Will the CIA torture report cause the masses to wake up to 9/11 truth? We can only hope

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With CIA torture programs now fully exposed to the world, a common background theme has emerged. The CIA torture report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is a summary of the original report which you can read for yourself. In the first few pages of the Senate report we are quietly reminded that the backdrop which set the stage for the justification of torture is 9/11. More specifically, the 9/11 "official story" narrative. The much questioned, challenged, and refuted official story narrative that is. The report quietly pulls the reader in with a passionate recollection of 9/11:

I recall vividly watching the horror of that day, to include the television footage of innocent men and women jumping out of the World Trade Center towers to escape the fire. The images, and the sounds as their bodies hit the pavement far below, will remain with me for the rest of my life.

Reading down further in the report, the 9/11 official story meme continues fully settling on the clear determined narrative that would be used in the CIA's attempt to justify torture by reminding the audience of the "terrorist plots"

It is worth remembering the pervasive fear in late 2001 and how immediate the threat felt. Just a week after the September 11 attacks, powdered anthrax was sent to various news organizations and to two U.S. Senators. The American public was shocked by news of new terrorist plots and elevations of the color-coded threat level of the Homeland Security Advisory System. We expected further attacks against the nation.

Do you remember now? The day when (CIA asset) Bin Laden and his (CIA) Al Qaeda terrorist (supposedly) took over four commercial planes and strategically overpowered the world's greatest military, all from a cave in Afghanistan? For anyone with any sense of logic and reason, just think for a minute. We are asked to believe that the same Al Qaeda that the establishment media claims did 9/11 is STILL alive and well, and fully operational, never having missed a beat fighting against the world's most sophisticated military, and returning fire (even-steven and tit-for-tat) while keeping up on supplies and ammo. All of this for over 13 plus years!!

One problem with this 9/11 backdrop 'war on terror' narrative is that long after the war in Afghanistan seemed like it should have been over, the war (or more correctly, the occupation) mysteriously and illogically continues without missing a beat. Even as humanity has witnessed 13 years of a "war" with literally no evidence of a war, the "war" continues. That's right, for over 13 years, while the CIA torture program rolls on fully implemented, no one has ever produced, authenticated and validated video proof of a war in Afghanistan showing the opposition clearly firing at U.S. troops in a war-like scenario and sustaining themselves in the heat of battle. It's been over 13 years and yet there is still no clear-cut footage showing the Al Qaeda tanks, artillery and grunts running around fighting hard against their U.S. enemies. It's been 13 years, where is this footage??

Another problem with the war on terror narrative is that humanity has long woken up to the fake terror and long-term (U.S.-Israeli/PNAC) Middle East plans. With the help of the alternative media, citizen journalists, independent media and investigative journalists, expansions of government engineered synthetic terrorism has been fully exposed. Thanks to the U.S./Israeli/NATO ongoing Middle East aggressive ambitions exemplified by the creation, arming and funding of ISIS and their terror partners (FSA, Al-Nusra), the continued engineered war on terror is now fully exposed to the world.

Consequently, looming in the background of this most recent revelation of CIA torture and public indignation over Bush and Cheney war crimes, is the years of lies and how much the 9/11 official story meme has fallen apart since 2001. No longer does the story fit into the reality we now experience. From the Bin Laden death hoax and all the secrecy surrounding this event that never quite happened the way U.S. officials and the media say happened, to the long list of oddities and mysterious deaths of key witnesses and characters, to the now deeply established scientific facts about the improbable destruction of the 3 WTC towers, the 9/11 official story is no longer easy to believe.

Thus looming in the background of the hideous CIA torture programs is the powerful and liberating truth of 9/11. It sits in everyone's consciousness waiting to come out. Now that horrific torture is fully revealed to the world, government can only hope that the masses somehow still believe the 9/11 official story lie.

Mixed unofficial polls have been taken which indicate anywhere from 35 to 70+ percent of Americans question the official story narrative. What the actual percentages is no one really knows. This much is true, however: the 9/11 official story doesn't make any more sense. The story suffers from too many holes, too many convenient oddities and coincidences, a blatant violation of the laws of science, frightening coincidental and untimely deaths of witnesses and outdated logic justifying the continued existence of Al Qaeda (and now ISIS) who of course never attack Israel or plan other 9/11-style attacks from caves in Afghanistan.

It's absolutely time for the world to wake up to 9/11 Truth, which is primarily based on the overwhelming scientific evidence and secondarily on gathered evidence against the true masterminds. We know factually that the towers were brought down by controlled demolition. Three teams of researchers confirmed the presence of nano-sized thermite in the dust of the world trade centers. Samples (of WTC dust) which when tested, each time showed the confirmed presence of thermite, a military-grade incendiary compound whose thermite form has been used for controlled demolition in the past. This irrefutable evidence for controlled demolition should loom in the background of everyone's mind as they continue to read about the CIA (engineered, staged, pre-planned, malicious) torture program actually designed to torture innocent people for which there is no credible evidence of a crime or wrongdoing other than being verbally accused of being a "terrorist".

So as the illegal prison in Guantanamo remains wide open against all promises by candidate Obama, let us forever remember the men illegally imprisoned there without rights and without justice. Let us consider the possibilities that too many Americans are too afraid to face. Americans would rather bury their heads in the sand than to face the reality of 9/11, torture, illegal prisons and war crimes.

Remember this, however: 9/11 Truth will eventually be admitted by the mainstream media. It may not happen today or tomorrow. Perhaps the system is not quite ready to admit 9/11 Truth and merge all of these charges to the record of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld quite yet. But the puzzle has come together for many of us and we are waiting for critical mass awareness to move forward with justice.

Many of us believe justice for 9/11 will happen sooner or later. This is the course humanity is on, and today I'm happy to say I believe this CIA torture exposure brings America and humanity as a whole one step closer to accepting and thus acting upon 9/11 Truth.

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Bonanza for Big Pharma: Dangerous drug cocktails prescribed to almost 60% of patients taking opiate painkillers

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The greatest growth in prescription drug use between 2009 and 2013 came in the 20-44 age group.

Almost 60% of patients taking prescription opiate painkillers are prescribed potentially dangerous drug combinations, according to a study released on Tuesday by a prescription drug management company.

"There could be instances when prescribing these combinations of drugs is appropriate, but not at this scale," said Lynne Nowak, a doctor with Express Scripts, a St Louis, Missouri-based company that processes more than 1bn prescriptions each year. "The fact that the majority of these patients are being treated by multiple physicians and pharmacies signals a communication breakdown that leads to dangerous use."

The study, a Nation in Pain, was conducted using the anonymized records of more than 6.8 million Americans who had filled prescriptions for opioids between 2009 and 2013. Opioids, such as Vicodin and OxyContin, came to national attention as potentially dangerous in the mid-2000s when cities across the US started experiencing unusually high incidences of opiate overdose and addiction-related crime.

Express Scripts' study found that while fewer Americans are prescribed opioid painkillers, those that are have more prescriptions and for longer. Both the number of prescriptions and the amount of medication distributed rose by 8.4%. While the number of long-term users remained relatively constant, the number of short-term users declined by 11.1%. Almost half of those who took the medication for 30 days remained on the drugs three years later.

The greatest growth in prescription use came in the 20-44 age group.

"The elderly have the highest prevalence of opioid use, but younger adults (age 20-44) filled more opioid prescriptions and had the greatest increase in the number of days of medication prescribed, per prescription, of any age group over the five-year period."

More than half of users, almost 60%, were also prescribed potentially dangerous drug combinations such as benzodiazepines, a category of drugs used to treat anxiety. Together, opioids and benzodiazepines are the most common cause of overdose deaths involving multiple drugs, the report says. Other drug combinations, such as a combination of muscle relaxers, painkillers and anti-anxiety medications, called "Houston cocktails", were used by 8% of those studied.

The fear of addicting patients to opiate-based medications was once so profound in the medical community that opium-derived drugs were rarely prescribed, even in extreme cases.

That changed in the 1990s during the pain management movement. In 1995, the Food and Drug Administration approved the use of OxyContin, meant to be a slow-release blend of oxycodone and acetaminophen (the active ingredient in Tylenol). At the time, expert panels recommended doctors prescribe the medication more often, citing a wide range of benefits despite slim research into the drug's long-term effects.

But in what is now a well-documented form of abuse, those looking to use the painkillers recreationally only needed to crush the tablets and snort them for a euphoric rush. The movement and subsequent abuse is extensively chronicled in books such as Pain Killer and A World of Hurt .

From the time OxyContin was approved, it took another 15 years for the small Connecticut pharmaceutical company that created the drug to make it tamper-resistant (in other words, more difficult to crush and snort). By then, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was well on its way to declaring prescription painkiller abuse an "epidemic".

The study's results are also geographic. The use and abuse of these prescriptions painkillers is primarily concentrated in cities in four states - Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia and Kentucky, the study found.

"Government- and insurer-run drug monitoring programs can help prevent these possibly life-threatening scenarios, but unfortunately they are underused and vary by state," Nowak said in a statement. "As more people gain access to health coverage, this problem will worsen if the country doesn't use every tool at its disposal to ensure the safe use of these medications."

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What the end of racial profiling looks like...

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Why do common folk have to educate law enforcement?

It was 11 years ago when we first argued that constitutional protections can be balanced against national security interests, and that racial profiling is bad policing practice because it's ineffective and hurts law enforcement's legitimacy in communities. Sadly, racial profiling is used in 2014 as much as it was in 2003, and too often with deadly consequences. The deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner reminded those who don't experience racial profiling that many police in America still regularly treat African Americans differently than white people.

So while we - and others - applaud US attorney general Eric Holder's plan to update the federal government's racial profiling guideline, the new rules announced this week won't do nearly enough to end pervasive, race-based policing practices.

The biggest problem is that the federal profiling guidelines don't address the profiling actions of local law enforcement: they only apply to federal law enforcement agencies and local officials working with them on federal projects. The new guidelines are merely supposed to inspire local police to design their own - but local police departments pride themselves on their autonomy and aren't interested in the federal government telling them how to operate.

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"We're going to go out there and violate some rights." -NYPD Officer

There are only two situations in which police departments (reluctantly) accept federal directives about their policies should be done. One is when the US Department of Justice finds that local police engaged in a pattern of constitutional violation - which it did recently, finding that the Cleveland Police Department was excessively using force. The other is when a federal court finds that local police engaged in unconstitutional policing practices - as a court did last year, finding that the New York City Police Department's stops-and-frisk program was unconstitutional because it targeted minorities.

Another problem with the guidelines is that they broadly exempt many activities of the federal law enforcement agencies in the name of homeland security that one would expect to have to abide by the rules: US Border Patrol agents, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, Transportation Security Administration agents and the US Secret Service are all exempt. Such broad exceptions to the rules certainly don't help make the guidelines seem more legitimate in the eyes of ethnic minority populations and heighten the public scepticism of the government's commitment to curbing profiling .

A growing body of science tells us that police, like the general public, associate African Americans with crime and violence: studies, including ones by 2014 MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant winner Jennifer Eberhardt and researcher Joshua Correll, show that police officers still often associate black faces with criminality. But science also shows that racial bias is often unconscious, not overt race-based decision making - and making decisions based on stereotypes one isn't conscious of is difficult to change.

But people, and law enforcement agents, can change.

Police officers who get better training to counteract implicit racial bias can potentially see its effects reduced in their day-to-day decision-making. Increasing racial diversity throughout the ranks of local police departments - from police chiefs to patrol officers - also engenders in minority communities more trust and confidence in police, and helps reduce officer bias.

President Obama's recently-established Task Force on 21st Century Policing is an important opportunity to make long-needed changes to police departments that still use explicit or implicit racial profiling, and it shouldn't be squandered. The Task Force should recommend the creation of, and carve out a budget for, a national police training centre for local police that would host mandatory training for local police officers focused on ending racial profiling and repairing eroded police legitimacy.

The curriculum, developed with law enforcement, community and academic stakeholders, would focus on procedural justice training and how to deliver services to community members. By providing police with skills in listening, communication and transparency, procedural justice trainings developed by Tom Tyler and colleagues have been successful in improving trust and confidence in the police in pilot cities including New Orleans and Manchester in the UK.

Police must work with communities to improve their relationships, not operate in opposition to the people they are supposed to serve: communities are not the enemy. If we can make increasing their perceived legitimacy a central focus of every local police department, and help police officers understand how their implicit biases negatively affect their work and their communities, the end of racial profiling will finally be in sight.

Comment: Why do Americans still invest their faith and free will in systems that are obviously to their detriment no matter what their color, race or gender? When police are mandated to quotas in order to keep their jobs or qualify for promotions - it means the police departments are holding their officers hostage, who then look for easy targets. It is no longer law enforcement by the book, it is by the numbers.

Officers are encouraged to disregard rights, instigate fear tactics, break the law, and use brutality to harass innocent victims as part of a "hush policy" endorsed by law enforcement hierarchy, ever-widening the gap and blurring the lines between those they are obligated "to protect" and the pathocracy they serve. When did the the people make law enforcement their unrestrained overlords and prison masters? Did they not notice the insidious encroachment of a totalitarian regime?

Procedural justice and racial bias training sounds like a nice remedy. It is a fix that can't. The racial protocol is now systemic in departments all over the country, observable by the skyrocketing increase in racial profiling, innocent deaths caused by police officers, and daily abuse without provocation. And, understandably, the reaction of the common people is mounting. But, how do you put the cat back in the bag once it has usurped power it was never meant to have? When it becomes "us versus them" we have lost an important fundamental basis in the ability to function as a united and healthy society. These abuses of power that lead to the deaths of innocent persons must end and those who perpetrate these atrocities must be held accountable in a court of REAL law and justice. If not, we are all victims of a system in which we have good reason to no longer trust or believe.

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Comet Lovejoy heading our way

© Gerald Rhemann

The new Comet Lovejoy, C/2014 Q2, as imaged on November 27th by Gerald Rhemann in Austria using a remotely operated 12-inch f/3.6 astrograph in Namibia.

A new Comet Lovejoy, designated C/2014 Q2, is heading our way out of deep space and out of the deep southern sky. It may brighten to 5th magnitude from late December through much of January as it climbs into excellent viewing position for the Northern Hemisphere, high in the dark winter night.

This is Australian amateur Terry Lovejoy's fifth comet discovery. He turned it up at 15th magnitude in Puppis last August, in search images that he took with a wide-field 8-inch scope. It hasn't moved very much since then - it's still in Puppis as of December 11th - but it's hundreds of times brighter now at visual magnitude 6.8, reports David Seargent in Australia. On the 9th "I saw it easily using a pair of 6x35 binoculars," he writes. Using a 4-inch binocular telescope at 25×, he says it was a good 8 arcminutes wide with a strong central condensation and no visible tail.

And it's picking up speed across the sky for a long northward dash.

A Comet of the High Dark

"Comet Q2," as some are calling it, will skim through Columba south of Orion and Lepus from the nights of December 16th through the 26th, brightening all the while, as shown on the finder charts for December and January below and on the print-friendly versions here: December, January. The dates on the charts are in Universal Time, and the ticks are for 0:00 UT.

The comet spends the last few days of December in Lepus at perhaps 6th magnitude, though by then the light of the waxing Moon (at first quarter on the 28th) will start to be an annoyance. On New Year's Eve, a little after January 1st Universal Time, look for the comet just off Lepus's forehead as shown on the charts.

The Moon brightens to become full on January 4th. Most of us won't get a dark moonless view again until early in the evening of January 7th, with the comet now crossing northern Eridanus. That's the same day it passes closest by Earth: at a distance of 0.47 a.u (44 million miles; 70 million km). That's also about when it should start glowing brightest for its best two weeks, as it crosses Taurus and Aries high in early evening.

By then the comet is starting to recede into the distance, but its brightness should still be increasing a bit; it doesn't reach perihelion until January 30th, at a rather distant 1.29 a.u. from the Sun. By that date the comet should be starting to fade slightly from Earth's point of view. If February it will continue north between Andromeda and Perseus as it fades further, on its way to passing very close to Polaris late next May when it should again be very faint.

Originally Comet Q2 wasn't expected to become this bright. We're basing these predictions on an analysis by J. P. Navarro Pina in late November using the comet's visual behavior for the previous several weeks. Whether it will continue to brighten on schedule is anybody's guess, but the odds are good; comets that don't come near the Sun are more predictable in their brightnesses than those that do.

Q2 is a very long-period comet, but this is not its first time coming through the inner solar system. On the way in, its path showed an orbital period of roughly 11,500 years. Slight perturbations by the planets during this apparition will alter the orbit a bit, so that it will next return in about 8,000 years.

© Sky & Telescope

Finder chart for Comet Lovejoy, C/2014 Q2, during December 2014. The dates are in Universal Time; the ticks are at 0:00 UT (8 p.m. on the previous date Eastern Standard Time).

© Sky & Telescope

Finder chart for Comet Lovejoy, C/2014 Q2, during January 2015. The dates are in Universal Time; the ticks are at 0:00 UT (8 p.m. on the previous date Eastern Standard Time).

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Yet another country: Austria considers repatriating its gold

The gold reserves of the Oesterreichische Nationalbank (OeNB) and their deposits in the UK and in Switzerland are a recurring theme in political discussions. Especially like the Freedom require relocation to Austria, the example of the Deutsche Bundesbank in mind, who want to move their gold by 2020 half of them to Germany.

In Austria, the Court has adopted in its recent OeNB examination of the issue of gold. In its draft report he gives the OeNB diverse recommendations on the way. One of the key points: Given the "high concentration risk in the Bank of England" advise the examiner to "rapid evaluation of all possibilities of a better dispersion of the storage locations". Not only the parties to be diversified, but it should also come to the "actual spread of the storage locations".

Gold relocation possible

In the central bank can not hold, such a transfer excluded. The existing gold bearing concept would be reviewed, at best you'll bring parts of the stored gold in the UK to Austria, OeNB experts explain the standard. Any changes will be decided according to security and economic criteria, according to the OeNB.

A brief orientation in gold Milieu: Austria has 280 tons of gold, only a small part of them (17 percent) are kept in Vienna. 80 percent of the reserves are located in London, the main trading for gold, three percent in Switzerland. For comparison, the German Bundesbank has 3400 tons of gold; about half of them superimposed (as of 2013) in the United States. With the decision by the end of 2012, to resettle half of the gold to Germany, gave the Bundesbank political pressure.

Examiners want Strategy

Because you do not think in the OeNB; the central bank decide "autonomously", as emphasized. But there was indeed a discussion of the gold storage, you will receive and evaluate the recommendations of the Court. But whose final report is not yet available, the OeNB has transmitted to the auditors on 28 November their comments on the draft report.

The examiners also recommend an analysis of the costs of the bearings and a "comprehensive strategy for the management of gold reserves" to. The OeNB said: "opportunities to develop a long-term approach bearings will be evaluated." The criticism of the auditor, the OeNB have the gold that is not stored in the National Bank itself, not regular "physically checked" 2009-2013 or not, has the OeNB in ??its opinion violently back.

In October 2011, had central bankers, as mentioned in the report body, held in three deposits in Switzerland and one in London "Einschau". 2012 were examined in the coin Austria gold holdings. Keyword Einschau: This should not be so easy. Anyway criticize the auditor that access opportunities are not agreed with all bearings contract.

Violent criticizes the Court of Auditors on the audit of the gold holdings abroad: Since lacked a concept of what constitutes a gap in the internal control system. The OeNB denies it, which was founded in 2013 department of "values ??Revision" fulfills that function already.

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Personality traits determine the strength of the immune system

Researchers have found new evidence that explains how some aspects of our personality may affect our health and wellbeing, supporting long-observed associations between aspects of human character, physical health and longevity.

A team of health psychologists at The University of Nottingham and the University of California in Los Angeles carried out a study to examine the relationship between certain personality traits and the expression of genes that can affect our health by controlling the activity of our immune systems.

The study did not find any results to support a common theory that tendencies toward negative emotions such as depression or anxiety can lead to poor health (disease-prone personality). What was related to differences in immune cell gene expression were a person's degree of extraversion and conscientiousness.

The study used highly sensitive microarray technology to examine relationships between the five major human personality traits and two groups of genes active in human white blood cells (leukocytes): one involving inflammation, and another involving antiviral responses and antibodies.

A group of 121 ethnically diverse and healthy adults were recruited. These were comprised of 86 females and 35 males with an average age of 24 (range 18-59) and an average body mass index of 23. The participants completed a personality test which measures five major dimensions of personality -- extraversion, neuroticism, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness -- (NEO-FFI McCrae and Costa, 2004). Blood samples were collected from each volunteer for gene expression analysis and their typical smoking, drinking and exercise behaviours were also recorded for control purposes. Gene expression analysis was carried out at the Social Genomics Core Laboratory at UCLA.

Leading the research, Professor Kavita Vedhara, from The University of Nottingham's School of Medicine, said: "Our results indicated that 'extraversion' was significantly associated with an increased expression of pro-inflammatory genes and that 'conscientiousness' was linked to a reduced expression of pro-inflammatory genes. In other words, individuals who we would expect to be exposed to more infections as a result of their socially orientated nature (i.e., extraverts) appear to have immune systems that we would expect can deal effectively with infection. While individuals who may be less exposed to infections because of their cautious/conscientious dispositions have immune systems that may respond less well. We can't, however, say which came first. Is this our biology determining our psychology or our psychology determining our biology?"

These two clear associations were independent of the recorded health behaviours of the participants and subsets of white blood cells which are the cells of the body's immune system. They were also independent of the amount of negative emotions people experienced. The study also found that expression of antiviral/antibody-related genes was not significantly associated with any personality dimension.

In the remaining three categories of personality, 'openness' also trended towards a reduced expression of pro-inflammatory genes and 'neuroticism' and 'agreeableness' remained unassociated with gene expression.

The research concludes that although the biological mechanisms of these associations need to be explored in future research, these new data may shed new light on the long-observed epidemiological associations between personality, physical health, and human longevity.

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'This year's flu shot is a dud' says the government and any discussion of natural alternatives is not allowed

They're also telling doctors to supplement with drugs that don't work and have terrible side effects. This is the same government that wasted billions stockpiling these very drugs.

The flu shot is not a static formulation. It changes each year based on the World Health Organization's assessment of which flu virus strains (usually three or four) will be the most prevalent that season. The CDC is admitting that the flu shots distributed this year may not be a good match for the viruses currently in circulation.

This year's vaccines protect against two types of influenza A viruses (one H1N1 and one H3N2) as well as one or two influenza B viruses. But so far this flu season, the strains most active in the US are versions of H3N2 viruses. And in seasons when H3 viruses predominate, says Dr. Tom Frieden of the CDC, there tend to be more hospitalizations and more deaths from the flu.

Of course, as we have pointed out previously, when the CDC speaks of deaths from the flu, they really mean respiratory illnesses in general including the real killer, pneumonia. They like to speak of "flu deaths" because that promotes the flu shot.

Although this year's vaccine covers the H3N2 virus, there still isn't a match. Fewer than half (48%) of the 103 samples of the H3N2 flu virus tested since October 1 are closely related to the strains the government chose this year. The CDC's explanation? The H3N2 strain being targeted by the vaccine has mutated (called "drift").

That's right: this year's flu shot will provide no protection whatsoever against more than half of the deadliest flu viruses currently in circulation. The CDC's solution doesn't help matters. They advise doctors to supplement with Tamiflu and Relenza - and the earlier the better, as soon as you become ill, if possible.

There is so much wrong with this scenario that it's hard to know where to begin. Even in a good year, with better matches, there are arguments why the vaccine doesn't work:

• Influenza A (including H1N1 and H3N2) and B represent about 10% of all circulating viruses. Only 2.7% of all non-vaccinated adults get type A or B influenza each year. As noted above, the CDC wildly exaggerates the number of hospitalizations and deaths that result from flu.


• According to , the flu vaccine in any given year is only 62% effective in preventing type A or B influenza, and doesn't protect at all against norovirus and whooping cough.


• the vaccine will fail 38% of the time - which means it really benefits only about 1.8% of the population. This is in an average year, not a year with poor matches such as this one.


• This year's flu vaccine won't even touch 52% of the H3N2 strains in circulation this year. Add this to the vaccine's usual failure rate and it becomes an epic fail.


• The CDC recommends supplementing the vaccine with Tamiflu and Relenza as soon as you become sick - despite the fact that Relenza has been shown to reduce rates of infection by only 8%, and Tamiflu's manufacturer withheld vital data that suggested the drug is no more effective than aspirin. Billions of taxpayer dollars were wasted because the US stockpiled over 37 million doses of the useless drugs - and they still have a lot to get rid of.


• A recent analysis found that both drugs are mostly ineffective: when taken at onset, they shorten the duration of symptoms of influenza-like illness (unconfirmed influenza or "the flu") and have no effect on hospitalizations for flu. They have no effect on asymptomatic influenza, so taking them before symptoms appear, as the CDC urges, would seem to be useless.


• The same study showed that Tamiflu, when used as a preventive measure, was associated with nausea, vomiting, headaches, renal, and psychiatric events. Its effect on the heart was unclear: it may reduce cardiac symptoms, but may induce serious heart rhythm problems.

Even some mainstream media outlets are beginning to recognize that the flu vaccine simply doesn't work very well. NBC reports that people who get vaccinated each year may actually have less protection than those who don't: a University of Michigan study found that people vaccinated two years in a row didn't seem protected against the flu at all. And Bloomberg recently reported that the Novartis flu vaccine was linked to one serious illness and three deaths in Italy. The country has suspended use of the vaccine.

The flu vaccine in the US also notoriously contains mercury (thimerosal) and other potentially toxic ingredients. It is routinely given to pregnant women and to infants, despite the mercury content.

Maintaining proper levels of vitamin D in your system is easily the most effective way to prevent the flu. We discuss this at length in our White Paper on vitamin D. A study published in the found that schoolchildren who were given vitamin D3 supplements were 42% less likely to get infected with seasonal flu than those who had taken a placebo.

The nonprofit Vitamin D Council says adults should take between 5,000 and 10,000 IU of D3 daily for optimum health. The organization offers a home test kit to make sure your blood serum levels of vitamin D are in the proper range.

Vitamin A is directly antiviral and is an excellent treatment for the flu at onset. The sooner you take it, the better. This and other remedies are discussed in our earlier article on natural antivirals.

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