(Near) Death From Stupidity: Gary Null's Personal Product Endorsement

Putting the 'die' in diet

Health guru nearly killed eating own product

By DAREH GREGORIAN New York Post

Last Updated: 10:20 AM, April 28, 2010

UPDATE: AOL NEWS picks up the story.




That's not exactly a ringing endorsement.

Nutrition guru Gary Null says he was almost killed by eating a dietary supplement -- his own.

In papers filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, the controversial alternative-medicine advocate says he suffered "mentally and physically" after eating his Gary Null's Ultimate Power Meal.

Over the month Null, 65, ate the powdered product, he suffered "excruciating fatigue along with bodily pain," and "began to suffer from extreme cracks and bleeding from within his feet," the suit says.

"Null had to be in bed with his feet elevated because it was so painful he did not have the strength to walk" -- but he kept eating Gary Null's Ultimate Power Meal, "thinking that it would help him and relieve his condition."

Instead, it made it worse, according to the suit, which blames a contractor that mixed the powder.

The health nut went to see his doctor, and tests showed he had elevated levels of Vitamin D in his system. He later discovered that the Ultimate Power Meal had 1,000 times the amount of Vitamin D than the label claimed.

That meant that instead of ingesting 2,000 IU of Vitamin D daily, he was ingesting 2 million IU, the suit says. Most doctors recommend 1,000 IU a day.

Null said he was later told that if he hadn't visited his doctor when he did, "he could have died within a short period of time."

When Null discovered what the problem was, he "sequestered himself and fasted, only consuming massive amounts of water, as he was told that there was no medical treatment to lower the amount of Vitamin D in his system," the suit says.

"It took three months to get his blood seemingly back to where he was able to function. Even now, Null's condition is questionable, as he continues to occasionally urinate blood," the suit says.

Null -- who markets fitness DVDs, as well as hair-care, anti-aging, anti-stress, air-purification, weight-loss and pet-care goods on his Web site -- soon discovered he wasn't the only one who couldn't handle his product.

While he was recuperating, "six consumers were hospitalized with severe kidney damage, and Null, in the midst of all this, while he was suffering in bed, had dozens of his customers calling him, along with condemning and threatening him," the suit says.

The suit -- seeking $10 million -- says New Jersey company Triarco was responsible for mixing the Vitamin D for the product, which has since been recalled. It charges Triarco failed to do proper tests before sending the ingredient on.

Triarco didn't return a call for comment.

AIDS Denialist - Libertarian Connection: Celia Farber's Dad Reports on Her Tea Bagging Activities

A warning to the tea partiers
by Barry Farber (aka Dad)
WorldNetDaiily.com April 21, 2010

The following has never been verified by me. Too many good stories are ruined by over-verification. Just call it "Southern folk-biology."

We were taught that the magnolia blossom, probably the most beautiful in the plant kingdom, stays beautiful only as long as you do nothing but look at it. If you touch it, it blackens and dies! I think tea parties do, too.



Born strong a year ago and now reportedly stronger than either of the two major parties, the tea-party movement defies coherent journalistic attempts to sum it all up. Writing about the tea-party movement is like trying to nail a custard pie to the side of a barn. Like the Vestal Virgins of ancient Rome, the power of the tea parties is bound up with their un-touchability. Pollsters tell us the tea parties are more admired than the major parties. But if the tea partiers ever start behaving like a major party, they'll go the way of the magnolia blossom.


Get the definitive account describing the rebirth of appreciation for liberty across the nation, Whistleblower magazine's "THE GREAT AWAKENING: How tea partiers are setting a new course for America"

The standard political movement starts with a leader and a message and then outreach; once upon a time, letters, then doorbells, then telephones, now computers and eventually rallies; small and then, the founders hope, larger and larger. That's called "top down." This tea-party phenomenon came upon us like Iceland's cloud of volcanic ash. It's strictly from the bottom up, from deep down inside the boiling American soul; up, up and away.

Complicating the task of the journalist is that fact that, like snowflakes and fingerprints, no two tea parties are alike. My daughter Celia Farber, a writer whose work has reached the front cover of magazines like Esquire and Harpers, attended the New York Tea Party on April 15. Here's part of her report.
"I wanted to go see for myself rather than rely on quasi-hysterical media depictions. I was moved. Everybody was smiling, and there was a very uplifting feeling in the crowd. I felt no hate at all, nothing extremist or menacing. I felt uplifted and hopeful. I went with no pre-conceptions. Everybody was warm and welcoming. The left is making a big mistake disparaging these people."


When asked if minority Americans were there, Celia saved a lot of words by stating simply, "Yes. It was the same mix of people you see on the New York subway." Was it a hate-Obama rally? "No way," insists Celia. "That's a red herring. It was much more a protest against the countless violations of liberty in recent years, culminating with the banking bailout and the health-care reform bill."

There may have been tea parties in which President Obama undoubtedly was the big target. There's no "tea party-line." If the question is, "Who's in charge here?" the tea party's present strength lies in the answer, "Nobody!" Or, at least, different unfamiliar names in different places. It's so long since we've seen a real grass root we've forgotten what it looks like. Sure, the tea-party movement now has a list of candidates they endorse, but those endorsements are based strictly on principles – not backroom deals with a union. And they've got a "Contract From America" broadcaster Larry Kudlow analyzed as mostly a defense of the

Constitution. Can anything this great really be happening to us?

My plea to the tea parties, one of which I was privileged to address last July 4, is, "Please, fellows. Keep it up, but don't ever try to get organized. Let it all flow like a student riot in Ecuador; or, better, a patriots' gathering in old Lexington and Concord." (I'd favor granting every illegal alien who could explain that last sentence instant citizenship. And I'll bet you we could tote the lot of them down to the courthouse in a normal-sized van!)

Last attempt to explain the force and fragility of the tea parties: the Rudyard Kipling tale of "The Man Who Would Be King." A ne'er-do-well from the Queen's Army in Imperial India and his buddy slip across into Afghanistan and convince the local primitives they were there to rule over them. They do a good job at first; infrastructure, farming, bridge-building. They persuade their subjects they are more than rulers; they are gods! They amass a fortune. They talk of declaring nationhood and negotiating with the queen herself as fellow royalty.

One day, big slip-up. The locals believe that gods don't do anything as human as bleed. And one of them gets bitten by a woman and bleeds a little. Gods aren't supposed to bleed at all! The enraged mob falls upon the phony gods tossing one to his death in the bottom of a canyon and crucifying the other, who manages to free himself and crawl back to India to tell the tale.

Got it? Gods don't bleed. And the movement Americans crave right now doesn't deal, double-deal, dirty-deal, lie, manipulate, cheat, prevaricate, exaggerate, over-spend, steal, live it up or act like gods or even kings. And they're non-violent!

So, tea-folk, tea-patriots: Make sure your rallies are bloodless. Don't feature angry women with sharp teeth. Or spears. Or swords.

In fact, don't even go anywhere near the briars.

Is Peter Duesberg Finally Paying His Dues?

Exclusive:
AIDS Scientist 
Investigated for 
Misconduct
After Complaint

by Greg Miller on April 16, 2010, Science Insider 
UPDATE: Huffington Post / Daily Californian pick up the story:UC Berkeley Professor Under Investigation For Controversial AIDS Article; 
Statement by Nathan Geffen on Complaint Against Peter Duesberg 

University of California, Berkeley, professor of molecular and cell biology Peter Duesberg tells ScienceInsider that he is the subject of a misconduct investigation launched by the university. Duesberg has been a controversial figure for decades because of his vocal skepticism that HIV is the cause of AIDS. But he says this is the first time he has ever been investigated for misconduct, and ScienceInsider has learned that an AIDS activist may have helped initiate the investigation.



The charges apparently stem from a paper Duesberg and four colleagues published last summer in Medical Hypotheses that challenged the assertion that HIV has caused massive loss of life due to AIDS, and more specifically, disputed a 2008 study arguing that hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost in South Africa because of delays in distributing antiretroviral drugs (ARVs). Under pressure from AIDS researchers, Elsevier, the journal's publisher, withdrew the paper and told its editor to either implement a peer-review process or hand in his resignation. 

The university would neither confirm nor deny that Duesberg is under investigation, but he forwarded a letter to ScienceInsider, signed by university Vice Provost Sheldon Zedeck and dated 18 November 2009, that says the university has appointed a faculty member to investigate allegations it received. According to this letter:

The specific allegations are that an article you submitted to Medical Hypotheses was investigated and then withdrawn by the publisher based on issues of credibility and false claims. The allegations also state that you failed to declare a relevant conflict of interest with regard to the commercial interests of your co-authors.

Duesberg says he heard nothing more until last week, when he received an e-mail from the university's investigator, epidemiologist Art Reingold, requesting a meeting to discuss the allegations. Duesberg says he declined to meet until he receives more information about the charges against him. According to the university's faculty code of conduct, disciplinary actions can range from a written reprimand to salary reduction to dismissal.

In response to Duesberg's request, Reingold sent him two letters of complaint the university received in August 2009. The authors' names are redacted, but ScienceInsider confirmed one of them is Nathan Geffen of Treatment Action Campaign, an advocacy group in South Africa.

Geffen says his chief concern is an undeclared conflict of interest. "In particular, there is no mention in theMedical Hypotheses article that [co-author] David Rasnick worked with Matthias Rath, a vitamin salesman, and that the basis of their business model was to claim that vitamins, not ARVs, treat AIDS," Geffen says. (Rath was not an author on the Medical Hypotheses paper.) This information about Rasnick was not disclosed in the paper, but it should have been, Geffen says. And as first author, Duesberg should have taken responsibility, he says.

Rasnick says he worked as a salaried senior scientist with Rath's nonprofit foundation in South Africa from March 2005 to July 2006. But he says he currently has "no financial interest whatever" in the Dr. Rath Health Foundation.

Given that Rasnick stopped working with Rath almost 3 years before the Medical Hypotheses paper was published, Duesberg says, "I don't see that there was a conflict of interest." Duesberg is convinced that the allegations stem from a desire to censor his unpopular views. "There is clearly some movement to get rid of any dissent against the HIV-AIDS hypothesis," he says.

HIV/AIDS denialists prefer the term "re-thinkers." What's the difference?

When Is The Truth Pejorative?

by J. Todd DeShong

Published by splicetoday.com
 

The truth is often cold, hard and downright ugly. But is the truth ever pejorative? Can the truth be used in such a way that it can have a disparaging, derogatory, or belittling effect or force? I’d say no; truth can only be what it is. When the truth is portrayed in any other form, it is, quite simply, a lie. The truth is really the only thing in the world that is black and white.

In The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, the father, Baba explains sin to his son Amir this way:

"Now, no matter what the mullah teaches, there is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft. When you kill a man, you steal a life. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness. When you tell a lie, you steal someone’s right to the truth."

Perhaps this is overly simplistic. For example, some people say there are three sides to any disagreement: the plaintiff, the defendant, and the truth, which lies somewhere in the middle. Yet even in such an example, the truth is not diminished. Even though each person may slant the truth in his or her favor this does not change nor alter the facts. And facts are what support the truth.

When a person or group holds a belief or opinion that is not supported by facts, the best way to distract others from this flaw is to make a specious claim. Such is the case with AIDS Denialists. They are offended by being termed “denialists,” as they claim the term unfairly associates them with deniers of the Holocaust, Climate Change and 9/11. However, is that a legitimate claim, or further distraction from the truth? Here at Splice Today, Zach Kauffman wrote a thoughtful article called, Notes from the Field: HIV/AIDS Denialists, which apparently was the final straw for this group. In direct response to Kaufmann, they created a Facebook page as a call to arms for AIDS “Re-Thinkers,” (their preference) to rise up and fight this horribly pejorative term!

I can’t understand their logic.

AIDS Denialists say that they are just questioning the validity of the science of the past 26 years. They are not “denying” anything. But is that true? It’s my assumption that they will agree to the following:

They deny the existence of the virus known as HIV OR

They deny HIV is harmful or pathogenic.

They deny HIV is transmitted sexually, especially heterosexually.

They deny HIV medications are helpful.

They deny HIV medications have drastically extended and improved lives.

They deny HIV has devastated South Africa

They deny HIV caused the deaths of countless hemophiliacs.

They deny HIV destroys the immune system.

They deny the devastation HIV caused in the 1980s.

So why is it that this group abhors the term “Denialist”? They admit to holding the above beliefs. Is it just semantics? Do they have a valid beef? Or are they just tilting at windmills, obfuscating the facts and attempting to steal our right to the truth?

Living Belgrade from Coba - Serbian Design and Branding

Some time ago I discovered this publication by COBA & associates called LIVING BELGRADE and I loved it so much that I want to share it with all of you. A magnificent collection of streets, houses and people that come together to create something that we know as Belgrade.

The team around Creative director Slobodan Jovanović-Coba put together an exiting (and graphically apealing) brochure with all their favorite highlights, foods, coffee shops, drinks, clubs, fashion, design, music, stores and much more of Belgrade.

Jovanovic wished to keep a record of the changed and to learn from them and create something better and more honorable. it was also a way for him to point out those little things that make up a big city.

He writes: "We will not be unrealistic and fantasize, but rather offer our professional point of view as a solution and inspiration on how to deal with the daily cacophony of irritation and noise."

You can download the brochure here (in English) and here (на српском) and it's a great adventure to flip through the wonderful pages:

Included are also the  CLASSIC TOP 5 of Belgrade's architecture:

MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART(I made a post here)

HOUSE OF THE FEDERAL EXECUTIVE COUNCIL (I made a post here)

SPORTCOMPLEX 25.MAJ (I made a post here)

PRINTERY BIGZ (I made a post here)

THEDEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE COMPLEX (GENERALŠTAB) (I made a post here)

Who is the man behind this great work?

Slobodan Jovanović Coba

 He is the creative director of Coba & Associates a design and branding agency in Belgrade. I'll write surely more about the great work that he's doing with his team.

http://www.cobaassociates.com/