Thursday 17 April 2008

Vitamins Will Kill You

I received the following Email from fellow researcher Terry Boardman following the re-launch of the 'Cochrane Collaboration' in the MSM. As always, Terry's observation are truly insightful.

The BBC Radio flagship programme "Today" this morning (Wed), did a feature on a report from something called 'The Cochrane Collaboration' which claimed that use of vitamins and supplements could be damaging to health. I immediately noted that trials of 230,000 (i.e. 23 again) were referred to. What is this Cochrane Collaboration that the BBC pushes our way? It's rather like the Brussels-based International Crisis Group in the foreign affairs field, which the BBC likes to make out is somehow 'impartial', and also often refers to, but the ICG is in fact a front for NWO elitists. Such groups are always said to be 'independent, non-profit-making' etc but for the ICG, take a look at their board, exec committee and key advisors:
http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=1139&l=1 and for their "senior advsors", here:
http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=4399&l=1

The Cochrane Collaboration, and the Campbell Collaboration, with which Cochrane is increasingly allied, are examples of the kind of semi-invisible bodies, linked to major elite organisations, that drive health practices into national populations via govt & supra-govt. (e.g. EU) bureaucratic channels. They they just surface from time to time, like polling institutes; they are assumed to be impartial and objective, and the mainstream media normally do not investigate them; they just assume they're neutral and "OK".

The Cochrane Collaboration are driving the agenda of the so-called 'evidence-based approach' in health and social policy. This approach has been present in education and other fields since the 80s. This is basically Baconian thinking that seeks to impose uniformity in every field, based on so-called 'empirical data' and computer modelling.
[see the related area of Outcomes-Based Education below at the bottom of this post]

As is so often the case with things introduced to the public by the BBC, which claims to be 'global', you'll find that the Cochrane Collaboration, which is promoting so-called "evidence-based medicince", is overwhelmingly an outfit from the English-speaking countries (USA + Brit Commonwealth).

Cochrane takes its name from the work of British epidemiologist Archie Cochrane, who seems to have been a decent man, but it has become a system that now goes far beyond his individual initiatives. http://www.cochrane.org/docs/archieco.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_based_practice
Note that this wikipedia entry on "evidence-based" methodologies, which have spread like a virus throughout organisations of all kinds, does NOT mention the origins of the practice. The approach is directed at all non-conventional ways of doing anything, from psychiatry to social policies, seeking to discredit them on the basis of "what does not work".

Another organisation, The Campbell Collaboration, has emerged on the same model as Cochrane, but deals with crime and social policy. Note that this group is funded by, amongst others, the Rockefeller Foundation. While Cochrane insists it is not funded by the pharmaceutical companies, behind the scenes, I am sure you will find money from one of the Big Foundations, like Rockefeller, Ford, Carnegie etc that are associated with the New World Order. Basically, these groups seek to push all social practice, health practice etc in the direction of uniformity of method.

http://www.campbellcollaboration.org/partnerships.asp

Here is a quote from someone critical of the "evidence-based" methods advocated by the Cochrane Collaboration. He is commenting on criticism of these methods by a Dr Healy. Note what he says.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1994886

"While I concur with Dr. Healy that relying solely on evidence-based medicine to determine medical guidelines better suits the needs of governments and insurance companies for cost control than the needs of patients for optimal medical treatment, I agree for a different reason.
While evidence-based medicine is absolutely essential to comprehensive healthcare reform, it has been profoundly corrupted by money."

Ray Moynihan: Organisations like the Cochrane Collaboration are bringing renewed awareness of the benefits, the harms and the uncertainties of all medical interventions. But there are notes of caution being sounded about an over-zealous adoption of evidence-based medicine.

Professor John Loeser, The University of Washington: "I think we are at risk, as we move into a more evidence-based medicine way of practising, of throwing out the human aspects of the doctor/patient in a relationship that are very important to patient well-being and of course, it's really hard to measure what's going on between a doctor and a patient when you compare to what's going on with this new drug versus the old drug. That's easy to measure but what you and I are interacting about, that's much harder to measure. I think there is a real peril in the move towards evidence-based medicine to lose sight of the fact that physicians are human beings interacting with other human beings, patients and that's why we exist. The technology is a very new addition to health care."

Hilda Bastian: "It's an interesting thing being an outsider put into this kind of a process because it's very much like a club, you know all these people, they tend to know each other even if they don't know each other as individuals, they know who they are and where they're coming from and although they will disagree about things they've actually got a very similar kind of mind-set and it becomes a very clubbish kind of an atmosphere and I guess that doesn't lead to too much questioning."

For the CC itself, see:
http://www.cochrane.org/docs/descrip.htm
http://www.cochrane.org/docs/commercial_sponsorship_revised.htm
It's interesting to just look at the website and get a feel for the style, vocabulary, self-identification etc of this group, and ask yourself if this really has anything to do with *health* ?

See this on David Eddy, the guy who first developed evidence-based methods in medicine http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/abstract/hlthaff.26.4.w500v1?rss=1%3C/span%3E%3C/td%3E%3Ctd%3E+%3C/td%3E%3Ctd

http://www.conservapedia.com/David_Eddy

David Eddy is founder and medical director of Archimedes Inc. in Aspen, Colorado. Archimedes was founded to improve the quality and efficiency of health care by using advanced mathematics and computing methods to build realistic simulation models of physiology, diseases, and health care systems. Sean Tunis is founder and director of the Center for Medical Technology Policy (http://www.cmtpnet.org) in San Francisco.


You can see a video of Eddy here:
http://fora.tv/2007/10/06/Hospital_of_the_Future

http://www.nclnet.org/health/ebm2.htm
This webpage above presents the background context for the push for the "evidence-based" approach, namely, that individuals are beginning to take ever more responsibility for their own health. Medical professionals don't like this. Neither do drugs companies, who depend on their relationships with GPs, hospitals and political health authorities.

http://www.equity.cochrane.org/en/newPage1.htmlThe World Bank Health, Nutrition and Population program, Reaching the Poor, has developed and funded several case studies on interventions that are targeted to the poor.
This program has been developed with the commitment of the World Bank to "taking action to reduce inequalities". There is tremendous potential for synergy between the Campbell and Cochrane Collaborations and this World Bank initiative.

Here we see the link ups between the 2 'Collaborations':
http://www.equity.cochrane.org/en/about.html

And, sure enough, buried away near the bottom of the page, is the Rockefeller connection:
1.4 Applicability of Campbell and Cochrane reviews to equity-relevant clinical guidelines

Clinical Practice Guidelines are recognized as one way to inform clinicians of the best available evidence, in a format that is useful in practice. With ***major funding*** from the Rockefeller Foundation [my emphasis - Terry], INCLEN is developing methods for creating equity-focused and locally relevant clinical practice guidelines. These methods include applying an equity lens to existing clinical practice guidelines (Dans 1998), as well as developing new recommendations using a modification of the GRADE Working Group methods (led by Andy Oxman). The GRADE Working Group has acknowledged the importance of equity factors by proposing that equity considerations be reflected in separate recommendations. The extent to which Campbell and Cochrane reviews can play a role as the source of evidence for these separate recommendations depends on the availability of equity information in reviews.

What is INCLEN? - A Rockefeller Project : See http://www.inclen.org/history.html
"INCLEN comprises health specialists concerned with the availability, effectiveness and efficiency of health care in their home countries. Created in 1980 as a project of The Rockefeller Foundation, INCLEN has been an independent non-profit organization since 1988. "

http://www.aapss.org/section.cfm/5/835/1110

Place Randomized Trials: Experimental Tests of Public Policy Edited by: Robert F. Boruch A Volume of The Annals of The American Academy of Political and Social Science Volume 599, May 2005

As a springboard from the Campbell Collaboration initiative and supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, this special issue of the ANNALS includes a thorough review of randomized tests across a variety of studies. Exploring significant dimensions of place randomized trials (also called cluster randomized trials or group randomized trials), these papers shed light on recent efforts to enhance the quality of designing such trials as well as on results reporting.

These methods mesh in with what has been called Outcome-Based Education. It goes by many other names (see below), the brainchild of one Dr William Spady http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Spady

http://www.learningtolearn.sa.edu.au/Colleagues/pages/default/spady/

William Spady is the head of ChangeLeaders. William Spady is a sociologist and the self-proclaimed father of Outcome-Based Education (OBE). OBE is referred to by over 20 different names including Systemic education restructuring, Performance Based Education, Standards based education reform, High Performance Learning, Total Quality Management, Transformational Education, and Competency-Based Education.

"His research is still widely cited in nations such as Australia which are still adopting OBE. Nevertheless, the names have been changed in the US largely due strong negative responses to these programs when they have been introduced to actual students and parents. All of these titles refer to a similar philosophy and a plan which implements radical and "systemic" change into schools. The response to his involvement with OBE has been so negative in some communities that hundreds of parents have shown up in community meetings to protest his involvement in education planning. Many have researched the thousands of articles on the internet referring to Spady, with many showing the harmful effects of his theories on actual children."

Spady has set up something called the Unity Empowerment Trust which seeks to train new 'leaders' for society.

See : http://www.appa.asn.au/cms/uploads/events/spadykeynote2ohts.pdf

Now, who is behind Spady? Who works to make his dreams reality? You guessed it.

See
http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:9mmPO8MEMzYJ:preterhuman.net/texts/education/who-obe.txt+Dr+William+spady+rockefeller+foundation&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=uk

http://uci.net/~bonville/Education/WhatIsOBE.html

Here we see the mesh between touchy-feely New Ageism and rigid systems thinking.

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