America’s Main Problem: Corruption                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

Submitted by George Washington on 05/07/2015
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-05-07/america%E2%80%99s-main-problem-corruption

The Cop Is On the Take

Government corruption has become rampant:

• Senior SEC employees spent up to 8 hours a day surfing porn sites instead of cracking down on financial crimes

• Nuclear Regulatory Commission workers watch porn instead of cracking down on unsafe conditions at nuclear plants

• An EPA employee who downloaded 7,000 porn files, then spent 2-6 hours each workday watching porn. He's been doing it for years ... but the EPA never fired him. Another EPA employee harassed 16 women co-workers ... and then was promoted to a higher-paying job with more responsibility, where he harassed more women

• NSA spies pass around homemade sexual videos and pictures they've collected from spying on the American people

• NSA employees have also been caught using their mass surveillance powers to spy on love interests, such as girlfriends, obsessions or former wives … and to eavesdrop on American soldiers’ intimate conversations with their wives back home. And see this (“routinely shared salacious or tantalizing phone calls that had been intercepted” … “‘Hey, check this out … there’s good phone sex'”)

• An employee of the Transportation Security Administration admitted that TSA agents share – and laugh at – nude scans of passengers.  Another TSA employee says that screeners make excuses so they can grope and fondle travelers that they're attracted to

• Investigators from the Treasury’s Office of the Inspector General found that some of the regulator’s employees surfed erotic websites, hired prostitutes and accepted gifts from bank executives … instead of actually working to help the economy

• The Minerals Management Service – the regulator charged with overseeing BP and other oil companies to ensure that oil spills don’t occur – was riddled with “a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity”, which included “sex with industry contacts”

• Agents for the Drug Enforcement Agency had dozens of sex parties with prostitutes hired by the drug cartels they were supposed to stop (they also received money, gifts and weapons from drug cartel members)

• Pentagon employees used government credit cards to pay for adult "escorts" (i.e. prostitutes) and to gamble

• Federal agents with the Drug Enforcement Administration and Secret Service investigating Bitcoin money laundering extorted and stole over $1 million in Bitcoin

• The IRS gave promotions to employees who were themselves tax cheats

• The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has conspired with big banks to manipulate commodities prices for decades

• The government-sponsored rating agencies committed massive fraud (and see this)

• The Treasury department allowed banks to “cook their books”

• Regulators knew of and allowed the use of debt-hiding accounting tricks by the big banks

• The Secretary of Treasury (Tim Geithner) was complicit in Lehman’s accounting fraud, (and see this)

• The former chief accountant for the SEC says that Bernanke and Paulson broke the law and should be prosecuted

• The government knew about mortgage fraud a long time ago. For example, the FBI warned of an “epidemic” of mortgage fraud in 2004. However, the FBI, DOJ and other government agencies then stood down and did nothing. See this and this. For example, the Federal Reserve turned its cheek and allowed massive fraud, and the SEC has repeatedly ignored accounting fraud. Indeed, Alan Greenspan took the position that fraud could never happen

• Paulson and Bernanke falsely stated that the big banks receiving Tarp money were healthy, when they were not. The Treasury Secretary also falsely told Congress that the bailouts would be used to dispose of toxic assets … but then used the money for something else entirely

• A high-level Federal Reserve official says quantitative easing is “the greatest backdoor Wall Street bailout of all time”

• The SEC has been shredding Wall Street documents for decades to help the big banks cover up their fraud

• The non-partisan Government Accountability Office calls the Fed corrupt and riddled with conflicts of interest. Nobel prize-winning economist Joe Stiglitz says the World Bank would view any country which had a banking structure like the Fed as being corrupt and untrustworthy. The former vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas said said he worried that the failure of the government to provide more information about its rescue spending could signal corruption. “Nontransparency in government programs is always associated with corruption in other countries, so I don’t see why it wouldn’t be here,” he said

• Arguably, both the Bush and Obama administrations broke the law by refusing to close insolvent banks

• Congress may have covered up illegal tax breaks for the big banks

• Police have been busted framing innocent people

• Warmongerers in the U.S. government knowingly and intentionally lied us into a war of aggression in Iraq. The former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – the highest ranking military officer in the United States – said that the Iraq war was “based on a series of lies”. The same is true in Libya and other wars

• $8.5 TRILLION dollars in taxpayer money doled out by Congress to the Pentagon since 1996 has NEVER been accounted for. The military wastes and "loses" trillions of dollars. And Congress pushes expensive boondoggles that our generals say are unnecessary and unhelpful ... because it's pork for their district

• The government lied when it said it doesn't conduct mass surveillance on Americans, and then lied again when it said that spying was aimed at protecting America against terrorists

• The government also lied when it said American doesn't torture (and see this), and then lied once again when it said torture was aimed at protecting America against terrorists

• The government made sure that false claims were made about the amount of oil spilled by BP in the Gulf

• The government has framed whistleblowers with false evidence

• The Pentagon falsely smeared USA Today reporters because they investigated illegal Pentagon propaganda

• When one of the most respected radiologists in America – the former head of the radiology department at Yale University – attempted to blow the whistle on the fact that the FDA had approved a medical device manufactured by General Electric because it put out massive amounts of radiation, the FDA installed spyware to record his private emails and surfing activities (including installing cameras to snap pictures of his screen), and then used the information to smear him and other whistleblowers

• In an effort to protect Bank of America from the threatened Wikileaks expose of wrongdoing – the Department of Justice told Bank of America to a hire a specific hardball-playing law firm to assemble a team to take down WikiLeaks (and see this)

• The Bush White House worked hard to smear CIA officers, bloggers and anyone else who criticized the Iraq war

• Corruption at the FBI lab led to the execution of scores of innocent people

• The FBI smeared top scientists who pointed out the numerous holes in its anthrax case. Indeed, the head of the FBI's investigation agrees that corruption was rampant

• Terror attacks such as 9/11, the Boston Marathon bombing and the Texas shooting all happened because of pervasive corruption in our intelligence agencies

The biggest companies own the D.C. politicians. Indeed, the head of the economics department at George Mason University has pointed out that it is unfair to call politicians “prostitutes”. They are in fact pimps … selling out the American people for a price.
Government regulators have become so corrupted and “captured” by those they regulate that Americans know that the cop is on the take. Institutional corruption is killing people’s trust in our government and our institutions.
Indeed, America is no longer a democracy or republic ... it's officially an oligarchy.
The allowance of unlimited campaign spending allows the oligarchs to purchase politicians more directly than ever. Moreover, there are two systems of justice in America … one for the big banks and other fatcats, and one for everyone else.

Big Corporations Are Also Thoroughly Corrupt

But the private sector is no better ... for example, the big banks have literally turned into criminal syndicates.
Wall Street and giant corporations are literally manipulating every single market.
And the big corporations are cutting corners to make an extra penny ... wrecking havoc with their carelessness. For example:

• Fracking companies dumped 3 billion gallons of highly-toxic waste into California's drinking water supply. Fracking is polluting water all over the country. A study published in the journal Ground Water predicts that the highly-toxic fluids used in fracking can migrate to aquifers within a few short years. In addition, it is now official that fracking can cause earthquakes.  Yet fracking companies are using military psychological operations techniques to discredit opponents (and see this)

• U.S. military contractors have pocketed huge sums of money earmarked for humanitarian and reconstruction aid

• Monsanto has claimed for decades that Roundup is safe, but the World Health Organization just said that it probably causes cancer.  Monsanto forbids independent scientists from testing its GMO crops for safety, attacks the computers of people who oppose GMO foods and sue small farmers when Monsanto GMO crops drift onto their fields

• Big farmers are drenching their crops with Roundup right before harvest ... to save a buck

• Big food companies work hand-in-glove with the government to dish up unhealthy food

• BP's criminal negligence led to the giant Gulf oil spill

(Further examples here, here, here, here and here.)

We've Forgotten the Lessons of History

The real problem is that we need to learn a little history:

• We’ve known for thousands of years that – when criminals are not punished – crime spreads

• We’ve known for hundreds of years that the failure to punish financial fraud destroys economies, as it destroys all trust in the financial system

• We’ve known for centuries that powerful people – unless held to account – will get together and steal from everyone else

Beyond Partisan Politics

Liberals and conservatives tend to blame our country's problems on different factors ... but they are all connected.
The real problem is the malignant, symbiotic relationship between big corporations and big government.

Video Game Trend: The Decline Of The 'Game' And The Emergence Of The 'Living Game World'

from the a-brand-new-world dept     https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150507/05082730910/video-game-trend-decline-game-emergence-living-game-world.shtml

Normally, reading a report on an earnings forecast by a video game company is no more interesting than it would be if the company made, say, toilet bowl brushes. But every so often, you can catch a glimpse of where a company thinks the gaming industry is going and how gaming might evolve next. One such report on Activision's earnings has some interesting tidbits to go along with the company's acknowledgement of the known trends in digital distribution.

The report starts off with Activision reporting that its overall sales strategy is focused on shifting as much effort to digital/internet sales as possible. This is no surprise of course, as the trend for gaming to shift away from shiny discs and towards downloads has been in place for a while now. Still, hearing Activision report that three-fourths of its revenue now comes from sales over the internet is jarring. But the really interesting stuff comes when Activision talks about how the internet has made it possible for a gaming company to go beyond making "games" and instead creating living, evolving game worlds for players to immerse themselves in.

Activision also said two of its newest games -- the space-age shooting game Destiny, and the digital card game Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft -- have accumulated more than 50 million registered users and are now responsible for more than $1 billion sales. Hearthstone, for tablets and smartphones, is offered for free to download, and makes its money by charging for upgrades and additional items over time. Destiny is also designed to get players spending money over the next ten years of its development by offering additional storylines and other items. Activision says Destiny's player base clocks around 3 hours of playtime a day.
The 11-year old World of Warcraft game is one of Activision's best known and longest-running active games. That has helped executives see the value in creating titles of all types that operate less as products burned onto physical discs and played over a short time to living titles, regularly expanded and updated over time. So far, it's paying off. Activision said a record 76 percent, or $538 million, of its total revenue came from sales over the Internet of full-game downloads and in-game adds-ons.

MMOs are not new. As the quote above notes, WoW is over a decade old. That said, gamemakers might have waited until recently to decide that evolving, online gaming worlds are going to be the new norm in gaming. The way Activision is talking about this sounds like the idea of making "games" is going to take a backseat to making evolving, always-running, decades-spanning game worlds in which the sales strategy will be an ongoing participation by gamers, rather than simply having them plunk down $40 at a retailer to take their shiny disk home and pop it into a console.

Activision isn't alone in this line of thinking.

This shift, though more dramatic with Activision, follows an industry trend with other large game makers, like Electronic Arts and Take-Two Interactive, which have both seen consistent boosts to sales over the Internet in recent quarters. These companies are beginning to see success in the games industry as less a matter of selling the most units and more a question of how to get gamers to play a single game for longer -- and spending real money in the virtual worlds as well.

Ten years ago, the method for measuring the play time in gaming was measured in hours. Ten hours was a short game, twenty was about average, and a forty-hour game was massive. Now game developers are looking to measure game time in years, not hours. It's a massive shift in business models.

This isn't to say that the more traditional "game" is immediately going away, of course. Activision is still going to pump out Call of Duty games, and is even reportedly looking to revive the Guitar Hero brand. But this sort of reminds me of how it felt at the start of the adventure game decline fifteen or so years back. They didn't die off immediately, or at all, really. Instead, the industry just slowly stopped making as many of them, bit by bit, until the point-and-click adventure game became the niche market it is today. Will old-fashioned "games" follow the same trajectory? The money trend seems to indicate it might.

Mitochondrial “Collateral Damage” Thanks to Big Pharma

Iatrogenic Drug and Vaccine-induced Mitochondrial Disorders

By Dr. Gary G. Kohls

Global Research, May 06, 2015

Theme: Science and Medicine

“Mitochondrial damage is now understood to play a role in a wide range of seemingly unrelated disorders such as schizophrenia, diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, chronic fatigue syndrome, and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis. Recently it has become known that iatrogenic (physician or treatment-caused) mitochondrial damage explains many adverse reactions from medications.” – John Neustadt, MD and Steven Pieczenik, MD

“All classes of psychotropic drugs have been documented to damage mitochondria, as have statin medications, analgesics such as acetaminophen, and many others.” – John Neustadt, MD and Steven Pieczenik, MD

Several years ago I attended a conference that was sponsored by the United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation (UMDF), an organization which seems to be a combination patient advocacy group and a funding organization for mitochondrial researchers.

The conference centered entirely upon the rare congenital/inherited forms of mitochondrial disorders that are first diagnosed in infancy and which comprise about 10 – 15 % of cases of known mitochondrial disorders.

Nothing was said by the presenters about the 85 – 90 % of acquired forms of mitochondrial disorders, which could, of course, be preventable if knowledge of the root causes were transmitted to us physicians and patients.

During the Q & A, a mitochondrial research scientist in the audience got up and talked about a colleague of his that had written an academic paper that identified 72 commonly-prescribed drugs that were mitochondrial poisons. He mentioned Pfizer’s Lipitor and Zoloft as two examples. The author had not been able to get her paper published, and I have found no evidence that it was ever published. No comments were forthcoming from the UMDF expert that was leading the conference, and the discussion went back to the rare hereditary forms of the disease.

Being naturally suspicious of “experts” who may have professional or financial conflicts of interest, my curiosity was aroused; so I talked to the researcher who raised the obviously unwelcome question. He gave me his email address, but my several attempts to contact him by email failed to get any response. I later discovered that the researcher had at one time received research grants from Pfizer.

Ever since that suspicious episode I have maintained an interest in mitochondrial disorders, and since then I have discovered many articles in the basic science literature that have dealt with drug and vaccine-induced mitochondrial disorders, none of which ever gets published in the mainstream medical journals, at least those that take advertising money from pharmaceutical companies.

Interestingly, UMDF has a convenient privacy policy that keeps it from revealing who are their donors, although five pharmaceutical or genetic testing companies (Reata, Transgenomic, Courtagen, Raptor and Stealth BioTherapeutics) have their logos displayed, but no discussion about acquired or iatrogenic mitochondrial disorders could be found on its website. I could find only one statement (on www.Mitoaction.org’s website) about non-inherited mitochondrial disorders. It said that “Medicines or other toxic substances can trigger mitochondrial disease.” No elaboration or links to more information were provided. I smelled a rat, and so should we all.

So this Duty to Warn column is about the multitude of common iatrogenic (drug- or doctor-caused) diseases that can be caused by the commonly prescribed drugs and/or commonly injected vaccine ingredients that are making many of us highly drugged, malnourished, environmentally-toxic and also thoroughly vaccinated. We Americans (infants, children, adolescents and adults) are among the sickest, most chronically-ill people in the developed world.

I include excerpts from just three examples from a multitude of peer-reviewed medical journal articles that have been trying to tell us clinicians (and our most aware patients) that there are many common, preventable disorders that the powers-that-be want us to believe are either the fault of the patient-victim (“shame-on-you”) or are simply inherited from our guilty parents (and thus neither preventable nor curable).

Many of these disorders (see list below) are actually caused by prescription drugs, vaccines and/or other toxic chemicals that are poisoning the mitochondria in our brains, nerves, muscles and other organs. Thus we are being afflicted by preventable, iatrogenic- or industry-caused diseases. Both realities are taboo subjects in the current era of mind-control by America’s powerful, profit-motivated, multinational corporations in BigPharma, BigChemical, BigMedicine, BigMedia, BigFood and BigAgribusiness industries. That pervasive group prefers our ignorance, and each of them spends unlimited amounts of money to ensure it.

The avarice of these industries for larger market-share, higher share price, bigger profits, lower wages and more aggressive wealth extraction knows no bounds, and their brain-disabling products makes their goals ever easier to attain.

The first excerpt below is about the injectable, toxic aluminum adjuvants that have been added to virtually all infant and adult vaccines for the past 70+ years There is no safe dose of aluminum or mercury, and neither have any nutritional value. (Aluminum is poorly absorbed when swallowed [0.5% absorption] but is 100% absorbed into the blood stream when injected.) The CDC/AAP (American Academy of Pediatrics)-mandated immunization schedule ensures that a total of nearly 5,000 micrograms of the mitochondrial toxin aluminum will be injected into the average American baby by the time he or she reaches 18 months (before which, by the way, is when many of the alleged “inherited” mitochondrial diseases become manifest)!

The second excerpt talks about how poisonous mercury is to the mitochondria that are in human brain, nerve, muscle and body cells. Over the last 20 years there have been at least a hundred peer-reviewed medical journal articles that have been warning physicians about the neurotoxicity of mercury, the second-most toxic metal known to man (plutonium is first).

Mercury, in the form of Eli Lilly & Company’s Thimerosal, has been in most infant and adult vaccines for several generations and was only removed from a number – but not all – of them when the AAP pleaded with the vaccine manufacturers to remove it from all vaccines because many concerned pediatricians were rightfully convinced that the rapidly escalating autism epidemic was at least partially caused by the rapidly escalating dosing of vaccines: and they were correct. But the neurotoxic aluminum, often given in multiple inoculations simultaneously, remained in the over-vaccination schedule, and the epidemic of chronic, autoimmune disorders among fully vaccinated children continued.

Nevertheless, the pharmaceutical companies, the CDC and the AAP continue to recommend annual (aluminum and mercury-containing) flu shots for immature, immune-vulnerable, brain-undeveloped babies as young as 6 months of age, and for their pregnant mothers! What could possibly go wrong? One must ask: who are the benefactors and who are the victims?

The third article below consist of extracts from a literature review of the subject of mitochondrial damage and the role of medications, chemicals, pesticides, metals, drugs, vaccine ingredients and other mitochondrial poisons that put every cell in our bodies at increased risk of permanent damage. It is titled “Medication-induced Mitochondrial Damage and Disease”. Alarmingly, no mitochondrial patient advocacy website that I could find has links to this or any of the scores of articles that discuss acquired or iatrogenic mitochondrial disorders. Go figure.

1) Aluminum-induced Defective Mitochondrial Metabolism Perturbs Cytoskeletal Dynamics in Human Astrocytoma Cells

By  J. Lemire, R. Mailloux, S. Puiseux-Dao, and V. D. Appanna

Published in the Journal of Neuroscience Research 87:1474–1483 (2009) 

Posted at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jnr.21965/abstract

Abstract

Although aluminum (Al), a known environmental toxin, has been implicated in a variety of neurological disorders, the molecular mechanism responsible for these conditions is not fully understood. In this report, we demonstrate the ability of Al to trigger mitochondrial dysfunction and ineffective adenosine triphosphate (ATP) production. This situation severely affected cytoskeletal dynamics. Whereas the control cells had well-defined structures, the Al-exposed astrocytoma cells appeared as globular structures. Creatine kinase (CK) and profilin-2, two critical modulators of cellular morphology, were markedly diminished in the astrocytoma cells treated with Al. Antioxidants such as a-ketoglutarate and N-acetylcysteine (NAC) mitigated the occurrence of the globular-shaped cells promoted by Al toxicity. Taken together, these data reveal an intricate link between ATP metabolism and astrocytic dysfunction and provide molecular insights into the pathogenesis of Al-induced neurological diseases.

2) Thimerosal-Derived Ethylmercury Is a Mitochondrial Toxin in Human Astrocytes

By M. A. Sharpe, A. D. Livingston, and D. S. Baskin – Published online 6/28/2012 in the Journal of Toxicology, (posted at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3395253/)

Abstract

Thimerosal generates ethylmercury in aqueous solution and is widely used as a (bactericidal) preservative. We have investigated the toxicology of Thimerosal in normal human astrocytes, paying particular attention to mitochondrial function and the generation of specific oxidants. We find that ethylmercury not only inhibits mitochondrial respiration leading to a drop in the steady state membrane potential, but also concurrent with these phenomena increases the formation of superoxide, hydrogen peroxide, and Fenton/Haber-Weiss generated hydroxyl radical. These oxidants increase the levels of cellular aldehyde/ketones. Additionally, we find a five-fold increase in the levels of oxidant damaged mitochondrial DNA bases and increases in the levels of mtDNA nicks and blunt-ended breaks. Highly damaged mitochondria are characterized by having very low membrane potentials, increased superoxide/hydrogen peroxide production, and extensively damaged mtDNA and proteins. These mitochondria appear to have undergone a permeability transition, an observation supported by the five-fold increase in Caspase-3 activity observed after Thimerosal treatment.

Introduction

Thimerosal is a preservative that is widely used in medical products, including as a preservative in vaccines, immunoglobulin preparations, skin test antigens, antivenins, ophthalmic and nasal products, and tattoo inks, and is composed of 49.6 percent ethylmercury by weight. The widespread use of Thimerosal exposes many to its potential toxic effects, especially in  utero and in neonates. We report the results of a series of experiments using cultured normal human astrocytes (NHA) exposed to Thimerosal to study the compound’s effect on astrocyte mitochondria.

Oxidative Stress and Brain

The brain utilizes 20% of the oxygen consumed by the body but constitutes only 2% of the body’s mass. <<snip>>

3) Medication-induced Mitochondrial Damage and Disease

By John Neustadt and Steve R. Pieczeni

Published in Molecular Nutrition and Food Research. 2008, 52, pp 780 – 788

This article is posted in its entirety at: http://psychrights.org/research/Digest/NLPs/DrugsCauseMitochondrialDamage.PDF

Abstract

Since the first mitochondrial dysfunction was described in the 1960s, the medicine has advanced in its understanding the role mitochondria play in health and disease. Damage to mitochondria is now understood to play a role in the pathogenesis of a wide range of seemingly unrelated disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disease, dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy, migraine headaches, strokes, neuropathic pain, Parkinson’s disease, ataxia, transient ischemic attack, cardiomyopathy, coronary artery disease, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, retinitis pigmentosa, diabetes, hepatitis C, and primary biliary cirrhosis.

Medications have now emerged as a major cause of mitochondrial damage, which may explain many adverse effects.

All classes of psychotropic drugs have been documented to damage mitochondria, as have statin medications, analgesics such as acetaminophen, and many others. While targeted nutrient therapies using antioxidants or their precursors (e. g., N-acetylcysteine [NAC]) hold promise for improving mitochondrial function, there are large gaps in our knowledge. The most rational approach is to understand the mechanisms underlying mitochondrial damage for specific medications and attempt to counteract their deleterious effects with nutritional therapies. This article reviews our basic understanding of how mitochondria function and how medications damage mitochondria to create their occasionally fatal adverse effects.

Introduction

Mitochondria are the powerhouses of our cells. They are responsible for generating energy… <<snip>> …mitochondria are the only other subcellular structure aside from the nucleus to contain DNA. However, unlike nuclear DNA (nDNA), mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) are not protected by histones. nDNA wraps around histones, which then physically shield the DNA from damaging free radicals and are also required to repair DNA breaks. Since mtDNA lacks the structural protection of histones and their repair mechanisms, they are quite susceptible to damage. <<snip>>

Mitochondria Structure and Function

Cellular energy requirements control how many mitochondria are in each cell. A single somatic cell can contain from 200 to 2000 mitochondria, while human germ cells such as spermatozoa contain a fixed number of 16 mitochondria and oocytes have up to 100 000. The largest number of mitochondria are found in the most metabolically active cells, such as skeletal and cardiac muscle and the liver and brain. Mitochondria are found in every human cell except mature erythrocytes (red blood cells).

Acquired Conditions in which Mitochondrial Dysfunction has been Implicated (as of 2007

Diabetes

Huntington’s disease

Cancer including hepatitis-C virus-associated hepatocarcinogenesis

Alzheimer disease

Parkinson’s disease

Bipolar disorder

Schizophrenia

Aging and senescence

Anxiety disorders

Nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH – late stage of nonalcoholic fatty infiltration of the liver)

Cardiovascular disease, including atherosclerosis

Sarcopenia (muscle-wasting disease, mainly of the elderly)

Exercise intolerance

Fatigue, including chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, and myofascial pain

Medications Documented to Induce Mitochondrial Damage (as of 2007)

http://psychrights.org/research/Digest/NLPs/DrugsCauseMitochondrialDamage.PDF

Alcoholism medications Ex: Antabuse

Alzheimer’s dementia drugs Ex: Tacrine (Cognex), Galantamine

Analgesics (for pain) and anti-inflammatory drugs, Ex: Aspirin, acetaminophen (Tylenol), indomethacin, Naproxen

Anesthetics Ex: lidocaine, propofol (also general anesthetics likehalothane. isoflurane, sevoflurane)

Angina medications Ex: amiodarone

Antiarrhythmic (regulates heartbeat) Ex: amiodarone (also beta blockers)

Antibiotics Ex: tetracycline (also chloramphenicol, Cipro)

Antidepressants Ex: amitriptyline, citalopram (Celexa), fluoxetine (Prozac, Symbyax, Sarafem)

Antipsychotics Ex: chlorpromazine, fluphenazine, haloperidol, risperidone, quetiapine, clozapine, olanzapine

Anxiety medications Ex: (Every benzodiazepine), including alprazolam (Xanax), diazepam (valium)

Barbiturates Ex: amobarbital, phenobarbital, pentobarbital, , propofol, secobarbital

Cholesterol-lowering medications Ex: All statins – atorvastatin, fluvastatin, lovastatin, pravastatin, rosuvastatin (Crestor), simvastatin, cholestyramine, clofibrate (Atromid-S)

Cancer (chemotherapy) medications Ex: Mitomycin C, profiromycin, adriamycin

Diabetes medications Ex: metformin, Glucophage, troglitazone, rosiglitazone, buformin

HIV/AIDS medications Ex: (AZT, zidovudine)

Epilepsy/Seizure medications Ex: valproic acid (Depakene, depakote, divalproex sodium)

Mood stabilizers Ex: lithium

Parkinson’s disease medications

Vaccine Ingredients Ex: Mercury, aluminum, ethylene glycol

Mechanisms of Mitochondria-induced Injury

Damage to mitochondria is caused primarily by reactive oxygen species (ROS) generated by the mitochondria themselves. <<snip>>

As a medical concern, hyperglycemia induces mitochondrial superoxide production by endothelial cells, which is an important mediator of diabetic complications such as cardiovascular disease. Endothelial superoxide production also contributes to atherosclerosis, hypertension, heart failure, aging, sepsis, ischemia-reperfusion injury, and hypercholesterolemia. Inflammatory mediators such as tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-a) have been associated in vitro with mitochondrial dysfunction and increased ROS generation. <<snip>>

Vitamins, minerals, and other metabolites act as necessary cofactors for the synthesis and function of mitochondrial enzymes and other compounds that support mitochondrial function, and diets deficient in micronutrients can accelerate mitochondrial decay and contribute to neurodegeneration. For example, enzymes in the pathway for hemoglobin synthesis require adequate amounts of pyridoxine, iron, copper, zinc, and riboflavin. Deficiencies of any component of the TCA cycle or ETC can lead to increased production of free radicals and mtDNA damage. For example, low iron status decreases mitochondrial activity by causing a loss of complex IV and increasing oxidative stress.

Medication-induced Mitochondrial Damage

Mitochondrial dysfunction is increasingly implicated in the etiology of drug-induced toxicities, but mitochondrial toxicity testing is still not required by the US FDA for drug approval. Mitochondria can be damaged both directly and indirectly by medications.

Conclusions

Since the first mitochondrial dysfunction was described in the 1960s, the central role mitochondria play in health and disease has been widely documented. Mitochondrial damage is now understood to play a role in a wide range of seemingly unrelated disorders such as schizophrenia, diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, chronic fatigue syndrome, and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (late-stage fatty infiltration of the liver).

Recently it has become known that iatrogenic mitochondrial damage explains many adverse reactions from medications. Mitochondrial toxicity testing as part of the preapproval process for medications may help protect the public by identifying the most toxic medications before they are allowed to reach the market. By understanding the mechanisms underlying drug-induced mitochondrial damage, it may be possible to develop nutritional strategies to decrease the potentially toxic effects of medications.

While targeted nutrient therapies using antioxidants or their precursors (e. g., N-acetylcysteine [NAC]) holds promise for improving mitochondrial function, there are large gaps in our knowledge. The most rational approach is to understand the mechanisms underlying mitochondrial damage for specific medications, and attempt to counteract their deleterious effects with nutritional therapies. While randomized, controlled trials are lacking in this regard, they hopefully will be designed and conducted in coming years so that clinicians will have a clearer understanding of how to best protect and treat their patients.

Dr Kohls is a retired physician who practiced holistic mental health care for the last decade of his career. Virtually all of his patients exhibited iatrogenic (prescription drug-related) syndromes such as are mentioned in the article above. In retrospect, those patients were actually manifesting iatrogenic mitochondrial diseases. His practice mainly consisted of helping his patients, through brain nutrient therapy, psycho-educational psychotherapy and the gradual reduction or elimination of the psychotropic medications that were sickening them. He now writes a weekly column for the Reader Weekly, an alternative newsweekly published in Duluth, Minnesota, USA. Many of Dr Kohls’ columns are archived at http://duluthreader.com/articles/categories/200_Duty_to_Warn.

Apple Trying To Kill Off Spotify's Free Tier; DOJ Now Investigating For Antitrust   ~   Lol don't worry folks  ... "a"  got's  our back  ..... er errr um   ah oh  or  yer  bare ass ?  Oops :O

from the tempting-the-anti-trust-gods dept

Remember a few years ago when Apple got in trouble for conspiring with book publishers to raise ebook prices to hurt Amazon and the public? Apparently the company hasn't learned very much. Today comes a report from the Verge, claiming that the DOJ is now investigating Apple for conspiring with the major record labels to get them to kill off Spotify's free tier, in an effort to better promote its own Beats Music service, which has no free tier.

Apple has been using its considerable power in the music industry to stop the music labels from renewing Spotify’s license to stream music through its free tier. Spotify currently has 60 million listeners, but only 15 million of them are paid users. Getting the music labels to kill the freemium tiers from Spotify and others could put Apple in prime position to grab a large swath of new users when it launches its own streaming service, which is widely expected to feature a considerable amount of exclusive content. "All the way up to Tim Cook, these guys are cutthroat," one music industry source said.

And it's not just Spotify. Apparently, Apple was trying to get labels to pull music from YouTube too:

Sources also indicated that Apple offered to pay YouTube’s music licensing fee to Universal Music Group if the label stopped allowing its songs on YouTube. Apple is seemingly trying to clear a path before its streaming service launches, which is expected to debut at WWDC in June. If Apple convinces the labels to stop licensing freemium services from Spotify and YouTube, it could take out a significant portion of business from its two largest music competitors.

This is fascinating for a few reasons, even beyond Apple's antitrust troubles over ebooks. In fact, there's some history here as well. A few years ago, there was an investigation, after Apple tried to pressure the labels into killing off daily deals that they were offering to Amazon, as it harmed Apple's iTunes business.

And, of course, there's the long history of the labels' relationship with Apple for much of the first decade of the millennium. Almost exactly a decade ago, we wrote about how the music labels all resented Apple because it had become such a dominant force in music with iTunes and the iPod (this was pre-iPhone) and had (for a while, at least) blocked the labels from trying to raise the price of single tracks beyond the original $0.99 price point. Of course, it's quite a sign of how the online music industry has shifted from downloads to streaming that those labels are apparently now working with Apple to focus on trying to stop competitors like Spotify and YouTube.

Just a month or so ago, we noted that there had been a series of articles claiming that the labels themselves were conspiring to put an end to free tiers on Spotify and other services, and we pointed out how stupid this was (mainly in the context of Jay-Z's new "Tidal" service). Bringing Apple into the game as well just makes the whole thing that much more ridiculous.

Rather than trying to build a better experience for users and give them more value, it appears that the labels and Apples are looking to decrease the value of competitors through coordinated action. It really says something -- and not something good -- when a company thinks the only way to compete in the market place is to kneecap competitors rather than build a better service itself. Competition has shown that great services can be built when they actually do focus on what consumers want. And there's still a long way to go. Spotify still has significant problems, but it's pretty good right now. It's astounding that Apple and the labels think that the right solution is not to build an even better product, but rather to make everyone else's products worse. Once again, it makes you wonder if they actually want to drive consumers back to completely unauthorized services.

And here's the thing that's really bizarre: why should Apple care about this at all? Apple is a hardware business. Even when iTunes was dominant, people at Apple would quietly admit that it was considered a "loss leader" or maybe a "breakeven leader" with the focus on selling more hardware. The same should be true of a streaming music service. Beats can make iPhones even more valuable -- and one way to do that is by offering a free streaming tier. Why Apple wants to take away its own value seems like a strategic error all around -- not just for consumers and competitors, but for itself as well.