Part 3 of the Debunking of the Full-Length Thrive Movie.
This is Part III of the first debunking done on the full-length Thrive movie. There will be additional debunking material that is more detailed, both on the full movie and on various individual aspects of it, posted later. This debunking is not by me, but by gabrieltech (SlayerX3), a contributor to this blog. If you missed Part I, here it is, and here is Part II.
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Free Energy suppression: “Follow the Money.”
The Oil & Energy Empires:
Summarizing this part, Gamble states that the power, money and influence of major energy and oil corporations like Standard Oil, BP, Texaco, Exxon Mobil and specially the Rockefellers have been suppressing alternative free energy sources to protect their profits.
I don’t think they need to suppress something that doesn’t work.
[Muertos comment: Gamble’s assertion that free energy is being “suppressed” is based on a handful of extremely spurious “examples.” As described in Part II of the debunking, the claims that various “free energy” scientists have had their labs ransacked or have even been murdered do not stand up to scrutiny. In short, there is no evidence of suppression at all. Everything in the Thrive movie about is unsourced, anecdotal, or unrelated–for example, the murder of Eugene Mallove, which in fact had nothing to do with his energy work.]
The green revolution:
Gamble states that with the power acquired from the Rockefeller Oil Empire and the creation of oil based fertilizers and pesticides, Rockefeller also controls our food as well.
He later talks about the 1960’s and 1970’s green revolution and his disappointment towards it, saying it used massive amounts of fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides yet it wasn’t able to end world hunger and the US farmers received billions of dollars in subsides.
Hunger claim:
It’s commonly accepted among the economist and humanitarian groups that the world hunger is not caused by the insufficient production of food, but by improper food distribution caused by poverty, governmental policies and military conflict and more recently climate change. These are the main reasons why the African continent and South Asian countries and the like are plagued by hunger: the population is barred access to food due to economic disparity, policies that benefit the nation’s elites and war. Blaming the industrial food production method for the world hunger is another one of Gamble’s attempts to make the viewer think that industrial groups are the sole agents responsible for the hunger problem.
Link: Does the world produce enough food to feed everyone?
Production cost and subsides:
For starters, industrial fertilizers are cheaper and more efficient (not less harmful, but that is arguable) in producing crops with higher yield per acre. The issue with those is not the chemical themselves but the manner they are being used, which sometimes leads to over fertilizing and scorching the ground. There is also a tendency to use massive amounts of land to grow crops, which tends to reduce the yield when compared to smaller crops (that is a management issue, not a technological one), yet the cost of production is very low when compared to all organic farms and crops, while the yields are higher per acre when compared to the latter.
http://www.eolss.net/Sample-Chapters/C08/E3-18-04-03.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_agriculture
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertilizer
Gamble cites the subsides paid to US farmers as evidence of inefficiency, yet this doesn’t explain why crops and farms in South America, Asia, Africa and Europe who use the same techniques are economically viable and profitable. There are somewhat obvious reasons why the US farmers receive subsides from the US government, and I’m sure Mr. Gamble missed them on purpose.
- First, they receive the subsides because there is a bill that permits US agricultural producers to receive monetary help regardless of need or not. This bill predates the Great Depression started by the 1929 stock market crash in order to stabilize prices and elevate the crops’ value.
- Second, the US farms are in direct competition with other emerging nations’ agricultural industries, most notably from the BRIC block (Brazil, Russia, India and China). Several factors ranging from geographical advantages to currency exchange rates give some countries, especially Brazil and India, a major edge in food exportation to US and Europe. Not only US but the EU also uses subsides to shield their local producers from cheaper products coming from developing nations.
It’s also worth mentioning that the World Trade Organization along with the G8 and G20 discuss on a regular basis the subsides from US and EU producers. This is a matter of competition rather than alleged inefficiency (not really the type that Gamble implies).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._farm_bill
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food,_Conservation,_and_Energy_Act_of_2008
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_subsidy#United_States
Family Farming:
More than anything else the fall of the family farmer is tied to income. Mostly outside US, especially in developing countries, rural workers migrate to cities in the search for better job opportunities, with the well-paying jobs being localized in urban areas. This leaves little room for family farming to sustain, well a family.
Inside US is another story, and is more tied to the higher industrial demand where larger farms have a better ability to deliver and supply the commercial demand.
http://www.usda.gov/factbook/chapter3.htm
Loss of bio diversity and environmental harm:
A broken clock is right twice a day. Do I really need to explain that predatory human action in nature does almost every kind of harm?
On a note, since agro toxics tend to remain in the superficial skin of vegetables, a simple wash is able to remove most of the harmful chemicals. Also on the production line food does receive baths and other processes to remove harmful chemicals (the ethical companies do that at least).
Vandana Shiva:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandana_Shiva
A prominent figure in ecoactivism and ecofeminism, and perhaps one of the most respectable people to feature in Thrive, even though I don’t agree with most of her views. She discusses the use of GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms) and Free Trade Treaties.
First definition of GMOs: “is an organism whose genetic material has been altered using genetic engineering techniques. These techniques, generally known as recombinant DNA technology, use DNA molecules from different sources, which are combined into one molecule to create a new set of genes. This DNA is then transferred into an organism, giving it modified or novel genes. Transgenic organisms, a subset of GMOs, are organisms which have inserted DNA that originated in a different species.”
The top 5 users of GMO crops are (by area, in millions of Hectares, data from 2006): USA (54.6), Argentina (18.0) Brazil (11.5) Canada (6.1) China (3.5) and Paraguay (2.0).
The debate on the use of GMOs is very controversial from the scientific, economic and sociological point of views, with discussions about the safety, gains, access and health benefits and dangers related to the use of GMOs.
Shiva focuses in the social repercussions of the GMOs in Thrive, mostly because of the seed patenting, sterile seeds and exclusion of impoverished producers.
There’s an uproar against the seed patenting among environmentalists. Quoting Shiva “patenting seed and patenting life as a way of control, declaring seeds to be private property”.
The main issue is that GMOs do not occur naturally in nature and are products of extensive research and genetic manipulation to modify or enhance living organisms such as plants and add or remove traits. Currently only major companies and well-funded research agencies are able to create GMO seeds. This excludes the majority of the small producers because they don’t have enough capital to purchase these type of seeds and because they would be at a serious disadvantage when competing with the producers that purchased GMOs.
Patenting is a way to ensure other companies don’t copy the designed GMOs and trade them as their own. This is a very common practice in business and industry to avoid intellectual theft, but the impact in common producers is that they can’t trade the GMO seeds they acquired, as this would be considered theft. This brings us to another practice.
The “Terminator” control mechanisms–this is a control mechanism that has several purposes. The Terminator seeds only generate plants whose seeds are sterile. This is done first to avoid cross pollinating, and second to prevent spreading of GMOs in foreign environments.
Another and less noble practice depends solely on ethics as the producer would be tied to the GMO supplier forever. The producer wouldn’t be able to harvest new seeds from his current crop and will be forced to acquire directly from his supplier. From a social point of view this is horrible since it ties small producers to major groups and doesn’t give them much freedom to handle their own affairs.
The third practice is intended to prevent further generations of GMO seeds from being sold by farmers. This generates two main disadvantages for the company that designed and produced the GMO: (1) they can’t control the spread and cross breeding of their product (since this could generate undesired effects, the legal and public relations fallout could be enormous) and (2) their product would be spread without granting them the royalties associated with their patents.
It’s easy to see why Shiva doesn’t sympathize with GMOs as she aims for what she believes is best for the impoverished population, and those technologies when used unethically could cause great harm to people.
(I was really disappointed when I found out the Terminator technology wasn’t about kill bots!)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_organism
http://www.bc.cas.cz/en/MOBITAG.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_food_controversies
http://bmb.oxfordjournals.org/content/56/1/62.full.pdf+html
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol4/iss1/art13/#ComparisontoIntroducedSpecies
Free Trade Treaties:
Shiva points out that free trade treaties exclude common people, but this happens by design as free trade treaties allow major producers to export and import products and goods without many drawbacks from taxes, tariffs and bureaucracies.
Since major companies have the resources to organize, administrate and supply higher demands along with transporting their products, they receive the upper hand in free trade treaties.
The impact of this is that smaller producers and traders can’t compete with major groups and lose both internal and external markets to cheaper products. Although free trade treaties can benefit economies from a global point of view, they tend to ruin local economies that aren’t properly shielded or adapted to compete with the new economic environment. (This is the case when some governments and union groups adopt subsides or other protectionist measures to prevent this scenario from happening).
http://www.ehow.com/about_5452992_negative-impact-trade.htmlv
http://www.twnside.org.sg/title2/gtrends68.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_trade
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_trade_area
Quote: “Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world.” – Henry Kissinger.
I couldn’t find any paper, interview, video, press conference or anything that had evidence or source claiming or showing that Henry Kissinger actually said that, but it’s quite common in end the Fed and other anti-capitalism sites and forums.
And it was surprisingly similar to George Orwell’s 1984 Ingsoc slogans.
[Muertos comment: it is very common in conspiracy theorist circles for a completely made-up quote, usually from a distrusted figure like Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzesinski, George H.W. Bush, etc. to gain the appearance of being true simply by the number of times it is quoted by like-minded conspiracy theorist websites. This is particularly frustrating when you try to argue with a conspiracy theorist that there is no proof the person actually said this, and the theorist responds with a dozen examples of unreliable sites all quoting each other and containing the unsourced and false quote. The quote also does not have to be totally false; sometimes it can be a partially true quote that is taken out of context, such as George H.W. Bush’s 1991 speech including the unfortunate words “New World Order” (unfortunate because it saddles us debunkers for the rest of time to listen to conspiracy theorists telling us how this supposedly proves the “New World Order” exists, even though it does not, and even though Bush was talking about something completely different. That will likely be the subject of another blog post.]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Kissinger
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Henry_Kissinger
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Henry_Kissinger
After Henry’s (mis)quoting, Gamble reaffirms that elite banking groups and their corporations control energy and food.
Patterns of control:
[A full debunking of this section is coming in the future.]
National Education Association:
I wasn’t able to tie the foundation of the NEA either with the Rockefeller family or with the Carnegie and Ford families, but those entities did invest and donated money to the NEA, especially because they were lobbying for bills that provided tax cuts to companies that invested in philanthropic projects and foundations. And during the 1920 and 1930s USA had a dire need for more qualified workers and access to a trained workforce was crucial for companies to expand.
But the point is simple: there is no conclusive evidence that those companies control the NEA.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Education_Association
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_Corporation_of_New_York
John Taylor Gatto:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Taylor_Gatto
Gatto is a former professor and writer. He claims that compulsory schooling indoctrinates children and leaves them more susceptible to authority. He also defends homeschooling.
Gamble states that the education system was set to create a docile, consumer and obedient workforce.
I guess it’s not working.
The American Medical Association:
[A full debunking of this section is coming in the future.]
John Robbins:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Robbins_%28author%29, http://www.johnrobbins.info/
Robbins is the author of several books on health and food including the award winning Diet for a New America. In his brief appearance he points out how the material distributed to doctors and medical school students on the subject of nutrition are from food industries that profit from unhealthy eating habits. He mentions the National Dairy Council, Beef USA and the American Sugar Association.
I can’t properly comment on this since I have no easy access to medical school curriculum material.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dairy_Council_of_California
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2430660/
http://www.ajcn.org/content/72/3/868S.full
http://www.nationaldairycouncil.org/Pages/Home.aspx
[Muertos comment: this is the type of claim that can never really be substantiated. Unless Robbins or Gamble specifically identify the material they’re talking about, we have no way of checking it. This is an insidious way of sneaking an un-verifiable claim into the movie.]
Soon after this part of the film, Deepak Chopra states that the pharmaceutical corporations make profits using the AMA and other medical centers to promote their products by selling from doctors and physicians to their patients.
Deepak Chopra:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepak_Chopra
An Indian physician, Deepak Chopra is known for many of his self-help books, new age spiritualism and alternate medicine.
He is a critic of the current system of medicine in the western world, and his ideas revolve around the use of quantum mysticism and spirituality to improve health and cure diseases.
Author note: I admit that a clean state of mind does help and can improve your health, but finding a licensed doctor for a more objective diagnosis is crucial. Personally I think that alternate medicine is as good as a placebo but don’t let people undermine modern doctors and medicine in favor for exotic, esoteric and alternative treatments. Those can cost lives.
Gamble then talks how the cure for diseases has been suppressed the same way free energy has, and then he introduces the viewer to the “well documented example” of Royal Raymond Rife.
R. Royal Raymond Rife:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_raymond_rife
Yet another inventor who was more of a scam artist than a scientist, Dr. Rife became famous for his “cancer curing machine” using electromagnetism that he claimed was able not only to cure cancer but other infectious diseases. This was during the 1930s when electricity and magnetism were still being studied. During that time many inventors and scam artists used those to sell miracle machines using buzz words and techno babble to convince people of its properties, but this time Rife got the cake.
After other scientists failed to reproduce the same results using Rife’s technique and machines, the scientific community started to reject Rife’s devices and ideas on cancer. Rife blamed the rejection of his devices on a conspiracy that consisted of accusations that the AMA and other medical organizations were behind the failures.
After the accusations of medical fraud, Rife’s lab was destroyed in a fire, probably arson by Rife himself to prevent investigations of his lab from revealing him as a complete fraud.
Today and then, Rife is considered nothing more than a scam artist and his devices are regarded as nothing but pseudoscience by the scientific community.
During the 1980s several scam artist started using Rife-based machines to sell miracle cures, once again causing health problems for those who tried to treat serious diseases, like cancer, with them.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.3322/canjclin.44.2.115/pdf
http://www.healthwatcher.net/Quackerywatch/Cancer/Cancer-news/smh001230rife-aus.html
http://www.devicewatch.org/reports/aquadetox.shtml
Kimberly C. Gamble later makes an emotional appeal using the cancer history in her family. Then she proceeds to make links between cancer treatment patents by corporations and the suppression of alternative cancer treatments that worked and which didn’t leave the patient tied to the treatment, citing Rene Cassie, Max Gerson and Hoxsey therapy as examples.
Rene Cassie:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essiac
Cassie is a Canadian nurse who is claimed to have found herbs from whose tea can cure and prevent cancer. During the 1970’s up until now, several medical laboratories tested the efficiency of her ESSIAC tea and concluded it isn’t effective at curing cancer and in some cases it stimulated the cancer growth.
Cassie was prosecuted for practicing medicine without a license. Many of the people who were treated and “cured” from cancer using ESSIAC were found not to have had cancer at all but were misdiagnosed instead.
ESSIAC can’t be sold as a treatment for cancer but it can be sold as food supplement.
http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/cancer.html#Essiac
http://quotations.hubpages.com/hub/Essiac-Tea-Does-It-Work-For-Cancer
Max Gerson:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Gerson
Gerson is a german physician that created the Gerson therapy. It consists of special diets aimed to relieve the body from toxic residues. He made several claims that his method cured cancer during the 1950s but medical tests proved no direct relation to his therapy and curing cancer.
Quoting Wikipedia:
“Gerson’s therapy required the patient to consume a vegetarian diet and to drink a 250-milliliter (8-ounce) glass of fresh organic juices every waking hour. Coffee and castor oil enemas were among several types of prescribed enemas, and some patients were given hydrogen peroxide orally and rectally. Rectal ozone was also applied. Dietary supplements include vitamin C and iodine. The diet prohibited the drinking of water and consumption of berries and nuts, as well as use of aluminium vessels or utensils.”
If you read the last two sentences it’s easy to see why his therapy was found to be dangerous and even deadly, as it can lead to dehydration, infections and other health problems.
http://cancertreatmentwatch.org/reports/gerson.shtml
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/cam/gerson/patient
http://www.post-gazette.com/regionstate/19990409davis4.asp
Hoxsey therapy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoxsey_Therapy
Another therapy involving the use of herbal formulas to treat and cure cancer. So far this therapy has been proven to be more harmful than helpful.
As the peer review of Hoxsey treatments showed, there was no evidence of the effectiveness of his therapy. He also had issues with the AMA, which he claimed was persecuting him.
Ironically he used his own therapy to treat his prostate cancer. Due to the failure of his own treatment he had to rely on conventional surgery to remove his cancer!
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.3322/canjclin.40.1.51/pdf
http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/WhatWeDo/History/ThisWeek/ucm117863.htm
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[More debunking of Thrive to come!]
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Thrive Debunked 
Enjoying this blog so far. Been following since the start.
I’m tired and may not be thinking clearly but “These are the main reasons why the African continent and South Asian countries like are plagued by hunger” Appears to be missing a word or punctuation.
Keep up the good work, guys.
Fixed.
Most of the time conspiracy theorists make things more complex then it actually is, but in terms of this food problems, their claims are actually less complex then what it actually is (although not much more, and still a bunch of BS)
As for the medical quackery, this is probably the most dangerous part of the film, as it is promoting things that not only could get people killed, but actually has gotten people killed.
Excellent summary here of the fake cancer cures mentioned in Thrive. Indeed, one of the most dangerous and misleading parts of the movie, targeting emotionally vulnerable people with false promises. The Thrive Movement web site is also promoting Vitamin B17, aka Laetrile. Here is a brief history of Laetrile as a purported cure, which happens to metabolize to toxic hydrogen cyanide in the body, which resulted in several deaths from people attempting this treatment:
http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/Cancer/laetrile.html
Wikipedia has more citations of scientific studies debunking Laetrile therapy.
That hasn’t stopped Thrive star G. Edward Griffin from promoting this dangerous treatment:
I worked with someone back in ’06 who knew the Ontario nurse with the “cancer cure”, and it did not happen the way it was described on the Wiki site. I was also found the Kissinger quote on quite a number of sites that no political affiliation whatsoever, so…
It’s not a question of political affiliation, it’s a question of reliability. Do any of these sites research their material? Can they provide a time and place where this quote came from? If nothing else, could you link us to them?
” I worked with someone back in ’06 who knew the Ontario nurse with the “cancer cure”, and it did not happen the way it was described on the Wiki site”
What is described on Wikipedia is that Cassie sold the formula in 1977, and that testing showed no effect on cancer. What is your acquaintance claiming? That the sale did not happen? Or did they both know Cassie and people involved in the Lab tests after the sale?
Apparently Kissinger said it in 1970. Here’s a link, and it’s stated in the third paragraph (the one below Engdahl’s picture): http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7716
The person I worked with was of Aboriginal or Metis descent. At the time when the person was explaining the situation to me, I was interested in his conviction of the story, but I personally knew nothing about it at the time. All I remember the person saying is the women were made to “go away” when they presented their formula, and they never heard from them again.
Further to information on cancer, here’s another link with Wendy Mesley doing a documentary on cancer back in ’07: http://www.cbc.ca/marketplace/2007/03/marketplace_update.html
Being a breast cancer survivor herself, she went to find out what’s being done to combat cancer. I found it telling at the end of the documentary when she asked a doctor why isn’t there more of an effort to find a cure, and his answer was “it’s not financially viable”.
Globalresearch.ca is a conspiracy theorist site, and Engdahl is a conspiracy theorist author who believes in the “New World Order.” This source cannot be trusted.
An anecdote from a single cancer survivor also is not proof of the Thrive movie’s claims about cancer cures being “suppressed.” This is exactly the flimsy crap upon which conspiracy theorists base their unsupportable claims.
Sorry, Alex, neither of these things support your argument.
Essiac was on the market for 50 years before the sale in 1977. Even if we accept ‘she was made to go away’ as evidence of suppression, I would wonder why ‘they’ waited so long to step in.
No worries, muertos. It’s not up for me to convince you of anything really. I only know what I know with the evidence I’ve come across. I also understand the term “conspiracy theorists” have been given a bad name lately, and again I can’t do anything about that either.
However, I think the bigger question would be who would actually benefit from NOT finding a cure for cancer.
I think it’s good practice to be discerning of ALL information and draw conclusions with the facts retrieved.
Considering the biological mechanism of cancer, I think it explains why it’s so hard to find a cure.
I’m far from an expert but from my understanding cancer is when regular cell division in the body goes wrong. Some carcinogenic substance damages a cell or group of cells so they don’t know when to stop growing and reproducing. Cancer cells are fairly close to normal cells.
To me, this makes sense. Any sort of treatment for cancer has to kill these fast growing cells, while somehow not killing the surrounding, healthy cells. I’d imagine that’s pretty difficult.
It also, to me means that if you developed a cure for cancer, you would be sitting on the most profitable medical find of the century. After all, it’s one thing to cure, it’s another to prevent. And preventing the normal process of cell reproduction from ever going wrong.. seems.. impossible.
So if you have the ability to cure a disease that can not be prevented or truly avoided, it sounds incredibly profitable to me.
What’s the benefit of not using this cure?
(I apologize if using Highschool science in one of this discussion with no source links is uncoth. It’s been a long day)
FYI:
http://technorati.com/lifestyle/article/the-cure-for-cancer-has-been/
freeyourmindonline.net/Blog/2011/10/cancer-cure-found.pdf
RE: Cure for cancer – The first promising treatment that I remember came out in Japan but I don’t have any links to it, I only remember some of the basic mechanics of it. It wasn’t much more than a modification of existing treatment, probably 15 years ago or more. Basically it’s like this: Some tumorous cells have capillary openings that are larger than most normal
cells. What they were doing was attaching existing chemotherapy drugs to some sort of polymer, thus making the particles too big for the openings in healthy cells but small enough to get into the tumors.
I remember that there were quite a few success stories, all peer-reviewed. The treatment wasn’t made available in the US because the FDA wouldn’t allow it at the time. My guess is because they wanted more testing and studies of the long term effects. I remember some mention of that but no details. What’s totally a pure guess that comes from much more recent experience is that I suspect such a treatment was probably hell on the liver and/or kidneys. It’s a shame that we aren’t born with more redundant organs. It would be nice to remove a liver, undergo a harsh treatment that beats the crap out of the other, then just replace it with the healthy one later :p
Another one, much more recent, that I have much more direct experience with is Cyberknife. My best friend’s oncologist was an absolute [expletive deleted]. I used to take her to her appointments and we both had to push him very hard to get her proper care. He was insisting on putting her through traditional chemotherapy again and she was basically like “uh uh, I’m not going out like that.” Right behind that hospital, hiding in plain sight, is a Cyberknife facility. We asked the doctor so many times what else could be done, not once did he ever mention Cyberknife. He wanted to keep prescribing painkillers, some were quite harsh, and seemed to have some hope that eventually she would give in to the chemotherapy he kept insisting on.
She wanted to go outside one day, I pushed her around in the wheelchair and we saw the Cyberknife place and got curious. I looked it up later and was even more curious and somewhat impressed, also more than a little upset that her doctor never once mentioned it. We got her a consultation and they examined her both the very next day. They said she could get treated there and that they wished she had gone there sooner (the oncologist had dragged things out for 5 months).
Here’s where things suck a bit. She had her treatments but Cyberknife doctors chose to be a little more aggressive than they normally would have been. Her liver was already in very bad shape from the drugs her other doctor had her on for so long. The Cyberknife treatment worked. Cancer in both her brain and chest were totally eradicated. The problem was that her body couldn’t process all the dead cancer cells. She survived the cancer but died of liver failure. Her family and I collected statements from 5 different doctors, basically stating exactly what she died from and their opinions of why. They vary slightly but don’t contradict each other at all. Each of them agree that her treatment was handled poorly. The family is currently still in the process of two lawsuits and the doctor is no longer practicing but is still getting paid (administrative leave?).
I get the FDA needing further testing and that the Japanese polymer thingy might not have been a good idea, I don’t know. My bigger question is why an oncologist who had been practicing in that hospital for well over a decade just totally neglected to mention the place right behind his hospital, despite being asked repeatedly for alternatives to chemotherapy.
@Alex
Why do you even have to draw a conclusion, sometimes somethings are simply not yet understood…. For example the cure of cancer…and just because we have no cure does not imply anyone is subverting the creation of a cure. That would require every Doctoral researcher and hospital/laboratory and university to be willingly corrupted.
Are you implying that all the people who work all their lives to save lives and help their fellow humans are lying and are actually pretending while meanwhile covertly removing cures for cancer ?
To believe this is an insult to my intelligence and to the hard efforts people put in to save lives.
@ Alex
Re: FYI. Your first link I’d read before, I forgot about it though. It doesn’t give the information directly and the link in it is broken, but it’s a reference to dichloroacetate. It’s also not being ignored. The first tests in 2007 should very good results, and it was moved to human testing. . Human testing is being done, and the results are still good, but another round of testing on mice raised some concerns.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dichloroacetic_acid#Potential_cancer_applications
It’s promising, but it’s also early.
Your PDF is not as promising. Googling shows that every one of these have not withstood testing. It’s also a wide range of ..proposed cures. What’s the cause of cancer? The lack of Omega 3? The lack of b-17? Clark’s parasites? All of the above? The claims that each one was than makes it harder to believe. If Omega-3 cures cancer then surly Clark’s parasite-killing machines don’t. And where does the Hunza diet fit in? If even half of these don’t work, why bother suppressing it? But how can they *all* be true?
Also, you have not yet explained who benefits from not curing cancer? The doctors who could treat it? And then treat the other cancers, and non cancer related disease the now cancer-free people get? The entire medical industry is built on keeping people alive. It’s hard to sell things to a corpse. What could be worth the effort in suppressing a cure? Who gains what?
My apologies for the broken link. I’ll try again. If it doesn’t work, the name of the article is called, “Cancer Cure Found? Free Your mind online”.
Click to access viewer
Who would benefit? Why, the pharmaceutical industry, of course. It’s all about the all mighty dollar. That’s obvious…at least to me it is.
In any event, I’m most certain these posts could go on infinitely, and there would undoubtedly be people who won’t believe there is evidence of a possible cure. As I stated before, there’s nothing I can do about that. This would ultimately end up being ” my link is better than your link”, “I’m right, you’re wrong”, and/or “this is not a credible link”, etc., thereby, creating nothing more than polarization rather than a rational online discussion.
The pharmaceutical industry benefits from keeping people alive. Let me put it this way. One of the most profitable drugs in history is Viagra, sold by Pfizer Inc. Now if Pfizer finds out about a working cure for cancer, then all the people who would have died of cancer are new people who might be in the market for Viagra. Repeat that with every other drug under the sun. Sure, curing cancer may not make you that much money, but those people you cured of cancer will get sick sooner or later. And when they get sick, you sell them other drugs!
From the Pfizer’s point of view, keeping people alive longer means more chances for people to buy their products. It’s simple business sense.
I used to work at car service shop. I was amazed, at first, to find out we lost money every time we sold someone an oil change. But those customers we lost money changing oil on, They kept coming back. And they bought other things from us. The best kind of business is repeat business. Even if you lose money to guarantee it.
I can’t believe how badly this blog has missed the main point. Debunking every detail is no way to articulate the message that Foster Gamble is a lying sleazy sociopath con artist. They are ripping off people by selling them free energy systems. The Thrive movie is nothing more than cocktail of new age pseudo science with goal of legitimizing products being sold by Gamble and his cohorts.
Who cares about proving things like crop circles as a hoax? The point of debunking should be about a billionaire heir profiting of the peoples hopes and dreams for a solution to a problem that is ripping this planet apart. Instead this blog is all about the details of the packaging. It completely fails to make every lie in the Thrive movie an issue. The issue is the slick sociopathic artistry of the new age movement have no limits no bounds when it comes to sucking the cash out the pockets of gullible people, they are discrediting the alternative energy movement.
The point of debunking the Thrive movies is because it is blatantly misleading, it advocates non-sense, undermines critical thinking by pushing conspiracy and new age ideas by asking the viewer to put “faith” in Gamble’s ideas, advocates cures for cancer that doesn’t work and endanger people.
It keeps parroting conspiracy theories and misconceptions that only makes the situation worse by shifting the problem’s cause to something that doesn’t exist, instead of the real issue and like other faux alternative documentaries like Zeitgeist it proposes new models that have no practical foundation and hardly would work (even if you gave them a chance).
By showing that Gamble and his associates are misleading the audience is evidence that he doesn’t have good intentions, even if his goals can be called noble, the means he use to instigate people to join it are completely wrong for anyone who puts enough thinking on the subjects Gamble discusses in his movie.
Besides the Alternative Energy movement is already discredited because, you know, their advocators never came up with something that works. (And no, wind, solar and geothermal energy aren’t alternative these are have well understood methods of action and functioning unlike the alternative/free energy crowds that don’t show how their devices work)
And I’m sorry but Wikipedia is not a universally acceptable CREDIBLE source. Any 1st year university student would know that. But you keep believing it, and using it as your primary source for your crap blog. Laughable and very pathetic.
[citation needed]
LOL the dude hasn’t even watched the documentary yet they are calling the blog out with no actual insight into the actual movie, all they know is fluoride and aspartame equal corporate world take over and that is good enough for them.
These CT wind bags are so uneducated and clueless to rality it is sometimes painful to share the same planet with them.
I am overwhelmed by this bloggers expertise in alternative medicine. Gee it costs lives? Actually it saves thousands of lives for those with serious chronic illnesses. Various prescription drugs approved by the FDA cause thousands of deaths. Easy for an addict of the internet to check that out .
I find your general debunking to be misleading. There are elements of truth in the documentary well worth considering in terms of how the economic system works. Catherine Austin Fitts definitely shares good information.
@World Citizen: if you believe this blog is mistaken, please present a concrete example of a factual claim made in this article, or any other article on this blog, that you believe is erroneous, and present your evidence as to why it is erroneous and why the evidence upon which you rely is credible. Please be specific.
There is a major difference between alternative medicine and the quackery in Thrive, there are methods like acupuncture and other herbal medicine that are proven to help relieve aches, stress and alleviate symptoms of a few diseases, but those are hardly effective to treat major diseases like HIV and cancer.
The “alternative” medicine in thrive does cost lives by making people believe that those “alternative” medicine methods are effective and end up not taking the necessary medication or not going to the doctor while the disease persists, by the time they find out it isn’t working it’s probably already too late to turn back.
I feel you create a disservice by using such arbitrary sources of information as wikipedia as a peer reviewed source. Numerous mistakes are found in wikipedia.
Your GMO coverage was very limited and one sided, but here goes (just click on the link and read the articles. It is self explanatory why GMO’s are not an ideal approach to solving world hunger and are really not good at all after reading these authors who are not industry folks from Monsanto:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-robbins/gmo-food_b_914968.html
http://civileats.com/2011/08/19/why-gmos-won%E2%80%99t-feed-the-world-despite-what-you-read-in-the-new-york-times/
There are many examples on how wrong GMO’s are if you take the time.
I feel your treatment of alternative medicine helps support the pharmaceutical companies who provide very misleading information for maintaining health. It is a multi billion dollar industry and the drugs cause a lot of harm. One example:You are aware that Vioxx killed over 40,000 people before pulled from the market. Google for examples.
Many people utilize alternative medicine after they are written off by the medical doctors, not before. Many are already terminal and then try the alternative approach where chances of recovery are low.
Many follow use of integrative medicine which incorporates the best of both polarized positions in medicine — alternative vs. allopathic etc.
Modern medicine has done wonders especially in emergency care.
One issue about treating cancer is the causes are not being dealt with.
Read the book The Secret History of the War on Cancer. You can read more at: http://www.environmentalhealthtrust.org/content/secret-history-war-cancer
I agree that Gamble should have left out the crop circles and speculation on alien visits and posted that on another area of your blog, but not all the documentary was worthless.
I hope you use your investigative skills for the improvement of humanity and the biosphere we are all dependent on for our survival.
Another reason not to read the huff-po, John Robbins gets so much wrong it’s hard to know where to begin, for one there are no suicide/terminator seeds in use commercially http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_use_restriction_technology and much of the post is essentially about a strawman. He’s referring to the first version of golden rice, basically a beta version, around 2005 they seriously beefed up thw nutritional content and made golden rice 2.0 “which produces up to 23 times more beta-carotene than the original golden rice, was announced.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_rice
But even if so, the rice was never intended to be eaten by itself, just to make up the shortfalls in the already existing diet -part of a balanced breakfast if you will, boosting it enough so you won’t go blind.
Lastly in focusing on this he completely ignores that GMOs can help target the real source of hunger which is poverty. In the long run GMOs are cheaper for poor farmers as they require purchasing less chemicals, pesticides or fertilizers, and can allow the purchase of cheaper less harmful herbicides. Also you can get varieties that can survive on less water making the crop more stable, and for Africa in particular there can be modifications for the crops to grow better in aluminum-rich souls that is harmful to plants and wide spread in Africa. With all this 3rd world farmers can begin seeing yields that go beyond feeding their own family (and often were at risk of not even doing that) and begin to make an actual living off of it.
One thing that i noticed about the Tesla portion of the video was that Tesla was indeed talking about wireless transmission of power. The light demonstration showed that it was possible. i think when his backers found out that there was not a practical way to make money on unregulated power that comes thru the air they stopped the funding. Now we are just getting back to where Tesla was in the 1920’s with the “new” wireless chargers for cell phones and such. see http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-06-apple-patents-meter-range-wireless.html
Hi Karl do you have evidence Tesla perfected and had technology to build wireless electricity ?
I hear many people make multiple claims about Tesla and the conspiracies to keep him and his knowledge down, most of it follows the big corporation conspiracy theories we hear in Thrive and online.
It would be nice if you had evidence rather than use modern technological advances Apple makes to validate your assertions Tesla was further advanced in the concept all those years ago.
I haven’t seen the film and dread the loss of 2 hours (or whatever the length of the film is) should I ever see it, but I am happy to see that the debunking of Vandana Shiva does not actually include a debunking of her. It sounds like SlayerX3 pretty well agrees with her.
I’ve written on the GMO issue a number of times, doing rather in-depth research to do so competently. Someday it might make a useful technology, but not yet. To paraphrase the words of one cautionary study (and I do apologise for not having the proper citation on hand or even the journal – I think it was Nature Biotechnology, but this was several years back), genetics has advanced to the point where we are starting to understand that we don’t really understand what a gene is.
I’d personally be more comfortable with the technology would that we could precisely insert a transgene into a specified location on the genome (without interrupting any of the host’s genes), and with a promotor and terminator sequence only around the transgene. That level of precision, unfortunately, is science fiction.
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No one says any amount of fluoride is safe. Virtually everything is harmful and toxic if you take enough of it, even water. Things by and large work in terms of thresholds not linear relationships. Something that can harm you at one dosage level will not necessarily do half that amount of harm at half the dosage. Thus nor do the effects usually accumulate, having a cup of wine a day is not going to ruin your liver like drinking whole bottles at once will. http://www.skepdic.com/fluoridation
And on GMOs you can find papers by lone scientists saying most anything, that’s why instead of cherry picking and anomaly hunting we have peer review and replication. This over time shows when a bad study is a bad study. Such as the bt-corn rat feed study funded by greenpeace, the scientists tried to claim that larger variants of organ sizes in the rats suggested the possibility of organ failure down the line (though this often gets exaggerated by anti-gmo sites that will tell you they outright died horribly…no…). But upon review, peer groups around the globe found they made the glaring error of having no control group, and when you compared the rats to natural variances in the general population, no difference was found, ie no effect.
Which is what you’d logically expect from something that works via targeting receptor proteins in the stomach of only a few select insects. Receptors that are not found in any mammals whatsoever, let alone rats, let alone humans.
And when you realise that you can see why any reports of bt showing up in people’s blood is meaningless. I bet I have salt in my blood as well, that it kills slugs is not going to alarm me. However even the studies that found that much were using a detection method designed for plant tissue not human tissue or blood especially. Without calibrating beforehand as responsible scientists would there’s no way to determine the accuracy of your measurements. It’s like reading a thermometer with no markings on it but actually worse because this had the large possibility of false positives. And through it all no source of bt was specified or controlled for, since bt is widely used in spray form on organics, spraying not just the cry protein itself but the bugs that make it, if it was an accurate reading it could just as likely come from organic foods. Which ignores the fact that it’s still harmless to humans.
Poverty also results from local agriculture businesses being less viable, stunting and preventing job creation. In developing countries farming would be one of the most readily go-to businesses to start up, however these countries lack their own protective subsidies (probably unable do to so, at least as much, given they’re poor countries) and get their markets flooded by counties like ours, rendering it much harder to make it a growth industry. Farmers get stuck growing enough for themselves but that’s about it, further they’re more vulnerable to unexpected change in crop production. With an inability to accumulate income and a high risk of crop failure you have a good recipe for starvation.
Part of this also is the harsh soils in many parts of africa and lack of infrastructure, water access, agricultural education, and fertilizers. Which fortunately is being worked on…our subsidies cannot be entirely to blame. Yes poverty is a huge barrier to food access and there is enough being grown for all, but the irony is, it is also because of that excess of food that contributes to poverty because of where it comes from. People in developing countries need jobs to buy the food, but they can’t develop jobs (at least ag-jobs) if prices in their country make farming non-viable.
The mention of GMOs is interesting for GMOs in fact reduce the need for chemical sprays, fertilizers, or even water depending on the variety, and some are even engineered to allow for better growth in the aluminum-rich soils that plague Africa, reducing the usually out of reach start up costs of serious farms. Thus it’s interesting he laments the 3rd world farmer yet condemns one of the easiest methods out of their poverty.
To add onto the topic of terminator seeds, these are not commercially used or viable, it’s application has been restricted to scientific research. Some have speculated about using them commercially but it’s never happened.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_use_restriction_technology