as well as its geographical spread.
Sir Liam Donaldson, Britain’s chief medical officer, dismissed criticism the pandemic was exaggerated.
“It is extremely important that none of us be intimidated by these criticisms and become complacent,” Donaldson told the board. “This virus will drift and produce more serious outbreaks and deaths over time.
Click here for the full report.
