On Wednesday I was given the opportunity, by Dick Purtan on WOMC Radio in Detroit, to share information with his audience on the recent recommendation on mammogram utilization (or lack of) by The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.

This is a very critical foreshadowing of what is coming to EVERY person, family and business in our country if the current legislation advocated by President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, Senator Reid and the Democratic Majority in Congress is passed into law.

The foundation for rationing is already in place by the establishment of The Federal Coordinating Council For Comparative Effectiveness Research (The Rationing Board) through the “hidden” health care portion of The Stimulus Bill. The recently passed Health Care Bill in The House and the recently proposed Health Care Bill in The Senate further empower RATIONING and DENYING OF CARE as the main mechanism of cutting costs … the most inhumane and unethical means to do so.

Today it is rationing of tests … tomorrow it WILL be the rationing of treatment. Below is the link to the interview with Dick Purtan, who has been a strong advocate of our prevention based approach for over 20 years.

Dick Purtan interviews Dr. Dave Janda

Malia and Sasha Obama have not been vaccinated against the H1N1 flu virus.  White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs says the vaccine is not available to them based on their risk.

Currently, only children with chronic medical conditions whose immune systems are not strong enough to fight off the virus are being vaccinated. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that children from 6 months to 18 years of age get the H1N1 vaccination. 

For many parents the biggest drawback to getting the vaccination is the mercury-containing preservative thimerosal, which has been used in vaccines and other products since the 1930s.

The H1N1 vaccine can include thimerosal, but the CDC insists that there is no scientific evidence to suggest that the preservative in low doses causes anything except for redness and swelling at the injection site.

The CDC also insists that no link between thimerosal and autism has been proven scientifically, a conclusion widely disputed by the National Autism Association and other non-profit organizations.

School systems have been notifying parents to return consent forms quickly for their child to receive an H1N1 vaccination during school clinics. Students will be able to get the vaccine unless they have underlying medical problems.

The CDC wants the public to know that a regular seasonal flu shot will not protect against the H1N1 virus.

Will Brother O subject his own children to the “benefits” of the H1N1 vaccine, or will he follow in the footsteps of committee Democrats, who exempted themselves from enrollment in the public option, and go on to opt out his kids from taking the vaccine while promoting it as beneficial for average Americans?

Time will tell.

The Congressional Budget Office published its preliminary estimate Wednesday of the health overhaul bill crafted in secret by Montana Senator Max Baucus’s Finance Committee. According to CBO, the Bill’s $829 billion ten year cost would be offset by $910 billion in “savings,” resulting in a net $81 billion reduction in the federal budget deficit by 2019.

Right. Take a deep breath.

Included in the “savings” estimates are about $507 billion, that is one-half a trillion dollars in new taxes and penalties and $404 billion in cost reductions. Most of the cost reductions would come on the backs of service providers, meaning service cuts to Medicare recipients, and a preliminary reading suggests a majority of the new taxes would come from higher income clients who pay for their service already. It includes a 40 percent excise tax on the more generous health-insurance plans, but due to inflation, over time this tax would cover lower cost plans as well.

It gets better.

The operating assumptions underlying cost estimates are usually heroically optimistic and peppered with backside-covering caveats. The assumptions used are also the place to spot future problems. Taken directly from the CBO report, the following should give any reasonable person pause:

These projections assume the proposals are enacted and remain unchanged throughout the next two decades, which is often not the case for major legislation. (Emphasis mine.)

That is an understatement. When legislation like this passes it is almost always bare bones, a camel’s nose under the tent. Once they have managed to sign the bill into law, legislators come out of the woodwork turning it into a Christmas tree for new proposals.

Every piece of similar legislation in the past, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Aid to Families with Dependent Children and any other entitlement you can name grew exponentially after it became law, not merely because the program attracted so many beneficiaries, but primarily because legislators added new provisions on an almost yearly basis.

That is what will happen with this bill. Although it will likely happen much faster, because complete socialization of medicine is the ultimate goal, and they have been working to achieve this for almost a century. Read on:

The projected savings for the proposal reflect the cumulative impact of a number of specifications that would constrain payment rates for providers of Medicare services. (Emphasis mine)

This will cause service cuts to Medicare. Expect to see doctors abandon ship en masse. Here are some more gems:

Payments to physicians would be lowered by constraining Medicare Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) increases.

While this amounts to price controls — a bad thing — it is a big part of the cost savings in this bill. The Cato Institute claims that Congress routinely blocks such restraints and will do so again. If that happens, there goes $200 billion in “savings.” Cato has found an additional $108 billion in federal spending it says CBO overlooked:

Payment rates for many other service providers would be held below the level of inflation. (Emphasis mine.)

In real terms, this amounts to a pay cut (read more shortages.) Now here is the kicker:

The projected longer-term savings for the proposal also assume that the Medicare Commission is relatively effective at reducing costs –beyond the reductions that would be achieved by other aspects of the proposal…

Medicare Commission? What is that? Could it possibly be the dreaded Death Panel?

The proposal would also establish a Medicare Commission, which would be required, under certain circumstances, to recommend changes to the Medicare program to limit the rate of growth in that program’s spending.

Death Panel? C’mon! Don’t be ridiculous! That was only what that silly Palin girl called it. This is simply a reasonable effort to control costsas some lawyer at Oxford University Press Blog described.

Granny, grandpa, ruuuun! 

This Commission is severely restricted in the current proposal as indicated by the relatively paltry savings CBO projected due to its activities: $22 billion. Yet the statement above clearly suggests that a much bigger role for the Commission is envisioned in later years.

And finally:

The long-term budgetary impact could be quite different if those provisions were ultimately changed or not fully implemented.

So in order to make this thing work there will be $500 billion in new taxes and service cuts totalling another $400 billion, and most of those cuts will be achieved by this new ”Medicare Commission.” Great!

But they didn’t tell you everything. The CBO made vague references to “national health expenditures”:

Members have also requested information about the effect of proposals on national health expenditures (NHE). CBO does not analyze NHE as closely as it does the federal budget, however, and at this point the agency has not assessed the net effect of the current proposal on NHE…

Whoa! What do we call this, an er…ah… oversight?

They are talking about an additional one trillion dollars!

Over half the bill’s mandates are unfunded and fall on businesses and individuals, and so are not counted in the “cost to government!”

This information is what killed Hillary’s proposal in 1994 and is the reason they kept it out of this one!

And here is the last shocker of this CBO estimate: they did it without even seeing the legislation! None was provided to them to make these estimates, so we still don’t even know what’s really in the bill!

There are a host of other frauds being perpetrated on us right now by our government regarding health care. So let’s get something straight about the high percentage of GDP (16-17 percent) devoted to healthcare in this country, because it is widely misunderstood.

First, most of the excessive costs of American medical care are the result of government intervention. In fact proponents of socialized medicine anticipated that the costs of Medicare and Medicaid would create a crisis in health care, generating calls for reform. Their ready answer was just more of the same.

We would all like to see costs of medical care come down. This country should move to reduce costs by removing the causes: excessive government intervention that distorts the market. The many ways government intervenes and the many solutions are beyond the scope of this essay, but that is the answer.

But more importantly, even were this not true, it is irrelevant. It is not a zero sum game! This is the mistake all socialists make. You have heard the argument: “If we spend less on health care, we can spend more on other things.”

When government confiscates the income generated by productive activity in one sector of the economy (it doesn’t matter which sector), and transfers it to a sector of the economy that produces nothing (the government) the entire economy suffers.

Conversely, the healthcare sector of the economy is largely self-supporting – or would be, if the government got out of the way. That is, it thrives, without government help, on the productive activity of its professionals with the dollars voluntarily contributed by its clients (you and I).

You and I are not constrained by what we voluntarily pay in order to stay healthy. We are constrained by parasitic government activity that confiscates today at least one third of our annual earnings without providing commensurate benefit.

This country chooses a high level of care. We prefer it that way, and so far, we have been able to afford it. Government’s growing intrusion into the healthcare market may put costs out of reach, but be clear on the cause!

However, with ever higher taxes and ever more regulation over everything we do, our government is gradually strangling us. Now they are spending not only our hard-earned dollars, but a good portion of the dollars future generations are expected to earn before they are even able to earn it. Will they be able to?

And now House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has been caught on tape calling for a Value-Added-Tax (VAT) to pay for the healthcare bill and other goodies. Does this mean even the Democrats recognize CBO’s cost estimate is a fraud? They should, because it is.

The healthcare overhaul bill currently hiding in the Senate Finance Committee of Max Baucus is a walking disaster. Proponents of this monstrosity claim we have to do something or things will get worse. Newsflash: things can always get worse, and under this bill they certainly will.

[Cross-posted from the DC Independent Examiner.]

Health care workers must be immunized against H1N1 by November 30 or lose their jobs, said New York State Health Commissioner Dr. Richard Daines. Health Department officials approved the regulation in August, making New York the only state in the country to mandate seasonal and swine flu immunizations for all health care providers, including doctors.

Some nurses and health care providers say the regulation not only violates their personal freedom but also puts them at risk for severe neurological disorders such as Guillain Barre syndrome and death without legal redress. The federal government has extended “liability immunity against tort claims” for its five swine H1N1 flu vaccine contractors should their vaccines be linked to sickness, nerve-damage, or death.

Opponents’ concerns regarding the H1N1 vaccine are not unfounded. The last federal government swine-flu vaccination program in 1976 was a debacle. Outbreaks of Guillain Barre syndrome were linked to the flu shot, and the national immunization campaign was shut down after just 10 weeks.

Even though the Public Employees Federation has urged union members to comply with the regulation, many health care providers are angry that they are being compelled to take H1N1 flu shots. “No one wants to be forced to take a vaccine that’s been hurried through the approval process,” said Helena Kosorek, spokeswoman for the New York Healthcare Concerned Citizens Group.

Nurse Kristi Tramposch said she is reluctant to take the shot because of the “toxic substances that go into vaccines” and prefers to wait until enough people have taken it before she even considers it.
 
Typically, only 40 to 50 percent of New York’s health care workers are vaccinated yearly against influenza, but Daines predicts opponents will ultimately comply with the directive and roll up their sleeves.

Hundreds of health care workers opposed to the mandatory H1N1 flu shot are expected to rally today at the State Capitol Building in Albany.

Terminally ill patients die prematurely under the British system of socialized medicine, a subtle form of euthanasia. Many are condemned to die too soon under the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS) death forecasting scheme, the London Telegraph reports. Leading experts, who care for the terminally ill, claim that some patients are being diagnosed as being close to death “without regard to the fact that the diagnosis could be wrong.”

The NHS scheme, known as the Liverpool Care Pathway, puts terminally ill patients on the fast track by withdrawing fluid and drugs and administering continuous sedation until they die.

Under Pathway guidelines, the medical team treating the patient decides when the patient is close to death. To determine whether the patient is a candidate for Pathway, the team looks for signs, which include if the patient is unconsciousness or has difficulty swallowing medication.

The experts caution that these signs can also point to other medical problems. For example, side effects from pain-killers such as morphine or the effects of dehydration can cause patients to become semi-conscious and confused.

Once a patient is put on Pathway, the guidelines recommend that doctors stop giving medications and invasive procedures, such as intravenous drips. The problem for some patients is that they have been “wrongly” diagnosed to Pathway, and this becomes a “self-fulfilling prophecy”; they believe they are about to die, so they die.

Experts also worry that too many doctors are not regularly monitoring patients for improvement in their condition once they start on Pathway. The patient is administered drugs through a syringe driver that continually infuses them over 24 hours until the patient is “terminally” sedated.

The Pathway scheme, which was designed to reduce the suffering of cancer patients in their final hours, has now accounted for about one in six of all deaths in the UK between 2007-08, twice as many as in Belgium and the Netherlands, according to research by Clive Seale, professor of medical sociology at Bart’s and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry.

Palliative care experts point out that death forecasting is an inexact science and when patients are sedated it becomes that much harder to determine if their condition is improving. The UK’s unusually high percentage of deaths by continuous deep sedation (CDS) suggests the possibility that the NHS may be administering the Pathway scheme as a subtle form of euthanasia.

A Department of Health spokesman said, “The Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP) is an established and recommended tool that help[s] … [m]any people receive excellent care at the end of their lives.” The concern over the NHS Pathway scheme is not about how many people received excellent care; it’s about the Pathway of death for those who did not.

Pending Massachusetts legislation would compel unproven vaccinations, authorize warrantless entry to private homes, and penalize for non-compliance.

According to Massachusetts’ “Pandemic Response Bill” 2028, once the governor declares a state of emergency or declares an emergency exists that is considered detrimental to public health, the local public health authority, with approval of the commissioner, has the authority to:

• require the owner or occupier of premises to permit entry into and investigation of the premises;
• close, direct, and compel the evacuation of, or to decontaminate or cause to be decontaminated any building or facility, and to allow the reopening of the building or facility when the danger has ended;
• decontaminate or cause to be decontaminated, or to destroy any material;
• restrict or prohibit assemblages of persons;
• require a health care facility to provide services or the use of its facility, or to transfer the management and supervision of the health care facility to the department or to a local public health authority;
• control ingress to and egress from any stricken or threatened public area, and the movement of persons and materials within the area;
• adopt and enforce measures to provide for the safe disposal of infectious waste and human remains, provided that religious, cultural, family, and individual beliefs of the deceased person shall be followed to the extent possible when disposing of human remains, whenever that may be done without endangering the public health;
• procure, take immediate possession from any source, store, or distribute any anti-toxins, serums, vaccines, immunizing agents, antibiotics, and other pharmaceutical agents or medical supplies located within the commonwealth as may be necessary to respond to the emergency;
• require in-state health care providers to assist in the performance of vaccination, treatment, examination, or testing of any individual as a condition of licensure, authorization, or the ability to continue to function as a health care provider in the commonwealth;
• waive the commonwealth’s licensing requirements for health care professionals with a valid license from another state in the United States or whose professional training would otherwise qualify them for an appropriate professional license in the commonwealth;
• allow for the dispensing of controlled substance by appropriate personnel consistent with federal statutes as necessary for the prevention or treatment of illness;
• authorize the chief medical examiner to appoint and prescribe the duties of such emergency assistant medical examiners as may be required for the proper performance of the duties of office;
• collect specimens and perform tests on any animal, living or deceased;
• exercise authority under sections 95 and 96 of chapter 111;
• care for any emerging mental health or crisis counseling needs that individuals may exhibit, with the consent of the individuals.

The bill would give state and local agencies power over transportation routes, communication devices, carriers, public utilities, fuels, food, clothing and shelter, and subject citizens to “involuntary transportation,” physical examinations, tests, and specimen collection. Citizens who refuse would be isolated, quarantined, or detained “for as long as may be reasonably necessary.”

In addition, the bill would authorize law enforcement authorities to:

“arrest without warrant any person whom the officer has probable cause to believe has  violated an order for isolation or quarantine … Any person who knowingly violates an  order for isolation or quarantine shall be punished by imprisonment of not more than 30  days and may be subject to a civil fine of not more than $1,000 per day that the violation continues.”

The progeny of the citizens acclaimed for “the shot heard ’round the world,” appear now to be cowering in abject servitude to a tyrannical government that is about to strip away their rights to free assembly, enter their homes and businesses without their approval, and investigate and quarantine them without their consent.

While the proposed bill awaits approval in the House, Massachusetts citizens could take a few moments to ponder the thoughtful insight of Alexis de Tocqueville:

“Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice  the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.”

Government control of our food supply is the ultimate step in our enslavement. Barack Obama has moved swiftly, and largely unnoticed by either Congress or the public, to seize authority over the very food we eat. The mechanism for this power grab is legislation that most Congressmen will vote for without reading, as usual, based on the synoptic introduction listing intended improvements. From the HR version:

To establish the Food Safety Administration within the Department of Health and Human Services to protect the public health by preventing food-borne illness, ensuring the safety of food, improving research on contaminants leading to food-borne illness, and improving security of food from intentional contamination, and for other purposes.

Going through process in the House of Representatives is H.R.875, the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009.

• The version maintained by the Library of Congress is here.
• The version maintained by GovTrack, a civic project to track Congress, is here.
• The version maintained by Open Congress, a project of the Sunlight Foundation, is here. This website allows readers to comment on line items in the bill after free registration with Open Congress.

Concurrently being rammed through the Senate is S.425, the Food Safety and Tracking Improvement Act.

A bill to amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to provide for the establishment of a traceability system for food, to amend the Federal Meat Inspection Act, the Poultry Products Inspections Act, the Egg Products Inspection Act, and the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to provide for improved public health and food safety through enhanced enforcement, and for other purposes.

That sounds innocuous, doesn’t it?

• The version maintained by the Library of Congress is here.
• The version maintained by GovTrack is here.
• The version maintained by Open Congress is here.

These bills are being coordinated by their sponsors to stifle the debate that would normally occur during the reconciliation of the House and Senate versions:

These bills have the legal potential to eliminate organic farming, destroy small family farms, outlaw natural seed banks, and criminalize even backyard vegetable gardens. Their overt intention, although nobody is noticing, is to force all of the American people into a more costly diet entirely composed of genetically modified plants and animals.

How will this work? The genetically modified seeds are patented, so farmers who purchase seed from Monsanto are not allowed to save seed from one year’s crop to sow the next year. If they do, they will be sued out of business by the agri-giant. So once they get on the treadmill, they are forced to purchase every year from Monsanto. (Monsanto has even routinely sued farmers who didn’t want their seed, whose fields were contaminated by Monsanto seeds blown from neighboring farms.) This could be a moot point, as the hybrids often produce sterile seed. In fact, there is a danger that eventually the world’s grain crop could become totally sterile, destroying life on earth as we know it, since even the animals that we eat feed on the grains.

Whether deliberately or through their native ineptitude, Congress permitted the American people to be softened up to accept this restrictive legislation. Fear for public safety was induced by recent crises from Chinese (April, 2007) and Mexican (July, 2008) food imports, among many others.

Such events could be almost entirely prevented by adequate enforcement of exisiting laws and honest effort by responsible government agencies. But instead of correcting the failed existing system, the Obama administration will use these shortfalls as an excuse to pass even more legislation, and in the process, prevent Americans from providing for their own sustenance.

Worse, after claiming freedom from the influence of lobbyists, Obama is doing this at the behest of agricultural giant Monsanto, among others. One of his campaign advisors was Stanford University plant biologist Sharon Long, a director at Monsanto. Obama appointed former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack, so close to Monsanto that he often travelled in their corporate jet,, as Secretary of Agriculture. Most egregious, Obama’s reputed choice to head the new “Food Police” agency that will be created by this legislation is Michael Taylor, who joined Monsanto as Vice President for Public Policy in 1998.

Monsanto, you will recall, was one of the companies that produced Agent Orange, the herbicide used to defoliate the forest cover in Vietnam which was linked to veterans’ diseases. They also acquired the subsidiary that made the artificial sweetener Aspartame, linked to many reports of health problems because it breaks down into formaldehyde (enbalming fluid) in the human body.

On the European Common Market, Aspartame is banned for all children’s products. Why is this not the case in Canada and the U.S.? Because Monsanto – which owns the NutraSweet Company which manufactures Aspartame – pays off the FDA, the American Medical Association, The American Dietetic and Diabetic Associations, Congressmen and Senators and virtually anyone who gets in the way, and in other countries too. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation caught them red handed and aired a program where Monsanto was trying to bribe Canadian Doctors at Health Canada.

From 1930 until they were banned in 1977 Monsanto was the sole American producer/marketer of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), persistent organic pollutants which bioaccumulate in animals. Won’t a Monsanto minion make a great leader for the Obama food police?

The rest of the world already resents being forced to use genetically modified seed from the United States, 90% of which is from Monsanto. Pay particular attention to the spokeswoman from India in the following video:

There may be some unintended consequences for Barack Obama in these choices. His support in highly polarized — he has little among republicans and conservatives. And democrats and liberals are generally the ones who favor organic food and care deeply about the environment, so this goes against his political base. And, oh yes, Michelle and the girls just planted an organic garden on the White House grounds, amid much fanfare about promoting healthy choices. We wonder how that squares with her husband cozying up to Monsanto?

[Full disclosure -- author Nancy Matthis is a fiscal conservative, but is also a vegetarian, animal rights advocate opposed to factory farms, environmentalist, and passionate organic gardener.]

Related:

Yale Rudd Center — The Perils of Ignoring History: Big Tobacco Played Dirty and Millions Died. How Similar Is Big Food? (Research Report, PDF format):

The tobacco industry had a playbook, a script, that emphasized personal responsibility, paying scientists who delivered research that instilled doubt, criticizing the “junk” science that found harms associated with smoking, making self-regulatory pledges, lobbying with massive resources to stifle government action, introducing “safer” products, and simultaneously manipulating and denying both the addictive nature of their products and their marketing to children. The script of the food industry is both similar to and different from the tobacco industry script.

Food is obviously different from tobacco, and the food industry differs from tobacco companies in important ways, but there also are significant similarities in the actions that these industries have taken in response to concern that their products cause harm.

The Ecologist, Vol 28, No 5, Sept/Oct 1998 — Terminator Technology: The Threat to World Food Security:

Monsanto’s latest flagship technology makes a nonsense of its claim that it seeks to feed the worlds hungry. On the contrary, it threatens to undermine the very basis of traditional agriculture ~ that of saving seeds from year to year. What’s more, this “gene cocktail” will increase the risk that new toxins and allergens will make their way into the food chain….

Health Freedom Alliance — Monsanto’s Dream Bill – Dr Mercola’s take on HR 875:

The bill is essentially a giant gift package for Monsanto, mandating the criminalization of seed banking, prison terms and confiscatory fines for small farmers and 24 hour GPS tracking of their animals, and of “industrial” standards to independent farms.

The corporations want nothing less than full control of the land, the end of normal animals so they can substitute patented genetically engineered ones, and the end of normal seeds and thus of seed banking by farmers or individuals.

And now Monsanto wants its own employee, Michael Taylor (the man who forced genetically engineered rBGH on the country when the Clintons placed him over “food safety” in the 90’s) back in government, this time to act with massive police power as a “food safety tsar”. HR 875 would give him immense power over what is done on every single farm in the country and massive police state power to wield over farmers….

The Idaho Observer, September, 2006 — Suicide seed food weapons being readied for deployment by F. William Engdahl:

We are familiar with the “terminator” seed concept: Genetically engineered and patented crop species that do not produce viable seed for replanting. We are also aware of the implications should farmers be made dependent upon the likes of Monsanto to provide the seeds needed to plant the fields that produce the food for people and livestock….

The U.S. government has been financing research on genetic engineering technology which, when commercialized, will give its owners the power to control the food seed of entire nations or regions. The government has been working quietly on this technology since 1983. Now, the little-known company that has been collaborating in this genetic research with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)—Delta & Pine Land (D&PL)—is about to become part of the world’s largest supplier of seeds for genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) patented by the Monsanto Corporation of St. Louis, Missouri.

Relations between Monsanto, D&PL and the USDA, on closer scrutiny, show the deep and dark side of the much-heralded genetic revolution in agriculture. It proves deep-held suspicions that the “gene revolution” is not about “solving the world hunger problem” as its advocates claim. It’s about handing over control of the seeds for mankind’s basic food supply—rice, corn, soybeans, wheat, even fruit, vegetables and cotton….

The Idaho Observer, March, 2009 — The most Orwellian federal food regulatory scheme ever proposed…:

Since the Obama administration moved into the White House 64 days ago, it has zealously gone forward with plans to disarm law-abiding Americans and demonize them as domestic terrorists, pass laws to protect every form of sexual perversion imaginable, betray injured enlisted service personnel, dump everyone’s personal history into a massive health information database, fund legions of conscripted “Obama youth (and Obama seniors) into “volunteer” service, provide amnesty for Mexican illegals and take direct control of the Bureau of the Census to phony up statistics to justify government service agency expansion and the expenditure of hundreds of billions of imaginary stimulus dollars to finance some of the greasiest pork projects in U.S. history. Now this highly-motivated administration wants to make it unlawful for people to grow vegetable gardens and eat their own produce.

Apparently alarmed that farmers markets are becoming increasingly popular places to obtain fresh, organic produce and enjoy community interaction and, apparently, concerned that home and community gardens may impact sales of chemically-contaminated corporate produce, HR 875, the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009, was introduced Feb. 4, 2009. The 18,000-word bill, obviously drafted by lawyers from the biotech and agribusiness industries (with help from the “healthcare” industry that benefits enormously when people are starved onto genetically-modified/chemically-contaminated foods devoid of nutritional value), was sponsored by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT). All 39 co-sponsors are Democrats. The bill, which would create and fund a huge new cabinet-level federal bureaucracy called the “Food Safety Agency,” is currently with the House Agriculture committee….

Health Freedom Alliance — Criminalizing Organic and Home Growers:

This bill is sitting in committee and I am not sure when it is going to hit the floor. One thing I do know is that very few of the Representatives have read it. As usual they will vote on this based on what someone else is saying. Urge your members to read the legislation and ask for opposition to this devastating legislation. Devastating for everyday folks but great for factory farming ops like Monsanto, ADM, Sodexo and Tyson to name a few.

I have no doubt that this legislation was heavily influenced by lobbyists from huge food producers. This legislation is so broad based that technically someone with a little backyard garden could get fined and have their property seized. It will effect anyone who produces food even if they do not sell but only consume it. It will literally put all independent farmers and food producers out of business due to the huge amounts of money it will take to conform to factory farming methods. If people choose to farm without industry standards such as chemical pesticides and fertilizers they will be subject to a variety of harassment from this completely new agency that has never before existed. That’s right, a whole new government agency is being created just to police food, for our own protection of course.

Health Freedom Alliance — Slavery Means Someone Else Controls Your Body. Freedom Means You Do:

Which is it? Are you a slave or a free man or woman? If you do nothing to oppose the disingenuous and deadly (literally deadly) “Food Safety” (sic) and “Food Security” (sic) bills like HR 875, S 425, and the even more dangerous HR 759 you are saying “Enslave me. Take away my access to clean, unadulterated food. Pump me up with toxins – pesticiedes, fungicides, herbicides, Mad Cow Disease or BSE (only 1/10 of 1 % of the commercial cattle in our food supply MAY be tested for BSE although BSE occurs ONLY in commercial animals – and never, never in pasture grazed cattle. Pasture grazed cattle raisers run small operations. Just one more category of food producers these bills will run out of business – just like your grandma who makes her jams for the Church Bizare – gone, forbidden from making, producing or storing clean unadulterated food. Oh, by the way, your garden’s gone, too. Slaves eat what they are given.)

Ideas for Change in America — HR 875/S 425: Farm to Fork Food Fascism Comes to America:

Congress often comes up with bad ideas. This is not just a bad idea: it is a catastrophically bad idea for health and freedom. In fact, it is nothing short of food tyranny and will kill not only organic farming, but lots of people as well, along with the entire private farming sector. Your own gardens are at risk as well.

OpEdNews — Monsanto’s dream bill, HR 875:

To begin reversing GM [genetic modification] contamination will require ending the power biotech companies such as Monsanto exert over our government and through that, over our food.

HR 875 was introduced by Rosa DeLauro whose husband Stanley Greenburg works for Monsanto.

The bill is monstrous on level after level – the power it would give to Monsanto, the criminalization of seed banking, the prison terms and confiscatory fines for farmers, the 24 hours GPS tracking of their animals, the easements on their property to allow for warrantless government entry, the stripping away of their property rights, the imposition by the filthy, greedy industrial side of anti-farming international “industrial” standards to independent farms – the only part of our food system that still works, the planned elimination of farmers through all these means.

The corporations want the land, they want more intensive industrialization, they want the end of normal animals so they can substitute patented genetically engineered ones they own, they want the end of normal seeds and thus of seed banking by farmers or individuals. They want control over all seeds, animals, water, and land.

Our farmers are good stewards. That is who is threatened by Rosa DeLauro’s bill (and because of that, we all are)….

MonsantoToday — HR 875: Monsanto’s Dream Bill – Or Just an Internet Rumor?:

….The likely root of the offending blog post is a concern that food laws will make it more difficult to sell and process food that is grown locally. That is a legitimate concern—especially for small enterprises that would be hurt disproportionately by the fixed costs of regulation that larger businesses can spread across more revenue.

It is uncertain whether HR 875 would be effective at improving food safety, or whether it would create unreasonable burdens on local production and sale. This is the discussion that needs to take place in both the blogosphere and in Washington….

Seeds of Change, a Canadian documentary film — Farmers, Biotechnology, and the New Face of Agriculture:

The farmer focus of the Seeds of Change video provides an opportunity to hear firsthand accounts of the good, the bad and the ugly of GM crops from those who are most affected by the new crops’ impacts on agriculture and rural life. It is especially critical of the impacts that biotech giant Monsanto and its products are having on farmers and rural communities across the Canadian west.

Organic Consumers Association — Millions Against Monsanto Campaign:

Monsanto’s GE Seeds are Pushing US Agriculture into Bankruptcy — Genetically engineered crops are causing an economic disaster for farmers in the U.S. So says a new report released by Britain’s Soil Association. The report is a massive compilation of data showing GE crops have cost American taxpayers $12 billion in farm subsidies in the past three years….

Asheville Magazine — Monsanto: THE BAD SEED:

For more than a decade, the Monsanto Corporation of St. Louis has been maneuvering to dominate the world’s supply of seed for staple crops (corn, soybeans, potatoes) — a business plan that Monsanto’s critics say is nothing short of diabolical. Monsanto says it is just devilishly good business….

Francisco Pantaleon suffered a brain hemorrhage last month, but his life was saved by the highly qualified medical staff at the University of Illinois Medical Center at Chicago. That’s quite a different outcome than this illegal alien car wash employee might have experienced if the same malady had struck him while he was still in his native Mexico.

Privacy laws prohibit disclosure of the cumulative cost of his treatment to date, but comparable cases have run about $250,000, according to a guest on the Lou Dobbs Tonight television program Wednesday. Since this illegal immigrant has no personal resources and no health coverage, his costs must be borne by the hospital (i.e., by the US citizens who must pay for their own healthcare and by the taxpayers to the extent of government reimbursement).

The man is 30 years old, and according to reports, came here without documents eleven years ago. He has fathered two children while in the US. Do the math. That means he came here at about age 19, and without having the means to provide adequately for himself or for a family, he added two more individuals to the population of dependents for which hard-working citizens are soaked to provide government services — education and other social services, not to mention his now pricey health care.

He remains in a coma, and the medical prognosis is that he will not recover. A hospital is a critical-care facility, too expensive for long-term maintenance. So the Illinois Medical Center made arrangements to transfer him at their expense to a long-term care facility in his native Mexico. His family members are not gratefully thanking us for saving his life at our expense. No. They are suing to have him remain here in a vegetative state at our expense.

The Chicago Tribune reports:

Legally, hospitals are bound to stabilize all patients in an emergency, regardless of their nationality or insurance status. Afterward they are required to arrange to transfer patients to settings where they can receive adequate care, said Doreena Wong, staff attorney for the National Health Law Program. The difficulty is, nursing homes in Chicago usually will not serve undocumented immigrants who don’t have health insurance or any means to pay for care.

“We can’t arrange long-term care here, so we try to do the best we can in the country of origin,” said Dr. William Chamberlin, chief medical officer at UIC Medical Center….

Howard Peters, senior vice president of government relations at the Illinois Hospital Association, said “the family ought to be grateful” that UIC found a facility in Mexico willing to take Pantaleon and volunteered to pay for the trip.

Pantaleon’s sister and cousin appealed to the Mexican government for help. They are being represented by attorney James Geraghty of Chicago’s Mexican consulate. Not only is the Mexican government demanding that we spend our money to care indefinitely for their citizen, but strident Hispanic racial activist groups have seized this moment.

The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) are also strong-arming the taxpayers. In the following picture of a protest held outside the hospital Tuesday morning, note that the signs claim “discrimination” — that’s how they characterize $250K of free health care.

The Wall Street Journal Health Blog carries a reprise of the Chicago Tribune coverage — Illegal Immigrant in a Coma Set to Be Deported By Hospital. The information is largely the same, but the piece is worth a visit for the lengthy list of comments following the article. It expresses the anger of US taxpayers over being forced to pay for folk who break our laws to come here. A couple of typical comments:

*Someone breaks into my house, trips and falls in the dark, injures themselves, and I have to pay for their care? I don’t think so.

*Who was the last pariah employer of this illegal alien? They should be paying for the health care cost, instead of dumping the expenditures on the hospital and the US Taxpayer. This is becoming an absolute outrage, when citizens are forced by mandated Federal law, to house, educate, hospitalise, imprison and offer welfare programs. Not even US taxpayers get free healthcare and yet the liberal socialist judges make us look after the illegal aliens and their large families….

The New York Times carried a lengthy discussion about the problem of long-term health care for illegal aliens — Immigrants Facing Deportation by U.S. Hospitals. Predictably, it was tear-jerkingly sympathetic to the lawbreakers.

High in the hills of Guatemala, shut inside the one-room house where he spends day and night on a twin bed beneath a seriously outdated calendar, Luis Alberto Jiménez has no idea of the legal battle that swirls around him….

Shooing away flies and beaming at the tiny, toothless elderly mother who is his sole caregiver, Mr. Jiménez, a knit cap pulled tightly on his head, remains cheerily oblivious that he has come to represent the collision of two deeply flawed American systems, immigration and health care….

Are we to feel sorry about this pathetic tableau — the “tiny, toothless elderly mother” caring for her son with “a knit cap pulled tightly on his head”? Before he was returned to his own country, Jiménez, an illegal immigrant working as a gardener in Florida, had his life saved twice by quality US medical care, and was treated for years at a cost to US citizens of $1.5 million. It is not likely he would ever have received such largesse in Guatemala.

The Times report also gratuitously slips in their own bias as conventionally accepted fact, by inserting the phrase “two deeply flawed American systems, immigration and health care.” The liberal socialist agenda is clear — we can fix the flawed systems by granting amnesty and giving everyone universal health care paid for by the legal and productive members of society.

But it is the premise of this statement that is wrong. The systems are not flawed — the enforcement is flawed. If none of the estimated 20 million illegal aliens in the US, not to mention their millions more of anchor babies, had ever been allowed to come in the first place, our health care costs would be in fine shape. It is the illegal immigrants who are bankrupting US health care.

Newsbusters wonders what all the protests are about:

Wryly observes NB Managing Editor Ken Shepherd: “Mexico has universal health care, so surely he’ll get better health care there, right? Isn’t that what the liberals tell us? So why the consternation about sending him back?”

FierceHealthcare, a leading healthcare management newsletter, notes the generic problem:

With large numbers of undocumented, uninsured immigrants doing physically dangerous jobs in this country, expect to see this issue arise more frequently.

This gets at the heart of the problem. If the laws of our country were obeyed, all of the government protections for worker safety and all of the social systems for personal protection would be in place, and this type of situation would not occur. The combination of unscrupulous employers and government failure to enforce immigration law is the real culprit.

Update, Thursday, August 28 — The Chicago Tribune reports that Pantaleon died Tuesday, and the still ungrateful family is asking for an investigation as to whether the hospital was negligent:

Relatives of illegal immigrant who was in coma at UIC Medical Center seek review of his death
Wife wants negligence ruled out, she says

Grief-stricken relatives called for Cook County’s medical examiner to look into the death of Francisco Pantaleon, an illegal immigrant who died Tuesday in the University of Illinois Medical Center at Chicago after lying in a coma for more than a month.

The circumstances of his death remain unclear, and family members are angry about what they say was a failure by the hospital to inform them that Pantaleon, 30, was near death. They are asking for the investigation to be sure that negligence did not play a role in Pantaleon’s death, they said….

Officials at the hospital said that Pantaleon arrived in terrible condition and had been dying all along….

The family is asking for a second autopsy because they want an independent review of the circumstances of Pantaleon’s death. The first postmortem examination is being performed by the hospital.

“I’m not accusing the hospital of anything until I have a second report,” said Pantaleon’s wife, Maria, speaking in Spanish.

“Once I’ve seen the results of the second autopsy, then I’ll make a decision about what to do.”

Reading between the lines, one suspects the wife is hopeful of making some money off Americans through a lawsuit. It is much, much better not to let these ungrateful folk break our laws and come here illegally in the first place. Once they get inside, they DEMAND all kinds of services that they have not paid for, and cause all kinds of legal trouble.

Historically, immigrants to the United States have undergone health screening upon arrival at our borders or shores, to prevent catastrophic epidemic outbreaks in America. Writing about the history of Ellis Island in the academic publication Medicine and Health Rhode Island, prolific health science writer Dr. Stanley M. Aronson notes:

The immigrants, each with their names and geographic sites of origin inscribed on a piece of paper attached to their shirts, climbed a flight of stairs before entering the huge inspection hall. During this brief transit, they were carefully observed for visible signs of lameness, excessive physical weakness, pathologic lesions or mental aberration. Medical inspectors wrote appropriate chalk marks on the immigrants’ shoulders (e.g., G for goiter, L for lameness, X for mental deficiency). The immigrants were then channeled into twelve narrow aisles at the head of which was a vigilant uniformed public health physician who conducted what has sometimes been called the six-second inspection. Since twelve examining physicians were expected to certify the health of some 5,000 immigrants per day, the medical inspections were brief. The eyes and scalp were rigorously examined for signs of trachoma, scalp infection or lice.

Imagine, if you will, the anxiety, the inner turmoil, the dread experienced by each immigrant as he or she lined up for the rapid inspection, knowing that any hint of a number of organic illnesses or emotional states, deemed to be unsuitable for a future American resident, might be the basis for disqualification, shipment back to the old country and disruption of the family.

The 1903 published guidelines for examining physicians stated that certain diseases constituted unequivocal grounds for exclusion and therefore for shipment back to the old country. These dangerous and loathsome illnesses were first, trachoma, a highly contagious eye infection and one of the major causes of blindness today, especially in tropical regions. Early symptoms of trachoma included redness of the eyes with some discharge; and so mothers, fearful that their children might be rejected for admission, blindfolded them for the duration of the ocean voyage, many weeks, in the naive hope that this would cause their eyes to appear clear and unaffected. The second major ailment was pulmonary tuberculosis. A stethoscope was sometimes employed, but most of the time the diagnosis was reached by the nature of the cough and the degree of weight loss. Other excludable diseases included leprosy and various venereal diseases….

More recently, vigilance against the Asian bird flu has been prominent in the news. Mainstream media have given this subject extensive coverage, profiting from the readership that their scare-mongering inspires. The Center for Disease Control warns:

The avian influenza A (H5N1) epizootic (animal outbreak) in Asia and parts of Europe, the Near East, and Africa is not expected to diminish significantly in the short term. It is likely that H5N1 infection among birds has become endemic in certain areas and that human infections resulting from direct contact with infected poultry and/or wild birds will continue to occur. So far, the spread of H5N1 virus from person-to-person has been rare , limited and unsustained. No evidence for genetic reassortment between human and avian influenza A virus genes has been found; however, this epizootic continues to pose an important public health threat.

There is little pre-existing natural immunity to H5N1 infection in the human population. If these H5N1 viruses gain the ability for efficient and sustained transmission among humans, an influenza pandemic could result, with potentially high rates of illness and death….

Note how seriously our government and media respond to something that might happen. Why then is there no concern about something horrific that is happening? The flood of illegal aliens across our southern border spreads throughout our country, wherever day laborers and domestic workers find opportunity. With them they bring tapeworms and tuberculosis. They undergo no health screening as they slip across the Rio Grande at night. But our media deem it politically incorrect to caution the public about these dangers.

Owned by the Korean evangelist Sun Myung Moon, the Washington Times is less restricted. They have acknowledged the incursion of tapeworm disease:

Parasitic infection plagues states along Mexico border
By Joyce Howard Price
February 8, 2007

Federal researchers say neurocysticercosis, a brain infection caused by a pork tapeworm, is a “growing public health problem in the United States,” especially in states bordering Mexico, where the disease is endemic.

Neurocysticercosis is the “most common parasitic disease of the central nervous system,” according to a study jointly conducted by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and California public health officials, who reported that “international travel and immigration are bringing the disorder to areas where it is not endemic,” such as this country.

“Neurocysticercosis is the primary cause of epilepsy in endemic areas. This brain worm is very serious,” Victor C. Tsang, chief of the immunochemistry laboratory in the Parasitic Disease Division of the CDC said in a telephone interview….

“Recent data indicate cysticercosis is an important cause of death in California,” Mr. Tsang and other authors wrote in a recent report on the disease published in the European medical journal Acta Neurologica Scandinavica….

“In Hispanics and Latinos, neurocysticercosis accounts for 13.5 percent of [U.S.] emergency-room visits for seizures,” federal and California investigators wrote in their report in Acta Neurologica Scandinavica published late last year. “The growth is mainly due to immigration from endemic developing countries,” they reported….

Bottom line — the illegal immigrants who come here and take jobs in agriculture, domestic service, and fast food restaurants put us at risk for this brain disease. Also, they burden our health care system (and our tax dollars) with their own medical care for cysticercosis. And this is a pathogen that would not be spreading in our country if it were not for illegal immigration.

Tuberculosis, once thought to be well under control in the United States, is also on the rise as the illegals bring new drug resistant strains into our population. An article at About: Lung Diseases states:

Illegal Immigrants May be Bringing Tuberculosis Into U.S.
Government officials believe illegal immigrants are responsible for spreading tuberculosis to the U.S. Most illegal immigrants come from countries where health care is inadequate, and/or the immigrants lived in poor areas where they do not or can not seek proper health care. This puts them at risk for developing and dying from curable diseases, such as tuberculosis….

Tuberculosis is on the rise, affecting over 50 million people in over 30 countries. The toughest tuberculosis to control is multidrug-resistant tuberculosis….

The respected business publication Investor’s Business Daily discussed this problem in a widely excerpted article:

Give Us Your Sick
24-JUN-05

The Border: Among the consequences of illegal immigration we can now add the reappearance of infectious diseases long thought eradicated or under control.

In an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Dr. Reuben Granich, a lead investigator for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, reports the emergence in the U.S. of a particularly virulent, multidrug-resistant form of tuberculosis known as MDR-TB.

“Evidence of it has surfaced in 38 of 61 California health jurisdictions, and it could ‘threaten the efficacy of TB control efforts,’ Granich said. The infected were said to be four times as likely to die from the disease and twice as likely to transmit the disease to others.

“Reluctant to label the infected as ‘illegal’ or even ‘undocumented’ aliens, the report notes that of the 407 known cases of MDR-TB, 84% were ‘foreign-born’ patients, mainly from Mexico and the Philippines who’d been in the U.S. less than five years. The percentage of TB cases among the ‘foreign-born’ jumped from 29% in 1993 to 53% as of last year….

We find this report in The Journal of the American Physicians and Surgeons:

Volume 10 Number 1 – Spring 2005
Illegal Aliens and American Medicine
By Madeleine Pelner Cosman, Ph.D., Esq.

The influx of illegal aliens has serious hidden medical consequences. We judge reality primarily by what we see. But what we do not see can be more dangerous, more expensive, and more deadly than what is seen….

What is unseen is their free medical care that has degraded and closed some of America’s finest emergency medical facilities, and caused hospital bankruptcies: 84 California hospitals are closing their doors. ‘Anchor babies’ born to illegal aliens instantly qualify as citizens for welfare benefits and have caused enormous rises in Medicaid costs and stipends under Supplemental Security Income and Disability Income….

By default, we grant health passes to illegal aliens. Yet many illegal aliens harbor fatal diseases that American medicine fought and vanquished long ago, such as drug-resistant tuberculosis, malaria, leprosy, plague, polio, dengue, and Chagas disease….

Madeleine Pelner Cosman, Ph.D., Esq., is a medical lawyer who formerly taught medical students at the City University of New York. She has written an outstanding report on the impact of illegal immigration to the American health care system. Her findings are extensively documented with impeccable professional references and scholarly papers — there is no political agenda here, just findings based on research and facts. The report is available in PDF format here. We urge our readers to study it.

Summarizing her findings, Cosman concludes:

We must choose either to surrender medicine to illegal aliens, or to fight illegal aliens. Surrender to illegal aliens is surrender to collectivist America: land of moral ambiguity and home of pacifist appeasement. Fighting against illegal aliens is fighting for individualistic America: land of moral strength, and home of responsible liberty.

As we fight to reclaim medicine, so we defend our nation.

Do not shrug this off as a problem for California and other southwestern states. Now we are all paying for it. In 2005 the government worked out a plan to use federal tax revenue to reimburse health care providers for the mandatory treatment of illegal aliens. From a report by CNN News:

U.S. to pay medical bills for illegal immigrants
Tuesday, May 10, 2005

Health care providers can charge the government for emergency care provided to illegal aliens beginning Tuesday.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued final guidance Monday that sets up a system for reimbursement. Lawmakers set aside $1 billion over four years for the program, created by Medicare legislation passed in 2003….

Two-thirds of the money will be distributed to health care providers based on a state’s percentage of undocumented aliens. The remaining third will go to providers in the six states with the largest number of arrests of undocumented aliens.

The states receiving the highest amounts in the current fiscal year are California, $70.8 million; Texas, $46 million; Arizona, $45 million; and New York, $12.25 million….

Last year the talking heads drummed up the specter of the black plague, salivating over the fear-driven media ratings as they asked over and over, “Should we be worried about the bird flu?” (When there is no factual news to frighten us with, they ask a rhetorical question repeatedly until it assumes the stature of real news in the minds of the American public.) But faced with a real and demonstrated danger that we should be warned about, they are frozen in the silence of political correctness.

We must control our borders. We must permit only legal, and consequently health-screened, immigration. It is not a question of meeting labor force requirements. It is not about being compassionate to foreigners who seek opportunity. It is a medical issue of life or death, of survival for our own legal citizens.

Previous articles in our Illegal Immigration series:

The Crider Case
Illegals Deadlier Than War On Terror
Going By The Numbers
The Price of Lettuce