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A Beautiful Christmas Story

A Beautiful Christmas Story

The old man sat in his gas station on a cold Christmas Eve. He hadn't been anywhere in years since his wife had passed away. He had no decorations, no tree, no lights. It was just another day to him. He didn't dislike Christmas, just couldn't find a reason to celebrate. There were no children in his life. His wife had gone.

He was sitting there looking at the snow that had been falling for the last hour and wondering what it was all about when the door opened and a homeless man stepped through.
Instead of throwing the man out, George, Old George, as he was known by his customers, told the man to come and sit by the space heater and warm up.

"Thank you, but I don't mean to intrude," said the stranger. "I see you're busy. I'll just go"

"Not without something hot in your belly," George turned and opened a wide mouth Thermos and handed it to the stranger. "It ain't much, but it's hot and tasty. Stew. Made it myself. When you're done there's coffee and it's fresh."

Just at that moment he heard the "ding" of the driveway bell. "Excuse me, be right back," George said.

There in the driveway was an old 53 Chevy. Steam was rolling out of the front. The driver was panicked. "Mister, can you help me!" said the driver with a deep Spanish accent. "My wife is with child and my car is broken."

George opened the hood. It was bad. The block looked cracked from the cold; the car was dead. "You ain't going in this thing," George said as he turned away.

"But mister. Please help...." The door of the office closed behind George as he went in. George went to the office wall and got the keys to his old truck, and went back outside. He walked around the building and opened the garage, started the truck and drove it around to where the couple was waiting.

"Here, you can borrow my truck," he said. "She ain't the best thing you ever looked at, but she runs real good." George helped put the woman in the truck and watched as it sped off into the night. George turned and walked back inside the office.

"Glad I loaned them the truck. Their tires were shot too. That old truck has brand new tires........" George thought he was talking to the stranger, but the man had gone. The thermos was on the desk, empty with a used coffee cup beside it.

"Well, at least he got something in his belly," George thought. George went back outside to see if the old Chevy would start. It cranked slowly, but it started. He pulled it into the garage where the truck had been. He thought he would tinker with it for something to do. Christmas Eve meant no customers. He discovered the block hadn't cracked, it was just the bottom hose on the radiator.

"Well, I can fix this," he said to himself. So he put a new one on. "Those tires ain't gonna get 'em through the winter either." He took the snow treads off of his wife's old Lincoln. They were like new and he wasn't going to drive the car.

As he was working he heard a shot being fired. He ran outside and beside a police car an officer lay on the cold ground. Bleeding from the left shoulder, the officer moaned, "Help me."

George helped the officer inside as he remembered the training he had received in the Army as a medic. He knew the wound needed attention.

"Pressure to stop the bleeding," he thought. The laundry company had been there that morning and had left clean shop towels. He used those and duct tape to bind the wound. "Hey, they say duct tape can fix anythin'," he said, trying to make the policeman feel at ease. "Something for pain," George thought. All he had was the pills he used for his back. "These ought to work." He put some water in a cup and gave the policeman the pills. "You hang in there. I'm going to get you an ambulance." George said, but the phone was dead.

"Maybe I can get one of your buddies on that there talk box out in your police car." He went out only to find that a bullet had gone into the dashboard destroying the two-way radio. He went back in to find the policeman sitting up.

"Thanks," said the officer. "You could have left me there. The guy that shot me is still in the area."

George sat down beside him. "I would never leave an injured man in the Army and I ain't gonna leave you." George pulled back the bandage to check for bleeding. "Looks worse than what it is. Bullet passed right through 'ya. Good thing it missed the important stuff though. I think with time your gonna be right as rain."

George got up and poured a cup of coffee. "How do you take it?" he asked.

"None for me," said the officer.

"Oh, yer gonna drink this. Best in the city." Then George added: "Too bad I ain't got no donuts."

The officer laughed and winced at the same time.

The front door of the office flew open. In burst a young man with a gun. "Give me all your cash! Do it now!" the young man yelled. His hand was shaking and George could tell that he had never done anything like this before.

"That's the guy that shot me!" exclaimed the officer.

"Son, why are you doing this?" asked George. "You need to put the cannon away. Somebody else might get hurt."

The young man was confused. "Shut up old man, or I'll shoot you, too. Now give me the cash!"

The cop was reaching for his gun. "Put that thing away," George said to the cop. "We got one too many in here now."

He turned his attention to the young man. "Son, it's Christmas Eve. If you need the money, well then, here. It ain't much but it's all I got. Now put that pee shooter away."

George pulled $150 out of his pocket and handed it to the young man, reaching for the barrel of the gun at the same time.
The young man released his grip on the gun, fell to his knees and began to cry. "I'm not very good at this am I? All I wanted was to buy something for my wife and son," he went on. "I've lost my job. My rent is due. My car got repossessed last week..."

George handed the gun to the cop. "Son, we all get in a bit of squeeze now and then. The road gets hard sometimes, but we make it through the best we can."

He got the young man to his feet, and sat him down on a chair across from the cop. "Sometimes we do stupid things." George handed the young man a cup of coffee. "Being stupid is one of the things that makes us human. Comin' in here with a gun ain't the answer. Now sit there and get warm and we'll sort this thing out."

The young man had stopped crying. He looked over to the cop. "Sorry I shot you . It just went off. I'm sorry officer."

"Shut up and drink your coffee." the cop said.

George could hear the sounds of sirens outside. A police car and an ambulance skidded to a halt. Two cops came through the door, guns drawn.

"Chuck! You ok?" one of the cops asked the wounded officer.

"Not bad for a guy who took a bullet. How did you find me?"

"GPS locator in the car. Best thing since sliced bread. Who did this?" the other cop asked as he approached the young man.

Chuck answered him, "I don't know. The guy ran off into the dark. Just dropped his gun and ran."

George and the young man both looked puzzled at each other. "That guy works here," the wounded cop continued.

"Yep," George said. "Just hired him this morning. Boy lost his job."

The paramedics came in and loaded Chuck onto the stretcher. The young man leaned over the wounded cop and whispered, "Why?"

Chuck just said, "Merry Christmas, boy. And you too, George, and thanks for everything."

"Well, looks like you got one dozy of a break there. That ought to solve some of your problems." George went into the back room and came out with a box. He pulled out a ring box. "Here you go. Something for the little woman. I don't think Martha would mind. She said it would come in handy some day."

The young man looked inside to see the biggest diamond ring he ever saw.
"I can't take this," said the young man. "It means something to
you."

"And now it means something to you," replied George. "I got my memories. That's all I need."

George reached into the box again. A toy airplane, a racing car and a little metal truck appeared next. They were toys that the oil company had left for him to sell. "Here's something for that little man of yours."

The young man began to cry again as he handed back the $150 that the old man had handed him earlier. "And what are you supposed to buy Christmas dinner with? You keep that, too. Count it as part of your first week's pay." George said. "Now git home to your family."

The young man turned with tears streaming down his face. "I'll be here in the morning for work, if that job offer is still good."

"Nope. I'm closed Christmas day," George said. "See ya the day after."

George turned around to find that the stranger had returned. "Where'd you come from? I thought you left?"

"I have been here. I have always been here," said the stranger. "You say you don't celebrate Christmas. Why?"

"Well, after my wife passed away I just couldn't see what all the bother was. Puttin' up a tree and all seemed a waste of a good pine tree. Bakin' cookies like I used to with Martha just wasn't the same by myself and besides I was getting a little chubby."

The stranger put his hand on George's shoulder. "But you do celebrate the holiday, George. You gave me food and drink and warmed me when I was cold and hungry. The woman with child will bear a son and he will become a great doctor.

The policeman you helped will go on to save 19 people from being killed by terrorists. The young man who tried to rob you will become a rich man and share his wealth with many people.

That is the spirit of the season and you keep it as good as any man."

George was taken aback by all this stranger had said. "And how do you know all this?" asked the old man.

"Trust me, George. I have the inside track on this sort of thing. And when your days are done you will be with Martha again." The stranger moved toward the door. "If you will excuse me, George, I have to go now. I have to go home where there is a big celebration planned."

George watched as the man's old leather jacket and his torn pants turned into a white robe. A golden light began to fill the
room. "You see, George,------- it's My birthday …… Merry Christmas!

Can You Trust Chemotherapy to Cure Your Cancer???
by Andreas Moritz, citizen journalist
See all articles by this author
Email this author


(NaturalNews) Former White House press secretary Tony Snow died in July 2008 at the age of 53, following a series of chemotherapy treatments for colon cancer. In 2005, Snow had his colon removed and underwent six months of chemotherapy after being diagnosed with colon cancer. Two years later (2007), Snow underwent surgery to remove a growth in his abdominal area, near the site of the original cancer. This is a very treatable condition, said Dr. Allyson Ocean, a gastrointestinal oncologist at Weill Cornell Medical College. Many patients, because of the therapies we have, are able to work and live full lives with quality while they're being treated. Anyone who looks at this as a death sentence is wrong. But of course we now know, Dr. Ocean was dead wrong.

The media headlines proclaimed Snow died from colon cancer, although they knew he didn't have a colon anymore. Apparently, the malignant cancer had returned (from where?) and spread to the liver and elsewhere in his body. In actual fact, the colon surgery severely restricted his normal eliminative functions, thereby overburdening the liver and tissue fluids with toxic waste. The previous series of chemo-treatments inflamed and irreversibly damaged a large number of cells in his body, and also impaired his immune system -- a perfect recipe for growing new cancers. Now unable to heal the causes of the original cancer (in addition to the newly created ones), Snow's body developed new cancers in the liver and other parts of the body.

The mainstream media, of course, still insist Snow died from colon cancer, thus perpetuating the myth that it is only the cancer that kills people, not the treatment. Nobody seems to raise the important point that it is extremely difficult for a cancer patient to actually heal from this condition while being subjected to the systemic poisons of chemotherapy and deadly radiation. If you are bitten by a poisonous snake and don't get an antidote for it, isn't it likely that your body becomes overwhelmed by the poison and, therefore, cannot function anymore?

Before Tony Snow began his chemo-treatments for his second colon cancer, he still looked healthy and strong. But after a few weeks into his treatment, he started to develop a coarse voice, looked frail, turned gray and lost his hair. Did the cancer do all this to him? Certainly not. Cancer doesn't do such a thing, but chemical poisoning does. He actually looked more ill than someone who has been bitten by a poisonous snake.

Does the mainstream media ever report about the overwhelming scientific evidence that shows chemotherapy has zero benefits in the five-year survival rate of colon cancer patients? Or how many oncologists stand up for their cancer patients and protect them against chemotherapy treatment which they very well know can cause them to die far more quickly than if they received no treatment at all? Can you trustingly place your life into their hands when you know that most of them would not even consider chemotherapy for themselves if they were diagnosed with cancer? What do they know that you don't? The news is spreading fast that in the United States physician-caused fatalities now exceed 750,000 each year. Perhaps, many doctors no longer trust in what they practice, for good reasons.

Most cancer patients in this country die of chemotherapy... Chemotherapy does not eliminate breast, colon or lung cancers. This fact has been documented for over a decade. Yet doctors still use chemotherapy for these tumors... Women with breast cancer are likely to die faster with chemo than without it. - Alan Levin, M.D.

An investigation by the Department of Radiation Oncology, Northern Sydney Cancer Centre, Australia, into the contribution of chemotherapy to 5-year survival in 22 major adult malignancies, showed startling results: The overall contribution of curative and adjuvant cytotoxic chemotherapy to 5-year survival in adults was estimated to be 2.3% in Australia and 2.1% in the USA. [Royal North Shore Hospital Clin Oncol (R Coll Radiol) 2005 Jun;17(4):294.]

The research covered data from the Cancer Registry in Australia and the Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results in the USA for the year 1998. The current 5-year relative adult survival rate for cancer in Australia is over 60%, and no less than that in the USA. By comparison, a mere 2.3% contribution of chemotherapy to cancer survival does not justify the massive expense involved and the tremendous suffering patients experience because of severe, toxic side effects resulting from this treatment.
With a meager success rate of 2.3%, selling chemotherapy as a medical treatment of a scam), is one of the greatest fraudulent acts ever committed. The average chemotherapy earns the medical establishment a whopping $300,000 to $1,000,000 each year, and has so far earned those who promote this pseudo-medication (poison) over 1 trillion dollars. It's no surprise that the medical establishment tries to keep this scam alive for as long as possible.

In 1990, the highly respected German epidemiologist, Dr. Ulrich Abel from the Tumor Clinic of the University of Heidelberg, conducted the most comprehensive investigation of every major clinical study on chemotherapy drugs ever done. Abel contacted 350 medical centers and asked them to send him anything they had ever published on chemotherapy. He also reviewed and analyzed thousands of scientific articles published in the most prestigious medical journals. It took Abel several years to collect and evaluate the data. Abel's epidemiological study, which was published on August 10, 1991 in The Lancet, should have alerted every doctor and cancer patient about the risks of one of the most common treatments used for cancer and other diseases. In his paper, Abel came to the conclusion that the overall success rate of chemotherapy was appalling. According to this report, there was no scientific evidence available in any existing study to show that chemotherapy can extend in any appreciable way the lives of patients suffering from the most common organic cancers.

Abel points out that chemotherapy rarely improves the quality of life. He describes chemotherapy as a scientific wasteland and states that even though there is no scientific evidence that chemotherapy works, neither doctor nor patient is willing to give up on it. The mainstream media has never reported on this hugely important study, which is hardly surprising, given the enormous vested interests of the groups that sponsor the media, that is, the pharmaceutical companies. A recent search turned up exactly zero reviews of Abel's work in American journals, even though it was published in 1990. I believe this is not because his work was unimportant -- but because it is irrefutable.

The truth of the matter would be far too costly for the pharmaceutical industry to bear, thus making it unacceptable. If the mass media reported the truth that medical drugs, including chemotherapy drugs, are used to practically commit genocide in the U.S. and the world, their best sponsors (the pharmaceutical companies) would have to withdraw their misleading advertisements from the television media, radio stations, magazines, and newspapers. But neither group wants to go bankrupt.

Many doctors go as far as prescribing chemotherapy drugs to patients for malignancies that are far too advanced for surgery, with the full knowledge that there are no benefits at all. Yet they claim chemotherapy to be an effective cancer treatment, and their unsuspecting patients believe that effective equals cure. The doctors, of course, refer to the FDA's definition of an effective drug, one which achieves a 50% or more reduction in tumor size for 28 days. They neglect to tell their patients that there is no correlation whatsoever between shrinking tumors for 28 days and curing the cancer or extending life. Temporary tumor shrinkage through chemotherapy has never been shown to cure cancer or to extend life. In other words, you can live with an untreated tumor for just as long as you would with one that has been shrunken or been eliminated by chemotherapy (or radiation).

Chemotherapy has never been shown to have curative effects for cancer. By contrast, the body can still cure itself, which it actually tries to do by developing cancer. Cancer is more a healing response than it is a disease. The disease is the body's attempt to cure itself of an existing imbalance. And sometimes, this healing response continues even if a person is subjected to chemotherapy (and/or radiation). Unfortunately, as the previously mentioned research has demonstrated, the chances for a real cure are greatly reduced when patients are treated with chemotherapy drugs.

The side effects of the treatment can be horrendous and heartbreaking for both patients and their loved ones, all in the name of trustworthy medical treatment. Although the drug treatment comes with the promise to improve the patient's quality of life, it is just common sense that a drug that makes them throw up and lose their hair, while wrecking their immune system, is doing the exact opposite. Chemo-therapy can give the patient life-threatening mouth sores. It attacks the immune system by destroying billions of immune cells (white blood cells). Its deadly poisons inflame every part of the body. The drugs can slough off the entire lining of their intestines. The most common side effect experienced among chemo patients is their complete lack of energy. The new additional drugs now given to many chemo patients may prevent the patient from noticing some of the side effects, but they hardly reduce the immensely destructive and suppressive effect of the chemotherapy itself. Remember, the reason chemotherapy can shrink some tumors is because it causes massive destruction in the body.

If you have cancer, you may think that feeling tired is just part of the disease. This rarely is the case. Feeling unusually tired is more likely due to anemia, a common side effect of most chemotherapy drugs. Chemo drugs can dramatically decrease your red blood cell levels, and this reduces oxygen availability to the 60-100 trillion cells of your body. You can literally feel the energy being zapped from every cell of your body -- a physical death without dying. Chemo-caused fatigue has a negative impact on day-to-day activities in 89% of all patients. With no energy, there can be no joy and no hope, and all bodily functions become subdued.

One long-term side effect is that these patients' bodies can no longer respond to nutritional or immune-strengthening approaches to cancerous tumors. All of this may explain why cancer patients who do not receive any treatment at all, have an up to four times higher remission rate than those who receive treatment. The sad thing is that chemotherapy does not cure 96% to 98% of all cancers anyway. Conclusive evidence (for the majority of cancers) that chemotherapy has any positive influence on survival or quality of life does not exist.

To promote chemotherapy as a treatment for cancer is misleading, to say the least. By permanently damaging the body's immune system and other important parts, chemo-therapy has become a leading cause of treatment-caused diseases such as heart disease, liver disease, intestinal diseases, diseases of the immune system, infections, brain diseases, pain disorders, and rapid aging.

Before committing themselves to being poisoned, cancer patients need to question their doctors and ask them to produce the research or evidence that shrinking a tumor actually translates to any increase in survival. If they tell you that chemotherapy is your best chance of surviving, you will know they are lying or are simply misinformed. As Abel's research clearly demonstrated, there is no such evidence anywhere to be found in the medical literature. Subjecting patients to chemotherapy robs them of a fair chance of finding or responding to a real cure and deserves criminal prosecution.

Andreas Moritz's book, Cancer is not a Disease - It's a Survival Mechanism, explains the root causes of cancer and how to eliminate them for good. Available through (www.ener-chi.com) or (www.amazon.com).

Health care economics: Diseases are too profitable to prevent or cure
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor www.naturalnews.com

There's something seriously wrong with our modern system of healthcare in the United States and in Western countries, but this article's not what you might think -- it's not about the obvious things that are wrong. This is about something much larger.

Let's take a look from a large, top-down view. In fact, I'm going to challenge the assumption that we should have disease-oriented doctors at all. I think the whole diseased-focused model of health care we have today is part of the problem.

Let's take a look at it: The job of a doctor (a General Practitioner, or GP) is primarily to diagnose disease, treat symptoms and make referrals to other specialists for surgery, lab tests or other procedures. (Good doctors also help educate patients, but that's the exception, not the norm.) Patients don't go see a doctor unless there's something wrong with them. When they do see the doctor, the doctor's job is to patch them up, make the pain go away, make the swelling go down, stitch up the cut, prescribe drugs or whatever is immediately necessary.
Think about it... the doctor only makes money when people are sick. Drug companies only make money when people need treatment for disease. And most people are only really interested in their health when something goes wrong. I think there's something terribly misguided about this entire process, both in terms of what patients are doing and what doctors are doing. So what could be a better system?

Imagine a world of health consultants...
Suppose we had a system, in some imaginary society, where there weren't doctors -- instead, there were health consultants or "healers." The job of the healer would be to keep you healthy, not to patch you up when you've got a disease. In fact, in this imaginary society, every person would see a healer on a regular basis, working with them like a health coach to avoid and prevent chronic disease. Most importantly, healers would only get paid when you stay healthy, not when you are sick.
If you ever got a disease or experienced symptoms of disease, that would be considered a failure on the part of both the healer and yourself, and the healer would earn no money from your disease. But if the healer was doing their job, and the patient was at least marginally interested in their own health, then of course the vast majority of chronic disease would be entirely avoided.
What if we had a system where you paid your healer a small monthly fee to help keep you healthy?
Under such a system, the healer is financially punished when his or her patients aren't healthy. There's actually a financial incentive for the healer to make sure that everyone stays as healthy as possible. That would be an economic incentive that turns the entire system of healthcare on its head, because right now our current system financially rewards disease.

Diseases are too profitable to prevent or cure
If you think about the way the drug companies operate, they are financially rewarded for inventing new diseases, or redefining old diseases so that more people are now diagnosed with something. In fact, the more diseases they can invent and the more people they can convince of having some disease, the more money drug companies make.

But what if we turned that around, and we had a system where there was an economic incentive to keep people healthy? What if there was actually a penalty for having to use pharmaceuticals, because that meant you failed to follow a healthy lifestyle? What if healing foods such as fresh produce and raw nuts were offered virtually free of charge, but junk foods were very, very expensive? How might that change people's purchasing habits?

If you turn the whole system upside down, and you create rewards for keeping people healthy, then entrepreneurs all throughout the country will find new and interesting ways to keep people healthy. Business people will always find ways to make money, and if disease is financially rewarded, then disease is what they'll create. But if you offer them a way to make money by keeping people healthy, pioneering entrepreneurs will find all sorts of creative ways to improve patient health and cash in on the profits.

Modern medicine rewards disease
Right now, we have a system that rewards disease. That's why we have so much fraud in Medicare and Medicaid, so much corruption in the medical industry and so much money and effort invested in inventing disease. Yet we have virtually nothing invested whatsoever in prevention.
There's really no serious disease prevention program in this country. The government is not working on preventing disease. Drug companies certainly aren't doing anything to prevent disease, and even the national cancer associations, diabetes associations and all these health charities are doing virtually nothing to actually prevent disease. Why is that? Because everybody's making money from disease, including the doctors, hospitals, medical imaging specialists, oncologists, radiologists, anesthesiologists and, of course, psychiatrists, who are now making money by imagining that people have all sorts of brain chemistry disorders like Road Rage Disorder that they claim need to be treated with prescription drugs.

How healers would keep you healthy
What we need are healers, whose job is to keep you healthy, and who can engage in education, nutritional therapies, detoxification programs, physical therapy, stress reduction and other meaningful health therapies. These healers would be able to assess your specific nutritional needs and then prescribe foods to you. They may even prescribe exercise programs, sunshine or more water so that you stay hydrated.
Now, I'm not imagining that all of this would be easy to implement, or that the government should be the one running such programs. I realize this is a simplified description of economics, human decision processes and complexities in health care today, so this is not a serious proposal of reform. This is just an exploration of ideas of how we might turn things around by altering the way incentives are applied.

Modern medicine is an utter failure
What's very clear today is that the current system we have has utterly failed. We have more people on drugs in this country than anywhere in the world, we're spending more per capita on healthcare than any country in the world, and yet we are the most diseased population in the world (barring plagues and the like).
We have depression, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and a long list of other chronic diseases that are devastating our population, and not just our adults and senior citizens, but now our children too. It's very clear that the system of health care we have in our country does not work.
Over 40 percent of our population has no health insurance. Approximately 99 percent of our population (and the vast majority of licensed physicians) remains completely and utterly ignorant of the relationship between nutrition and health. In this country, we continue to subsidize sugar and genetically-engineered corn on a grand scale. We continue to allow the drug companies and junk food companies to exploit consumers and brainwash people into thinking they need chemicals or junk foods in order to be healthy, feel good or be popular. We have a system that is dominated by evil industries that really have no purpose other than to generate profits. These are the food, drug, cosmetics and chemical industries, primarily.
Doctors are often trapped in the system, too
We also have a medical industry that is, in some ways, helpless to do anything in response to all these problems. I know it's easy to blame doctors, and certainly they are part of the problem, but doctors are also caught in a system where they are often powerless to do much.
Many doctors start out wanting to be healers. They really want to help people, but they soon find out that they can't stay in business if they're spending 20 minutes per patient. A clinic or a hospital won't hire them unless they can work faster and see more patients, spending an average of only 3 minutes per patient. What started out as a genuine desire to help people quickly degenerates into a drug-dispensing factory operation.
Some of that responsibility, however, belongs with the patients. A lot of patients don't want real health solutions -- they just want a prescription. They just want a magic pill, and they're not interested in changing their diet or engaging in exercise. Sometimes a doctor can give patients excellent advice, and the patient will just ignore them.
Now, if this happens to you a thousand times, and you're a doctor, pretty soon you get tired of preaching to people and you eventually just leave it up to them. I think that's where too many doctors ultimately end up. They've given up on trying to help people, and they're just pushing drugs and surgery. Every treatment in conventional medicine, it seems, comes down to pushing more drugs, and the continuing education programs (CMEs) required for doctors to maintain their licensure are, more often than not, sponsored by drug companies. Doctors are flooded by pro-drug information through drug reps, medical journals, continuing education and from patients themselves (who request drugs by name because they saw an advertisement on TV).
The bottom line is that if we're going to make some lasting changes in this industry, and actually do something to qualitatively improve the health of American citizens, we have to change the dynamics of this system. We have to stop providing incentives for disease and start finding new ways to create rewards for personal health improvements.
I think we can do that by starting at both the bottom and the top, the bottom being grassroots education, which is part of what I do. At the top, there would be reform of the FDA, and we would create a true Department of Health that is actually interested in promoting health, and not just promoting the financial interests of politically powerful drug companies and food corporations.
We've got to sever the corrupt connection between government and industry, and create some honest regulatory agencies that are actually going to do something to protect the consumer. Today, we are far from that. In fact, it's nowhere in sight. But that's where we have to start if we're going to have a chance at improving the health situation in this country.

Ten Things You're Not Supposed to Know about the Swine Flu Vaccine

Ten Things You're Not Supposed to Know about the Swine Flu Vaccine
by Mike Adams, NaturalNews Editor (NaturalNews.com)

She was deathly afraid of the flu.
So she asked her doc what she should do.
He jabbed her unseen
With a swine flu vaccine
Blurting, "Darling, I haven't a clue.
- by the Health Ranger

Let's not beat around the bush on this issue: The swine flu vaccines now being prepared for mass injection into infants, children, teens and adults have never been tested and won't be tested before the injections begin. In Europe, where flu vaccines are typically tested on hundreds (or thousands) of people before being unleashed on the masses, the European Medicines Agency is allowing companies to skip the testing process entirely. And yet, amazingly, people are lining up to take the vaccine, absent any safety testing whatsoever.

When the National Institutes of Health in the U.S. announced a swine flu vaccine trial beginning in early August, it was inundated with phone calls and emails from people desperate to play the role of human guinea pigs. The power of fear to herd sheep into vaccine injections is simply amazing...
Back in Europe, of course, everybody gets to be a guinea pig since no testing will be done on the vaccine at all. Even worse, the European vaccines will be using adjuvants -- chemicals used to multiply the potency of the active ingredients in vaccines. Notably, there is absolutely no safety data on the use of adjuvants in infants and expectant mothers -- the two groups being most aggressively targeted by the swine flu vaccine pushers. That leads us to the disturbing conclusion that the swine flu vaccine could be a modern medical disaster. It is untested and un-tried. Its ingredients are potentially quite dangerous, and the adjuvants being used in the European vaccines are suspected of causing neurological disorders.

Paralyzed by vaccines
I probably don't need to remind you that in 1976, a failed swine flu vaccine caused irreparable damage to the nervous systems of hundreds of people, paralyzing many. Medical doctors gave the problem a name, of course, to make it sound like they knew what they were talking about: Guillain-Barre syndrome. (Notably, they never called it "Toxic Vaccine Syndrome" because that would be too informative.)
But the fact remains that doctors never knew how the vaccines caused these severe problems, and if the same event played out today, all the doctors and vaccine pushers would undoubtedly deny any link between the vaccines and paralysis altogether (that is what is happening today with the debate over vaccines and autism: Complete denial).
In fact, there are a whole lot of things you will never be told by health authorities about the upcoming swine flu vaccine. For your amusement, I've written down the ten most obvious ones and published them below.

Ten things you're not supposed to know about the swine flu vaccine
(At least, not by anyone in authority...)

1 - The vaccine production was "rushed" and the vaccine has never been tested on humans. Do you like to play guinea pig for Big Pharma? If so, line up for your swine flu vaccine this fall...

2 - Swine flu vaccines contain dangerous adjuvants that cause an inflammatory response in the body. This is why they are suspected of causing autism and other neurological disorders.

3 - The swine flu vaccine could actually increase your risk of death from swine flu by altering (or suppressing) your immune system response. There is zero evidence that even seasonal flu shots offer any meaningful protection for people who take the jabs. Vaccines are the snake oil of modern medicine.

4 - Doctors still do not know why the 1976 swine flu vaccines paralyzed so many people. And that means they really have no clue whether the upcoming vaccine might cause the same devastating side effects (and they're not testing it, either...).

5 - Even if the swine flu vaccine kills you, the drug companies aren't responsible. The U.S. government has granted drug companies complete immunity against vaccine product liability. Thanks to that blanket immunity, drug companies have no incentive to make safe vaccines, because they only get paid based on quantity, not safety (zero liability).

6 - No swine flu vaccine works as well as vitamin D to protect you from influenza. That is an inconvenient scientific fact that the U.S. government, the FDA and Big Pharma hope the people will never realize!

7 - Even if the swine flu vaccine actually works, mathematically speaking if everyone else around you gets the vaccine, you don't need one..., simply because it cannot spread through the population you are with! So even if you believe in the vaccine, all you need to do is to encourage your friends to go and get vaccinated...

8 - Drug companies are making billions of dollars from the production of swine flu vaccines. That money comes out of your pocket -- even if you don't get the jab -- because it is all paid by the taxpayers.

9 - When people start dying in larger numbers from the swine flu, rest assured that many of them will be the very people who got the swine flu vaccine. Doctors will explain this away with their typical Big Pharma logic: The number saved is far greater than the number lost.
Of course, the numbers saved is entirely fictional, imaginary and exists only in their own corrupted minds.

10 - The swine flu vaccine centers that will crop up all over the world in the coming months are not completely useless: they will provide an easy way to identify large groups of really stupid people.

The lottery, they say, is a tax on people who can't do math.
Similarly, flu vaccines are a tax on people who don't understand health.

CANCER TREATMENTS - The truth about Conventional and Natural Methods

Cancer Treatments – the TRUTH about conventional and “alternative” methods
by Tanya Harter Pierce (USA)

Despite the expenditure of billions of dollars, mainstream medicine’s track record for curing cancer is unfortunately dismal. Too many people have watched loved ones die miserably after suffering the terrible side effects of chemotherapy and other toxic conventional treatments, and more and more are choosing alternative methods instead.

Case:
Sydney’s mom was one such person. Sydney was a bright little girl just two years old when she was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
After a year of chemotherapy, Sydney was in remission and her parents and doctors hoped the cancer would not come back. But it did come back, and at age four Sydney’s doctors were recommending a bone marrow transplant as her only hope. However, this procedure offered a mere 5-10% chance of cure and the treatment could potentially cause severe damage to her body (or even kill her).
Instead, Sydney’s mom decided to decline the conventional treatment and chose an alternative approach that was safe and non-toxic. Within just a few months, there was no sign of leukemia in little Sydney. She is currently nine years old and still cancer-free.

Sydney’s story is not uncommon as advances in alternative medicine continue to outpace conventional allopathic medicine for the treatment of chronic metabolic diseases.

So what do we mean by “alternative cancer treatments?”
Any health treatment is considered alternative if it has not yet been approved by the FDA (Food and Drug Administration – USA) and has not yet been accepted by mainstream medicine. But many “alternatives” are scientifically based and effective treatments nevertheless.
The approach administered to Sydney is an easy-to-use liquid formula called Protocel. This formula was developed by an American chemist who discovered a way to interfere with how cancer cells produce energy for themselves.
The approach is supported by research done by the Nobel Prize-winning scientist Otto Warburg, who proved that cancer cells primarily use anaerobic cell respiration. Protocel interferes with that type of cell respiration just enough to make anaerobic cells (cancer cells) fall apart. The Protocel formula has been used by thousands of people to achieve recoveries from breast, prostate, lung, brain, colon, and virtually all other types of cancer. A side benefit is that many other illnesses--such as multiple sclerosis, viral infections, ulcerative colitis, and Crohn’s Disease also involve anaerobic cells. Thus, Protocel has been used to help people with these conditions as well. Typical examples include a woman who used Protocel to cure herself of metastasized bladder cancer, only to find that all signs of her Hepatitis C infection had disappeared.
A man who saw his wife cure herself of metastasized vaginal wall cancer decided to use Protocel himself preventively, and within two weeks a psoriasis/fungal type infection that he’d had on his fingers for ten years completely cleared up.
Another powerful alternative cancer approach based on Dr. Warburg’s anaerobic principle of cancer cells is called Cesium High pH Therapy. This was developed by an American physicist named Dr. Aubrey Keith Brewer who discovered that cancer cells readily take in the mineral cesium, which then alkalizes the cancer cells to death from the inside. Following are two real-life cases of people who chose to use cesium.

Case:
A man suffering from advanced stomach cancer was told by his oncologist that his cancer was not responding to chemotherapy. His medical team said that the only thing they had left to offer him was total surgical removal of his stomach, after which they would attach his upper intestine to his esophagus. This man was not pleased with the option of trying to live without a stomach, so he declined the surgery. His wife found out about cesium and he used that instead for a complete recovery. He continues to remain cancer-free years later.

Case:
A woman with metastasized ovarian cancer was told by her doctor that chemotherapy would never get rid of all her cancer; it could only hope to control it. As she saw her cancer gradually spreading, she finally stopped the ineffective chemotherapy and through the use of cesium became cancer-free as well. Protocel and Cesium High pH Therapy are just two of many effective alternative methods. While no approach is a “Magic Bullet” that will cure everybody, when used correctly alternative methods for cancer often provide better overall chances for long-term cure than chemotherapy or radiation. As already mentioned, an important difference between alternative and conventional cancer treatments is that alternative methods are not officially approved by the FDA and are not prescribed by mainstream medicine. This means you won’t hear about them from your oncologist and your health insurance company won’t reimburse you if you choose to use one. So it is left to you to educate yourself as to your true options. Another important difference is that alternative methods are always non-toxic, whereas conventional methods are virtually always toxic. It’s the non-toxic aspect of alternative cancer treatments that is the key to why alternative methods are more effective at achieving long-term cures in so many cases. This is because a non-toxic method can be used 24/7, for as many weeks, months, or even years as it takes to get rid of all of one’s cancer. Being non-toxic, it does not hurt a person’s healthy cells or immune system, and thus allows for continual use in cooperation with the body’s own healing process. Both chemo and radiation, on the other hand, are so toxic and so damaging to the body’s immune system they do NOT allow for continual use. In fact, using chemo or radiation every day for months would kill the patient. So breaks in the treatment are necessary to allow the patient to recover from the treatment--and these breaks allow the cancer to recover and grow back!
Often, the cancer grows back even more virulently because the immune system is weakened. This explains the vicious cycle in conventional medicine of remission and recurrence until the patient dies. It is tragic to hear heart-breaking stories of people who bravely suffered the side effects of toxic chemotherapy or radiation only to find their cancer has spread even more extensively throughout their body. Once they find an effective alternative approach, they frequently say, “If I had known about alternative methods, I never would have done the chemo and radiation in the first place.” With 1 in 3 Americans likely to develop cancer at some point in their lifetime, and our medical system turning its back on alternative medicine, it is essential and heartening to know there are non-toxic options out there that really can work!

Tanya Harter Pierce is a retired marriage, family, child counselor who started researching alternative cancer treatments when a family member was diagnosed with the disease. To learn more about her book, Outsmart Your Cancer: Alternative Non-Toxic Treatments That Work, or to listen to inspiring testimonials of cancer recoveries using alternatives, visit www.OutsmartYourCancer.com
____________________________________________________________________

In South Africa there is another effective “alternative” medicine for cancer, called Matema.

Matema is available in liquid form and it is a natural, herbal extraction. All ingredients come from the soil of Africa and they have been used in traditional medicine for hundreds of years.
Matema has been used for many forms of cancer, without any side effects. At the same time, as often noted with many natural remedies, many other ailments also seem to disappear. No one can claim to know how exactly it works, but with Hippocrates’ first rule for healing: “do not harm!”, it has been shown that it does work and it is safe.

For all enquiries contact:

GEORGE-GABRIEL BERKOVITS EMP. EPP. C.Ht. Holistic Healing
SANCTUARY OF SOUL, Fourways, Johannesburg, South Africa george@soulhealer.co.za Website: www.soulhealer.co.za

Registered SATHPHSHA Traditional Health Practitioner
ETHNOMEDICINE PRACTITIONERS ASSOCIATION OF S.A.

VITAMIN D - Important Information

New research shows vitamin D slashes risk of cancers by 77 percent; cancer industry refuses to support cancer prevention

by Mike Adams, www.naturalnews.com

Exciting new research conducted at the Creighton University School of Medicine in Nebraska has revealed that supplementing with vitamin D and calcium can reduce your risk of cancer by an astonishing 77 percent.

This includes breast cancer, colon cancer, skin cancer and other forms of cancer.

This research provides strong new evidence that vitamin D is the single most effective medicine against cancer, far outpacing the benefits of any cancer drug known to modern science.The study involved 1,179 healthy women from rural Nebraska. One group of women was given calcium (around 1500 mg daily) and vitamin D (1100 IU daily) while another group was given placebo.

Over four years, the group receiving the calcium and vitamin D supplements showed a 60 percent decrease in cancers. Considering just the last three years of the study reveals an impressive 77 percent reduction in cancer due to supplementation. (The full press release of this study is included below. It provides more details about the findings.)

Note that these astonishing effects were achieved on what many nutritionists consider to be a low dose of vitamin D. Exposure to sunlight, which creates even more vitamin D in the body, was not tested or considered, and the quality of the calcium supplements was likely not as high as it could have been (it was probably calcium carbonate and not high-grade calcium malate, aspartate or similar forms).

What does all this mean?

It means that if you take high-quality calcium supplements and get lots of natural sunlight exposure or take premium vitamin D supplements (such as those made from fish oil), you could easily have a greater reduction than the 77 percent reduction recorded in this study.

American Cancer Society opposes vitamin D

This research on vitamin D is such good news that the American Cancer Society, of course, had to say something against it. An ACS spokesperson, Marji McCullough, strategic director of nutritional epidemiology for the American Cancer Society, flatly stated that nobody should take supplements to prevent cancer.

If it seems surprising to you that the American Cancer Society -- which claims to be against cancer -- would dissuade people from taking supplements that slash their cancer risk by 77 percent, then you don't know much about the ACS.

In my opinion, the ACS is an organization that actually prevents prevention and openly supports the continuation of cancer as a way to boost its power and profits. The ACS is the wealthiest non-profit in America and has very close ties to pharmaceutical companies, mammography equipment companies and other corporations that profit from cancer.

Notice the name, too: It isn't the American Anti-Cancer Society, it's the American Cancer Society! What they really stand for is right in the name!

The cancer industry is a multi-billion dollar industry, and I've written extensively about the criminal organizations that protect and promote the industry. Just about everything the public is told about cancer by these cancer institutions is a lie. Those "race for the cure" cancer walks are a complete scam (they really aren't searching for any way to prevent cancer or cure cancer, they're only searching for new patented drugs to profit from cancer).

This research on vitamin D is a huge threat to the cancer industry profit mongers because it reveals a way to prevent cancer for free -- by seeking natural sunlight exposure and letting your skin manufacture your own powerful anti-cancer medicine (vitamin D). The idea that the cancer industry could lose 80% of its patients due to widespread education about vitamin D and sunlight scares the living daylights out of the cancer industry. Billions of dollars in cancer profits are at stake here, so the pro-cancer groups have to do everything they can to discredit vitamin D by creating doubt and confusion. The degree of dishonesty at work here is almost unbelievable to those who don't really know what's happening in the cancer industry.

Ten questions to ask yourself about the cancer industry

Consider these questions:

#1: Why does the cancer industry refuse to educate people about cancer prevention?

#2: If people keep donating money for the "search" for a cancer cure, why won't drug companies pledge to "open source" their patents on cancer drugs to benefit the people whose donations funded them in the first place? In other words, why do people donate money for cancer research but then get charged for cancer drugs?

#3: Why does the entire cancer industry so strongly dissuade people from using sunlight exposure to dramatically reduce their cancer risk? (Hint: Follow the money to the sunscreen industry...)

#4: Why have all the really good cancer supplements, clinics and naturopaths been banned, arrested or run out of the country? (Look up the FDA's oppression of Lane Labs over MGN-3 for a fascinating review of this...)

#5: The U.S. has poured billions of dollars into the cancer industry over the last three decades. Cancer cures were promised in the 1970's. Why are cancer rates still essentially the same today as they were in the 1970's?

#6: Why does the cancer industry continue to use chemotherapy, radiation and other toxic procedures to "kill tumors" when the latest science clearly shows that cancer tumors are only the symptoms, not the cause, of cancer? Chemotherapy destroys immune function and causes permanent damage to the heart, brain and liver...

#7: The World Health Organization says that 70% of all cancers are easily preventable through dietary and lifestyle changes. This latest research shows that sunlight and low-cost calcium supplements can slash cancer risk by 77% in women. Why won't conventional medicine embrace this low-cost, safe and highly effective method for preventing cancer?

#8: The cancer industry routinely attacks anti-cancer herbs, superfoods and supplements. Why is the cancer industry opposed to anti-cancer nutrition? Why does it believe that only man, not nature, can manufacture anti-cancer medicines?

#9: Dark skin pigmentation blocks ultraviolet radiation, meaning that people with black skin need far more time under the sun to generate the same amount of vitamin D as someone with white skin. Not surprisingly, black women suffer extremely high rates of breast cancer while black men show similarly high levels of prostate cancer. The white-dominated medical industry pretends to be "mystified" by all this. Why won't conventional medicine simple tell black people the truth about vitamin D, skin pigmentation and cancer? Why do oncologists try to keep black people ignorant about their vitamin D deficiencies?

#10: Why is it illegal for nutritional supplement manufacturers to tell the truth about the anti-cancer effects of their products? Broccoli, garlic, onions and sprouts all have powerful anti-cancer effects, as do dozens of rainforest herbs (Cat's Claw, for example), Chinese herbs and Western herbs. But the FDA threatens and censors any company that dares to mention cancer prevention on its supplement products. Why is the FDA enforcing a policy of nutritional ignorance with U.S. consumers? Why does the federal government want people to remain ignorant of methods for preventing or treating cancer?You probably already know the answer to all these questions, because the answer is the same for each one: Corporate profits. Cancer is hugely profitable to treat. Substantially preventing cancer would result in a loss of billions of dollars in profits for the oncologists, drug companies, hospitals and clinics that currently prey upon the finances of cancer victims.The cancer industry is operated like a criminal racket, using false information, intimidation, political pressure and propaganda to protect its power base and keep its corporations profitable. And that, my friends, is exactly why the industry is against the use of sunlight to prevent cancer. Free medicine from the sky? The very thought of it makes the cancer industry cringe. Sunlight doesn't even need a prescription, you see, and it can't be patented, either.

Preventing cancer the healthy way

Let me tell you how I prevent cancer. I take long walks in the desert with no shirt on, and I don't wear sunscreen. I soak up the sun's rays for many hours each week, and I never get a sun burn because I eat lots of antioxidant-rich superfoods, berries and fresh produce.

I drink a raw superfood smoothie each morning, made of fresh produce and superfoods. My two favorite recipes are chocolate (with raw cacao, coconut oil or macadamia nut oil, raw avocado, spirulina, quinoa, banana and almond milk) and super berry (fresh berries, freeze-dried berries, egg white protein, stevia, aloe vera gel, fresh cucumber or watermelon, celery).

I put no personal care products on my skin whatsoever: No deodorants, no fragrance, no skin creams, no cosmetics and no sunscreen. This alone saves me from exposure to hundreds of cancer-causing toxic chemicals added to personal care products. I refuse to use chemical laundry detergent and, instead, use natural laundry soap that grows on trees: Natural soap berries that we sell as a replacement for chemical laundry detergents.

Corporate-controlled U.S. government doesn't want to prevent cancer

The U.S. government doesn't want the population to be free of cancer.

That's a strong statement, so let me offer you an undeniable piece of strong evidence to back that up:

The artificially low RDA numbers for vitamin D.

One of the best ways to keep the population suffering from cancer is to enforce long-term nutritional deficiencies that lead to cancer. The US government accomplishes this by keeping the recommendations for vitamin D artificially low, practically guaranteeing that anyone who follows the recommendations will eventually be diagnosed with cancer.

Vitamin D deficiency is the leading cause of breast cancer.

Most educated nutritionists agree that the daily dose of vitamin D for an adult should be at least 1000 IUs, perhaps as high as 1400. But the U.S. Institute of Medicine (IoM), which controls the recommendations on these things, currently states that adults under 50 only need 200 IUs of vitamin D a day. This policy is, in my opinion, an organized conspiracy to keep the American people diseased by making sure they stay deficient in anti-cancer nutrients. It serves the interests of all the powerful corporations and non-profits that run Washington. And yes, it is a conspiracy. I've documented it in far more detail in my book, Natural Health Solutions and the Conspiracy to Keep You From Knowing About Them, which reveals shocking details, documents and photographs showing how modern medicine is a system that's literally designed to keep the people in a state of chronic disease.

The FDA doesn't want people to prevent cancer either.

That's why they've aggressively attacked companies offering anti-cancer nutrients, and completely censored the very mention of the word "cancer" by supplement companies. In fact, the only reason I can print the information you're reading right now is because I sell no food or supplements and my free speech writing is not regulated by the FDA. If I were selling supplements and writing these same words you're reading right now, I would be arrested, charged with federal crimes, and put out of business by state and federal authorities.

That's the reality of the oppressive medical environment under which we live today: Health is outlawed, and only disease is allowed to be promoted.

The cancer industry, you see, is not merely incompetent; it is criminal. Intentionally keeping a population sick so that you can profit from disease is a crime against humanity.

And yet this is business as usual in America's modern cancer industry. Discrediting simple, free and safe cancer prevention strategies is also criminal, and yet this is what the American Cancer Society seems to do at every opportunity.

Plotting to profit from the suffering of other humans beings is evil. And yet the entire revenue base of the cancer industry is based on precisely that: Keeping people alive long enough to "treat" them with overpriced toxic chemicals that can be billed to Medicare at 50,000% markups over their manufacturing cost. Cancer is big, big business. And curing cancer is a threat to all the criminals participating in that industry: The non-profit employees, oncologists, doctors, federal regulators, drug company executives, med school propaganda teachers, pharmaceutical reps and many others. These people cannot allow cancer to be prevented or cured. Their jobs and careers are at stake.

Another outstanding source for learning more about the evils of the cancer industry is G. Edward Griffin.

A world free from cancer and full of abundance

Personally, I believe we could create a world virtually free of cancer. We could accomplish it in two generations by taking tough action to outlaw cancer-causing chemicals and investing in genuine cancer prevention education. Drug companies would lose trillions of dollars in profits, hospitals would lose huge amounts of patients, and pro-cancer non-profit groups would lose power, money and prestige.

But guess what? We'd all be better off without cancer.

Here's a startling statistic: Did you know that reducing the cancer death rate by just 1% would be worth almost $500 billion to the U.S. economy over the next hundred years or so? (Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) Drop the cancer rate by 10% and it's worth $5 trillion dollars to the economy. (These gains are due to increased productivity and life spans of working, contributing people.)

We know right now that vitamin D and calcium can slash cancer rates by 77 percent.

Do the math on that, and you realize that sunlight and calcium could result in a $38.5 trillion boost to the U.S. economy over the next century.

That's enough economic productivity to pay off our entire national debt, build new schools in every town and city in the country, provide free college educations to all young people who wish to go to college, invest billions in new energy technologies and even fund massive health education campaigns to keep our population healthy.

$38 trillion is a lot of money. With that kind of increased abundance, we could build a whole new society of health, wealth and education.

But guess what? The cancer industry won't let that happen. There's too much short term profit to be made in keeping everybody sick. The cancer industry is so evil that it will sell out our future in order to maintain power, profits and control over the people today. The cancer industry doesn't want cancer rates to go down, regardless of the benefits to society or individual lives.

The cancer industry wants there to be MORE cancer, which is exactly why it opposes commonsense prevention strategies that would reduce cancers. (It's true, this industry actually opposes removing cancer-causing chemicals from the workplace...)

Read more at Dr. Sam Epstein's website: http://www.preventcancer.com/losing/The bottom line in all this?

New research shows us that using low-cost calcium and vitamin D supplements (or just natural sunlight), we could slash cancer rates by an astonishing 77 percent. The cancer industry opposes this and is firmly positioned as an opponent of cancer prevention.

The industry depends on cancer to grow its own power and profits, and it will invest in the de-education of the public in order to maximize its own revenues. Cures for cancer exist all around us: sunlight, rainforest herbs, anti-cancer foods and superfoods, etc.

The causes of cancer are well known: toxic chemicals in foods, cosmetics, personal care products, home cleaning products, and so on. So why don't we, as a nation, take steps to outlaw the things that cause cancer while promoting the things that prevent cancer? The reason, once again, is because there's too much money at stake here. The corporations are in charge, and as long as they're running the show, cancer cures or prevention strategies that really work will simply not be tolerated.

Creighton press release

Here's the original press release about the new findings on vitamin D and cancer prevention: OMAHA, Neb., June 8 -- "Most Americans and others are not taking enough vitamin D, a fact that may put them at significant risk for developing cancer, according to a landmark study conducted by Creighton University School of Medicine.The four-year, randomized study followed 1,179 healthy, postmenopausal women from rural eastern Nebraska.* Participants taking calcium, as well as a quantity of vitamin D3 nearly three times the U.S. government's Recommended Daily Amount (RDA) for middle-age adults, showed a dramatic 60 percent or greater reduction in cancer risk than women who did not get the vitamin.The results of the study, conducted between 2000 and 2005, were reported in the June 8 online edition of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.The findings are very exciting. They confirm what a number of vitamin D proponents have suspected for some time but that, until now, have not been substantiated through clinical trial," said principal investigator Joan Lappe, Ph.D., R.N., Creighton professor of medicine and holder of the Criss/Beirne Endowed Chair in the School of Nursing. "Vitamin D is a critical tool in fighting cancer as well as many other diseases."

Other Creighton researchers involved in the study included Robert Recker, M.D.; Robert Heaney, M.D.; Dianne Travers-Gustafson, M.S.; and K. Michael Davies, Ph.D.Research participants were all 55 years and older and free of known cancers for at least 10 years prior to entering the Creighton study. Subjects were randomly assigned to take daily dosages of 1,400-1,500 mg supplemental calcium, 1,400-1,500 mg supplemental calcium plus 1,100 IU of vitamin D3, or placebos. National Institutes of Health funded the study.

Over the course of four years, women in the calcium/vitamin D3 group experienced a 60 percent decrease in their cancer risk than the group taking placebos. On the premise that some women entered the study with undiagnosed cancers, researchers then eliminated the first-year results and looked at the last three years of the study.
When they did that, the results became even more dramatic with the calcium/vitamin D3 group showing a startling 77 percent cancer-risk reduction. In the three-year analysis, there was no statistically significant difference in cancer incidence between participants taking placebos and those taking just calcium supplements.

Through the course of the study, 50 participants developed nonskin cancers, including breast, colon, lung and other cancers. Lappe said further studies are needed to determine whether the Creighton research results apply to other populations, including men, women of all ages, and different ethnic groups.

While the study was open to all ethnic groups, all participants were Caucasian, she noted.

There is a growing body of evidence that a higher intake of vitamin D may be helpful in the prevention and treatment of cancer, high blood pressure, fibromyalgia, diabetes mellitus, multiple sclerosis, and rheumatoid arthritis and other diseases.

Humans make their own vitamin D3 when they are exposed to sunlight. In fact, only 10-15 minutes a day in a bright summer sun creates large amounts of the vitamin, Lappe said. However, people need to exercise caution since the sun's ultraviolet B rays also can cause skin cancer; sunscreen blocks most vitamin D production.

In addition, the latitude at which you live and your ancestry also influence your body's ability to convert sunlight into vitamin D. People with dark skin have more difficulty making the vitamin. Persons living at latitudes north of the 37th parallel -- Omaha is near the 41st parallel -- cannot get their vitamin D naturally during the winter months because of the sun's angle.

Experts generally agree that the RDA** for vitamin D needs to be increased substantially, however there is debate about the amount. Supplements are available in two forms -- vitamin D2 and vitamin D3.

Creighton researchers recommend vitamin D3, because it is more active and thus more effective in humans.

* Study participants came from the Nebraska counties of Douglas, Colfax, Cuming, Dodge, Saunders, Washington, Sarpy, Burt and Butler.

** RDA recommendations for vitamin D are 200 IU/d, birth-age 50; 400 IU/d, 50-70 years; and 600 IU/d, 70 years and older.