Associated Press declares war on alternative medicine

(NaturalNews) The Associated Press has declared war on alternative medicine, publishing a series of stories attacking everything from nutritional therapies to bioidentical hormones. These stories, which are syndicated across thousands of websites around the world, are prefaced with the following highly-opinionated "Editor's Note":

EDITOR'S NOTE: Ten years and $2.5 billion in research have found no cures from alternative medicine. Yet these mostly unproven treatments are now mainstream and used by more than a third of all Americans. This is one in an occasional series examining their use and potential risks.

What this note reveals is an extraordinary bias against natural medicine from the start. It's clear from the claim of "examining their use and potential risks" that the Associated Press isn't even looking for potential benefits of natural medicine. They're just looking to discredit it. And the part about "Ten years and $2.5 billion in research have found no cures" is factually incorrect.

To be more accurate, the statement should have said "Ten years and $2.5 billion in research by pharmaceutical researchers who don't even know how to study something holistically have found no cures that they are willing to publicly acknowledge."

Because, in reality, natural medicine has provided the populations of the world with countless cures spanning thousands of years of indigenous use by billions of people. Oh, but wait... the Associated Press doesn't count that. The only evidence they will consider is "proof" provided by researchers on the payroll of the criminally-operated pharmaceutical industry and rubber-stamped by a corrupt, racketeering U.S. Food and Drug Administration that unquestionably pushes a pro-pharma agenda at the expense of public health.

In one story about alternative medicine, the Associated Press characterized the teaching of acupuncture as "Harry Potter medicine." The story criticizes acupuncture and demeans any mention of "energy channels" even though acupuncture has been scientifically proven to be extremely effective at managing pain. There is no mention in the AP story of the published, peer-reviewed studies that promote acupuncture's proven effectiveness and safety.

What happened to just reporting the truth?
As I've stated here on NaturalNews many times, the whole system of "evidence-based medicine" is biased against natural medicine from the start because the FDA maintains an official policy of declaring all plant-based medicines to be inert in the human body, regardless of how much scientific evidence demonstrates otherwise.

In the FDA's eyes, there is no such thing as a food, herb, dietary supplement or nutrient that has any beneficial effect against any disease or health problem in the human body. And you know why? Because according to the FDA, only "drugs" can be used to prevent, treat or reverse any disease or health condition, not nutrients. All nutrients are inert by decree.

So the simple truths that vitamin C cures scurvy or that vitamin D prevents cancer are censored out of existence by the FDA and its media cohorts. So the AP, instead of reporting to the American people what works to make them healthy, spends its time attacking Suzanne Somers over her new book featuring interviews with doctors who have cured cancer using nutritional therapies and other forms of alternative medicine. (http://www.amazon.com/Knockout-Inte...)

When it comes to health, the Associated Press apparently isn't interested in reporting what works. It's not interested in educating the public how to be healthy, how to avoid cancer, or how to explore natural therapies that might support their health rather than destroying it (like chemotherapy does). Instead, the AP has taken the side of the criminally-operated pharmaceutical industry to discredit and destroy anything that offers the American people freedom of choice in their medicines.

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Permalink Reply by Sathiaseelan Gusa Lavan on November 8, 2009 at 7:48pm: I heard prescribed medication is the leading cause of death in the US.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Jazmin on November 9, 2009 at 12:40am: Dozens if not hundreds of modalities under the banner of Alternative Medicine exist today. A few have survived for thousands of years in all continents, and some have been revived in the last three decades.
I can only speak of Western Herbal Medicine because it's one of my emerging specializations. Pranic Healing, Reiki, Therapeutic Touch, and Aromatherapy are some of my other interests, but I won't talk about them here.

Regarding Western Herbal Medicine, one of the books I find relevant to this topic of discussion is:
'The Scientific Validation of Herbal Medicine: How to remedy and prevent disease with herbs, vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients' (c1986) by Daniel B. Mowrey, Ph.D.

James A. Duke, Ph.D. says in his book, 'The Green Pharmacy Herbal Handbook: Your comprehensive reference to the best herbs for healing' (2002), "We Americans like to think of ourselves as at the forefront of everything: technology, science, health care, business, culture. But for almost two decades, we've lagged far behind in at least one critical area: the search for new medicines. Or perhaps I should say a new search for old medicines.
"Since the early 1980s, a high-powered, government-commissioned panel of top-notch authorities in Germany has been using high-tech scientific research to document the age-old therapeutic powers of medicinal plants--how they heal, why they heal, whether they heal, whether they pose any peril. The work of Commission E, as this group is called, now serves as a guideline for all of Europe in regulating the sale and dispensing of over-the-counter and prescription herbal medications.
"The United States, never a notable player in searching for natural therapeutics, has no official equivalent to Commission E."; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Jazmin on November 9, 2009 at 1:15am: Ann,
I copied the following email I received from WC Douglass (realhealth@healthiernews.com), dated November 7, 2009:

Deadly mistakes plague hospitals

Dear Reader,

"The American healthcare system is starting to resemble a game of Russian roulette, right down to the stakes: your life.

The National Academies' Institute of Medicine estimates that there are 400,000 preventable drug-related injuries every year. Another study found a 1-in-30 chance that your prescription will be filled out wrong.

And those aren't even the most appalling numbers.

I nearly fell out of my chair when I read "Dead by Mistake," an investigation by Hearst newspaper and TV reporters that found some 200,000 preventable deaths caused by medical injuries and accidents each year.

It's nearly 10 percent of our deaths overall. That's more people than are killed by diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, influenza and pneumonia combined.

In one tragic and inexcusable case, two pregnant women in a Florida hospital were accidentally given drugs designed to force dead fetuses out of the body. One of the women was pregnant with twins, and lost both babies. The other gave premature birth to a girl who suffered severe brain damage.

The hospital blamed poor handwriting on the doctor's prescription, which led to a mix-up in the drugs.

Enough's enough. I'm tired of all the stupid jokes about doctors and their terrible handwriting. Until doctors learn to write legibly, they have no business prescribing drugs.

Computerized systems, where doctors can order meds by typing rather than scribbling, can help prevent these mistakes, but most hospitals are still in the digital Stone Age. A paltry 10 percent of them have these systems in place.

That's outrageous and unacceptable. Fast-food restaurants are more technologically advanced than our hospitals.

This is just one more reason you should hammer your doctors and nurses with questions, especially when they give you meds – and don't swallow anything until you're satisfied with the answers.

Ask what you're being given, what it does and if there are any side effects (you can bet your bottom that there will be). Then ask to see the label. It's your right, and if they can't or won't show it to you, refuse to take it.

And if you're not in any condition to check up on these things yourself, have someone with you who can.

It's inexcusable that it has to be that way. But the alternative is that deadly game you can't afford to play."; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Marique on November 9, 2009 at 1:42am: Great and enlightening post. I almost died on a new menopause drug they were testing and I was in the clinical trial of it. It was a synthetic hormone compound. It stopped my heart briefly and made it beat erratically and I was in the hospital for a week.. They forgot to put on my chart that I was on this new experimental drug, and then they almost killed me again by giving me a well known heart arrythmia medicine, but were still giving me the experimental drug because one doctor (the cardiologist, who just saw me once the whole time I was there, came by to check on me and gave me a pill, and because it was not on my chart that I was taking the other one as part of a clinical trial at that hospital....they almost killed me again...) Heart started skipping all over the place, then stopped again. Dahhhh. Hospital error ya think? They could not figure out why I would want to drop out of the trial, but for me it was a no brainer....It was not worth the money they were paying me....And now I still have an eratic heartbeat, one two skip a few...love hospitals, NOT.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Jazmin on November 9, 2009 at 3:48am: Marique, I almost died in a hospital when I was 18 years old. The family doctor put me in a hospital just because I had a mild duodenal ulcer. A few days later, I was nearly well and ready to go home when the nurse gave me a tiny pill which caused a severe side-effect. The hospital called my parents, telling them to come to the hospital immediately because I was dying. My father, being a devout Catholic, called a priest who performed the 'last rites' on me. At the same time, my father asked for the best specialist to try and save me. To cut the story short, my parents paid the specialist who saved my life with just one injection more than quadruple the amount of money they paid for my entire stay and 'medicine' in the hospital. Two months later, my father died in the same hospital room from a massive heart attack.
The positive side of that episode was that, when I 'came back' from my NDE, the priest told me that while struggling between life and death, I whispered to him that I didn't want to die because ... ; so he asked me not to fall asleep and to keep myself awake by thinking of my happy future. And here I am.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Barron on November 9, 2009 at 8:07am: Very moving Jazmin - thanks for sharing! You clearly have unfinished "business" to do!
(I am glad you're still here!!! xx; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Jazmin on November 10, 2009 at 12:19am: You're quite right, Barron. Thank you.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Jazmin on November 10, 2009 at 12:13am: Ann & Marique,
Here's another email I received from WC Douglass
(realhealth@healthiernews.com) dated November 4, 2009:

Children suffering from drug reactions

"More than a million kids suffering from bad drug reactions every year. But these children aren't being victimized by smack or crack or any other street drug.

They're suffering from legal, prescription meds – many of which never should have been given to them in the first place.

Close to 600,000 kids are hit with side effects like rashes, stomachaches and diarrhea after a visit to their local pusher… er, pediatrician — and tens of thousands of them end up in the hospital because of those reactions, according to a study in Pediatrics.

Even worse, 43 percent of these kids are under 5 years old, when any medical complication can quickly turn into a crisis – or at least send their parents into a panic. Some of the most common reactions happen when these little victims are put on antibiotics, which most of them don't need and shouldn't get anyway.

Another 540,000 kids suffer from bad drug reactions in hospitals every year, according to government numbers — and their problems go far beyond those side effects. Some of these kids are accidentally given the wrong medications, or the wrong amounts, resulting in accidental overdoses in the very place where that should NEVER happen!

I know hospitals are busy and chaotic – but these kinds of mistakes are inexcusable at any age. When they happen to children, it's criminal.

It's time parents start to stand up to these legal drug pushers and demand real treatments when their kids get sick – not an endless series of prescription meds, side effects and hospital visits."; ▶ Reply to This