(Subjects: Religion/Worship, Lightworkers, Food, Health, Prescription Drugs, Homeopathy, Innate (Body intelligence), New Age movement, Global Unity, ... etc.) - (Text version)

“…… Should I use Doctors and Drugs to Heal Me or Spiritual Methods?

"Dear Kryon, I have heard that you should stay natural and not use the science on the planet for healing. It does not honor God to go to a doctor. After all, don't you say that we can heal with our minds? So why should we ever go to a doctor if we can do it ourselves? Not only that, my doctor isn't enlightened, so he has no idea about my innate or my spiritual body needs. What should I do?"

First, Human Being, why do you wish to put so many things in boxes? You continue to want a yes and no answer for complex situations due to your 3D, linear outlook on almost everything. Learn to think out of the 3D box! Look at the heading of this section [above]. It asks which one should you do. It already assumes you can't do both because they seem dichotomous.

Let's use some spiritual logic: Here is a hypothetical answer, "Don't go to a doctor, for you can heal everything with your mind." So now I will ask: How many of you can do that in this room right now? How many readers can do that with efficiency right now? All of you are old souls, but are you really ready to do that? Do you know how? Do you have really good results with it? Can you rid disease and chemical imbalance with your mind right now?

I'm going to give you a truth, whether you choose to see it or not. You're not ready for that! You are not yet prepared to take on the task of full healing using your spiritual tools. Lemurians could do that, because Pleiadians taught them how! It's one of the promises of God, that there'll come a day when your DNA works that efficiently and you will be able to walk away from drug chemistry and the medical industry forever, for you'll have the creator's energy working at 100 percent, something you saw within the great masters who walked the earth.

This will be possible within the ascended earth that you are looking forward to, dear one. Have you seen the news lately? Look out the window. Is that where you are now? We are telling you that the energy is going in that direction, but you are not there yet.

Let those who feel that they can heal themselves begin the process of learning how. Many will be appreciative of the fact that you have some of the gifts for this now. Let the process begin, but don't think for a moment that you have arrived at a place where every health issue can be healed with your own power. You are students of a grand process that eventually will be yours if you wish to begin the quantum process of talking to your cells. Some will be good at this, and some will just be planting the seeds of it.

Now, I would like to tell you how Spirit works and the potentials of what's going to happen in the next few years. We're going to give the doctors of the planet new inventions and new science. These will be major discoveries about the Human body and of the quantum attributes therein.

Look at what has already happened, for some of this science has already been given to you and you are actually using it. Imagine a science that would allow the heart to be transplanted because the one you have is failing. Of course! It's an operation done many times a month on this planet. That information came from the creator, did you realize that? It didn't drop off the shelf of some dark energy library to be used in evil ways.

So, if you need a new heart, Lightworker, should you go to the doctor or create one with your mind? Until you feel comfortable that you can replace your heart with a new one by yourself, then you might consider using the God-given information that is in the hands of the surgeon. For it will save your life, and create a situation where you stay and continue to send your light to the earth! Do you see what we're saying?

You can also alter that which is medicine [drugs] and begin a process that is spectacular in its design, but not very 3D. I challenge you to begin to use what I would call the homeopathic principle with major drugs. If some of you are taking major drugs in order to alter your chemistry so that you can live better and longer, you might feel you have no choice. "Well, this is keeping me alive," you might say. "I don't yet have the ability to do this with my consciousness, so I take the drugs."

In this new energy, there is something else that you can try if you are in this category. Do the following with safety, intelligence, common sense and logic. Here is the challenge: The principle of homeopathy is that an almost invisible tincture of a substance is ingested and is seen by your innate. Innate "sees" what you are trying to do and then adjusts the body's chemistry in response. Therefore, you might say that you are sending the body a "signal for balance." The actual tincture is not large enough to affect anything chemically - yet it works!

The body [innate] sees what you're trying to do and then cooperates. In a sense, you might say the body is healing itself because you were able to give it instructions through the homeopathic substance of what to do. So, why not do it with a major drug? Start reducing the dosage and start talking to your cells, and see what happens. If you're not successful, then stop the reduction. However, to your own amazement, you may often be successful over time.

You might be able to take the dosage that you're used to and cut it to at least a quarter of what it was. It is the homeopathy principle and it allows you to keep the purpose of the drug, but reduce it to a fraction of a common 3D dosage. You're still taking it internally, but now it's also signaling in addition to working chemically. The signal is sent, the body cooperates, and you reduce the chance of side effects.

You can't put things in boxes of yes or no when it comes to the grand system of Spirit. You can instead use spiritual logic and see the things that God has given you on the planet within the inventions and processes. Have an operation, save your life, and stand and say, "Thank you, God, for this and for my being born where these things are possible." It's a complicated subject, is it not? Each of you is so different! You'll know what to do, dear one. Never stress over that decision, because your innate will tell you what is appropriate for you if you're willing to listen. ….”

Monsanto / GMO - Global Health


(Subjects: Big pharma [the drug companies of America] are going to have to change very soon or collapse. When you have an industry that keeps people sick for money, it cannot survive in the new consciousness., Global Unity, ... etc.) - (Text version)
"Recalibration of Free Choice"– Mar 3, 2012 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Caroll) - (Subjects: (Old) Souls, Midpoint on 21-12-2012, Shift of Human Consciousness, Black & White vs. Color, 1 - Spirituality (Religions) shifting, Lose a Pope “soon”, 2 - Humans will change react to drama, 3 - Civilizations/Population on Earth, 4 - Alternate energy sources (Geothermal, Tidal (Pedal wheels), Wind), 5 – Financials Institutes/concepts will change (Integrity – Ethical) , 6 - News/Media/TV to change, 7 Big Pharmaceutical company will collapse “soon”, (Keep people sick), (Integrity – Ethical) 8 – Wars will be over on Earth, Global Unity, … etc.) - (Text version)
"The Recalibration of Awareness – Apr 20/21, 2012 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Old Energy, Recalibration Lectures, God / Creator, Religions/Spiritual systems (Catholic Church, Priests/Nun’s, Worship, John Paul Pope, Women in the Church otherwise church will go, Current Pope won’t do it), Middle East, Jews, Governments will change (Internet, Media, Democracies, Dictators, North Korea, Nations voted at once), Integrity (Businesses, Tobacco Companies, Bankers/ Financial Institutes, Pharmaceutical company to collapse), Illuminati (Started in Greece, Shipping, Financial markets, Stock markets, Pharmaceutical money (fund to build Africa, to develop)), Shift of Human Consciousness, (Old) Souls, Women, Masters to/already come back, Global Unity.... etc.) - (Text version)
"THE BRIDGE OF SWORDS" – Sep 29, 2012 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: ... I'm in Canada and I know it, but I will tell those listening and reading in the American audience the following: Get ready! Because there are some institutions that are yet to fall, ones that don't have integrity and that could never be helped with a bail out. Again, we tell you the biggest one is big pharma, and we told you that before. It's inevitable. If not now, then in a decade. It's inevitable and they will fight to stay alive and they will not be crossing the bridge. For on the other side of the bridge is a new way, not just for medicine but for care. ....) - (Text Version)

Pharmaceutical Fraud / Corruption cases

Health Care

Health Care
Happy birthday to Percy Julian, a pioneer in plant-drug synthesis. His research produced steroids like cortisone. (11 April 2014)

Friday, June 29, 2012

Merck vaccine fraud exposed by two Merck virologists; company faked mumps vaccine efficacy results for over a decade, says lawsuit

NaturalNews, by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor, June 28, 2012                  
               
(NaturalNews) According to two Merck scientists who filed a False Claims Act complaint in 2010 -- a complaint which has just now been unsealed -- vaccine manufacturer Merck knowingly falsified its mumps vaccine test data, spiked blood samples with animal antibodies, sold a vaccine that actually promoted mumps and measles outbreaks, and ripped off governments and consumers who bought the vaccine thinking it was "95% effective."

See that False Claims Act document at:

According to Stephen Krahling and Joan Wlochowski, both former Merck virologists, the Merck company engaged in all the following behavior:

• Merck knowingly falsified its mumps vaccine test results to fabricate a "95% efficacy rate."

• In order to do this, Merck spiked the blood test with animal antibodies in order to artificially inflate the appearance of immune system antibodies. As reported in CourthouseNews.com:

Merck also added animal antibodies to blood samples to achieve more favorable test results, though it knew that the human immune system would never produce such antibodies, and that the antibodies created a laboratory testing scenario that "did not in any way correspond to, correlate with, or represent real life ... virus neutralization in vaccinated people," according to the complaint. (http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/06/27/47851.htm)

• Merck then used the falsified trial results to swindle the U.S. government out of "hundreds of millions of dollars for a vaccine that does not provide adequate immunization."

• Merck's vaccine fraud has actually contributed to the continuation of mumps across America, causing more children to become infected with mumps. (Gee, really? This is what NaturalNews has been reporting for years... vaccines are actually formulated to keep the outbreaks going because it's great for repeat business!)

• Merck used its false claims of "95 percent effectiveness" to monopolize the vaccine market and eliminate possible competitors.

• The Merck vaccine fraud has been going on since the late 1990's, say the Merck virologists.

• Testing of Merck's vaccine was never done against "real-world" mumps viruses in the wild. Instead, test results were simply falsified to achieve the desired outcome.

• This entire fraud took place "with the knowledge, authority and approval of Merck's senior management."

• Merck scientists "witnessed firsthand the improper testing and data falsification in which Merck engaged to artificially inflate the vaccine's efficacy findings," according to court documents (see below).

US government chose to ignore the 2010 False Claims Act!

Rather than taking action on this false claims act, the U.S. government simply ignored it, thereby protecting Merck's market monopoly instead of properly serving justice. This demonstrates the conspiracy of fraud between the U.S. government, FDA regulators and the vaccine industry.

Chatom Primary Care sues Merck for Sherman Act monopolization, breach of warranty, violation of consumer protection laws

Following the unsealing of this 2010 False Claims Act, Chatom Primary Care, based in Alabama, smelled something rotten. Three days ago, Chatom filed a lawsuit against Merck. That lawsuit record is available here:

It alleges, among other shocking things:

[Merck engaged in] ...a decade-long scheme to falsify and misrepresent the true efficacy of its vaccine.

Merck fraudulently represented and continues to falsely represent in its labeling and elsewhere that its Mumps Vaccine has an efficacy rate of 95 percent of higher.

In reality, Merck knows and has taken affirmative steps to conceal -- by using improper testing techniques and falsifying test data -- that its Mumps Vaccine is, and has been since at least 1999, far less than 95 percent effective.

Merck designed a testing methodology that evaluated its vaccine against a less virulent strain of the mumps virus. After the results failed to yield Merck's desired efficacy, Merck abandoned the methodology and concealed the study's findings.

...incorporating the use of animal antibodies to artificially inflate the results...

...destroying evidence of the falsified data and then lying to an FDA investigator...

...threatened a virologist in Merck's vaccine division with jail if he reported the fraud to the FDA...

...the ultimate victims here are the millions of children who every year are being injected with a mumps vaccine that is not providing them with an adequate level of protection. And while this is a disease that, according to the Centers for Disease Control ('CDC'), was supposed to be eradicated by now, the failure in Merck's vaccine has allowed this disease to linger, with significant outbreaks continuing to occur.

Chatom Primary Care also alleges that the fraudulent Merck vaccine contributed to the 2006 mumps outbreak in the Midwest, and a 2009 outbreak elsewhere. It says, "there has remained a significant risk of a resurgence of mumps outbreaks..."

This investigation is only beginning

NaturalNews has only begun to investigate this incredible breaking news about Merck and the vaccine industry. We are pouring through the court documents to identify additional information that may be relevant to this case, and we plan to bring you that information soon.

For the record, Merck denies all allegations. Is anyone surprised?


Sources for this article:

NaturalNews wishes to thank CourthouseNews.com for its coverage of this story. Original article at: http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/06/27/47851.htm

Chatom Lawsuit against Merck

2010 False Claims Act against Merck, by two Merck virologists

Announcement of the lawsuit in the media:
http://www.nasdaq.com/article/lawsuit-claims-merck-overstated-mumps-vaccine-effectiveness-20120622-00532



"The Recalibration of Dark & Light" – Feb 25, 2012 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Big pharma [the drug companies of America] are going to have to change very soon or collapse. When you have an industry that keeps people sick for money, it cannot survive in the new consciousness., Global Unity, ... etc.) - (Text version


"The Recalibration of Awareness – Apr 20/21, 2012 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll)(Subjects: Old Energy, Recalibration LecturesGod / Creator, Religions/Spiritual systems (Catholic Church, Priests/Nun’s, Worship, John Paul Pope, Women in the Church otherwise church will go, Current Pope won’t do it), Middle East, Jews, Governments will change (Internet, Media, Democracies, Dictators, North Korea, Nations voted at once), Integrity (Businesses, Tobacco Companies, Bankers/ Financial Institutes, Pharmaceutical company to collapse), Illuminati (Based in Greece, Shipping, Financial markets, Stock markets, Pharmaceutical money (fund to build Africa to develop)), Shift of Human Consciousness, (Old) Souls, Women, Masters to/already come back, Global Unity.... etc.)


"The Recalibration of the Perception of the Future"– Jun 23, 2012 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Caroll) - New

Thursday, June 28, 2012

Supreme Court upholds Obama health reforms

Jakarta Globe, June 28, 2012 

Demonstrators gather outside
the US Supreme Court
The US Supreme Court Thursday upheld historic health care reforms but changed some of the key provisions, in a major election-year victory for Democratic President Barack Obama.

The nation's top justices ruled that a key plank of Obama's domestic policy to extend health insurance to some 32 million Americans was constitutional, but imposed some limitations on extending aid to the nation's poorest.

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Sick of Expensive Prescriptions? Indonesian Doctors Association Offers a Cure

Jakarta Globe, Dessy Sagita, June 27, 2012

The Indonesian Doctors Association (IDI) is encouraging patients to report
 their physicians if they suspect they are being prescribed medications for
reasons other than their well-being. (JG Photo/Safir Makki)
 
         
Related articles

If you’re sick of paying for expensive prescription drugs at your physician’s urging, the Indonesian Doctors Association (IDI) said on Wednesday that it is ready to hear your complaint.

“If there are indications of [being prescribed] too expensive medicine, or if you go to the doctor 10 times and get the same medicine over and over again [without results], and the evidence is clear, please send us a written report,” said Agus Purwadianto, head of IDI’s medical ethics council.

Agus said a limited number of health economy experts in Indonesia to provide trustworthy information and the reluctance of people to report doctors had led to many doctors conspiring with the pharmaceutical industry, receiving kickbacks from pharmacists for prescribing expensive drugs.

“There is also a snob paradigm among people — that without expensive [medicine], they won’t be healed.”

Agus said IDI was very serious about supervising its doctors and preventing code of conduct violations. The association recently gained more power to question doctors who are accused of receiving bribes, as well as the alleged bribers.

“In the past, we were only allowed to question the doctors and get a one-sided explanation, but now we can summon both parties in the investigation,” he said. “If it is proven, the doctor will be sanctioned.”

The 2009 Law on Medical Practice’s Article 62, which includes the doctor’s oath, states: “I hereby promise to conduct my duties within ethical means and will not accept from anyone, directly or indirectly, a pledge or a gift.”

The International Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Group said it would impose stricter regulations on its members to prevent bribery to doctors.

“We have revised the ethics code of IPMG and tightened it,” Allen Doumit, head of IPMG's market practices subcommittee, said on Wednesday.

Under this code of conduct, the pharmaceutical industry is not allowed to offer gifts or services to doctors and medical staff that might cause a conflict of interest.

If, for example, a pharmaceutical company wanted to sponsor a doctor to attend seminar or conference abroad, the doctor should leave just one day prior to the event and return a day after its conclusion at the latest.

“We could not send doctor a week before the event or on an additional trip that is not related to the event,” Allen said.

Allen said under the old code of conduct, pharmaceutical companies were not forbidden from indulging doctors with lavish hotel suites or business class plane tickets, but such offerings would be regulated under the new code.

“We hope the government could be involved to supervise this,” Allen said.

Only 24 pharmaceutical companies out of more than 200 in Indonesia are members of IPMG. Allen said that though many are not members of IPMG, all pharmaceutical companies should heed the organization's ethics standards.

“We are really serious in upholding the ethics. Recently we warned a pharmaceutical company that sent flowers to a hospital.”

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Coca-Cola: still the real thing?

Sales of soft drinks are in decline, but king Coke is still top of the heap. Do you drink less than you used to?

guardian.co.uk, Oliver Thring, 26 june, 2012

Various cans of cola. Photograph: Photoshot/Hulton Archive

A health campaign group today calls for the UK to follow California and ban a specific colouring from soft drinks including Coca-Cola and Pepsi. A byproduct of the process used to make some caramel colourings is a chemical called 4-MI, and although British and European food safety watchdogs have decided its presence in colas is not a health concern, the substance has been found to cause cancer in rats and mice.

Coke is utter junk, of course, but it can be terribly refreshing. I probably drink a Diet Coke every other week. My "brand loyalty" is literally unquestioned – it never occurs to me to buy any other cola, not that there ever seems much of an opportunity to do so. Pepsi has a 9.5% share in the UK soft drinks market, far less than the 17% for Coke and even the 9.9% for Diet Coke. Diet Pepsi lags with a pitiful 5.3%.

On the few occasions I have bought another cola (even that word looks alien and amputated), I've never been impressed. Fentiman's Curiosity Cola tastes flat and monotone, with a lingering undercurrent that reminds me of diesel. One ethically minded food and drinks company is launching a new cola in time for the Olympics. But a lifetime of conditioning and marketing can often make these products taste less like "the real thing" even though they may derive more of their flavour from genuine kola nuts.

It's a brave company that seeks to rival Coca-Cola. The drink has a presence in over 200 countries: "more than the UN itself", as one of its executives boasts. It's been the most valuable brand in the world for years. This is all a long way from its origins in the 1880s, when a morphine-addicted veteran of the American civil war concocted a cocaine and caffeine tonic which he claimed cured headaches, impotence and, handily, morphine addiction. After a certain amount of internal wrangling, a man named Asa Candler wound up with the rights to sell the drink, and made a vast fortune from it. He marketed Coca-Cola with a ferocity never seen before, and his commercial heirs have always followed his lead.

Coke is now the market leader in almost every country in the world, but rivals jostle with it across its markets. Pepsi outsells it in parts of Canada, the Caribbean, the Middle East and in Pakistan, whose cricket team is sponsored by Pepsi. Other rivals around the world are called things like Zam Zam Cola, Parsi Cola, Mecca Cola, Big Cola and the Indian Thums Up. On Madeira in the eastern Atlantic, a Fanta variant called Laranjada outsells it, and the Scots used to drink more Irn-Bru. Barr's lost its lead there in 2005, but throughout my childhood I lived in a dissident soda market.

However sketchy its ethics, Coke is a masterclass in the power of marketing and an unanswerable witness to America's cultural hegemony during the last century. But the company relies increasingly on other brands in its portfolio, and many Americans and Europeans are drinking less of the main product. Are you among them?



Who is responsible for making us fat?
Photograph: Pat Doyle/Corbis
.

Breast cancer sufferer 'used superfoods to combat disease'

A breast cancer sufferer has described how she turned down a powerful drug and used a special low fat diet including curry spices to combat the disease.

The Telegraph, 25 June 2012

Vicky Sewart used a special diet to beat cancer Photo: APEX

Vicky Sewart said she was concerned about the side-effects of the medicine which she was offered so opted to treat her condition with a health regime involving exercise and special foods.

She used a range of 'superfoods' including the spice Turmeric used in curries which she claims "makes cancer cells commit suicide".

She said she used the spice in dishes including curries, stir-fry and a range of other food.

Now, four years later and with no sign of the cancer coming back, the 44-year-old is at the centre of a research project to study how lifestyle can be used to help other victims of the disease.

Vicky from Plymouth, Devon, told how she had an operation to remove a breast and lymph node in June 2008.

RELATED ARTICLES

After Vicky, who runs the Victoria Sewart Contemporary Jewellery Gallery on the Barbican, in Plymouth, was diagnosed with a fast-growing tumour she underwent chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery.

But then she shocked doctors and her family when she refused to take Tamoxifen during remission ~ saying she would be using her diet as her anti-cancer 'drug'.

Vicky said: "It's very unusual for breast cancer patients not to take the drug.

"When I told the doctors I didn't want to take it, they just advised me to keep oestrogen out of my body, which is basically what the drug does.

"The doctors absolutely will not say that the diet is going to do anything to help the cancer in any way, other than to say a healthy diet is going to help in the fight against any disease.

"This was four years ago and I think attitudes are changing a bit now so that these ideas are running alongside the more usual treatments.

"I believe absolutely enormously that my diet has assisted my recovery."

Vicky researched foods which, according to anecdotal evidence, might have helped the recovery of breast cancer patients.

At first, she adhered to a very strict diet. She became a vegan for a while and cut out all dairy produce. She also added 'super-foods' to her diet and ate almost entirely organic.

Vicky said: "Fresh fruit, vegetables and juices are great, and frozen berries are fantastic as a superfood.

"Turmeric kind of makes cancer cells commit suicide and ginger and garlic are great to cook with."

She prepares all her food from scratch, makes her own body lotions from natural ingredients and only uses chemical-free cleaners and detergents.

"I decided that I was going to help myself and do as much as I could," she said.
Another element of her lifestyle is moderate exercise, which she believes was helpful in her recovery from cancer.

Vicky made her decision based on the side effects she could expect from Tamoxifen.

"It was the worry of the drugs and the side effects, I didn't want to have to worry about it, I wanted to be free," she said.

The national research study is looking at how lifestyle can help prevent the recurrence of breast cancer after surgery. It is the largest of its kind in the world, involving 56 hospitals around the UK and 3,400 patients who have had the disease.

For the past four years, Vicky has provided blood and urine samples and filled in regular questionnaires about her well-being, diet and lifestyle as part of the national research.

She has another year left of the trial and some findings are expected later this year and the full results will be published next year.

Vicky is hoping to mark her five-year remission in August 2013 and is getting ready to marry her fiance Michael in September.

She added: "People can die, or come back from it and enjoy life, you've just got to be thankful you're still around. Make the most of life, everything will always be alright in the end."

Dr Steve Kelly, an oncologist specialising in treating patients with breast cancer, based at Derriford Hospital, said: "Breast cancer deaths have been going down steadily for over 20 years thanks to surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy - all have helped.

"But there are three things patients can do to help themselves, it doesn't guarantee survival, but it does help.

"The first is to exercise for thirty minutes three days a week, the second is to not gain any weight and the third is to reduce fat intake.

"These things help to reduce the chance of cancer coming back. For this patient, four years on now, it is still early days."

Vicky's father Dr John Sewart, aged 85, from Saltash, said: "I gave her advice when she asked for it.

"I was answering as a father first and a doctor second. It wasn't difficult, I agreed with what she was planning to do, and I agreed with her decisions."

Monday, June 25, 2012

Eating Placenta, an Age-Old Practice in China

Jakarta Globe, June 25, 2012

Related articles

Shanghai. After Wang Lan delivered, she brought home a baby girl and her placenta, which she plans to eat in a soup — adopting an age-old practice in Chinese traditional medicine.

The health-giving qualities of placenta are currently creating a buzz in Western countries, where some believe it can help ward off postnatal depression, improve breast milk supply and boost energy levels.

But placentophagy — the practice of eating one’s placenta after birth — is relatively common in China, where it is thought to have anti-ageing properties, and dates back more than 2,000 years.

“It is in the refrigerator now and I am waiting for my mother to come and cook it to eat. After cleaning, it can be stewed for soup, without that fishy smell,” Wang said, adding she believed it would help her recover from delivery.

Qin Shihuang, the first emperor of a unified China, is said to have designated placenta as having health properties some 2,200 years ago, and during China’s last dynasty, the dowager empress Cixi was said to have eaten it to stay young.

A classic medical text from the Ming Dynasty (1368--1644) said placenta — which lines the uterus and is key to the survival of the foetus — was “heavily nutritious” and “if taken for the longer term... longevity will be achieved.”

China’s state media says the practice of eating placenta has re-emerged over the past decade. One maternity hospital in the eastern city of Nanjing reported that about 10 percent of new parents took their placenta after childbirth.

Internet postings swap recipes on how to prepare placenta. One popular health website suggests soup, dumplings, meat balls or mixing it with other kinds of traditional Chinese medicine.

While trade in the organs has been banned since 2005, pills containing placentas ground into powder are legally available in Chinese pharmacies — indicating unwanted placenta is somehow making its way to drug companies.

“It is a tonic to fortify the ‘qi’ and enrich the blood,” a traditional medicine doctor at Shanghai’s Lei Yun Shang pharmacy said, referring to the “life force” that practitioners believe flows through the body.

“Sales are very good. Basically, every time we have supplies, they sell out very quickly,” a clerk at the shop told AFP.

And it’s not just mothers who want to eat the placenta.

One new father in Shanghai who did not want to be named said his relatives were eager to try the sought-after item. “My wife and I were still in the hospital... and they ate it,” he said.

But strong demand has created a thriving black market with hospitals, medical workers and even mothers selling placentas in violation of the law.

Last year, authorities investigated a hospital in the southern city of Guangzhou for selling placentas for 20 yuan ($2) apiece.

“They (nurses) take the money and use it to buy breakfast,” a source told a the local Xin Kuai newspaper.

They fetch a higher price in other parts of China like the eastern city of Jinan, where dealers ask as much as 300 yuan per placenta, most sourced from hospitals, the Jinan Times said last year.

Last month, South Korean customs said they had uncovered multiple attempts to illegally import over 17,000 capsules apparently containing the powdered flesh of dead babies.

Experts have said the pills may actually be made from human placenta, raising concerns that China’s trade in the organs has started to go international.

Some people, meanwhile, are averse to the idea of eating the organ.

“I know it’s good for health, but the idea of eating human flesh is just disgusting. I cannot do it,” said Shanghai accountant Grace Jiang, who opted to leave the placenta after giving birth to her son.

Agence France-Presse

Sunday, June 24, 2012

Fake meat: is science fiction on the verge of becoming fact?

The race to make fake meat just got interesting. Two scientists on opposite sides of the world both claim to be on the verge of serving up the first lab-grown hamburger – and saving the planet in the process. The new reality is so close, you can almost taste it

guardian.co.uk, Michael Hanlon, Friday 22 June 2012

This is a disruptive technology. ‘I think the meat industry will be an adversary,
 and maybe a dangerous one,’ Mark Post says. Photograph: Liz McBurney for
the Guardian

As mission statements go, it takes some beating. Scrawled on a whiteboard are the words: "We will change how the Earth looks from space!" It surpasses "Don't be evil" (the motto of Google, just down the road), and in terms of hubris it trumps even that of Facebook (also just round the corner): "Move fast and break things!"

In this anonymous laboratory on a low-rise industrial estate in Menlo Park, 40km south of San Francisco, there is a whiff of revolution in the air. There is a whiff of madness, too, but after a few hours in the company of the man leading this intriguing Silicon Valley startup, one begins to wonder if it is the rest of the world that is insane.

Professor Patrick Brown could easily be taken for a deranged visionary. He is intense, driven and unfazed by critics and rivals. This 57-year-old ultra-lean, sandal-wearing, marathon-running vegan wants to stop the world eating meat. Not through persuasion or coercion, but by offering us carnivores something better for the same price or less.

The fake meat business has been around for decades, of course, but it has never really taken off. That is because the products out there, usually based on some sort of reconstituted soy or fungal gloop, taste as disgusting as they look. They are usually expensive as well.

But the meat-fakers say they are on the verge of a breakthrough, that there is a real possibility that a new era of fake meat – nutritious, cheap and indistinguishable from the real thing, made either of synthesised animal tissue or derived from plant material – may be upon us.

'I have zero interest in making a new food for vegans,’ says molecular biologist
 Patrick Brown. ‘I’m making a food for people who want meat.' Photograph:
Winni Wintermeyer

Brown, a specialist in the genetics of cancer, is a tenured Stanford University molecular biologist, a member of the National Academy and the founder of a non-profit academic publisher. For two years, he has been working on creating synthesised meat and dairy products. "I have zero interest in making a new food just for vegans," Brown says. "I am making a food for people who are comfortable eating meat and who want to continue eating meat. I want to reduce the human footprint on this planet by 50%."

What Brown is talking about is a revolution that will remake our relationship with our planet, and with our fellow animals.

Eating meat is bad for the environment, of that there is no doubt. And the moral arguments against killing animals are compelling. Humans currently slaughter about 1,600 mammals and birds every second for food – that is half a trillion lives a year, plus trillions more fish, crustaceans and molluscs. The total biomass of all the world's livestock is almost exactly twice that of humanity itself. And while crops that feed people cover just 4% of the Earth's usable surface (land that is not covered by ice or water, or is bare rock), animal pastureland accounts for a full 30%. Our meat, in other words, weighs twice as much as we do and takes seven times as much land to grow.

And we are going to have to feed a lot more people in the coming decades. The world's population stands at a little over 7bn; by 2060 this will have risen to perhaps 9.5bn, and that is a fairly optimistic scenario. Not only are there more and more of us, but we are eating more and more meat. Demand for it is expected to double by 2050. The market in chicken, pig, cattle and sheep flesh is worth about $1trn ayear. By mid-century this will more than double, perhaps triple at today's prices, as the cost of land rises.


But it is animal suffering that usually turns people vegetarian. Meat farming is, say its critics, an obsolete technology that produces a nutrient-dense food in just about the most inefficient (and cruel) way imaginable. The problem – the big problem – is that, when given a choice, most of us like to eat meat regardless. It may be inefficient, dirty and cruel, but there is no denying that cooked animal flesh tastes good.

The idea of synthetic meat has been around for a long time. In 1932, Winston Churchill stated, "Fifty years hence, we shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium." But fake meat, aka schmeat or in-vitro meat, is one of those ideas that, like lunar colonies, fusion power and flying cars, has yet to cross the threshold between fantasy and reality.

That is because flesh is hard to fake. Meat, essentially muscle tissue (unless you're talking about offal), is a complex material. A steak, for instance, consists of tens of thousands of muscle fibres, blood vessels, nerves, layers of fat and connective tissue, gristle and perhaps bone. A slab of sirloin is a chunk of incredibly complex machinery, and it is this complexity that is giving the fakers a headache.

The hundreds of chemicals in meat give it its flavour, and its flavour and texture changes depending on how it is cooked. The globular muscle protein myoglobin, for instance, gives raw meat its characteristic pink colour and oxidises when cooked to become a brownish grey.

Fresh raw meat is almost tasteless. But when heated, the myoglobin changes colour and a series of changes, called Maillard reactions, combine amino acids (the building blocks of proteins) with sugars to give cooked meat its distinctive, tangy flavour. Biting into a chicken thigh involves not merely the ingestion of protein (easy to synthesise), but a complex interplay of aromas, textures and tastes. Synthesising all this in a lab is no easy task.

One approach is to manipulate plant material to create a meat-facsimile; this is what Brown is doing. The trouble is, I am not allowed to tell you very much about it. Before being shown around his lab, I have to sign non-disclosure agreements.

"Look, I don't want to come across as a jerk," says Brown, a serious man who seems genuinely terrified that his project may yet be undone, "but I don't want things appearing in the media that will stop this happening."

When Brown appeared at a major science conference in Vancouver earlier this year, he gave away few details, save to say that the meat industry is "a sitting duck". And he's right. There is seriously big money hovering around Sand Hill Foods, the provisional name of Brown's startup.

The other approach is to grow actual meat in a factory, animal muscle tissue sans the animal itself, and this is being pioneered in Europe.

"What are we going to call it? Well, we thought long and hard, and came to the conclusion we should simply call it meat," says Dr Mark Post, an affable 54-year-old Dutchman. When we meet at the University of Maastricht, there is no NDA to sign, no secrecy and a lot of self-doubt. Like Brown, Post is motivated by concern for the environment, but the two scientists could not be more different. For a start, the Dutchman is a meat-loving amateur chef. Then there is his admission: "This may not succeed… My family think I am crazy."

At that Canadian conference, Brown was critical of Post's methodology, dismissing it as too expensive and complex to work. The two scientists gave a joint presentation, but there was clearly no love lost between them. The Dutchman concedes his American rival may win the race to produce the world's first viable synthesised meat – but suggests he might have trouble selling his idea.

"He is a genius," Post tells me, "but he has a personality issue. He is very defensive. He is much smarter than I am, but he is not going to get this across to the public. He needs a PR adviser."

‘What are we going to call it?’ says scientist Mark Post.‘We thought long
and hard, and came up with "meat".' Photograph: Judith Jockel

Post is following up on about a decade's worth of work to try to culture living muscle tissue in the lab. Back in the early noughties, Nasa sponsored a scientist called Morris Benjaminson to see if it was possible to grow real meat in a test tube. The idea was to find a way to feed astronauts on long space flights. Benjaminson got as far as growing a small fish fillet. "Did you taste it?" I asked him. "No way," was his not entirely reassuring response. The project ground to a halt.

Since then, the baton has been taken up by a series of Dutch teams, thanks to a €2m grant from the government. The animal rights group Peta has offered $1m to the first group that produces a convincing animal-free burger.

Post's small team has secured private venture capital funding as well. He won't tell me who the funder is, save to say "he" isn't British, that I've certainly heard of him and that "he does not like to be associated with failure". At the Vancouver conference, Post made headlines with his claim that Heston Blumenthal would be asked to cook the world's first synthetic hamburger this autumn, at a London hotel.

So how do you grow meat in a vat?

As a recipe, it is unusual, hard to follow and at first glance somewhat unappetising. But if its creator is right, in a few decades our descendants will be puzzled – indeed horrified – that we ever did it any other way.

First, you take a cow, pig or indeed just about any animal. Up to now, this animal will have led a charmed life, with several acres of grazing at its disposal, the finest winter feed and no abuse.

Then you kill it. The creation of in-vitro meat does require the slaughter of animals, but the point is that, in theory, a single specimen could provide the seed material for hundreds of tonnes of meat. Only a tiny fraction of the farm animals alive today would be needed to supply the entire human race.

The next stage is to extract a sliver of muscle tissue and transfer this blob of red matter to a petri dish. Then you use a mixture of chemistry and manual manipulation to tease apart the cells on the dish. What you are looking for are skeletal muscle satellite cells – stem cells – all-purpose repair modules that are there to create new tissue in case of damage. It is satellite cells in your muscles that swing into action should you injure yourself in the gym or have a nasty fall – dividing, then dividing again in rapid succession to create new muscle.

When you have a few thousand of these satellite cells, you place them in a warm broth, consisting of a mixture of 100 or so synthetic nutrients together with serum extracted from cow foetuses. "That will have to change in the final product," Post says (an admission that, in yuck terms, "foetal serum" is up there with quivering blobs of flesh). Then you wait for nature to take its course.

After a few days, your microscopic ball of cells has divided into a thin sheet of muscle tissue big enough to cover the bottom of a flask. At this stage the dividing cells need to be checked for genetic stability. It may be possible to tweak the growing tissue to produce, say, a surfeit of healthy polyunsaturated fatty acids. Fake meat could be a health food, Post says.

After a week there are enough cells to cover 10 flasks. Then, with extreme care, you wrap these little slivers of unformed muscle around Velcro "anchors" and, in a touch of pure Mary Shelley, you give them a jolt of electricity. "This is very good," Post says. "They actually start to contract spontaneously."

The creation of in-vitro meat does require the slaughter of animals, but in
theory a single specimen could provide the seed material for hundreds
of tonnes of meat. Photograph: Liz McBurney for the Guardian

Currently, this technology can produce small strips of muscle, a couple of centimetres long and a few millimetres thick. The process is time-consuming and labour intensive – and harvesting enough of these beef mini-fillets to squash into a hamburger patty (several hundred will be needed) will cost in the region of £200,000.

It is at this stage that Blumenthal and his griddle pan will come in. "Yes, it's a publicity stunt – of course it is," Post admits. "It's proof of concept, nothing more." If all goes well, a Famous Veggie – the identity of whom is unclear, but Post perks up when I suggest Gwyneth Paltrow – will stand in front of the cameras and take a big bite out of the £200,000 beefburger. The idea is that, once Post has demonstrated to the world that his stem-cell technique works, the money will come pouring in.

To make bigger chunks of meat, Post will need to make synthetic fat ("actually quite easy") and grow the fillets on some sort of biodegradable scaffold, "fed" with nutrients pumped through artificial polysaccharide "veins". Otherwise the centre of the fillet will become gangrenous and die.

The technique is viable for any species.

"Could you make fake panda?"

"Sure."

"What about human?"

"Don't go there."

Eventually, Post envisages a future where huge quantities of high-quality meat are gown in vats, incorporating not only muscle fibres but layers of real fat and even synthetic bone. "In 25 years," he says, "real meat will come in a packet labelled, 'An animal has suffered in the production of this product' and it will carry a big eco tax. I think in 50-60 years it may be forbidden to grow meat from livestock."

This will happen only if consumers can be weaned off the real thing. The yuck factor will play a part, but all the evidence is that, as far as consumers are concerned, price, taste and safety – in roughly that order – determine their bulk-food purchases. Few people enquire too carefully how their regular meat was produced, after all. The market for ethically-reared free-range meat is, in global terms, tiny. In terms of yuckiness, real meat is at the top of the scale.

Few outsiders have tasted fake animal products. Back in Menlo Park, Brown lets me try one. He is collaborating with a number of well-known, non-vegetarian chefs to get the taste, texture and mouth feel just right. After all, Brown has not eaten anything made from an animal for decades.

I am not allowed to say what I tried, nor which chef helped create it, and certainly not what it tasted like. But I can say this: I would have had no idea it wasn't "real". Quorn this is not.

In the US, half of the total market for meat is in processed products – minced and ground beef, reconstituted chicken, sausages and so on – and the proportion in Europe is only slightly lower. Both Post and Brown say that they will start with processed "meat" and, as the technology matures, work up from there to fillets of steak, chicken breasts and so on.

What about religious concerns? Could Jews and Muslims eat fake pork and Hindus fake beef? Surprisingly, the answer seems to be a qualified yes. Post has had discussions with imams and rabbis, and they have said that, as long as there are sufficient steps between source and product, the "meat" will be kosher or halal. "I never expected that," he says.

This is a disruptive technology – one that threatens to overturn a powerful and established order. The global meat industry, which is populated by some very ruthless people, is going to fight this hard. "I think the meat industry will be an adversary, and maybe a dangerous one," Post says.

What the meat-fakers have going for them is a growing unease surrounding intensive livestock farming and the bludgeoning reality, which is only just beginning to sink in, that what Britain's chief scientist John Beddington has called the perfect storm of population growth, climate change and resource shortages is about to strike.

In his recent book, The Better Angels Of Our Nature (Allen Lane, £30), the Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker predicts that meat-eating may be the final frontier in what he calls the "rights revolution": the extraordinary decline in human violence and cruelty seen in the past 300 years.

Pinker argues that the brutal reality of "meat hunger" (it is the eating of cooked meat that gave humans our huge brains, as cooking unleashes a torrent of nutrients otherwise indigestible in the raw form) will mean that the "vegetarian revolution" may never arrive.

But if that meat hunger can be sated at a reasonable cost, with something indistinguishable from the real deal, then one of the greatest revolutions in human history may be upon us.

If Brown and Post are successful, the global meat industry may find itself in the same position as the makers of fax machines and typewriters were a generation ago, rendered obsolete by a new and better technology. In which case the world really will look different from space. And whoever wins the race to produce the first viable alternative for a foodstuff that has been part of human life for 200,000 years had better watch their backs.

Related Articles:

"Recalibration of Knowledge" – Jan 14, 2012 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) - (Subjects: Channelling, God-Creator, Benevolent Design, New Energy, Shift of Human Consciousness, (Old) SoulsReincarnation, Gaia, Old Energies (Africa,Terrorists, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela ... ), Weather, Rejuvenation, Akash, Nicolas Tesla / Einstein, Cold Fusion, Magnetics, Lemuria, Atomic Structure (Electrons, Particles, Polarity, Self Balancing, Magnetism), Entanglement, "Life is necessary for a Universe to exist and not the other way around", DNA, Humans (Baby getting ready, First Breath, Stem Cells, Embryonic Stem Cells, Rejuvenation), Global Unity, ... etc.) - (Text Version)