I’ve been saying for years that we don’t know how synthetic prescription drugs – these lab-created “alien molecules” that have never existed before on planet earth – will affect us.
And here’s one more piece of evidence that we never know what these foreign chemicals do in our bodies. It’s right on the front page of Family Practice News, a publication of the AMA. I look at it every month to keep up on what standard doctors are being given as news.
The first story is an unpublished study where doctors discovered that giving children antibiotics early in their lives can cause food allergies.
Antibiotics… which most people think of as a godsend, and as safe… are causing allergies.
Who knew?
Of course, there was no way to know. Antibiotic drugs never existed in the entire course of human history until very recently. And now we’re seeing the effects.
The risk of food allergies gets greater the more courses of antibiotics a child gets. And children are twice as likely to develop food allergies if they get antibiotics before 6 months old, compared to children even as close to that as 7-12 months old.
The case study of 7,538 children was presented at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology. It also found that kids were more than twice as likely to develop food allergies if they got three or more course of antibiotics.
Children aren’t the only ones getting doses of antibiotics, though.
You are too. Through products made from animals that are getting dosed, and probably overdosed, with antibiotics, to keep them alive. Although we may never know just how overdosed the animals are.
The US Senate has a committee that’s supposed to oversee agricultural antibiotic use. But it just re-approved the Animal Drug User Fee Act.
That name says it all. It’s a law that, instead of protecting you from antibiotic use in animals, is really just a scheme to get veterinary drug manufacturers to give up some information about the sales of their products… and then turns around and allows new drug products to be approved faster. It’s so secretive that the Government Accountability Project sued the FDA back in December to try and get them to release what little data on food animal drug abuse they do have.
What’s worse is the Senate re-approved the law without allowing any testimony about the negative, unintended consequences of misusing and overusing those drugs.
Sen. Lamar Alexander from Tennessee talked about why the Senate re-approved the act. But, unfortunately, he’s a spokesman for everyone who’s missing the point. He said “these programs have reduced the average waiting time for the FDA to approve generic animal drugs by 450 days … meaning farmers get faster access to cheaper and better medicines.”
The senator also said, “…and people are healthier.”
Not true. Children are developing food allergies. And adults are becoming antibiotic-resistant. Even the bacteria are becoming antibiotic-resistant!
Some in the House of Representatives do want to help. Reps. Henry Waxman of Calif. and Louise Slaughter of N.Y. proposed a bill called DATA (The Delivering Antibiotic Transparency in Animals Act1).
DATA would force Big Agra to reveal exactly what and how much medication is being put into their animals. But it’s a long way from being law.
In the meantime, big government and Big Agra are working together for the benefit of big business … but leaving your health out of the mix.
Fortunately, there are a few things you can do to protect yourself from the effects of antibiotics.
1) First, let me tell you about some big changes coming to the Wellness Research Foundation, my non-profit research arm. I’ve hired a long-time and respected researcher, food scientist, organic farmer and farm-to-table specialist to oversee the Wellness Foundation website.
Her name is A.N., and she’ll start with posting reports to the website which we’re redesigning, about individual health issues – like the overuse of antibiotics, and how Big Agra is turning healthy foods into Frankenfoods.
Soon, we’ll have everything set up so that you’ll be able to visit my redesigned Wellness Research Foundation website, where you can join petitions and have the FDA tell Big Agra to stop abusing antibiotics, to have manufacturers label GMO foods, and much more.
2) Second, you can take a stand against antibiotic abuse when you opt for antibiotic-free, pasture-raised grass fed meat and eggs.
Some grocery stores are starting to offer grass fed beef. You can ask the butcher. But don’t be fooled by beef labeled “organic.” The organic label only means that the cattle do not have detectable levels of antibiotics in their body at the time of slaughter. It does not mean that ranchers have never subjected cattle to antibiotics.
The surest way to get real grass fed products is through a private farm. You can try US Wellness Meats, one of the original grass-fed meat suppliers and the one I use (grasslandbeef.com).
You can also get a listing of local farms that pasture-raise their animals at the excellent information site EatWild: eatwild.com.
1.http://democrats.energycommerce.house.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Bill-Text-HR-820-2013-2-26.pdf