Friday, February 15th, 2019
Jon Queally, Staff Writer - Common Dreams
Stephan: I have been urging my readers for years to eat organic foods, and eliminate the toxins in their house, i.e., cleaners, soaps, sprays, air-scent sprays, insect sprays, and on and on. But even I was surprised at how dramatic the effect could be. Here, finally, we have some real data. It's amazing. I encourage you to download and read the entire report: http://foe.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/OrganicForAll_report_Final.pdf
A new peer-reviewed study shows that eating a completely organic diet—even for just one week—can dramatically reduce the presence of pesticide levels in people, a finding that was characterized as “groundbreaking” by critics of an industrial food system that relies heavily on synthetic toxins and chemicals to grow crops and raise livestock.
Published in the Environmental Research, the study—titled Organic Diet Intervention Significantly Reduces Urinary Pesticide Levels in U.S. Children and Adults (pdf)—found that switching to an organic diet significantly reduced the levels of synthetic pesticides found in all participants.
“We all have the right to food that is free of toxic pesticides. Farmers and farmworkers growing our nation’s food and the rural communities they live in have a right not to be exposed to chemicals linked to cancer, autism and infertility.”
— Kendra Klein, PhD, Friends of the Earth
“This study shows that organic works,” said study co-author Kendra Klein, PhD, senior staff scientist at Friends of the Earth. “We all have the right to food that is free of toxic pesticides. Farmers and farmworkers growing our nation’s food and the rural communities they […]
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Friday, February 15th, 2019
Carey Gillam, - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: The fact that Roundup is still sold in the United States is a measure of the corruption of the regulatory agencies whose job is supposed to be to protect us from poisons like Roundup. That it is for sale is proof that, particularly under Trump, corporations own the agencies that are supposed to regulate them.
Bottles of Roundup herbicide, a product of Monsanto. Findings come as regulators in several countries consider limiting the use of glyphosate-based products in farming.
Credit: Jeff Roberson/AP
A broad new scientific analysis of the cancer-causing potential of glyphosate herbicides, the most widely used weedkilling products in the world, has found that people with high exposures to the popular pesticides have a 41% increased risk of developing a type of cancer called non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
The evidence “supports a compelling link” between exposures to glyphosate-based herbicides and increased risk for non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), the authors concluded, though they said the specific numerical risk estimates should be interpreted with caution.
The findings by five US scientists contradict the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) assurances of safety over the weed killer and come as regulators in several countries consider limiting the use of glyphosate-based products in farming.
Monsanto and its German owner Bayer AG face more than 9,000 lawsuits in the US brought by people suffering from NHL who blame Monsanto’s glyphosate-based […]
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Friday, February 15th, 2019
Ben Kesslen, - Reader Supported News/NBC News
Stephan: The greed of the pharmaceutical industry in the United States is almost unbelievable. Even within the hallmark general greed of America's illness profit system, it is notable. If I wrote it in a novel it would be implausible. I try to imagine the executives of these drug companies sitting at a conference table justifying acts like the one described in this report, and I cannot. Obviously, they have no moral integrity, but how does one live like that? I just don't know.
Will Schuller, who has Lambert-Eaton Myasthenic Syndrome.
Credit: NBC News
When Will Schuller was an 18-year-old senior in high school in Overland Park, Kansas, something puzzling was happening. He was “big into running at the time” and seemingly in good health, but his mile time kept increasing.
“I was getting much slower and slower times,” Will, who is a now a senior at the University of Tulsa studying mechanical engineering, told NBC News on Thursday. Eventually, he said, it got the point that within weeks he “couldn’t run even half the distance.”
From there, it only got worse. Will struggled to walk from the school parking lot to his classes, and he couldn’t exercise.
“Everyone knew I was this fit guy, and in just a matter of a month you see me struggling to walk from one side of the hallway to the other,” he said. “My sister would have to piggyback me up the stairs.” At that point, Will’s parents had to pull him out of school.
It took about six […]
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Friday, February 15th, 2019
Jake Johnson, - AlterNet/Common Dreams
Stephan: Millions of Americans who work full time, sometimes more than 40 hours on multiple jobs, still have to borrow small sums of money to get from paycheck to paycheck. Elizabeth Warren spearheaded the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) precisely to protect these Americans from rapacious lenders who might as well be mafiosa.
Now as with every other regulatory agency Trump is gutting the regulations in service to corporations and individuals who own payday lenders. It is a disgusting story, but very true. Here is the latest. And yet, today Trump's approval rating has gone up; it is 41.5% according to fivethirtyeight. That is the best example of the power of willful ignorance in the U.S. one could ask for.
CFPB director Kathy Kraninger
“This administration has moved the CFPB away from protecting consumers to protecting the very companies abusing them.”
In what progressive lawmakers and advocacy groups decried as the Trump administration’s latest “shameful” attack on vulnerable families, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) unveiled a plan on Wednesday that would gut regulations protecting consumers from predatory payday lenders.
Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, denouncedthe CFPB’s plan as “a slap in the face to consumers—especially people of color—who have been victims of predatory business practices and abusive lenders.”
“This decision will put already struggling families in a cycle of debt and leave them in an even worse financial position,” Gupta added. “This administration has moved the CFPB away from protecting consumers to protecting the very companies abusing them.”
