By Dr. Edward F. Group

Magnetic resonance imaging is a common preventative and diagnostic method used in medicine, and at times this technology can be invaluable. Of course there are some health questions associated with the practice, such as does the practice involve powerful magnetic fields? But for those who require them in case of an emergency, they can be extremely helpful. Besides the minute threat of magnetic frequencies, new concerns over the drugs used to produce clearer images have been shown to leave toxic residue in the brain. These findings have shown the importance of more stringent health monitoring prior to MRI application.

The Real Danger Behind MRIs

MRIs are typically safer than a CT scan, as they emit little to no radiation during the procedure. The real concern surrounding MRIs, in fact, has nothing to do with the technology at all. Patients are often given injectable drugs that improve the visibility of certain areas in the brain, which can be very useful for discovering health issues that could possibly be missed. The issue is that these drugs may accumulate gadolinium–a toxic metal–in brain tissue.

The medications, known as contrasting agents, sharpens the resulting images; however, it may also be contributing to deleterious effects, many of which have yet to surface in any research. Toxic metals that build up in brain tissue are commonly associated with age-related brain declines, such as those attributed to dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.  Some research even shows that these drugs could be linked to kidney problems, prompting FDA to issue a “black box” warning on the drugs.

What You Should Know about MRIs

There are currently nine gadolinium-based agents in the United States, and two of the most concerning are made by GE Healthcare and Bayer HealthCare. Omniscan is perhaps the most commonly-used contrast agents used during MRIs, as is Magnevist, Gadavist, and Dotarem. If you take into consideration the compounds we are exposed to almost every day that are already contributing to brain degeneration (i.e., aluminum), you can see why you must be constantly aware of what is being offered to you by medical professionals. Ask questions and research any drugs that you are being given, especially if you are having an MRI, and work with your doctor to find safer methods for obtaining your health goals.

http://www.thesleuthjournal.com/real-danger-behind-mris/

By Michael Bastach

A new study found adjustments made to global surface temperature readings by scientists in recent years “are totally inconsistent with published and credible U.S. and other temperature data.”

“Thus, it is impossible to conclude from the three published [global average surface temperature (GAST)] data sets that recent years have been the warmest ever – despite current claims of record setting warming,” according to a study published June 27 by two scientists and a veteran statistician.

The peer-reviewed study tried to validate current surface temperature datasets managed by NASA, NOAA and the UK’s Met Office, all of which make adjustments to raw thermometer readings. Skeptics of man-made global warming have criticized the adjustments.

Climate scientists often apply adjustments to surface temperature thermometers to account for “biases” in the data. The new study doesn’t question the adjustments themselves but notes nearly all of them increase the warming trend.

Basically, “cyclical pattern in the earlier reported data has very nearly been ‘adjusted’ out” of temperature readings taken from weather stations, buoys, ships and other sources.

In fact, almost all the surface temperature warming adjustments cool past temperatures and warm more current records, increasing the warming trend, according to the study’s authors.

“Nearly all of the warming they are now showing are in the adjustments,” Meteorologist Joe D’Aleo, a study co-author, told The Daily Caller News Foundation in an interview. “Each dataset pushed down the 1940s warming and pushed up the current warming.”

“You would think that when you make adjustments you’d sometimes get warming and sometimes get cooling. That’s almost never happened,” said D’Aleo, who co-authored the study with statistician James Wallace and Cato Institute climate scientist Craig Idso.

Their study found measurements “nearly always exhibited a steeper warming linear trend over its entire history,” which was “nearly always accomplished by systematically removing the previously existing cyclical temperature pattern.”

“The conclusive findings of this research are that the three [global average surface temperature] data sets are not a valid representation of reality,” the study found. “In fact, the magnitude of their historical data adjustments, that removed their cyclical temperature patterns, are totally inconsistent with published and credible U.S. and other temperature data.”

Based on these results, the study’s authors claim the science underpinning the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) authority to regulate greenhouse gases “is invalidated.”

The new study will be included in petitions by conservative groups to the EPA to reconsider the 2009 endangerment finding, which gave the agency its legal authority to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

Learn more: https://needtoknow.news/2017/07/hot-seat-nasa-noaa-altered-data-temperatures-support-theory-global-warming/

By Sarah Knapton

Chemotherapy could allow cancer to spread, and trigger more aggressive tumours, a new study suggests.

Researchers in the US studied the impact of drugs on patients with breast cancer and found medication increases the chance of cancer cells migrating to other parts of the body, where they are almost always lethal.

Around 55,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer in Britain every year and 11,000 will die from their illness. Many are given chemotherapy before surgery, but the new research suggests that, although it shrinks tumours in the short term, it could trigger the spread of cancer cells around the body.

It is thought the toxic medication switches on a repair mechanism in the body which ultimately allows tumours to grow back stronger. It also increases the number of ‘doorways’ on blood vessels which allow cancer to spread throughout the body.

By John O’Sullivan

British Colombia: After six years, the libel lawsuit filed by Michael Mann, the climate scientist who created the ‘hockey stick’ climate model and graph, is finally coming to an end. The lawsuit was against Tim Ball, a retired professor at the University of Winnipeg, for saying that the data used by Mann was fraudulent and that he should be in the state pen instead of Penn State. Mann claimed that this was defamation of character. The court, however, asked Mann to prove that his data was not fraudulent and asked for it to be made available for inspection. When Mann refused, he was in contempt of a court order, and that likely will lead to the collapse of his case against Professor Ball. Dr. Ball is expected to instruct his attorneys to ask for punitive court action, including a ruling that Mann did act with criminal intent when using public funds to commit climate-data fraud. [Professor Ball’s debunking of Global Warming soon will be broadcast on the Internet along with thirteen other experts who participated in a conference, sponsored by Freedom Force International, called Global Warming, An Inconvenient Lie. To be advised of the date and time of this free broadcast, click here.]   –GEG

Learn more: https://needtoknow.news/2017/07/michael-mann-creator-hockey-stick-climate-graph-held-contempt-court-withholding-scientific-evidence/

One year after ignorantly doubling down on the drug war, the UN is now calling to end prohibition. The drug war is crumbling.

By Justin Gardner

A little-noticed public statement issued by the United Nations last week contains a dramatic shift in thinking on the issue of “illicit” substance use. After recommitting to the failed idea of prohibition just last year, the UN is now calling for the worldwide decriminalization of drug use and possession.

The statement, put out by the World Health Organization (WHO) as the U.S. is in the midst of a nonsensical debate over health care, calls for “ending discrimination in health care settings.” The WHO calls on states to end discrimination against “marginalized and stigmatized populations” in a variety of ways, and includes a blunt and rather shocking statement on the drug war.

“We, the signatory United Nations entities, call upon all stakeholders to join us in committing to taking targeted, coordinated, time-bound, multisectoral actions in the following areas. Supporting States to put in place guarantees against discrimination in law, policies, and regulations by… Reviewing and repealing punitive laws that have been proven to have negative health outcomes and that counter established public health evidence. These include laws that criminalize or otherwise prohibit…drug use or possession of drugs for personal use.”

This is an admission that the problem of drug abuse is a public health issue, not a criminal justice issue. Locking people in cages for the victimless behavior of ingesting substances arbitrarily deemed illegal by the State does nothing to reduce drug use or supply, as evidenced by the utter failure of the War on Drugs.

Prohibition has also denied people the miraculous healing powers of cannabis. For decades medical research of cannabis was stifled by a drug war borne of racism and political suppression. But research has increased exponentially in recent years as governments around the world take steps to decriminalize this medicinal plant, notably among states in the U.S.

With this awakening have come amazing stories of healing through cannabis, such as stopping seizures in children with debilitating epilepsy, treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in veterans where all other treatments have failed, and healing a host of other illnesses without the dangerous side-effects of pharmaceutical drugs.

Learn more: http://thefreethoughtproject.com/un-calling-worldwide-decriminalization-drug/?

By Miles Elliott

Roads and transportation are a major subject of sustainable development and smart cities.

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has published a transport strategy that outlines his vision of the future of transportation in Britain’s capital. The strategy conforms to his pledge to be London’s “greenest mayor” as it will reduce motor vehicle traffic while simultaneously encouraging walking and cycling. As a way to discourage motor vehicle journeys, Khan plans to charge drivers a distance-based fee for using city roads. While the scheme is likely to represent an important new revenue stream for the city (or the firm that wins the contract), the plan also seems to resemble parts of the global elite’s technocratic agenda.

First of all, London’s proposal is not the only one of its kind. Various forms of road charging are in use in countries around the world, with many more proposed; the type that charges motorists based on the distance they drive is often called  a ‘vehicle miles traveled tax’ (VMT tax). This type of scheme has so far been implemented in Germany, Austria, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and Switzerland, as well as in several locations around the United States, such as Oregon with its OReGO program. Other similar schemes are being tested in countless locations internationally. Numerous think tanks and governments – including the UN and EU – have been urging the adoption of VMT taxes for some time, in what is clearly a coordinated international push.

An obvious problem with this idea is that charging for road use according to distance driven will discriminate against lower-income people and small business, but favour wealthier individuals and larger corporations. When Khan says, “we have to make not using your car the affordable, safest and most convenient option”,  he is clearly saying that using a car would become less affordable under the scheme. This broadly fits with the UN’s Agenda 21 plan, which aims to reduce the use of motor vehicles by the general public – as we shall see.

What Khan does not say is that the new policy would be used to raise revenue for London at drivers’ expense, which is not likely to be popular. As the BBC stated, “politicians don’t usually like talking about road charging.” Nevertheless, the revenue generated by the scheme is likely to be a powerful factor motivating Mayor Khan to attempt to introduce it. According to a study by the Policy Exchange, tax revenues from fuel duty could fall by as much as £170 billion by 2030 due to the ‘decarbonisation’ of transportation, largely as a result of the growing number of electric vehicles in use. With such a huge amount of money at stake, politicians are likely to try to make up for it in some way, either through the introduction of VMT taxes, new toll roads or a combination of the two.

Drivers already have an incentive to drive electric or low-emissions hybrid vehicles as these are exempt from road tax in the UK; within London, drivers have an even greater incentive to go electric, as these vehicles are also exempt from central London’s congestion charge. Fuel duty makes a very sizeable contribution to Britain’s treasury, and it has been reported in the past that British fuel tax is higher than that of any other country in Europe.

A further problematic aspect of distance-based road charging is that it will contribute to the ongoing erosion of our privacy. Many of the schemes rely on GPS trackers to calculate distance, and therefore track not only the distance driven but also the location of the vehicle. When combined with all the other forms of surveillance and tracking we are subjected to, will there be any privacy left?

Smart Cities & the Internet of Things

The issues surrounding Mayor Khan’s proposal go much deeper than its immediate economic effects or its effect on privacy, however. His transport strategy is almost certainly just one piece of a larger plan – to transform London into a smart city through the use of technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT).

The internet is expanding from your desktop, tablet and phone into devices all around us, such as our dishwashers, fridges, televisions and whatever other devices and appliances you can imagine. Thanks to Bilderberger and former CIA Director David Petraeus, we already know that spy agencies plan to capitalize on the flood of data these devices will make available. According to Wired magazine, Petraeus told a conference for In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital arm, that IoT technologies would be “transformational…. particularly to their effect on clandestine tradecraft.” He went on to say:

“Items of interest will be located, identified, monitored, and remotely controlled through technologies such as radio-frequency identification, sensor networks, tiny embedded servers, and energy harvesters – all connected to the next-generation internet using abundant, low-cost, and high-power computing.”

Now take that idea and apply it to an entire city the size of London. The central idea of a smart city (similar to the ‘smart grid’ for electrical power) is to use information and communications technologies – especially IoT – to enable the city to collect, communicate and process data from all of its assets, with a view to better managing the city. This covers roads and transportation systems, buildings and land, hospitals and health services, water and energy infrastructure, waste management systems, law enforcement, and so on. Smart cities provide city managers an unprecedented amount of data about what is happening at every node of the grid, and therefore much greater control over the city.

zzzhttp://21stcenturywire.com/2017/06/30/technocracy-inc-now-charging-for-roads-by-the-mile/

By Matt Agorist

New Jersey — A scathing investigative report from NJ.com has revealed some startling and damning facts about the exponential increase in fentanyl overdoses and the rate at which family practitioners prescribed it. In the center of the equation are pharmaceutical companies who’ve been exposed for paying doctors millions to push their deadly drug.

Prior to 2013, most Americans, unless they knew someone dying of cancer or who lived in immense pain, never heard of fentanyl. Now, this drug, which is magnitudes more powerful than heroin and far deadlier, has become a household name — for all the wrong reasons.

Fentanyl was created to be used as part of anesthesia to help prevent pain after surgery or other medical procedures. It was also used to treat pain in the terminally ill as well as those with severe and chronic debilitating pain. However, in 2013, the unscrupulous big wigs in the pharmaceutical industry saw it as a means of making their already opioid-saturated market that much more lucrative — and addictive.

Learn more: http://www.naturalblaze.com/2017/07/big-pharma-caught-bribing-family-doctors-prescribe-drug-50x-stronger-heroin.html?

By Heather Callaghan, Editor

Good news! Despite the cover-up antics of Big Agri – glyphosate – the main ingredient in herbicides such as Roundup – will be officially listed as a substance known to cause cancer in the state of California.

Therefore, after a long-time coming, the toxic product will finally receive the warning it deserves. This is significant news as glyphosate is the world’s most ubiquitous herbicide and since it carries no warning to human health, people mistakenly believe it is safe, simply because it is sold on the market.

From California’s OEHHA posted in late June, 2017:

On March 28, 2017, the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) posted a Notice on its website that glyphosate (CAS No. 1071-83-6) would be added to the list of chemicals known to the state to cause cancer for purposes of Proposition 65 with a delayed effective date due to the pending case Monsanto v OEHHA.

Monsanto’s challenge was unsuccessful in the trial court.  Although the case has been appealed, no stay of the listing has been granted. Therefore, glyphosate is being added to the Proposition 65 list on July 7, 2017.

In summary, glyphosate is listed under Proposition 65 effective July 7, 2017 as known to the state to cause cancer.

http://www.naturalblaze.com/2017/07/weedkiller-roundup-cancer-warning.html?

Big Pharma Losing Grip as Study Shows

Nearly 100% Cannabis Users Give Up Rx Pain Meds

By Rachel Blevins

A landmark study helps explain why Big Pharma is so afraid of the medical benefits of cannabis. The pharmaceutical and alcohol industries, both powerful influences in Washington, have long lobbied against cannabis legalization in order to protect their profits.

The recent study is lending credibility to the idea that medical cannabis can be used as a natural alternative to prescription pain medications, with nearly 100 percent of respondents saying they believe cannabis is helping them decrease their use of prescription opioids to treat the pain.

The study, which was conducted by HelloMD, one of the largest medical cannabis communities in the nation, and University of California Berkley, surveyed nearly 3,000 patients who use both opioid and non-opioid based pain medication.

The results of the study concluded that 97 percent of respondents “strongly agreed/agreed” that they could decrease use of their opioid medications when using cannabis. While 92 percent of respondents said that they “strongly agreed/agreed” that they prefer cannabis to treat their medical condition.

The study also found that 81 percent of respondents said they “strongly agreed/ agreed” that using cannabis alone was more effective than taking cannabis with opioids.

Learn more: http://www.naturalblaze.com/2017/07/big-pharma-losing-grip-study-shows-nearly-100-cannabis-users-give-rx-pain-meds.html?