On November 3rd, 2009 Frontline aired a program on the subject of a dramatic increase in the number of children being diagnosed with serious psychiatric disorders.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/medicatedchild/view/

The program opens with a video clip of an activist protesting on behalf of children's rights and bringing light to this epidemic sweeping across the nation.

A lot of the credit for lighting a fire under the FDA goes to the much-maligned anti psychiatry movement and its most prominent spokesperson, Peter R. Breggin, MD.  Dr. Breggin the author of many scientific articles and books which includes Toxic Psychiatry, and Medication Madness: A psychiatrist exposes the dangers of mood- altering medications (2008), for years along with a few others have been the lone voices in pointing out how drug companies have essentially bought and paid for the psychiatric establishment. This includes lead academic researchers who have been paid to lend credibility to questionable industry research. According to Dr Breggin, this research, most of which is done on adults, has been used to "justify coercing unsuspecting kids into submission".

While she was hunting around for some new acquisition of the outlandish apparel teenagers relish these days, I sauntered idly around the shops. The stores are all chains common to malls across our country. She spent her time at two places I had never heard of, Rue 21 and Wet Seal, jam-packed with girls her age.

There was not a natural product among all the offerings as far as my eyes could see. Every item of apparel was constructed of a man-made fabric, mostly acrylic, some nylon. In the mall plaza where I then sat down to wait, a free-standing booth was selling wind-up toys, plastic one and all.

My granddaughter emerged with her purchases of a fake fur vest (acrylic) and animal-patterned tights (nylon). She explained she intended to wear this outfit as a Halloween costume, to be discarded after that single use.

The common thread (no pun intended) throughout the mall is petroleum. Both acrylic and nylon are manufactured from oil. Just as 98% of all manmade chemicals are. Acrylic was originally created by DuPont. Monsanto entered the picture when it developed a chemical process to keep acrylic from pilling.

Our doctors and nurses carry as many harmful chemicals in their bodies as the rest of us. You might think that, being trained in chemistry and medicine (as most of us are not) and therefore perhaps more careful, not to mention highly-educated and relatively affluent, health care professionals would have found ways to avoid toxics. But they are in fact exposed to the same kinds of chemicals and hazards as workers in blue collar industries. A report published today by three nonprofit health-related organizations, "Toxic Chemicals Found in Doctors and Nurses," is the first examination of the ‘body burden' of 20 members of the medical profession. Every one of them carried toxic chemicals, every one carried 18 of the same chemicals, and each participant bore a burden of at least 24 individual chemicals of the 62 chemicals for which labs ran their analysis. That adds up to major chemical pollution with major potential for harm.

The bottom line from this study for all of us is, that we cannot shop or sanitize our way out of this problem. We need a shift in the way chemicals are made and sold and used.

The chemicals found in every one of these doctors and nurses include four that EPA is now considers top priority: bisphenol A (used to make rigid plastic polycarbonates), mercury, PFCs (for stain-resistant coatings), and phthalates (used in PVC plastics and cosmetics). Almost every participant also carried signs of flame retardants and the antimicrobial chemical triclosan, two other highly-suspect chemicals. One and all, these are endocrine disruptors, meaning they harm our hormonal systems. They can trigger reproductive problems, from testicular and breast cancer to lowered fertility, as well as altered brain development, and cancer, and they are linked to problems with our metabolism, such as obesity, high cholesterol, and diabetes.

On October 13, 2009 Gary Null provided a riveting testimony to the New York State Assembly on vaccination. During that testimony he brought forth a number of arguments that challenge the prevailing beliefs that vaccines are safe and effective. The following are some excerpts from that testimony as well as the actual videos. The videos contain much more information than the excerpts presented here.

"I could find no convincing evidence that any vaccine, at all, had long term double-blind placebo controlled study trials."

On the studies that CDC, FDA, and other organizations are using as their evidence of double-blind placebo studies, "You left out the virus part of the vaccine [for the placebo] but you included all the other ingredients including thimerosal and mercury and formaldehyde, etc. Well that's not a placebo. In good science you don't use that as a placebo."

But is there really no evidence?

In 2001, the French Agency for Food Safety performed an exhaustive and critical evaluation of the nutritional and sanitary quality of organic food. An expert working group of more than 50 people examined papers on well-defined and certified organic procedures. The main characteristics of organic agriculture entails the respect for the environment and animals, promotion of sustainable cropping methods, use of non-chemical fertilizers and control of pests, diseases, and weeds, and no use of genetically modified (GM) crops. After 2 years of work a final consensus report was issued in 2003. A review of this work was recently published in Agronomy for Sustainable Development Journal.

The World Health Organization, the UN agency (ir-)responsible for declaring a Phase 6 "PANDEMIC" global alert over what it calls H1N1 Influenza A or Swine Flu, whose chief Dr Margaret Chan has repeatedly warned that while Swine Flu to date had been rather mild, that the emergency declaration was necessary because it "could mutate" aggressively into a deadly pandemic killing millions, now admits well into the flu season in the Northern Hemisphere that H1N1 has apparently not mutated.

Margaret Chan, the head of the World Health Organization, at a meeting with health officials in her native Hong Kong, has just stated that the swine flu virus has not yet mutated into a more deadly strain. WHO Director of the Initiative for Vaccine Research, Dr Marie-Paule Kieny, reinforced that statement in a press conference September 24 in Geneva when she stated, "we are lucky that the pandemic is moderate in severity that most people experience a mild illness and recover spontaneously." That means recovery with no vaccination, no Tamiflu or other dangerous "antiviral" drugs. Just with letting nature take its course.

Last summer, when the WHO decided to declare a global "pandemic emergency" over what it called the H1N1 Influenza A global spread, it also announced in a notice buried among its press releases that most countries had stopped testing ill populations for H1N1, and that the WHO therefore simply arbitrarily "assumed" all patients with a stated set of symptoms were automatically H1N1 victims. So the H1N1 pandemic case counts, to quote the WHO, "no longer reflect actual disease activity."

BPA is an ingredient in hard plastics, such as #7 polycarbonate baby bottles, sippy cups and reusable sports water bottles, in the resins that line canned foods and soft-drink cans, in PVC pipes, even in dental sealants. BPA is one of the many chemicals, now a constant feature of today's world, that disrupt the way our hormonal systems work. Among all these chemicals, BPA tops the list in volume, at 6.4 billon pounds a year. It generates $6 billion a year for its manufacturers which include Dow and GE Plastic. Soda makers such as Coca-Cola and canned food companies such as Del Monte rely on BPA. These companies sent representatives to the spring meeting and their trade groups will foot the bill for the PR campaign.

BPA leaches into water even from new polycarbonate and resins at room temperature, accelerating with wear or heat. It shows up in the urine of 93 percent of all Americans and, just a few months ago, research found that it doesn't leave the body as easily as previously thought but seems to linger in our fatty tissues.