Why Label GMOs?

Can money and power buy truth?  In California, we’re about to find out.  Because if you think you are informed enough to vote no on Prop 37, and please pardon my presumption, but unless you work for Monsanto, Dow, Syngenta, Pepsico, Bayer, BASF, Kraft or Coca-Cola,[1] you probably aren’t.  Don’t take my word for it.  Read the first four pages of State of the Science on the Health Risks of GM Foods prepared by the Institute for Responsible Technology.  Considering that Americans are now eating their weight in GMOs every year (which is an underestimate, particularly for children and Hispanics), the fact that “virtually no long-term health studies have been done on consumption of genetically engineered food,” [2] should perhaps be a concern.

But wait, some of you may quite reasonably be thinking, “What do you mean ‘virtually no long-term studies have been done?’”  How do they know that GMOs are safe then?  Put a check mark next to that question.  By law any novel ingredient (i.e. additive) introduced into the food supply has to go through testing to make sure it’s safe right?  Yup.  That is except if you happen to be a GMO product in which case we simply assume it’s safe and throw it into the food supply sight unseen, and untested.  In the US, the legal standard for granting “Generally Recognized As Safe” (GRAS) status to any new food product or additive requires that “the substance must be the subject of a substantial amount of peer-reviewed published studies (or equivalent) and there must be overwhelming consensus among the scientific community that the product is safe.”[3]  GMO products have neither.  Yet in 1992 GMOs were given GRAS status by the FDA based on, wait for it, industry assurances that they were safe because they were “substantially equivalent” to their parent food.  To this day the FDA does not require any safety testing (or labeling) of GMOs.  They can be introduced into the food supply without so much as a “how do you do” or DBA announcement in the local paper.  GM products can be, and are, put into your food without notifying any regulatory or safety body what, where, when or how.

I would suggest that if you think genetically modified foods are safe as the original parent food, you haven’t read what scientists who have studied them have to say.  But again, don’t take my word for it.

“The American Academy of Environmental Medicine this year said that genetically modified foods, according to animal studies[4] are causally linked to accelerated aging, dysfunctional immune regulation, organ damage, gastrointestinal distress, and immune system damage.[5]

And this from FDA scientists during their original review of GMOs,

“…internal memos made public from a lawsuit showed that the overwhelming consensus among the agency scientists was that GM crops can have unpredictable, hard-to-detect side effects. Various departments and experts spelled these out in detail, listing allergies, toxins, nutritional effects, and new diseases as potential dangers. They urged superiors to require long-term safety studies.  In spite of the warnings, … “References to the unintended negative effects of bioengineering were progressively deleted from drafts of the policy statement (over the protests of agency scientists).”[6]

If you’re surprised or perhaps a wee bit incredulous about any of this, please read just the first four pages of State of the Science on the Health Risks of GM Foods for a more comprehensive review of the history of the (lack of) safety testing and (lack of) regulation of GM products.

So, back to the issue at hand, why label GMOs?  Well, before delving into that issue, it may be illuminating to examine why we think we need GMOs in the first place.  Most of us ‘know’ that GMOs are designed to help feed people, to make more food available, in places and in quantities it hasn’t been or with novel nutritional qualities it hasn’t had before .  Most people believe that GMOs are a welcome and necessary new technology to help feed a growing population from a shrinking arable land base.  The idea of feeding more people more efficiently is appealing and desirable.  It is human nature to want to trust what we have been told, especially when it is relates to helping people.  But is this really how GM crops work in the real world, is this really what they do?

Necessity of GMOs

Most people assume that the purported, and oft-repeated, claims regarding the purpose and benefits of GMOs are accurate.  But is this a valid assumption?  And if you’re one of the people who is generally positively predisposed, or is at least lacking negative predisposition, to the use of GMOs, at least in part based on the belief that GMOs are doing what they have been marketed, represented, and sold to the public as doing, have you actually seen evidence supporting that belief?

So what are the assumptions regarding the purpose and efficacy of GMOs?  The most fundamental assumption is that they are necessary to feed everyone, and while it is true that yields may initially increase after the introduction of GMO crops, this does not equate to necessarily being less expensive or more sustainable in the long run.  These longer-term effects have only recently been able to be studied and quantified.  The results?  Well, we’ll get to that, but they aren’t what we’ve been led to believe.

For starters, herbicide tolerant crops comprise about 80% of all GM plants. The other 20% are corn and cotton varieties that produce a pesticide in every cell.  So we have more, a lot more plants that can be be sprayed with all the herbicide you want, or simply produce enough of the stuff by themselves that you (purportedly) won’t need to add more.  So one of the first things that is happening is that since the introduction of these GM crops, the use of pesticides has increased dramatically.  And those increases are becoming more and more substantial the longer GM crops are used.

Over 80% of all GMOs grown worldwide are engineered for herbicide tolerance. As a result, use of toxic herbicides like Roundup has increased 15 times since GMOs were introduced (a 404 million pound increase in overall pesticide use from 1996 through 2011)..[7]

As a result the amount of pesticide on the food you are consuming has increased dramatically as well.  So much so that the EU had to increase its maximum allowable pesticide residue by a factor of 200 in order for these new GM crops to be sold legally.[8]

So we are using substantially more pesticides as a result of the introduction of GMO crops and leaving more toxic residues both in the environment and in our bodies, but are these products helping farmers? Are they helping us to feed people that wouldn’t otherwise be fed?  Are they making our food production process more stable and sustainable, or less?  Let’s look at what folks who have taken more time than you or I to study these assertions have to say.

“A study came out by the Union of Concerned Scientists confirming … that genetically modified crops, on average, reduce yield. A USDA report from 2006 showed that farmers don’t actually increase income from GMOs, but many actually lose income. And for the last several years, the United States has been forced to spend $3-$5 billion per year to prop up prices of GM crops.[9]

GE crops have led to resistance, both in weeds and pests, leaving farmers to struggle with an increasingly difficult situation. More than two dozen weed species are now resistant to glyphosate, the primary ingredient in Monsanto’s broad-spectrum herbicide Roundup.  Rapidly increasing weed resistance is now driving up the volume of herbicide needed by about 25 percent annually. [And resulted in the necessity to revert to more toxic pesticides such as 2,4-D, also produced by, you guessed it, Monsanto.]

The International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development, is the most comprehensive evaluation of world agriculture ever. It was a three-year collaborative effort with 900 participants and 110 countries, and was co-sponsored by the World Bank, FAO, UNESCO, and the WHO. The behemoth effort evaluated the last 50 years of agriculture, and prescribed the methods that were now needed to meet the development and sustainability goals of reducing hunger and poverty, improving nutrition, health and rural livelihoods, and facilitating social and environmental sustainability.  And GMOs were not one of those needed methods…[10]

According to a report submitted to the Human Rights Council of the UN General Assembly by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier de Schutter, the promise of agroecology has already been shown to not only provide greater food production compared to chemical-intensive GM food technologies, but also to be more accessible and sustainable to those who are most in need.

“If we are going to make headway in combating hunger due to overpopulation and climate change, we will need to increase crop yields.  Traditional breeding outperforms genetic engineering hands down.”[11]

To feed 9 billion people in 2050, we urgently need to adopt the most efficient farming techniques available. And today’s scientific evidence demonstrates that agroecological methods outperform the use of chemical fertilizers in boosting food production in regions where the hungry live….  We won’t solve hunger and stop climate change with industrial farming on large plantations.[12]

How often have we heard that organic farming can’t feed the planet?  Guess what?  You’ve been lied to…again.

Research commissioned by the Foresight Global Food and Farming Futures project of the UK Government reviewed 40 projects in 20 African countries where sustainable intensification was developed during the 2000s. The projects included crop improvements (particularly improvements through participatory plant breeding on hitherto neglected orphan crops), integrated pest management, soil conservation and agro-forestry. By early 2010, these projects had documented benefits for 10.39 million farmers and their families and improvements on approximately 12.75 million hectares. Crop yields more than doubled on average (increasing 2.13-fold) over a period of 3-10 years.[13]

So on the one hand we have a chemically intensive and expensive system that has made all manner of promises about increasing food production through various forms of technology-driven (read profit-driven) mechanisms while on the other we have a system that is “grounded in local material, cultural, and intellectual resources”, that directly benefits poor farmers, is more sustainable and actually reduces carbon inputs to the atmosphere rather than increasing them.  The question then becomes, “which would you prefer: double your yield for a price (to buy the seeds and fertilizer) or double the yield for free (via agroecology)? You’d prefer to save your money and to use it for a medical emergency, or for a grain mill, or school for your kid, or whatever.”[14]

Safety of GMOs

What about safety?  Over and over again we have been told that GMOs are “substantially equivalent” to the foods they are derived from.  In order to bring them to market without the normal safety testing required of any food additive, they were granted “Generally Recognized As Safe” (GRAS) status by the FDA in 1992.  The legal requirements for GRAS status require that  “the substance must be the subject of a substantial amount of peer-reviewed published studies (or equivalent) and there must be overwhelming consensus among the scientific community that the product is safe.”  GM foods had, and have, neither.

From the editor of the medical journal Lancet,

“It is astounding that the US Food and Drug Administration has not changed their stance on genetically modified food adopted in 1992…. Governments should never have allowed these products into the food chain without insisting on rigorous testing for effects on health.”[15]

While the Royal Society of Canada described substantial equivalence as “scientifically unjustifiable and inconsistent with precautionary regulation of the technology.”[16]

If we are to believe industry claims, the reasoning supporting the safety of GMOs goes something like this:  “Obviously GMO foods have been adequately tested or they wouldn’t have been found to be safe by the FDA, and therefore, since we know they are safe, there’s no reason to be worried about them, or to test them anymore.”  The biggest flaw in this reasoning is not its circular logic, but the assumption that any adequate, impartial testing has ever been done on these products in the first place.  In the process of granting GRAS status to GMOs, all of the “safety” data came directly from their manufacturers.  (Which is now standard operating practice for the NIH, FDA and USDA.)  In reality, attempts by independent researchers to do studies on long-term health effects of GMO foods are directly hindered by the manufacturers for patent-protection and proprietary reasons.  When you hear that these products have been found to be “substantially equivalent” and “as safe as” non-GMO foods, you should consider the hundreds of millions of dollars of profits that are being protected by keeping these foods unlabeled, as well as the inherently corruptible regulatory agencies whose funding and data is significantly dependent on the industries they are supposed to be regulating.

What do other scientists who are not employed by Big Ag, biotech or food manufacturers have to report?  In its position paper on GMOs the American Academy of Environmental Medicine writes,

There is more than a casual association between GM foods and adverse health effects. There is causation as defined by Hill’s Criteria in the areas of strength of association, consistency, specificity, biological gradient, and biological plausibility.The strength of association and consistency between GM foods and disease is confirmed in several animal studies.[17]

Multiple animal studies show significant immune dysregulation, including upregulation of cytokines associated with asthma, allergy, and inflammation.  Animal studies also show altered structure and function of the liver, including altered lipid and carbohydrate metabolism as well as cellular changes that could lead to accelerated aging…. Changes in the kidney, pancreas and spleen have also been documented.  A recent 2008 study links GM corn with infertility, showing a significant decrease in offspring over time and significantly lower litter weight in mice fed GM corn. This study also found that over 400 genes were found to be expressed differently in the mice fed GM corn.  [Author’s note: There are only 300 genes that differentiate the human genome from the mouse genome to begin with.[18]] These are genes known to control protein synthesis and modification, cell signaling, cholesterol synthesis, and insulin regulation.  Studies also show intestinal damage in animals fed GM foods, including proliferative cell growth and disruption of the intestinal immune system.[19]

And for health-conscious individuals who have taken principle-driven actions to change their diet, sometimes not just for personal health but for environmental and ethical reasons, just what do you think you’re eating when you sit down at your favorite vegan restaurant and order any one of a number of remarkably tasty meat substitutes?  Unless you have asked the server, or the cook, or the owner directly and been told (hopefully truthfully) that your tofu, or tempeh, or soy chicken, is organic, the chances are quite good (94% of soy grown in the US is GMO) that not only are you eating a highly-processed food product that comes directly from a factory but that it is also a GM ‘food’.

Remember who you’re dealing with.  These are the people who brought you dioxin, agent orange PCBs, and terminator seed technology all with fervent and prolonged assurances that they were completely safe.  No matter how much you might wish it to be so, no matter how long you have taken their word that it is actually true, genetically modified foods are not about feeding the planet.  They are another piece in the puzzle to create and maintain control of agricultural production and food distribution.  These companies have filed hundreds of lawsuits against non-GMO farmers when pollen from transgenic crops contaminated neighboring fields, not only forcing them to pay royalties to avoid prosecution for patent infringement but also compelling them to turn over all information regarding their seed providers.  Hundreds of farmers, seed providers and seed cleaners have been bought out or forced out of business in the United States because of these law suits.  Farmers, even those who do not want to grow GM foods, must pay royalties to Monsanto and other biotech firms for the privilege of having their fields contaminated with transgenic DNA, and then must continue to buy seeds from them or be subject to further legal action.  In nearly every case these industry lawsuits have been upheld including in Canada’s highest court and the US Supreme Court.[20]

The purpose of GMOs are first and foremost about creating markets for profit-driven companies so they can maintain monopolistic control over every aspect of our food cycle.  Just ask the farmers in India who believed that this new technology would raise their production, and reduce their dependence on expensive chemical inputs.  Ask the families of the more than two hundred and fifty thousand Indian farmers who have committed suicide in the last sixteen years[21] (often drinking the pesticides they can no longer afford) when the promise of GMOs instead became a perfect storm of crop failure, environmental degradation, physical illness, financial insolvency and complete dependence on ever-increasing amounts of insecticides, pesticides and patented, proprietary, terminator-technology seeds.

Many people may not want to know just how many products they are consuming that contain GMOs.  In the US (for the time being) this really isn’t a problem however, because unlike the EU, Australia, Brazil, China, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and South Korea, in the United States you simply don’t have the right to know whether these products are in your food so there’s no way to know how much you’re consuming.  And hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent, along with immense amounts of lobbying, advertising, back-door regulatory cronyism and PR over many decades to make sure you continue to not have that right.

So, why label GMOs?  This should not even be the question when in truth, the most fundamental question “Why use GMOs in the first place?” has not been adequately addressed or honestly presented to the American public.

It makes sense to know what you’re putting in body.  There should be transparent, long-term safety testing of novel biotechnologies before releasing them into the environment and taking them into our bodies.  Everyone should be able to make their own decisions regarding their food and health.  But right now, not only do we not know these things, we are being flooded with propaganda to convince us that such concerns are entirely unnecessary.  It’s not only that you don’t know.  You don’t have the right to know.  This is massively profitable proprietary technology…that, in its current form and use, we don’t need and shouldn’t be using in the first place.  Who are you going to trust?  It’s your call.

Again, please don’t take my word for this.  Educate yourself, read the footnotes and pick some of the references to peruse so you can better appreciate how much we have been kept in the dark about the real effects, and dangers of GMOs.  And if you’re wondering about something to do…go to the “No on 37” Facebook page, or websites and post this in their comments section.  Pass it along to anyone you think might vote no and ask them to do the same.

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Websites to visit:

1.       Institute for Responsible Technology  (“The most comprehensive source of GMO health risk information on the web.”)  http://www.responsibletechnology.org/
Visit their Resources page (http://www.responsibletechnology.org/resources).

2.       State of the Science on the Health Risks of GM Foods http://www.responsibletechnology.org/docs/145.pdf
If you’re gonna do nothing else, click on this link and read the first 3 or 4 pages of this report…and pass it along to anyone you know who is undecided or likely to vote No on 37.

3.       “GMO Myths and Truths:  An evidence-based examination of the claims made for the safety and efficacy of genetically modified crops”
http://earthopensource.org/files/pdfs/GMO_Myths_and_Truths/GMO_Myths_and_Truths_1.3b.pdf   This is a 123 page document that is comprehensive, written by experts in the field, and well referenced.

4.       “All GM Field Trials in India to be Stopped” 30 Oct 2012.  http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/10/30/gm-crop-field-trials.aspx
This is a good review article of the current situations and challenges presented by GM foods and the effort to require them to be labeled.  Includes a list of common foods made from GM products (including TVP, Vitamin C, high-fructose corn syrup and many others).

5.       “Why Glyphosphate Should Be Banned,” Institute of Science in Society Special Report.  10 Oct 2012. http://www.i-sis.org.uk/Why_Glyphosate_Should_be_Banned.php

6.       Millions Against Monsanto.  http://www.organicconsumers.org/monsanto/  Background and history of Monsanto and current worldwide actions by and against them.

7.       http://www.nongmoproject.org/

8.       www.voteyes37.org

Videos:

1.       Genetic Roulette ,11min remix.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TB5EBFUwaw0&feature=related
“There are only nine genetically modified food crops [soy, corn (not popcorn), cottonseed(for oil), canola (for oil), sugar beets (for sugar), papaya, zucchini, yellow crookneck squash and alfalfa (for hay)] but their derivatives are found in over 70% of the foods found in the supermarket, particularly processed foods.”

2.       Genetic Roulette Part 7, 3 mins.  Coverup of data and discrediting, firing and defunding of scientists who report unfavorable GMO study results.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=uZNTUzfPGFY

3.       Genetic Roulette full film, 85 mins
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnlTYFKBg18 ()

4.       Dr. Mercola, Support Proposition 37. 5 mins
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4p7G-xcUQPE&feature=player_embedded ()

5.       http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=OhWqi6D3qBQ

6.       “Brought to You by Monsanto” 45 secs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ruuZfe56I4&feature=player_embedded

Books:

1.       Seeds of Deception: Exposing Industry and Government Lies About the Safety of the Genetically Engineered Foods You’re Eating by Jeffrey Smith.“The world’s bestselling and #1 rated book on GMOs.”

2.       Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods by Jeffrey Smith. “…documents 65 health risks of the GM foods Americans eat everyday.”

3.       The Unhealthy Truth by Robyn O’Brien

References:

1.       State of the Science on the Health Risks of GM Foods.   http://www.responsibletechnology.org/docs/145.pdf

2.       “Failure to Yield:  Evaluating the Performance of Genetically Engineered Crops”  http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/our-failing-food-system/genetic-engineering/failure-to-yield.html

3.       “Discussion paper on GMOs for the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians House Of Delegates, 2009”  http://nyanp.org/discussionpapersongmos.aspx

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[1] Who have contributed over $44 million so far to the “No on 37” public relations campaign. (http://farmfutures.com/story.aspx/campaign-funding-defeat-california-prop-37-tops-44m-0-64542)

[2] http://www.ewg.org/agmag/2012/10/americans-eat-their-weight-in-genetically-engineered-food/

[3] http://www.responsibletechnology.org/docs/145.pdf p. 1

[4] http://www.responsibletechnology.org/ (Scroll halfway down the page for the article.)

[5] http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/our-failing-food-system/genetic-engineering/failure-to-yield.html

[6]  http://www.responsibletechnology.org/docs/145.pdf p. 2

[7] http://www.nongmoproject.org/learn-more/

[8] http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/01/31/monsanto-worst-company-of-2011.aspx

[9] http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/our-failing-food-system/genetic-engineering/failure-to-yield.html

[10] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-smith/vilsack-mistakenly-pitche_b_319998.html

[11] http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/our-failing-food-system/genetic-engineering/failure-to-yield.html (end of article)

[12]Groundbreaking New UN Report on How to Feed the World’s Hungry: Ditch Corporate-Controlled Agriculture. http://www.alternet.org/story/150158/groundbreaking_new_un_report_on_how_to_feed_the_world%27s_hungry%3A_ditch_corporate-controlled_agriculture

[13] http://www.srfood.org/images/stories/pdf/officialreports/20110308_a-hrc-16-49_agroecology_en.pdf

[14] http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/03/08/953788/-Oh-Oh-OMG-Oh-yes-UN-Report-Just-Gave-Me-an-Orgasm by Jill Richardson reviewing the

[15] Ibid. p.2

[16] Ibid. p.2

[17] “Genetically Modified Foods” by The American Academy of Environmental Medicine.  (please refer to the article itself for direct references to the multiple studies they reviewed)  http://aaemonline.org/gmopost.html

[18] http://www.txtwriter.com/backgrounders/Compgenomes/compgenomes1.html “A comparison of the two genomes reveals that both have about 30,000 genes, and they share the bulk of them—the human genome shares 99% of its genes with mice. There are only 300 genes unique to either organism, about 1% of the genome.”

[19] Op cit. “Genetically Modified Foods”, fifth paragraph

[20] One recent hopeful example to the contrary is one Saskatchewan’s farmer fight against Monsanto chronicled in a new documentary, “David vs. Monsanto”  http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/11/03/david-versus-monsanto.aspx?e_cid=20121103_DNL_art_1

[21] http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/10/30/gm-crop-field-trials.aspx   As a result, a five-member Technical Expert Committee (TEC) appointed by the Supreme Court of India unanimously recommended that all GM field trials in India should be stopped.  The Committee also recommended a 10-year moratorium on field trials of all Bt food crops and a moratorium on field trials of herbicide-tolerant crops until an independent assessment has evaluated its “impact” and “suitability”.

Western medicine’s most effective anti-cancer agent – Part 2

Picking up where we left off with this rather exciting story about Vitamin D…

The human genome project mapped 30,000 genes in our DNA.  Of these 30,000 genes, vitamin D directly effects over 2000.  Dr. Isaac Gardner calls vitamin D “an extremely novel and important prohormone.”  He goes on to describe some of the different areas where vitamin D is used in the body:

There are receptors for vitamin D in pancreatic islet cells involved in insulin secretion. In fact low vitamin D levels are associated with type I and type II diabetes mellitus. Vitamin D is important in cellular immunity and prevention of the autoimmune diseases. It is actively involved in brain metabolism with links to depression. Fibromyalgia is a musculoskeletal syndrome characterized by muscle pain and fatigue of unknown origin. It has been found that a majority of patients presenting with symptoms of fibromyalgia are deficient in vitamin D. Treatment with vitamin D3 is successful in relieving the symptoms of fibromyalgia in these cases.[i]

(For those of you keeping track at home, we’re now up to cancer, diabetes, autoimmune diseases, depression and fibromyalgia on the list of common, or even epidemic health issues which are significantly improved simply by adding vitamin D to the mix.)  Receptors that respond to vitamin D have been found in almost every type of human cell, from your brain to your bones.  So, it is only common sense to surmise that vitamin D deficiency might have numerous ill effects on the body.  But what exactly does it mean to be ‘deficient’ in vitamin D?

When you look at the studies showing dramatic changes in cancer rates you find that the daily supplementation levels are consistently at 1000 IU or higher, with recommended serum levels in the 40-60ng/mL range.[ii] This is where official recommendations regarding vitamin D and the last several decades of research part course because both intake and serum concentrations levels in these studies are several times higher than the current USRDA.

The National Institutes of Health latest recommendations[iii] (dated June 2011) regarding serum levels for vitamin D, describe a level of ≥20ng/mL as “Generally considered adequate for bone and overall health in healthy individuals.”  “Generally considered adequate” is not a description ringing with certainty, and, this recommendation actually represents a recent upward change.  For many years recommended levels had been 15-20ng/mL.  This is the serum concentration below which vitamin D deficiency causes rickets in infants and children.  In other words there are serious, and obvious, negative health consequences below this level.  What is becoming clear however is that even these guarded upward revisions in recommended serum levels of vitamin D leave room for a range of health consequences which, while not as immediately apparent, are nonetheless serious and much more commonplace than previously understood.

The NIH data sheet lists RDAs for vitamin D between 400 IU (for 0-12 months of age) up to 800 IU (for those over 70).  These recommendations explicitly assume minimum sun exposure, meaning that almost all of your vitamin D would be coming from supplementation, not sunlight.  Contrast this with most vitamin D supplements off the shelf and you will see the disparity between current USRDA levels and recent research and experience.  Most vitamin D supplements recommend dosages above 1000 IU per day.   The one I take comes in 5000 IU tablets (about the size of children’s aspirin) and lists this as being 12,500% of the “US Daily Value”.  If you are sick many doctors will recommend increasing vitamin D intake to 20,000-30,000 IU daily.

So when you ask the question, “Am I deficient in vitamin D?” or if you are a researcher trying to determine just how many people are “deficient” the answer would be quite different depending on whose standards you chose to use.  Having said that, let’s look at our options for getting whatever amount of vitamin D we want.

Most of us aware that vitamin D3 is produced from exposure to sunlight and it is definitely possible to get all you need from the sun, but not for all of us and not all the time.  Dietary vitamin D on the other hand is usually insufficient to significantly reduce the risk of most cancers since typical ingested amounts, up to 200 to 400 IU per day, are too low [Grant and Garland, in press]. Evidently, at least 600 to 1000 I.U per day are required to reduce the risk of vitamin-D-sensitive cancers.

As with many things, the ‘D’ is in the details as it were.  The first important piece of information to know is that only UVB radiation produces D3.  UVA radiation on the other hand reduces D3 levels.  Which means that if you are sitting indoors on the other side of a pane of glass in the sun, you are actually causing yourself to lose D3  because the UVB radiation is absorbed by the glass while the UVA is not.  This also means that if you are using sunscreen that only blocks UVB , you are quite literally increasing your chances of developing skin cancer compared to what would be the case if you left the sunscreen off altogether (assuming you don’t give yourself a bad burn).

Secondly, if you live in higher latitudes, say Boston or above, the sun does not get high enough in the sky for over four months of the year for you to receive UVB radiation at all because it is completely absorbed by the atmosphere.  This is why it’s better, at any latitude, to get your sun exposure in the middle of the day when the sun is at its highest point in the sky in order to maximize the  UVB/UVA exposure ratio.  Yes, you read that right, it’s better to be out in the sun in the middle of the day when the sunlight is at its most intense.  Who knew?

Now don’t get carried away and think I’m telling you to go out and get sunburned.  In mid-latitudes at mid-day in the summer you need about 15-30 minutes with at least your hands and face exposed.  This will produce about 20,000 units of vitamin D.  Longer exposures will not produce any additional vitamin D and can potentially lead to premature skin aging and increase your risk of skin cancers.  At higher latitudes, or in other seasons you will need a little more time, up to 30 to 40 minutes.  The last rather important, and only recently understood factor in your Vitamin D absorption is that it takes up to 48 hours for the D3 that is made on the skin to get absorbed into the body.  If you wash with soap, the D3 will be washed off with it.  You can rinse with water, but you cannot use soap without losing the D3 off your skin.

So while sun exposure can be sufficient, most of us don’t get that much of our body in the sun on a daily basis, and in the winter months simply can’t get enough vitamin D from being outside.  So you have two choices:  supplements; or safe, UVB-only, tanning beds.  Dr. Mercola recommends the use of safe tanning beds (ones that have shielding for non-UVB radiation) as a healthy way (I know…who knew…) of getting your body to naturally produce vitamin D.

So to wrap up, let’s check with Dr. Greg Plotnikoff, Medical Director of the Penny George Institute for Health and Healing, Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis, who says:

“Because vitamin D is so cheap and so clearly reduces all-cause mortality, I can say this with great certainty: Vitamin D represents the single most cost-effective medical intervention in the United States.”[iv]

Sounds good to me.

References

Vitamin D Resource Page by Dr. Mercola http://www.mercola.com/article/vitamin-d-resources.htm

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[i] http://www.psychoneuroendocrinology.com/articles/vitamin-d.html

[ii] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17556697  “Vitamin D and calcium supplementation reduces cancer risk: results of a randomized trial.” Am J Clin Nutr. 2007 Jun;85(6):1586-91.

[iii] http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VitaminD-HealthProfessional/

[iv] http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health-conditions/

Western medicine’s most effective anti-cancer agent…and much more (Part 1 of 2)

If someone were to tell you that you could cheaply and easily reduce your risk of contracting breast, prostate or colorectal cancer by 50% or more, would you do it?  In a review article entitled, “Vitamin D for Cancer Prevention: Global Perspective”, Dr Cedric Garland, et al, concluded:

It is projected that raising the minimum year-around serum 25(OH)D level to 40 to 60 ng/m would prevent approximately 58,000 new cases of breast cancer and 49,000 new cases of colorectal cancer each year, and three fourths of deaths from these diseases in the United States and Canada, based on observational studies combined with a randomized trial. Such intakes also are expected to reduce case-fatality rates of patients who have breast, colorectal, or prostate cancer by half. … The time has arrived for nationally coordinated action to substantially increase intake of vitamin D and calcium.[i] [emphasis mine]

 Do I have your attention?  Good, because there is literally nothing known to western medicine that is less expensive, less harmful, and more effective at preventing, and fighting, cancer than Vitamin D.  Add to this the fact that much of what we have been told about the relationship between sun exposure and skin cancer is completely wrong, and you have the makings of a first class myth.  One that meets all the criteria for this blog:  those myths having the greatest impact on our health, wealth and happiness, as individuals and as a society.  And we’re not just talking about cancer.  The list of diseases that have been shown to substantially improve with increased serum levels of Vitamin D is truly remarkable.[ii]

Most of us have unfortunately, to our own detriment, been led to believe that staying out of the sun is good for our health and that sun exposure is something to be minimized or avoided altogether.   Unfortunately for this particular myth, even researchers looking to confirm the relationship between sun exposure and increases in cancer incidence have had decidedly mixed results.  In a 2004 study published in the Lancet, the authors were forced to conclude:

“Paradoxically, outdoor workers have a decreased risk of melanoma compared with indoor workers, suggesting that chronic sunlight exposure can have a protective effect.”[iii]

Whoops.  This after a 1990 study published in the Archives of Environmental Health had unequivocally stated:

Findings…from this study suggest a protective role for brief, regular exposure to sunlight and fit with recent laboratory studies that have shown vitamin D to suppress growth of malignant melanoma cells in tissue culture. A mechanism is proposed in which vitamin D inhibits previously initiated melanomas from becoming clinically apparent.[iv] [Italics mine.]

In an article entitled “Reduce Your Risk of Cancer With Sunlight Exposure”, Dr. William Grant says, “The list of cancers for which ultraviolet B (UVB) (290-315 nm) and vitamin D is protective was extended through a variety of observational epidemiologic studies by the end of the 1990s to include breast, ovarian and prostate cancer and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.”[v]

Papers continue to appear supporting the UVB/vitamin D-cancer connection.  A 2004 Norwegian study, showed that the detection of breast, colon, and prostate cancer has a seasonal cycle correlated with vitamin D production by sunlight.  This paper was important because it showed that vitamin D effectively fights cancer even in the later stages.[vi]

In 2007, a large-scale, randomized, placebo-controlled study that looked at almost 1,200 women, aged 55 and older, over the course of four years prompted the Canadian Cancer Society to start promoting Vitamin D as a cancer-prevention therapy.  In short, it found that all-cancer risk could be reduced by over fifty percent as a result of Vitamin D and calcium supplementation.[vii]

Other research conducted by Dr. Grant found that about 30 percent of cancer deaths — which amounts to 2 million worldwide and 200,000 in the United States — could be prevented each year with higher levels of vitamin D.[viii]

So what’s going on with Vitamin D that is has such profound effects on our physiology?  First off, Vitamin D is not really a vitamin.  It is more correctly called a ‘prohormone’.  What differentiates a hormone from any other type of chemical, or endogenously produced substance in your body is how little of it is necessary to have great effects on the body.  In this regard ‘Vitamin D’ is a power player.

The human genome project mapped 30,000 genes in our DNA.  Of these 30,000 genes, vitamin D directly effects over 2000.  Dr. Isaac Gardner calls vitamin D “an extremely novel and important prohormone.”

Tune in next week to find out what other diseases are improved with adequate Vitamin D levels, whether you are Vitamin D deficient, how much you should have and how best to get it.   In the meantime, you might want to start shopping for high-quality D3 supplements!

Yours in good health….

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[i] Garland CF, Gorham ED, Mohr SB, and Garland FC.  “Vitamin D for Cancer Prevention: Global Perspective”. Ann Epidemiol 2009;19:468–483.

[ii] [ii] http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health-conditions/

[iii] The Lancet, Volume 363, Issue 9410, Pages 728 – 730, 28 February 2004 doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(04)15649-3

[iv] Garland FC, White MR, Garland CF, Shaw E, Gorham ED.  “Occupational sunlight exposure and melanoma in the US Navy” Arch Environ Health. 1990 Sep-Oct;45(5):261-7.  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2256710

[v] http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2004/03/31/cancer-sunlight.aspx

[vi] Robsahm TE, Tretli S, Dahlback A, Moan J. “Vitamin D(3) from sunlight may improve the prognosis of breast-, colon- and prostate cancer (Norway)”. Cancer Causes Control. 2004;15:149-58

[vii] Lappe JM, Travers-Gustafson D, Davies KM, Recker RR, Heaney RP. “Vitamin D and calcium supplementation reduces cancer risk: results of a randomized trial.” Am J Clin Nutr. 2008 Mar;87(3):794. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?orig_db=PubMed&db=PubMed&cmd=Search&term=Am.%20J.%20Clin.%20Nutr.[Jour]%20AND%202007[pdat]%20AND%20Lappe%20J[author]

[viii] http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/01/20/the-overwhelming-evidence-that-sunlight-fights-cancer.aspx

Exercising for greater benefit in (a lot) less time

How would you like to get more benefit in much less time than most people who exercise?  This kind of exercise increases cardiovascular endurance, the rate at which you burn fat, your resting metabolic rate, and insulin resistance, while also improving skin elasticity, reducing wrinkles and helping you look and feel younger[i]. Sounds a bit like wishful thinking doesn’t it?

It’s what many professional athletes do when they need to add speed and endurance (which isn’t easy for them to do).  It involves increasing the levels of a hormone that speeds up the process of healing and rebuilding specific types of muscle tissue.  It’s the same hormone actors use to help them look younger and to build and maintain muscle as they get older.  It’s called human growth hormone, or HGH.  But if you’re an Olympic or professional athlete and don’t want to get busted for doping because of taking synthetic HGH, what do you do?  Many of them (and more all the time) do High Intensity Interval Training or HIIT.

HIIT involves doing short, intensive exercise with interspersed recovery periods.[ii]  We’re talking about seconds here.  Thirty seconds of all-out, as-hard-as-you-can-go exertion followed by ninety seconds of recovery.  And you do it eight times (fewer when you first start).  That’s it.  You can run, swim, cycle, or even lift weights (with a spotter).  It takes 20 minutes including warming up and you’re done.

So how does it work?  Our bodies have three types of muscle tissues.  They are called slow twitch, fast twitch and super-fast twitch muscles.  Slow twitch muscle tissues are what you use when you do extended cardio workouts such as distance running, biking, spinning, incline treadmill work, etc. They make up about 50% of total muscle tissue.  These muscle fibers are used during aerobic exercise.  Fast twitch muscles on the other hand are only accessed by anaerobic exercise. You have to push your body into an oxygen deficit where the muscles are put into an anaerobic condition.  The quickest way to do this is to add velocity to your workout. The primary intention is to push yourself past your aerobic capacity when you exercise.  This is why you can get the increased benefits in smaller amounts of time.  You are not spending extra time doing unnecessary aerobic exercise.  Instead you are trying to put yourself into an anaerobic state as fast as possible.  At this point, you may be figuring out that just because interval training is much faster…it isn’t exactly easier.  I can tell you from experience, it’s hard.  You have to push past the point where your body tells you it doesn’t want to go.  That’s why it works.

If you already exercise regularly, you might be wondering about missing the benefits that come with traditional aerobic training if you were to start doing HIIT. This is another ‘icing-on-the-cake-with-an-organic-non-FD&C red-colored cherry on top’ aspect to HIIT.  You don’t lose the benefits of aerobic conditioning in the process.  It turns out that fast, hard anaerobic training is one of the best ways to increase aerobic capacity.  Bottom line?  You get all the benefits associated with more traditional aerobic training but in less time and with less energy expended.  Research by Gibala et al demonstrated that 2.5 hours of sprint interval training (over one week) produced similar biochemical muscle changes to 10.5 hours of endurance training with similar endurance performance benefits.[iii]   Other, more recent research by Gibala et al shows mitochondrial biogenesis can as much as double after only after eight weeks of high-intensity training[iv].   Energy comes from the mitochondria in your cells.  Basically your body is producing more of the cellular engines that give you energy.  Other research shows increased calorie burning rates lasting up to fourteen hours after HIIT exercise.[v]  This is really good news for anybody wanting to lose weight and increase their resting metabolism.

For me it has increased my cardiovascular stamina and foot speed to the point that my tennis partner noticed so much improvement he asked if I had been doing some kind of conditioning program.  It was almost embarrassing to say, “Yup, I’m spending an hour a week doing this high-intensity interval training thing.”  (At the time I was only doing it twice a week, now I spend a whopping 90 minutes per week, including travel, warm-up and exercise time.)

And, now for the less-tangible, more-difficult-to-measure benefits of this kind of workout.  (I’ve been holding out on you a bit here…)  I have always appreciated the added benefits that exercise gives me.  I feel stronger and more energized, I sleep better, and I’m generally in a better frame of mind the entire day.  I think I see things a bit more clearly after a workout.  I’m less likely to respond hastily or with upset when I’ve already wrung stuck energy and tension out of my body.  Interval training gives me all of those benefits but to an even greater degree than I got from other types of exercise in the past.  It’s a bit odd to say, but I feel happier when I do these workouts…pretty much all day long.  And many researchers believe a high level of HGH in the body is the closest thing western medicine has found to a fountain of youth.[vi]  Although documented increases in longevity resulting from HGH supplementation have not yet been shown in any literature I can find, significant improvements in many of the characteristics associated with aging have been demonstrated (including but not limited to: increased muscle mass, decreased insulin resistance, greater fat-burning capacity, increased skin thickness and elasticity, increased resting metabolism, endurance and cardiovascular capacity).   This is the stuff that tells the body to clear out and replace old or damaged cells.  It keeps you feeling and looking younger and also helps strengthen and rebuild muscle and organ tissues.  Sounds pretty close to a fountain of youth to me…even if all the evidence isn’t in yet.

So to  wrap this up, I would offer a few of words of caution.  First, be patient.  I’ve been athletically active all my life, not at an elite level but always relatively fit.  Four minutes of this exercise (with the ten and a half minutes of recovery time interspersed) completely kicks my butt.  Even as a person who considered himself to be in relatively good shape, doing HIIT twice a week was all I wanted to do.  Second, you don’t get to overdo it, even if you think you want to.  While slow twitch fibers take about 24 hours to heal, fast twitch fibers take 48 hours.  Therefore you should never do high-intensity workouts more than three times per week.  The recommendation for this type of exercise is to start at twice per week and do fewer reps at the beginning (at least four), eventually increasing to eight reps three times a week.  That’s all you’ll ever need (or want) to do.

[Disclaimer: As always, the point of these posts is to examine pervasive “myth-understandings” in society.  I make a concerted effort to only put things on the table that are not only supported by referenced evidence, but that will also make the most difference in the quality of life for us as individuals and as a society.  And, these posts are only (my) summaries, not complete examinations of the topic.  Don’t take my word for it, click through to the references so you can speak from your own knowledge and not from hearsay (or ‘read-say’).  Thank you!]

References:

Wikipedia:  High-Intensity Interval Training.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-intensity_interval_training

Interval Training Workouts Improve Speed and Endurance: Intervals training workouts that vary exercise intensity help build fitness fast. http://sportsmedicine.about.com/od/tipsandtricks/a/Intervals.htm

Fast Fitness – 30-Second Sprint Workouts Build Fitness Fast: Get Fit Faster with Sprint Workouts.  http://sportsmedicine.about.com/od/sampleworkouts/a/30sec_sprints.htm

http://fitness.mercola.com/sites/fitness/archive/2012/02/10/phil-campbell-interview.aspx?e_cid=20120210_FNL_art_1   This site includes an hour-long interview which is great if you have time…and, most of the information is summarized in the written portion of the page if you don’t.

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[i] http://www.hgh-human-growth-hormone-guide.com/hgh-look-young.htm

[ii] http://sportsmedicine.about.com/od/sampleworkouts/a/30sec_sprints.htm

[iii] “Short-term sprint interval versus traditional endurance training: similar initial adaptations in human skeletal muscle and exercise performance”. J Physiol 575 (3): 901–911. doi:10.1113/jphysiol.2006.112094. PMC 1995688. PMID 16825308. http://jp.physoc.org/cgi/content/short/575/3/901.

[iv] Gibala MJ, McGee SL, Garnham AP, Howlett KF, Snow RJ, Hargreaves M. Brief intense interval exercise activates AMPK and p38 MAPK signaling and increases the expression of PGC-1alpha in human skeletal muscle.  J Appl Physiol. 2009 Mar;106(3):929-34. Epub 2008 Dec 26.  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19112161

[v] http://www.acsm.org/about-acsm/media-room/news-releases/2011/09/01/vigorous-exercise-burns-calories-for-14-hours-after-exercise

[vi] Human Growth Hormone Guide:  HGH Research Articles – Part 1.  http://www.hgh-human-growth-hormone-guide.com/hgh-research.htm

The Cholesterol Myth

The primary purpose of this blog is to uncover and illuminate modern myths in society, especially those which most negatively affect basic issues of health, wealth and happiness.  This topic matches all three of those criteria.  However the myth-understandings, as it were, regarding cholesterol are so ubiquitous, their stature and righteousness so widely and deeply accepted, that the process of unwinding them is proportionally more challenging.  One could write a book (which a good number of intrepid authors have indeed done…see references) about it and still not plumb the depths of the misperceptions, misrepresentations and misunderstandings regarding cholesterol.  The question arises, what is the best approach and most effective means of tackling such a topic in the necessarily limited space and time of a blog post?  And the answer in this case, is to not attempt to provide irrefutable evidence debunking all the nonsense that we have been fed about cholesterol, but rather just to state the rather surprising facts about its real relationship to health and well-being and most tellingly, it’s lack of relationship to disease and mortality.  References to the several books I have read on this topic will be provided as well as links to helpful websites that will be able to provide more of the detailed information behind “The Cholesterol Myth.”

In cases like this the best thing I can do is to effectively set the table and create the most conducive circumstances for resetting previously unquestioned, nearly hard-wired beliefs.  How does one do that you might ask?  Well I haven’t the foggiest idea, but I can tell you in all sincerity that I’d like to do it better, so if you have any suggestions please leave them for me in the comments section.  Seriously speaking however, it can be uncomfortably confronting to examine beliefs that you have previously held as more-or-less unquestioned truths.   Beliefs about cholesterol and its effects on your health and what you supposedly should do about it might rank near the top of the list of generally accepted ideas that are entirely, completely upside down and backwards.  The point of this paragraph?  To prepare you to hear something you may be very inclined to simply shake your head at and say, “That can’t be right….”  The bright side?  Think of the billions of dollars we could be saving in testing, treatment and side effects from the “cure” for this dreaded non-disease.

So in the interests of time, and the quickest path back to sanity regarding cholesterol and the massively unnecessary avoidance of cholesterol-containing healthy food, we’re gonna cut straight to the bottom line.  DIETARY CHOLESTEROL CONSUMPTION AND  HIGH LEVELS OF BLOOD CHOLESTEROL  DO NOT CAUSE HEART DISEASE.   Nor are they associated with higher levels of overall mortality.  In fact, higher blood cholesterol levels are actually associated with a reduced rate of coronary heart disease, stroke, cancer and overall mortality.   People with high blood cholesterol live longer than those with low blood cholesterol.  Now before you stop reading and click off to another page in utter disbelief about what you just read, go here, and here, and here, and here, and be sure to check this one out too.  Seriously, you shouldn’t worry about high cholesterol and contrary to all we continue to be told, you should be much more concerned if your cholesterol levels are low and decreasing rather than if they are high and increasing.  And for heaven’s, and your health’s, sake please stop taking statins because a  bunch of MDs and pharmaceutical companies have convinced each other (and most of us) that we need to be lowering our cholesterol…for our health.  It is simply, flat out, wrong.  It is the absolute worst kind of myth, one which represents itself as something that will improve our lives while in fact compromising our health with unwanted side effects (from what is typically lifelong treatment) and burdening us with unnecessary expenditures that could be put to at least a hundred and eight better uses.

References:

Books:  Ravnskov, Uffe, MD, PhD.  The Cholesterol Myths: Exposing the Fallacy that Saturated Fat and Cholesterol Cause Heart Disease,  2000.

Kendrick, Malcolm, MD.  The Great Cholesterol Con:  The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It, 2007.

On-line references:

http://www.westonaprice.org/know-your-fats/cholesterol-friend-or-foe  Cholesterol: Friend Or Foe?,  by Natasha Campbell-McBride, MD,  May 4 2008.  This is a great summary article of the incredible number of essential functions played by cholesterol in the body and why you don’t want to stress your body by reducing your cholesterol levels.

http://healthydietsandscience.blogspot.com/   This is one of the most comprehensive websites I have found for  information regarding diet and health.  Be sure to look down the right side of the site for the index of article topics.  There are 49 separate topics related to cholesterol referencing well over two hundred research papers.

The Money Masters

Links to “The Money Masters”

To add to Silver Bean’s excellent suggestions, I highly recommend to anyone here, the videos The Money Masters (parts 1 and 2). They are long, but infinitely worth seeing in the entirety. Videos here:

Part 1:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7757684583209015812&hl=en&emb=1#docid=6076118677860424204
Part 2:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7757684583209015812&hl=en&emb=1#docid=-7336845760512239683

A Propaganda Primer

The word ‘propaganda’ as it is used today, did not always have the negative connotations that became associated with it in the post World War II era.  The Third Reich made extensive and remarkably effective use of the technology enabling it to generate public support to prosecute wars of hatred and intolerance against people inside and outside the country.  (Such manipulation, of course, did not cease to exist when the Third Reich fell.)  What is less well known however, is the history and intent (or future employers) of the primary architect of these fledgling techniques to control the public mind.  The pioneer of this new field was an Austrian-born American by the name of Edward Bernays, who is recognized as “the father of modern public relations.”[1] At the time however, the science and practice of propaganda was still a maturing and relatively untested technology.  Hitler’s Germany became its first society-wide success story, setting the stage for its planetary application which has become so ubiquitous as to be almost unconsciously embedded and accepted in our experience and expectations.  In the early 1920s, Mr. Bernays published the seminal work in this new field.  The book was simply titled “Propaganda” and was used as a graduate level text.  At the time, it was presented as a necessary and benign means of ‘educating’ the common man.  The issue at hand was how to generate public support for national social and political policies in the most efficient and effective manner.  Being the nephew of Sigmund Freud, Mr. Bernays was no neophyte when it came to his understanding of unconscious human desires and motivations.  Taken as a whole, he believed these unconscious drives led to the necessity of “enlightened despotism” in order to control the otherwise dangerous “herd instincts” of society.[2] He made no effort to hide his motivations and reasons for developing technology for the expressed purpose of controlling the public mind.  In his own words:

“If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it?  The recent practice of propaganda has proved that it is possible…”[3]

This is the most fundamentally important aspect of modern ‘public relations’ to understand and to appreciate.  Namely that its primary purpose is, was, and always has been, to control the public mind, to generate the accepted realms of discourse, understanding and perceptions of the public at large, without their conscious knowledge or consent…for their own good.  This process is called propaganda, public relations, advertising, and more honestly, brainwashing.  Despite what more (potentially) innocent modern-day media moguls and advertising experts may believe or say, all of these practices essentially refer to the same process and objective, namely, using mass media to effect control of public beliefs, desires and actions through the subconscious.

The second primary distinguishing characteristic of conditioning/propaganda/advertising/brainwashing is that there will always be protections and resistances to uncovering it, to becoming conscious of it and its effects.   It is always designed with built-in protective mechanisms, otherwise it would not remain as well hidden, underexposed or effective.  Therefore, anytime you are being pushed up against belief systems that have been impressed upon you in this way, you will feel resistance of some kind.  It may come as an emotional response, ranging from slight discomfort and disquiet to extreme upset and anger.  It will often take the form of ridicule, derision or dismissal (think how most people react when they hear the words “conspiracy theory”).  This is the second defining characteristic of conditioning.

We’ve all seen pictures of goose-stepping soldiers.  This kind of conditioning did not stop with Hitler’s Third Reich, with Russian Communism or with China or North Korea’s statist control structures.  It did not and is not just happening to them.  It is happening to us, now.  The leap of faith I am asking you to make is to be willing to consider that, in many ways, we are those goose-stepping soldiers; and not only are we them, but we are purposefully conditioned to resist acknowledging or even considering it as a possibility.  Not just then, not just them.  Us.  Now.  Not just Democrats.  Not just Republicans.  Not just rabid sports fans.  Not just adrenaline-addicted sex and gambling junkies.  Not just retail-therapy addicted shoppers.  Not just Playstation zombies.  All of us.

We have all been conditioned, in ways we don’t recognize, to see things a certain way, to believe things that suit the interests of others and not ourselves.  And at some level, we know it.  We see it around us.  We hear it on the radio and TV talk shows.  Perhaps we might even recognize the conditioning of the everyday American who is dutifully working more and more for less and less while cheerleading for the wonders of ‘capitalism’ and ‘The American Way’.  We can easily see such conditioning…in others.  It’s all around us.  Many of us, most of us, marvel at it every day, often with large helpings of sarcasm and ‘how-can-they-be-so-hopelessly-ignorant’ rhetoric thrown in for good measure.

But it seems we all think it hasn’t happened to us.  We all think that we, amongst all the rest of the true believers out there, have risen above and reasoned our way out of the trap of unconscious manipulation.  We all pretty much know what we believe, why we believe it, and why we’re right and everybody else has got some, or most of it wrong.

And don’t you see?  It can’t be that way.  It can’t be that we’re the only ones who’ve got the straight scoop.  But most of us it seems, think we do (…including this author of course).

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[1] The Century of the Self, 2002 BBC documentary.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/features/century_of_the_self.shtml

[2] Wikiipedia, “Edward Bernays” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays

[3] ibid