Case Adams: Medicinal Herbs Show Ability to Replace Diabetes Medication without Side Effects

Researchers from University of Mississippi's School of Pharmacy have conducted an extensive analysis of medicinal plants and proved once again that herbs can replace medications - now diabetes medications. They found that a number of herbs safely modulate cellular PPAR receptors – which means they help regulate glucose, insulin and fat metabolism.

The researchers screened extracts from a total of 263 species of herbs from 94 plant families. They found that eight of the extracts activated the PPARα (Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor – alpha) and 22 of the plant extracts activated the PPARγ (Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor – gamma).

Of these, five plant extracts activated both receptors. They were Daphine (Daphne gnidium), Star Anise (Illicium anisatum), Red Cedar (Juniperus virginiana), Haritaki (Terminalia chebula), and Thymelaea (Thymelaea hirsuta).

Among these, the Haritaki and Thymelaea were found to significantly stimulate both the PPARα and PPARγ receptor proteins, while inhibiting the process of adipogenesis – the process of fat cell expansion that results in a higher risk of obesity.

Haritaki and Thymelaea inhibited the process of fat cell expansion, while the Red Cedar and the Daphine actually reduced adipose (fat) cells - making them potential remedies for obesity reduction.

The big news is the ability of these herbs to activate the PPARα and PPARγ receptors - giving them the ability to help diabetics process insulin better. How so?

What are PPARα and PPARγ receptors? 

The PPARα receptor facilitates insulin reception – the ability of the cell to attach to insulin, and thus utilize glucose. If the cell does not receive insulin (bind onto receptors) properly, the cell cannot adequately absorb glucose – leaving glucose free in the bloodstream. Free glucose has been tied to a variety of ill effects, including artery damage, obesity and heart disease.

Meanwhile, the PPARγ protein decreases the risk of the cell becoming resistant to insulin.

All this means that increasing the availability of the PPARγ and PPARα proteins allows cells to better attach insulin and receive glucose more appropriately.

The trick however, is that stimulating these two proteins pharmaceutically also typically comes with stimulating the proliferation – expansion – of fat cells, among other ill effects, such as heart disease.

Viable Alternatives to Chemical Diabetes Control - without the risk

This is in fact one of the issues for the popular diabetes drug Rosiglitazone, along with other side effects. The drug – branded as Avandia by GlaxoSmithKline – has been the subject of negative panel reports - including one from the European Medicines Agency, which advised the drug be removed from the market. Research has estimated the drug causes up to 500 heart attacks and 300 heart failures a month in the U.S.

Meanwhile, medicinal plants such as Haritake have no known negative side effects to their ability to decrease insulin sensitivity and glucose regulation. Haritake is part of the famous Ayurvedia trifecta known as Triphala – which has been used in Ayurveda as a digestive aid and blood sugar regulation agent.

Research from China's Sichuan University confirmed this last year when it found Terminalia chebula fruits able to reduce and balance blood sugar levels.
And new research from Italy has found the Haritake's polyphenol content make it anticarcinogenic to boot.


REFERENCES:
Yang MH, Avula B, Smillie T, Khan IA, Khan SI. Screening of Medicinal Plants for PPARα and PPARγ Activation and Evaluation of Their Effects on Glucose Uptake and 3T3-L1 Adipogenesis. Planta Med. 2013 Jul 22.

Pellati F, Bruni R, Righi D, Grandini A, Tognolini M, Pio Prencipe F, Poli F, Benvenuti S, Del Rio D, Rossi D. Metabolite profiling of polyphenols in a Terminalia chebula Retzius ayurvedic decoction and evaluation of its chemopreventive activity. J Ethnopharmacol. 2013 May 20;147(2):277-85.

Silawat N, Gupta VB. Chebulic acid attenuates ischemia reperfusion induced biochemical alteration in diabetic rats. Pharm Biol. 2013 Jan;51(1):23-9.

Huang YN, Zhao DD, Gao B, Zhong K, Zhu RX, Zhang Y, Xie WJ, Jia LR, Gao H. Anti-Hyperglycemic Effect of Chebulagic Acid from the Fruits of Terminalia chebula Retz. Int J Mol Sci. 2012;13(5):6320-33.

Hye Yang M, Vasquez Y, Ali Z, Khan IA, Khan SI. Constituents from Terminalia species increase PPARα and PPARγ levels and stimulate glucose uptake without enhancing adipocyte differentiation. J Ethnopharmacol. 2013 Jul 10.

Harris G. Research Ties Diabetes Drug to Heart Woes. NY Times, 2010 Feb 19.

Case Adams is a California Naturopath and holds a Ph.D. in Natural Health Sciences. His focus is upon science-based natural health solutions. He is the author of 25 books on natural health and numerous print and internet articles. A listing and description of many of his books can be found on Realnatural.org. A new video series on low back pain can be found on Healthy-back.net. Case appreciates feedback and questions at case@caseadams.com.

Be The Change ...

"Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike." -- J.K. Rowling 

One day, at one of the busiest intersections in Los Angeles, California stood a person, destitute and holding a sign which read simply, "Can you spare a moment? Blessings appreciated." Most cars passed by without notice, as seems to have become the analogy in how many of us live our lives. To those passing by, this was just another homeless person looking for a handout. They had no way of knowing that this "outcast" was actually a highly successful Hollywood filmmaker seeking a new perspective on life and living.


Read this filmmaker's touching story here ...http://hollywoodjournal.com/personal-journeys/encounters-at-the-exit-ramp/20130709/


Be The Change ...
Make it a point to be aware of those around you, and reach out to help in a time of need. Make it a practice to see yourself in the eyes of others you meet.

Daily Words of the Buddha for August 04, 2013

Pāṇaṃ na hane na ca ghātayeyya,

na cānujaññā hanataṃ paresaṃ,

sabbesu bhūtesu nidhāya daṇḍaṃ.

Ye thāvarā ye ca tasā santi loke.

One should not kill a living being,

nor cause it to be killed,

nor should one incite another to kill.

Do not injure any being, either strong or weak, in the world.

Sutta Nipāta 2.396

The Discourse Collection: Selected Texts from the Sutta Nipāta, translated by John D. Ireland

Daily Words of the Buddha for August 03, 2013

Idha socati pecca socati;

pāpakārī ubhayattha socati.

So socati so vihaññati,

disvā kammakiliṭṭhamattano.

The evil-doer grieves here and hereafter;

one grieves in both the worlds.

One laments and is afflicted,

recollecting one's own impure deeds.

Dhammapada 1.15

The Dhammapada: The Buddha's Path of Wisdom, 
translated from the Pali by Acharya Buddharakkhita

ORME - Orbitally Rearranged Monoatomic Elements IS WHITE POWDERED GOLD

One of my favorite topics of discussion: WHITE POWDERED GOLD. This is a substance I make sure to mention to each and every serious student that comes to us for training: ORME and Tachyonized water/foods spark awake your Pineal Gland.

Here's the primary video that I first viewed in 2007 that convinced me to try Orbitally Rearranged Monoatomic Elements (ORME) versus Ormus (there is a big difference in effect vs. price, people!) ... I will also upload other videos that convinced me that ORME was THE substance to ingest to reawaken my Clairsentient abilities. The results? My Dreams manifested and I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be in this Timeline, positioned to fulfill my role in the Divine Plan ... and now, you are each here with me at The Halau today. 

Hands down, taking ORME daily is the single act of Sovereignty that you can do for your Self now.


Ask any of our senior students about ORME ... If they've physically been to The Halau, they've all experienced ORME because we offer doses of it to you while you're here. ORME is undiluted White Powdered Gold; Ormus is a liquid colloidal. There is a difference in effect and in price. Frankly, I didn't get the metaphysical bump from any of the Ormus solutions that I received from taking straight ORME (and it doesn't matter which lab you obtain it from, either). You feel ORME working and it feels great when you can finally experience clairsentient results in the body. 


Here's another video I viewed back in 2007 (remastered by another videographer) featuring Jim Marrs discussing ORME for the first time at a Truth Conference ... I viewed this video several (25!) times alongside the above video before I was convinced to try ORME. 

It really has been about the Gold all along ... but not gold for jewelry: Gold for DNA. That really ups the ante and puts a different spin on all the news you've been listening to thus far ... that is, if you've been keeping your eye on the PTW's shenanigans.


Check out these links as well:

All About Monoatomic High Spin Elements

Farmer David Hudson rediscovered ORME exists in Nature

Recipe: Cream Puffs

Cream Puffs are a delicious and beautiful dessert that are always a family favorite!  They also make a wonderful treat to serve to friends with tea and coffee, though you might want to consider doubling this recipe so you have one for yourself afterward.  Enjoy!

Ingredients

stick of butter

• 1 cup water
• 1 cup flour
• 4 eggs
• 2 small boxes instant vanilla pudding (3.4 oz each)
• 1⅓ cup cold whole milk
• 8 oz sour cream
• powdered sugar

Instructions

Cream Puffs:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees

1. Melt stick of butter and water to a rolling boil
2. Stir in flour and stir vigorously over low heat until mixture leaves the pan (comes off the sides) and is in a ball (about 1 minute)
3. Remove from heat and cool for a couple of minutes
4. Beat in eggs (one at a time) with a mixer
5. Beat mixture until smooth and velveety
6. Drop by spoonfuls (walnut sized) onto ungreased cookie sheet
7. Bake until DRY, 20-25 minutes (maybe longer)
8. Allow to cool

Filling:

Mix instant vanilla pudding with whole milk until the pudding is dissolved

1. Add sour cream until thick
2. Put mixture in the refrigerator (at least an hour)
3. Slice the cream puffs in half and fill with the chilled pudding mixture. Alternatively, you can use a pastry cone with a nozzle tip for a neater fill.
4. Sprinkle with powdered sugar
5. Enjoy

Notes:

You can be creative with the cream filling to offer a variety of tastes to your guests.

1.  Use Nutella, instead of pudding;

2.  Try Pistachio, Lemon, Coconut, Chocolate, Banana or Mango flavors;

3.  Try using sweet Vanilla-flavored marscapone cheese filling.

  

You can also jazz up the dusting sugar to elevate the taste experience of your cream puff:

1.  Mix freshly ground cinnamon into the dusting sugar before using;

2.  Add toasted coconut as an alternate topping;

3.  Add a vanilla bean to your powdered sugar to give it a vanilla flavor.

Mom's Chicken Adobo

My mother, Teodora "Dory" Generao, is one of the best Filipino cooks around, and I'm not just saying that because she's my Mom.  You can ask ANYONE who has known our family, from Newport ... to Pearl Harbor .... to Seattle .... to Vallejo ... and everyone on both sides of our family in the Philippines.  When Mom says she's cooking, folks come from miles to attend her gatherings.  So, I decided that I'll share some of Mom's recipes from time to time so you folks can dine with us at our table, too.

My grandparents would love to see that family tradition continue here in America:  the sharing of our foods with friends across a table overlighted with great conversation and laughter.  Good times all around, eh?

Adobo is a traditional dish that developed as a result of the lack of ability to refrigerate.  It is a versatile dish and can also be made with yard-long green beans or beef cubes (just substitute lemon juice for the vinegar when using the green beans and/or beef).  If you combine everything together in the morning, your adobo will be perfect when you arrive home to cook dinner.  You don't need to refrigerate your dish, either while its marinating, or after it is cooked, because of the vinegar and garlic, which makes this dish perfect to take along to a picnic potluck.  Usually, you can use either pork cubed, chicken or a combination of both for your adobo, and it's a matter of taste.  If you still eat meat, a combination of chicken and pork (using country-style ribs) is quite tasty (and was my favorite way).  However, chicken adobo is really one of those tastes that evokes my memories of home in Mom's kitchen, hands down ... which is why this was the first dish I mastered when I first left home to attend UC Berkeley.  Just ask my compare' Jet Lacebal ... my adobo is how we overcame homesickness for our Moms' cooking during our first years at Cal.


Ingredients - Combined in a dutch oven pot:

2 lbs. chicken, cut into 2-inch pieces (Vegan substitute:  Seitan, cubed)
1/2 TBsp. whole black peppercorns
8 large cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 c. Soy Sauce
1/2 c. White Vinegar
1 c. water
2 Bay leaves
1 TBsp. brown sugar
1 tsp. Paprika (optional, from mother Maria Reyes' recipe)

1 onion, chopped (optional, Southern region variation)

Served with hot jasmine rice.

Combine all ingredients into the pot and allow it to marinate together for a minimum of 15 minutes.  The trick to a great adobo, however, is the length of time you allow your ingredients to marinate together: generally, the longer you marinate beyond 15 minutes, the better this dish is going to taste.  So, combine your ingredients the night before, or the morning of your planned adobo meal.  You can either leave the covered pot on the kitchen counter or in your refrigerator.

When you are ready to cook, place the pot with the lid still on and bring your ingredients to a boil over medium-high heat.  Reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer for an hour, stirring occasionally so nothing sticks to the bottom; crack the lid to allow the steam to escape.  You will see the marinade thicken and get a little sticky ... a wonderful taste experience when combined with steamed rice.

In fact, if you have leftovers (highly doubtful), you can create the most amazing fried rice as you "clean the pan".  This was something my brother and I always looked forward to the next meal time or brunch-time ... nothing beats adobo fried rice, maybe a few leftover pieces of adobo and fried eggs for breakfast!  Masarap!!  That means it's tasty good!  Enjoy!

Island-style Braised Tofu and Shiitake Recipe

Enjoy this recipe, which is actually quite versatile with your culinary imagination ... ALOHA!

Ingredients: 

2 packages (28 ounces) of firm tofu 

1/2 pkg. of Vegan grounds

1 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch and 1/2 teaspoon for slurry 

4 tablespoons soy sauce 

2 tablespoons vegetable oil 

4-5 cloves minced garlic 

16 ounces shiitake mushrooms (30 mushrooms), stems removed, cleaned and sliced 

3 tablespoons oyster sauce 

2 tablespoons chili garlic sauce 

1 cup chicken stock 

1/2 cup chopped cilantro

Directions: 

1) Drain tofu and blot dry with paper towel. Cut tofu into 3/4 inch square cubes and set aside.

2) In a large bowl, combine the protein grounds, 1 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch and 2 tablespoons soy sauce. In a separate bowl, make a slurry by mixing 1/2 teaspoon cornstarch with 2 tablespoons cold water.

3) Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a large non-stick skillet over medium-high heat. Pan-fry the tofu cubes 1-2 minutes on each side until lightly brown. Transfer to plate.

4) Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a large wok over high heat. Add the garlic and grounds mixture, breaking it up with a metal spatula. Stir-fry 1-2 minutes. Add the mushrooms and stir-fry for another 1-2 minutes. Add the tofu and stir-fry for 1 minute. Mix in oyster sauce, chili garlic sauce, 2 tablespoons soy sauce and chicken stock. Re-whisk and add cornstarch slurry and bring to a boil, stir until the sauce is slightly thickened. Adjust seasonings to taste. Stir in cilantro and serve over jasmine rice.

Makes 6 to 8 servings

Jonathan Latham: Science as Social Control: Political Paralysis and the Genetics Agenda

Synopsis: Over the last twenty years, human genetic research has convinced the public that genetic factors often underly disease and human behavior. Yet this genomic research project, which is one of the most expensive science programs ever conceived, has almost entirely failed to identify the important genes that geneticists predicted, or to account for the occurrence of human illness. Thus the BRCA1 equals breast cancer example, which remains the most cited example of a genetic contribution to common disease, plays a role in less than 10% of all breast cancer cases. This contrast between the hype of genetics and the meagre reality exposes, first a failure of geneticists to honestly report their results, and second a failure of the science media. It also brings into focus the disturbing historical fact that human disease genetics first attained prominence with money from the tobacco industry. The tobacco industry had decided it urgently needed to find alternative explanations for lung cancer and tobacco addiction that were capable of dissipating public opprobrium and derailing potential legal actions.

---

The relevance of this experience, in which geneticists probably saved the tobacco industry, was that it positioned human genetics as the go-to science of polluters and reactionary governments. That is because human genetics plausibly offered to locate the blame for unwanted social behaviors, inequality, and human diseases in the genomes of victims rather than in their external experiences of unequal opportunity, social stress and toxic environments. Thus the political impetus of democratic and social movements has successfully been blunted even while the underlying sciencehas never materialized.

Variations in individual "educational attainment" (essentially, whether students complete high school or college) cannot be attributed to inherited genetic differences. That is the finding of a new study reported in Science magazine (Rietveld et al. 2013). According to this research, fully 98% of all variation in educational attainment is accounted for by factors other than a person's simple genetic makeup.

This implies that most of student success is a consequence of potentially alterable social or environmental factors. This is an important and perhaps surprising observation, of high interest to parents, teachers, and policymakers alike; but it did not make the headlines.

The likely reason is that the authors of the study failed to mention the 98% figure in the title, or in the summary. Nor was it mentioned in the accompanying press release.
Instead, their discussion and interest focused almost entirely on a different aspect of their findings: that three gene variants each contribute just 0.02% (one part in 5,000) to variation in educational attainment. Thus the final sentence of the summary concluded not with a plea to find effective ways to help all young people to reach their full potential but instead proposed that these three gene variants

"provide promising candidate SNPs (DNA markers) for follow-up work".

This is as spectacular a misdescription of a scientific finding as is to be found anywhere in the scientific literature. But the question is why? Why did the more than two hundred authors decide to highlight the unimpressive 0.02% and bury the 98%? The easy answer is that the authors are geneticists and that geneticists will not have distinguished careers if variation in genes is irrelevant to health and human achievement. The full answer, however, is considerably more interesting, and much more significant, than simple conflicts of interest.

The broader explanation, which needs to account, for example, for the fact that Science magazine would publish such a discrepant conclusion, is that the science of human biology is in the grip of hidden political forces. These forces are powerful enough to enable (this and other) comprehensively misrepresented genetic studies to evade the corrective potential of the scientific peer review process, and be published in the foremost journals of science.

How money and politics can dictate the conclusions of a scientific study
The easiest starting point to explain this miscarriage of science is to begin with funding. The Rietveld research, we know for a fact, was part of a genetic epidemiology project called the Social Science Genetic Association Consortium (SSGAC). The consortium obtains its money almost entirely from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation, i.e. the US government.

The self-described funding premise of SSGAC is that:

"for most outcomes in life, over half the resemblance of two biological siblings reared in the same family stems from their genetic similarity" (Benjamin et al. 2012).

In other words, SSGAC believed even before Rietveld was published that inherited genetic predispositions make the dominant contribution to ones' lifetime achievements, in education and apparently "most" spheres of human behavior. Consequently, the aim of all its projects is to physically locate these specific genetic factors on human DNA.
But the actual Rietveld result implies that such genetic predispositions are pretty much irrelevant, at least as far as educational attainment is concerned. Moreover, SSGAC had previously searched for gene variants associated with "general intelligence", and "economic and political preferences" (such as risk-aversion and trust). For all these traits the search was again unsuccessful; in only one instance did project members find a genetic variant that reached the threshold of statistical significance (which is itself far below what might be considered important as a predisposing factor) (Benjamin et al. 2012; Chabris et al. 2012). Thus we can say that SSGACs' founding premise is not in alignment with the data.

But that just brings the question back one stage further: why is the US government funding excessively genetic determinist projects such as this in the first place?
The probable answer is that the US education system has many problems, which are exemplified by its low rankings on international scales. There is a danger that blame for these problems might be laid at the door of the secretary for education, the administration, or the President. This possibility could be neatly sidestepped, however, if educational attainment was genetically fated.

Essentially the same political logic applies to any human disease or disorder, or even any social complaint. If the disorder, for example autism, can be shown (or even just suggested) to have a partial genetic origin then a barn door is opened for any accused vaccine maker, or polluter, or policymaker, to evade the blame–both legally and in the perception of the public.

This opportunity within biology to make inequality (not just of wealth) look 'natural' has been recognized for a long time. Harvard Geneticist Richard Lewontin summed it up his 1992 book 'The Doctrine of DNA: Biology as Ideology':

"The notion that the lower classes are biologically inferior to the upper classes........is meant to legitimate the structures of inequality in our society by putting a biological gloss on them"

Extreme genetics
Recognition that this reasoning aligns the interests of both corporations and governments has coincided with the extraordinary funding opportunities for scientists willing to apply DNA analysis and genomic approaches to vast areas of mental and physical health. Precise figures are not available, but over the last fifteen years close to half the budget of the NIH has gone to genetic analysis of human populations. That is likely in excess of $100 billion dollars in the US alone.
The financial outlay is ongoing: the same SSGAC consortium is also researching the possibility of genetic factors in "subjective well-being" (happiness) and "fertility". Furthermore, the scope of the search for genetic predispositions is widening. In 2004 science writer John Horgan noted that (unsuccessful) searches have been made for "genes for"

"attention-deficit disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, manic depression, schizophrenia, autism, dyslexia, alcoholism, heroin addiction, high IQ, male homosexuality, sadness, extroversion, introversion, novelty seeking, impulsivity, violent aggression, anxiety, anorexia, seasonal affective disorder, and pathological gambling."

Since he compiled that list the field of "behavioral economics" has been added to the list of genetic searches considered worthy of public support. For example, a 2013 publication in the journal PLOS one (with 68 authors) goes by the title "The Molecular Genetic Architecture of Self-Employment" (van der Loos et al. 2013). Meanwhile, the US National Human Genome Research Institute last year put out a call for evidence asking geneticists to support a search for predispositions to "behavioral adherence" to expert advice (i.e. compliance).

Thus there is operating within the disciplines of medicine, public health, social science, and now economics, a research framework that, if successful, would locate the causes of negative human outcomes internally. At fault will be genes and not circumstances. It is an officially sanctioned and scientific version of "blame the victim".

Three major strands of evidence support this thesis.

Big tobacco and the origins of human genetics
Most directly of all, there is clear evidence that the search for genetic predispositions is the centerpiece of a longterm corporate agenda whose purpose is to sway public opinion. It began in the 1960s with the tobacco industry at a time when smoking was first implicated in lung cancer. The strategic purpose was to deflect the public fear of smoking, minimize the likely policy responses, and eliminate potential legal expenses, by funding, encouraging, and then exploiting, human genetic research. This could be done, so the industry thought, by building from scratch a science of genetic risk factors.
This agenda operated until the late 1980s when the tobacco industry became politically too controversial for medical organizations to maintain formal relations. According to research by Helen Wallace of the UK non-profit GeneWatch, the tobacco industry by 1994 had awarded around 1,000 researchers £225 million ($370 million) to nurture research in human genetics (Wallace 2009). This tobacco research money was directed in particular to searches for genetic associations with lung cancer.

As early as 1965, this strategy was sowing uncertainty about the causes of lung cancer. As Dr. George L. Saiger, a consultant paid over $50,000 by the tobacco industry, testified before the US Senate Commerce committee:

"There is strong reason to believe that the constitutional hypothesis fits the evidence appearing in the Report of the Surgeon General's Committee at least as well as the cigarette hypothesis..."

Proof that this statement was part of a conscious program to build the credibility of a "constitutional hypothesis" (i.e. the existence of genetic predispositions to lung cancer) was subsequently confirmed by searches of the Legacy Tobacco Documents (Gundle et al. 2010). These are internal documents of the tobacco industry, now kept by the University of California, San Francisco, that the industry was compelled to release in a lawsuit settlement.

The tobacco industry also pioneered 'behavioral genetics'. The idea that even addiction to cigarettes was a genetic phenomenon (and not a characteristic of cigarettes or tobacco) originated with the tobacco industry.  The consistent aim behind promoting genetics, according to a memo written by Fred R. Panzer, Vice President of Public Relations for the Tobacco Institute, was to change the focus of attention "from one product to a type of person".

The tobacco industry was still actively pursuing the same public relations (PR) strategy when, for example, senior tobacco executives met with geneticist and Nobel Laureate Sydney Brenner in 1988, just a month before he set up the Human Genome Organization (HUGO) (Wallace 2009). HUGO was the organization formed to oversee the Human Genome Sequencing Project.

Human genetics is not public health
The second important point of evidence is that the public interest justification for identifying gene variants is hard to discern. For example, even if predispositions for educational attainment were to be found, it is not clear how public welfare would benefit. For example, it wouldn't affect at all the need for high quality education, either for individuals found wanting, or for those of average or higher ability. This crucial point is glossed over by proponents of genetic explanations who, according to Chaufan and Joseph (2013), merely assume that genetic knowledge "will necessarily improve the prediction, diagnosis, prevention, or treatment of common disorders."

As these weaknesses have become clearer, it has become more common for public health professionals to question the utility of these studies and argue that, at a minimum:

"advocates of genomic medicine should be much more modest"

about the likely impacts on public health (Hall, Mathews, and Morley 2010).

The genetic evidence deficit
The third reason to suspect that a political and not a scientific agenda underlies the continued push for genetic research is that the money has continued to flow even in the face of a tsunami of evidence against its major predictions. As Hall and colleagues also wrote, geneticists:

"have not identified major susceptibility alleles (gene variants) for most common diseases."  (Hall, Mathews, and Morley 2010).

Even the findings that have been claimed (which are modest) have consistently not stood up to retrospective replication (Ioannidis and Panagiotou 2011). The absence of evidence is now so clear that even leaders in the field of human genetics sometimes find an acknowledgement is necessary (though only in the context of a request for more funding) (Manolio et al. 2009).

As the evidence for genetic causations has continuously and stubbornly refused to appear, critics have grown bolder. Chaufan and Joseph in 2013 felt confident enough to write:

"these variants have not been found because they do not exist" (Chaufan and Joseph 2013).

It is important, nevertheless, to acknowledge that there are exceptions. The breast cancer mutations of the BRCA1 gene are one class of exception. But even BRCA1 is an exception that proves the rule. BRCA1 is well known precisely because it remains an almost unique example of a prominent genetic predisposition to a common disease. Yet even BRCA1 is oversold. More than 90% of all breast cancer cases are unrelated to it (Gage et al. 2012).

The other class of exceptions are those relatively rare disorders for which there is clear evidence of a simple genetic cause. Cystic fibrosis is an example of such a disease; Huntington's disease is another.

However, to return to the main point, for common physical and mental health conditions, such as heart disease, cancer, autism and schizophrenia, the situation has proven very different. The epidemiological and genetic evidence suggests that genetic risk is at most a minor contributing component. For behavioral and economic traits the lack of positive genetic data is even more apparent.

Consequently, an extra-scientific explanation is required to explain why very large sums of taxpayer money have funded human genetic research in the face of such negative results.

Human genetics: a PR success built on a scientific failure
In purely research terms, the search for human genetic predispositions has foundered. Yet this failure has done curiously little to prevent medical and behavioral genetics from being an overwhelming PR success. Thanks to the tobacco industry (joined later by the chemical industry, thefood industry, the pharmaceutical industry, all the way to the gambling industry), "genes for" any disease, or talent, or human oddity, is nowadays a standard topic of adult conversation.

This was not always the case. When the geneticist Mary-Claire King (co-discoverer of the BRCA1 gene) was interviewed recently in New Scientist, she was at pains to remind the interviewer that in the 1980s convincing funders to explore an inherited genetic basis for cancer was exceedingly difficult.

"The main experience of the period was that people completely ignored me" (Powerful genes New Scientist 22 June 2013).

It is hard to be certain but it is likely that this sea change in public opinion did indeed protect the tobacco industry, which continues to thrive. It also, we have previously argued, played a key role in protecting polluters and politicians of all kinds from facing regulations and responsibility. Much of the explanation for our societies' generic failure to address social and environmental problems can probably be attributed to the simple overreliance on genetic determinist explanations.

Yet beyond the example of BRCA1, few scientists or lay people could name a specific discovery to back up their genetic suppositions. This discrepancy, between the failure of the science program itself and its success as a PR project is truly a sobering testament to the power of modern public relations. It is also an indictment of science journalism and the inadequacy of the science media as a whole.

Free enquiry vs directed science
The above analysis proposes that it is a mistake to ascribe responsibility for their conclusions solely to authors of papers such as Rietveld et al. Equally culpable is the operating system within which these researchers find themselves. Science magazine and its editors and reviewers, for example, are clearly complicit in publishing misleading conclusions. Funding agencies are complicit in awarding public funds to speculative gene hunting projects at the expense of pressing public health questions. The evidence thus points to a broad system-wide failure.

Not sufficiently understood by outsiders is the fact that most of science is essentially now a top-down project. There persists a romantic notion (retained by many scientists) that science is a process of free enquiry. In this view, the endless grant applications and the requests for applications are merely quality control measures, or irritants imposed by bureaucrats.

But free enquiry in science is all but extinct. In reality, only a tiny proportion of research in biology gets done outside of straightjackets imposed by funding agencies.

Researchers design their projects around funding programs; universities organize their hiring around them, and every experiment is carefully designed to bolster the next grant application.

The consequences of this dynamic are that individual scientists have negligible power within the system; but more importantly it opens a route by which powerful political or commercial forces can surreptitiously set the science agenda from above.

In the case of medical genetics that power has been used to deform our understanding of human nature itself. Thus public money has bought not scientific 'progress' but the domination of intellectual enquiry by an entirely malevolent project, conceived fully outside of science. This project was intended only to ensure political paralysis and the consolidation of economic power and whatever agenda scientists thought they were following was entirely incidental. What we observe is in fact a full-blown enlightenment malfunction.

Nevertheless, despite the almost daily PR barrage of genetic determinist headlines, our fate is not written in our DNA and the state of public understanding can in principle be reversed. The hopeful truth is that there are compelling reasons to remove subsidies for junk food, pesticides from the food and water, toxins from the workplace, and social and economic injustices from society, and that when we do, things will improve.

This article was originally published on Independent Science News and republished with permission.


References
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Chabris CF, et al. (2012) Most reported genetic associations with general intelligence are probably false positives. Psychol Sci. 23: 1314-23.
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Hall WD, Mathews R, Morley KI (2010) Being More Realistic about the Public Health Impact of Genomic Medicine. PLoS Med 7(10): e1000347. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000347
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Rietveld et al. (2013) GWAS of 126,559 individuals identifies genetic variants associated with educational attainment. Science, 340, 1467-1471, . doi:10.1126/science.1235488
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Jonathan Latham is co-founder and Executive Director of the Bioscience Resource Project and also Editor of the Independent Science News website. Dr. Lathamholds a Masters degree in Crop Genetics and a PhD in Virology.

HOMEMADE BEESWAX CANDLES

The concept for making beeswax is fairly simple. Take your beeswax, melt it down, and pour into your container of choice with a wick. In my case, I had beeswax pastilles, an empty honey jar,a cotton string serving as a wick, and a chopstick to secure it. Let’s go!

Homemade Beeswax Candles

Beeswax Pastilles (I used 1/2c.)
Glass jar(s)
Cotton wick
Chopstick


Wash out your jar and dry thoroughly. Cut your wick to the size of the jar, leaving a bit extra to tie around the chopstick. Tie the wick on the chopstick and place it over the jar to make sure the wick stays in the center.




In a double boiler, melt down the beeswax pastilles until fully liquid. Gently pour your liquid beeswax around the wick until it gets to the top of the jar. Let sit until the wax is fully cooled and hardened.

Remove the chopstick and trim the wick to your liking.

Vasumi: Kin 170: White Magnetic Dog (Thursday 1 August)

Welcome to the White Dog wavespell/13-day cycle, where the feminine aspect of God, the capacity to merge, to feel the oneness with the full web of life is experienced... To look to connect with all of life, in pure devotion to the Universal Family of consciousness... We have now entered the New Time on July 26, the Yellow Galactic Seed day, inaugurating a time where all that we are is shifting at a vast rate from the inside out... It becomes no longer possible to do the stuff to the earth or each other that does not fulfill our destiny of awakening... In this cycle we come to understand how we are all connected in the divine harmonic geometrical web of life... Each one receptive to every other one... A cycle of love and the deep-end-dance of merging with the all of consciousness…

The keywords for the Dog are love, loyalty and heart… we have this doubled today, coupled with the keywords for the Magnetic tone of unify, attract and purpose… We find that today we may experience unification with the heart, attracting love, allowing a purpose of loyalty, or any other mix of those words that may come to you, until you feel a pulse inside that resonates… This is the key with the Mayan Dreamspell, we are not looking to make sense with the mind, more to feel the sensitivity of the spirit, to feel the kerplunk, when the words hit the nervous system with a knowing of the reality of what is being shared, a channeling from the divine, with the words that ultimately are born of the divine to reflect upon a pulse of energy experienced… In this way this practice aligns us with the Universal Truths that we are all engaged with daily…

So today is the beginning of the 13 days of love, loyalty and heart… how glorious… Spiritual family to the fore… With this love operating primarily on the spiritual plane, it also represents devotion and unconditional love, not as we mostly think of love, the love of one other in the physical plane, but more unconditional love that bridges all dimensions, the loyalty to  and as love itself … The ultimate feminine aspect of God/Dog… to allow all to merge with oneself - the e-merge-ncy of our times… to release all boundaries that would choose to see anything as separate from self…

Predawn we attract purity, purification and sensitivity to the flow of the spiritual realms, allowing our antennae to be filaments from spirit to attract love, pure mergence with the divine… To unify with pure consciousness, flowing, pure and unencumbered…

From sunrise we attract a sense of connectedness of merging with all things, of pure devotion... Of ourselves as the great void that embraces all in the divine darkness of the Mothers Womb... The heart of the web that weaves its sensitive tendrils, allowing the weft of love to encompass all in its flow...

From noon we attract light, as we centre into the light of our own beings... The in-deep-end-dance of loving self, in order to radiate the light that we are...

From sunset we are present with the gift of magical vision, trusting the bigger picture that has been revealed today of the connectedness of all in the web of connected consciousness... All consciousness in a state of change with the capacity to trust oneself as a player being played in the grand scheme of consciousness evolving itself…

Blessed be dear hearts and enjoy abiding in the heart of all things that sources in the heart of your own being…

O YUM HUNAB KU EVA MAYA E MA HO!