Prev: Proby impersonated a human? - Case dismissed!
Next: Wholeflaffers = Dr. Frager = LIAR
From: Sir Arthur on 2 Aug 2008 08:41
JOHN wrote:
> Flawed St. John's Wort Study on ADHD Failed to Use Active Form of Herbal
> Extract
> June 2008
>
> http://www.naturalnews.com/023430.html
>
> (NaturalNews) On the heels of shocking revelations that top psychiatric
> research Dr. Joseph Biederman secretly took $1.6 million from drug companies
> while conducting psychotropic drug experiments on children, it has been
> learned that Dr. Biederman is now one of the key collaborators behind the
> latest efforts to discredit St. John's Wort. In a study published in the
> Journal of the American Medical Association and widely reported in the
> mainstream media, Dr. Biederman and fellow cohorts "concluded" that the St.
> John's Wort herb is useless in treating ADHD in children.
>
> What's astonishing about this study, as you'll learn in this article, is
> that all the children used in the study were given inactive forms of the St.
> John's Wort herb where the active ingredients had been oxidized and rendered
> useless! In other words, this clinical trial, which was widely reported in
> the mainstream media with headlines like "St. John's Wort Found Useless!"
> didn't test the herb's active ingredients at all! It sort of makes you
> wonder about the agenda of the people running the study, doesn't it?
>
> Keep in mind that one of the study's authors, Dr. Biederman, is not merely
> on the take from drug companies that sell competing pharmaceuticals, but
> that he also lied about how much money he was being paid by drug companies,
> hiding the truth about his income by underreporting $1.6 million he took
> from psychiatric drug companies. See my report on that here:
> http://www.naturalnews.com/023408.html
>
> Dr. Biederman has a clear financial interest in promoting patented
> prescription drugs for brain chemistry disorders while discrediting
> competing natural alternatives such as St. John's Wort. This blatant
> conflict of interest was not disclosed by JAMA, nor was it mentioned in the
> text of the study on ADHD and St. John's Wort. It appears Dr. Biederman
> would prefer his financial ties to Big Pharma continue to remain secret,
> even while producing questionable studies that desperately attempt to show
> that herbs don't work.
> Testing Herbs to Treat Fictitious Diseases
> Well, beyond the fact that the herb used in the trial was entirely inactive
> (meaning it was rendered useless even before the study began), there's also
> another burning issue that questions the credibility of the study: ADHD
> doesn't exist in the first place!
>
> There is no such thing as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. It's
> something that psychiatrists just made up and voted into existence in order
> to sell more drugs to children. There is no objective test for this
> "disease," nor is there any physiological evidence of any kind that it
> exists at all. Thus, to test an inactive herb on a disease that doesn't
> exist, and then declare the herb doesn't work is an outrageous example of
> extreme intellectual dishonesty. And yet it's precisely the kind of
> sleight-of-hand quackery carried out by modern psychiatry -- an industry
> that has nothing to offer society other than mind-numbing drugs, medication
> addictions and chemically-induced violence, obesity and diabetes.
>
> But why let modern psychiatry have all the fun inventing diseases? I could
> just as easily invent a disease called "Stupid Scientist Disease" (SSD) and
> then test aspirin on SSD. When I demonstrated that aspirin had no effect on
> SSD, I could submit the paper to JAMA, get it published, and have the
> national media report with blaring headlines, "Aspirin Doesn't Work to Treat
> Stupid Scientist Disease!"
>
> And if they actually print that, then we could move on to test aspirin on
> "Stupid Journalist Disease," which also appears to be an epidemic in modern
> society.
> How to discredit natural medicine and spread fear, uncertainty and doubt
> All this has the effect of making the medicine being tested look bad, which
> of course was the whole point of conducting this study on St. John's Wort in
> the first place. Modern medical research is not about pursuing science, nor
> truth, nor objective understanding about health. It is about pushing an
> agenda, and it's clear that the agenda of Dr. Biederman and colleagues is
> about diagnosing more children with more brain chemistry "diseases," then
> demanding that they all be put on mind-altering drugs, all while desperately
> trying to convince the public that herbs are useless.
>
> By the way, you can invent your own psychiatric conditions at the click of
> your mouse by using my free, highly-entertaining Disease Mongering Engine
> available here: http://www.naturalnews.com/disease-mong...
>
> I had hoped to create a similar online engine where you can randomly
> generate fictitious scientific papers filled with psychobabble nonsense, but
> it appears JAMA has already beat me to it...
>
> St. John's Wort, for the record, has been clinically proven to be even more
> effective than antidepressant drugs for treating mild to moderate
> depression. That makes it better than all the SSRI drugs ever invented, but
> you don't hear medical journals reminding anybody about that simple fact, do
> you? Instead, they go out of their way to test it for the wrong condition --
> a fictitious condition! -- as an excuse to simply say St. John's Wort
> doesn't work for something.
>
>
> A Disturbing Trend: Bastyr Naturopaths Partner with Dr. Biederman to
> Discredit Herbs
> There's another disturbing trend in all this. The St. John's Wort study was
> led by Wendy Weber, ND, a graduate of Bastyr University. Bastyr is an
> "integrative medicine" med school that teaches drug-based medicine combined
> with more natural modalities. It's one of the top three naturopathic schools
> in the U.S., and yet to learn that one of its graduates is now collaborating
> with a psychiatric drug pusher who has been paid $1.6 million by drug
> companies is more than a bit disturbing.
>
> It indicates that this Bastyr graduate either has no idea about the true
> agenda of the people she's working with or that she doesn't mind that
> agenda. Either way, she sort of ends up looking rather silly with her name
> positioned above the scandalous Dr. Joseph Biederman, a widely-hated Big
> Pharma disease monger who will hopefully soon be arrested and prosecuted as
> a common criminal for conducting medical experiments on four-year old
> children.
>
> In the world of naturopathy, by the way, there is quite a chasm between the
> more "conventional" N.D.s (like Bastyr graduates) and the holistic, natural,
> salt-of-the-Earth kind of naturopathic healers who have no sponsoring
> institution. The Bastyrs of the world are working hard to get naturopathic
> medical practice legalized in many states, but they're also disliked by the
> non-accredited naturopaths who end up being labeled criminals for practicing
> their own brand of natural medicine in those same states.
>
> Many non-accredited naturopaths insist that Bastyr is just a "green"
> replacement for organized medicine's tyranny. Without a doubt, when people
> see Bastyr graduates collaborating with top psychiatric drug pushers on a
> study that clearly seeks to discredit a valuable herb, it just fans the
> flames of dissent against Bastyr among more holistic practitioners.
>
> What's my take on the issue? I think Wendy Weber must be a complete fool to
> lend her name to such a study, because the very title of the study
> presupposes something that's entirely false to begin with: That ADHD is a
> bonafide "disease" in the first place. She even based the entire scoring of
> the participants' symptoms on the American Psychiatric Association's
> DSM-IV -- the tome of psychobabble "disorders" invented by a truly evil
> industry that seeks to label every person still breathing with some sort of
> brain chemistry disorder (and then demand that they all be "treated" with
> mind-altering drugs that just happen to enrich their corporate sponsors, the
> drug companies!).
>
> Remember, the DSM-IV is the manual that declares fear of public speaking to
> be a "disorder." In fact, all the following are "mental health disorders,"
> according to the DSM-IV manual:
>
> . Questioning authority (i.e. asking questions of medical authorities)
> . Feeling overwhelmed by too many tasks (like we all are...)
> . Being excitable (WHAT?)
> . Frequently taking risks (like every entrepreneur in the world...)
> . Inappropriately messy (like my desk...)
> . Showing excessive stubbornness (No, I'm not stubborn!)
> . Being argumentative (Oh yeah? Say that to my face...)
> . Losing things (Where did I park my car, again?)
>
> ... and this list continues, including descriptions of virtually every human
> emotion, thought or behavior. According to the DSM-IV, these are all
> diseases!
>
> How many of these familiar to you? Don't we all lose our keys from time to
> time? Don't we all have messy desks (except all you clean freaks, but don't
> get me started on your cleanliness "disorder" okay?) Don't we all feel
> overwhelmed from time to time by too many tasks?
>
> This is the great gimmick of modern psychiatry: They just keep naming
> symptoms, behaviors and thoughts until they find one that you've got! Then
> they declare you to be "sick" and needing "treatment," and that's when the
> mind-altering medications begin.
>
> Personally, I'm shocked to learn of a Bastyr graduate lending any credence
> whatsoever to the DSM-IV manual and the fictitious diseases of modern
> psychiatry. It is shameful that such a well-educated individual would spend
> her time and effort in such a futile psychobabble exercise that proves
> nothing, and I can only hope that Wendy Weber refocuses her considerable
> talents into a more productive direction in the future. (I also hope that
> she denounces the actions of Dr. Biederman for lying about the $1.6 million
> he took from Big Pharma while pushing psych drugs for children... but that's
> her choice, of course.)
>
>
> Problems with the trial
> Beyond the fatal problem of studying the effects of an herb on a fictitious
> disease in the first place, this trial suffers from all sorts of other
> scientific showstoppers. For starters, there were only 54 people used in the
> results of the trial, with 27 receiving placebo and 27 receiving St. John's
> Wort. This is a very small sample size to justify any declaration that St.
> John's Wort doesn't work, especially given the fact that it has been safely
> and effectively used by tens of millions of people around the world in just
> the last decade or so.
>
> Secondly, more than 40 percent of the children used in the study had
> previously used psychiatric medications, so their brains have already been
> damaged by psych drugs even before the study began! Psych drugs actually
> cause behavioral disorders and long-term brain damage (which is evidenced by
> the fact that so many children commit violent acts against themselves and
> others after taking psychiatric medications). So why would an honest
> researcher study the effectiveness of an herb on the brains of children that
> were already damaged by psychiatric drugs in the first place? Unless, of
> course, they wanted the trial to fail... but we'll get to that later.
>
> Thirdly, the study contains numerous protocol mistakes that distort the
> final results. For example, six children who displayed a large response to
> placebo were supposed to have been dropped from the study to isolate the
> herb's effects from placebo effects, but these kids were accidentally
> randomized and thrown into the mix anyway, thereby distorting the final
> results in favor of placebo responders, which makes the herb responders look
> weaker by comparison. This troubling error in the study is never pointed
> out, of course, in the mainstream media (whose journalists don't understand
> science anyway, and can't interpret statistics with any degree of
> mathematical competence).
>
> A fourth problem in the study is that young males are far more susceptible
> to the kinds of behaviors that are labeled as "ADHD," compared to young
> females, and yet in this study, the placebo group consisted of only about
> 50% males while the herb treatment group consisted of nearly 75% males. In
> other words, the placebo group was predisposed to a positive outcome simply
> due to its composition of females vs. males, while the herb treatment group
> was predisposed to a less-than-favorable response.
>
> And finally, it turns out that the children used in this trial may not have
> been receiving any active St. John's Wort at all! As stated directly in the
> JAMA publication for this study:
>
> The product used in this trial was tested for hypericin and hyperforin
> content at the end of the trial and contained only 0.13% hypericin and 0.14%
> hyperforin.
>
> Stop the presses! Are you telling me that the St. John's Wort used in this
> trial contained barely one-tenth of one percent of the active chemical
> constituents in the herb? Quality St. John's Wort supplements typically
> contain up to five percent hyperforin, or thirty-five times the amount of
> active ingredient used in this trial! In other words, the St. John's Wort
> being tested in this trial was a sub-clinical dose, barely containing any
> usable St. John's Wort at all!
>
> It's kind of like testing a dose of 2mg of aspirin to see if it has any
> pain-relieving effect. Of course it doesn't, the dosage is too small!
>
> But it gets even better. As the study text published in JAMA also admits:
>
> Hyperforin is a very unstable constituent that quickly oxidizes and then
> becomes inactive, which is likely what happened to the product used in this
> clinical trial.
>
> What the heck? Did the study authors just admit that the St. John's Wort
> they used in the trial was INACTIVE because it all oxidized? Yes, that's
> exactly what they said!
>
> Absolutely amazing, isn't it? This study, which was blasted across
> newspapers, websites and cable news problems, was all based on a study of
> INACTIVE St. John's Wort given at sub-clinical doses to a group of
> placebo-biased children diagnosed with a fictitious disease!
>
>
> A Classic Case of Junk Science
> This, friends, is the state of junk science today in our modern medical
> industry. It is disgusting to see such papers making headline news, knowing
> that the whole point of this study was clearly to fabricate
> scientific-sounding lies about the uselessness of a very useful herb, and
> thereby misinform consumers and drive more people to take drugs for ADHD.
> I'm not at all surprised, of course, to see that JAMA gladly published it.
>
> Wendy Weber, you should be ashamed of your role in this junk science fiasco,
> and your authorship of this obviously politically-motivated study brings
> great dishonor to the university from which you graduated. If you're going
> to push drugs and discredit herbs by using contorted, intellectually
> dishonest trials that are engineered to fail in the first place, then you
> might as well just slap the letters M.D. after your name and stop using N.D.
> to describe your credentials. Don't parade around as a naturopath if you're
> pulling stunts like this that result in consumers being gravely misled about
> the efficacy of herbs for supporting healthy brain function.
>
> For a Bastyr graduate to even take part in a study that lends any credence
> whatsoever to the DSM-IV -- and all its loopy, made-up descriptions of
> disorders -- really makes me wonder what's happening in the classrooms over
> there these days. I've interviewed both Joseph Pizzorno and Michael T.
> Murray on several occasions, and I've found them to be extremely
> well-informed, high-integrity individuals who were highly instrumental in
> the founding and the success of Bastyr University. I couldn't imagine
> Michael T. Murray ever being involved in such a poorly-designed study that
> seems to have set out -- from the very beginning -- to obfuscate the
> efficacy of a valuable herb that's been used for literally thousands of
> years to support healthy brain function.
>
>
> How modern medical researchers use sleight of hand to commit fraud
> This is a favorite tactic of modern medical researchers who wish to
> discredit herbs, vitamins or supplements: They simply use sub-clinical doses
> or poorly-assimilated nutrients that never make it to the bloodstream, then
> they declare the herb (or vitamin, or nutrient, or whatever) to be useless!
>
> This is exactly what happened in the recent trials that tested Vitamin D on
> prostate cancer. The headlines touted the sensationalized conclusion that
> "Vitamin D Has No Effect on Prostate Cancer!" But what was the truth behind
> the study?
>
> As it turns out, virtually none of the men used in the study showed any
> appreciable level of Vitamin D in their blood. That's because most of the
> men studied in the trial didn't take their supplements! It's no surprise
> that if you don't actually take your vitamin D supplements, they probably
> won't prevent prostate cancer for you, right? Yet this astonishing fact is
> NEVER mentioned in the mainstream press reporting on this study. It's just
> one fact of many that are routinely ignored by a national media more
> interested in trashing natural medicine than actually reporting anything
> based on facts.
>
> We saw this same tactic with one study on women's bone health and calcium
> intake, by the way. The headline blared, "Calcium Found Useless in
> Preventing Osteoporosis!" but what the study actually proved -- to anyone
> who bothered to read it -- was that women who don't take calcium supplements
> don't experience any benefits from them.
>
> No kidding? Gee. And people who buy books but don't read them somehow don't
> learn anything from them, either.
>
> Supplements don't work if they're still sitting on your shelf. You actually
> do have to consume them to experience their benefits. This should be obvious
> to health reporters working in the mainstream media, but sadly, they still
> don't grasp this rather obvious fact.
>
> Neither did JAMA, it appears, since they went ahead and published this study
> about ADHD and St. John's Wort even when it turns out that none of the
> children likely consumed any active St. John's Wort ingredients after all.
>
> By the way, don't you find it curious that the study authors only tested the
> potency of the St. John's Wort supplements AFTER the study was completed,
> rather than before? It's almost as if they didn't want to know the potency
> before they started the trials.
>
> Bad science conducted under the guise of good science is worse than bad
> science by itself, because it carries disinformation clothed in the
> credibility of good science and thereby acts as a virus of the mind that
> infects consumers. That mental virus is driven even deeper by the illusion
> of authority, thereby making it ever more difficult for consumers to later
> purge those lies from their belief systems so that they might awaken to the
> truth about healing with natural medicine.
>
> It is in this way that JAMA, and Wendy Weber, and the mainstream media all
> perform a great disservice to the American people and further deepen the
> epidemics of malnutrition, disease and over-medication that threaten the
> very future of the western world.
>
>
> Sample headlines from the mainstream media
> By the way, here's a sampling of the headlines from mainstream media
> sources. As you read these, realize that nobody bothered to actually read
> the study! (Or if they did, they didn't understand it...)
>
> St. John's wort fails to help kids with ADHD
> The Associated Press
>
> St. John's Wort Doesn't Work for ADHD
> Washington Post
>
> St. John's Wort No Help in ADHD
> ABC News
>
> St. John's wort no better than placebo for ADHD, Bastyr study finds
> Seattle Times
>
> St. John's Wort No Help for ADHD
> TIME Magazine
>
> Herb does not ease ADHD
> ZDNet
>
> St. John's wort doesn't help ADHD, study finds
> Reuters
>
> About the author: Mike Adams is a holistic nutritionist with a passion for
> sharing empowering information to help improve personal and planetary health
> He has authored and published thousands of articles, interviews, consumers
> guides, and books on topics like health and the environment, impacting the
> lives of millions of readers around the world who are experiencing
> phenomenal health benefits from reading his articles. Adams is an
> independent journalist with strong ethics who does not get paid to write
> articles about any product or company. In 2007, Adams launched EcoLEDs, a
> manufacturer of mercury-free, energy-efficient LED lighting products that
> save electricity and help prevent global warming. He's also the CEO of a
> highly successful email newsletter software company that develops software
> used to send permission email campaigns to subscribers. Adams volunteers his
> time to serve as the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a
> 501(c)3 non-profit organization, and practices nature photography, Capoeira,
> Pilates and organic gardening. Known on the 'net as 'the Health Ranger,'
> Adams shares his ethics, mission statements and personal health statistics
> at www.HealthRanger.org

Thank you John! This will quiet even the most out-of-control people
who want to deny the facts about St. Johns! A new day is dawning for
those who "suffer" from these dreaded spin-dromes, and everyone will
benefit, except certain drug companies! Good work!
 | 
Pages: 1
Prev: Proby impersonated a human? - Case dismissed!
Next: Wholeflaffers = Dr. Frager = LIAR