At about $750 billion (now $4.3 trillion) in spending, America spends more on health care than any other country. However, very little of this money is spent on preventive care. If America seriously hopes to end its crisis in health care, it must redirect its attention to preventive care.

While I support a reasonable universal health care coverage plan, making America healthy must become the personal responsibility of each citizen, and not the responsibility of government, except in those cases where preventive care is not adequate. 

This approach would require that each individual becomes more knowledgeable, and that leadership in the food industry, medical community and government become more responsible in providing and teaching the people the truth about caring for the human body.

The greatest gift that we have been given is the gift of life. The essence of our very being is housed within this magnificent creation of flesh and blood known as our bodies.

Unfortunately, we live in a society that misdirects us and misinforms us in such a way that we place our own bodies at risk. We take care of our clothes, our pets and our material possessions better than we take care of our own bodies.

Knowledge is the principle resource that can help us take better care of our bodies and our health. God, the Creator and Sustainer of all life, has given us direction for taking care of our health. However, we live in a society that is in opposition to the directions from the Giver of life, and as a result we suffer.

It is sad that buying material possessions is valued more than getting a simple yearly checkup by a competent doctor. It is sad that watching television several hours a day takes precedence over scheduling a few minutes of exercise that would help keep our bodies and our minds fit. 

It is sad that we put more emphasis on going to movies and listening to music feeding our minds through the reading of proper books and literature.

And it’s a tragedy that we overeat, eat the wrong foods, smoke, take drugs, drink alcohol, and take an excessive amount of pills to cope with life’s stresses instead of developing the core values and self­-control to protect ourselves from these addictions.

Here again, the airwaves can be used to promote a healthy lifestyle among the people.

The post Knowledge and valuing our bodies properly  appeared first on Final Call News.

by Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. The Defender

This article was originally published by the Defender—Childrens Health Defense News & Views Website September 14, 2026

Pfizer and Israel’s Ministry of Health (MOH) knew in early 2021 about a significant “cardiac event” safety signal associated with Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine—but withheld the information from physicians and the public for several months, a new peer-reviewed study has found.

The authors of the study, published last week in EXCLI Journal, reviewed an MOH dataset containing 531 hospitalization records dating from March 2021—just months after the rollout of the mRNA Pfizer-BioNTech shot—to May 2022.

The records included 67 deaths, including nine in patients under age 50. Two of the nine deaths were attributed to myocarditis, which can lead to cardiac arrhythmia and death.

Myocarditis was recorded in 71.6% of the hospitalization records involving patients under 30. Nearly two-thirds of those patients “had no meaningful medical history” before their diagnosis.

The deaths and injuries were reported to Israel’s MOH and to Pfizer. Yet, public health authorities in Israel, the U.S. and elsewhere downplayed the safety signal, reporting it “only after a delay of approximately three to four months.” Even then, health authorities described most cases as “rare” or “mild”—and of less concern than the risk COVID-19 posed.

Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., senior research scientist for Children’s Health Defense (CHD), said none of the myocarditis deaths are found in the U.S. government’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), even though Pfizer was obligated to report the deaths to VAERS.

“The bereaved and the injured are owed an answer,” Jablonowski said.

Steve Kirsch, founder of the Vaccine Safety Research Foundation, said the study’s findings are significant because they are based on “internal government data” instead of data from vaccine makers or from publicly available databases.

Kirsch said the data show that Israel’s MOH “was clearly more interested in protecting the manufacturers than the public.”

Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, said the findings reflect a trend across multiple countries, in which public health authorities and Big Pharma hid the risks of the COVID-19 shots.

“I don’t think Israel is an outlier. Pharmaceutical companies, public health authorities, organized medicine, and academics worldwide have performed shamefully and betrayed our trust,” Orient said.

‘Generally short intervals’ between vaccination and injuries, deaths

The study presents a breakdown of the 531 hospitalization records and 67 death records in the Israeli MOH data, noting that these cases involved a significant number of younger patients. These cases were reported to Pfizer in 2021 and 2022.

“Reported events spanned cardiac, neurological, inflammatory, and other serious clinical categories and involved a substantial proportion of younger individuals, with 211 of 530 hospitalization records with valid age data (39.8 %) involving patients under 30 years of age,” the study states.

Other key findings from the study include:

The two myocarditis-related deaths in people under 50 involved a 22-year-old woman and a 47-year-old man.

An additional death of a younger adult—a 35-year-old man—was also identified. His record indicated “worsening heart failure” but did not mention myocarditis.

Μyocarditis or pericarditis was identified in 250 of 531 hospitalization records (47.1%) and in 151 of 211 records (71.6%) of patients under 30.

48 patients under 18 were diagnosed with myocarditis or pericarditis.

134 of the 211 patients under 30 had “no meaningful medical history,” of which 99 of 134 were diagnosed with myocarditis and pericarditis — most of whom were male (90 out of the 99, or 90.9%).

According to the study, a significant number of records involving younger patients recorded the onset of “acute cardiac inflammation” that developed “within days to weeks of vaccination.”

Though the study focused on myocarditis and pericarditis, the researchers’ review of the records also identified a “broad spectrum” of other “serious clinical events.” These injuries included:

• Other cardiac events, including arrhythmias, syncope and heart failure.

Neurological disorders, including seizures, stroke, encephalitis, Guillain-Barré syndrome and cranial nerve palsies.

Allergic reactions, including “suspected anaphylaxis.”

Inflammatory and hematological conditions, including multisystem inflammatory syndrome and immune thrombocytopenic purpura.

Other serious conditions, including acute kidney injury and sudden hearing loss.

The combination of detailed case-level clinical documentation, the “generally short intervals” between vaccination and injury, the formal reporting to Pfizer and the fact that the data were sourced from a government health authority support the study’s credibility, the authors said.

Pfizer was kept in loop about deaths in 2021-2022

Israel MOH records also showed Pfizer was kept in the loop about the deaths and hospitalizations, receiving nine such reports between March 2021 and May 2022.

The first report, dated March 25, 2021, included information on 157 hospitalizations and 46 deaths.

“Reports to Pfizer, which began no later than March 25, 2021, included a notable proportion of young individuals, including many for whom no meaningful medical history was identified,” the study states.

Yet, Pfizer—and public health authorities worldwide—sat on this information for weeks or months before revealing it to the public.

The study cited documentary evidence of these delays—and the subsequent downplaying of the severity of the serious adverse events related to the vaccine. For instance, an October 2021 New England Journal of Medicine study found that early myocarditis cases were detected in Israel as early as January 2021—only a month after the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was released to the public.

On Feb. 28, 2021, Israel alerted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other public health authorities about approximately 40 myocarditis cases.

But this information didn’t become public until February 2023, following a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that CHD submitted to the CDC. In early March 2021, the CDC was warned about “large numbers” of myocarditis and pericarditis cases among young people in Israel.

A week later, officials from the CDC and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) circulated an internal response about the myocarditis cases reported in Israel, stating that no additional details about those cases were available.

Yet on April 26, 2021, the CDC and FDA denied that “safety signals” existed for myocarditis. It wasn’t until May 28, 2021, that the CDC issued a recommendation to all clinicians to report “all cases” of myocarditis or pericarditis.

The authors of the EXCLI Journal study suggested that the decision by public health authorities and Pfizer to sit on this information “may have had implications for clinical awareness and informed decision-making.”

Epidemiologist M. Nathaniel Mead, Ph.D., a McCullough Foundation scholar, agreed. “Informed consent should have included an age-and-sex-specific warning in time for them to say no, delay a second dose, or choose differently. Many men never got that chance.”

Were more vaccine-related deaths concealed?

The study found that the dataset provided by Israel’s MOH appeared to have been revised several times, noting that later versions “added clinical information to existing records, revised diagnoses and reporting dates, and omitted some records.”

The omissions included a death report contained in an October 2021 version of the MOH’s dataset that was “no longer present in the December or any subsequent version.”

According to the study, the dataset contains no “methodological documentation” and “no formal audit trail identifying who made these changes or the reasons for them,” making it impossible to tell why these revisions were made based on the available data.

Later revelations show Israeli authorities continued to downplay the risks of the COVID-19 shot well into 2022. A leaked video from June 2022 revealed that researchers shared data with Israel’s MOH showing serious and long-term side effects linked to the Pfizer-BioNTech shot.

The video suggested that Israel’s MOH did not reveal this information to the expert committee that met later that month to decide on recommending the vaccine for children under age 5, or to leaders of Israel’s COVID-19 vaccine booster program.

Kirsch said the delayed public release of the data and the open questions that remain about how the data were entered and updated raise accountability concerns that span beyond Israel’s MOH and Pfizer to include the broader medical community.

“Nobody was fired. More importantly, no pro-vaccine doctor in the U.S. has expressed any outrage in the suppression of the Israeli safety data,” Kirsch said. Orient said the study adds to evidence supporting the suspension and withdrawal of mRNA vaccines from the marketplace.

“There is no justification for the continued use of these vaccines. There should be no further iterations unless and until all questions are answered and benefit is shown to exceed risk—if ever. We should instead be concentrating on treatment.”

This article was originally published by the Defender—Childrens Health Defense News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BYNCND 4.0.

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It starts with one sweeping new federal law, according to national research, healthcare advocates and professionals, including Lawanda Muhammad, a licensed Medicare and Medicaid advisor.

She works with seniors every day in California—one of the states where these changes are already playing out, and a useful window into what’s unfolding across the country.

In July 2025, the U.S. Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). It cuts hundreds of billions of dollars over the next 10 years from Medicaid—called Medicaid in most states—but known as Medi-Cal in California, MassHealth in Massachusetts, and by other names elsewhere.

The good news is that seniors 65 and older are not affected by the new “work requirement” rule at all. They don’t have to prove they’re working to keep their coverage. That part of the law targets younger adults, ages 19–64.

The real issue for seniors isn’t a work rule—it’s paperwork, mail, and a shrinking safety net underneath the paperwork.

According to KFF, Black people in America are most affected. Roughly 21% of Medicaid enrollees are Black, compared to about 13% of the overall population. Roughly 73.9 million Americans are enrolled in Medicaid nationwide, according to KFF’s most recent tracker.

If Black people make up about 18% of that group, that’s roughly 13 million Black people in America on Medicaid—out of an estimated 44–45 million Black Americans in the country overall, per Census Bureau population figures. In other words, nearly 1 in 3 nationally relies on Medicaid, a far higher share than the population as a whole.

For seniors specifically, Black and Latino elders are more likely to be dual-eligible—enrolled in both Medicare and Medicaid.  If a state tightens Medicaid rules and someone loses their Medicare Savings Program help, it’s disproportionately Black and Latino seniors who feel that loss first, since more of them rely on that help to begin with, advocates point out.

Every year, the standard Medicare Part B premium (what pays for doctor visits) gets adjusted nationwide. In 2026, it’s $202.90 a month, the same amount for seniors in every state, and it’s projected to rise to around $209.50 in 2027. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), however, won’t confirm the official rate until this fall.

What makes it feel connected is that many low-income seniors do not normally pay that $202.90 out of pocket, noted Ms. Muhammad. Medicaid pays it for them, through something called a Medicare Savings Program, but if they miss their paperwork or deadline for recertification, they lose benefits.

“They’re already on a budget … they look up, and now they’re missing $202.90 out of their check. That’s a big deal,” said Ms. Muhammad. Nearly all of the real damage comes down to seniors missing something in the mail, she continued, and recommended they watch for these three things in their mailbox:

1. Renewal forms. Starting in 2027, some Medicaid recipients nationwide will need to renew their eligibility every six months instead of once a year. Missing the deadline stops coverage—even for someone who still qualifies. “If they don’t respond in the cutoff time, they lose their [coverage],” said Ms. Muhammad, describing what she sees among her California clients.

2. A notice about SSI/SSP-linked Medicaid changing. Some seniors who receive Supplemental Security Income (SSI) get an extra state check on top of it—in California, called the State Supplementary Payment (SSP); other states have similar supplemental programs under different names.

Ms. Muhammad said some of her California clients are now getting letters saying that extra payment—often a few hundred dollars—is going away, and they’re being moved to a different Medicaid program. This doesn’t necessarily mean losing Medicaid entirely, but it can mean losing the automatic help that was paying a senior’s Medicare Part B premiums, she explained.

3. A letter about bank accounts. Separately, some states are reviving “asset tests” through their own state budget decisions—not the federal law. California brought back an asset test starting January 1, 2026, with a limit of $130,000 in countable assets for an individual, according to the state’s 2025–26 budget act.

Other states have their own limits, or none at all, depending on local budget choices. Illinois, by contrast, has kept a stable $17,500 asset limit in place since 2023—one of the more generous in the country, with no similar disruption for seniors there, according to the Illinois Department of Human Services.

Other large states have kept their own versions: Florida sets a $5,000 limit for aged/disabled Medicaid ($2,000 for nursing home care specifically); and Texas and Georgia generally hold to the federal minimum of $2,000.

This is a state-by-state budget decision, separate from the federal law, but it’s a reminder that Medicaid rules—and how much they can change year to year—vary significantly depending on where someone lives.

Justice in Aging, a national legal advocacy organization focused on senior poverty, has been one of the most vocal critics of how these changes are being implemented.

In comments submitted to federal regulators in July, the organization stated that the new rules take “a more restrictive standard than the statute for determining when an individual should be exempt from work requirements due to health or disability … .”

The group warned, this approach is “especially harmful for older adults, many of whom leave the workforce because of health or functional challenges.”

Justice in Aging has also pushed back on the caregiver exemption specifically, noting the rule “narrows the exemption for caregivers, which will leave out caregivers such as neighbors, friends, and chosen family who provide essential support to older adults.”

More broadly, it warns that the danger isn’t the underlying rule so much as the process around it.  Work requirements create administrative barriers that will lead to improper terminations and disrupted access to crucial healthcare, the group argues.

Further, older adults, people with disabilities and chronic health conditions, and family caregivers face heightened risk of losing Medicaid coverage because these administrative hurdles, reporting requirements, and narrow exemption processes can improperly terminate people, even when they still qualify, continued Justice in Aging.

The organization has also connected the dots to long-term care specifically, reporting that the work requirements could worsen staffing shortages at nursing homes, indirectly affecting residents who aren’t subject to the rule at all.

Ms. Muhammad emphasized, “Pay attention to the mail that’s coming in from the state … there’s a lot of changes.” If a letter looks confusing, she recommends calling the number on it, or call a trusted Medicare/Medicaid advisor, and ask “Do I still have Medicaid? And is it still paying my Part B premium?”

The post Understanding healthcare changes for seniors appeared first on Final Call News.

Do you like Pop Tarts? Do you like Frosted Flakes? A chemist who works for Kellogg came in the barber shop one day, and said: “Don’t eat sugared cereals, because in the sugar is the poison that sterilizes and brings cancer.” “Sugar” is a drug that makes you want it again, and again, and again. It’s a habit-forming chemical.

[Note: “Sugar” is the generalized name for a class of chemically related sweet-flavored substances, most of which are used as food. They are carbohydrates, composed of carbon (C), hydrogen (H) and oxygen (O).]

Well, what are “staple foods,” because these poisonous chemicals are not just in the water, now; they’re in the staple foods. A “staple food” is a food that can be stored for use throughout the year, or produced fresh any time of the year; and forms the basis of a traditional diet; it is a food that is eaten routinely, and in such quantities that it constitutes a dominant portion of a standard diet in a given population.

Typical examples of staples include tuber (or “root crops”), such as: Beets, Carrots, Parsnips, Potatoes, Turnips, Radishes, Sweet Potatoes. Other “staples” are Grains, Legumes and other seeds; maize (or Corn); Wheat, Rice, Cassava, Soy Beans, Sorghum, Yams and Plantain.

These are the staple foods of various cultures! From the Asian people, it’s “rice”; to the people of Central and South America, it’s corn (or maize), and some of the legumes, or beans. 

So when you get bread that is supposed to contain “wheat”—but, if you didn’t grow that wheat, where did you get the seeds from that wheat? Where is the corn coming from? These are the things that are being used to “cull” populations all over the planet Earth!

Wheat, now, is genetically engineered! Corn is genetically engineered! Many vegetables are genetically modified—and the food industry is fighting to keep from advertising what it really is! 

According to the American Society for Nutrition, in its Journal of Nutrition (April 2006, Volume 136, Number 4, pages 1064-1067), published an Abstract entitled “Biofortification of Staple Food Crops.” Well, according to this Abstract, “biofortification” is: “The development of micronutrient-dense staple crops using the best traditional breeding practices and modern biotechnology.” It goes on to state: 

“Deficiencies of vitamin A, iron, and zinc affect over one-half of the world’s population. Progress has been made to control micronutrient deficiencies through supplementation and food fortification, but new approaches are needed, especially to reach the rural poor.

Biofortification (enriching the nutrition contribution of staple crops through plant breeding) is one option… The challenge is to get producers and consumers to accept biofortified crops and increase their intake of the target nutrients.

“With the advent of good seed systems, the development of markets and products, and demand creation, this can be achieved.” Are they really “enhancing” the food with nutrients, or are they making sure that those who eat it become victims of the policy to cull the people of the Third World?

According to an October 2007 article by Lloyd Grove titled “The World According to Lynn Forester de Rothschild,” originally published on “Portfolio.com” (now renamed the Upstart Business Journal):

The Rothschilds made a major investment in the India produce market, and became the “No. 1 producer of fruits in the world and No. 2 vegetable growers.”

The Rothschilds’ upstart company Field Fresh has now taken over the food production of fruits and vegetables in India; so this says to us that they are going to push out “the small farmer,” and crush him—and they will be the mass producer, sending food from India all over the world.

When we juxtaposed the “decrease in farming,” with this “Memorandum 200” by Kissinger and “the culling of the population of the planet” with a policy of “population control”—or depopulation in the United States—then we can see now how food is used as a “weapon” in that process!

And then, the control of the “means of production of food” and the “methodology in producing the food”: All of this is a part of the policy, now, of the Department of Agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”), and the CIA! They are all linked together. The Chemistry of Death: Poisonous water supplies, and ‘the pawns’ of a chemical-filled makeup industry. 

Also in this book Ecoscience, Chapter 10 titled “Direct Assaults on Well-Being,” it talks about “depopulation” by putting certain chemicals in the water: “Water pollutants take many forms. One useful classification follows: Disease-causing organisms—specifically parasites, bacteria, and viruses.

Which often enter water with human sewage; Synthetic organic compounds in the form of industrial, household, and agricultural chemicals, as well as water-treatment chemicals added deliberately and the products formed by the reaction of these with other contaminants… Water pollutants also can be classified by their effects:

“Direct impact on health in the form of bacterial or viral disease; production of cancer, genetic defects, and birth defects; other varieties of acute and chronic toxicity to people; and effects on ecosystems, through which an impact on human beings may subsequently be felt… 

“Pesticides, radioactivity, fluorides, and heavy metals (which occur in air and soil as well as in water) are treated in more detail later in this chapter. These and other water pollutants receive further attention in the discussions of carcinogens and mutagens… .”

Fluoride is a poison! Sodium Fluoride is a poison that is used in the production of sarin gas! Sodium Fluoride is an inorganic chemical compound (formula “NaF”); a colorless solid. Toothpaste contains sodium fluoride, with a claim to “reduce cavities.”

So every time you drink from the tap, fluorinated water, you’re drinking some of the poison that they say will keep you from having cavities. But your children, by the age of 6 and 7 and 8, have cavities! When I grew up, I never knew what a “cavity” was; there was no “fluoridation of water” at that time!

Let’s look at some of the “Facts About Fluoride” that appear in an article by Paul Joseph Watson and Matt Ryan titled “Poison Tap Water” InfoWars.com: Fluoride is a waste by-product of the fertilizer and aluminum industry, and it’s also a “Part II Poison” under the UK Poisons Act 1972; Fluoride is one of the basic ingredients in both Prozac (FLUoxetene Hydrochloride) and Sarin nerve gas (Isopropyl-Methyl-Phosphoryl FLUoride).

In an article by Maria Hoven titled “Foods Containing Fluoride,” posted on the website Livestrong.com dated July 25, 2013, she identifies foods containing this poison fluoride: “Fluoride toxicity can have adverse effects on your kidneys and it can also cause skeletal fluorosis in adults.

“Children who consume high amounts of fluoride can suffer from dental fluorosis, which develops when you consume too much fluoride from birth to age 8 when your teeth are forming … .” And she states some of the following foods that contain sodium fluoride, for example, instant formula—that you give your babies; juices and tea, soda, cereals; wine and beer.

Another toxic chemical additive in foods is the diet sweetener Aspartame, which is the sweetener used in all “diet” drinks. It is considered a “carcinogenic,” meaning it can, will, and is, producing cancers.

The American people really need to see what the government is doing, and how terrible the government is to allow something like this as “policy” not only in Third World countries, but its policy right here in America!

The post The chemistry of death: Staple foods used by various cultures are targets of wicked scientists  appeared first on Final Call News.

by Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. The Defender

This article was originally published by the Defender—Childrens Health Defense News & Views Website August 31, 2026

Researchers from the University of Illinois are proposing to turn plastic into edible vanilla-flavored protein cookies using genetically engineered (GE) yeast.

They say their product, nutritionally enhanced 3D-printed “µBites,” could address two major global issues: food scarcity and plastic pollution. The research started as part of the NASA Deep Space Food Challenge—but now the researchers argue it could have broader implications than just creating food in deep space.

To make the cookies, they take used plastic bottles sourced from a supermarket and discarded sweetcorn plant stalks and leaves and use heat, water, pressure and oxygen in a 32-part process to break them down into components digestible by microbes, the American Chemical Society reported.

Then they feed that product into a bioreactor, where yeast—produced using CRISPR gene-editing technology—turns it into the fats, proteins and other components they need to make the cookies.

They engineered the microbes to produce vanillin, which gives the cookies their vanilla flavor and scent. They also engineered a yeast to produce beta-carotene to give the cookies a golden color and some vitamin A.

They mix the ingredients into a dough and put it into a 3D printer, which prints the cookies. They microwave them, and the final cookie should be ready to eat, according to the researchers.

The researchers haven’t been able to taste the cookies yet—they’re waiting for university approval, according to NewScientist.

“I think it has a pleasant, appealing aroma,” Lahiru Jayakody, Ph.D., a microbiologist who led the research, told NewScientist. “And it will taste good, too. We’ve not tasted it, but it smells good—that’s for sure—like a real cookie.”

They are waiting on university approval to taste their cookies.

GE yeast and bacteria can ‘unexpectedly produce toxins or allergens’

Jayakody and several other researchers have a patent application pending for their µBites production system.

The researchers also said that realistically, it will take many more years of research before plastic can be removed from landfills and turned into food, but they hope their research will inspire others to develop similar solutions. Food and environmental safety experts are more skeptical.

“This is just the latest in a long line of bad ideas that industry and their allied scientists have come up with to turn lab-produced goop into ‘edible food-like substances’ that the unsuspecting public are meant to eat,” according to Claire Robinson, GMO food expert and founder of GMWatch.

She said that when evaluating the safety of GE food, she looks for in-depth data and molecular profiling, followed by long-term animal feeding studies.

“Such tests are especially important for ‘food-like substances’ made from genetically engineered GE yeast and bacteria, because these microorganisms can unexpectedly produce toxins or allergens,” Robinson said.

For example, in 1989, 37 Americans were killed, and over 1,500 were sickened when they consumed GE tryptophan made by Showa Denko, a Japanese company.

“However, in the case of these plastic cookies, I wouldn’t dignify the product by expecting lab animals to eat it, let alone humans,” Robinson said.

The scientists haven’t even done the taste testing, she added, “That’s quite apart from the ‘yuck factor’ of eating plastic-derived food and the profound cultural inappropriateness of assuming that food is just an amalgamation of ‘useful ingredients’ such as proteins and fats.”

She added that the environmental claims the researchers made were highly questionable. The environmental footprint of lab-grown bioreactor food is massive—it’s extremely energy- and resource-hungry and difficult to scale up to commercially useful levels.

“Certainly plastic cookies couldn’t make more than a minor dent in the plastic pollution problem,” Robinson said. She conceded that plastic pollution is a “serious problem,” but said the solution is to phase out plastic production worldwide and recycle what we can’t avoid using, with the help of money-back deposits on all plastic containers.

“The plastic cookie venture makes me wonder why scientists aren’t put to work on something genuinely useful for humanity,” Robinson said.

This article was originally published by the Defender—Childrens Health Defense News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BYNCND 4.0.

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September is Prostate Cancer Awareness Month, and as both a Black man and a cancer center director, I know many men in our community think it’s bad luck to talk about cancer. But I’m here to tell you it’s bad luck not to talk about it.

We, Black men in the U.S., are nearly 70% more likely than White men to be diagnosed with prostate cancer. We’re also twice as likely to die from the disease.

But I’m telling you, if you’re diagnosed early, you can still enjoy a long, happy life doing the things you love, whether that’s playing with grandkids or staying active in your community. That’s because although it can become a serious illness, most men diagnosed with prostate cancer won’t die from it.

In fact, more than 3.5 million U.S. men who’ve been diagnosed with prostate cancer are still alive today. And when it’s diagnosed early, you boost your odds of survival. It’s that simple.

Generally, prostate cancer is most likely to develop after age 50, but when it develops in Black men, they tend to be younger. That means we need to be on the ball about understanding our personal risk. The risk factors include a family history of prostate cancer and certain genetic health risks that come from a parent.

When it comes to family medical history, we need to get a lot better at talking. For me, it turned out I had uncles who’d died from prostate and other cancers, but I didn’t always know that, so I couldn’t use that information to help me make smarter screening choices.

The American Cancer Society recommends that Black men speak with their doctor at age 45 about whether prostate cancer screening is right for them. Men at even higher risk should have that discussion at age 40, especially those with one or more close relatives who were diagnosed at an early age.

Look, I get that no one looks forward to a screening, but it typically starts with just a simple blood test, called a prostate-specific antigen, or PSA.

Even if you end up needing a digital rectal exam, it takes less than a minute and could save your life. So, what I say to people is, what’s the price of your life? Isn’t it worth a minute of being uncomfortable?

Brothers, this is essential for you to know: just because you’re feeling good doesn’t mean you don’t have early-stage prostate cancer. By the time you start to actually experience symptoms, the disease could be at an advanced stage and might be harder to treat.”

Prostate cancer is significantly impacting our fathers, our brothers, and our sons. That’s why the American Cancer Society is working with health systems and professionals in your community to help remove barriers in the fight against the disease.

We can help you find low-cost or free screening locations. And for men who need cancer treatment, the American Cancer Society can reduce the financial burden of  traveling to medical appointments by providing free rides and, if you live far away from where you receive treatment, a free place to stay.

When it comes to prostate cancer screening, one size doesn’t fit all. So, it’s important for all men—and especially Black men—to talk to their doctor about what’s best for them based on their age, risk, and health history. Please make that appointment, because we don’t want you to risk missing out on the best years of your life.

For more information, call the American Cancer Society’s 24/7 helpline at 1-800-227-2345 or visit cancer.org.

Dr. Robert Winn is a nationally recognized physician-scientist and researcher. He currently serves as cancer center director at Temple Health’s Fox Chase Cancer Center.  Since 2021, he has served on the board of directors for the American Cancer Society.

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When I spoke to the students at Tuskegee University on March 22, 2013, I said: “You are more than who you think you are. … Because of ‘who’ you are, you are in danger. So tonight, I want to expose the danger, and by God’s Grace, give you the guidance to be exactly what I said you are: ‘The Seminal Fluid’ of The Kingdom of God.”

Tuskegee University has received high amounts of government funding for research and experimentation, the most recent being the HeLa, or “immortal cells” (the oldest, most commonly used human cell line), which are cancer cells used in testing and creating vaccines!

I said at Tuskegee: “Your former slave masters don’t give you money without another purpose beyond what they tell us! …You have to remember history to guide you in the way you think! It’s all right to think that people have ‘changed’—but you cannot go to sleep; you have to watch to see if the change is real.”

For example, in the 1940s the U.S. government experimented by infecting the people of Guatemala with syphilis and gonorrhea and sexually transmitted diseases! The government has now acknowledged this.

On October 1, 2010, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, apologized in a statement with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton regarding this HeLa experimentation.

And, brothers and sisters, this is what I’m afraid of; that with the research that is going on in Tuskegee with the HeLa cells, now The Enemy has created genetic weapons that are designed specifically for certain genetic groups—and they are designing different drugs for that same purpose!

Dr. Jonas Salk used the HeLa cells in producing the polio vaccine; but yet, a contaminant was introduced into the vaccine! Also, it was this HeLa cell that was the carrier of the cancer that was introduced into “SV40” (an abbreviation for “Simian vacuolating virus 40”

Or “Simian virus 40,” a polyomavirus that is found in both monkeys and humans) into the polio vaccine; and that’s why the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, in the ’60s, forbade his followers from taking the polio vaccine.

Now they say that 2,000 pounds of HeLa cells have been produced. … And they’ve gone all over the world! So instead of these immortal cells being used to curb the rise of cancer, the opposite is true: Cancer is proliferating all over the world, especially in Third World countries—and especially among the Black man and woman in America. Is this an “accident”?

Why, in the scheme of things, was the syphilis experiment “so important”? Why is the HeLa experiment and research “so important”? Why, in the scheme of things, was this experiment to start at Tuskegee, in Alabama, where Booker T. Washington established the principles 1.) self-reliance, 2.) self-help, 3.) commerce, 4.) industry; and 5.) agriculture—and where George Washington Carver was?

And they even told George Washington Carver that he should not marry; that he should not have any children, because these oppressors did not want to see another “Carver” in a future generation that their children would have to contend with! My question is: What type of research is this, and how will this research benefit us as a people?

Scientists took these cells without asking for permission, and have made millions of dollars off of these cells. And the woman—the Black woman, Henrietta Lacks, from which this immune cell, this great cell was taken—has not received anything, though the world is benefiting from this HeLa cell.

Why Tuskegee? Well, Tuskegee is like a “manger.” A manger is like a trough; it’s a feeder that is made of carved stone, wood or metal construction, and is used to hold food for animals, as in a “stable.”

Jesus was born in a manger. … It is not an accident that such greatness has come out of that little city! Tuskegee is a “manger,” it’s a place of feeding ground—a “feeding place” for a people that have been made savage; that from such an institute.

Which is now a university, can come that which will civilize not only the Black man and woman of America, but from it, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad saw “a world institution.”

The post Members of the Original Black Nation: Victims of deceptive research experiments appeared first on Final Call News.

Do you know how White folks got rich? Have you ever been to Macy’s? Gimbles? All of these big department stores, like Sanger-Harris in Atlanta? Did you ever go shopping for jewels at Kay Jewelers? You did? But you don’t even care who owns it, do you?

How did they get it? Brothers and sisters, when the Jews came into America, the more “seasoned” Jews had backpacks, with lots of things in the backpack that the people in the South needed.

So they loaded the Jewish fellow up that had just come over from the old country with a “100-pound backpack.” And if you’re thinking, “Aww man, that’s a lot of weight!”: Well, if you’re in the Army, you have to carry that too, don’t you? Don’t worry about that then; because now you are “carrying something for yourself.”

Now look at this: They came with their backpacks, and they sold pots and pans and things that the people would need. They sold to the slave master and they sold to the slave who was on the plantation!

From those backpacks, they consolidated, and then started setting up stores in Alabama, in Mississippi. And in their stores, they would tell you that you couldn’t come in there; or, “You go round there (to the back).”

See, they set it up for themselves at our expense, and from there they became bigger and bigger, where they controlled huge department stores. Now when you go in the department stores, Jews own most of that; but it started from cotton.

Well, we’re studying you now. Suppose we go back South and buy up the plantations? Some of them may not want to sell, but we may give them “an offer they can’t refuse.” See, if God is with you, He is going to help you! We’re not stealing, we’re buying: “Okay, how much acreage do you have? We’d like to have all of that.” From the farm is where all industry starts!

Consider what you can produce from “one bale of cotton”: 215 jeans, 249 bed sheets, 409 men’s sport shirts, 690 terry bath towels, 765 men’s dress shirts; 1,217 men’s t-shirts; 1,256 pillowcases; 2,104 boxer shorts; 2,419 men’s briefs; 3,085 diapers; 4,321 mid-calf socks; 6,436 women’s knit briefs; 21,960 women’s handkerchiefs; or, 313,600 “$100 bills.”

All that came from one bale of cotton. When the Jews sent the cotton North to their brother who had a mill that turned the cotton into cloth, that brother then sold the cloth to his brother in New York, and they made the jeans, the pillowcases; they made the sanitary napkins; they made the baby diapers—from cotton!

Now, if we could pick it for the White man, and make him rich, what’s wrong with us, now, owning huge tracts of land with cotton growing? “Well, I don’t feel like pickin’ no cotton … .” No, they’ve already made a machine, so you just buy the machine, and you won’t have to mess up your hands again.

But “the machine” doesn’t take everything out of the field! So we could take a young brother and show him how to pick it, and give him a decent wage. Clean the field, and bale the cotton! And then start an industry from cotton that gives your people what? Jobs. Jobs, just from cotton!

We must learn ‘Growing Power’ to become self-sufficient land owners. The Messenger said that “God is curtailing the land on its sides”—and this is written in the Holy Qur’an. If you look at the storms that are raging on the East Coast, the West Coast; the fires, you will see that He is pushing people toward the center of the country!

Now, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad said we should start North, and go South, buying land. Well, I like Michigan; at the top of Michigan, called “the thumb”: They are the greatest producers of the navy bean. They (the navy beans produced in the region) had a little disease recently. … And that’s good, because God promised them disease! He didn’t promise that for us.

Do we eat corn? Do we eat rye? Do we eat barley? Do we need wheat? Well, then let’s study what are the wheat-producing states! Now, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin are states that either produce corn and/or soybeans; and Wisconsin also produces dairy products.

And, we have a little farm in Michigan—but, we won’t grow soybeans, because we don’t eat that. (We’ll tell you why at another time.) We grow the navy bean.

Agricultural scientists once came down from the University of Michigan, and they said, “Umm, Farrakhan, navy beans don’t grow in this kind of soil!” I said, “Well, watch and see!” We planted the navy beans; then the people from the University came again, and they couldn’t believe it! The bean was so nice … . Man, you put it in the pot, and it just acts like it wants to get in your stomach!

We met a man named Will Allen: A giant Black man! He taught us how to “sweeten the land” away from the pesticides! So during one fall/winter, we planted winter wheat. Mr. Allen said, “But don’t let it ‘seed’: Cut it down just before it seeds, and turn it under.” (i.e. “cover crops”/“crop rotation”).

We had over 50 acres where we planted winter wheat; and when it got to the point where it was about to “seed,” we cut it down, turned it under; then, we planted sorghum (which produces a sweetener), and that cane grew three, four, five feet tall! But after it grew we cut it down, and turned it under.

We also planted “winter rye”; and it wasn’t a week before the whole field had turned green! So by springtime, we will turn that crop under, and then plant our navy beans. We checked the “ph factor” of the land—because you have a “ph factor”! 

We are from the Earth, and if you don’t know how to care for the Earth, the Earth won’t care for you! And if you love God, and love the Earth, then the Earth will give you all the health and well-being that you need;

But you must know how to care for what God has given us! And since White folks (not “all” White people, but those that were in power): Because you just messed up the Earth, with your greedy self, you’ve got to go!

The post We Are From The Earth appeared first on Final Call News.

by Sentient Media Published on The Defender Written by Natasha Gilbert

This article was originally published by the Defender—Childrens Health Defense News & Views Website August 18, 2026

Intensive farming, where animals are kept in close quarters, creates environments that encourage the evolution of harmful bacteria and other pathogens so that they gain traits making it easier to infect people and more difficult to cure, a new study suggests.

Hygiene and welfare standards are often low on industrial farms, also called factory farms, and the rising widespread use of antimicrobials has led to concerns that overuse in animal farming is playing a key role in driving antimicrobial-resistant infections in people.

To gain insights into how intensive animal farming influences the evolution of harmful bacteria, a new study investigated how modern densely populated chicken farms have shaped the evolution of strains of Campylobacter jejuni bacteria, which are the leading cause of gut illness and diarrhea from bacterial food poisoning in people, typically after eating contaminated chicken.

Chickens are of particular interest because populations have shot up sevenfold since the 1960s due to agricultural growth and increasing demand for poultry. Today, roughly 31 billion chickens inhabit the globe. Together, poultry accounts for around 70% of all bird biomass on Earth.

The results showed that C. jejuni evolved rapidly in chickens, developing genetic strains resistant to antimicrobials and more likely to adapt to other species, which makes it easier for them to infect people.

Published in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from the universities of Oxford and Sheffield in the United Kingdom analyzed the genetic information of 2,747 C. jejuni samples from wild birds and chickens.

They found that since 1900, the transmission between chickens and wild birds has increased by more than 100-fold.

Farming intensification has changed how pathogens interact between populations of wild birds and domesticated chickens, says Oakem Kyne, a lead researcher on the study at the University of Oxford.

There is a much wider variety of chicken-adapted C. jejuni strains now than before they were domesticated, with a large jump since 1900 when modern poultry farming intensified, says Kyne.

The transmission across species, or spillover, can occur in this case when there is direct contact between the wild birds and chickens or contact with the other species’ poop.

The chickens act like “sponges,” their modeling showed, absorbing different bacterial strains from the environment, says Kyne.

“Having a lot of different strains of pathogens within these chickens means that there’s a lot more potential for human disease,” explains Kyne.

The researchers also found that chicken-adapted strains developed genetic traits that help C. jejuni survive and become more antimicrobial-resistant. For example, some strains are resistant to the common antibiotic tetracycline, which is used in intensive poultry farming and to treat infections in people.

There was also evidence that some strains gained a better tolerance for environments with oxygen, and the researchers suggested this could potentially enable them to survive on food more easily and then be more likely to infect people.

Andrew deCoriolis, executive director of Farm Forward, an advocacy group campaigning to end factory farming, says that industrial poultry production is a breeding ground for bacteria and viruses that pose risks to public health.

In a report published earlier this month, Farm Forward shows that modern poultry farming is also supercharging strains of salmonella that are becoming easier to spread and increasingly resistant to certain antibiotics.

Compared with 48% a decade earlier, in 2025 around 73% of poultry samples that tested positive for salmonella were resistant to at least one antibiotic that the World Health Organization considers highly important for human medicine.

Protecting the health of wild and farmed animals requires better biosecurity to prevent spillover, or transmission from animal to human, says Kyne. Farmed populations must be better isolated so that diseases aren’t entering the food system or escaping into wild populations, he says.

“When poultry companies cram tens of billions of birds into industrial facilities and dose them with routine antibiotics, they’re not just risking outbreaks,” says deCoriolis.

“They’re running an evolution experiment on a massive scale and the bacteria are winning.”

This article was published by the Defender—Childrens Health Defense News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BYNCND 4.0. Originally published by Sentient Media. Sentient Media is a nonprofit news outlet investigating factory farms and their effect on climate, animals, health, politics and more.

Natasha Gilbert is a freelance journalist reporting on the environment, science and health. 

The post ‘The bacteria are winning’: How factory farms cause human sickness appeared first on Final Call News.

A new report is making the case for ending a widely-hated and sometimes deadly tactic used by for-profit health insurers to deny needed care.

It’s called “prior authorization,” and it allows health insurance companies to override physicians and decide whether certain care is medically necessary before it is covered.

The policy brief, published Aug. 10 by the American Economic Liberties Project (AELP), an anti-monopoly think tank, argues that the system is a massive drag on the U.S. healthcare system, draining doctors of their time, fueling hiring shortages, and—most importantly—worsening treatable health problems for millions of Americans.

“This practice has massive financial and human costs, as I know personally from my family’s own tragic experience,” said the report’s author, Hannah Garden-Monheit—a senior fellow at the AELP, whose late father was denied rehab by UnitedHealthcare after cancer forced his leg to be amputated.

“Prior authorization may have started as a narrow cost-control tool,” she explained. “But it’s mushroomed into private insurers’ strategy for diverting resources from care toward their own profits. It’s time to ban prior authorization as we know it.”

The report examines how prior authorization went from a tool used sparingly to prevent payment for unnecessary treatments to what Garden-Monheit and co-author, AELP senior healthcare fellow Emma Freer, described as a “corporate care veto.”

Around 1 in 5 adults with private insurance report that they or a family member had experienced a coverage denial in the past year, with 28% reporting that it worsened their health problem, according to a June survey from the Commonwealth Fund.

While insurers claim that their decisions to deny care are “evidence-based,” the authors say that “in reality, the practice empowers distant corporate entities with a financial conflict of interest to override the professional judgment of physicians with firsthand knowledge of patients’ medical needs.”

“There is generally little to no transparency or accountability for these decisions,” the authors wrote.

While insurers claim that denials are reviewed by qualified clinicians, one survey from the American Medical Association (AMA) found that only 16% of physicians participating in peer-to-peer reviews reported that the “peer” was often or always qualified.

Garden-Monheit said United denied her father’s claim multiple times, first citing his cancer diagnosis—the reason his leg was amputated in the first place—then by claiming that he had made significant enough “progress” that paying for rehab was unnecessary. The “progress” was that he “had figured out how to hop on one leg from his hospital bed to a chair.”

Garden-Monheit describes how she, her father, and their care team were forced to navigate a “bureaucratic maze” by United, which ultimately led them to give up.

“At least twice, I learned of a denial only after calling United to check on the status of their request. They hadn’t even bothered with a letter,” she said. “While the lines of communication felt frustratingly unpredictable, the answers always led to the same place: ‘no.’”

As she explained in a recent op-ed for MS NOW: “My family’s experience wasn’t a one-off glitch. For United, the system was working as designed.”

Former United chief medical officer Dr. Archelle Georgiou estimated that across just two Medicare Advantage plans from United and Humana, the companies save an estimated $100 million per year by denying claims that never get appealed. She said that’s a “conservative estimate.” Across the two plans, 1.75 million people were denied care, even after appeal.

While insurers pad their profits, patients suffer, the researchers found. Among people reporting a prior authorization denial, 41% said it delayed their care and 28% said their health problem worsened, according to the Commonwealth survey.

Meanwhile, the AMA survey found that 95% of physicians said that prior authorization delays care, 79% said it causes patients to abandon recommended treatments, and more than 1 in 4 doctors said it has caused a serious adverse event, including hospitalization, permanent impairment, or death.

Denied timely treatments, many patients end up paying for costly and ineffective alternatives that only make their situations worse and cause the costs to increase down the line.

“It was extremely difficult to obtain authorizations for substance abuse treatment when I covered the emergency department as a practicing psychologist,” one healthcare professional, identified in the report as Nancy, said.

“Other times, in my private practice, I would get authorizations and later experience ‘clawbacks’ where Blue Cross, for example, would decide the treatment was not medically necessary and take back the money already paid.”

“It is impossible at times to provide sound ethical treatment and extremely hard to make a living,” she said, “when reimbursement rates kept going down, and the insurance companies could take back the money they had already paid for no obvious reason.”

Prior authorization doesn’t just deny care to patients. It also creates piles of paperwork for their doctors, taking away precious time that could be dedicated to their care.

The report found that physicians and their teams now spend so much on prior authorization paperwork that it consumes the equivalent of nearly 100,000 full-time physician and advanced practice clinician workloads, plus more than 213,000 clinic staff, costing as much as $32.7 billion each year. If prior authorization were eliminated, they found, it would free up enough capacity to turn a national physician shortage into a surplus.

A YouGov poll for AELP found that more than two-thirds of voters in both parties want legislation banning prior authorization outright. But the researchers said both the Trump and Biden administrations have enacted only minor reforms that “fail to address the structural conflict of interest that underpins the corporate care veto strategy.”

Meanwhile, the industry is making the denial process even more ruthlessly efficient, increasingly deploying artificial intelligence to deny requests en masse.

According to a 2023 class action lawsuit, United’s NaviHealth system used a predictive AI model to determine whether Medicare Advantage patients should receive rehabilitation care despite knowing that the model had a 90% error rate.

President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has expanded prior authorization for traditional Medicare through a pilot program that allows AI models to adjudicate claims in some states. In July, Senate Republicans blocked Democrats’ attempt to end the pilot program.

As part of a national pro-AI strategy, Trump has also sought to preempt state laws banning the use of AI to deny care.

The AELP researchers called for a series of reforms to end prior authorization as it currently exists. Among other changes, they said decisions to authorize treatments should be made by independent third parties without the incentive to deny care.

That denials must be evidence-based, that the use of AI tools to deny claims should be banned, and that physicians should review patients in person before denying their claims.

“For too long, prior authorization has allowed insurance companies to put profits ahead of patients by overruling doctors and delaying and denying essential care,” Freer said.

“This status quo is failing patients, ratcheting up costs, and undermining the basis of effective, expert-informed care. It’s time to end this ‘corporate care veto’ and put medical decisions back where they belong: with patients and their doctors.”

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