Wuhan – a blessing in disguise?

Some people will allege that Covid 19 is the result of ‘gain of function’ research at China’s germ warfare laboratory in Wuhan and point to the involvement of America’s EcoHealth Alliance in financing research there after Obama’s government put a stop to it in the US.  Others will point to plucky little bats - living in caves 800 miles from Wuhan.

What is sure, though, is that people worldwide now really get it about the immune system.  Sales of organic food and vitamins and supplements that strengthen immunity are booming.   Awareness of the fact that most people who are symptomatic or die of Covid have ‘comorbidities’ has sparked a wider understanding of how to stay healthy and shrug off this horrible mutation of the coronavirus, a virus we’ve known for centuries as the ‘common cold.’  People have always been getting colds, some get them worse than others and some rarely get colds at all.  Now many more people understand why.

The comorbidities that land you in hospital with Covid include obesity, diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease and cancer.  If you don’t have one of those then the likelihood of Covid exposure giving you any symptoms is pretty low. You are certainly very unlikely to die of it.

What causes comorbidities?  The main factors are diet, exercise and environmental pollutants.  (plus booze and fags)

Sugar and refined cereals drive obesity and diabetes.  Now more people are reducing sugar and eating whole grains.

Hydrogenated fat and overeating cause heart disease.  Cardiovascular disease has dropped 60% in Denmark since 2002, when they led the world in banning hydrogenated fat, or trans fats, in food.  Denmark ranks 45 on the global list of Covid deaths per capita.  The USA and India were the last to ban hydrogenated fat, the US last year and India planning cuts next year.

A diversity of gut flora microorganisms helps resist the virus.  Overuse of antibiotics devastates the gut flora.  The NHS is now urging doctors to stop prescribing antibiotics for colds and flu. The mystery is why doctors ever did - they’re doctors, not pharmacists.

In 1948 the NHS envisioned centres all over the country educating people about healthy diet, exercise and preventive medicine.   The British Medical Association insisted that the first point of contact was with a General Practitioner, not some poncy ‘health centre.’  This was a victory for doctors and the pharmaceutical industry.   The ‘prevention versus cure’ debate has been going on ever since.

In the 1950s every Briton could get free cod liver oil and free concentrated orange juice.  This was because 70 years ago doctors still understood that if people had a high level of Vitamin D and Vitamin C they would be able to better resist colds and flu. This was probably the last official support of prevention as an alternative to medication.  Since the coronavirus pandemic numerous doctors and clinicians have started urging that getting people’s D and C levels up is a key preventive measure.  In January 2021 the NHS finally announced that free Vitamin D was available and urged people to get their D levels up,  This was 11 months after the pandemic hit and after the Government had wasted tens of billions on track and trace and lockdowns. In 2020 in the sunniest April and May in memory people were told not to go out in the Vitamin D-rich sunshine. 

The authorities are talking about ‘health passports’ to allow people who have been vaccinated to travel and go to the theatre.  How about health passports for people who have a robust immune system and are unlikely to get colds or flu?  It could be easy to do: just measure indicators of immune strength such as T Cells and Vitamin C, D and zinc levels.  Doctors and nurses should have that kind of health passport before they go to work in hospitals, to protect them and patients. If your immunity is good, skip the vaccination. If not, get the jab.

And maybe it’s time to stop all germ warfare research everywhere?  Just in case something could possibly go wrong?

Could we also please have ‘eco’ and ‘bio’ back?  The EcoHealth Alliance researches deadly viruses. ‘Biowarfare’ puts them to work. Not our thing at all.

Pity Poor Pharma

Mexico has just passed a law that bans American agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration from acting freely in the country.  This was a response to the US arrest of Salvador Cienfuegos, former Defense Minister of the Mexican Government, on charges of drug trafficking. 

What’s going on in Mexico? The drugs gangs are all at each others’ throats, fighting over an ever-diminishing pie.  There are now only 6 American states left where marijuana is illegal - in all the rest it is legal or allowed for medical purposes. The impact on Mexico’s drug gangs has been horrendous.  Almost at a stroke the lucrative American market has collapsed. 

With the marijuana market gone the Mexican drug gangs had to start pushing Fentanyl even though it meant competing with American legal pharmaceutical companies, but boy is it profitable.  A kilo of heroin costs $6000 and can be sold for $80,000, a mere 13 times profit.  A kilo of Fentanyl costs $4150 per kilo and sells for $1,600,000 as it is 100 times stronger than heroin. That’s a stonking 385 times profit.  As a mere organic grocer like me, who’d go out of business if I aimed for a 2 times profit those figures are pretty impressive.  Just think if vitamins were that profitable.

But to a legal pharmaceutical company those figures are pathetic.  Xanax costs 2p to make 1 mg and sells for £100 per mg.  That’s 5000 times profit for Pfizer.  Prozac costs 9p to make 20mg and sells for £185 per 20g. That’s 2000 times profit for Eli Lilly. 

Bear in mind, however, that the manufacturing cost doesn’t include all the research on the drug and then ‘educating’ doctors in how to prescribe it and the endless fines for illegal marketing and health care fraud.  Pfizer holds the record for the largest criminal fine - $2.3 billion in 2009.

The great thing about being a pharmaceutical company is that you can take the occasional billion-dollar fine in your stride.  Even better, you never go to jail.  Mexican pharma-dealers are always at risk of a prison sentence for their wrongdoings, something corporate pharma executives never have to worry about.  They just pass the cost of fines on to their shareholders.

But legalised marijuana has had a damaging effect on the sales of opioids and alcohol and antidepressants.  Potheads drink less booze and actively avoid opioids like Fentanyl or oxycontin and would rather take CBD than take an antidepressant. 

Marijuana legalisation’s been bad enough for the drug business but worse challenges are on the horizon.  In November 2020 Oregon decriminalised all drugs.  Instead of spending $375 million a year arresting and prosecuting drug users, Oregon is now going to open a dozen drug treatment centres to help addicts get well.  With $100 million a year coming in from the tax on legal marijuana sales they can afford it.  For blacks this is particularly good news as, even though drug use is no higher among black people, a heck of a lot more of them are stopped, searched and arrested for possession - drugs are the leading cause of jail time for people of colour.

So who else is making money out of illegal drugs?  You and me. ‘Our’ UK Government-backed Angel CoFund has shares in Small Pharma, who are raising £12 million on the Toronto Stock Exchange to research DMT, the most powerful psychedelic of all.  If they did the research here they’d go to jail,  so they will do it legally in Canada.  The Canadians are already spearheading the use of psilocybin from magic mushrooms - a couple of doses and depression is alleviated that would otherwise require a lifetime of antidepressant use.  More bad news for the makers of Prozac and Xanax - and doctors and pharmacists.

Luckily the pharmaceutical companies have harvested £6 billion from governments for their coronavirus vaccine research.  Making vaccines is usually bad business - you give someone a shot and they don’t need another one.  But lavish subsidies make it worthwhile.

Just think if the cash that has been spent on vaccine research had gone to protect people in care homes and making sure everyone’s vitamin C and D and zinc levels were adequate.  Prevention sounds nice, but profitable?  Forget it.

Who gives a toss about tiny differences in vitamins and minerals?

The fixation with tiny nutritional differences between organic and non-organic is a silly distraction from the real issues, writes Craig Sams.

I’m having a bit of a ‘Duh’ moment I’m afraid.]

20 years ago, way back in 1992 I wrote and recorded a song called “Eat Organic Save the Planet.”  It was part of a promotion by Whole Earth Foods that created the model that has been applied for September organic promotions ever since.  We produced ‘Eat Organic’ leaflets, badges for kids, shelf talkers offering 10% off , printed window posters and gave a prize to the retailer who had the best organic window display with Cheryl Thallon as the judge. The song was on a cassette tape and we gave one to every participating shop to play on their music system. Our job was to push retailers to switch from our ‘natural’ products to the new organic versions we had developed, despite the price differences.

The song’s lyrics set out the argument:

“The weather round the world is getting very strange

As the Amazon rain forest turns into a cattle range

But still you keep on buying all those products that they sell

Eating burgers, drinking coffee, let the Indians go to hell

Eat Organic – Save the Planet”

And

“If you’re part of the problem then you’re holding us back

We’re fighting for survival put the world back on the track

Clean your act up, eat organic and be part of the solution

It’s time to take the next step in the planet’s evolution”

And

“One day we’ll lose the land that our lives are built upon

Then the next thing has to be that we will all be gone”

And

“If we really want to save this planet of our birth

We’ve got to place some value on what life on Earth is worth

If we didn’t spray so many toxic pesticides

All those different species never would’ve died”

So when some monomaniac academics at Stanford say organic is no better than non-organic because it has the same level of vitamin content I can’t take it seriously. They don’t get it. They probably never will.  They are part of the problem and are accessories after the fact (to use the correct legal terminology) to the murder of our beloved planet, which in effect is the murder of all of us.

Organic farming protects biodiversity; it helps get carbon out of the atmosphere and into the soil via composting; it combats global warming by not using nitrate fertilisers (responsible for 1/7 of the annual increase in greenhouse gases); it doesn’t produce sick animals or milk from cows that die when they’re three years old; it helps restore soils that were built up over thousands of years and have been horribly degraded in the past 50 years; it encourages wildlife, birds and bees and other vital pollinators instead of killing them with sprayed poisons; it doesn’t use pesticides that are proven causes of birth defects – defects that are intergenerational and where your grandchildren get the hardest hit from them. Organic farming uses half the fossil fuels of non-organic; organic farmers are younger and prettier (they are 30% younger and six times more likely to be female) than non-organic farmers; organic farming never uses genetically modified seeds or hormonal milk drugs which have never been properly tested for human safety; organic farming never uses sex hormones to build up layers of muscle and fat; organic farmers don’t routinely give antibiotics to their animals just to make them grow a little faster, not least because this breeds antibiotic-resistant diseases that cross-infect and kill humans. Organic food never contains hydrogenated fat, named or disguised as mono- and di-glycerides of fatty acids; or artificial flavourings, colourings, preservatives.

Jeez, I’m exhausted just running through this list.

So who really gives a toss about tiny differences in vitamins and minerals? It’s one thing (along with ‘it tastes better’) that I’ve always felt is totally irrelevant. We make food choices using our better judgement and if we eat a lot of junk food, sugar, alcohol, hydrogenated fat and hormones and antibiotics and pesticides then no amount of extra vitamins will make much difference.

It seems so bleedin’ obvious and it is. People worldwide are going organic.  Farming in the developing world is rejecting GM and going for organic solutions. The black arts of PR-backed ‘experts’ and ‘scientists’ and ‘authorities’ can’t turn back the tide.