Warning: Herbal Flu Remedy Fraudulently Marketed

(Natural News) In an independent review published in a peer-reviewed medical journal (see below), a popular herbal immune supplement called "ImmunoFlu Remedy" was found to fraudulently marketed as a "flu prevention supplement."

Its makers claim that if you take the supplement, you won't get the flu and won't miss a day of work during the flu season (a silly claim, eh?).

But clinical testing recently revealed that ImmunoFlu Remedy only works to reduce flu symptoms on 1 out of every 100 people who take the supplement, meaning it is 99 percent ineffective.

“Obviously Fraudulent”

An FTC spokesperson, commenting on the study results, characterized the marketing of ImmunoFlu Remedy as "obviously fraudulent" –

-- and a top FDA official has publicly promised to launch a criminal investigation into the makers of ImmunoFlu Remedy in order to "protect the public from misleading health claims."

Evidence has also surfaced that ImmunoFlu Remedy may contain trace levels of heavy metals linked to neurological disorders. Over a dozen children admitted to emergency rooms at hospitals across the country have been identified as consumers of ImmunoFlu Remedy, and two of those children died.

The makers of ImmunoFlu Remedy are being ordered to remove the product from their website and recall the product from distributors and retailers.

As shocking as all this sounds, there's something you need to know as you continue reading this story here on NaturalNews. There is no such thing as ImmunoFlu Remedy. This story is actually about seasonal flu vaccines.

Most of the details mentioned above, you see, are actually the true story about seasonal flu vaccines.

Flu vaccines don't work on 99 out of 100 people

Seasonal flu vaccines have been scientifically shown to reduce flu symptoms in only 1 out of every 100 people (they are ineffective on 99% of those receiving the shots).

Flu vaccines also contain chemical ingredients linked to neurological disorders, which is why so many children in Australia and around the world have been admitted to hospital emergency rooms suffering from seizures and convulsions following flu shot injections.

Seasonal flu vaccines are also fraudulently marketed with blatantly false claims that they prevent the flu in everyone who receives a shot. "Get the shot and you won't miss work" is one of the common claims made in flu shot promotions.

Or, as Walgreens implies, "Get the shot and you won't infect your family members." That claim is blatantly misleading and scientifically false.

And yet, despite this fraudulent marketing of a product that doesn't work on 99% of those who take it, neither the FTC nor the FDA has taken any action against it.

Marketers of flu vaccines, it turns out, can make any claims they wish, even if such claims are laughable in the face of scientific scrutiny.

Forget the science... we've got vaccines to sell!

Flu vaccines, you see, are immune from any real scientific scrutiny -- even by the scientific community.

The mythology of season flu vaccines has been so pervasive and so widely described as "scientific" that the truth of whether it's really scientific no longer matters.

Flu vaccines are simply assumed to work even without testing; without scientific evidence and without any legitimate application of skeptical thinking.

There's a word for that, of course. It's the word used to describe a system of belief that requires no evidence –

-- a system in which truths are materialized out of lies through the mere act of enough authoritative people uttering falsehoods until they all begin to believe each other.

That word, of course, is a four-letter word: Cult.

A cult need not answer to statistical scrutiny.

It need not subject its own internal beliefs to outside review because everyone inside the cult already agrees on the answer -- and why ask questions when we already know the truth, right?

Such is the nature of the cult of flu vaccines. It's a large cult, of course, but the sheer size of the cult in no way detracts from the fact that it is a cult nonetheless.

In other words, just because millions of doctors believe the propaganda of a cult does not make it any less of a cult.

Even if all the doctors, pharmacists and drug pushers in the world fall for a fictitious belief and put their faith and professional reputations on the line in order to back that belief, it's still fiction.

And it's still a cult.

The real quackery of vaccines

The evil genius in all this is that people have been tricked into believing in vaccines whether they work or not.

When someone receives a vaccine shot, they consider themselves "protected" from the flu.

So what happens if they get the flu anyway? They simply reason in their own heads that if they hadn't been vaccinated, they might have experienced far worse flu symptoms.

And if they don't get the flu at all? Then they reason that the vaccine prevented the flu!

Thus, with the right programming, flu vaccines can be thought of as useful and effective regardless of the actual health outcome.

This is a classic red flag for a system of quackery. It's one of the most common complaints leveled against energy medicine by conventional scientists, in fact. They rightly point out that determining whether energy medicine really works for you is a guessing game:

If you still get sick, you might think the energy medicine worked a little bit but not enough. If you don't get sick, then you might think the energy medicine worked like a miracle.

Such a logic matrix is prone to misinterpretation by patients and doctors alike. In both cases -- energy medicine as well as flu vaccines -- patients are likely to convince themselves that it's working, even if there is no real evidence that their belief is accurate.

Belief itself, of course, is perhaps the best medicine of all, and it is a distinct possibility that the small number of patients who seem to be helped by flu vaccines (one percent) may be experiencing the benefit of the placebo effect.

Nevertheless, the way out of this puzzle is to subject flu vaccines (or energy medicine, similarly) to rigorous clinical trials in which a serious attempt is made to tease out some statistically significant answers such as "what percentage of people are actually helped by this treatment?"

What's really amazing about all this is that such clinical trials have already been done on flu vaccines, and the results are in:

Seasonal flu vaccines prevent flu symptoms in about one percent of the people who receive vaccine jabs. And that's if you believe the more optimistic conclusions of the vaccine manufacturers themselves, by the way.

How would this quackery be viewed

if it were an herbal remedy?

From a scientific perspective, then, seasonal flu vaccines have roughly a one percent effectiveness rate, which means they have no apparent effect on 99 out of 100 people.

What's interesting about this is that if homeopathy, or energy medicine, or an herbal formula produced such poor results, it would be widely ridiculed as a quack remedy promoted via fraudulent marketing.

A one percent effectiveness rate proves any "natural" remedy to be quackery, you see, and yet the same one percent effectiveness rate is more than sufficient to support the mythology of vaccines to those who believe the vaccine cult.

What it all comes down to is really this:

Seasonal flu vaccines are really 1% science and 99% wishful thinking.

And yet, apparently, that's more than enough reason for virtually the entire medical and scientific establishments to back seasonal flu vaccines as if they were scientifically proven while touting highly exaggerated marketing claims that imply one hundred percent effectiveness.

In any other industry, marketing a product that didn't work 99 percent of the time would be considered fraud. But in the vaccine industry? It's just business as usual.

How to make money selling a product

that almost never works as advertised…

The seasonal flu vaccine is a great money-making con, too. Imagine how much money you could make if you could convince hundreds of millions of people to buy a product that didn't work on 99 percent of your customers, and yet 100 percent of them were convinced that they were receiving benefits from it!

It's a pretty clever con, and it all depends on promoting the mythology -- or "catapulting the propaganda" as President George Bush famously said -- in order to make sure that 99 percent of the wishful thinking that powers the flu vaccine industry remains in place.

Because, let's face it:

If flu vaccines actually worked, the industry really wouldn't need to advertise them so heavily, would they?

If these vaccines really stopped flu infections with 100 percent effectiveness, word of mouth about flu vaccines would spread even faster than the flu itself, and virtually everyone would line up to get their "flu protection" shots out of sheer necessity.

The only reason the industry needs to engage in such aggressive flu vaccine promotion is because flu vaccines are only based on 1% science, and the other 99% of the marketing formula depends on keeping people brainwashed into believing the false mythology of flu vaccines.

Flu shots as placebo

Flu vaccines, in effect, are largely just placebo shots. If you think they're going to work for you, then you'll remain convinced of that regardless of whether you get sick or not.

There wouldn't really be any harm in that except for the inconvenient fact that vaccine shots contain harmful chemical ingredients that pose a health risk to those who take them.

Thus, even while a flu vaccine may be providing as much as a 1% protection against the flu, it may simultaneously subject a person to a significantly smaller risk of a far more serious detrimental outcome:

Neurological damage, convulsions, learning disabilities or even the accelerated development of Alzheimer's disease.

Are these risks really worth a 1-in-100 chance of preventing the flu?

A rational answer seems to be no, they aren't. Especially when the available evidence says that vitamin D supplements work far better at preventing flu infections. And vitamin D can be taken with virtually no health risks whatsoever.

Even better, vitamin D supplements are not formulated with mercury preservatives, chemical adjuvants or other questionable chemicals that are typically added to vaccines.

But don't expect this sort of rational, clear-thinking discussion of flu vaccines and vitamin D to be undertaken by your physician. Doctors have already drank the flu vaccine Kool-Aid, and as a result the science no longer matters to them.

Even if Wikileaks released definitive documents showing the entire flu vaccine industry to be a complete scam based on fraudulent science, most doctors would no doubt continue to push flu vaccines anyway because that's what they've always done.

Doctors don't change course very often... especially not if they've participated as active members of the vaccine cult for several years (or decades).

The likelihood of a doctor actually changing his mind on this issue of flu vaccines is even less than the likelihood of a flu vaccine preventing you from getting the flu this winter. And that likelihood is ridiculously low to begin with. So don't hold your breath.

And don't hold out any faith for the idea that doctors will suddenly embrace scientific thinking, either. Because there's no room for truly scientific thought in the membership ranks of the vaccine cult.

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Vitamin B-6 declared a "drug" by FDA; to be banned from vitamin supplements

Vitamin B-6 Declared a “Drug” by FDA; to be Banned from Vitamin Supplements

God help us, because the FDA has now opened the gateway for all vitamins to be declared “drugs” and removed from sale by the nutritional supplement industry.

What they have done is declared that pyridoxamine (one of the three primary forms of vitamin B-6) is in reality a “new drug,” thus clearing the way for it to be banned from sale as a nutritional supplement. (See the news article below this commentary for more details.)

Here’s what happened:

Some years back a North Carolina-based firm called Biostratum began research and testing on a pyridoxamine-based drug, which they called Pyridorin. It is designed to prevent the progression of diabetic nephropathy (kidney disease). The company then petitioned the FDA to declare pyridoxamine a “new drug,” clearing the way for them to hold an iron-clad monopoly on its sale.

Today, the FDA agreed with Biostratum, and declared this form of vitamin B-6 to indeed be a “new drug,” using the argument that its medical qualities had been under investigation for years before it was ever used as a nutritional supplement under the DSHEA, which ironically was enacted in 1994 in order to protect nutritional supplements from excessive FDA regulation.

Not to worry, said many observers in the nutritional supplement industry. After all, there are other forms of vitamin B-6 that can still be used in multi-vitamin formulations. The problem is, another drug company has already petitioned the FDA to declare the second most popular form of B-6, pyridoxal 5'-phosphate, which is also called P5P, a “new drug,” apparently for the very same reason pyridoxamine has been declared a drug, i.e., it’s purely medical qualities have been investigated long before it was ever used as a nutritional supplement.

How much longer other forms of B-6 will be declared a “drug”? You can bet your boots the pharmaceutical companies are racing to get in on the FDA’s new fast-track for turning B-vitamins into drugs.

Will All Vitamins Eventually Be Declared Drugs?

Worst of all, the very same argument being used to declare vitamin B6 a “drug” can essentially be made for any vitamin. After all, every known vitamin on the face of the earth has been studied for their medicinal qualities even since the discovery of the existence of vitamins in food back in 1905, when a scientist named William Fletcher realized that foods contained special nutrients that actually prevented disease.

It is easy to see that the day is soon-coming in which all vitamins will be offered solely as “drugs,” by prescription only.

One of the most galling aspects of the whole thing is that the FDA flatly refuses to allow nutritional supplement manufacturers to even mention the incredible medicinal values of the vitamins, minerals and other supplements they sell. Indeed, the FDA routinely claims vitamin and mineral supplements are “useless” and “inert.”Yet when a drug company develops the same natural molecule as a “drug,” suddenly its medical benefits can be touted from the rooftops. The only problem is, the drug company is given a monopoly to produce the “drug,” and what was once a natural product available inexpensively in any health food store in America is now an expensive drug you have to get a prescription for.

Drug-Induced B-6 Deficiency a Growing Phenomena

Another serious issue regarding B-6 is that a growing number of medications actually deplete the body of this vital nutrient that is absolutely essential to life. The syndrome is called Drug Induced Pyridoxine Deficiency, and several drugs, including drugs for the treatment of tuberculosis, Parkinson’s Disease and for cancer are known to cause this syndrome, which essentially turns you into a mental vegetable by depleting your body of its needed stores of vitamin B-6.

Foods that Contain Vitamin B-6 Naturally

Under the circumstances it is important to note that certain foods contain vitamin B-6 naturally. They are, in order of their content percentage of the recommended daily value of the vitamin:

Baked potato, flesh and skin, 1 medium: 0.7 mg ~ 35% DV
Banana, raw, 1 medium: 0.68 mg ~ 34% DV
Garbanzo beans, canned, 1/2 c: 0.57 mg ~ 30% DV
Chicken breast, meat only, cooked, 1/2 breast: 0.52 mg ~ 25% DV
Pork loin, lean only, cooked, 3 oz: 0.42 mg ~20% DV
Roast beef, eye of round, lean only, cooked, 3 oz: 0.32 mg ~ 15% DV
Trout, rainbow, cooked, 3 oz: 0.29 mg ~ 15% DV
Sunflower seeds, kernels, dry roasted, 1 oz: 0.23 mg ~ 10% DV
Avocado, raw, sliced, 1/2 cup: 0.2 mg ~ 10% DV
Salmon, Sockeye, cooked, 3 oz: 0.19 mg ~ 10% DV
Tuna, canned in water, drained solids, 3 oz: 0.18 mg ~ 10% DV
Peanut butter, smooth, 2 Tbs: 0.15 mg ~ 8% DV

More importantly, safe, simple Brewer’s Yeast contains relatively high levels of B-vitamins, including B-6. Capsulated Brewer’s Yeast can be purchased in just about any health food store in the country, or is available through many online sources.

What to Do Now

Legally speaking, as of today, anyone wanting to purchase the pyridoxamine form of B-6, and probably soon the P5P form, will have to have a doctor's prescription to do so.

One thing you can do is go to the web site of the American Association for Health Freedom and sign their petition to stop the FDA from turning any more vitamins into drugs.

You should also write and call your Congressmen and Senators immediately, and tell them you don’t want the FDA banning any more vitamins by turning them into “drugs.”

It is high time we all start expressing our outrage at this outlandish behavior by the FDA and other bureaucracies in regards to their disdain for nutritional supplements. We now have the EPA trying to re-classify colloidal silver as a "pesticide" so they can ban its sale in health food stores. And we have the FDA actually re-classifying common vitamins as drugs. And it is all at the behest of the major pharmaceutical companies.

The handwriting is on the wall. And frankly, it is up to "we the people" to put a stop to this egregious breach of our health freedoms.

-- S. Spencer Jones

FDA Declares Form of Vitamin B6 a Drug, Effectively Banning Pyridoxamine from Dietary Supplements
http://www.naturalnews.com/025606.html

Thursday, February 12, 2009 by: Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

(NaturalNews) The FDA has effectively banned a naturally-occurring form of vitamin B6 called pyridoxamine by declaring it to be a drug, reports the American Association for Health Freedom.
Responding to a petition filed by a drug company, the FDA declared pyridoxamine to be "a new drug."

Now, any nutritional supplements containing pyridoxamine will be considered adulterated and illegal by the FDA, which may raid vitamin companies and seize such products. See the history of FDA raids on vitamin companies here: http://www.naturalnews.com/021791.html

Pyridoxamine occurs naturally in fish, chicken and other foods (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_B6), putting the FDA in the strange position of banning a substance from dietary supplements even though it is already present in the food supply.

The FDA's war on Mother Nature

It's not the first time the FDA has declared a natural molecule to be a "drug" while attacking nutritional supplements that contain the same molecule. A similar story unfolded with red yeast rice and the lovastatin molecules it contains that lower high cholesterol. The drug companies engaged in biopiracy, ripping off the molecule from red yeast rice to make their now-famous "statin drugs."

Once the statin drugs were patented, Big Pharma and the FDA went after red yeast rice, claiming the supplement was "adulterated with pharmaceuticals." It wasn't really adulterated, of course. It just contained a natural statin-drug-like molecule that the drug companies copied and patented.

It would be like Big Pharma patenting vitamin C, then the FDA claiming that all oranges and lemons were adulterated with drugs because they naturally contain their own vitamin C.

This is the insanity of the FDA as it operates today. You can read more about the FDA on our channel webiste www.FDAreform.org which is updated every few days.

So will this ruling on pyridoxamine affect nutritional supplements? Yes, any supplements containing this form of vitamin B6 can now be declared "adulterated" by the FDA. Manufacturers of such supplements can be arrested and shut down for engaging in "illegal drug trafficking." Such is the nature of the FDA's agenda to criminalize nutritional supplement companies and limit consumers' access to Mother Nature's remedies.

The pyridoxamine "drug," by the way (which is just pyridoxamine), is designed to prevent the progression of diabetic nephrothapy (kidney disease). Most likely, the FDA will eventually approve the "drug" for that condition, even while claiming vitamin B6 supplements containing the very same chemical are useless and inert.

This is another classic oppression tactic of the FDA: Ban the herb, but promote the drug using the same chemicals. The same thing happened with ephedra, a Traditional Chinese Medicine herb known as ma huang. The FDA banned the herb, saying it was "dangerous at any dose," but pharmaceuticals containing the very same molecules (ephedrine) are still being sold over-the-counter as cold medicines, meaning they're available to any child without a prescription.

The bottom line is this: FDA approvals and bans have nothing to do with science and everything to do with protecting drug companies profits. If a drug company can make money selling a vitamin as a drug, the FDA will gladly ban the vitamin and protect the drug. If a drug company can rip off molecules from Mother Nature and patent them, the FDA will ban those same molecules found in nature.

All of this points to the urgent need to reform the FDA. A new petition demanding real FDA reform will be announced here on NaturalNews in the coming days.

Sources for this story include:

AAHF: http://aahf.nonprofitsoapbox.com/in...

NewsFood.com: http://www.newsfood.com/?location=E...

NaturalProductsInsider.com: http://www.naturalproductsinsider.c...Buzz up!5 votes

About the author: Mike Adams is a natural health researcher and author with a mission to teach personal and planetary health to the public He is a prolific writer and has published thousands of articles, interviews, reports and consumer guides, impacting the lives of millions of readers around the world who are experiencing phenomenal health benefits from reading his articles. Adams is an honest, independent journalist and accepts no money or commissions on the third-party products he writes about or the companies he promotes. 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 a successful software entrepreneur, having founded a well known email marketing software company whose technology currently powers the NaturalNews email newsletters. Adams volunteers his time to serve as the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, and pursues hobbies such as Pilates, Capoeira, nature macrophotography 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