| |
Tools For Conscious Awareness
Newsletter For
A Next Step...Light Center for Transformation and
Healing
Vol. 96 - September, 2008
In Truth, Simplicity, Love and Service
.................
FEATURES:
Many of us are slaves to our minds.
We try to focus, and our mind wanders off. We try to keep stress at bay, but
anxiety keeps us awake at night. We try to be good to the people we love, but
we put ourselves first. It seems we all agree that training the body thru exercise,
diet and relaxation is a good idea, but why dont we think about training our mind?
Working with our mind and our emotional states can help us in any activity in which
we engage
From Turning the Mind Into an Ally by Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche
Hello and blessings Beloveds. This is our 9th Anniversary of celebrating
Bursting the Body Light-Violet Flame of Forgiveness as a means of Intenting Peace for The
World on the first Sunday of every month since 2000. Thank you to all who join us daily and
monthly in this intent with these breath meditations.
As we begin turning the wheel of time into a new season soon, we are most grateful to Mother
Nature who teaches how to surrender in grace and ease in transformation. We also acknowledge
the recent energies that have come in in August and blessed us with an acceleration of our
process and unfoldment. Surrendering and letting go of the old is essential now. Embracing
what is, what we are becoming and have always been is also key.
Our Intent for the month: AS WE WILLINGLY LET GO OF SUPPRESSED EMOTIONS and THOUGHTS
(emotional gunk as Sara calls it), WE GRATEFULLY ACCEPT THE HIGHER VIBRATIONS THAT WE ARE.
**Our next World Peace breath meditation: Sunday, SEPTEMBER 7th,
2008/ Using BBL-VFF Breath Meditation to INTENT WORLD PEACE where
there is willingness. Please join us from wherever you are.
**To learn the first part of Bursting the Body Light-Violet Flame
of Forgiveness, go to the opening page of www.anextstep.org and
click on free offer, put your email address, submit and we will
send it to you free of charge.
To learn both breath meditations and support this light center,
purchase it thru the website or send a us a money order for $54
and we will email it to you--make sure to send us your email address.
If you wish to make a donation to this Light Center, go to paypal
and send it to toni@anextstep.org Thank you from the bottom of
our heart.
Does Objective Reality Exist?
In 1982 a remarkable event took place. At the University of Paris, a research team led by physicist Alain Aspect
performed what may turn out to be one of the most important experiments of the 20th century. You did not hear about
it on the evening news. In fact, unless you are in the habit of reading scientific journals you probably have never
even heard Aspect's name, though there are some who believe his discovery may change the face of science.
Aspect and his team discovered that under certain circumstances subatomic particles such as electrons are able to instantaneously
communicate with each other regardless of the distance separating them. It doesn't matter whether they are 10 feet or 10 billion
miles apart. Somehow each particle always seems to know what the other is doing.
The problem with this feat is that it violates Einstein's long-held tenet that no communication can travel faster than the speed
of light. Since traveling faster than the speed of light is tantamount to breaking the time barrier, this daunting prospect has
caused some physicists to try to come up with elaborate ways to explain away Aspect's findings. But it has inspired others to offer
even more radical explanations.
University of London physicist David Bohm, for example, believes Aspect's findings suggest that objective reality may not exist, that
despite its apparent solidity the universe is at heart a phantasm, a gigantic and splendidly detailed hologram.
How Does a Hologram Work?
To understand why Bohm makes this startling assertion, one must first understand a little about holograms. A hologram is a three-dimensional
photograph made with the aid of a laser. To make a hologram, the object to be photographed is first bathed in the light of a laser beam.
Then a second laser beam is bounced off the reflected light of the first and the resulting interference pattern (the area where the two
laser beams commingle) is captured on film.
When the film is developed, it looks like a meaningless swirl of light and dark lines. But as soon as the developed film is illuminated
by another laser beam, a three-dimensional image of the original object appears.
The three-dimensionality of such images is not the only remarkable characteristic of holograms. If a hologram of a rose is cut in half
and then illuminated by a laser, each half will still be found to contain the entire image of the rose. Indeed, even if the halves are
divided again, each snippet of film will always be found to contain a smaller but intact version of the original image. Unlike normal
photographs, every part of a hologram contains all the information possessed by the whole.
The "whole in every part" nature of a hologram provides us with an entirely new way of understanding organization and order. For most
of its history, Western science has labored under the bias that the best way to understand a physical phenomenon, whether a frog or an
atom, is to dissect it and study its respective parts.
A hologram teaches us that some things in the universe may not lend themselves to this approach. If we try to take apart something constructed
holographically, we will not get the pieces of which it is made, we will only get smaller wholes.
This insight suggested to Bohm another way of understanding Aspect's discovery. Bohm believes the reason subatomic particles are able to remain
in contact with one another regardless of the distance separating them is not because they are sending some sort of mysterious signal back and
forth, but because their separateness may be an illusion. He argues that at some deeper level of reality such particles are not individual
entities, but are actually extensions of the same fundamental something.
To enable people to better visualize what he means, Bohm offers the following illustration. Imagine an aquarium containing a fish. Imagine
also that you are unable to see the aquarium directly and your knowledge about it and what it contains comes from two television cameras, one
directed at the aquarium's front and the other directed at its side.
As you stare at the two television monitors, you might assume that the fish on each of the screens are separate entities. After all, because
the cameras are set at different angles, each of the images will be slightly different.
But as you continue to watch the two fish, you will eventually become aware that there is a certain relationship between them. When one turns,
the other also makes a slightly different but corresponding turn; when one faces the front, the other always faces toward the side. If you remain
unaware of the full scope of the situation, you might even conclude that the fish must be instantaneously communicating with one another, but this
is clearly not the case.
This, says Bohm, is precisely what is going on between the subatomic particles in Aspect's experiment. According to Bohm, the apparent faster-than-
light connection between subatomic particles is really telling us that there is a deeper level of reality we are not privy to, a more complex
dimension beyond our own that is analogous to the aquarium. And, he adds, we view objects such as subatomic particles as separate from one another
because we are seeing only a portion of their reality.
The Interconnected Nature of the Universe
Such particles are not separate "parts", but facets of a deeper and more underlying unity that is ultimately as holographic and indivisible as the
previously mentioned rose. And since everything in physical reality is comprised of these "eidolons", the universe is itself a projection, a hologram.
In addition to its phantomlike nature, such a universe would possess other rather startling features. If the apparent separateness of subatomic
particles is illusory, it means that at a deeper level of reality all things in the universe may be infinitely interconnected.
The electrons in a carbon atom in the human brain may be connected to the subatomic particles that comprise every salmon that swims, every heart
that beats, and every star that shimmers in the sky. From this vantage point, everything interpenetrates everything, and although human nature may
seek to categorize and pigeonhole and subdivide, the various phenomena of the universe and all of nature is ultimately a seamless web.
In a holographic universe, even time and space could no longer be viewed as fundamentals. Because concepts such as location break down in a universe
in which nothing is truly separate from anything else, time and three-dimensional space, like the images of the fish on the TV monitors, would also
have to be viewed as projections of this deeper order.
At its deeper level, reality may be a sort of superhologram in which the past, present, and future all exist simultaneously. This suggests that
given the proper tools, it might even be possible to someday reach into the superholographic level of reality and pluck out scenes from the long-
forgotten past.
What else the superhologram contains is an open-ended question. Allowing, for the sake of argument, that the superhologram is the matrix that has
given birth to everything in our universe, at the very least it contains every subatomic particle that has been or will be -- every configuration
of matter and energy that is possible, from snowflakes to quasars, from blue whales to gamma rays. It must be seen as a sort of cosmic storehouse
of "All That Is."
Although Bohm concedes that we have no way of knowing what else might lie hidden in the superhologram, he does venture to say that we have no
reason to assume it does not contain more. Or as he puts it, perhaps the superholographic level of reality is a "mere stage" beyond which lies
"an infinity of further development".
The Holographic Mind
Bohm is not the only researcher who has found evidence that the universe is a hologram. Working independently in the field of brain research,
Stanford neurophysiologist Karl Pribram has also become persuaded of the holographic nature of reality. Pribram was drawn to the holographic
model by the puzzle of how and where memories are stored in the brain. For decades numerous studies have shown that rather than being confined
to a specific location, memories are dispersed throughout the brain.
In a series of landmark experiments in the 1920s, brain scientist Karl Lashley found that no matter what portion of a rat's brain he removed he
was not able to eradicate its memory of how to perform complex tasks it had learned prior to surgery. The only problem was that no one was able
to come up with a mechanism that might explain this curious "whole in every part" nature of memory storage.
Then in the 1960s, Pribram encountered the concept of holography and realized he had found the explanation brain scientists had been looking for.
Pribram believes memories are encoded not in neurons, or small groupings of neurons, but in patterns of nerve impulses that crisscross the entire
brain in the same way that patterns of laser light interference crisscross the entire area of a piece of film containing a holographic image. In
other words, Pribram believes the brain is itself a hologram.
Pribram's theory also explains how the human brain can store so many memories in so little space. It has been estimated that the human brain has
the capacity to memorize something on the order of 10 billion bits of information during the average human lifetime (or roughly the same amount of
information contained in five sets of the Encyclopedia Britannica).
Similarly, it has been discovered that in addition to their other capabilities, holograms possess an astounding capacity for information storage
-- simply by changing the angle at which the two lasers strike a piece of photographic film, it is possible to record many different images on the
same surface. It has been demonstrated that one cubic centimeter of film can hold as many as 10 billion bits of information.
Our uncanny ability to quickly retrieve whatever information we need from the enormous store of our memories becomes more understandable if the
brain functions according to holographic principles. If a friend asks you to tell him what comes to mind when he says the word "zebra", you do not
have to clumsily sort back through some gigantic and cerebral alphabetic file to arrive at an answer. Instead, associations like "striped",
"horselike", and "animal native to Africa" all pop into your head instantly.
Indeed, one of the most amazing things about the human thinking process is that many pieces of information seem instantly cross-correlated with
other pieces of information -- another feature intrinsic to the hologram. Because every portion of a hologram is infinitely interconnected with
every other portion, the mind is perhaps nature's supreme example of a cross-correlated system.
The storage of memory is not the only neurophysiological puzzle that becomes more tractable in light of Pribram's holographic model of the brain.
Another is how the brain is able to translate the avalanche of frequencies it receives via the senses (light frequencies, sound frequencies, and
so on) into the concrete world of our perceptions.
Encoding and decoding frequencies is precisely what a hologram does best. Just as a hologram functions as a sort of lens, a translating device
able to convert an apparently meaningless blur of frequencies into a coherent image, Pribram believes the brain also comprises a lens and uses
holographic principles to mathematically convert the frequencies it receives through the senses into the inner world of our perceptions.
Holographic Evidence
An impressive body of evidence suggests that the brain uses holographic principles to perform its operations. Pribram's theory, in fact, has
gained increasing support among neurophysiologists.
Argentinian-Italian researcher Hugo Zucarelli recently extended the holographic model into the world of acoustic phenomena. Puzzled by the fact
that humans can locate the source of sounds without moving their heads, even if they only possess hearing in one ear, Zucarelli discovered that
holographic principles can explain this ability. Zucarelli has also developed the technology of holophonic sound, a recording technique able to
reproduce acoustic situations with an almost uncanny realism. [listen to samples here and here - earphones needed]
Pribram's belief that our brains mathematically construct "hard" reality by relying on input from a frequency domain has also received a good deal
of experimental support. It has been found that each of our senses is sensitive to a much broader range of frequencies than was previously suspected.
Researchers have discovered, for instance, that our visual systems are sensitive to sound frequencies, that our sense of smell is in part dependent
on what are now called "osmic frequencies", and that even the cells in our bodies are sensitive to a broad range of frequencies. Such findings
suggest that it is only in the holographic domain of consciousness that such frequencies are sorted out and divided up into conventional perceptions.
But the most mind-boggling aspect of Pribram's holographic model of the brain is what happens when it is put together with Bohm's theory. For if
the concreteness of the world is but a secondary reality and what is "there" is actually a holographic blur of frequencies, and if the brain is
also a hologram and only selects some of the frequencies out of this blur and mathematically transforms them into sensory perceptions, what becomes
of objective reality?
Put quite simply, it ceases to exist. As the religions of the East have long upheld, the material world is Maya, a kind of superficial illusion,
and although we may think we are physical beings moving through a physical world, this too may be more a sensory illusion than objective reality.
We may actually be "receivers" floating through a kaleidoscopic sea of frequency, and what we extract from this sea and transmogrify into physical
reality is but one channel from many extracted out of the superhologram.
The Holographic Paradigm
This striking new picture of reality, the synthesis of Bohm and Pribram's views, has come to be called the holographic paradigm, and although many
scientists have greeted it with skepticism, it has galvanized others.
A small but growing group of researchers believe it may be the most accurate model of reality science has arrived at thus far. More than that,
some believe it may solve some mysteries that have never before been explainable by science and even establish the paranormal as a part of nature.
Numerous researchers, including Bohm and Pribram, have noted that many para-psychological phenomena become much more understandable in terms of the
holographic paradigm.
In a universe in which individual brains are actually indivisible portions of the greater hologram and everything is infinitely interconnected,
telepathy may merely be the accessing of the holographic level.
With this model, it is obviously much easier to understand how information can travel from the mind of individual 'A' to that of individual 'B'
at a far distance point, and to understand a number of other unsolved puzzles in psychology.
In particular, psychiatric researcher Dr. Stanislav Grof feels the holographic paradigm offers a model for understanding many of the baffling
phenomena experienced by individuals during altered states of consciousness.
In the 1950s, while conducting research into the use of LSD as a psychotherapeutic tool, Grof had one female patient who suddenly became convinced
she had assumed the identity of a female of a species of prehistoric reptile. During the course of her hallucination, she not only gave a richly
detailed description of what it felt like to be encapsuled in such a form, but noted that the sexually arousing portion of the male of the species'
anatomy was a patch of colored scales on the side of its head.
What was startling to Grof was that although the woman had no prior knowledge about such things, a conversation with a zoologist later confirmed
that in certain species of reptiles, colored areas on the head do indeed play an important role as triggers of sexual arousal.
The woman's experience was not unique. During the course of his research, Grof encountered examples of patients regressing and identifying with
virtually every species on the evolutionary tree (research findings which helped influence the man-into-ape scene in the movie Altered States).
Moreover, he found that such experiences frequently contained obscure zoological details which turned out to be accurate.
Regressions into the animal kingdom were not the only puzzling psychological phenomena
Grof encountered. He also had patients who appeared to tap into some sort of collective or racial unconscious. Individuals with little or no
education suddenly gave detailed descriptions of Zoroastrian funerary practices and scenes from Hindu mythology. In other categories of experience,
individuals gave persuasive accounts of out-of-body journeys, of precognitive glimpses of the future, of regressions into apparent past-life
incarnations.
In later research, Grof found the same range of phenomena manifested in therapy sessions which did not involve the use of drugs. Because the
common element in such experiences appeared to be the transcending of an individual's consciousness beyond the usual boundaries of ego and/or
limitations of space and time, Grof called such manifestations "transpersonal experiences", and in the late '60s he helped found a branch of
psychology called transpersonal psychology devoted entirely to their study.
Although Grof's newly founded Association of Transpersonal Psychology garnered a rapidly growing group of like-minded professionals and has
become a respected branch of psychology, for years neither Grof or any of his colleagues were able to offer a mechanism for explaining the
bizarre psychological phenomena they were witnessing. But that has changed with the advent of the holographic paradigm.
As Grof recently noted, if the mind is actually part of a continuum, a labyrinth that is connected not only to every other mind that exists
or has existed, but to every atom, organism, and region in the vastness of space and time itself, the fact that it is able to occasionally
make forays into the labyrinth and have transpersonal experiences no longer seems so strange.
Connecting Hard Science With the Holographic Paradigm
The holographic paradigm also has implications for so-called hard sciences like biology. Keith Floyd, a psychologist at Virginia Intermont
College, has pointed out that if the concreteness of reality is but a holographic illusion, it would no longer be true to say the brain
produces consciousness. Rather, it is consciousness that creates the appearance of the brain -- as well as the body and everything else
around us we interpret as physical.
Such a turnabout in the way we view biological structures has caused researchers to point out that medicine and our understanding of the
healing process could also be transformed by the holographic paradigm. If the apparent physical structure of the body is but a holographic
projection of consciousness, it becomes clear that each of us is much more responsible for our health than current medical wisdom allows.
What we now view as miraculous remissions of disease may actually be due to changes in consciousness which in turn effect changes in the
hologram of the body. Similarly, controversial new healing techniques such as visualization may work so well because, in the holographic
domain of thought, images can ultimately be as real as "reality".
Even visions and experiences involving "non-ordinary" reality become explainable under the holographic paradigm. In his intriguing book
"Gifts of Unknown Things," biologist Lyall Watson describes his encounter with an Indonesian shaman woman who, by performing a ritual dance,
was able to make an entire grove of trees instantly vanish into thin air. Watson relates that as he and another astonished onlooker continued
to watch the woman, she caused the trees to reappear, then "click" off again and on again several times in succession.
Although current scientific understanding is incapable of explaining such events, experiences like this become more tenable if "hard" reality
is only a holographic projection. Perhaps we agree on what is "there" or "not there" because what we call consensus reality is formulated and
ratified at the level of the human unconscious at which all minds are infinitely interconnected.
Limitless Implications
If this is true, it is the most profound implication of the holographic paradigm of all, for it means that experiences such as Watson's are
not commonplace only because we have not programmed our minds with the beliefs that would make them so. In a holographic universe there are
no limits to the extent to which we can alter the fabric of reality.
What we perceive as reality may be but a canvas waiting for us to draw upon it any picture we want. Anything is possible, from bending spoons
with the power of the mind to the phantasmagoric events experienced by Castaneda during his encounters with the Yaqui brujo don Juan, for magic
is our birthright, no more or less miraculous than our ability to compute the reality we want when we are in our dreams.
Indeed, even our most fundamental notions about reality become suspect, for in a holographic universe, as Pribram has pointed out, even random
events would have to be seen as based on holographic principles and therefore determined. Synchronicities or meaningful coincidences suddenly
makes sense, and everything in reality would have to be seen as a metaphor, for even the most haphazard events would express some underlying
symmetry.
Whether Bohm and Pribram's holographic paradigm becomes accepted in science or dies an ignoble death remains to be seen, but it is safe to say
that it has already had an influence on the thinking of many scientists.
And even if it is found that the holographic model does not provide the best explanation for the instantaneous communications that seem to be
passing back and forth between subatomic particles, at the very least, as noted by Basil Hiley, a physicist at Birbeck College in London,
Aspect's findings "indicate that we must be prepared to consider radically new views of reality".
For lots more fascinating material along these lines, don't miss Michael Talbot's highly engaging book The Holographic Universe.
..
He who is of calm and happy nature will hardly feel
the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite
disposition, youth and age are equally a burden.
- Plato, The Republic
Herbs and spices are rich in antioxidants, and they are also potent inhibitors of tissue
damage and inflammation caused by high levels of blood sugar.
When researchers tested extracts from 24 common herbs and spices, they found a direct
correlation between antioxidant phenol content and the ability of the extracts to block
the formation of compounds that contribute to damage caused by diabetes and aging.
Spices such as cloves and cinnamon have phenol levels that are 30 percent and 18 percent
of dry weight, respectively, while herbs such as oregano and sage are 8 and 6 percent
phenol by dry weight. Blueberries, which are widely touted for their antioxidant
capabilities, contain roughly 5 percent phenol by dry weight.
Sources: Journal of Medicinal Foods June 2008; 11(2):275-81
Dr. Mercola's Comments:
Any molecule in your body is capable of causing damage, but probably the most damaging
of all are glucose and other sugar molecules. They cause more inflammation that leads
to heart disease than cholesterol could ever hope to.
How Does High Blood Sugar Cause Tissue Damage and Heart Disease?
Glucose and other sugar molecules cause glycation; a process in which the sugar bonds
with proteins and form so-called advanced glycation end products, or AGEs. Its a
fitting acronym as it along with oxidation -- is one of the major molecular mechanisms
whereby damage accrues in your body, which leads to disease, aging, and eventually, death.
When sugar glycates it creates inflammation, which activates your immune system in a
defensive maneuver. Macrophages are scavenger cells that are part of your immune
defense system, and as such they have special receptors for AGEs, aptly called RAGEs
(think: raging inflammation). These RAGEs bind to the AGEs and get rid of them.
Unfortunately, this process can leave its fair share of battle scars.
Essentially, when you consume excess sugar you tend to produce and accumulate AGEs,
which frequently lead to raging inflammation, which leads to damage in your arteries.
The damage control ultimately takes its toll and you begin to form scar tissue, which
inside your arteries is called plaque.
And, voila! -- Heart disease.
This is why theres such a strong correlation between diabetes and heart disease and
shortened lifespan.
People with Type 2 diabetes get heart disease about 15 years earlier than non-diabetics,
and also lose about 18 years from their expected life span, according to
findings from hospital and death records of close to 9.5 million Canadians.
How Common Spices Can Protect Against Heart Disease and the Ravages of Aging
This study, published in the current issue of the Journal of Medicinal Foods, found a strong
and direct correlation between the phenol content of common herbs and spices and their ability
to inhibit glycation and the formation of AGE compounds, making them potent preventers of heart
disease and premature aging.
The top 10 most potent herbs and spices are:
Cloves (ground)
Cinnamon (ground)
Jamaican allspice (ground)
Apple pie spice (mixture)
Oregano (ground)
Pumpkin pie spice (mixture)
Marjoram
Sage
Thyme
Gourmet Italian spice
This is not the first time scientists have declared culinary herbs and spices as potent
anti-diabetic alternatives.
Cinnamon and cinnamon extracts have previously been shown to effectively lower blood sugar.
As a matter of fact, cinnamon was found to increase glucose metabolism 20-fold, in one such
study!
Interestingly, cinnamon lowers your blood sugar by acting on several different levels. It
slows the emptying of your stomach to reduce sharp rises in blood sugar following meals,
and improves the effectiveness, or sensitivity, of insulin. It also enhances your antioxidant
defenses.
Researchers have even gone so far as to say cinnamon could play the role of an insulin
substitute in the treatment of type 2 diabetes.
1 in 4 Americans Now Suffer From Pre-Diabetes or Some Form of Diabetes
The latest statistics on diabetes indicate that the U.S. now has as many as 24 million
people with diabetes, or 8 percent of our total population. However, the statistics are
even more grim when it comes to the prevalence of pre-diabetes (impaired fasting glucose).
Almost 26 percent of U.S. adults over the age of 20 are pre-diabetics, and more than 35
percent of seniors, 60 and older. In total, thats 57 million Americans walking around with
pre-diabetes, in addition to the 24 million that have already crossed the line.
That means that just over 26.5 percent of the entire U.S. population either has pre-diabetes,
or some form of diabetes!
My personal experience with diabetes and review of the literature has made it VERY clear
to me that virtually every case of type 2 diabetes is 100 percent reversible without the
use of prescription drugs.
And let me assure you, the cure for type 2 diabetes has NOTHING to do with giving insulin.
Giving someone insulin with type 2 diabetes is one of the WORST things that can be done.
Any physician doing this for type 2 diabetes is suffering from profound ignorance of insulin
physiology.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of physicians are still seriously confused about this issue,
which is why most doctors cause diabetics to D. I. E.
How to Prevent Diabetes and Heart Disease, and Increase Longevity
First things first: For people with diabetes, the last thing you want to eat is a lot of
grains, or any sugar for that matter.
Swap out your grains and sugar for high-quality sources of protein, healthy fat (which
INCLUDES saturated fat) and vegetables according to your nutritional type, all of which is
outlined in my Take Control of Your Health Program, and youll be off to a great start.
Add in regular exercise, the other essential key to preventing and reversing diabetes, and
youll be even better off. These two measures alone will help you to shed excess weight,
and a weight loss of 10 pounds can reduce your risk of diabetes by nearly 60 percent.
Last but not least, why not add some spice to your life?
Herbs and spices have very low calorie content, theyre relatively inexpensive, and theyre
a great way to turbo-boost the natural antioxidant and anti-inflammatory power of your diet!
Tons of benefits and zero hazardous side effects. It doesnt get any better than that, which
is why I keep advocating for the return to a healthy whole food diet that is tailored for
your individual biochemistry, rather than stocking up on a cabinet-full of (often synthetic)
supplements.
Set up a good herb and spice cabinet and season your food liberally, and you could potentially
double or even triple the medicinal value of your meal.
HEAL YOUR BODY
By Louise Hays
Possible mindset in creating Diabetes: Longing for what might have been. A great need to control.
Deep sorrow. No sweetness left.
Metaphysical Affirmation to reverse the above: THIS MOMENT IS FILLED WITH JOY. I NOW CHOOSE
TO EXPERIENCE THE SWEETNESS OF TODAY.
Kelley and I recently attended a seminar where the very wise leader told the group that in
the next few years diabetes will jump by 40%. Lets wake up folks. Lets take inventory of
our lives. Lets own our thoughts and emotional states that accompany them. Lets take
action moment by moment to undo the training we have and live by. Let us move forward
and entrain ourselves into the beauty, joy and goodness of our lives that we By All That
Is create more of the same.
'Cause we ought to know and have some say...
In TSL, Kelley
This message is available online at
http://www.WantToKnow.info/008/080721_children_drugs_corruption
"Joseph Biederman of Harvard may be the United States' most influential doctor when it comes to
determining whether their children are normal or mentally ill. That's why Iowa Sen.
Charles Grassley's recent revelation that Biederman did not declare $1.6 million in
drug company consulting fees is so important, scary and tragic. Virtually all doctors
who receive drug company money say they are not influenced, but every independent study
examining the effects of such money says they are."
-- Lawrence Diller, M.D in the San
Francisco Chronicle, 7/13/08
Dear friends,
The below article by respected UC San Francisco faculty member Lawrence Diller, M.D.,
exposes blatant corruption and collusion between major drug companies and top pediatricians.
This cozy, profitable arrangement between big business, academia, and physicians causes harm
to countless children around the world. When profits are the primary driving force behind
both research and the researchers in the health field, public health is endangered. Help
to spread the word about this important article so that we can work together to protect
our children's health and promote the needed reforms proposed by Dr. Diller.
With best wishes,
Fred Burks for PEERS and the WantToKnow.info Team
Are Our Leading Pediatricians Drug Industry Shills?
Lawrence Diller
Sunday, July 13, 2008
As reported in the San Francisco Chronicle
Most parents have never heard of him, but Joseph Biederman of Harvard may be the United States'
most influential doctor when it comes to determining whether their children are normal or
mentally ill.
In 1996, for example, Biederman suggested that drugs like Ritalin might serve 10 percent
of American kids for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. By 2004, one in nine
11-year-old boys was taking the drug. Biederman and his team also are more responsible
than anyone for a child bipolar epidemic sweeping America (and no other country) that has
2-year-olds on three or four psychiatric drugs.
The science of children's psychiatric medications is so primitive and Biederman's
influence so great that when he merely mentions a drug during a presentation, tens
of thousands of children within a year or two will end up taking that drug, or combination
of drugs. This happens in the absence of a drug trial of any kind - instead, the decision
is based upon word of mouth among the 7,000 child psychiatrists in America.
That's why Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley's recent revelation that Biederman did not declare
$1.6 million in drug company consulting fees is so important, scary and tragic. If true,
this scandal is yet one more stake in the heart of American academic medicine's credibility
with frontline doctors like me - and more importantly, with the parents of the patients
I deal with every day.
American medicine, with psychiatry the most culpable, has fallen back to a time more than
100 years ago when doctor credibility was tantamount to the promotion of patent medicine.
Subsequent reforms severed ties between medical school doctors and the drug industry -
and for decades there was a much more ethical balance between the industry and physicians.
Now once again, drug company money is corrupting medical practice and the maintenance of
our country's health. In a market economy, both doctors and the companies are motivated
by profit. However, doctors' Hippocratic oath and their personal/professional relationships
with their patients attenuate the most crass aspects of a fee-for-service system.
In contrast, drug companies owe primary responsibility to their shareholders. Of course
these companies must operate within legal business and Food and Drug Administration
restraints, but the drive to push such rules to the limit is implicit in any business.
Such a strategy isn't always beneficial when our children's health is affected.
The Fortune 500 drug companies, by their sheer economic clout, have become the single
most dominant influence in our health care system. The ambiguities of children's mental
health and illness make child psychiatry the most vulnerable branch of medicine open to
such influence.
In this climate, drug company research money, professional medical education and direct
advertisements to parents tilt families and doctors to biologically brain-based solutions,
rather than nondrug (e.g., parenting and education) approaches.
That's why we're seeing famous (or infamous) Newsweek cover boys like Max, a 10-year-old
who has taken 38 psychiatric medications in his short, unhappy life.
Research funding must be directed to the needs of patients and their doctors - not to the
bottom line of stockholders. Drug companies can still make money, but it's ethically
immoral when stockholder profits trump children's health needs (as in the cover-up of
negative studies of antidepressants in children).
More money must be directed toward head-to-head competition between existing generics
and the new products, and toward more studies comparing nondrug or combination approaches
to drug-only interventions for children's problems.
Drug company funding of medical research is not going to end - nor should it entirely stop.
Yet a new set of federal rules dictating the transparency and direction of such funding is
desperately needed to redress a dangerously corrupt system. It's not enough to simply have
doctors more explicitly report their incomes from drug companies, though it is a very useful
first step.
I remember about six years ago when I read a major article by the Biederman team on the
advantages of a non-Ritalin drug pathway for ADHD. On the same day, much to my dismay, I
also heard him give a speech - for a Wall Street audience - promoting a new drug by Eli
Lilly called Strattera.
Although Strattera turned out to be a bust both clinically and commercially for ADHD, I
was still shaken that such a prominent researcher could be so brazen with his potential
conflict of interest appearance.
The $1.6 million that Biederman didn't declare is only a small fraction of the full amount
of research funding that his clinic receives from nearly a dozen companies that pay for not
only the cost of running studies but also the salaries of the doctors involved. Virtually
all doctors who receive drug company money say they are not influenced, but every
independent study examining the effects of such money says they are.
The leadership of Harvard's psychiatry department is strangely silent or even defends
Biederman. These are good men with solid reputations both in drug and nondrug aspects of
treatment. Yet they know that their psychiatry department would not exist were it not for
drug company money - considering the withdrawal of federal research dollars over the past
25 years and the meager reimbursements that psychiatrists receive for their services from
insurance companies and Medi-Cal.
Sens. Grassley, a Republican, and Herbert Kohl, a Wisconsin Democrat, have introduced the
Physician Payments Sunshine Act, which will require more vigorous reporting and enforcement
on payments (anything more than $500) received by doctors from drug companies.
But in addition, we need laws to have the federal government, along with the major academic
research centers, coordinate and direct the use of drug company money in medical research.
This is not pie-in-the sky wishing. Such reform was precisely what the doctors of 100 years
ago accomplished in this country.
Lawrence Diller, M.D., practices behavioral-developmental pediatrics in Walnut Creek, CA,
and is on the clinical faculty of UCSF. He is the author of "The Last Normal Child" (Praeger,
2006).
Final Note: WantToKnow.info believes it is important to balance disturbing cover-up
information with inspirational writings which call us to be all that we can be and to
work together for positive change. Please visit our Inspiration Center at:
http://www.WantToKnow.info/inspirational
for an abundance of uplifting material.
See our archive of revealing news articles at:
http://www.WantToKnow.info/indexnewsarticles
You gotta love the FDA. They've apparently decided to declare Bisphenol-A (the chemical
in plastics) to be safe enough for babies to drink. Read my article at:
http://www.naturalnews.com/024020.html
**Sunday, SEPTEMBER 7th, 2008 / Our Breath Meditation Intenting World
Peace using Bursting the Body Light-Violet Flame of Forgiveness.
We would like as many of you as live nearby to join us and those
of you afar to join us as well. The time is now to take action
and be taking action continuously for World Peace. It starts with
us.
Join us the first Sunday of each month. We meet at 3pm Rocky Mt.
Standard Time and breathe around 4pm. It is an exquisite way to
stop the chatterbox and have our love intention impact on the
Collective, the Earth's Bodies and our bodies as well.
...............
Mother Father God I thank you for the Desire, the Hope , the Faith,
the Willingness and the Experience of Loving You with all my Heart,
all my Mind, all my Soul and all my Strength, creating Perfect
Gratitude, Perfect Praise, Perfect Love, and Perfect Faith - filling
my heart with Songs Of Joy, Waters of Life and Clothing of Light.
I love you, I love you, I love you. Amen.
...............
In Truth, Simplicity, Love and Service, Om Shanti, Shanti, Shanti,
Om Peace
Young Toni Delgado and Young Kelley Elkins
A NEXT STEP...Light Center for Transformation and Healing
P.O.Box 429
Dona Ana, New Mexico 88032
toni@anextstep.org
www.anextstep.org
575-382-8771
................
Buy Toni's new book: A CALL TO MOTHERS GRACE AND GIFTS
Go to OUR STORE: bottom of page at www.anextstep.org to order it.
Also available at iuniverse.com, amazon, barnesandnoble, borders.
|
|
