Did you know vaccine makers have no liability for bad products?

Here are two paragraphs from Dr. Mercola's newsletter that I read this morning:

"Pandemic vaccines are 100 percent risk-free for the vaccine maker, as laws ushered in after 9/11 exempt them from ANY liability. And, making matters worse, the laws create a negative incentive to test it for safety, because if they are fully aware of problems, then they could potentially be held liable for willful misconduct! It’s in their best interest to know as little as possible about the adverse reactions their vaccine might cause.

Non-pandemic vaccine injuries fall under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, which is a no-fault federal vaccine injury compensation program. But again, very few vaccine injured children ever receive compensation from this program, and asexplained in this previous article, the program is so seriously flawed as to be useless."

The Big Pharma companies are now they are in the process of creating vaccines for things that don't even involve bacteria or viruses!  They are creating vaccines for obesity and stress, and what do you want to bet the highly un-educated American public will buy them, not understanding the principle of vaccination nor the real causes of obesity and stress.   Can I get a science teacher?

A great book

I recently re-read a great book by Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D., entitled Mindset:  The New Psychology of Success.  It's easy to read and understand, but she is a world-renowned scholar in the fields of personality, social psychology and developmental psychology.  She holds a chair in Psychology at Stanford, and previously held one at Columbia, so she obviously has credibility.

The book is about the difference between children and adults who have the growth mindset, that is, they believe they can learn and grown into any skill or ability, as opposed to those children and adults who believe our level of intelligence and skills are set in stone, a given, and are unchangeable even with great effort.  The latter category gives up when they run into a subject or skill set that they cannot pick up on the first try.  They become despondent and feel bad about themselves.  The former category who have the growth mindset believe that they can learn anything if they put enough time and effort into it, and even find it exhilarating to try.  If they fail, it doesn't reflect on them as a person, they get up, dust themselves off, and try another tack, learn more about their challenge before they attempt it again.  Failure is nothing more than feedback that they weren't yet appropriately prepared to face that particular challenge at that moment.

If you asked me which mindset I have, I would likely have told you that I am of the fixed mindset because I often feel bad about myself when I fail to achieve a particular goal on the first or second or even third try.  However, my life has again and again borne out the truth of the growth mindset.  I mastered the art form of opera singing even though I chose it because it was the only art form I wasn't absolutely certain I could master.  I never gave up trying to heal (rather than just mitigate) my fibromyalgia.  For the past 17 years, whenever my research and experimentation with natural medicine took me two steps forward, I always ended up having to take one step back.  It is incredibly frustrating when you work as hard at getting well as I have.  But I refuse to give up.  I know I can master this, too.  There is always a reason for why things have gone awry.  And the process of experimentation and discovery is fascinating.

I remember meeting a young man once while we were both commuting on the ferry from Hoboken, New Jersey to the World Financial Center in lower Manhattan.  He was a gifted musician, but he wasn't Mozart so he completely gave up music to work as a trader and make a lot of money in downtown Manhattan.  He was clearly bitter about not being a better musician, and it was a shock to me to realize how miserable he was.  It was almost as if he were punishing himself for not having been born a better musician.  There are plenty of musicians out there making a living at it but who aren't anywhere close to being a Mozart, and they are happy.  How we choose to judge ourselves and the world entirely shapes our experience of it.  We can choose how we look at things.  It makes all the difference.

I plan to recommend this book to every one of my patients who suffers from a chronic disease that challenges them to keep working at healing.  It can get very discouraging to get sick again when you have worked so hard to stay well, but Mindset

Americans Against Food Taxes - BAH HUMBUG!

I could hardly believe my eyes this morning when I was on the Care2 petition website, where I often sign petitions on various political issues in an attempt to protect our environment, our food stream, and generally stand up against the powerful on behalf of the average citizen.  As a primary healthcare practitioner, the well being of ordinary people is my greatest concern, and often very powerful large business interests are allied against the wellbeing of ordinary people when it threatens their profits.

So I was disappointed to discover this morning that a group calling itself "Americans Against Food Taxes" appeared on the Care2 petition website.  They cite research studies that say there is no connection between drinking lots of sugar sodas and obesity, which, having just finished nine semesters of pathophysiology, is simply not true.  There might be one or two studies here or there that say such things, but the overwhelming majority of studies say the opposite.  Clearly they are cherry picking studies, probably funded by Big Agribusiness, that say what they want to say, not indicating that there are hundreds if not thousands of studies saying the opposite.  That is not merely misleading, that is a flat out lie, and they should not get away with that.

Because in classical Chinese medicine diet is seen as the treatment of first resort for any condition, I fight daily for keeping our foods pure and natural.  That is what we were designed or have evolved to eat, and not the processed gargabe that makes up 75% of the foods sold in grocery stores.  So it was no surprise when I looked at the page of "members" of this "Americans Against Food Taxes" and found that it was made up of regional grocery store associations (private business interests that have their own best interest rather than the health of their customers at heart, or should I say in mind), and Big Agribusiness, companies like Cargill (they grow millions of acres of corn and soybeans and make billions of dollars) and Burger King, as well as Coca Cola.  Now do you suppose Coca Cola would be a disinterested observer on this issue, since it is soda that the government is trying to tax to reduce its use, the way they tax cigarettes to make it a very expensive habit and reduce the number of cigarettes smoked?  Of course not, that is an absurd notion.

So I want my readers to recognize what a farce this front group is for Big Agribusiness.  Shame on you, American Against Food Taxes.  You are an enemy of the American people.