MORGELLONS: UNKNOWN SKIN DISEASE MAY BE LINKED TO GM FOODS (GMO's)

Photo of the fibrous structures that were in the skin of a Morgellons sufferer.

www.morgellonsusa.com

GMO and Morgellons Disease

by Barbara H. Peterson

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8464

March 27, 2008

Since the Clinton administration made biotechnology “a strategic priority for U.S. government backing” (1), giant transnational agri-business concerns have aggressively taken over the global food chain by flooding it with Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) without regard for the consequences to the earth or its inhabitants. This takeover not only has the potential for global economic devastation, but threatens the earth’s population with far-reaching health concerns as well. One health concern that seems to coincide with the GMO revolution is Morgellons disease. What if the advent of Morgellons disease has something to do with the ingestion of GMO foods?

Morgellons Disease – What is it?


Very little can be found regarding this disease. Originally, sufferers were told that their problem was imaginary. This was of little comfort to the people who were suffering.

Morgellons Disease sufferers report strange, fiber-like material sticking out of sores or wounds that erupt on the skin. This is accompanied by painful, intense itching, that has been described as “an ever present sensation as if something is crawling under the skin.” (2)

On May 18, 2006, KGW, a local news channel reporting out of the Oregon area published this story:

Strange sickness: Mystery disease horror story (excerpt)

[Dr. Drottar] The disabled family practice doctor felt like bugs were crawling under her skin.

"If I fully tell people what has gone on with me medically, they think they’re in the twilight zone,” said Drottar.

She woke up with the feeling that fluid was flowing just below her skin. Often black or blue hair like fibers protruded from her skin, she said.

“I thought I had been exposed to asbestos. I thought I was having asbestos fibers come out of my skin. I was pulling long, thin, small hair-like fibers that were extremely sharp that could literally pierce through my finger nails,” Drottar said.

In addition to the feeling of bugs and the fibers, Drottar also suffered from severe depression, chronic fatigue and a weakened immune system. As a result, she had to give up her family practice, Drottar said. (3)

Morgellons and GMO – the Link

Little information has been revealed concerning the long-term health effects of GMO crops on humans or animals, and even less information can be had regarding research correlating Morgellons with GMO foods. This is suspicious right off the bat, because it would seem that there would be a natural curiosity regarding a link between Genetically Modified Organisms that people ingest regularly and inorganic fibers that protrude from a person’s skin. This would be right up a geneticist’s alley, and quite worthy of intensive research. So, why aren’t there a ton of published studies? Why is it so difficult finding anything related to this? Could it be that companies such as Monsanto have enough clout to effectively squash these stories? If they have enough clout to ruin countries by deceiving impoverished farmers into purchasing patented GMO seeds, and then take it a step further and force these poor people to purchase seeds year after year instead of harvesting their own, then they have enough clout to ask our more than willing corporate government to manipulate the press...again.

According to Mike Stagman, PhD,

“Genetic Engineering is a nightmare technology that has already caused MANY disease epidemics -- documented but unpublicized.” (4)

Well Monsanto, you let at least one study slip through. With the help of a couple of search engines, the following article by Whitley Strieber published on October 12, 2007, titled “Skin Disease May Be Linked to GM Food” was found, which concludes that the fibers taken from a Morgellons sufferer contain the same substance that is "used commercially to produce genetically-modified plants." Here is the article:

Skin Disease May Be Linked to GM Food

12-Oct-2007

Many people—and most physicians—have written off Morgellons disease as either a hoax or hypochondria. But now there is evidence that this mysterious disease may be REAL and related to GENETICALLY MODIFIED food!

The skin of Morgellons victims oozes mysterious strands that have been identified as cellulose (which cannot be manufactured by the human body), and people have the sensation of things crawling beneath their skin. The first known case of Morgellons occurred in 2001, when Mary Leitao created a web site describing the disease, which had infected her young son. She named it Morgellons after a 17th century medical study in France that described the same symptoms.

In the Sept. 15-21 issue of New Scientist magazine, Daniel Elkan describes a patient he calls "Steve Jackson," who "for years" has "been finding tiny blue, red and black fibers growing in intensely itchy lesions on his skin." He quotes Jackson as saying, "The fibers are like pliable plastic and can be several millimeters long. Under the skin, some are folded in a zigzag pattern. These can be as fine as spider silk, yet strong enough to distend the skin when you pull them, as if you were pulling on a hair."

Doctors say that this type of disease could only be caused by a parasite, but anti-parasitic medications do not help. Psychologists insist that this is a new version of the well-known syndrome known as "delusional parasitosis." While this is a "real" disease, it is not a physically-caused one.

But now there is physical evidence that Morgellons is NOT just psychological. When pharmacologist Randy Wymore offered to study some of these fibers if people sent them to him, he discovered that "fibers from different people looked remarkably similar to each other and yet seem to match no common environmental fibers."

When they took them to a police forensic team, they said they were not from clothing, carpets or bedding. They have no idea what they are.

Researcher Ahmed Kilani says he was able to break down two fiber samples and extract their DNA. He found that they belonged to a fungus.

An even more provocative finding is that biochemist Vitaly Citovsky discovered that the fibers contain a substance called "Agrobacterium," which, according to New Scientist, is "used commercially to produce genetically-modified plants." Could GM plants be "causing a new human disease?" (5)

GMO – Not on My Watch!

The giant transnational corporations behind the GMO revolution are hitting us in our most vulnerable spot – our bellies. Most people have been brought up with an innate trust that what they purchase from the stores is safe to eat. This is no longer true, since most processed foods contain genetically engineered ingredients that can have disastrous effects on both animal and human health. What you purchase from the corner store might just change your DNA and create such frightening symptoms that the general public simply does not believe it. What is worse is that when you go to the doctor to get help, he/she tells you what you are experiencing is all in your head. This is rubbish! It is up to people who care to make the correlations between what we eat and what happens to our bodies. Remember the old saying – “you are what you eat?” Well, this author believes it is true.

Notes

1) Engdahl, F.W. (2007). Seeds of Destruction.

2) Stagman, M. Phd. (2006). GMO Disease Epidemics: Bt-cotton Fiber Disease. Retrieved from http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2006/08/344305.shtml

3) Porter, L. (2006). Strange sickness: Mystery disease horror story. Retrieved from http://www.kgw.com/news-local/stories/kgw_051806_news_sweeps_strange_sickness_morgellons.53b2569a.html

4) Stagman, M. Phd. (2006). GMO Disease Epidemics: Bt-cotton Fiber Disease. Retrieved from http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2006/08/344305.shtml

5) Strieber, W. (2007). Skin Disease Might be Linked to GM Food. Retrieved from
http://www.unknowncountry.com/news/?id=6486

Barbara H. Peterson is a Writer and Activist,
http://spktruth2power.wordpress.com

BIOFUELS LEADING TO LAND GRAB AROUND THE WORLD...

Biofuels and ‘Land Grabs’ in Poor Nations

By James Kanter

http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/12/biofuels-and-land-grabs-in-poor-nations/

12 June, 2009

Current protections against land-grabs in developing countries are “absolutely insufficient,” said Olivier De Schutter, the U.N.’s special rapporteur on the right to food.

Olivier De Schutter, the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food, warned on Thursday that biofuels remain an important driver behind big land acquisitions and land leases in poor countries that jeopardize local inhabitants’ food security.

About one-fifth of the activities that Mr. De Schutter deemed as “land grabs” – often backed by hedge funds or sovereign wealth funds – are projects in parts of Africa and Asia aimed at growing crops to make feedstock for biofuels.

“There still is a vast market for first-generation agrofuels,” said Mr. De Schutter, who added that he considered the safeguards adopted by the European Union in 2008 “absolutely insufficient to monitor to the impacts on the countries concerned by shifts in land use for agrofuels production.”

Next-generation biofuels made from plants that would reduce competition with food crops were still in development and so the existing incentives for biofuels in the United States and European Union remained a cause for grave concern, he said.

These newer fuels “were too distant for the moment to say that we can continue to insist on the use of agrofuels for transport.”

He also underlined that second-generation agrofuels “will be hugely water consuming.”

Mr. De Schutter was in Brussels to propose a set of principles and measures to curb “land grabbing” by investors seeking agricultural lands for major crops, like soy and jatropha, which are often exported to produce food for rich-world consumers or to produce biofuels.

He said some large-scale land investments provided much-needed new infrastructure and employment.

But he said that new rules were needed because some investments were leading to evictions, sudden losses of farm and grazing lands, and greater competition for water resources.

Mr. De Schutter was appointed to his post in 2008 by the U.N. Human Rights Council.

Russia Dumps US Dollar as basic reserve currency

source: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13691

May 20, 2009

The US dollar is not Russia’s basic reserve currency anymore. The euro-based share of reserve assets of Russia’s Central Bank increased to the level of 47.5 percent as of January 1, 2009 and exceeded the investments in dollar assets, which made up 41.5 percent, The Vedomosti newspaper wrote.

The dollar has thus lost the status of the basic reserve currency for the Russian Central Bank, the annual report, which the bank provided to the State Duma, said.

In accordance with the report, about 47.5 percent of the currency assets of the Russian Central Bank were based on the euro, whereas the dollar-based assets made up 41.5 percent as of the beginning of the current year. The situation was totally different at the beginning of the previous year: 47 percent of investments were made in US dollars, while the euro investments were evaluated at 42 percent.

The dollar share had increased to 49 percent and remained so as of October 1. The euro share made up 40 percent. The rest of investments were based on the British pound, the Japanese yen and the Swiss frank.

The report also said that the reserve currency assets of the Russian Central Bank were cut by $56.6 billion. The losses mostly occurred at the end of the year, when the Central Bank was forced to conduct massive interventions to curb the run of traders who rushed to buy up foreign currencies. The currency assets of the Central Bank had grown to $537.6 billion by October 2008. Therefore, the index dropped by almost $133 billion within the recent three months.

The majority of Russian companies, banks and most of the Russian population started to purchase enormous amounts of foreign currencies at the end of 2008. The dollar gained 16 percent and the euro 13.5 percent over the fourth quarter. The demand on the US dollar was extremely high, and the Central Bank was forced to spend a big part of its dollar assets, experts say.

The change of the structure of the currency portfolio of the Bank of Russia has not affected the official peg of the dual currency basket, which includes $0.55 and 0.45 EUR.

The investments of the Bank of Russia in state securities of foreign issuers have been considerably increased, the report said. About a third of Russia’s international reserves are based on US Treasury bonds.

Russia became one of the largest creditors of the US administration last year, the US Department of the Treasury said. Russia increased its investments in the debt securities of the US Treasury from $32.7 billion as of December 2007 to $116.4 billion as of December 2008.