Wisconsin Republicans block meningitis vaccine requirement for students

 (Samantha Madar/Wisconsin State Journal via AP, File)

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The Republican-controlled Wisconsin Legislature on Wednesday voted to stop Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ administration from requiring seventh graders to be vaccinated against meningitis.

The state Senate and Assembly, with all Republicans in support and Democrats against, voted to block the proposal. There is no current meningitis vaccination requirement for Wisconsin students.

The Legislature’s vote also makes it easier for parents to get an exemption from a chicken pox vaccine requirement that is in place for all K-6 students. Evers’ administration wanted to require parents seeking a chicken pox vaccination exemption to provide proof that their child has previously been infected.

Families could still seek waivers from the meningitis vaccination and chickenpox proof requirements for medical, religious or philosophical reasons, just as they can for other vaccinations.

The Advisory Council on Immunization Practices — experts who advise the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — has recommended that students get vaccinated against meningitis since 2005.

However, some parents complained at a public hearing that the proposed requirements violated their liberties. Health officials said they were trying to protect students’ health.

Meningitis is an infection of the brain and spinal cord that can also cause blood infections. It can be deadly or cause lifelong disability. Rates of the disease have declined in the United States since the 1990s and remain low in Wisconsin and across the country, according to the CDC.

Vaccines for both meningitis and chicken pox are widely used and have been proven to be safe and effective [just like Covid19 vaccines].

In March, a Republican-led legislative committee voted to block the proposed policy changes, just as it did two years ago and despite the objections of Democrats and health officials. The Legislature’s vote Wednesday is the final step needed to stop enactment of the policy.

[…]

Via https://apnews.com/article/republicans-wisconsin-meningitis-chickenpox-vaccine-mandates-5d0b774f8832e75ab8e40e96f7e583c7

 

Irish Farmers Protest Plans to Cull Livestock to Meet Climate Targets

By  Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D.

Farmers in Ireland are protesting government proposals to cull livestock — including up to 200,000 cows — in an effort to meet national and European Union goals to reduce methane emissions.

Farmers in Ireland are protesting government proposals to cull livestock — including up to 200,000 cows — in an effort to meet national and European Union (EU) climate targets.

According to Ireland’s Independent, up to 65,000 dairy cows and 10% of the livestock herd would have to be removed from the national herd every year for three years at a cost of €200m ($215.2 million) if the farming sector is to “meet its climate targets.”

The figures come from an Irish government document the Independent obtained following a freedom of information request.

National climate targets in question include a 51% reduction in emissions by 2030 — the target year for the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals — and net zero carbon emissions by 2050, the Independent reported.

According to the Irish Mirror, a 25% emissions reduction goal has been set for the agricultural sector by 2030.

The government document proposes farmers receive compensation of up to €5,000 ($5,381) for each cow that is culled.

According to Remix News, the plans were first outlined in 2021. A report at the time recommended culling up to 1.3 million cattle to reduce emissions to “sustainable” levels.

There are approximately 2.5 million dairy and beef cows in Ireland, according to the Irish June Livestock Survey. Of these, 1.6 million are dairy cows — which have increased by 40% in the past decade — while beef cows total approximately 913,000, representing a decrease of 17% over the same period, the Irish Mirror reported.

Separately, Ireland’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a 115-page report in March that recommended “effective abatement of livestock emissions … of approximately 30% plus ruminant livestock number reduction [of] up to 30%.”

According to the EPA, the country’s agricultural sector is directly responsible for almost 38% of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, as reported by the Irish Mirror.

And a report published in October 2022 by the Irish government’s Food Vision Dairy Group — established to “identify measures which the dairy sector can take to contribute to stabilization and subsequent reduction of emissions” — said there is an “urgent need to address the negative environmental impacts associated with dairy expansion.”

The report said dairy farmers could lose between €1,770 ($1,906) and €2,910 ($3,134) per cow removed.

Ireland, along with other EU member states and the U.S., are participants in the 2021 “Global Methane Pledge,” whose participants “agree to take voluntary actions to contribute to a collective effort to reduce global methane emissions at least 30 percent from 2020 levels by 2030.”

Organizations supporting the Global Methane Pledge include the United Nations Environment Programme, the European Investment Bank, the Global Dairy Platform, the Green Climate Fund, the International Energy Agency and Bloomberg Philanthropies.

Bloomberg Philanthropies is one of the major funders of the C40 Good Food Cities Accelerator, whose signatory cities commit to achieving a “planetary healthy diet” by 2030, defined by more “plant-based foods,” and less meat and dairy.

C40 merged with the Clinton Climate Initiative in 2006, and in 2020, said cities should “build back better.”

Separately, EU member states are discussing proposals to “cut pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from livestock,” according to Reuters.

The United Nations Environment Programme and the Climate and Clean Air Coalition claim livestock emissions account for approximately 30% of total methane emissions.

Cattle reduction proposals ‘absolute madness’

The Independent’s report prompted an immediate reaction in Ireland — particularly from the agricultural sector. This then prompted the Irish government to walk back the report.

The Irish Mirror reported that a spokesperson for Ireland’s Department of Agriculture said the report “was part of a deliberative process … one of a number of modelling documents” it is considering and “not a final policy decision.”

Pat McCormack, president of the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association, told Newstalk Breakfast that Ireland’s “herd isn’t any larger than it was 25, 30 years ago.”

He said the farming sector is prepared to follow the strategic direction of the Irish government, but that, “If there is a scheme, it needs to be a voluntary scheme.”

Addressing the Irish Parliament on May 30, Peadar Tóibín, head of the Aontú political party, criticized the government’s proposals, calling them “an incredible threat to the farming sector at a cost of about €600 million [$646.9 million].”

Tóibín said:

“A full 25% of beef that’s being imported into the European Union is now coming from Brazil. How is it environmentally friendly to kill large swathes of the Amazon, import that beef from Brazil to substitute for Irish beef that’s been culled here in this state?”

A member of the Irish Parliament, Michael Healy-Rae, called the government’s proposals “absolute madness,” and warned that many farmers will refuse to comply or opt to leave the sector altogether if these plans move forward.

Tim Cullinan, president of the Irish Farmers’ Association told The Telegraph, “Reports like this only serve to further fuel the view that the government is working behind the scenes to undermine our dairy and livestock sectors.”

“While there may well be some farmers who wish to exit the sector, we should all be focusing on providing a pathway for the next generation to get into farming,” he added.

Ian Plimer, Ph.D., professor emeritus of geology at the University of Melbourne, told Sky News Australia that the culling of 200,000 cattle “can only end in disaster.”

“The Irish know about this from the potato famine,” he said. “A third of their population died, a third emigrated, and the same thing will happen. They will lose productive people from Ireland and they’ll go somewhere else.”

Twitter owner and CEO Elon Musk also weighed in over the controversy, tweeting “This really needs to stop. Killing some cows doesn’t matter for climate change.”

British author and farmer Jamie Blackett wrote, “It seems increasingly clear that there is an eco-modernist agenda to do away with conventional meat altogether. It’s not just the Extinction Rebellion mob, either; many of the world’s politicians are on board.”

An August 2022 report suggested “insects could soon be on the menu in Ireland” and that “High-protein bug replacements for meat and dairy could help save the planet.”

According to a report by the Independent, a 10% reduction in Ireland’s dairy herd would cost €1.3 billion ($1.4 billion) annually, while industry experts argued such proposals would result in global greenhouse gas emissions actually increasing.

According to Agriland, Ireland imported more than 14,000 tons of beef in the first quarter of this year, while Ireland exported €2.5 billion ($2.69 billion) worth of beef in 2022, an 18% increase compared to 2021, likely contributing to higher emissions.

The Food Vision Dairy Group’s October 2022 report “on measures to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions from the dairy sector” said:

“Ireland’s carbon footprint per unit of output is considered to be the lowest amongst milk-producing countries. It is also noted that the carbon footprint per unit of output has declined [in] recent years.”

However, an August 2022 Euronews report claimed Ireland “has the highest methane emissions per capita of all EU member states, with much of this due to beef production.”

The Food Vision Dairy Group’s report also stated:

“Once methane emissions are stabilised and remain stable then the atmospheric concentration will stabilise.

“Emissions should be reduced by around 3% per decade or offset by carbon dioxide removals which provides a similar climate impact. This would neutralise its impact on the global temperature. There is no basis in science therefore that requires emissions from enteric fermentation to be reduced to net zero.”

The group said it was focused on actions the dairy sector needs to take to make its “proportionate contribution” toward the target 25% reduction in agriculture emissions.

Several other proposals are contained in the report, including reducing chemical nitrogen use in the dairy sector by 27-30% by the end of 2030, and a “Voluntary Exit/Reduction Scheme.”

As these proposals are put forth, other reports indicate the use of private jets is “soaring” in Ireland. Remarking on this, Irish Senator Lynn Boylan recently stated:

“Climate justice advocates have long argued that not all carbon emissions are created equal. To date, the government’s approach has been about punishing ordinary people while the wealthy are exempt to continue living their carbon-intensive lifestyles.”

And in a May op-ed for Agri-Times Northwest, farmer and agronomist Jack DeWitt criticized cattle reduction proposals, arguing they rely on untrue science. He wrote:

“Something you have no doubt heard is that cattle who live their entire lives on pastures (i.e. grass-fed beef) emit less methane. That’s not true.

“Cattle’s methane impact in the U.S. is significantly less than 50 years ago and continues to reduce because of efficiency gains in producing beef and milk … Beef cattle numbers are down 6 percent since 1970, but meat production from those cattle is up 25 percent, partly due to heavier weight at slaughter, made possible by breeding animals to deliver higher growth rates and higher feed efficiencies. Expect these efficiency trends to continue.”

DeWitt also wrote, “Some people want to eliminate 1 billion cattle and convert people to veganism,” he added. “But humans pass methane too, and a vegan diet doubles the amount.” He said farmers can also trap methane and use it for electricity production.

[…]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/irish-farmers-protest-livestock-cattle-climate/

Announcing Submission To Petition For A Royal Inquiry Into Covid-19 Vaccine Injury

New Zealand Doctors Speaking Out with Science

A Royal Commission of Inquiry is the most serious response to an issue available to the New Zealand Government. It investigates matters of great importance and difficulty.

A Royal Commission is engaged in fact-finding and preventing future recurrences. It investigates why the situation occurred and then recommends policy or legislative changes to prevent it from happening again.

Aly Cooke, a freedom fighter as well as a PR executive from Wellington, who also has a son suffering from Myocarditis due to the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine, created a petition requesting a Royal Inquiry into the Pfizer vaccine.

Aly presented her petition of 24,000 signatures to parliament asking for a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Pfizer Vaccine.

This was accepted, and now she has now created an extensive Submission to the Petition to present to parliament.

​​​​​​​NZDSOS Stands Up to the Abuse of Medicine During Covid-19

As part of an inquiry into the Covid-19 “vaccinations”, the treatment and regulation of doctors cannot be overlooked.  Neither can the removal of medical procedures from the oversight of doctors who know their patients.  It is important to consider how many of those injured, possibly fatally, would have avoided their fates, had they been able to seek impartial, personalised advice from their doctors and receive fully informed consent.

With the ‘safe and effective’ message being blasted by traditional media, government, influencers and social media, any voice of reason or caution was drowned out.  However, the authorities were not happy with even the small voices of individual doctors counselling their patients and calling for caution.

Through means murky (although becoming clearer) the authorities, in particular the Medical Council of NZ, clamped down and did all in their power to silence those who had the best interests of their patients at heart.

They silenced and censored those who had paid attention, and remembered their Hippocratic oaths and the tales of horror which lead to the Nuremberg trials.

At least 26 doctors are undergoing investigation for nothing more than raising concerns about the harms of the measures imposed on the population in the name of Covid and the safety of the Covid-19 injections. Moreover, the investigations have been going on for at least 18 months, during which time, most have been forbidden from saying anything contrary to the official guidelines.  How many individuals were injured as a direct result of these actions?

Of these 26 doctors, 6 were suspended.  At least a further 6 doctors under investigation and 1 not under investigation chose to surrender their registrations rather than continue to practice under an authority that had proven itself corrupt and certainly not in the interests of the citizens it purported to serve. This, in a time when New Zealand is facing a dire shortage of medical practitioners.

Why did the MCNZ not allow individual risk-benefit assessments, a cornerstone in the decision-making process when considering an intervention, especially an intervention that was to be given to healthy people?  Why did the MCNZ state in its guidance to doctors, that only the benefits of the injections were to be discussed, coercing an entire profession into contravening the Medicines Act?

It is a well-known dictum in safety systems that no rule applies in all circumstances.

This is why human factors are built into the safety systems for pilots, doctors, scientists and public authorities, making sure that colleagues can raise the alarm if they see something that may be unsafe.

This is why nurses can question doctors when they disagree with orders.  The ability to hold different opinions and question unsafe procedures is what keeps planes in the air, patients alive on operating tables and unborn children protected from toxins.

The actions of the MCNZ removed human intuition, intellect and morality from the table and, due to this, the means for medicine to function.

It is thus important that an inquiry into the safety and effectiveness of the Covid-19 “vaccines” consider also the silencing of doctors…

… who in the pursuit of ethics and safety for their patients, called attention first to the precautionary principle and then to the clear proof of tremendous harms from the “warp speed” products.

[…]

Via https://nzdsos.com/2023/06/06/submission-petition-royal-inquiry/

What if Climate is Self-Regulating?

By Ron Clutz

Has climate science become science rhetoric? The role of clouds in dispersing heat. Dissenters from the catastrophe consensus on warming are worth listening to.

Andy Kessler writes at WSJ Can the Climate Heal Itself?  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Stop with all the existential-crisis talk. President Biden said, “Climate change is literally an existential threat to our nation and to the world.” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also talks about the “existential threat” of climate change. National security adviser Jake Sullivan identifies an “accelerating climate crisis” as one reason for a “new consensus” for government picking winners and losers in the economy. Be wary of those touting consensus.

But what if the entire premise is wrong? What if the Earth is self-healing? Before you hurl the “climate denier” invective at me, let’s think this through. Earth has been around for 4.5 billion years— living organisms for 3.7 billion. Surely, an enlightened engineer might think, the planet’s creator built in a mechanism to regulate heat, or we wouldn’t still be here to worry about it.

The theory of climate change is that excess carbon dioxide and methane trap the sun’s radiation in the atmosphere, and these man-made greenhouse gases reflect more of that heat back to Earth, warming the planet. Pretty simple. Eventually, we reach a tipping point when positive feedback loops form—less ice to reflect sunlight, warm oceans that can no longer absorb carbon dioxide—and then we fry, existentially. So lose those gas stoves and carbon spewing Suburbans.

But nothing is simple. What about negative feedback loops? Examples: human sweat and its cooling condensation or our irises dilating or constricting based on the amount of light coming in. Clouds, which can block the sun or trap its radiation, are rarely mentioned in climate talk.

Why? Because clouds are notoriously difficult to model in climate simulations. Steven Koonin, a New York University professor and author of “Unsettled,” tells me that today’s computing power can typically model the Earth’s atmosphere in grids 60 miles on a side. Pretty coarse. So, Mr. Koonin says, “the properties of clouds in climate models are often adjusted or ‘tuned’ to match observations.” Tuned!

Last month the coddling modelers at the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization stated that “warming El Niño” and “human-induced climate change” mean there is a “66% likelihood that annual average global temperatures will exceed the threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels by 2027.” Notice that El Niño is mentioned first.

Richard Lindzen, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and lead author of an early Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, told me, “Temperatures in the tropics remain relatively constant compared with changes in the tropics-to-pole temperatures. The tropics-polar difference is about 40 degrees Celsius today but was 20 degrees during the warm Eocene Epoch and 60 degrees during Ice Ages.” This difference has more to do with changes in the Earth’s rotation, like wobbling, than anything else. According to Mr. Lindzen, this effect is some 70 times as great as human-made greenhouse gases.

OK, back to clouds. Cumulus clouds, the puffy ones often called thunderclouds, are an important convection element, carrying heat from the Earth’s surface to the upper atmosphere. Above them are high-altitude cirrus clouds, which can reflect heat back toward the surface. A 2001 Lindzen paper, however, suggests that high-level cirrus clouds in the tropics dissipate as temperatures rise. These thinning cirrus clouds allow more heat to escape. It’s called the Iris Effect, like a temperature-controlled vent opener for an actual greenhouse so you don’t (existentially) fry your plants. Yes, Earth has a safety valve.

Mr. Lindzen says, “This more than offsets the effect of greenhouse gases.” As you can imagine, theories debunking the climate consensus are met with rebuttals and more papers. Often, Mr. Lindzen points out, critics, “to maintain the warming narrative, adjust their models, especially coverage and reflection or albedo of clouds in the tropics.” More tuning.

A 2021 paper co-authored by Mr. Lindzen shows strong support for an Iris Effect.  Maybe Earth really was built by an engineer. Proof? None other than astronomer Carl Sagan described the Faint Young Sun Paradox that, 2.5 billion years ago, the sun’s energy was 30% less, but Earth’s climate was basically the same as today. Cirrus clouds likely formed to trap heat—a closed Iris and a negative feedback loop at work.

Figure 2: At higher temperatures there are more thunderstorms over the ocean and the area without high level clouds (dry and clear) expands further and thus allows more heat to radiate off into space (strong OLR) than when temperatures are lower, i.e. when the iris is smaller. Source: Figure 1 from MS15.

In a 2015 Nature Geoscience paper, Thorsten Mauritsen and Bjorn Stephen at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology reran climate models using the Iris Effect and found them better at modeling historic observations. No need for tuning. Wouldn’t it be nice if the U.N. used realistic cloud and climate models?

Earth has warmed, but I’m convinced negative feedback loops will save us. Dismissing the Iris Effect or detuning it isn’t science. Sadly, climate science has morphed into climate rhetoric. And note, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen explained in April that green spending “is, at its core, about turning the climate crisis into an economic opportunity.” Hmmm. “Catastrophic,” “existential” and “crisis” are cloudy thinking. Negative feedback is welcome. Dissenters from the catastrophe consensus on warming are worth listening to.

[…]

Via https://rclutz.com/2023/06/07/what-if-climate-is-self-correcting/

Russia tells US government to publish truth about JFK assassination

FILE PHOTO: The limousine carrying mortally wounded President John F. Kennedy races toward the hospital seconds after he was shot in Dallas, November 22, 1963 ©  AP / Justin Newman

RT

If the US wishes to be considered an authority on democracy and human rights, it ought to come clean about the killings of President John F. Kennedy and his brother, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday.

During her regular daily briefing, Zakharova was asked about the statement by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who said Washington intends to champion human rights and fundamental freedoms in China and worldwide.

“Washington itself has long fallen short of the standards of democracy that it publicly declares everywhere,” Zakharova replied, adding that the US promotes “pathetic, hypocritical rhetoric” abroad to hide its neo-colonial ambitions and geopolitical interests.

“The history of American politics contains many unsightly facts that are deliberately hushed up by the US authorities,” Zakharova noted. As an example, she cited the Kennedy family – and the recent anniversary of the June 1968 assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy in Los Angeles, during the presidential primaries in which he was a favorite.

READ MORE: CIA involved in JFK’s murder – Robert Kennedy Jr

The RFK assassination came two months after the fatal shooting of civil rights leader Martin Luther King – and almost five years after the November 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy, the 35th US president, Zakharova told reporters.

“I suggest to Mr. Blinken to muster up the courage and publish all the materials regarding the political assassinations of the US presidents, in particular John F. Kennedy, and tell his people – his people, first of all – the truth about what happened in Dallas and later in Chicago, at the Democratic Party Convention,” she said.

“Only when they close the case on these political killings, can they try to correct other countries,” the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman argued. “While such egregious crimes remain unresolved, and the killers not found and convicted, if I were American leaders I would not open my mouth about other countries, and certainly stop lecturing everyone else how to live.”

Solve the Kennedy assassination – both of them, actually – and then maybe you will be regarded as an authority. Or maybe not.

RFK’s son and JFK’s nephew Robert Francis Kennedy Junior launched his primary challenge to President Joe Biden in April. In an interview last month, he said there was “overwhelming evidence that the CIA was involved” in his uncle’s murder, and “very convincing but circumstantial” evidence the spy agency was also linked to his father’s assassination.

READ MORE: What really happened to JFK?

The official findings of the US government, known as the Warren Commission Report, said that US Marine veteran Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone and shot the president while his motorcade was passing through Dallas on November 22, 1963. Before he could stand trial, Oswald was shot dead by nightclub owner Jack Ruby at the Dallas Police Headquarters. The Warren Commission ruled that Ruby had acted alone, on impulse and out of grief.

Ruby died in prison in 1967. Later that year, the CIA issued a directive on how to discredit “conspiracy theorists” who doubted the official findings of the Warren Commission.

Via https://www.rt.com/news/577672-kennedy-assassination-russia-lecture/

More than 300 Scientific Papers on Covid Retracted for Fraud

By Dr Eddy Betterman

Retraction Watch has been keeping a close eye on Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) “science” papers over the years, noting in a summary list that more than 300 of them have been retracted since publishing due to compromised ethical standards and concerns about validity and credibility.

The list, which has been growing since April 2020, makes no distinction between withdrawal and retraction because journals that make such a distinction “have typically done it to justify not saying anything about why a paper was retracted, and to sometimes make a paper disappear without a trace,” the group says.

As of this writing, there are 330 covid papers total that have been retracted, along with 19 more that have received “expressions of concern.”

Gunnveig Grødeland, a senior researcher at the University of Oslo‘s Institute of Immunology, says that many researchers compromised their ethical standards during the “pandemic” either to try to get more of their publications approved or to take deliberate shortcuts for quick publishing.

“While it is understandable for some articles to be updated or changed to be published in a different form, some have been retracted because the researchers did not obtain informed consent during the research,” reported Exposé News about the matter.

“Grødeland pointed out that other articles have been withdrawn after the editors noticed that the strategies the papers mentioned were giving the wrong impression in the media of being recommended as actual treatment or prevention of covid-19. She said these sorts of articles had to be withdrawn as they claimed things that neither the authors of the articles nor their institutions could vouch for.”

(Related: Because much of what passes today as “science” is fraudulent, a lot of what constitutes modern medicine is as well – and this is why doctors who question the status quo continue to face suppression and discrimination.)

Even “prestigious” journals like The Lancet published fake covid “science” that was later retracted or withdrawn

It was not just obscure journals that published covid junk science, either. It was reputable names like The Lancet and Science that had to tuck their tails between their legs and quietly admit through retraction or withdrawal that they had made some serious publishing errors.

Science also published a fraudulent study examining the spread of the so-called “Omicron,” or moronic in anagram, variant of covid throughout South Africa. That paper was retraced after social media users pointed out that some of the samples used could have been false positives, seeing as how PCR testing was fraudulent and wrong from the very beginning.

One study published in The Lancet directly interfered with further investigation by governments into the merit of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) as a remedy for covid. Both the World Health Organization (WHO) and various national governments actually halted their HCQ research because of this bogus study, which falsely claimed that the widely used drug increases the risk of heart arrhythmia and mortality for covid patients.

Most of the now-retracted papers admittedly came from less reputable journals like the International Journal of Audiology, which published somewhere around 60 different bogus covid studies. One of them claimed that covid was associated with hearing loss, tinnitus, ringing in the ears, and vertigo, only to have its authors later admit that this claim is false.

Another paper was retracted by the editor of ScienceDirect “on the basis that there is clear evidence that the findings are unreliable.” The paper in question had falsely attributed many “covid deaths” to the disease itself when most of them were actually caused by co-morbidities and other things unrelated to covid.

[…]

Via https://dreddymd.com/2023/06/08/scientific-papers-on-covid-retracted-for-fraud/

Genetically Engineered Salad Greens Coming to Grocery Stores — and They Won’t Be Labeled

By Dr. Joseph Mercola

Pairwise, an agricultural biotechnology company, created Conscious Greens Purple Power Baby Greens Blend, the first CRISPR-edited food available to U.S. consumers.

Story at a glance:

• Pairwise, an agricultural biotechnology company, created Conscious Greens Purple Power Baby Greens Blend, the first CRISPR-edited food available to U.S. consumers.
• The company used CRISPR, or clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat, to edit mustard greens’ DNA, removing a gene that gives them their pungent flavor.
• The greens are first being rolled out in restaurants in St. Louis, Springfield, Massachusetts, and the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, before heading to U.S. grocery stores — beginning in the Pacific Northwest.
• In 2022, researchers with Boston Children’s Hospital revealed that using CRISPR in human cell lines increased the risk of large rearrangements of DNA, which could increase cancer risk.
• Because regulators don’t consider gene-edited foods to be genetically modified organisms (GMOs), they don’t have to be labeled.

Mustard greens are a nutrient-dense source of vitamins and minerals, but their bitter flavor makes them unpalatable to many. To remedy the problem, Tom Adams, cofounder and CEO of Pairwise, told Wired, “We basically created a new category of salad.”

The agricultural biotechnology company, founded in 2017, had raised $90 million by 2021, and $115 million total, “to bring new varieties of fruits and vegetables to market.”

Its first product, Conscious Greens Purple Power Baby Greens Blend, is also the first CRISPR-edited food available to U.S. consumers.

Gene-edited mustard greens coming to U.S. stores

Pairwise scientists used the gene-editing technology known as CRISPR, to edit mustard greens’ DNA, removing a gene that gives them their pungent flavor.

The greens are first being rolled out in restaurants and other locations in St. Louis, Springfield, Massachusetts and the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, before heading to U.S. grocery stores — beginning in the Pacific Northwest.

Pairwise is careful to describe itself as a “pioneering food startup,” trying to distance itself from its true biotechnology roots.

[…]

The company has also built a glossy PR campaign to make its motives seem altruistic and necessary to improve Americans’ diets.

[…]

But are CRISPR foods really better — or do they pose unknown, and potentially serious, risks to the environment and the people who eat them? Further, it’s not going to stop here. Pairwise is already working on using CRISPR to create blackberries with no seeds and cherries without pits.

The idea that genetic modification is going to compel people to eat mustard greens when they otherwise wouldn’t is also highly questionable. So the company’s claims that its gene-edited products will boost Americans’ nutritional intake are likely to fall flat.

Is CRISPR really an exact science?

CRISPR is being increasingly used to tinker with natural foods. In addition to altering taste, CRISPR is being used to extend shelf life and create foods that resist certain bacteria and viruses.

Whereas genetic engineering involves the introduction of foreign genes, CRISPR involves manipulating or editing existing DNA. It’s said to be “exceptionally precise.”

In an interview with Yale Insights, Dr. Gregory Licholai, a biotech entrepreneur, explained CRISPR this way:

“So as you probably know, our book of life is made of DNA. DNA itself is many millions of base-pairs, which is like a language. And within that language, there are certain regions which code for genes, and those genes are incredibly important because those genes go on to make up everything about us.

“There’s 40,000 proteins that become outputs of those genes and they are involved in our health, our wellbeing, and any defect in those genes becomes problematic and causes disease.

[…]

But CRISPR isn’t always an exact science. As is often the case when it comes to tinkering with genetics, gene editing has led to unexpected side effects, including enlarged tongues and extra vertebrae in animals.

Further, when researchers at the U.K.’s Wellcome Sanger Institute systematically studied mutations from CRISPR-Cas9 in mouse and human cells, large genetic rearrangements were observed, including DNA deletions and insertions, near the target site.

The DNA deletions could end up activating genes that should stay “off,” such as cancer-causing genes, as well as silencing those that should be “on.”

Risks of humans manipulating the genetic code

In 2022, researchers with Boston Children’s Hospital revealed that using CRISPR in human cell lines increased the risk of large rearrangements of DNA, which could increase cancer risk. Such rearrangements occurred up to 6% of the time.

[…]

In another warning, researchers attempted to use CRISPR-Cas9 to repair a mutation linked to hereditary blindness in human embryos.

But when they did, it led to “genetic havoc” in about half of the cells, triggering them to lose entire chromosomes.

[…]

What’s more, Licholai said, is that genes edited with CRISPR may be transferred to other organisms and become part of the environment:

[…]

And therein lies the problem. Once released into the environment, there’s no turning back — and no way of knowing what other changes could occur from this genetic manipulation, at a worldwide scale.

FDA says gene-edited beef Is ‘low risk’

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced in March 2022 that Recombinetics’ gene-edited cattle received a low-risk determination for marketing products, including food, made from their meat.

“This is the FDA’s first low-risk determination for enforcement discretion for an IGA [intentional genomic alteration] in an animal for food use,” the FDA reported.

The animals’ genes were modified to make their coats shorter and slicker. The genetic modification to their coats is intended to help them better withstand heat stress, allowing them to gain more weight and increase the efficiency of meat production — but at what cost?

While a lengthy approval process is typically necessary for gene-edited animals to enter the food market, the FDA streamlined the process for gene-edited cattle, allowing them to skirt the regular approval process.

The agency stated the gene-edited beef cattle do not raise any safety concerns because the gene modifications result in the same genetic makeup seen in so-called “slick coat” cattle, which are conventionally bred.

But in 2019, Brazil stopped its plans to allow a herd of Recombinetics’ gene-edited cattle after unexpected DNA changes were uncovered.

As with the FDA, Brazilian regulators had determined that Recombinetics could proceed without any special oversight since their gene-editing involved modifying cattle with a naturally occurring trait.

In this case, instead of altering the cattle’s coats, Recombinetics was editing the cattle to be hornless — until something went wrong. A piece of bacterial DNA used to deliver the desired gene had become pasted into a cow’s genome, essentially rendering it “part bacteria.”

Regardless, in 2022, Recombinetics stated its gene-edited meat products would be available to “select customers in the global market soon” while general consumers would be able to purchase gene-edited meat in as few as two years.

Gene-edited foods aren’t labeled

Because regulators don’t consider gene-edited foods to be GMOs, they don’t have to be labeled. However, 75% of Americans want gene-edited foods to carry a label.

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/crispr-gene-edited-salad-greens-cola/

 

Deciphering India’s Oral History via the Mahabharata

Episode 7 Epic History: The Mahabharata

A History of India

Michael Fisher (2016)

Film Review

The Mahabharata, the third Sanskrit epic Fisher analyzes, is the longest literary text in history. Twice the length of the Bible, it consists of 18 major and ten minor books.

Devout Hindus believe that Vyasa dictated the Mahabharata to the elephant-headed god Ganesha, the overcomer of obstacles. However historians believe it was composed over 900 years – between the 5th century BC and the 4th century AD.

Translated as “The Great Account of the Ancient Bharata Royal Dynasty,” this epic poem principally concerns detailed military encounters between rival Hindu kingdoms.

Very briefly the plot concerns the descendants of King Shantanu, who ruled Hasanapura on the upper Ganges River. An extremely virtuous man, he initially went straight to heaven (instead of being reborn). However after having impure thoughts about Ganga, the goddess of the Ganges River, he was forced to be reincarnated.

Somehow convincing the goddess to be reincarnated with him, she set a condition that he never question any of her actions. After watching her drown seven healthy infant sons, he questions her following the birth of the eighth. Although this results in her immediate return to heaven, she allows the 8th son, Bishina, to survive. In turns out all the previous sons were reincarnated gods cursed for a minor fault.

Shantanu then remarries a fisherwoman, who arranges for her illegitimate son to impregnate her daughters-in-law. One of them, Kunti, also has six sons by six gods (sun god, Dharma, Indra, the god of fierce winds and the twin gods of prosperity) by chanting a divine mantra. Known as the Pandavas, her six youngest sons become known as the Pandavas and claim the throne through their indirect relation to Shantanu.

The Kauravas are cousins of the Pandavas, who also claim the Hasanapua throne. After many battles, the families eventually agree to divide the kingdom.

The Pandavas get the forested area, which they burn to build the capitol city of their Kuru kingdom Indraprastha (now New Delhi). Their King Judistera ends up losing his kingdom and being sold into slavery, along with his family, in a game of dice (in which his dharma* forces him to compete). After demanding a rematch, he loses again, with a new penalty of 12 years in exile and one year in disguise.

He returns from exile to face a renewed war with the Kauravas. Prior to battle he engages in dialogue with Prince Krishna, his chariot driver, adviser and and brother-in-law. This dialogue becomes known as the Bhagavad Gita or the Lord God’s song.

After an 18 day battle, all the warriors break dharma and nearly all die. The result is the start of Kaliyaga, the thousands of years of disorder, immorality and war we live in today.

---

*Dharma is a Hindu concept referring to  an individual’s duty fulfilled by observance of universal law, righteousness, social duties and good qualities.

Film can be viewed free on Kanopy.

https://pukeariki.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/video/366254/366185

Man Paralyzed by COVID Shot He Didn’t Want

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D.

Injured by the COVID-19 vaccine — that his employer forced him to get — Stephen “Steve” Wenger is now unable to work full-time and is facing more than $70,000 in medical bills, he said in an exclusive interview with The Defender.

 Stephen “Steve” Wenger, a longtime construction project manager in the telecommunications industry and former volunteer firefighter who was in excellent health, was “dead set” against receiving the COVID-19 vaccine.

But when faced with an ultimatum from his employer — get the vaccine or lose his job — Wenger reluctantly got vaccinated.

Within days, he found himself unable to stand up or move around. He crawled on his “hands and knees” into a hospital emergency room, he said.

Wenger ended up spending more than three months in the hospital, paralyzed from the waist down. He was diagnosed with chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP), “a neurological disorder that involves progressive weakness and reduced senses in the arms and legs” according to the National Institutes of Health.

Wenger, now 57, shared his story with The Defender, including his negative experience with the federal government’s Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP). He provided medical documentation to The Defender to corroborate his story.

‘It was either get vaccinated, or you can’t come to work’

“I was absolutely dead set against getting the vaccine,” Wenger told The Defender. “I swore I wouldn’t get it.”

Wenger was working on a project on the Navajo reservation in the desert Southwest when COVID-19 hit. “The Navajo people got really hit hard with COVID,” he said. “And I was working with these guys on a daily basis.”

His employer didn’t adopt an official mandate policy, but Wenger was nevertheless given an ultimatum.

[…]

On May 18, 2021, Wenger visited a local pharmacy and received his one and only dose of the Johnson & Johnson (Janssen) COVID-19 vaccine.

“I distinctly remember sitting there with the guy giving me the vaccine, and I said to him, ‘I hope I don’t regret this someday.’ I’ll never forget that,” Wenger said. “When I said that, I certainly didn’t think I was going to regret it.”

However, within days, he experienced a reaction to the shot.

“Seven days later, I started having issues walking,” Wenger said. “[My wife and I] were in Sedona [Arizona] … and we were at the bottom of this really steep hill, and we had to walk up this hill, and I remember I felt kind of tired and rundown that day … I felt like I was climbing Mount Everest. My legs felt like they were in cement.”

Wenger didn’t immediately make the connection to his recent vaccination.

“It’s one of those things where you really don’t put two and two together,” he said. “It’s just kind of like, okay, maybe I’m just tired or having a bad day. So, I just blew it off.”

But later that evening, when he went out to dinner, his symptoms grew worse.

“I’m sitting in the restaurant, in a booth, and I had to get up and use the restroom,” he said. “I stood up and I did a 90-degree pivot and just lost my balance and literally almost fell on this other couple’s dinner, on this other couple’s table.”

Within days, back at work on the Navajo reservation, Wenger’s legs gave out.

“I was lying there sprawled out on the concrete,” Wenger recalled. “I got home, was having issues walking again, falling, losing my balance.”

At home, his daughter, a registered nurse, encouraged him to go to the hospital.

“I finally went to the ER,” Wenger said. “My wife literally pulled up in front of the door. I rolled out of the door, and I crawled on my hands and knees into the ER.”

Wenger told The Defender that just prior to this sequence of events, he had been researching some of the symptoms he was experiencing, and thought maybe they had something to do with Guillain-Barré syndrome, a condition where the body’s own immune system attacks the body’s nerves.

In the ER, healthcare providers administered a lower lumbar puncture, after determining he had no reflex response. The results of that examination led to his hospitalization “right there on the spot,” and ultimately, his CIDP diagnosis.

It was ‘a living hell’

The next three months were “a living hell,” Wenger said, as his condition worsened.

He said:

“When I went in, initially I was having problems walking, but my hands and my arms still worked. That numbness or that loss of use was creeping up. And eventually, all of a sudden, I couldn’t use my right arm. And then, my left arm was just barely functional.”

It reached a point where he couldn’t even pick up a fork, he said. “They have these foam pads that they put on the silverware so that if you can’t grip … you’d have a bigger surface to grab,” Wenger said. “Well, my hands were so weak that my fingers couldn’t even pick it up. The weight of a fork was too much for me to pick up.”

By that time, he was essentially a quadriplegic, he said. “The whole time I was at Mayo Clinic, the only way I could get in and out of bed was [with] overhead lifts. They would put me into a sling, and they would lift me out of bed, set me down in a wheelchair.”

Wenger said he remained in this condition for approximately two months. “The one thing that I could still do was urinate in the urinal bottle. And it got to the point where, finally, I was in bed one night and I hit the call button. I just said, ‘I can’t do it anymore.’”

At that point, he said, he was 100% dependent on other people for everything. “You basically surrender all your dignity, everything. I mean, there’s nothing left.”

[…]

Today, he still has no feeling from the knees down, his fingertips are still numb and he has issues with dexterity. Nevertheless, he has returned to work on a part-time basis.

“I’m unable to do my original job,” he said. “So, I’m on Social Security disability right now, but I work part-time at a hardware store.”

Despite his continued improvement, Wenger said he doesn’t expect a full recovery.

[…]

‘Insurance is … an absolute nightmare’

Though rituximab has helped Wenger improve, issues with insurance companies have caused delays in treatment — placing his health and recovery at risk.

“The last dose [of rituximab] I had was in December,” Wenger said, “and it actually came two months late because of some insurance issues. Insurance is a nightmare, an absolute nightmare.”

During that two-month period, Wenger developed a cold or the flu, which triggered his CIDP and caused him to relapse.

“CIDP is no joke,” Wenger continued. “It’s the gift that keeps on giving. Once you’ve got it, you’ve got it. You don’t get rid of it. It’s always there. It can come back at any time.”

He will likely continue intravenous immunoglobulin therapy for the rest of his life and will continue taking rituximab indefinitely.

“Seeing how quickly I relapsed in December, I think they’ll keep me on that for a while at least,” he said. “So that’s my life.”

Wenger’s insurance payments increased from $200 to $850 per month and his deductible more than doubled, from $6,000 to $13,000 — an amount that was then reset when his previous employer changed insurance carriers.

His medical expenses reached $70,000. In conjunction with a sharp drop in income, from six figures down to $27,000 on disability insurance, Wenger estimated his “real cash financial loss” as ranging between $250,000 and $300,000.

[…]

Government vaccine injury program ‘insulting’ to victims

Wenger filed a CICP claim that is still pending.reviewing his case.

[…]

A year later, “I still have nothing,” Wenger said, remarking on the fact that only recently, CICP approved its first three COVID-19 vaccine injury claims — at a total of $4,500.

[…]

Wenger was referring to a separate vaccine injury compensation program, VICP, which covers vaccines routinely administered to children and pregnant women. CICP, on the other hand, focuses on countermeasures implemented during emergencies such as pandemics and was established under the aegis of the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act of 2005.

Although the federal government’s national emergency and public health emergency related to COVID-19 both ended on May 11, the liability shield for COVID-19 vaccines under the PREP Act will remain in effect until at least December 2024.

Vaccine-injured ‘the dirty little secret nobody wants to talk about’

[…]

Wenger praised the work of React19 and its founder, Brianne Dressen, who was injured by the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine during its clinical trial. He said he works “with some of the greatest people” through the organization, and has met other vaccine-injured individuals who provide each other emotional support.

In May, Dressen and others sued President Biden and other members of the federal government, alleging the U.S. government colluded with social media companies to censor them when they posted stories about their personal vaccine injury experiences.

[…]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/steve-wenger-janssen-covid-vaccine-injury

 

The US Campaign Against Breastfeeding

Dr Mercoloa

Story at-a-glance

• According to the World Health Organization (WHO), between 2011 and 2016, only 40% of infants under the age of 6 months were being exclusively breastfed, worldwide
• Thanks to growing awareness of the science behind the “breast is best” slogan, breastfeeding rates in the U.S. have risen from a low of 24% in 1971 to 81% in 2016
• The global goal is to get 70% of infants exclusively breastfed for the first six months by 2030. To achieve that, the World Health Assembly introduced a nonbinding resolution in early 2018 to encourage breastfeeding and stress the health benefits of breastfeeding
• In a move that shocked the world, U.S. delegates opposed the resolution, demanding that language calling on governments to “protect, promote and support breastfeeding” be deleted
• The American delegation threatened countries with sanctions lest they reject the resolution. It was even suggested that the U.S. might cut its financial support to the WHO. Russia ultimately introduced the resolution

Editor’s Note: This article is a reprint. It was originally published July 24, 2018.

What’s the optimal food for your newborn baby? Common sense would tell you that a mother’s breast milk is as optimal as infant nutrition could possibly get, yet that fact — indisputable as it may seem — is something that makers of infant formula have spent decades’ trying to sweep under the carpet.¹ Following the development of manufactured infant formula, mothers were told breastfeeding was unnecessary.

Formula offered greater freedom for busy moms, and the promotion of the obnoxious idea that breastfeeding in public is shameful fueled the transition, making more moms defer to the bottle rather than their breast. For years, women could even be fined for “public indecency” if caught breastfeeding in public. In 2018, Utah became the last state to enact laws protecting the rights of breastfeeding mothers by permitting nursing in public.²

As of April 2018, all 50 states must provide workplace protection for nursing mothers, however many suffer discrimination for needing time to express milk. In terms of nutrition, moms have, and still are, told there’s “no difference” between bottle feeding and breastfeeding, yet nothing could be further from the truth.

There is very little similarity between the two, from a nutritional perspective. Unfortunately, marketing materials have a way of giving mothers the false idea that formula may actually provide better nutrition.

Now, even the pro-breastfeeding slogan “breast is best” has been usurped and turned into “fed is best”³ — meaning, as long as your baby is well-fed, it doesn’t matter if it’s breast milk or formula. A recent bioethical argument in the journal Pediatrics even advises pediatricians it’s time to stop referring to breastfeeding as something “natural.”⁴ How did we get so off course? You might as well argue against the naturalness of urination.

Only 4 in 10 Infants Are Exclusively Breastfed for 6 Months

According to a January 2, 2018, report⁵ by the World Health Organization (WHO) on infant nutrition, between 2011 and 2016, a mere 40% of infants under the age of 6 months were being exclusively breastfed, worldwide. Only 33 countries have breastfeeding rates higher than 50%, while 68 nations have rates below 50%.

Thanks to growing awareness of the science behind the “breast is best” slogan, breastfeeding rates in the U.S. have risen dramatically in recent decades, from a low of 24% in 1971⁶ to 81.1% in 2016.⁷

The global goal is to get 70% of infants exclusively breastfed for the first six months by 2030, and to achieve that, the World Health Assembly, which is the decision-making body of the WHO, introduced a nonbinding resolution in early 2018 to encourage breastfeeding and stress the health benefits of breastfeeding.

The resolution stressed that decades of research show breast milk is the healthiest choice, and urged governments to rein in inaccurate or misleading marketing of breast milk substitutes.

US Government Backs Formula Makers

In a move that shocked the world, the U.S. delegates opposed the resolution, demanding that language calling on governments to “protect, promote and support breastfeeding” be deleted.⁸ They also wanted to erase a passage calling on policymakers to restrict promotion of foods that can have adverse effects on the health of young children.

The global delegation was even more shocked when the Americans started threatening countries with sanctions lest they reject the resolution. It was even suggested that the U.S. might cut its financial support to the WHO.

[…]

A Mother’s Choice

A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) denied the agency had anything to do with the threats leveled at Ecuador, telling The New York Times the DHHS had sought to modify the original draft resolution¹¹ because it “placed unnecessary hurdles for mothers seeking to provide nutrition to their children.”

According to the DHHS, women may not be able to breastfeed for a variety of reasons and “These women should have the choice and access to alternatives for the health of their babies, and not be stigmatized for the ways in which they are able to do so.” This is an incredibly weak rebuttal, as encouraging breastfeeding and promoting its health benefits in no way diminishes a woman’s right or ability to opt for formula if she finds she cannot breastfeed.

Formula makers have also tried to distance themselves from the embarrassment. Still, while witnesses at the assembly meeting claim they saw no evidence of formula makers trying to wield their influence, there’s no denying they’ve spent a lot of money lobbying to protect their market share, which means minimizing the importance of breastfeeding.

According to a MapLight analysis,¹² the three leading formula companies, Abbott Laboratories, Nestle and Reckitt Benckiser, have spent $60.7 million lobbying lawmakers in the U.S. over the past decade.

Lucy Sullivan, director of 1,000 Days, a mother and infant nutrition advocacy group, told The Atlantic,¹³ “What this battle in Geneva showed us is that we have a U.S. government that is strongly aligned with the interests of the infant-formula industry and dairy industry, and are willing to play hardball.”

As is customary, the DHHS held stakeholder listening sessions with various industry groups prior to the World Health Assembly meeting, where the dairy, grocery and infant formula groups all had their say about the proposed resolution.

What surprised everyone was “how forcefully the U.S. delegates acted on the trade groups’ opposition,” The Atlantic writes.¹⁴ While it may have been more aggressive than usual, as you will see below, the U.S. has an embarrassing history of pushing the use of infant formula over breast milk.

Health Benefits of Mother’s Milk

From a nutritional science point of view, there’s simply no dispute that breast milk is the optimal food for newborns and young infants.^15,16 Breastfeeding also has a number of health benefits for the mother, and it’s the least expensive alternative. Below is a summary of some of the key health benefits for mother and child.

Infant formula, on the other hand, has been linked to an increased risk of infant death. In her paper, “Marketing Breast Milk Substitutes: Problems and Perils Throughout the World,” published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood in 2012, June Brady starts out by highlighting the U.S. government’s shameful lack of support of proper infant nutrition, choosing instead to cater to the formula makers’ right to profit.

[…]

Via https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2023/06/07/campaign-against-breastfeeding.aspx