I've heard it said that GMO is the left's climate change. Sure seems that way.
A lot of that Monsanto stuff is mythology, I think. I used to be on the "Monsanto sucks" train too but it didn't really stand up once I started researching it in unbiased sources. The whole "suing farmers for cross-pollination" thing is way overblown- the most famous case of this, the farmer was actually found to be growing a crop of almost 100% Roundup Ready plants. That doesn't happen by accident.
Can We Trust Monsanto with Our Food? - Scientific American
Top Five Myths Of Genetically Modified Seeds, Busted : The Salt : NPR
Bloom says, noting that seed dealers work on commission. DuPont Pioneer, for example, offers him a non-GMO corn for $180 a bag, while Wyffels Hybrids sold the same for $115 a bag last year.
Why does Pioneer charge so much? Because it doesn’t want lower-priced conventional seed to lure customers away from GMOs. Bloom says a company dealer confessed: “We don’t want our farmers to buy it.â€
I still have questions on the GMO debate, and frankly I find it silly that people are so offended by non GMO or organic campaigns, but never once questioned the aggression of dairy campaigns or beef and pork campaigns...why? Just because you grew up with it? People need to question their own biases, not just the bias of thine enemy. It bears pointing out too that GMO should upset fundamentalist Christians just as much as homosexuality, because in Leviticus it warns against cross breeding crops and animals right next to frowning on gays. Something to ponder, because hey the Jews actually were right about pork.
Anyhoo, my last contribution to this thread is to recommend you take an unbiased look at two recent documentaries: the best one is Forks Over Knives, but Milk? is a pretty unbiased comprehensive look at all sides.
kyuuei said:Really annoying story. I get it, it's all super religious or whatever. But when religions and beliefs are writing death sentences for children it's really fucking annoying.
I think the parents made the wrong choice since leukemia is one of the more treatable cancers around. I can understand if it were pancreatic cancer or liver cancer which have low (under 20%) five year survival rates.
I do agree with the court decision. I don't think anyone should be forced to undergo an expensive medical procedure against their will. We don't like to think of healthcare as an economic transaction, but that's what it is. You have to pay someone to get a service. The government shouldn't be in the position to force a person to spend thousands or tens of thousands on a procedure they don't want. If the government does force someone to undergo a medical procedure, then the government should pay for it.
Available scientific evidence does not support claims that naturopathic medicine can cure cancer or any other disease, since virtually no studies on naturopathy as a whole have been published. The individual methods used by naturopathic medicine vary in their effectiveness. Homeopathy, for instance, has been shown in studies to be of little value. Other naturopathic methods have been shown to help in prevention and symptom management. Examples include diet for lowering the risk of severe illnesses such as heart disease and cancer and counseling, relaxation, and herbs to help reduce anxiety.
There is
not only a cure for cancer but there is also a way to prevent cancer
from taking over a healthy body. The cure is called the immune
system.
kyuuei said:And the thing is, the child doesn't even get a say. They aren't old enough, or wise enough, to make their own decisions, but I'm sure most children don't want to pick a decision that'll nearly guarantee a death either. And that kid doesn't even get a say in whether they live or die here.
If it wasn't cancer and it was a more established medical disorder like PKU intolerances or diabetes, the parents would have been labeled neglectful right off the bat.
Available scientific evidence does not support claims that naturopathic medicine can cure cancer or any other disease, since virtually no studies on naturopathy as a whole have been published.
Absolutely, but this is about cancer.
I liked your post up to this point. The reason why there isn't much evidence on alternative approaches is because the orthodox medical establishment refuses to do the studies on them. I've mentioned the controversy with Vitamin C already. It's cheap, it kills cancer in vitro and we know how it kills cancer cells. There are positive studies from multiple sources but these are not randomly controlled studies. One has to wonder why the establishment refuses to examine such a promising treatment (I'm referring to intravenous administration of Vitamin C.).
The establishment similarly screwed up in its examination of laetrile, Burzynski's antineoplastons, etc, etc. The few alternative approaches that have been looked at have been subjected to the most embarrassing incompetence around.
I think the aggressiveness of the non-GMO campaigns are what really do it for me. I honestly don't care--I like both styles honestly, I think we need that dynamic because it creates variety in the marketplace and there's definitely room for both cowboys here. But the messages are usually really, really dark. It isn't, "Hey, non-GMO is great. The seeds are cheaper for farmers, you know what you're getting. Return to your roots. *rainbow*" It's more like "Did you know you're eating pretty much evil poison? Yeah. You are. Cut that shit out. Everytime you eat a GMO carrot baby kittens get one of their eyes poked out. And they only have two.. Well, one now, asshole."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvecCrSZYtM
First milk commercial that came up for me. Positive message, outlandish, as commercials tend to go, standard old message: milk will make you strong so drink up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuUit86ILaU
Had trouble even finding a commercial, but most of the videos that showed up were pretty much this. "Lets show you how evil this shit is, and how much of an uneducated asshole you've been to think that squirrels are smarter than you are. Stop being such a moron and killing yourself and your family with your so-called food." When you fear monger, people either panic, or think you're full of it and ignore you because the message is offensive instead of uplifting. And that posh, uppity attitude that comes with the message is why people are turned off to it. No one really gives a shit if don't like milk. People REALLY care if you're for GMO products though.
On to what I came here to post about. The articles are a little old, but I just remembered them from a while back via a facebook redate (I dunno what to call those.. updates that are actually old stuff hashed up as if it's new?) posted today.
Vegan Nursing Mom's Baby Dies From Malnutrition | Parenting
Basically: The mom was fully vegan, and was vitamin deficient, and instead of taking caution of her baby's low birth weight (which is overwhelmingly a determinant of if your baby is doing well health wise and will continue to be the gold standard for if your baby is developing well or not) long before it was an issue, by the time she called for help the baby had passed away. Her vegan diet didn't provide her body the nutrients it needed because she was probably eating it wrong, and thus didn't provide any nutrient for the baby to survive either..
Vegan Mom Sarah Markham Faces Criminal Charges Over Underweight Baby
As much as I hate the huffington post, there's a hundred websites with this everywhere anyways. Basically the mother was uncooperative, supposedly gave her baby soy formula (but who knows in actuality), and used the I'm vegan card to play off her guilt as being neglectful as a mother. The media's super spinning this as a vegan vs non thing, because that's the card she's playing for her innocence, but the truth is she didn't follow doctor orders and she could have requested vegan-friendly food for her child at the hospital. Hospitals have the means to do that stuff. The case was really about whether she was neglectful of her son or not.
Vegan mom Sarah Markham regains custody of son Caleb | Daily Mail Online
The judge decided no, but losing 10% of body mass is really really bad for a kid. Saying, "fuck you doctor, you're a quack, I know what's best for my baby" without evidence that the doctor's just being an asshole is just the wrong answer. And this hippy religious stuff really irks me. That kid might not have been hurt right then or anything, but he certainly needed medical attention, and clearly the doctors were in the right to report that the child was not being treated to CPS. The mother's dad is all, 'Oh, the doctor just didn't like her challenging him.' No, clearly the kid was dehydrated and that's a critical amount of weight loss to pay attention to.. and all the doc could see was a mom that said, "yeah, I know you told me he needs medical attention, but I don't care." He was right to make the call even if the case was dismissed. Better safe than sorry.
No, the court isn't going to just make a kid disappear because the mom is a vegan, but the clear stipulation that she needed to collaborate with a nutritionist certainly shows she didn't know how to use her vegan diet appropriately with her child.
It takes a lot of education actually and effort to balance nutrients in a vegan diet for an infant. It's not an easy task. People think if you just eat enough fruits and vegetables you'll be free of all the bad things in health. Everything is balance. You take away an entire variety of food in your diet, you need to try extra hard to balance of the other weights on the scale again. The more options you take away, the more balancing acts you need to perform.
Her vegan diet didn't provide her body the nutrients it needed because she was probably eating it wrong, and thus didn't provide any nutrient for the baby to survive either..
The media's super spinning this as a vegan vs non thing, because that's the card she's playing for her innocence, but the truth is she didn't follow doctor orders and she could have requested vegan-friendly food for her child at the hospital.
No, the court isn't going to just make a kid disappear because the mom is a vegan, but the clear stipulation that she needed to collaborate with a nutritionist certainly shows she didn't know how to use her vegan diet appropriately with her child.
Those are all from my post. So, hopefully I've demonstrated I don't care if you're on a 100% kangaroo diet as long as you do it right--and if you're going to take on a lifestyle like that, you'd better know how to do it right when you put it onto a kid too because they don't know how to fix that shit and google it when they drop too much weight and can't figure out why. My aim, I hope clearly, wasn't to complain about vegan diets.. but the mentality that uneducated people get about vegan diets and all the hog wash being sold around it. Instead of looking at very, very obvious signs of infant distress, they're so convinced their way is the right way that it could end up hurting the child. It's a dangerous mentality, and it's sold in small, tiny bite sized pinterest chunks all the time.
That mom literally said, "I know you're a doctor and said my baby needs an ER.. But I just don't believe you're right and that you can make that call."Except doctors can make that call--AND they're obligated to report anything they suspect as abuse to a child, including failing to give it medical attention. That attitude is a VERY common one now-a-days, and I see a real danger in dismissing a doctor trying to resuscitate a child's fluid imbalance in favor of whatever she thought whole foods baby food was going to do that she wasn't providing before somehow. That is literally the whole idea behind farmacy. "Don't go to the doctor to get well! Go to the grocery store! The Organic one, of course."
I'll say again: The whole point of this thread is to pick on the extreme examples and ideas as well as the more mainstream ideas and hot-button-debates that natural medicine and foodie-farmacies and all that use to promote their lifestyle choices as if they're 100% science and not just a personal preference and philosophy based on some science while demonizing modern medicine and how people do things now-a-days as barbaric pretty much. So, yeah, I'm going to post extreme examples. It fits the thread well enough.
seriously kyuuei, someone who starved their baby is A RELIGIOUS NUT not a trendy vegan. Veganism is partly religion to some people, though many people do it for health reasons, and that mother is to vegans what the parents who let their children die of xyz are to Christians, do you not get that? Anyone who has a baby had nine months to inform themselves on nutrition, that's not about Pinterest, it's about someone's religion.
I can't say I know a TON of vegan people, but I know plenty of vegetarians and foodies and stuff like that, and I volunteer from time to time at the raw food co-op here in Houston that's run by a total raw food nut. But I like her personality so I go. Don't have a problem with a diet, but it is a philosophical choice, not a nutritionally superior one alone.
Why I’m No Longer Vegetarian | Urban Antonio
“Forks Over Knivesâ€: Is the Science Legit? (A Review and Critique) | Raw Food SOS
For every one that's found a great nutritional basis for veganism and vegetarianism, there are those who have found it quite useless for them.
But it isn't the diet that I take issue with at all, even if it wasn't nutritionally superior or even healthy. (McDonalds certainly isn't healthy, and I opt for it sometimes.)
It is definitely the fact that they treat this diet as a god-send like religion. It isn't just one person.
Freelee the banana girl is clearly off her rocker, and she constantly bitches about how young people are dying of cancer because they don't eat vegetable diets.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICsCoCoS62w
Even the girl I SUPER like watching, I actively follow her on youtube and I heart her tons.. But she's religious about this. It isn't a diet for her, it's a whole lifestyle. At least she isn't saying that it can cure diabetes type 1 (I got super worried when that video got released about diabetes) but this is a very real philosophy for her. That her body can restore itself with her raw foods. And sure, she prefaces it with, "Don't try this necessarily, I'm not a doctor! Just saying my experience" but that really isn't the message many people will walk away with, and especially coupling that with black widow spider bites rarely being lethal and don't have much in the way of treatment unless you have overall symptoms so most people recover on their own regardless of eating habits, you instantly have a raw food healing.
It's very religious-y, and people don't have to be extreme like those examples I posted to WANT to believe in something. The idea of 'farmacy' is a very real idea being spread and it's spreading like wildfire. And, no coincidence, money is flowing like water towards that fire. A lot of people have spent a LOT of money and been duped by the idea that veganism and whole foods is all they need to get healthy. They WANT to believe that's all they have to do to be healthy people. They spend $40 on a can of super powder drink from 17 jungles because they get 100x more enzymes (aka protein) than they would from their regular boring cheap diet.
But that isn't the truth, and that's the message I frequently hear. The more local, and whole your food is, the more healthy you will be. And that's pretty misleading. Health involves far more than just food, even if it is an important part of health.. it isn't at all the only factor or contributor to it. I've definitely been duped by it before I decided to get educated, and I figured SO many people talking about it had to be true. And then I immediately felt like an old person that ordered a tap light on TV at 3am when I got very sick on a vegan diet. And I wasted all of that money. and it's gone, and it's never coming back. Money I could have spent on things that didn't make me sick. Like traveling, and adventuring. I could have gone snowboarding 3x over in the same amount of money I spent on whole foods and juice and smoothies and shit. I didn't feel healthier.. I gained weight, in all the wrong ways, and I got very sick. It's definitely not for everyone, and it is a decision that ought to be discussed before jumping into.