Walgreens announces flu shot gift card; give the "gift" of a vaccine

(NaturalNews) Summer isn't even over yet and the big push for the mass vaccination of the entire population is already under way. The CDC started the push by recently urging vaccine shots for everyone -- including infants, pregnant women and immune-compromised people. Adding to the vaccination hoopla, Walgreens has announced something quite bizarre: A flu shot gift card.Available for $29.99 at your nearest Walgreens retailer, this gift card is, as Walgreens explains on their website, "a way to help more Americans stay well throughout the upcoming flu season by giving the gift of a flu shot

Of course, if you gave your friends the gift of vitamin D supplements, they wouldn't need a flu shot or a jab in the arm with a sharp needle. Vitamin D has been proven again and again to work better than vaccines at preventing influenza yet it remains all but ignored by the conventional medical establishment which just happens to be dominated by the financial interests of vaccine manufacturers (pharma companies).

Swine flu again?

As Walgreens admits on its own website this year's seasonal flu shot only protects against last year's viruses. In particular, this year's flu shot contains DNA fragments from H1N1 swine flu -- yep, the very same virus that fizzled out last year after the WHO hilariously declared a stage six global pandemic. This whole charade turned out to be engineered by WHO advisors who had financial ties to the vaccine companies (http://www.naturalnews.com/029441_vaccine_manufacturers_advisors.html).

Now they're trying to jab you again with the same viral fragments. But this year they're playing mind games with the public by packaging these flu shots as "gifts." Walgreens must think this is clever, but it's actually a bit of a farce.Usually a gift is something you actually want; something that's uplifting or health enhancing in some way. Vaccines, on the other hand, have been widely linked to convulsions and neurological disorders.

Just recently, Australia actually banned its seasonal flu vaccine for children after dozens of children went into convulsions from receiving the flu shot.Why do flu shots cause convulsions? Because flu shots contain neurological inflammation agents designed to elicit an immune response for building antibodies. The problem is that these chemicals can also cause neurological damage leading to symptoms you just can't ignore... such as convulsions. Some teens have even been paralyzed by flu shots.

Western doctors routinely ignore this evidence and simply declare vaccines to be "safe for everyone!" even when they clearly aren't.So anyone who buys a flu shot gift card and hands it to a child or teenager might actually be giving the gift of convulsions. Happy Birthday, Bobby! Here, have some convulsions and go get yourself jabbed in the arm with a sharp needle...

Sending the wrong messageIn my opinion, buying a Walgreens flu shot gift card sends a powerful, two-part message. First, it announces that you're a complete idiot when it comes to health, and you're a total sucker for the corporate-controlled interventionist health care system that excels at convincing you to buy dangerous drugs you don't even need.

Secondly, it says that you probably hate the person you're giving it to. What kind of person buys a vaccine shot as a gift anyway? Does it include a Hallmark card that says "Every time I think of you, I wince in pain and can't stop convulsing. Enjoy this vaccine so that you can have the same experience."Or another card, "I couldn't decide what to get you for Christmas, so I thought I'd get you vaccinated instead. Merry Christmas!"Can you imagine some little kid receiving this gift from his parents? He was hoping for an X-Box or a dirt bike, but instead he gets an envelope with a red card in it. "What's this?" he asks his parents. "Oh, Bobby, it's a VACCINE gift card! To protect your health!" Bobby replies, "How does it work?" And his parents answer, "Well, using this vaccine gift card, you can get jabbed in the arm with chemicals and live viruses, and it won't even cost you a penny!""I feel really loved," answers Bobby. "No one has ever given me the gift of a vaccine shot! When can we go to Walgreens and cash in?"

Sharp Increase in Spinal Surgery Among Medicare Patients Shows Decreased Benefits

Procedures: Sharp Rise in Complex Back Surgery Among Older Adults

The percentage of older adults undergoing a complicated fusion procedure for the painful lower-back condition called spinal stenosis has increased steeply, rising fifteenfold from 2002 to 2007, a new study reports.

Researchers said the increase was leading to higher Medicare costs and more life-threatening complications. They noted that although the overall rate of all types of surgery for spinal stenosis fell slightly during the five-year period, the proportion undergoing complex fusion increased to 19.9 per 100,000 Medicare beneficiaries, up from 1.3.

In the complex surgery, more than three vertebrae are fused and both the back and the front of the vertebrae are involved. Alternative procedures are decompression — removal of part of the bone pressing on the nerve — and simple fusion, in which two or three vertebrae are fused and only the front or the back of the vertebrae is involved.

The complex procedure costs almost four times as much as decompression and is associated with three times the rate of life-threatening complications, according to the study.

Earlier studies have not found that the complex surgery leads to better results or greater pain relief, said Dr. Richard A. Deyo, a professor of family and internal medicine at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland and the lead author of the study, published April 7 in The Journal of the American Medical Association.

To read the entire study, go to JAMA---->

Trends, Major Medical Complications, and Charges Associated With Surgery for Lumbar Spinal Stenosis in Older Adults
Richard A. Deyo, MD, MPH; Sohail K. Mirza, MD, MPH; Brook I. Martin, MPH; William Kreuter, MPA; David C. Goodman, MD, MS; Jeffrey G. Jarvik, MD, MPH


JAMA. 2010;303(13):1259-1265.

Many Sunscreens May Be Accelerating Cancer

WASHINGTON (May 24) -- Almost half of the 500 most popular sunscreen products may actually increase the speed at which malignant cells develop and spread skin cancer because they contain vitamin A or its derivatives, according to an evaluation of those products released today.

AOL News also has learned through documents and interviews that the Food and Drug Administration has known of the potential danger for as long as a decade without alerting the public, which the FDA denies.

The study was released with Memorial Day weekend approaching. Store shelves throughout the country are already crammed with tubes, jars, bottles and spray cans of sunscreen.

The white goop, creams and ointments might prevent sunburn. But don't count on them to keep the ultraviolet light from destroying your skin cells and causing tumors and lesions, according to researchers at Environmental Working Group.

In their annual report to consumers on sunscreen, they say that only 39 of the 500 products they examined were considered safe and effective to use.

The report cites these problems with bogus sun protection factor (SPF) numbers:

-The use of the hormone-disrupting chemical oxybenzone, which penetrates the skin and enters the bloodstream.

-Overstated claims about performance.

-The lack of needed regulations and oversight by the Food and Drug Administration.

But the most alarming disclosure in this year's report is the finding that vitamin A and its derivatives, retinol and retinyl palmitate, may speed up the cancer that sunscreen is used to prevent.

A dangerous additive

The industry includes vitamin A in its sunscreen formulations because it is an anti-oxidant that slows skin aging.

But the EWG researchers found the initial findings of an FDA study of vitamin A's photocarcinogenic properties, meaning the possibility that it results in cancerous tumors when used on skin exposed to sunlight.

"In that yearlong study, tumors and lesions developed up to 21 percent faster in lab animals coated in a vitamin A-laced cream than animals treated with a vitamin-free cream," the report said.

The conclusion came from EWG's analysis of initial findings released last fall by the FDA and the National Toxicology Program, the federal government's principle evaluator of substances that raise public health concerns.

EWG's conclusions were subsequently scrutinized by outside toxicologists.

Based on the strength of the findings by FDA's own scientists, many in the public health community say they can't believe nor understand why the agency hasn't already notified the public of the possible danger.

"There was enough evidence 10 years ago for FDA to caution consumers against the use of vitamin A in sunscreens," Jane Houlihan, EWG's senior vice president for research, told AOL News.

"FDA launched this one-year study, completed their research and now 10 years later, they say nothing about it, just silence."

On Friday, the FDA said the allegations are not true.

"We have thoroughly checked and are not aware of any studies," an FDA spokesperson told AOL News. She said she checked with bosses throughout the agency and found no one who knew of the vitamin A sunscreen research being done by or on behalf of the agency.

But documents from the FDA and the National Toxicology Program showed that the agency had done the research.

"Retinyl palmitate was selected by (FDA's) Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition for photo-toxicity and photocarcinogenicity testing based on the increasingly widespread use of this compound in cosmetic retail products for use on sun-exposed skin," said an October 2000 report by the National Toxicology Program.

FDA's own website said the animal studies were done at its National Center for Toxicological Research in Jefferson, Ark. And it was scientists from the FDA center and National Toxicology Program who posted the study data last fall.

Vertebroplasty No Better Than Sham For Painful Osteoperotic Fractures

At least that's what the New England Journal Of Medicine is reporting. This randomized double blind, placebo controlled study took participants with one or two painful osteoperotic fractures unhealed and less than 12 months old by MRI and randomized them to either vertebroplasty or sham.

For the nonmedical types out there, vertebroplasty and kyphoplasty involves the injection or balloon expansion of a compressed vertebrae, the theory being that this action will decrease the back pain associated with fractures. The only indication to have one, that I'm aware of, is to treat uncontrolled pain.

Interestingly, 5 years ago we didn't have such a procedure. Patients with compression fractures got pain meds and Miacalcin and told to wait it out. They were told that as the bone healed the pain would improve. We would use moist heat and ultrasound to hasten the healing, then soft tissue adjustments.

Today, just about every acute compression fracture with associated pain gets an MRI and then gets evaluated by either an interventional radiologist or an orthopedic spinal surgeon for evaluation for vertebroplasty or kyphoplasty.

In the study above the primary outcome being measure was pain. Using the primary outcome of pain at 1 month, 3 months and 6 months the study showed no difference between the treatment group and the sham (placebo) group.

This is huge. HUGE. Granted, the study was small, but it appears to be well designed.

This is the second clinical study showing that vertebroplasties are worthless. And the studies were performed by spinal surgeons themselves!

People believe that invasive means better. It's engrained in the American culture where you have to be a specialist that does something to be worth your time and money. Why get pain medication or chiropactic care when you can get needles and cement at 1000 times the cost..... that must work.

This study is a fascinating example of the power of special interest groups infiltrated into clinical medicine. Early studies indicated the vertobroplaties and kyphoplasties may have clinical benefit. The key word is "may". They get approved by the Medicare National Bank as showing benefit over placebo and then everything gets paid for at enourmous cost to the MNB.

I would like to know how these procedures ever made it into mainstream medicine without strong scientific evidence to its efficacy, especially considering their cost to the public Treasury. Chiropractors are constantly ridiculed as being "unscientific", yet we have more clinical studies that show what we do works than most surgical procedures do!

Situations like this tend to weaken the standards of Western medicine which are supposed to be science based, but are looking more and more like they are financial based. Get a bunch of device manufacturers to back a less than optimal study design, gain favor from the radiological and orthopedic societies, which have direct finanical interests in the matter, and spread your position statements out to the world. And make it the gold standard.

Medicine is killing us....and you are paying for it!

Drugs Are Not The Solution-They Are The Problem!

Every day Americans are subjected to a barrage of advertising by the pharmaceutical industry. Mixed in with the pitches for a particular drug—usually featuring beautiful people enjoying themselves in the great outdoors—is a more general message.

Boiled down to its essentials, it is this: “Yes, prescription drugs are expensive, but that shows how valuable they are. Besides, our research and development costs are enormous, and we need to cover them somehow. As ‘research-based’ companies, we turn out a steady stream of innovative medicines that lengthen life, enhance its quality, and avert more expensive medical care.

You are the beneficiaries of this ongoing achievement of the American free enterprise system, so be grateful, quit whining, and pay up.” More prosaically, what the industry is saying is that you get what you pay for.

Is any of this true? Well, the first part certainly is. Prescription drug costs are indeed high—and rising fast. Americans now spend a staggering $500 billion a year on prescription drugs, and that figure is growing at a rate of about 12 percent a year (down from a high of 18 percent in 1999).1 Drugs are the fastest-growing part of the health care bill—which itself is rising at an alarming rate. (And I don't mean the Obama Care Bill).

The increase in drug spending reflects, in almost equal parts, the facts that people are taking a lot more drugs than they used to, that those drugs are more likely to be expensive new ones instead of older, cheaper ones, and that the prices of the most heavily prescribed drugs are routinely jacked up, sometimes several times a year.

Over the past 3 decades the pharmaceutical industry has moved very far from its original high purpose of discovering and producing useful new drugs. Now primarily a marketing machine to sell drugs of dubious benefit, this industry uses its wealth and power to co-opt every institution that might stand in its way, including the US Congress, the FDA, academic medical centers, and the medical profession itself. (Most of its marketing efforts are focused on influencing doctors, since they must write the prescriptions.)

If prescription drugs were like ordinary consumer goods, all this might not matter very much. But drugs are different. People depend on them for their health and even their lives. In the words of Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), “It’s not like buying a car or tennis shoes or peanut butter.” People need to know that there are some checks and balances on this industry, so that its quest for profits doesn’t push every other consideration aside. But there aren’t such checks and balances.

Anoher Reason to Avoid the Cow!

Breast-feeding Could Save Lives and Money

A cost analysis published in the journal Pediatrics, estimates that the lives of 900 babies per year would be saved, along with billions of dollars, if 90 percent of U.S. women fed their babies breast milk for the first 6 months of life.


The findings suggests that there are hundreds of deaths and costly illnesses each year from health problems that breast feeding may help prevent. These include stomach viruses, ear infections, asthma, juvenile diabetes. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and even childhood leukemia.


Breast milk contains antibodies that help babies fight infections, and can affect insulin levels in the blood, which may make breast-fed babies less likely to develop diabetes and obesity.


The analysis studied 10 common childhood illnesses, costs of treating those illnesses, including hospitalization, and the level of disease protection other studies have linked with breastfeeding. The $13 billion in estimated losses due to the low breast-feeding rate includes an economists' calculation partly based on lost potential lifetime wages - $10.56 million per death.

Soy may benefit breast cancer survivors, study says

Women with breast cancer who eat more soy are less likely to die or have a recurrence of cancer than women who eat few or no soy products, according to a new study.

In the past, physicians have often warned breast cancer patients not to eat soy. The new research represents "a complete turnaround" from the previous understanding about the link between soy consumption and breast cancer, says Sally Scroggs, a registered dietician and senior health education specialist at M.D. Anderson's Cancer Prevention Center in Houston, Texas.

"We have gone from saying, 'No soy for breast cancer survivors' to, 'It's not going to hurt,'" Scroggs says. "Now it looks like we can say, 'It may help.'"

The study looked at more than 5,000 women in China who had undergone a mastectomy; they were followed for about four years. The women who consumed the most soy protein (about 15 grams or more a day) had a 29 percent lower risk of dying and a 32 percent decreased risk of breast cancer recurrence compared to the women who consumed less than about 5 grams of soy protein a day, according to the study, which appears in the December 9 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. The National Cancer Institute and the U.S. Department of Defense's Breast Cancer Research Program funded the study.

Women who ate between 9.5 and 15 grams of soy protein saw nearly the same decrease in risk as the women who ate more than 15 grams. In fact, the researchers found no additional benefits to eating more than 11 grams of soy protein a day. (An 8-ounce glass of soy milk and a cup of shelled edamame contain about 7 and 14 grams of soy protein, respectively.)

In all, 534 women had a breast cancer recurrence or died from breast cancer during the study period.

Soy foods--such as milk, tofu, and edamame--are rich in naturally occurring estrogens (especially isoflavones) that can mimic the effects of estrogen in the female body. Because the most common types of breast cancer depend on estrogen to grow, experts once feared that soy isoflavones could stimulate the estrogen receptors in breast-cancer cells, even though the estrogens in soy are much weaker than those produced by the body

The current study suggests the exact opposite: Soy may actually reduce the amount of estrogen that's available to the body.

"Soy isoflavones may compete with estrogens produced by the body. Soy isoflavones may also reduce the body's production of estrogen, and increase clearance of these hormones from the circulation--all of which together reduce the overall amount of estrogen in the body," says the lead author of the study, Dr. Xiao Ou Shu, M.D., Ph.D., a cancer epidemiologist at the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center of Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee.

Shu says, however, that factors beyond estrogen may be at work. Other components of soy foods, such as folate, protein, calcium, or fiber (or some combination thereof) may also be responsible for the health benefits reported in the study, she says.

More studies are needed to confirm these findings, especially as they apply to women with estrogen-sensitive breast cancer or those who take drugs such as tamoxifen to keep breast cancer at bay, say Ballard-Barbash and Neuhouser. Still, they say, "Patients with breast cancer can be assured that enjoying a soy latte or indulging in pad thai with tofu causes no harm, and when consumed in plentiful amounts may reduce risk of disease recurrence."