Cholesterol Isn’t the Problem in Heart Disease; Inflammation Is

By Dr. Mercola

Cholesterol is a waxy substance found in nearly every cell of your body and is essential to good health. Your body uses it to make hormones, protect your cell membranes, digest food and manufacture vitamin D after exposure to the sun. Your liver manufactures most of the cholesterol your body requires from nutrients extracted from your food.

Animals use cholesterol in much the same way. This means the meats from beef, pork or chicken have similar levels of cholesterol. Even fat cells in animal meat have the same amount of cholesterol as other cells. All meat averages 25 milligrams of cholesterol per ounce.¹ Dietary cholesterol is absorbed at different rates, between 20 and 60 percent, depending upon the individual.²

The 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans³ addressed past vilification of dietary cholesterol, announcing⁴ “cholesterol is not considered a nutrient of concern for overconsumption.” These same guidelines also advise limiting sugar to no more than 10 percent of your diet,⁵ which is approximately 50 grams of sugar, or 200 calories, in a diet consuming 2,000 calories each day. This level is still far higher than what is healthy as net carbohydrates are a prime factor in the development of inflammation.

Recently published research from a clinical trial sponsored by Novartis Pharmaceuticals demonstrates a reduction in recurring heart attacks, strokes and cardiovascular deaths in participants who took a targeted anti-inflammatory medication that did not lower cholesterol levels.⁶

Although the results of the study were encouraging as they scientifically demonstrate the association between inflammation and cardiac disease, I do not recommend using a pharmaceutical intervention to achieve what lifestyle choices can easily accomplish.

Lowering Inflammation Helps Lower Cardiac Risk

This study from Brigham and Women’s Hospital was the culmination of a nearly 25-year cardiovascular research work. The trial was designed to test if reducing the amount of inflammation in the body would also reduce the risk of a recurrent heart attack or stroke. The researchers enrolled 10,000 people who had previously had a heart attack and had persistently elevated levels of C-reactive proteins, a strong biomarker of inflammation.

The participants were split into four groups, all of which received aggressive standard health care. Three groups were administered the drug canakinumab at various levels and the fourth placebo group received no drug. The drug, currently priced at $200,000 a year by Novartis Pharmaceuticals, demonstrated an ability to reduce inflammation with a reduced risk of cardiac events and reduced the need for interventional procedures, such as bypass surgery or angioplasty.⁷

The hypothesis of whether an intervention that reduces inflammation could potentially reduce your risk of a recurrent heart attack was tested using a medication already approved for use to target the immune system without affecting your lipid level.⁸ While the drug demonstrated a reduced risk in some patients, one of the side effects was a higher risk of fatal infection.

Once the researchers identified the results as they related to cardiac health, they also did an investigative analysis and found participants taking the medication had a reduced risk of lung cancer rates and deaths.⁹ The lead researcher in this study is also involved in another evaluating the effectiveness of low dose methotrexate —  an inexpensive common cancer and rheumatoid arthritis drug — in cardiovascular disease. These results are due to be completed in two to three years.¹⁰

Though there may be positive effects using methotrexate, it must be noted this drug also comes with a laundry list of side effects, including intestinal bleeding, sepsis, reduced blood platelets and liver damage.¹¹ The idea that inflammation is important in the development of disease and in the importance of cardiac health is not new, but it has now found an avenue for exploration in the pharmaceutical industry.

Inflammation Linked to Cardiac Disease, Cancer and Other Health Conditions

Studies such as these confirm the hypothesis that inflammation is one of the major underlying factors behind cardiac disease, cancer, diabetes and many other conditions. Chronic pain, peripheral neuropathy and migraines are also rooted in the inflammatory process in your body. Unfortunately, while many are suffering from these types of conditions, understanding how to eliminate the inflammation is not generally understood. Many physicians simply turn to pharmaceuticals that carry a significant number of side effects.

The source of inflammation in your body is usually driven by your lifestyle choices, especially those that affect your intestinal tract. Interestingly, the surface of your gut may cover two tennis courts when laid out flat. This is an amazing amount of surface area that resides in your abdomen and is responsible for protecting your health. The degree of permeability, or how much your intestines will allow through breaks in the cell wall, is dependent on a variety of factors, including the food you eat and the stress you’re under.

This disruption in the interconnections between the cells in your intestines may result in small holes that allow food particles and bacteria to enter your blood stream and trigger an immune response, also called leaky gut syndrome. This is a serious problem that triggers inflammation in your body and increases your potential risk for illness. With repeated damage to the microvilli of your intestinal walls, they begin to lose the ability to do their job.

This impairs your ability to digest food properly or absorb nutrients. One of the food groups that factor into the development of leaky guy syndrome is grains. Although advertising often touts the health benefits of eating whole grains, a growing body of scientific evidence demonstrates that whole grains, lectins and legumes are responsible for the development of leaky gut syndrome and the resulting inflammation.

Drugs Are Not the Answer

In many cases your physician has an insufficient understanding of the dangers of using pharmaceutical interventions to treat inflammation and disease. They often prescribe a quick pill, possibly believing patients may be more willing to take a pill than to change their eating habits or lifestyle choices. Unfortunately, each of those prescriptions come with side effects, some of which are more dangerous than the original condition they were intended to treat.

This was amply demonstrated in the featured study where one of the side effects from the medication tested was a higher risk of death due to infection. Side effects from other anti-inflammatory medications have resulted in the medication being pulled from use, such as Vioxx, taken off the market after it was found the drug increased the risk of heart attack and stroke. Statins are another medication prescribed with the mistaken idea that reducing your cholesterol levels will reduce your risk of heart attack and stroke.¹²

Dr. Dwight Lundell, former chief of staff and chief of surgery at Banner Heart Hospital in Arizona, took a stand against statin medications, believing they were doing cardiology patients more harm than good.¹³

This goes against years of physicians prescribing medications to lower cholesterol and strongly recommending diets that severely restrict any fat intake. Practicing physicians have been bombarded with pharmaceutically sponsored literature and seminars insisting heart disease is the result of one factor — elevated cholesterol levels.

This has led to large numbers of individuals experiencing the side effects of statins, as these drugs reduce your ability to absorb CoQ10, necessary for energy production in every cell in your body. The drug also reduces your ability to absorb vitamin K2, stimulating atherosclerosis and heart failure.¹⁴ Studies have also linked the use of statin drugs to cancer,^15,16 diabetes,¹⁷ neurodegenerative disease,¹⁸ musculoskeletal disorders¹⁹ and cataracts.²⁰

Statins not only have dangerous side effects, but they are not effective against preventing heart disease. You may assume falling cholesterol levels are proof you’re getting healthier, but you would be wrong.

Cholesterol Is Not the Enemy

The Minnesota Coronary Experiment was a study performed between 1968 and 1973 that examined the relationship between diet and heart health.²¹ The researchers used a double-blind randomized trial to evaluate the effect of vegetable oil versus saturated fats in coronary heart disease and death.

The results were left unpublished until 2016, when they appeared in the BMJ. An analysis of the collected data revealed lowering your cholesterol levels through dietary intervention did not reduce your risk of death from coronary heart disease. The researchers concluded:²²

“Available evidence from randomized controlled trials shows that replacement of saturated fat in the diet with linoleic acid effectively lowers serum cholesterol but does not support the hypothesis that this translates to a lower risk of death from coronary heart disease or all causes.

Findings from the Minnesota Coronary Experiment add to growing evidence that incomplete publication has contributed to overestimation of the benefits of replacing saturated fat with vegetable oils rich in linoleic acid.”

The researchers found that for every 30-point drop in total cholesterol, there was a 22 percent increase in the risk of death from cardiac disease. On autopsy, the group eating vegetable oil and the group eating saturated fat had the same amount of atherosclerotic plaques in their arteries, but the group eating saturated fat experienced nearly half the number of heart attacks as the group eating vegetable oil.

After scientists recommended Americans stop eating meat, eggs and saturated fats, intake of sugar and other carbohydrates spiked. In response, the obesity rate in the country exploded, as did the number of people who suffer from diabetes, cardiovascular disease and stroke. Over 50 years of research point to another culprit in the advancement of disease, and it isn’t cholesterol.

Instead, cholesterol is a response mechanism activated by your body when a blood vessel is injured through an inflammatory process.²³ Once the lesion occurs, your body sends cholesterol to cover the area and prevent further damage, much like a scab after you cut your skin.

Beverly Teter, lipid biochemist at the University of Maryland, has spent years studying how different types of fat in your food affects your long-term health. Over the years she has found that people with higher levels of cholesterol live longer. She has a personal story that bears witness to this belief:²⁴

“I come from a family that has, my mother’s side, had naturally high cholesterol. Her cholesterol was between 380 and 420 when I started watching her medical records, and she died at 97. So I don’t think that cholesterol was too bad for her.”

It is the inflammatory process in your body that first triggers an injury to your arterial walls. No matter how low your cholesterol numbers go, your body will still use the cholesterol it has to repair the arterial wall. On the other hand, cholesterol plays other protective roles against respiratory and gastrointestinal problems and in the production of vitamin D.

However, without inflammation, your arterial walls do not become injured and there are no atherosclerotic plaques laid down that may eventually block the artery. Statins work to lower your total cholesterol number, but cannot stop the injuries to your arteries from inflammation. So, this artificial reduction in total cholesterol has little to do with your overall risk of cardiac disease.

Better Assessment of Heart Disease Risk Found in Evaluating Other Tests and Cholesterol Ratios

As you evaluate your risk of cardiovascular disease, there are specific ratios and blood level values that will tell you much more than your total cholesterol number. The size of your low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, for example, is more important than your overall total LDL level. Large particle LDLs are not harmful to your health while the smaller, denser LDL particles may create problems as they squeeze through the lining of your arteries, oxidize and trigger inflammation.

An NMR LipoProfile that measures the size of your LDL particles is a better assessment of your risk of heart disease than total cholesterol or total LDL. The following tests will also give you a better assessment of your potential risk for heart attack or coronary artery disease:

•HS-CRP. High sensitivity C Reactive Protein is one of the best overall measures of inflammation. Since we now understand that inflammation, not cholesterol, is the primary cause of heart disease, this would be an excellent screening test. The lower the number the better. Ideally your level should be below 0.7. Mine typically ranges from <0.2 to 0.3.

•Cholesterol ratios: Your HDL/cholesterol ratio and triglyceride/HDL ratio is a strong indicator of your risk. For your HDL/cholesterol ratio divide your HDL by your total cholesterol and multiply by 100. That percentage should ideally be above 24 percent. For your triglyceride/HDL ratio divide your triglyceride total by your HDL and multiply by 100. The ideal percentage is below 2 percent.

•Fasting insulin level. Sugar and carbohydrates increase inflammation. Once eaten, these chemicals trigger a release of insulin, promoting the accumulation of fat and creation of triglycerides, making it more difficult for you to lose weight or maintain your normal weight. Excess fat around your midsection is one of the major contributors to heart disease.²⁵

Your fasting insulin level can be determined by a simple, inexpensive blood test. A normal fasting blood insulin level is below 5 microunits per milliliter (mcU/ml), but ideally, you’ll want it below 3 mcU/ml. If your insulin level is higher than 3 to 5, the most effective way to optimize it is to reduce net carbs.

•Fasting blood sugar level. Studies have demonstrated people with higher fasting blood sugar levels have a higher risk of having coronary heart disease.²⁶ In fact, when your fasting blood sugar is between 100 and 125 mg/dl, your risk of coronary artery disease increases to 300 percent more than those whose level is below 79 mg/dl.

•Iron level. Iron creates an environment for oxidative stress, so excess iron may increase your inflammation and increase your risk of heart disease. An ideal iron level for adult men and non-menstruating women is between 40 and 60 nanograms per milliliter (ng/ml). You do not want to be below 20 ng/ml or above 80 ng/ml.

Magnesium Plays Substantial Role in Reducing Inflammation

Magnesium is vital for your optimal health, biological function and mitochondrial health. There are more than 3,750 magnesium-binding sites on human proteins and more than 500 enzymes in your body rely on magnesium to function properly. Low levels of magnesium are associated with migraines, anxiety, depression, fibromyalgia, cardiovascular disease and death from all causes.

Low levels of magnesium are a culprit in the development of inflammation and may play a role in hardening of your arteries as they inhibit the deposit of lipids on your arterials walls and plaque formation.²⁷ Use of the mineral also has significantly positive effects when administered intravenously (IV) as soon as possible after a heart attack.²⁸ In a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, IV magnesium or normal saline was administered to 2,000 patients within 24 hours of their heart attack.

Those who received the magnesium experienced 24 percent fewer deaths and within the following five years, the death rate was also 21 percent lower than those not treated with magnesium. IV magnesium has been used to treat patients with congestive heart failure and arrhythmias.²⁹ Low levels have been found to be an important predictor of sudden cardiac death³⁰ and IV magnesium has been used to treat the onset of atrial fibrillation. ³¹

The use of magnesium during an immediate cardiac event demonstrates the significant health benefits of the mineral. However, ensuring an adequate level of magnesium on a daily basis may help to prevent these cardiac events as the mineral is also closely associated with reducing the inflammatory response. A recent study in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition³² determined there was an inverse relationship between levels of magnesium in the body of participants and the level of c-reactive proteins.

The researchers concluded the beneficial effect of magnesium intake on chronic diseases could potentially be explained by the effect the mineral has on inhibiting inflammation.³³

Many researchers and physicians believe recent studies demonstrate chronic low-grade inflammation is linked to heart attacks, strokes, Alzheimer’s disease, cancer and Type 2 diabetes.³⁴ Following the release of another study demonstrating the role inflammation plays in chronic disease,³⁵ Dr. Carolyn Dean, magnesium expert and author of “The Magnesium Miracle,” stated:³⁶

“Cholesterol is not the cause of heart disease and the decades-long attempt to treat this condition with statin drugs has failed, because the true cause is inflammation.”

Dean went on to comment on another study that demonstrated magnesium deficiency contributes to an exaggerated response to oxidative stress and inflammation, saying:³⁷

“This study shows that at the cellular level, magnesium reduces inflammation. In the animal model used, magnesium deficiency is created when an inflammatory condition is produced. Increasing magnesium intake decreases the inflammation.

With magnesium being actively required by 600 to 700 enzyme systems in the human body, internal functions that reduce inflammation with the help of magnesium are being newly discovered every year. For example, magnesium has been found to be a natural calcium channel blocker, which is crucial because calcium in excess is one of the most pro-inflammatory substances in the body.”

Natural Methods to Reduce Inflammation

There are multiple factors that affect the inflammatory process in your body. Some of the more significant include:

•Hyperinsulinemia: An excess of insulin in your blood triggered by a diet high in net carbohydrates increases your level of inflammation. What you eat tends to be the deal-breaker in how much insulin your body secretes. However, there are other factors that contribute to your insulin levels, such as smoking, sleep quality and level of vitamin D.

You can read more about how to reduce your insulin and fasting blood sugar levels to reduce inflammation in my previous article, “Insulin, Not Cholesterol, Is the True Culprit in Heart Disease.”

•Unbalanced fatty acids: Your body needs a balance of omega-3 and omega-6 fats. Unfortunately, most diets have an overabundance of omega-6 fats leading to greater amounts of inflammation. Strive for a 1-to-1 ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fats to reduce inflammation and your risk of heart disease.

•High iron stores: Ensure your ferritin blood levels are below 80 ng/ml. If they are elevated this can increase your level of inflammation. The simplest and most efficient way to lower your iron level if elevated is to donate blood. If you can’t donate, then therapeutic phlebotomy will effectively eliminate the excess iron. Heavy metal detoxification will also naturally reduce high iron.

•Leaky gut: Food particles and bacteria leaking from your intestines increase your level of inflammation and your risk of heart disease. By eliminating grains, sugars and lectin-rich legumes, while adding fermented foods, you may heal your gut and reduce your level of inflammation.

•Inadequate levels of magnesium: A century ago your diet provided nearly 500 mg of magnesium per day. Today, courtesy of nutrient-depleted soil you may be getting only 150 mg per day. Dean suggests using your intestinal reaction as a marker for your ideal dose of supplementation.

Your body flushes excess magnesium through your stool, so you may determine your own individual needs using magnesium citrate. Start by taking 200 mg of oral magnesium citrate each day, gradually increasing this dose until you develop slightly loose stools.

I now believe many may benefit from as much as 1 to 2 grams of magnesium per day, although you’d need to gradually work your way up to that amount and pay attention to your body’s response, especially if you use magnesium citrate, which causes loose stools.

My personal preference for magnesium supplementation is magnesium threonate as it appears to more efficiently penetrate cell membranes, including your mitochondria. It penetrates your blood-brain barrier and may help improve memory and it may be a good alternative to reduce migraine headaches.

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Google’s Disgraceful New Drug Trap, Don’t Take Their Quiz

By Dr. Mercola

I’ve written about the dangers of monopolies within the drug and agricultural industries on numerous occasions, but Google is perhaps one of the greatest  monopolies that ever existed on the planet. The reason why I’ve decided to address Google here is because the technology giant is injecting itself ever deeper into our day-to-day lives, from childhood education to patented meat substitutes^1,2 and health care, and with its internet monopoly and personal information tracking and sharing,

Google poses a very unique threat. Anyone concerned about their health and food and their ability to obtain truthful information about both needs to understand the role Google plays, and whose side Google is really on.

Starting with the issue of health care, the company recently partnered with the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) and is getting deeper into the drug promotion business with its launch of a depression self-assessment quiz.^3,4 Just like WebMD before it, this test funnels you toward a drug solution. No matter how you answered WebMD’s questions, you were diagnosed as being at risk for major depression and urged to discuss treatment with your doctor.

That test, it turns out, was sponsored by drugmaker Eli Lilly, maker of the antidepressant Cymbalta. Now, any time you use the search term “clinical depression” in the Google mobile search engine, you will find a link to a page to “check if you’re clinically depressed.” The quiz is part of the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHG-9), “a clinically validated screening questionnaire” according to MedicalXpress.⁵

Beware of ‘Patient’s Rights Groups’ Working on Behalf of Drug Makers

While it may seem like an altruistic ideal to raise awareness about mental illness, the “stop the stigma” campaign is actually funded and driven by the drug industry itself, under the guise of various front groups, of which NAMI is one. As noted by PsychCentral, nearly 75 percent of the organization’s funding comes from drug companies.⁶ Evidence also shows that drug companies have instructed NAMI to “resist state efforts to limit access to mental health drugs” and “how to advocate forcefully for issues that affect industry profits.”

As noted by CCHR International,⁷ the “next time you see an ad promoting ‘stop the stigma’ see it for what it is, a pharmaceutical marketing campaign.” While CCHR was started by the Church of Scientology, which does not believe in conventional psychiatry to begin with, the group has some valid points. What they forgot or failed to include is the fact that the insurance industry has also played a significant role in creating the trend of over-prescriptions by favoring reimbursement for drug treatment over other forms of treatment.

The article goes on to discuss how the drug industry created “patient’s rights groups” for the mentally ill. In reality, these so-called advocacy groups are part of the drug industry’s marketing and lobbying machine. According to CCHR, front groups like NAMI and Children and Adults With Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (CHADD) “have consistently lobbied for legislation that benefits the mental health and pharmaceutical industries which fund them, and not patients they claim to represent,” adding:

“A patients’ rights group for the mentally ill would never endorse something as absurd and obviously dangerous as giving electroshock to pregnant women, nor condone schools being able to require children to take a psychiatric drug as a condition of attending school.

Furthermore, they would never be opposed to the FDA actually doing its job and finally issuing long overdue warnings that antidepressants can cause children to commit suicide, or issue warnings that ADHD drugs have serious and even deadly side effects. Yet these are just some of the actions condoned and promoted by these so-called patients’ rights groups.

To put it simply, these groups are not what they appear to be. Yet their influence over legislation, lobbying, drug regulation (or lack thereof), and public relations campaigns is substantial and effects the entire nation,” CCHR warns. “[T]hese groups … frenetically lobby Congress and state governments to channel billions more taxpayers’ dollars into mental health programs that benefit the industry that funds them — not the patients they claim to represent.”

Tech-Driven Mental Health Diagnostics

In 2015, Google hired former National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) director⁸ Dr. Tom Insel as senior researcher for the Google Life Sciences (GLS) unit.⁹ (GLS was later rebranded as Verily, partially owned by Alphabet, the parent company that now also owns Google.) At the time, Insel told The Register his job at GLS would entail identifying technology to “help with earlier detection, better prevention and more effective management of serious health conditions.”

Insel served as director for NIMH between 2002 and 2015.¹⁰ In 2010, Insel — who led efforts to tighten ethics rules — got caught up in a conflicts of interest scandal and was accused of having a longstanding “quid pro quo” relationship with Charles B. Nemeroff, a psychiatrist and researcher at Emory University found guilty of failing to disclose pharmaceutical funds totaling $1.2 million.¹¹ According to The Chronicle of Higher Education:¹²

“In 2003, the journal Nature toughened its policies for author disclosures after Dr. Nemeroff used an article in Nature Neuroscience to praise treatments for depression in which he had an unreported financial interest. In 2004, Emory issued a report citing him for multiple ‘serious’ violations of its conflict-of-interest policies for protecting patients.

He quit as editor of the journal Neuropsychopharmacology in 2006 after he was reported to have endorsed an implantable device for treating depression without disclosing payments from its manufacturer. And he finally left Emory … after U.S. Senate investigators found he received $2.8 million from GlaxoSmithKline and other pharmaceutical companies between 2000 and 2007 and failed to disclose at least $1.2 million of it.”

Insel initially denied the charge outright,¹³ but weeks later expressed regret in a letter to Sen. Charles Grassley, admitting that helping Nemeroff get a job at the University of Miami was inappropriate.¹⁴ In May of this year, Insel left Verily (formerly GLS) to join another technology startup called Mindstrong. Interestingly, Mindstrong is doing more or less exactly what Verily is doing — creating smartphone and computer app technologies to diagnose and treat mental health disorders. According to Wired:¹⁵

“[A]combination of your medical records … and how you use your gadgets … could be a Big Data bonanza for predicting and treating health issues … In fact, mood is one of the things that Verily’s $100 million Baseline study will track among its 10,000 eventual participants. At Mindstrong, one of the first tests of the concept will be a study of how 600 people use their mobile phones, attempting to correlate keyboard use patterns with outcomes like depression, psychosis, or mania.”

Goopocalypse Underway

I don’t know about you, but the idea that your electronic medical records might eventually be linked to your use of the internet and social media to assess your risk of mental health problems and/or other health issues does not make me feel warm and fuzzy inside. Google has repeatedly been caught infringing on privacy rights and misrepresenting the type and amount of data it collects on its users.

It’s now become clear that Google catches every single thing you do online if you’re using a Google-based feature. It’s also clear that capturing user data is Google’s primary business.¹⁶ The fact that it provides services while doing so is really beside the point and serves as a convenient distraction from the fact that obnoxious privacy violations are taking place. As reported by Gawker:¹⁷

“Every word of every email sent through Gmail and every click made on a Chrome browser is watched by the company. ‘We don’t need you to type at all,’ [Google co-founder Eric] Schmidt once said. ‘We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about.'”

Today’s youth, and their parents, need to be particularly vigilant and aware of what Google is doing. Over the past five years, Google has taken over classrooms across the U.S. As noted by The New York Times,¹⁸ more than 30 million American children now use Google-based education apps such as Gmail, Google docs, Google classroom apps and Google-powered Chromebooks.

Once out of school, these youngsters are encouraged to convert their school accounts into personal accounts, allowing Google to build exceptionally powerful personality profiles of them as they grow into young adults. If these profiles are used for marketing purposes only, that would be bad enough. But what if they’re used for other types of profiling? Google’s data harvesting is particularly concerning in light of its military connections.¹⁹

A recent Activist Post article reveals how YouTube is censoring Ron Paul, former congressman and 2011 Republican GOP presidential candidate, for promoting peace.²⁰ Paul has also been a tireless defender of health freedom throughout his long career. In other words, Google is now actively controlling the public narrative — also known as social engineering — and, as noted in the article:

“When standing up against an illegal war with a message of peace and liberty becomes a censorable ‘offense’ it’s time to start paying attention … Make no mistake, what we are witnessing on YouTube and Facebook right now is a move to silence the peaceful opposition …

[T]his crackdown is also coinciding with a massive push by the mainstream media to stoke divide among the people … [D]ivisive identity politics are shoved down the collective throats of the masses in order to create an atmosphere so divided that people never look up at who’s controlling them. Disagreeing with the status quo is the new hate speech — speak out and you will be mowed down.”

Google’s catchphrase used to be “Don’t be evil,” but that’s exactly what it is. When Google became Alphabet, it dropped the “don’t be evil” slogan for a more comprehensive motto, which begins with doing “the right thing — follow the law, act honorably, and treat each other with respect.”²¹ Yet the company continues to act as if it’s above the law and really struggles when it comes to doing what’s right. In fact, Google seems to think its actions are righteous and justifiable simply by the fact that they’re doing them.

Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely

All of this brings us to the issue of monopolization and the corruption that inevitably follows. At this point, I cannot think of any company operating in breach of antitrust rules as blatantly as Google. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and this adage certainly fits when describing Google. As reported by The Washington Post:²²

“Google has established a pattern of lobbying and threatening to acquire power. It has reached a dangerous point … The moment where it no longer wants to allow dissent … Once you reach a pinnacle of power, you start to believe that any threats to your authority are themselves villainous and that you are entitled to shut down dissent. As Lord Acton famously said, ‘Despotic power is always accompanied by corruption of morality.’ Those with too much power cannot help but be evil.

Google, the company dedicated to free expression, has chosen to silence opposition, apparently without any sense of irony… [I]n recent years, Google has become greedy about owning not just search capacities, video and maps, but also the shape of public discourse. As the Wall Street Journal recently reported, Google has recruited and cultivated law professors who support its views.”

According to a recent Campaign for Accountability (CfA) report,²³ Google has paid academics in both the U.S. and Europe millions of dollars to influence public opinion and policymakers alike.^24,25

This includes funding research papers “that appear to support the technology company’s business interests and defend against regulatory challenges such as antitrust and anti-piracy.” Some of these academics have not declared the source of their funding, even though payments have reached as high as $400,000. As noted by The Times:²⁶

“On one occasion Eric Schmidt, Google’s former chief executive, cited a Google-funded author in written answers to Congress to back his claim that his company was not a monopoly — without mentioning that it had paid for the paper …”

Europe Fines Google Nearly $3 Billion for Antitrust Violations

Power can be assessed by looking at lobbying expenditures and, so far this year, Google is leading the pack when it comes to corporate spending on lobbying — efforts primarily aimed at eliminating competitors and gaining power over others. Google also appears to take full advantage of its power over organizations that it helps fund.

A recent example of this was when the Open Markets team at the New America think tank published a statement praising the EU’s decision to levy a $2.7 billion fine against Google for antitrust violations. In summary, Google gave preference to its own shopping subsidiaries over competitors in its search results, which the EU deemed to be a violation of antitrust rules (see the featured video above).

The Open Markets team also called on the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, Department of Justice (DOJ) and state attorneys general to apply American monopoly law to Google’s business in the U.S. Google’s response to the Open Markets statement was swift, and within three days, the New America think tank — which has received more than $21 million from Google over the years — ousted the entire Open Markets team.²⁷

Zephyr Teachout, associate professor of law at Fordham University, writes in her Washington Post article, “Google Is Coming After Critics in Academia and Journalism. It’s Time to Stop Them:”‘ ²⁸

“The imperial overreach of Google in trying to shut down a group of five researchers proves the point that the initial release from Open Markets was trying to make: When companies get too much power, they become a threat to democratic free speech and to the liberty of citizens at large …

Google is forming into a government of itself, and it seems incapable of even seeing its own overreach. We, as citizens, must respond in two ways. First, support the brave researchers and journalists who stand up to overreaching power; and second, support traditional antimonopoly laws that will allow us to have great, innovative companies — but not allow them to govern us.

Google’s actions forced the Open Markets team to leave New America. But, thankfully, it did not succeed in silencing them entirely. Open Markets will continue on as a separate organization, which I will chair. Their work exposing corporate monopolies and advocating for regulation is more important than ever. Google shows us why.”

New America Faces Backlash

The fact that New America was coddling Google and doing the company’s bidding did not go unnoticed, however, and Anne-Marie Slaughter, president of the Google-funded think tank is now accused of jeopardizing New America’s reputation with her decision to kick Open Markets out.

Scholars affiliated with New America have also been “quietly comparing notes on past instances in which they contend she placed donors’ interests over ideology.” According to The New York Times,²⁹ Slaughter has “pledged to re-examine her group’s policies for dealing with donors while defending the organization’s intellectual integrity.” Whatever might come of that “re-examination” remains to be seen.

Antitrust Revival

Former business journalist Barry Lynn, director of Open Markets, who spent over a decade with the New America Foundation before being ousted by Slaughter, has been a longtime advocate against monopolies such as Google, and his work is now gaining traction in what some have called an “antitrust revival.”³⁰ As noted by The Daily Beast:³¹

“For years, Lynn has been warning about the pernicious effect monopolies have on all facets of American life: from the food one eats, to the financial system one uses, to the forms of communications on which one depends. And for years, his work has been restricted to the usual confines of advocacy and academia …

On [July 24, 2017], that changed. [Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)] … outlined an agenda that put heavy emphasis on cracking down on corporate monopolies.

The topic occupies the first four pages of a 10-page document and includes placing new standards on the consolidation of corporate power, giving new tools to regulators to confirm and review mergers, and creating a new consumer competition advocate to tackle ‘anti-competitive behavior.’ Lynn, who estimates that he has been working on this stuff for 15 years, called the new agenda ‘fantastic.'”

Monopolies Threaten Public Liberties and Democracy

In a recent interview by The Verge,³² Lynn discusses his plans to continue fighting monopolies in America. Open Markets still has most of its funders and the organization is “already up and running” as an independent institution. They also have new funding sources lined up. When asked why it’s so important to dialogue about monopoly power, Lynn replies:

“[M]onopolies are a threat to our democracy and to our basic liberties and to our communities. Monopolization, this concentration of wealth and power, is a threat to everything that is America … So, Open Markets is built to fight the environment of law and regulation that currently promotes unrestrained monopoly. America today has a monopoly problem.

We’re seeing basically a second wave of consolidation and monopolization because of the digital revolution. These companies are just as bad as Newscorp or Walmart or Citibank was in 2005. Google, Facebook, and Amazon: the danger they pose is on a vastly different level.The first issue is consumer protection and potential consumer harm. We created antitrust laws originally to protect our liberties, often as producers of stuff …  

My liberty to bring my wheat, my ideas, the product of my labor to market. That’s liberty. The second purpose was to protect our democracy against huge concentrations of wealth and power. To protect our democratic institutions. And the third purpose [was] to protect your community.

If I’m living out in Peoria, do I want the city of Peoria to be run by a couple corporations based on Wall Street, or do I want it to be run by the citizens of Peoria? So you use anti-monopoly law to ensure that.”

Tech Monopolies Merge to Create Ultimate AI World

Last year, The Register³³ published an article pointing out the revolving door between Google and EU policy advisers; 16 Google employees have joined the government ranks in the EU while 64 policy advisers left to join Google. We see this revolving door phenomenon so often these days, it’s become quite cliché. Unfortunately, it is highly effective, which is why industry abuses it. Google is running such a clear monopoly, it’s quite astounding the U.S. has not nailed it on antitrust charges similar to those raised in the EU.

Then again, Music Technology Policy published a long article³⁴ last year describing how Google managed to install one of its own lawyers in the DOJ antitrust division, thereby protecting its own interests. These revolving doors between government and corporations exist for a reason, and it is not to benefit the public in any way.

As we look to the future, we also have Google’s sights on artificial intelligence (AI) to contend with. Already, two large monopolies have joined forces to bring about the ultimate AI world. As reported by The New York Times,³⁵ Amazon and Microsoft are now working together, merging their voice-controlled digital assistants — Alexa and Cortana — in order to enlarge the capabilities of both by building on each other’s strengths and abilities.

“In an interview … [Amazon CEO Jeff] Bezos predicted that over time people would turn to different digital assistants … the same way they turn to one friend for advice about hiking and another for restaurant recommendations. ‘I want them to have access to as many of those A.I.s as possible.’ Mr. Bezos said.”³⁶

Ultimately, the goal is to create self-learning AIs capable of imitating human thought processes. Meanwhile, Vanity Fair reports that Elon Musk is raising a “billion-dollar crusade” to prevent the AI apocalypse, calling for regulations on the technology “before it’s too late.” According to Musk, AIs are improving at a far greater pace than most people realize, and there’s no telling what they might ultimately be used for. Vanity Fair writes:³⁷

“In a startling public reproach to his friends and fellow techies, Musk warned that they could be creating the means of their own destruction. He told Bloomberg’s Ashlee Vance … that he was afraid that his friend Larry Page, a co-founder of Google and now the C.E.O. of its parent company, Alphabet, could have perfectly good intentions but still ‘produce something evil by accident’ — including, possibly, ‘a fleet of artificial intelligence-enhanced robots capable of destroying mankind.’

It’s in Larry Page’s blood and Google’s DNA to believe that A.I. is the company’s inevitable destiny — think of that destiny as you will. (‘If evil A.I. lights up,’ Ashlee Vance told me, ‘it will light up first at Google.’)”

Take Action — Here’s What You Can Do

As you can see, Google (or more accurately, Alphabet, the rebranded parent company that houses all of the various divisions) is turning into a gigantic octopus-like super entity, the tentacles of which reach into government, food production, health care, education, military applications and the creation of AIs that may run more or less independently.

A key component of many of these enterprises is data — your personal usage data; the tracking of every webpage you’ve ever visited and every single thought you’ve ever written on a Google-enabled device, along with geo tracking tracing your every move.

Ultimately, what can be done with that kind of information, besides personalized advertising? How might it be used in combination with military AI-equipped robots? How might it be used to influence your health care decisions? How might it be used to influence your lifestyle decisions? How might (or is) it used to shape politics and society at large?

Today, being a conscious consumer includes making wise, informed decisions about technology. Anyone who has spent even a small amount of time pondering the ramifications of Google’s ever-growing monopoly over our day-to-day lives is likely to shudder at the possibilities and agree that we cannot allow this to continue. To be part of the solution, I encourage you to take the following actions:

1. Sign the “Don’t be evil” petition created by Citizens Against Monopoly
2. Avoid any and all Google products. If you have a Gmail account, close it and open an account with a non-Google affiliated email service. Stop using Google docs. Digital Trends recently published an article suggesting a number of alternatives.³⁸ If you’re a high school student, do not convert the Google accounts you created as a student into personal accounts
3. Don’t use Google search engine. So far, one of the best alternatives I’ve found is DuckDuckGo.³⁹ It is now my primary search engine and I avoid Gmail and all of Google products whenever possible

The Free Individual is Greater than the State

[Once we allow the Rights afforded to us by the Bill of Rights to be eroded and slip away, we are truly slaves.  TMR]

By Jon Rappoport

In a sane society, the Bill of Rights would be studied in great detail, in every school and college.

The historical incursions on, and the crimes against, the Bill of Rights would be laid bare and excoriated.

“Grand juries” of students would be formed to investigate, in detail, these incursions and crimes, and wherever possible track them to their sources.

Reading the Bill of Rights, the first 10 Amendments to the Constitution, it is plain that the natural rights of the individual are confirmed—and also, the attempt to exercise any sort of excessive power over the individual is shackled.

Why?

Because the Founders saw the handwriting on the wall, engraved for centuries in totalitarian regimes and theocracies.

Here are the basics of the Bill of Rights:

Freedom of speech, religion, and the press.

The right to bear arms.

Housing of soldiers: “No soldier shall, in time of peace, be quartered in any house without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war but in a manner to be prescribed by law.”

Protection from unreasonable search and seizure.

Protection of rights to life, liberty, and property.

“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and causeof the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor; and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.”

“In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States than according to the rules of the common law.”

Excessive bails, fines, and punishments are forbidden.

“The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”

What do these 10 Amendments say about the individual? They say he is of greater importance than the State.

They say the purpose of basic law is protection of the freedom of the individual.

They say that, no matter how many scurrilous critics and logic-choppers may come along and parse the Bill of Rights to their advantage and against the individual, these critics should be cast aside, at the very least.

They say that there is something potentially glorious in the individual.

They say today’s collectivists are deluded, and in many cases are consciously attempting to hijack the basic notion of freedom—and substitute instead, a plethora of free goods and services derived from the State, which collects overbearing taxes and invents money out of thin air, for the purpose of creating unfree and dependent individuals.

Most importantly, in today’s society, these 10 Amendments stand on their own, as robust and profound Ideas, no matter who first conceived them, no matter what those men’s motives may or may not have been at the time of conception.

The ideas are alive. Now.

Centers of education may promote the decimation of the Bill of Rights, may attack the primary sources, may try to wage war against these ideas, but their assault is transparent to those who can see and think.

Those little would-be dictators of the mind are themselves already slaves. And so they want to make other slaves.

Europe, whose great thinkers invented the cradle of liberty, is falling under the sway of collectivist vultures. As a group, those gnawing birds of prey are centered in the European Union, the “share and care” face of fascism.

During decades of unearthing what corrupt European and American fascists have been trying to achieve, I have seen individuals rise up from the swamp of sticky economic, political, and spiritual collectivism and reassert and regain their natural freedom.

It’s a sight to behold.

It embodies a dawn that reawakens the mind and spirit.

It’s a call to all of life.

It reestablishes the great adventure of living and making a future of one’s own choosing.

The education system blacks that out. Major media do, too.

The whole idea of public education, at the beginning, in America, was to educate children about what it meant to be a free and responsible citizen in the new Republic.

That mission was abandoned.

In the early 20th century, powerful foundations (Carnegie, at the forefront) completely derailed education by removing significant study of the founding documents of the nation. This was no accident. It was an effort to control society, to make it over in the image of worker-drones fitting into slots, for “the greatest good of the greatest number.”

From its inception, the Carnegie Foundation was consciously focused on the most effective way to control a population. Its first choice was war. In its absence, the number two method, it decided, was education.

The individual, nevertheless, still possesses his natural freedoms. These freedoms are prior to any laws enacted to confirm them.

But the individual has to find/assert those freedoms within himself, on his own.

His future rises and falls on that profound effort, which begins with recognizing he is separate from any and all forms of the collectivist “equality” glob…

William James, American philosopher (1902): “Probably a crab would be filled with a sense of personal outrage if it could hear us class it without ado or apology as a crustacean, and thus dispose of it. ‘I am no such thing,’ it would say; ‘I am myself, myself alone’.”

To my friends in Australia: the vaccine war deepens

No acceptable. This is intrusion on steroids.

Jon Rappoport's Blog

To my friends in Australia: the vaccine war deepens

by Jon Rappoport

September 20, 2017

The string of abuses laid on citizens of Australia by their government grows almost week by week.

Now, parental rights to raise children, without interference from the State, is under a new form of attack. This must be resisted.

Schools are bringing doctors on board, as a permanent feature. Young children will be subjected to medical diagnoses and treatment, without consent or approval from parents, even if those parents actively object. The State is stealing the role of guardian.

The Herald Sun reports. Read carefully:

“DOCTORS will have the power to treat students as young as 12 in schools even if parents refuse their consent.”

“GPs will consult at 100 Victoria high schools for up to one day a week as part of a $43.8 million program.”

“Guidelines released on Thursday show that even if…

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How Many Drug Prescriptions do US Doctors Write per Year?

by Jon Rappoport

Medical News Today reports that, in 2011, there was a modest uptick in the number of prescriptions written in the US.

The increase brought the total to: 4.02 billion.

Yes, in 2011, doctors wrote 4.02 billion prescriptions for drugs in America.

That’s an average of roughly 13 prescriptions for each man, woman, and child.

That’s about one new prescription every month for every American. (Update: the Kaiser Family Foundation reports that in 2016, 4,065,479,343 drug prescriptions were written by US doctors—an increase of 65 million.)

The Medical News Today article concluded, “…the industry should be heartened by the growth of the number of prescriptions and spending.” Yes, I’m sure the drug industry is popping champagne corks.

We’re talking about prescriptions here. We’re not talking about the number of pills Americans took. We’re also not counting over-the-counter drugs or vaccine shots.

Pharmacopoeia, a 2011 exhibition at the British Museum, estimated that “the average number of pills a person takes in his or her own lifetime in the UK is 14,000.” That’s as a result of prescriptions. Including over-the-counter drugs, the 14,000 number would swell to 40,000 pills taken in a lifetime.

What are the effects of all these drugs?

We are looking at a supreme Trojan Horse that is rotting out America and all other countries from the inside. Wars, no wars, economic deprivation, economic prosperity, the drugs continue to do their work, debilitating and ruining and terminating lives.

Many sources can be cited to confirm this assessment.

On January 8th, 2001, the LA Times published an article by one of the best medical reporters in the business, Linda Marsa: “When Good Drugs Do Harm.” Marsa quoted researcher Dr. David Bates, who indicated that, in the US, there are 36 million serious adverse reactions to medical drugs per year.

On July 26, 2000, the Journal of the American Medical Association published the most stunning mainstream estimate of medical-drug damage in history: “Is US health really the best in the world?” The author was Dr. Barbara Starfield, a respected public-health researcher at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.

Starfield concluded that medical drugs were killing Americans at the rate of 106,000 per year.

That’s a million deaths per decade.

This is a conservative sketch of the Trojan Horse that has been placed in the center of every country in the world.

The pharmaceutical juggernaut will continue, no doubt about it. The only question is, how many people will wake up and seek another way?

The destruction of societies by medical drugs goes far beyond what some people call “over-prescribing.” This isn’t just a tilt in the wrong direction. It isn’t simply errors of judgment compounded by the number of doctors dispensing medicines.

Those are all polite terms suggesting the situation can be corrected through a show of good will and better judgment. That will never happen.

Countries of the world are literally being assaulted by pharmaceutical companies and their foot-soldier doctors. It’s chemical warfare.

To even begin to see light at the end of the tunnel, hundreds of millions of people must add themselves to the rolls of those who already are pursuing better health through natural means.

Not even the Nazis and their dearly beloved cartel, the monster IG Farben, dreamed of the day when the citizenry would line up and demand to ingest more and more life-destroying chemicals.

In case anyone thinks the FDA, the single US agency responsible for certifying drugs as safe and effective, has “overlooked the problem,” Google “FDA, Why Learn About Adverse Drug Events.” You’ll find the following statements on the FDA’s own site:

“Over 2 MILLION serious ADRs [Adverse Drug Events] yearly; 100,000 DEATHS yearly.”

The only thing missing is: “And we, the FDA, said the drugs were safe.”

Well, at one time, you could have found that statement on the FDA website.

The page has been removed.

New York Times: Spike the Food Supply with Sterilization Chemicals to Cause Global Infertility and Depopulation

Thursday, September 14, 2017 by: Mike Adams 

(Natural News) A November 4, 1969 New York Times feature article authored by Gladwin Hill called for sterilization chemicals to be added to the food supply in order to achieve globalist goals of human depopulation. That article, entitled “A Sterility Drug in Food is Hinted” came with the byline, “Biologist Stresses Need to Curb Population Growth.”

Until the New York Times memory holes the article, you can still find it in the NYT archives at this link, in fact. You can also see a partial photo of the NYT article below.

Most people living today — especially younger people — have no idea that a key agenda of globalism is the elimination of “undesirable” humans from the gene pool. They believe that ideas of “eugenics” and genocide were only carried out by the Nazis, not by American university professors and presidential science advisors. So they have no grasp of the context in which Planned Parenthood, for example, operates today as a depopulation engine to eliminate blacks from society. (Planned Parenthood’s founder, Margaret Sanger, was a black-hating eugenicist whose ideas directly inspired the genocidal goals of the Third Reich.)

The New York Times article, shown below, quotes Dr. Paul Ehrlich of Stanford University, a depopulation advocate, as well as President Richard Nixon’s chief science adviser, Dr. Lee DuBridge, who said that “population control should be the prime task of every government.” (Read PopulationControl.news for more headlines on this subject.)

Compulsory family regulation run by government

In the article, shown below, Dr. Ehrlich laments the fact that biologists believe, “compulsory family regulation will be necessary to retard population growth.” In essence, he is arguing that the government should be in charge of reproductive rights, determining who is allowed to reproduce and who must be sterilized.

To achieve the sterilization goals, he “urged establishing a Federal Population Commission ‘with a large budget for propaganda,’” reports the New York Times. He also called for, “the addition of a temporary sterilant to staple food, or to the water supply” in order to cause mandatory infertility.

Dr. Barry Commoner of Washington University in St. Louis added to the discussion:

Can we not invent a way to reduce our population growth rate to zero? Every human institution – school, university, church, family, government and international agencies such as Unesco – should set this as its prime task.

This agenda is already well under way

Most Americans have no awareness that this agenda is well under way. Flu shots, for example, are now scientifically confirmed to cause spontaneous abortions, a form of infertility and population control. This explains exactly why the CDC began pushing for flu shot vaccines during all three trimesters of gestation in expectant mothers.

Sperm viability is also plummeting across the modern world, according to dozens of published scientific studies. One such study — conducted by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem — found that sperm concentrations have plummeted more than 50 percentfrom 1973 to 2011. According to the abstract of this study as reported in Science Daily:

These findings strongly suggest a significant decline in male reproductive health that has serious implications beyond fertility and reproduction, given recent evidence linking poor semen quality with higher risk of hospitalization and death.

Covert vectors for depopulation that are being pursued right now

The depopulation goals from 1969 are in full force in America today. Some of the vectors for covert sterilization and depopulation now include:

• Covert genetic modification of crops to grow RNA interference fragments that nullify male fertility in humans.
• The continued use of toxic mercury in flu shots in order to cause spontaneous abortions in pregnant women.
• Planned Parenthood abortion centers that target minority communities for eugenics “cleansing” of the gene pool.
• Inoculation of all vaccine recipients with hidden, cancer-causing viruses that are deliberately allowed to contaminate many vaccines. (See the SV40 Simian Virus fiasco affecting 98 million Americans via the polio vaccine.) (Also, read the book “Plague” by Judy Mikovitz.)
• The planned, deliberate use of cancer-causing ingredients in the popular food supply, including sodium nitrite in processed meat, inducing widespread cancer and early deaths (the clueless population then eats itself to death, while enriching the cancer industry).
• Spiking public health vaccines with covert sterilization chemicals, exactly as has been confirmed in African vaccination campaigns that target young black women for sterilization without their knowledge or consent.

If you do not know that mass sterilization efforts are underway right now to eliminate human fertility and drastically reduce the global population, then you are not yet well-versed on reality. Even Bill Gates openly talks about achieving the correct amount of population reduction by using vaccines and other vectors, saying:

The world today has 6.8 billion people… that’s headed up to about 9 billion. Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent.

For the sake of preserving the historical record, we are reprinting the NYT article here, knowing that they are very likely to attempt to memory hole this article in another swipe at Orwellian-style revisionist history.

A STERILITY DRUG IN FOOD IS HINTED

Biologist Stresses Need to Curb Population Growth

By GLADWIN HILL
Special to The New York Times

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 24 – A possibility that the government might have to put sterility drugs in reservoirs and in food shipped to foreign countries to limit human multiplication was envisioned today by a leading crusader on the population problem.

The crusader, Dr. Paul Ehrlich of Stanford University, among a number of commentators who called attention to the “population crisis” as the United States Commission for Unesco opened it 13th national conference here today.

Unesco is the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. The 100-member commission, appointed by the Secretary of State, included representatives of Government, outside organizations, and the public. Some 500 conservationists and others are attending the two-day meeting at the St. Francis Hotel, devoted this year to environmental problems.

President Nixon’s chief science adviser, Dr. Lee DuBridge, brought up the population question in his keynote speech last night, calling the reduction of the earth’s population growth rate to zero “the first great challenge of our time.”

Godfrey a Speaker

His comments went beyond recent statements of President Nixon, who in a message to Congress stressed the provision of birth control information to underprivileged women.

But the Federal Government’s willingness to come to grips with population limitation was questioned by another speaker, Arthur Godfrey, radio-television star and a conservation campaigner.

“Dr. DuBridge rightly said that population control should be the prime task of every government,” he said. “But is there anyone here – anyone – who thinks that this Administration, or the next of the next, will act with the kind of force that’s necessary?”

Dr. Erlich, who is a biologist said:

“Our first move must be to convince all those we can that the planet Earth must be viewed as a spaceship of limited carrying capacity.”

“I think that 150 million people (50 million fewer that there are now) would be an optimum number to live comfortably in the United States.

‘Alternative to Armageddon’

“Some biologists feel that compulsory family regulation will be necessary to retard population growth. It is a dismal prospect – except when viewed as an alternative to Armageddon.”

He urged establishing a Federal Population Commission “with a large budget for propaganda,” changing tax laws to discourage reproduction and instituting mandatory birth control instruction in public schools.

He also urged “changing the pattern of Federal support of biomedical research so that the majority of it goes into the broad areas of population regulation, environment sciences, behavior sciences and related areas rather than into short-sighted programs on death control.”

If such steps are unavailing, he continued, the nation might resort to “the addition of a temporary sterilant to staple food, or to the water supply,” with limited distribution of antidote chemicals, perhaps by lottery.

Although it might seem that such a program could be started by doctoring foods sent to underdeveloped countries, he said, “the solution does not lie in that direction” because “other people already are suspicious of our motives.”

Economic Pressure Urged

Rather, he suggested,  the United States should stop economic aid to countries that do not try to limit their populations.

Dr. Barry Commoner of St. Louis, Washington University ecologist, in an ensuing discussion period differed with Dr. Ehrlich.

He said that he thought the urge to multiply was rooted in the sense of insecurity. And that the better way to reduce reproduction was by “increasing the well-being of peoples.”

He also opposed chemical strategems on the ground that “every technological trick like that we’ve tried  has caused disaster.”

Recapitulating the environmental problems stemming from population, Dr. Dubridge said: “Do we need more people on the earth? We all know the answer to that is no. Do we have to have more people? Also no.

“Can we reverse the urges of a billion years of evolving life? We can. We know techniques for reducing fertility. We are not fully utilizing them.”

Citing a widespread attitude, he said: ‘We have the right to have as many children as we can afford,’ we say. Do we, today? No.

“Can we not invent a way to reduce our population growth rate to zero? Every human institution – school, university, church, family, government and international agencies such as Unesco – should set this as its prime task.”

Source: The New York Times
Published: November 25, 1969

The Jesuits and Tupper Saussy

A fascinating read.

Jon Rappoport's Blog

The Jesuits and Tupper Saussy

by Jon Rappoport

September 13, 2017

My late friend, Tupper Saussy, wrote a shocking book titled, Rulers of Evil. It was published in 2001. It’s about the Jesuits. It’s about their influence on the founding of the United States.

Tupper was a brilliant researcher, among his other talents. While making his case in the book, he lets the reader know when the points of reference are circumstantial. Tupper was a man who knew how to assess degrees of evidence.

One of most shocking facts about the highly controversial book was its publication by HarperCollins, a major house. That feat was somehow accomplished by agent Peter Fleming. Peter did what no other agent could have done. He pulled off a magic trick for the ages.

I’m sure, once the book was in print, the people at Harper looked at each other and said, “What did…

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