On Friday, March 25, 2009, Reuters published an article citing Michelle Larkin at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in support of an article on groups urging FDA changes for "food safety" and a new federal agency for that purpose.
She was quoted as saying 500,000 people died from foodborne illness annually.
Problem is, it's untrue. Grossly and measurably untrue.
5,000 people a year die from food born illness.
Not 500,000.
500,000 is an inflation of the truth by 100 times.
A central fact - the entire basis of the "food safety" bills - that food born illnesses are so "TERRIBLY DANGEROUS" we are all at risk of dying at almost any moment from eating, is stretched and stretched and stretched to such an extremity that what is only minimally a risk is made to look imminent and terrifying.
Ms. Larkin was grateful to learn of the misquote and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation called Reuters to try to get it corrected. Today, the original Reuters story is down but the wildly exaggerated number has escaped into the world.
It was repeated on:
http://health.yahoo.com/...
http://www.mercksource.com/...
http://www.newsinferno.com/...
http://dailyme.com/...
http://channels.isp.netscape.com/... story/0002%2F20090325%2F1257749605...
http://www.portfolio.com/... changes-to-boost-us-food-safety
http://www.gateway.net/... 0002%2F20090325%2F1257749605.htm
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/... -
Reuters' unusual retraction is here: http://blogs.reuters.com/...
With the retraction making clear the number of deaths are a 1/100th of what was reported, where is the "food safety" dire emergency?
Doesn't this make it an...
OOPS?
And what about the slew of "food safety" bills all predicated on a "food safety" dire emergency which isn't?
OOPS?
What about that non-existent emergency raising the specter of Monsanto controlling the whole US supply from inside the White House in the form of Michael Taylor, the same guy who gave us rBGH and genetically engineered food with no labeling?
OOPS?
And the fact that "the Administrator" (Taylor) would be able to mete out punishments of up to $1,000,000 a day (and that number is not exaggerated, just insane) and 10 years in prison ... with no judicial review, a global tracking surveillance, "warrantless search, seizure and destroy" Patriot Act over all food?
OOPS?
Do we have a food safety crisis or not? Let's look at food born illnesses without the "help" of the media and see what's what.
Every death is serious and matters deeply, but 5000 deaths from foodborn illnesses are, if not the lowest, among the lowest number of annual deaths from any medical causes in this country.
Let's repeat that:
5000 deaths from foodborn illnesses are, if not the lowest, among the lowest number of annual deaths from any medical causes in this country.
Kind of a relief to realize that, after all the media fear-mongering and Reuters 100 times wrong death statistic.
More than three times as many people die just from taking aspirin and ibuprofen and the other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs each year.
A statement from a July 1998 issue of The American Journal of Medicine states the following:
Conservative calculations estimate that approximately 107,000 patients are hospitalised annually for nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID)-related gastrointestinal (GI) complications and at least 16,500 NSAID-related deaths occur each year among arthritis patients alone. The figure of all NSAID users would be overwhelming, yet the scope of this problem is generally under-appreciated.
http://www.phend.co.za/...
So, are there a slew of bills in congress to stop those kinds of deaths? No. And worse than "no." The FDA actually overstepped its regulatory authority in order to stop information from getting out that cherries - which cause no deaths annually - are potentially 10 times stronger than deadly NSAIDs for controlling pain.
The FDA threatened cherry growers - farmers - with punishment if they even put a link on their website to the peer reviewed study.
http://www.lef.org/...
Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, often referred to as NSAIDS, are assumed to be well tolerated and are widely used as an initial therapy for common inflammation. Everyone is familiar with these types of drugs with millions using them for pain relief. They range from over the counter aspirin and ibuprofen to a whole host of prescription brands. These pharmaceutical agents constitute one of the most widely used class of drugs, with more than 70 million prescriptions and more than 30 billion over-the counter tablets sold annually in the United States alone. NSAIDs are often called nonsteroidal because they are not steroids. Steroids affect inflammation by suppressing part of the immune system, which is the body's natural healing response to trauma. Instead NSAID drugs mainly inhibit the body's ability to synthesize prostaglandins. Prostaglandins are a family of hormone-like chemicals, some of which are made in response to cell injury.
Common over the counter names include: ibuprofen (Advil(r)), naproxen (Aleve(r)), and aspirin (Bayer(r)). Perscription brands include: celecoxib (Celebrex(r)), diclofenac (Voltaren(r)), etodolac (Lodine(r)), fenoprefen (Nalfon(r)), indomethacin (Indocin(r)), ketoprofen (Orudis(r), Oruvail(r)), ketoralac (Toradol(r)), oxaprozin (Daypro(r)), nabumetone (Relafen(r)), sulindac (Clinoril(r)), tolmetin (Tolectin(r)), and rofecoxib (Vioxx(r)).
And again a year later (June 1999) in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine there is a similar statement:
"It has been estimated conservatively that 16,500 NSAID-related deaths occur among patients with rheumatoid arthritis or osteoarthritis every year in the United States. This figure is similar to the number of deaths from the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome and considerably greater than the number of deaths from multiple myeloma, asthma, cervical cancer, or Hodgkin's disease. If deaths from gastrointestinal toxic effects from NSAIDs were tabulated separately in the National Vital Statistics reports, these effects would constitute the 15th most common cause of death in the United States. Yet these toxic effects remain mainly a "silent epidemic," with many physicians and most patients unaware of the magnitude of the problem. Furthermore the mortality statistics do not include deaths ascribed to the use of over-the-counter NSAIDS."
What these journal articles are stating is shocking. Over 100,000 people are hospitalised for GI bleeding and of those 16,500 die every year. And these values are considered "conservative". Also the figures only include prescription NSAIDs used to treat only arthritis and only in the United States. If prescription and over the counter NSAID-related hospitalisations and death rates were counted for not only arthritis, but for all conditions, and throughout the world, the figures would no doubt be enormous. Taking those figures and applying them over the many years that this class of drug that has been available since the early 1970s and the numbers would be horrific. And yet, no study to date has attempted to quantify these figures.
MANY DEATHS
Looking at this information from another perspective we can compare yearly estimated NSAID deaths since 1991 with the number of murders committed with firearms each year in the United States and with the number of U.S. Forces killed in Vietnam if that war was being fought in the 1990s instead of 1961-1972. Although no data shows the exact number of NSAID deaths each year 7,600 deaths were estimated in 1991 and 16,500 deaths were estimated in 1998. The graph presented here assumes a linear increase in the number of deaths, however the actually numbers are unknown. Once again the 16,500 NSAID deaths per year is considered conservative and does not include over the counter medications or prescriptions for other conditions other than arthritis.
Another important observation is that most people have no warning signs that these drugs are causing them internal damage before they ended up in the hospital with a serious medical condition. And as we have seen from the statistics, approximately 10% of these hospitalizations end in death.
"... 81% of the patients who were hospitalized with a serious GI complication did not have any prior GI adverse event. This finding has important clinical and health policy implications. Since most patients who have a hospitalization do not have a prior GI side effect and most patients who have a side effect are not subsequently hospitalized, a clinician cannot depend on early GI symptoms to identify patients at risk or provide a warning for subsequent serious complications." ii ...
Not only are there enormous deaths and suffering associated with NSAIDs there is also a tremendous financial cost.
"... the annual number of hospitalizations in the United States for serious gastrointestinal complications is estimated to be at least 103,000. At an estimated cost of $15,000 to $20,000 per hospitalization, the annual direct costs of such complications exceeds $2 billion." ix
Is this information of NSAID recent? Unfortunately the answer is no. Various medical journals in 1991 showed there was information on the toxicity of these types of drugs.
"These results led the investigators to suggest that in the United States the syndrome of NSAID-associated gastropathy accounts for at least 2600 deaths and 20,000 hospitalizations each year in patients with rheumatoid arthritis alone." x
"Overall death estimates are similarly disquieting. Conservative calculations, counting only excess deaths, indicate that about 7,600 deaths/year in the United States are attributable to NSAID use. The Food and Drug Administration suggests even higher figures, estimating NSAID use accounts for 10,000 to 20,000 deaths/year. These figures are comparable to Hodgkin's disease or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome and represent a serious problem." xi
So, where has the FDA been in all this?
In spite of this knowledge, the FDA did little. Over time certain NSAID medications that were especially toxic were withdrawn or banned, research slowly progressed to find less toxic NSAIDs or to find other medications that would counteract the damage being created. But there was no large-scale public alert to the potential hazards of these drugs. Instead the FDA opted to simply provide a warning label on NSAIDs.
This is the same FDA that wants more power over food and farmers?
Maybe you don't think the new agency, multiplying the power of two already corrupted agencies, would be unfair to farmers, even with Monsanto controlling all food, and with no judicial review over massive punishments ...
Let's look at what they are doing already.
Here is the warning letter the FDA sent to cherry growers just for trying to let us all know cherries could help people control pain, never mind all their anti-oxidants, their tasting good (not just artificial cherry flavor like in medicines), and their being completely safe:
CFSAN/Office of Compliance
October 17, 2005
Sample Warning Letter for Products Making Unsubstantiated Drug Claims
CERTIFIED MAIL
RETURN RECEIPT REQUESTED
[firm]
[address]
WARNING LETTER
Dear [addressee]:
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has reviewed the labeling of your [name of product] on your web site at [URL]. This review shows serious violations of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (the Act) in the labeling of this product. You can find the Act and implementing regulations through links on FDA's Internet home page at www.fda.gov.
Under the Act, articles intended for use in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment or prevention of disease in man are drugs [Section 201(g)(1)(B) of the Act]. The labeling for your product [name of product] bears the following claims:
[cite specific claims]
This list of claims is not intended to be all-inclusive, but represents the types of claims found in your product labeling.
These claims cause your product to be a drug, as defined in section 201(g)(1)(B) of the Act. Because this product is not generally recognized as safe and effective when used as labeled, it is also a new drug as defined in section 201(p) of the Act. Under section 505 of the Act, a new drug may not be legally marketed in the United States without an approved New Drug Application (NDA). FDA approves a new drug on the basis of scientific data submitted by a drug sponsor to demonstrate that the drug is safe and effective.
The above violations are not meant to be an all-inclusive list of deficiencies in your products and their labeling. It is your responsibility to ensure that products marketed by your firm comply with the Act and its implementing regulations.
Failure to promptly correct these violations may result in enforcement action without further notice. Enforcement action may include seizure of violative products, injunction against the manufacturers and distributors of violative products, and criminal sanctions against persons responsible for causing violations of the Act.
Please advise this office in writing, within 15 working days of receipt of this letter, as to the specific steps you have taken or will be taking to correct these violations, including the steps taken to assure that similar violations do not recur. Your reply should be directed to [compliance officer] at [address].
Sincerely yours,
[name]
District Director
[district] District
This tiny example of how the current FDA treats farmers doesn't really do justice to how a new merged FDA/USDA with police state power would treat farmers who don't comply. What would happen to farmers who persist in growing things with seeds they sorted with their usual seed cleaning equipment and saved for the next year, equipment the FDA has made illegal in some parts of the country this year.
Why, illegal? Because the FDA has just redefined "seed" as food, the better to eat up farmers with "strict safety standards", my dear.
New "food safety" standards applied to farmers' normal and essential seed cleaning equipment would mean a farmer would have to spend a million to million and a half dollars for a new building and equipment ... and for each type of seed. Before the FDA applied such "food safety standards," the farmer cleaned seed for nothing since he's had his equipment for ages, and he didn't leave any dead bodies around from it, either.
What would happen to him with Monsanto in charge? Ask Steve Hixon in Illinois, who's seen what they're like even when they're not given police state power.
So, tell us again what are we doing with all those bills in congress that the whole country is getting more and more upset about, bills that are linked to destruction of small farmers in the EU already, the end of raw milk dairies, the crushing of farmers markets, control over gardens, and to criminalizing storing seed?
http://www.opednews.com/...
Those bills created for a danger that isn't, apply "strict food safety" standards to all food. Monsanto managing it.
World According to Monsanto
http://www.livevideo.com/...
OOPS?
Taylor thinks we need to do something about "weak enforcement" and "a fragmented structure that impedes management."
Is that not another way to say more power and tighter control?
It that OOPS? OOPS? OOPS?
Or even OUCH?
So, maybe we need to put those 5,000 deaths into even more perspective.
5000 deaths versus deaths from medical errors:
FDA itself reports between 44,000 to 98,000 deaths from medical errors each year. Or over 8 times to up to almost 20 times more people die from medical error than die from foodborn illness.
Others put the number higher at 195,000. Or 39 times more people die from medical error than from food born illness.
And others believe it is closer to 800,000. Or 160 times more people die from medical error than die from foodborn illness.
Food born illness is clearly a a miniscule threat by comparison to other categories of deaths. Yet no one is creating bill after bill to stop those higher deaths.
Obviously, we are not only not in imminent danger from foodborn illnesses, we are barely threatened at all. If there are 300,000,000 people in the US, then isn't that only a .00167% chance of dying from foodborn illness in any year or less than a 2 thousandth of one percent chance?
Since the food born illness crisis is not a crisis, is there any reason for concern about our food?
There is real reason for concern but it is about the 365,000 deaths a year from poor diet and lack of exercise. Poor diet is about the food itself and we can begin to improve everyone's diet by connecting ourselves to local farmers so we can get real food and we can ensure that people have access to any natural supplements they may need.
And we can ask along with Jeffrey Smith: Will Obama's Food Safety Team Finally Regulate the Biggest Food Safety Hazard of Our Time?
3-Part Action Item:
Step 1: Click here to email the President NOW:
Step 2: Call the White House switchboard at 202-456-1414 and the comment center 202-456-1111.
Step 3: Click here to tell Congress "NO!" to all of the fake food "safety" bills. They provide neither real, wholesome food nor safety: