By Joseph Jankowski
Researchers at Iowa State University are moving forward with a long-delayed project in which a dozen students will be paid to eat genetically modified bananas.
According to The Des Moines Register, the bananas were created by a Australian scientist and contain a gene that is supposed to help people living in Africa make vitamin A.
The project, funded by Bill and Melinda Gates, would pay each student $900.
Food-science professor Wendy White, who is leading the ISU end of the trial, says the project will take place sometime this year after approximately two years of delay.
From The Des Moines Register:
In the summer of 2014, White’s team sent an email to ISU students seeking a dozen female volunteers for the study. White said that the volunteers would be paid $900 to eat the equivalent of three bananas each. Just one of the bananas would be the genetically modified type.
The participants were to eat a diet, including the bananas, for four days during each of three study periods, then have their blood tested. White said more than 500 women responded to the query, and 12 were to be selected.
White said in 2014 that the goal of her research was to help people in Africa increase their production of vitamin A.
Earlier this week, activists delivered a petition against the project to University officials and to the Seattle headquarters of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. According to the activists more then 57,000 people have signed the petition that warns the trial may be unsafe.
“ISU students are being asked to be the first to consume a product of unknown safety,” the activists said in a prepared statement. “The study is not being conducted in a transparent manner, and concerned ISU community members have not been able to receive answers about the research design, risks, nature of the informed consent given by the subjects and the generalizability of the study.”
According to the researchers the new type of banana includes a gene taken from another banana species, which naturally produces large amounts of beta-carotene.
“In Uganda and other African countries, vitamin A deficiency is a major contributor to deaths in childhood from infectious diseases,” Wendy White wrote in a statement released by the university in 2014. “Wouldn’t it be great if these bananas could prevent preschool kids from dying from diarrhea, malaria or measles?”
There has been no prior animal testing of the banana, and the study is one of the first ever GMO human feeding trials. There is no telling what kind of adverse health effects may occur from eating the genetically altered fruit.
By Carey Gillam
Former University of Illinois food science professor Bruce Chassy is known for his academic gravitas. Now retired nearly four years, Chassy still writes and speaks often about food safety issues, identifying himself with the full weight of the decades of experience earned at the public university and as a researcher at the National Institutes of Health. Chassy tells audiences that before he retired in 2012, he worked “full time” doing research and teaching.
What Chassy doesn’t talk much about is the other work he did while at the University of Illinois — promoting the interests of Monsanto Co., which has been trying to overcome mounting public concerns about the genetically engineered crops and chemicals the company sells. He also doesn’t talk much about the hundreds of thousands of dollars Monsanto donated to the university as Chassy was helping promote GMOs, or Monsanto’s secretive role in helping Chassy set up a nonprofit group and website to criticize individuals and organizations who raise questions about GMOs.
But emails released through Freedom of Information Act requests show that Chassy was an active member of a group of U.S. academics who have been quietly collaborating with Monsanto on strategies aimed at not just promoting biotech crop products, but also rolling back regulation of these products and fending off industry critics. The emails show money flowing into the university from Monsanto as Chassy collaborated on multiple projects with Monsanto to counter public concerns about genetically modified crops (GMOs) – all while representing himself as an independent academic for a public institution.
A New York Times article by Eric Lipton published last September laid bare the campaign crafted by Monsanto and other industry players to use the credibility of prominent academics to push the industry’s political agenda. That Times article focused primarily on University of Florida academic Kevin Folta, chairman of the university’s Horticultural Sciences Department, and Folta’s work on behalf of Monsanto. But an examination of recently released email exchanges between Monsanto and Chassy show new depths to the industry efforts.[...]
Chassy has said he did nothing unethical or improper in his work supporting Monsanto and the biotech crop industry. “As a public-sector research scientist, it was expected... that I collaborate with and solicit the engagement of those working in my field of expertise,” Chassy has stated.
[...]
In a November 2010 email, Monsanto chief of global scientific affairs Eric Sachs tells Chassy that Monsanto has just sent a “gift of $10,000” to the university “so the funds should be there.” He then tells Chassy he is working on a plan for Monsanto and others in the agribusiness industry to support an “academics review” website that Chassy can use to counter concerns and allegations raised by critics of GMOs. “From my perspective the problem is one of expert engagement and that could be solved by paying experts to provide responses,” Sachs wrote. “The key will be keeping Monsanto in the background so as not to harm the credibility of the information.”
In a separate 2010 exchange, Jay Byrne, president of the v-Fluence public relations firm and former head of corporate communications for Monsanto, tells Chassy he is trying to move the Academics Review project forward. He suggests “we work on the money (for all of us).” Byrne says that he has a list of GMO critics for Academics Review to target. He tells Chassy that the topic areas “mean money for a range of well-heeled corporations.”
The egg industry has been using fake "humane treatment of chickens" certifications, while the milk industry claimed milk "helps fight breast cancer." (Photo by Whitney)
By Martha Rosenberg Officially, Big Food is not worried about the small number of “fringe” food activists who object to cruel, unhealthful and environmentally destructive products. But unofficially, it is a different story. American Egg Board CEO Joanne Ivy stepped down in apparent disgrace this fall when a 2013 email she wrote to a consultant saying the board was accepting “your offer to make that phone call to keep Just Mayo off Whole Foods shelves,” was revealed. Just Mayo is an egg-free and vegan product from San Francisco start-up Hampton Creek. Whole Foods still sells it.
Why is Ivy’s attempt to quash competition reason to step down? As a USDA commodity “checkoff” program, the egg board is a quasi-government agency not supposed to be playing dirty retail tricks.
US egg producers themselves have also been caught playing dirty tricks. To block growing public outrage over the profit-driven cruel practices of debeaking and forced molting of chickens, United Egg Producers (the trade group that represents 85 percent of US egg producers and 180 egg farms) rolled out an “Animal Care Certified” logo ten years ago to assure consumers that its members’ eggs were produced humanely.
The problem was–it wasn’t true. In 2005, the Better Business Bureau ruled that the label was misleading, and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) demanded that the label read not “Care Certified” but “United Egg Producers Certified,” clarifying that there was no third party certification involved. United Egg Producers was also fined $100,000 and made to sign an agreement with attorneys general in sixteen states to settle the false advertising claims.
Statements from the dairy industry including its checkoff arm are also misleading. In addition to claiming milk helps fight breast cancer (that’s news to oncologists) the Fluid Milk Board told Congress a few years ago it was promoting milk to address “the high incidence of high blood pressure among African Americans.” It also said being lactose-intolerant was no reason to abstain from milk and even called milk a diet food which drew it government censure. In 2007, the FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection directed milk promoters to stop the weight-loss claims “until further research provides stronger, more conclusive evidence of an association between dairy consumption and weight loss.”
Susan Ruland, National Fluid Milk Processor Promotion Board spokesperson, objected. “There’s a strong body of scientific evidence that demonstrates a connection between dairy and weight loss,” she said. After the FTC clampdown, ads claimed that low-fat dairy products do not necessarily add weight and may have “certain nutrients that can help consumers meet dietary requirements”–pretty much the definition of “food.”
Then the ads went negative and bashed the competition. “Soft drinks and other sweetened beverages are now the leading source of calories in a teen’s diet and these nutrient-void beverages are increasingly taking the place of milk,” they charged.
New Jersey Psychology Practice Revealed Patients' Mental Disorders in Debt Lawsuits
The exterior of the Springfield, New Jersey, building that houses Short
Hills Associates in Clinical Psychology. “My clients deny and will be
vigorously defending against all allegations of wrongdoing here,” the
practice’s lawyer said. (Richard Perry/The New York Times)
When a New Jersey lawyer named Philip received legal papers last year informing him that his former psychologist's practice was suing him over an unpaid bill, he was initially upset they could not work out a payment arrangement outside of court.
It was only later, Philip said in an interview, that he scanned the papers again and realized something else: The psychology group to which he'd confided his innermost feelings had included his mental health diagnosis and treatments he received in publicly filed court documents.
The greatest fear of many patients receiving therapy services is that somehow the details of their private struggles will be revealed publicly. Philip, who requested his last name not be used to protect his privacy, said he felt "betrayed" by his psychologist. He worried that his legal adversaries would find the information and try to use it against him in court.
In cases in which the patients were minors, the practice sued their parents and included the children's names and diagnoses.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, the federal patient privacy law known as HIPAA, allows health providers to sue patients over unpaid debts, but requires that they disclose only the minimum information necessary to pursue them.
Still, the law has many loopholes, which ProPublica has been exploring in a series of articles this year. One is that HIPAA covers only providers who submit data electronically 2014 and apparently Short Hills Associates does not.
Between 2010 and 2014, Short Hills Associates filed 24 collections cases in which patients' diagnoses were listed, New Jersey court records show. The defendants included lawyers, business people and a nonprofit official.
The suits identified diagnoses by unique codes listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the reference work on mental illness published by the American Psychiatric Association. An online search of the codes quickly provides their meaning.
Short Hills Associates' managing partner, Barry Helfmann, has been a leader in New Jersey psychology circles. He is a past president of the New Jersey Psychological Association and serves as its director of professional affairs. He has also served on the board of the American Group Psychotherapy Association.
In other contexts, Helfmann has been a champion of patient privacy. In 2010, he was a plaintiff in a lawsuit against two insurance companies and a New Jersey state commission, accusing them of requiring psychologists to turn over their treatment notes in order to get paid.
Philip is now countersuing Helfmann and his partners, the psychology group and the practice's debt collection lawyers for invasion of privacy, breach of the psychologist-patient privilege, fraud and misrepresentation and other claims. He is seeking the court's permission to represent other patients as part of a class action.
Jon, another person being sued by Short Hills Associates for unpaid bills, said he was surprised to learn from a reporter last week that his son's name and diagnosis was included in court papers. He hadn't noticed at the time.
"Our kids learn in school and we're tasked to drive home to them that everything they do online will remain online forever. And don't do stupid stuff online," said Jon, who requested his last name not be published to protect his family's privacy. "And now to find out that adults aren't following that practice on their behalf is borderline devastating."
In a deposition taken in November, Audrey Muratore, billing manager for Short Hills Associates, maintained that "it is within my right" to send a bill for debt collection and that once a suit was filed, she did not see the legal papers. "Once they file a suit, it's out of my hands," she said.
She added that the firm had not filed any additional debt lawsuits since Philip filed his countersuit against them and currently did not have a collection agency working on its behalf.
ProPublica reviewed the billing lawsuits filed by another psychology group against patients in New Jersey and found that they redacted diagnosis and treatment codes.
John Mullahy, a lawyer for Helfmann and Short Hills Associates, issued a statement in response to questions for this article: "My clients deny and will be vigorously defending against all allegations of wrongdoing here. We cannot and will not comment further given that litigation is pending."
Jeffrey Rothbard, a partner at Rothbard, Rothbard, Kohn & Kellar, the firm that filed the collections lawsuits on behalf of Short Hills Associates, also declined to comment. "I don't want to start trying this case in the press," Rothbard said.
Some mental health practitioners expressed outrage that Short Hills Associates had revealed patients' private information as part of suing them for payment.
"That's just horrendous," said Deborah Peel, a Texas psychiatrist who is founder and chair of Patient Privacy Rights, a group that advocates for patient privacy. "I have never heard of anything that bad and I've been practicing for like 40 years."
Alan Nessman, the senior special counsel of the American Psychological Association, said in a statement that he could not comment on the legal fight in New Jersey. But he said the organization would typically recommend against including patients' diagnoses and a list of procedures as part of collection suits because it "may be more than the minimum disclosure necessary to obtain payment" under HIPAA and the group's ethics code.
The inclusion of patients' diagnoses in lawsuits is rare, experts say, but not unheard-of. An Indiana man won a $1.25 million jury verdict in 2010 against his physician group for including his H.I.V. status in a collections lawsuit. Another Indiana resident secured a settlement in 2013 after his HIV status was included in a billing suit filed by his dentist. (In bold, capital letters, his record said, "MEDICAL ALERTS: H.I.V. AIDS.")
The man, who asked that he be identified only by his first name, Fred, to protect his privacy, said in an interview that the dentist's disclosure upended his life. He was given a diagnosis of major depression and takes medications to treat it. "It affects the very essence of who I am," he said. "It would be tantamount to walking down the street with a sign pointing at me saying, 2018Here it is.'"
When Short Hills Associates filed suit against Philip in September 2014, it said he owed $4,400 for meetings from 2012 to February 2014.
Philip asserted in legal documents that he confronted Helfmann in a phone call the following month and the psychologist told him it was his fault his information was disclosed because he had not paid his bill.
In November 2014, Philip's lawyer obtained a judge's order directing that the bill detailing his diagnosis and treatment codes be replaced with a document in which that information was redacted.
Several months later, Andrew Thomasson, Philip's lawyer, sent an email to Mullahy, his counterpart representing Short Hills Associates, listing all the collection cases in which the practice had disclosed patients' diagnoses. As of Monday, though, the records were still publicly available.
Thomasson said he was particularly concerned about minors whose patient information was exposed.
"When they're grown up, want to get a job with the FBI or the U.S. attorney's office, they conduct very thorough background checks and they may come across it," he said in an interview. "It could be used to prevent someone from getting a job one day."
Nevertheless, a spokesman for the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs said the inclusion of diagnostic codes in lawsuits did not violate any regulations or statutes for the State Board of Psychological Examiners.
Philip filed a complaint in March with the Office for Civil Rights of the federal Department of Health and Human Services, the agency that enforces HIPAA. It included details on his case and others. In August, the agency wrote back to say it was "closing this complaint with no further action."
In an email, Rachel Seeger, a spokeswoman for the office, said the agency "closed this case because we determined that Short Hills Associates in Clinical Psychology is not a HIPAA-covered entity, and therefore we have no jurisdiction to investigate or take any action on the complaint."
The privacy law's language specifies that it covers only health providers who "electronically transmit any health information in connection with transactions for which HHS has adopted standards." Doctors who still rely on paper records and paper bills 2014 or clients who pay cash 2014 are not subject to the law.
In legal papers, Short Hills Associates has not argued that it falls outside privacy law's reach. In fact, on its website it offers patients forms and information that specifically mentions their rights under the law.
This story is part of a yearlong examination into how secure medical privacy is. Has your medical privacy been compromised? Help ProPublica investigate by filling out a short questionnaire. You can also read other stories in our Policing Patient Privacy series.
By JOE REEDY
A woman who refused to leave a hospital when doctors discharged her died after she was forcibly removed by police, authorities said Tuesday.
Barbara Dawson, 57, collapsed Monday while being escorted in handcuffs from the Liberty Calhoun Hospital, where she went to seek treatment for breathing difficulties, said Blountstown Police Department chief Mark Mallory. Mallory said an officer had arrested Dawson for disorderly conduct and trespassing.
An autopsy on Dawson has been performed and the results should be released Wednesday, Mallory said. Florida Department of Law Enforcement officials have been called in to investigate, department spokesman Steve Arthur said. He declined to comment further.
Mallory said that the officer who arrested Dawson removed the handcuffs after she collapsed and escorted her back into the hospital.
"We were told by a doctor once she got back in the hospital that her vital signs were good and it was their decision to readmit her," he said. He said dashcam footage from the officer's car does not show the incident but does pick up the audio.
Hospital officials did not return telephone calls Tuesday night. Ruth Attaway, administrator and CEO of the hospital, was quoted by The Tallahassee Democrat as saying that staff did everything they could to save Dawson.
At the Time Jim Jones Was Calling Dan Mitrione His "Close Friend" Mitrione Was Teaching Latin American Dictatorships Torture Techniques. Mitrione is depicted by an actor in the classic film, "State of Siege." He was eventually kidnapped and executed by Tupamaro Guerrillas.
_____________
Jonestown "Death Tape"
(FBI File No. Q042)
Recorded November 18, 1978
Source: Internet Archive
_______________
LT. COL. JAMES “BO” GRITZ AND JONESTOWN: "All The Niggers Are Dead" (Excerpt)
By "Gunny G"
The officer in charge of all U.S. Army Special Forces
for Latin America at the time of the Jonestown holocaust was Lt. Col.
James “Bo” Gritz. Gritz was the original soldier after which the movie
character “Rambo” was patterned. Gritz was the most decorated soldier to
come out of the Vietnam war.
The Guyana massacre was carried out by Bo Gritz’ men (along with British SAS troops). *Flatland* (#10) magazine, in an interview with Gritz, asked him:
Question: You trained Special Forces that went into Jonestown? What was the precise nature of the operation?
“I
don’t know precisely because it was a compartmentalized operation. The
only thing that I do know for certain is what the Sergeant I quote
coming out of Jonestown, he was insistent because he was disgusted, on
writing this book. He was, without compromise, going to call it *All the
Niggers Are Dead.* I asked him, ‘Why would you want to entitle anything
such an offensive way?’ ‘It doesn’t make a difference what your color,
your creed, your sex,’ he said, ‘when you are treated the way they were,
that’s what you are; you’re a nigger, you’re nothing else.’ I think
that those soldiers saw things that affected them and made them very
angry. I’ve seen other things like that in combat where there have been
abuses. I wrote about one of them in my book where the Captain tortured
the young severely and the young Sergeant put on a swastika and said,
“If I’m going to act like a Nazi I’m going to look like one.’ I think
that the same kind of negative impact occurred in Jonestown.”
Gritz
has more about Jonestown in his autobiography, *Called to Serve.*
Perhaps you simply cannot believe what I am telling you. Will you
believe it if told to you by the Green Beret officer in charge of the
men who did the killing? He admits that the information was
“compartmentalized” and it was not until later that he learned what his
men were actually doing. The following information is from pages 584-587
of his book:
“The true story of the Jonestown camp in
Guyana has been brought to light through an extensive investigation
conducted by John Judge, from Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., and
other dedicated researchers and investigators. The truth, which was
thoroughly suppressed by the American media, is that it was actually a
slave-labor camp run by Jones with the assistance of the CIA.
Most of the information which follows is from John Judge’s summary of
the investigation, supplemented with information provided by Special
Forces teams I had earlier trained and commanded, who were sent in to
‘clean up the remains of Jonestown.’
“Most of the
black and Hispanic poor people and social activists who became the
inmates of the camp were brought there either by force or coercion, or
lured under false pretenses, where extensive experiments of drug-induced
mind control were performed on them. Even before they were moved to
Guyana, reports of beatings, kidnappings, sexual abuse and mysterious
deaths had leaked out to the press about the earlier Peoples’ Temple in Ukiah, California.
“Jim Jones had a very interesting past which was overlooked by the media: During the time his friend Dan Mitrione
was teaching torture techniques to the Brazilian and Argentineans,
Jones was also sent to Brazil where his house, transportation and
groceries were provided to him by the U.S. Embassy, and he frequently
traveled to Belo Horizonte, the CIA headquarters in Brazil.
“Jones
had been contacted in Ukiah by ‘Christian missionaries’ from World
Vision (World Vision is a CIA controlled front operation), an
evangelical order which had performed espionage work for the CIA in
Southeast Asia. Most of Jones’ top lieutenants were from wealthy,
educated backgrounds, many with connections to the military or
intelligence agencies. These were the people who were involved in
setting up the bank accounts, complex legal transactions and financial
agreements which put people under the control of the Peoples’ Temple.
“Some of Jones’ Lieutenants were: Dr. Lawrence Layton was chief of Chemical and Biological Warfare Research at Dugway Proving Grounds
in Utah for many years and later worked as Director of Missile and
Satellite Development at the Navy Propellant Division at Indian Head,
Maryland. His wife, Lisa, was the daughter of Hugo Phillips, who had
represented the huge Nazi manufacturing cartel, I.G. Farben, as a
stockbroker. Their daughter, Debbie, met and married George Philip
Blakey, whose parents had extensive stock holdings in Solve Drugs, a
division of I.G. Farben.
“Blakey was reputed to be
training mercenaries in Jonestown who were sent to work with CIA-backed
UNITA forces in Angola. Terri Buford’s father, Admiral Charles T.
Buford, worked with Naval Intelligence. Marie Katsaris’ father was
minister with the Greek Orthodox Church, thought to be a conduit of CIA
funding, and she claimed she had proof he was a CIA agent. The ‘official
survivors’ were represented upon their return to the U.S. by Joseph
Blatchford, an attorney who had been named in a prior scandal involving
CIA infiltration of the Peace Corps.
“The people who
were taken from San Francisco to begin their ‘new life’ in Guyana were
bussed to Florida and arrived in Guyana bound and gagged, where they
were forced to work 16 hours or more daily, and were fed on minimum
rations. As more and more rumors began to filter back to the United
States of druggings, beatings, torture, sexual humiliations and coercion
at the Guyana site, Congressman Leo Ryan decided to go to Guyana and
verify the situation for himself.
“Ryan had challenged
the CIA’s overseas operations before, as a member of the House
Committee responsible for oversight on intelligence. He was co-author of
the controversial Hughes-Ryan Amendment, which would have required
advance CIA disclosure to the congressional committees of all planned
covert operations. The amendment would be defeated shortly after his
death in Jonestown.
“With Ryan on the way to
Jonestown, the secrecy surrounding the camp would be broken and
desperate measures would need to be taken to keep the truth from
escaping, much less the inmates. In a futile attempt to test their
conditioning methods, the leaders at Jonestown apparently tried to
implement an actual suicide drill, but it was obviously ignored.
Official stories first numbered the victims at 408, but later revised
the toll upward to 913. It was claimed that some 505 bodies had been
covered by those of the first 408 who had fallen directly on top of
them, confusing those who had been counting from aerial photographs. – a
blatant and ridiculous attempt at cover-up.
“However,
the first reports were true – 408 had died, and 700 fled to the jungle
where British Black Watch troops and American Special Forces were
conducting ‘training exercises.’ Of the 700, 505 who had been
deliberately shot in the jungle were added to the count of those who had
supposedly committed suicide by drinking cyanide-laced Kool Aid.
Was There A CIA Conspiracy to Destroy Jonestown? (Excerpt)
By Laurie Efrein-Kahalas, San Diego State University
The last person to leave the scene alive, Stanley Clayton, told the coroner’s jury in Matthews Ridge (an adjoining town) that when he left, only 100-200 people were still alive, and that although the scene was gruesome, it was peaceful, with Marceline Jones hugging people saying "I’ll see you in your next life." Indeed, there was an explicit final letter left at Jonestown (see FINAL WITNESS), which is specific about people passing on in a peaceful, if grief-laden procession.
So who was it who desecrated the bodies at Jonestown in such a gruesome manner? First, what might be the motive? One motive is clear: Make Jim Jones look like a brutal murderer of his own people, to bolster the claim that he had "ordered" the assassination of the Congressman. That would deflect investigation of the facts, much less consideration of a frame. Surely Jim Jones was responsible for everything. Case closed.
Who was responsible for the desecration? Who arrived at Jonestown before the coroner; before, indeed, anyone else arrived "officially"? Had forces arrived clandestinely, and if so, who were they, and how much time did they have to make the scene appear as they wanted?
The answer to these two questions appears to be, respectively, "Yes" and "A lot of time." First, the tragedy happened the night of Saturday, November 18th. The first team brought in "officially" was the Guyanese Defense Force, along with survivors from Jonestown brought back to identify bodies. That did not happen until Monday morning, November 20th. For the entire day of Sunday, November 19th, presumably no one was at Jonestown at all.
Yet two completely separate sources confirm that U.S. Special Forces (Green Berets) were in Jonestown within five or six hours. The first was a source from within the U.S. military, one Charles Huff from the U.S. Army Special Forces in Panama. According to FREEDOM Magazine, he was "one of the Green Berets who were the first American troops on the scene following the massacre." He said they were into Jonestown within about five hours. Indeed, Clayton told the coroner’s jury of the community falling completely silent following the deaths for 45 minutes, and that then, suddenly, there was a chorus of shouts, as well as gunfire. The source of the sounds and the gunfire, has never been identified.
Huff elaborated that "’We saw many bullet wounds as well as wounds from crossbow bolts." Huff noted that those with fatal bullet or bolt wounds appeared to have been running towards the jungle that surrounded Jonestown. Huff said that the adults who had not been shot had been killed by injections between the shoulder blades." Then enigmatically, "The killers escaped before the arrival of Huff and his team." Huff also claims that of the troops early into Jonestown, sixteen of them later "committed suicide." Given that only two Peoples Temple survivors committed suicide in the wake of the tragedy, sixteen "suicides" amongst trained combat personnel defies believability. But sixteen "suspicious deaths" is indeed a high figure, which compels investigation.
Who desecrated the bodies? Nearly no one "escaped" from Jonestown except for the tiny handful of people who ran into the jungle, and who were surely not responsible for any carnage. How could one not suspect that it was the Green Beret force itself who inflicted the purported damage?
An unexpected confirmation of U.S. troops clandestinely on site just showed up recently in a Russian book called "The Jonestown Carnage: A CIA Crime" printed by Progress Press in Moscow. Their claim was that "At about 18.00 [that’s 6 p.m. on November 18th], several S-141 military transport planes took off from military bases in Panama and Dover [Delaware] and headed for Guyana. The estimated time of flight was 3 hours 40 minutes. … Two hours later, without notifying the local authorities in the area of Venezuela where the Americans had their private missions (which served as a front for C.I.A. secret operations), three helicopters took off in the direction of Jonestown, which was 1 hour 10 minutes away."
What is startling in the Russian account, is that both their account and the American account of the arrival of Green Berets, designate the country of origin as Panama. The two independent reports tally with each other perfectly.
Equally ominous, the A & E special this past November, called "Jonestown: Mystery of a Massacre" revealed that the deaths at Jonestown were originally confirmed via a CIA radio channel, NOIWON, at 3:29 a.m. on the morning of Sunday, November 19th. The producer speculated that Richard Dwyer, the alleged C.I.A. plant in the State Department who had accompanied the Congressman to Jonestown, was the only one on site who could have made this call. But now we can see that it could have just as easily been made by U.S. Green Berets already on site, and undoubtedly under the control of the C.I.A.
What were Green Berets doing at Jonestown in the middle of the night? The C-141 MEDEVAC plane to assist the survivors of the airport shooting, according to official State Department records, did not even arrive at Georgetown from Charleston, SC until 7:55 a.m.! The Green Berets, meanwhile, were flown in immediately, before the situation at Jonestown had even been officially ascertained. They arrived in the middle of the night, but not to assist medically – rather for secret, classified work specifically at Jonestown, leaving the injured at an airstrip only seven miles away, completely unattended. Meanwhile, the MEDEVAC plane shows up on the official State Department log, but the Green Berets do not.
Was there any real concern for the people of Jonestown – their deaths, rapid evacuation of the bodies, possible survivors? Medical personnel such as the Guyanese coroner, were not sent into Jonestown for two more days! This bizarre reversal of priorities, involving moreover clandestine forces under separate command, is unsettling if not appalling, and requires investigation. Even the fact that confirmation of the suicides was received at 3:29 a.m. on the morning of the 19th, yet the incoming MEDEVAC personnel were not sent to investigate the death of over 900 people a mere seven miles away, implies not just lack of coordination between open and secret military commands, but utter disregard for human life.
Lastly, retired U.S. Air Force Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty (also uncovered by Freedom Magazine), claimed that "The Joint Chiefs of Staff had prepared air shipments of hundreds of body bags. … Within hours, they began to shuttle them down to Georgetown, the main city. They couldn’t possibly have done that without prior knowledge that it was going to happen. It shows that there was prior planning."
Martin Shkreli: Wall Street parasite turns out to be a scam artist of the first order.
By Travis Gettys This isn’t the first time Martin Shkreli, the most hated man on the Internet, has attracted criticism for his unscrupulous business dealings.
Shkreli has ignited a firestorm after purchasing the rights to Daraprim, a 62-year-old drug used for treating life-threatening parasitic infections in babies and AIDS patients, and raising the price overnight from $13.50 per tablet to $750.
He gave an interview Monday to Bloomberg, which has taken a “special interest” in the 32-year-old Shkreli after the “self-trained biologist” dramatically changed his position on biotech futures.
“We’ve wondered whether, after years of betting on biotech stocks to fall, he’d undergone a conversion or was using his knowledge to game the field,” wrote Bloomberg’s Peter M. Barrett last year.
Shkreli founded the biotech company Retrophin, but he was “unceremoniously dumped” Sept. 30, 2014, as chief executive after the company’s board of directors concluded “Shkreli had committed stock-trading irregularities and other violations of securities rules,” reported Bloomberg.
The company he founded in 2009 sued Shkreli last month for $65 million in damages, claiming the ex-hedge fund manager gave away Retrophin shares to friends and used the biotech firm’s assets to pay off personal debts and keep afloat his sinking investment firm, MSMB Capital Management.
A filing made in November 2014 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission showed Shkreli pulled in nearly $3 million in gross proceeds as he continued selling company stock while simultaneously urging investors to buy into Retrophin — which the rapper-quoting then-CEO hyped on his Twitter account.
Shkreli began plundering Retrophin after his hedge fund — which eventually collapsed — made a “disastrous” investment in Orexigen, reported FierceBiotech.
MSMB Capital Management lost more than $7 million and went “virtually bankrupt” after the 2011 investment, but Shkreli formed a health care-focused branch of the hedge fund to keep the company afloat rather than telling investors he lost their money.
The drug company that developed the drug decades ago was acquired by a start up corp owned by a hedge fund manager. He upped the price of a pill from $13.50 per pill to $750 in a matter of seconds. That move is typical: Recently the price of some old drugs have increased astronomically.
Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO Martin Shkrel: He's young but already a world class Wall Street parasite.
By Laura Lorenzetti
Turing Pharmaceuticals and its CEO Martin Shkreli were the subject of significant criticism on Monday after the company boosted the price of the toxoplasmosis treatment Daraprim by over 5,000% after acquiring the drug in August.
By ANDREW POLLACK
Turing Pharmaceuticals and its CEO Martin Shkreli were the subject of
significant criticism on Monday after the company boosted the price of
the toxoplasmosis treatment Daraprim by over 5,000% after acquiring the drug in August.
The move, and its resultant media coverage, led to outrage on Twitter. Comments got heated as people took personal cracks at Shkreli, calling him names that are mostly unprintable by this publication. In response, Shkreli and Turing have mounted their own media blitz to explain why they increased the cost of Daraprim to $750 a pill from $13.50.
“Toxoplasmosis is a very serious, sometimes deadly disease, yet there have been no significant advances or research into this disease area in decades,” the company wrote in an email response to Fortune. “Turing hopes to change that by targeting investments that both improve on the current formulation and seek to develop new therapeutics with better clinical profiles that we hope will help eradicate the disease.”
Certainly, an argument can be made in Turing’s defense. Toxoplasmosis, a parasitic disease often contracted via contaminated food, can be cause problems for people with suppressed immune systems, which is why various AIDS and cancer groups have been especially outraged by the price increases. It’s also particularly dangerous for pregnant women since it can cause birth defects, and the Centers for Disease Control lists it as one of five neglected parasitic infections in the U.S.
However, toxoplasmosis generally isn’t an issue for healthy people. In fact, about 60 million people (19% of the U.S. population) may be infected with the parasite without knowing it. There’s only about 4,400 hospitalizations each year due to toxoplasmosis and an estimated 327 deaths, according to the CDC.
Not content with having created over 1,000 hybrid mice with different heads, some a different colour from their bodies, controversial doctor Xiaoping Ren next wants to perform pioneering transplants on primates.
Shadowing him during a 10-hour operation, the Wall Street Journal witnessed a mouse with a new head move and breathe on its own following the procedure, even opening its eyes and drinking.
That being said, none of Dr Ren's transplanted mice have as yet lived longer than a few minutes.
He claims to be perfecting the procedure however, using tiny tubes to carry oxygenated blood from the brains to their new bodies, and will next try it out on primates (there are already plans for it up on his wall).
By Vladimir Platov, NEO
We used to think that cruel and inhuman experiments on human beings were conducted only in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. However, unfortunately, we ever more often find out that such experiments are performed almost regularly in the United States by US intelligence agencies, and even citizens of the United States are among those who suffer in these experiments on human beings.
Recently, the international community obtained yet another piece of evidence of criminal nature of the CIA – the main instrument of Washington’s ‘democracy’. As follows from the secret documents made public by “The Guardian” newspaper, the CIA, in its program of torture of alleged terrorists in US prisons, performed inhuman experiments on human beings in the style of Nazi Germany butchers.
The American Civil Rights Union got a secret document submitted by the journalists of The Guardian newspaper (UK), from which it becomes apparent that the CIA director authorized his employees to perform in prisons acts illegal under international law. The document notes that the CIA, according to the ‘guiding principles’ dated back to 1987 and then updated several times, should not sponsor, order, or conduct research on humans. However, the head of this agency was endowed with the authority ‘to approve, modify or reject all proposals concerning research on human beings’, and this ‘freedom’ conferred to him had not been publicly announced before.
Thus, according to the British newspaper, from 1997 to 2004 the CIA Director George Tenet authorized harsh interrogation techniques, including ‘waterboarding’, and instructed doctors to observe the process of torture and the prisoners’ reaction. These revelations about ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ of the CIA are in complete contradiction not only with international but also domestic US law, which clearly states that ‘research’ on humans can be done only with their informed consent. However, the CIA edited one of the four sections on experiments on human beings. After examining the declassified documents, one expert pointed out that the regulation proposed by the CIA manipulates the basic definitions of human experiments in order to ensure the continuation of the program of torture. According to the former investigator for war crimes and current researcher at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative Nathaniel Raymond: ‘The first crime by the CIA was torture. The second crime was ‘research without consent’.’
Having studied the document, experts noted that the National Security Agency and its medical staff, whose functions include regulation and supervision of research on human beings, violated the ‘guidelines’ emanating from Executive Law 12333 – which dates back to the Reagan years.
However, it should be noted that reports about experiments on its own citizens, carried out in the laboratories of the CIA, are not new. US intelligence agencies have throughout their existence repeatedly been accused of conducting cruel experiments on humans, including on its own citizens.
For example, in 1950, to simulate bacteriological warfare, two aircraft flew over San Francisco and sprayed a large amount of powder containing the bacteria Serratia marcescens, causing many residents to contract pneumonia and die. These experiments with the bacterium Serratia marcescens continued until 1969.
In 1955 in Florida near Tampa Bay pertussis bacteria were scattered, which immediately caused a massive epidemic of the disease. At least 12 people died.
In 1956 and 1957 in Georgia and Florida the CIA implemented another secret operation, during which millions of mosquitoes infected with yellow fever and dengue fever were released.
From 1963 to 1969 within Shipboard Hazard and Defence Project (SHAD) several types of bacteriological and chemical weapons were released on US Navy ships, and the crews suspected nothing when they began to be inundated with sarin, VX gas, and cadmium salts.
In the late 1960s, during another secret US intelligence operation, called ‘Study of the Vulnerability of Subway Passengers to Covert Attack with Biological Agents’, hay bacillus bacteria were released into New York and Chicago subways.
A secret medical research of the government of the United States on the inhabitants of the Marshall Islands – ‘Project 4.1′ is also well known: during the experiment people were exposed to radiation after the nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll on March 1, 1954. As a result of radioactive contamination, among women in the first five years after the tests the number of miscarriages and stillbirths doubled, and many of the newborns who survived soon developed cancer.
Another, possibly most infamous biomedical experiment on the residents of the United States in American history could be the study of syphilis in the city of Tuskegee, Alabama, which lasted from 1932 to 1972 and was conducted under the auspices of the US Public Health Service and was designed to investigate all stages of syphilis in African-Americans. During this ‘study’ American scientists hid the existence of penicillin from the subjects, and continued testing experimental materials, ostensibly in search medicine. As a result, many people were affected, some died of syphilis and infected their wives and children.
In 1974, The New York Times newspaper published a sensational journalistic investigation, which resulted in the exposure of one of the most sinister and mysterious projects – a CIA program code-named ‘MC-Ultra’, dedicated to searching for methods to establish full control over the mind and consciousness of a human being. During the existence of this project from the early 50s to late 60s thousands of people passed through the hands of the ‘experimenters’, some of the subjects developed serious mental disorders, and many just died. Soon after the appearance of this publication, the US Congress established a special commission to investigate the activities of the CIA, which was joined by a presidential commission headed by Nelson Rockefeller. However, the government investigation was seriously hindered by the fact that the CIA had managed by this point to destroy a significant portion of documents that could shed some light, and most of the surviving documentary evidence has not been declassified.
Another very famous psychological experiment on humans was so-called Stanford Prison Experiment, which was conducted in 1971 by the American psychologist Philip Zimbardo and was a study of a human response to restrictions of freedom in terms of prison life and an influence of a person’s social role. Twenty-four undergraduate students were the subjects of the test, which took place in the basement of the Faculty of Psychology, specially equipped to serve as prison premises.
Eight human rights organizations, including the very influential Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, in 2010 filed a formal request for an investigation of the CIA, accusing it of conducting illegal medical experiments on the citizens of Iraq and Afghanistan in 2004-2009. According to testimonies of human rights defenders, costly cancer drugs were tested on prisoners suspected of links to terrorists, which was supposed to bring in hundreds of millions of dollars of super-profits for pharmacists and medical centres. If human rights defenders are right, the Americans killed at least 300 people by testing Coley’s toxin in Iraq alone. Experiments with Burton’s serum were also widely conducted – in Iraq five hundred people were forced to participate.
At the end of the World War II, a significant number of the Nazis received death sentences at the Nuremberg trials for their inhuman experiments on human beings. But the US prefers to remain silent on its ‘human capabilities researchers’, keeping such activities classified. After all, there was a reason that in 1947 the US Commission on Nuclear Energy released ‘Medical Experiments on Humans,’ document that stated: ‘It is desirable that when conducting experiments on human beings no documents be created that might cause a negative public reaction… documents containing such information should be classified.’
As a result, up to date, no US official has been convicted of inhuman experiments on their own compatriots. However, the activities of different public and non-governmental organizations in the US are permitted by this ‘stronghold of world democracy’ to detect only failures on the part of countries that are foes of the White House.
Is it not the time for the United States itself to give account before its own people and the global public for the numerous experiments on human beings conducted by US intelligence agencies?
______________
Vladimir Platov, an expert on the Middle East, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” .
Reprinted with permission from New Eastern Outlook
The US now officially admits to conducting human experiments with mustard gas and other chemical weapons on 60,000 African Americans, as well as Japanese and Puerto Rican people. This is in addition to other human experiments the US carried out on African Americans, Guatemalans, Marshall Islanders, whom mainstream US culture referred to as “savages.“
Rollins Edwards is a young soldier in 1945 at Clark Air Force
Base in the Philippines. (Courtesy Rollins Edwards)
By Caitlin Dickerson
As a young U.S. Army soldier during World War II, Rollins Edwards knew better than to refuse an assignment.
When officers led him and a dozen others into a wooden gas chamber and locked the door, he didn't complain. None of them did. Then, a mixture of mustard gas and a similar agent called lewisite was piped inside.
"It felt like you were on fire," recalls Edwards, now 93 years old. "Guys started screaming and hollering and trying to break out. And then some of the guys fainted. And finally they opened the door and let us out, and the guys were just, they were in bad shape."
Edwards was one of 60,000 enlisted men enrolled in a once-secret government program — formally declassified in 1993 — to test mustard gas and other chemical agents on American troops. But there was a specific reason he was chosen: Edwards is African-American.
"They said we were being tested to see what effect these gases would have on black skins," Edwards says.
An NPR investigation has found evidence that Edwards' experience was not unique. While the Pentagon admitted decades ago that it used American troops as test subjects in experiments with mustard gas, until now, officials have never spoken about the tests that grouped subjects by race.
For the first time, NPR tracked down some of the men used in the race-based experiments. And it wasn't just African-Americans. Japanese-Americans were used as test subjects, serving as proxies for the enemy so scientists could explore how mustard gas and other chemicals might affect Japanese troops. Puerto Rican soldiers were also singled out.
White enlisted men were used as scientific control groups. Their reactions were used to establish what was "normal," and then compared to the minority troops.
All of the World War II experiments with mustard gas were done in secret and weren't recorded on the subjects' official military records. Most do not have proof of what they went through. They received no follow-up health care or monitoring of any kind. And they were sworn to secrecy about the tests under threat of dishonorable discharge and military prison time, leaving some unable to receive adequate medical treatment for their injuries, because they couldn't tell doctors what happened to them.
By Lenny Bernstein
A team of prominent researchers suggested Thursday that limited airborne transmission of the Ebola virus is "very likely," a hypothesis that could reignite the debate that started last fall after one of the scientists offered the same opinion.
"It is very likely that at least some degree of Ebola virus transmission currently occurs via infectious aerosols generated from the gastrointestinal tract, the respiratory tract, or medical procedures, although this has been difficult to definitively demonstrate or rule out, since those exposed to infectious aerosols also are most likely to be in close proximity to, and in direct contact with, an infected case," the scientists wrote. Their peer-reviewed analysis was published in mBio, a journal of the American Society of Microbiology.
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RELATED STORIES: While big media was insisting that Ebola could not be transferred through the air, these are some of the facts they ignored:
The paper's lead author, Michael T. Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, touched off a small furor and was condemned by some experts last Sept. 11 when he raised the same possibility in an op-ed piece in the New York Times as concern over the spread of the deadly disease was increasing rapidly.
Less than a month later, Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian infected with Ebola in his home country, died in a Dallas hospital, but not before two nurses who treated him became infected, sparking fears about how prepared U.S. hospitals were to handle the disease. Public health authorities reassured Americans they were in no danger of contracting the hemorrhagic disease from casual contact with others. Ebola is transmitted by contact with infected body fluids -- mainly blood, feces and vomit -- experts around the world have said. This is why health care workers and people who had contact with victims were most likely to become infected in the current epidemic, they said.
"There was almost a rush to ensure the public that we knew a lot more than we did," Osterholm said in an interview Wednesday night, repeating a theme he has raised many times before. "But we're saying you can’t rule out respiratory transmission."
By Ronald David Jackson
The following "Mercury in Medicine" report was added to the Congressional Record on May 20, 2003. The report was prepared by the staff of the Subcommittee on Human Rights and Wellness, Committee on Government Reform. The report is the result of a three-year investigation initiated in the Committee on Government Reform. The key findings of the investigation are highlighted with black outlines and in some cases with black and yellow outlines. Some of the key findings include:
1) No one knows for sure if vaccines are safe or unsafe because while there are studies comparing health outcomes in those who did and did not get the vaccine (epidemiological studies) - the vaccines themselves (and more importantly, the various ingredients in the vaccines) have never been thoroughly tested for safety in humans. Specifically: "The FDA [Food and Drug Administration] has never required manufacturers to conduct adequate safety testing on thimerosal and ethylmercury compounds."
2) As the rate of autism has grown at epidemic proportions during the last two decades, the number of childhood vaccines containing thimerosal was growing, increasing the amount of ethylmercury to which infants were exposed threefold.
3) The Institute of Medicine (an American non-profit, non-governmental organization founded in 1970) determined that a relationship between autism, attention deficit hyperactive disorder, and speech or language delay, and the increased use of thimerosal in vaccines is plausible and deserves more scrutiny (even though there was not enough evidence to support or reject this hypothesis).
4) In 1998, the FDA finalized a rule requiring that ethylmercury be removed from over-the-counter products like topical ointments and skin creams (suggesting that ethylmercury—used as a preservative in many vaccines—could be hazardous to health) . Yet it took the FDA 18 years to get around to doing this, even though an advisory committee determined that ethylmercury was unsalfe in these products in 1980.
5) The FDA and the CDC [Center for Disease Control] failed in their duty to be vigilant as new vaccines containing thimerosal were approved and added to the immunization schedule. When the Hepatitis B and Haemophilus Influenzae Type B vaccines were added to the recommended schedule of childhood immunizations, the cumulative amount of ethylmercury to which children were exposed nearly tripled.
6) The amount of ethylmercury to which children were exposed through vaccines exceeded the safety thresholds established by the Federal government for a closely related substance methylmercury, "experts agree that the methylmercury guidelines are a good substitute."
7) Federal health officials have conceded that the amount of thimerosal in vaccines exceeded the EPA threshold of 0.1 micrograms per kilogram of bodyweight. "In fact, the amount of mercury in one dose of DTaP or Hepatitis B vaccines (25 micrograms each) exceeded this threshold many times over.
8) The FDA has: a) Failed to require the pharmaceutical industry to conduct extensive safety studies on thimerosal or ethylmercury. b) Failed to require the pharmaceutical industry to conduct adequate testing to determine how thimerosal is metabolized. c) Failed to require the pharmaceutical industry to determine the maximum safe exposure level to thimerosal.
9) Over the course of two decades the FDA slowly removed ethylmercury from many medicinal products - WHY?
10) In June of 2000, the CDC's Advisory Committe on Immunization Practice met in Atlanta. One of the key factors that weighed against a recommendation for a preference for thimerosal-free vaccines was the financial health of the vaccine industry. A recommendation for thimerosal-free vaccine had "the potential for financial losses of existing inventories", "could harm one or more manufacturers and may then decreased the number of suppliers", and "could entail financial losses for all existing stocks of vaccines that contain thimerosal."
It appears that protecting the industry's profits took precedent over protecting children from mercury damage.
Global Research Editor’s note: We bring to the attention of our readers this incisive and carefully documented 2005 article by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. published by Rolling Stone, first posted on Global Research in July 2009. The article sheds light on the collusion between Big Pharma and the US government and the dangers associated with vaccines produced by major pharmaceutical companies. In 2009 this article was of particular relevance to the debate on the H1N1 swine flu virus and plans by the WHO, The Obama Administration and Big Pharma to develop a swine flu vaccine.
By Robert F. Kennedy Jr; Rollingstone.com 20 July 2005
In June 2000, a group of top government scientists and health officials gathered for a meeting at the isolated Simpsonwood conference center in Norcross, Georgia. Convened by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the meeting was held at this Methodist retreat center, nestled in wooded farmland next to the Chattahoochee River, to ensure complete secrecy. The agency had issued no public announcement of the session — only private invitations to fifty-two attendees. There were high-level officials from the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration, the top vaccine specialist from the World Health Organization in Geneva and representatives of every major vaccine manufacturer, including GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Wyeth and Aventis Pasteur. All of the scientific data under discussion, CDC officials repeatedly reminded the participants, was strictly “embargoed.” There would be no making photocopies of documents, no taking papers with them when they left.
The federal officials and industry representatives had assembled to discuss a disturbing new study that raised alarming questions about the safety of a host of common childhood vaccines administered to infants and young children. According to a CDC epidemiologist named Tom Verstraeten, who had analyzed the agency’s massive database containing the medical records of 100,000 children, a mercury-based preservative in the vaccines — thimerosal — appeared to be responsible for a dramatic increase in autism and a host of other neurological disorders among children. “I was actually stunned by what I saw,” Verstraeten told those assembled at Simpsonwood, citing the staggering number of earlier studies that indicate a link between thimerosal and speech delays, attention-deficit disorder, hyperactivity and autism. Since 1991, when the CDC and the FDA had recommended that three additional vaccines laced with the preservative be given to extremely young infants — in one case, within hours of birth — the estimated number of cases of autism had increased fifteenfold, from one in every 2,500 children to one in 166 children.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: The number of public figures with his level of integrity is quickly
dwindling to zero. (Photography by Mark Sutton)
Even for scientists and doctors accustomed to confronting issues of life and death, the findings were frightening. “You can play with this all you want,” Dr. Bill Weil, a consultant for the American Academy of Pediatrics, told the group. The results “are statistically significant.” Dr. Richard Johnston, an immunologist and pediatrician from the University of Colorado whose grandson had been born early on the morning of the meeting’s first day, was even more alarmed. “My gut feeling?” he said. “Forgive this personal comment — I do not want my grandson to get a thimerosal-containing vaccine until we know better what is going on.”
