Syrian Capital: 14 People died in new Bomb Attacks
SyriaNews
June 11, 2013
Sad news from the Syrian capital Damascus. At least 14 people have been killed by two bomb attacks carried out by the foreign-backed militants and jihadists, often called “Free Syrian Army” (FSA) or “democratic innocent people just defending themselves” by Western mass media. So according to the facts on ground in Syria since over two years, some might wish these European states some of these “democratic freedom-lovers” due the situation that their media and politicians love these militants so much.
The two bomb attacks in the Syrian capital Damascus were carried out near a police station after other explosive devices blew off near the known Marjeh Square in the central area of the Syrian capital Damascus. According to the Syrian Al-Ikhbariya television station, not only (at least) 14 people died due to the next terrorist attack in the Syrian capital, but also some 31 innocent Syrians were injured in this incident today.
Although there is so far no group which has claimed the responsibility for this terrorist attack in the capital of Syria, it seems logical that the foreign-backed militants and jihadists are behind such acts of pure terrorism against the innocent citizens of the Syrian capital. Thus, that the Syrian television channel Al-Ikhbariya has soon blamed the US-backed terrorists within Syria is not very far fetched, but logical.
After all the successful operations of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) in recent weeks, for example in al-Qusayr and the countryside of al-Qusayr near the border to Lebanon and the recent successful operations in the largest Syrian city Aleppo and the northern region of Syria, these next car bombs and acts of terror against the Syrian citizens of the capital Damascus can be taken as a cruel revenge and a last attempt of these foreign-backed militants and Islamists to spread fear in the capital. It is possible that these armed thugs wanted to give a sign that they are still able to carry out such horrible attacks against civilians in the capital of Syria.
While this horrible sign by these uneducated thugs and al-Qaeda fanatics is sure bad in terms of that there is not yet a real level of security implemented by the Syrian government even in the capital of the country, this cruel sign just boosts the morale of the resistance against this sectarian terrorism and the proxy war by foreign nations, including Arab traitors in Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, who are just working hand in hand with the Israeli regime and the American regime of terrorism, covered by mass media and politicians as the “world police” and “suppliers of democracy”. My ass.
Already some days ago, on June 8, at least eight people were killed in a car bomb blast in Al-Adawiya neighborhood of city of Homs. According to the reports, also some innocent Syrians were injured in this blast.
As mentioned, these recent horrible acts of terrorism came as the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) took control of the last militant bastion near the strategic town of al-Qusayr (al-Qusayyr) also in the province of the Syrian city of Homs and located near the Syrian border to Lebanon.
6,113 Foreign Terrorists Killed in Syria
Friends of Syria
June 12, 2013
ALMANAR REPORTS THAT 6,113 FOREIGN TERRORISTS HAVE BEEN KILLED, SEVERELY WOUNDED OR MISSING IN SYRIA. Here’s their breakdown according to the Hizbollah news source:
729 Saudi Arabians
640 Kurds from the Mujaahedeen Khalq (recently declassified as a terrorist organization by the U.S.)
489 Egyptians
439 Libyans
439 Chechens
301 Afghans
263 Libyans
261 Pakistanis
208 Iraqis
188 Russians
167 Turks
129 Jordanians
117 Somalis
129 Jordanians
109 Kuwaitis
90 French
67 Germans
66 British
50 Tunisians
55 Indonesians
53 Algerians
52 Yemenis
19 Qataris
45 Belgians
40 Uzbekis
35 Americans
31 Kosovars
21 Azerbaijanis
31 Maltese (Of Lebanese descent)
7 Mauritanians
6 Sierra Leone
6 Surinam
We at SyrPer do not agree with the break-down of nationalities. The evidence is much more convincing that the Libyans have made up the largest bloc of foreign rodents.
ZAF Syrian Perspective
VIDEO — China launches manned Shenzhou-10 craft to experimental space station
RT
June 11, 2013
China’s fifth-ever manned mission has successfully blasted off from a location in the Gobi desert and will now head to the country’s prototype orbital station, where the crew will spend 14 days – a Chinese space record. The Shenzhou-10 craft, carrying two male astronauts, and the second Chinese woman to go to space, will dock with the experimental Tiangong-1 space lab 40 hours after lift-off. READ MORE: http://on.rt.com/0stnn5
RT LIVE http://rt.com/on-air
Subscribe to RT! http://www.youtube.com/subscription_c…
Like us on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/RTnews
Follow us on Twitter http://twitter.com/RT_com
Follow us on Google+ http://plus.google.com/+RT
RT (Russia Today) is a global news network broadcasting from Moscow and Washington studios. RT is the first news channel to break the 1 billion YouTube views benchmark.
Bill Gates’ Polio Vaccine Program Caused 47,500 Cases of Paralysis Death
nsnbc international
May 8, 2013
Bill Gates and 47,500 Cases of Paralysis
Joe Samuel (4M),- In India, Monsanto hired Bollywood actors to promote genetically engineered cotton seed to illiterate farmers. Nana Petakar became a brand ambassador for Monsanto. The advertising has been called “aggressive, unscrupulous and false.”
Bill Gates, heavily invested in Monsanto’s GMOs as well as in vaccines, hired the most beloved of Indian actors, Amitabh Bachchan, to promote the oral polio vaccine.
Here is one example of the ads Bachchan created. Here is Bachchan and use of Bollywood itself to promote the vaccines, and here is another ad, in which Bachchan employes his acting skills.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation says:
“Worldwide efforts in the last two decades have reduced the number of polio cases by 99 percent. Until we reach eradication, however, we are working with governments and all partners in the polio effort to ensure no child is at risk of either contracting or transmitting this crippling disease.”
Monsanto used Bollywood actors and succeeded in selling India’s farmers Bt cotton seeds. Profits for Monsanto rose. When yields were less than promised, farmers incurred massive debt, leading many to suicide, in what is considered “the worst-ever recorded wave of suicides of this kind in human history.” To date, the number of suicides has surpassed 250,000.
P. Sainath details this neoliberal terrorism:
“With giant seed companies displacing cheap hybrids and far cheaper and hardier traditional varieties with their own products, a cotton farmer in Monsanto’s net would be paying far more for seed than he or she ever dreamed they would. Local varieties and hybrids were squeezed out with enthusiastic state support. In 1991, you could buy a kilogram of local seed for as little as Rs.7 or Rs.9 in today’s worst affected region of Vidarbha. By 2003, you would pay Rs.350 — ($7) — for a bag with 450 grams of hybrid seed. By 2004, Monsanto’s partners in India were marketing a bag of 450 grams of Bt cotton seed for between Rs.1,650 and Rs.1,800 ($33 to $36).”
Long after it was apparent that Monsanto was having a lethal impact on India, Bill Gates who says he wants to help the poor in India, made a huge investment in Monsanto. Does Gates care that he invested in a company that has left poor children of India without their fathers and lost them their land they had lived on?
How is Gates’ other investment – vaccines – faring? Mimicking Monsanto’s PR, Gates used Bollywood actors to strongly promote his vaccine campaign to ‘eradicate polio’ across India. Vaccines ware given to Indian children. Have they brought health?
From “Polio programme: let us declare victory and move on” by Neetu Vashisht and Jacob Puliyel at Medical Ethics http://www.issuesinmedicalethics.org/202co114.html:
“In 2011 there were an extra 47500 new cases of NPAFP [non-polio acute flaccid paralysis]. Clinically indistinguishable from polio paralysis but twice as deadly, the incidence of NPAFP was directly proportional to doses of oral polio received. Through this data was collected within the polio surveillance system, it was not investigated.”
The Oral Polio Vaccines were given to Indian children. The CDC dropped the OPV from its vaccine schedule in the US because it was causing polio.
“In 1976, Dr. Jonas Salk, creator of the killed-virus vaccine used in the 1950s, testified that the live-virus vaccine (used almost exclusively in the U.S. from the early 1960s to 2000) was the ‘principal if not sole cause’ of all reported polio cases in the U.S. since 1961 [44]. (The virus remains in the throat for one to two weeks and in the feces for up to two months. Thus, vaccine recipients are at risk, and can potentially spread the disease, as long as fecal excretion of the virus continues [45].) In 1992, the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published an admission that the live-virus vaccine had become the dominant cause of polio in the United States [36]. In fact, according to CDC figures, every case of polio in the U.S. since 1979 was caused by the oral polio vaccine [36]. Authorities claim the vaccine was responsible for about eight cases of polio every year [46]. However, an independent study that analyzed the government’s own vaccine database during a recent period of less than five years uncovered 13,641 reports of adverse events following use of the oral polio vaccine. These reports included 6,364 emergency room visits and 540 deaths (Figure 3) [47,48]. Public outrage at these tragedies became the impetus for removing the oral polio vaccine from immunization schedules [36:568;37;38].”
Did Gates not know the OPV had been dropped in the US as he suggested he wanted to bring the same good health to third world countries as Western countries enjoyed? If he did not know, is he pushing vaccines on the world’s children without such basic and truly critical information?
Neetu Vashisht and Jacob Puliyel at St. Stephens Hospital in Delhi address the question of eradication:
“The charade about polio eradication and the great savings it will bring has persisted to date. It is a paradox that while the director general of WHO, Margret Chan, and Bill Gates are trying to muster support for polio eradication (22) it has been known to the scientific community, for over 10 years, that eradication of polio is impossible. This is because in 2002 scientists had synthesised a chemical called poliovirus in a test-tube with the empirical formula C332,652H492,388N98,245O131,196P7, 501S2,340. It has been demonstrated that by positioning the atoms in sequence, a particle can emerge with all the properties required for its proliferation and survival in nature (23, 24).” [Emphasis added.]
“Wimmer writes that the test-tube synthesis of poliovirus has wiped out any possibility of eradicating poliovirus in the future. Poliovirus cannot be declared extinct because the sequence of its genome is known and modern biotechnology allows it to be resurrected at any time in vitro. Man can thus never let down his guard against poliovirus. Indeed the 18-year-old global eradication campaign for polioviruses will have to be continued in some format forever. The long promised ‘infinite’ monetary benefits from ceasing to vaccinate against poliovirus will never be achieved (24). The attraction that ‘eradication’ has for policy makers will vanish once this truth is widely known.”
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is apparently out of touch with what the scientific community has known for 10 years, as its website’s page on polio indicates”
2011 Annual Letter from Bill Gates: Ending Polio
Aid for the poorest has already achieved a lot. For example, because of donors’ generosity, we are on the threshold of ending polio once and for all.
And then the Foundation continues about how terrible polio is and how many children it paralyzed and killed.
Polio is a terrible disease that kills many and paralyzes others. Fifty years ago it was widespread around the world. When you talk to people who remember polio in the United States, they’ll tell you about the fear and panic during an outbreak and describe grim hospital wards full of children in iron lungs that maintained their breathing. At its peak in the United States in 1952, polio paralyzed or killed more than 24,000 people.
But in 2011 alone, the Bill and Melinda Gates’ polio vaccine campaign in India caused 47,500 cases of paralysis and death.
From Vashisht and Puliyel:
“It has been reported in the Lancet that the incidence of AFP, especially non-polio AFP has increased exponentially in India after a high potency polio vaccine was introduced (25). Grassly and colleagues suggested, at that time, that the increase in AFP was the result of a deliberate effort to intensify surveillance and reporting in India (26). The National Polio Surveillance Programme maintained that the increased numbers were due to reporting of mild weakness, presumably weakness of little consequence (27).
“However in 2005, a fifth of the cases of non-polio AFP in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh (UP) were followed up after 60 days. 35.2% were found to have residual paralysis and 8.5% had died (making the total of residual paralysis or death – 43.7%) (28). Sathyamala examined data from the following year and showed that children who were identified with non-polio AFP were at more than twice the risk of dying than those with wild polio infection (27).
“Data from India on polio control over 10 years, available from the National Polio Surveillance Project, has now been compiled and made available online for it to be scrutinised by epidemiologists and statisticians (29). This shows that the non-polio AFP rate increases in proportion to the number of polio vaccines doses received in each area.
“Nationally, the non-polio AFP rate is now 12 times higher than expected. In the states of Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Bihar, which have pulse polio rounds nearly every month, the non-polio AFP rate is 25- and 35-fold higher than the international norms. The relationship of the non-polio AFP rate is curvilinear with a more steep increase beyond six doses of OPV in one year. The non-polio AFP rate during the year best correlates to the cumulative doses received in the previous three years. Association (R2) of the non-polio AFP rate with OPV doses received in 2009 was 41.9%.
“Adding up doses received from 2007 increased the association (R2 = 55.6% p < 0.001) (30). Population density did not show any association with the non-polio AFP rate, although others have suggested that it is related to polio AFP (31). The international incidence of non-polio AFP is said to be 1 to 2/100,000 in the populations under 15 (32, 33). The benchmark of good surveillance is the ability to detect one case of AFP per 100,000 children even in the absence of polio (34).
“In 2011, an additional 47,500 children were newly paralysed in the year, over and above the standard 2/100,000 non-polio AFP that is generally accepted as the norm. (32-33). [Emphasis added.]
“It is sad that, even after meticulous surveillance, this large excess in the incidence of paralysis was not investigated as a possible signal, nor was any effort made to try and study the mechanism for this spurt in non-polio AFP. [Emphasis added.]
“These findings point to the need for a critical appraisal to find the factors contributing to the increase in non-polio AFP with increase in OPV doses – perhaps looking at the influence of strain shifts of entero-pathogens induced by the vaccine given practically once every month.
“From India’s perspective the exercise has been extremely costly both in terms of human suffering and in monetary terms. It is tempting to speculate what could have been achieved if the $2.5 billion spent on attempting to eradicate polio were spent on water and sanitation and routine immunization.”
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is apparently out of touch with what is known about the impossibility of eradicating polio, but it is not out of touch with the money involved.
“…. the last 1 percent remains a true danger. Eradication is not guaranteed. It requires campaigns to give polio vaccine to all children under 5 in poor countries, at a cost of almost $1 billion per year. We have to be aggressive about continuing these campaigns until we succeed in eradicating that last 1 percent.
“Therefore, funding is critical to success. Organizations such as Rotary Internationalhttp://www.rotary.org and the governments of India, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan are all major contributors to the polio campaign. Our foundation gives about $200 million each year. But the campaign still faces a 2011-12 funding gap of $720 million. If eradication fails because of a lack of generosity on the part of donor countries it would be tragic. We are so close, but we have to finish the last leg of the journey. We need to bring the cases down to zero, maintain careful surveillance to ensure the virus is truly gone, and keep defenses up with polio vaccines until we’ve confirmed success.”
The Foundation’s page on polio begins with urging eradication which is known to not be possible, but it ends with wanting money. Like Monsanto’s Bt seeds which were an agricultural and financial disaster for India’s farmers, Gate’s polio vaccine campaign has been the same – a public health and financial disaster for India.
We have seen how polio, that was not a priority for public health in India, was made the target for attempted eradication with a token donation of $ 0.02 billion. The Government of India finally had to fund this hugely expensive programme, which cost the country 100 times more than the value of the initial grant.
Did Monsanto stop their sale of Bt cotton seeds after it became apparent that farmers were being destroyed by overwhelming debt, the poor yields of the seeds and their inability to save seeds?
Has anyone from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation rushed to India to suspend their polio vaccines until crucial questions can be answered about their causingNPAFP [non-polio acute flaccid paralysis] and deaths?
Is the Foundation addressing the lack of vaccine safety? Vaccine safety may be a sensitive subject as Mr. Gates is on record in saying that “people who engage in anti-vaccine efforts [those questioning the safety of vaccines] kill children.”
And yet Mr. Gates’ polio campaign has been documented to have paralyzed 47,5000 children. Puliyel says that “children who were identified with non-polio AFP were at more than twice the risk of dying than those with wild polio infection (27).”
Bill Gates gives no figures or any details to back up his claim that people skeptical of vaccines are killing children, but he referred to parents didn’t give their children the pertussis vaccine and measles vaccines and children dying. However, Mr. Gates may not be aware that teens in Canada vaccinated for measles have come down with measles in greater numbers than the unvaccinated and vaccinated children who are developing pertussis (whooping cough).
From Investigative News Source:
· For pertussis cases in which vaccination histories are known, between 44 and 83 percent were of people who had been immunized, according to data from nine California counties with high infection rates. In San Diego County, more than two thirds of the people in this group were up to date on their immunizations.
· Health officials in Ohio and Texas, two states experiencing whooping cough outbreaks, report that of all cases, 75 and 67.5 percent respectively, reported having received a pertussis vaccination.
· Today, the rate of disease in some California counties is as high as 139 per 100,000, rivaling rates before vaccines were developed.
· Public officials around the world rely heavily on two groups of pertussis experts when setting vaccine policy relating to the disease. Both groups, and many of their members,receive money from the two leading manufacturers of pertussis vaccine.
· Dr. Fritz Mooi, a well-known Dutch scientist who has been studying mutations of the pertussis bacteria for 15 years, said a more virulent strain of bacteria is contributing to outbreaks.
The polio vaccine uses a synthetic virus which has created a more virulent strain. Does the pertussis vaccine also use a synthetic virus?
The WHO, which is working with Mr. Gates through GAVI, classifies the paralysis occurring in India as non-polio acute flaccid paralysis (NPAFP). Perhaps Bill Gates might consider that while Monsanto’s Bollywood PR worked to sell Bt seeds and Gates’ Bollywood PR worked to push his polio vaccines, no Monsanto PR changes the reality of the farmers’ suicides. And ‘relabeling’ paralysis after the vaccines were given does not change the facts. Paralysis is paralysis to the child who can no longer walk. Death is death to the parents who have lost a child.
Mr. Gates intends to vaccinate every child in the world. He has not been slowed in that commitment despite the mass numbers of death and paralysis of children in India. Not pausing from and not even investigating the disaster he has already caused, how many more children will Mr. Gates “help”?
Joe Samuel via The 4th Media first published at Food Freedom News
Related article:
The Vaccine Hoax is Over. Documents from UK reveal 30 Years of Coverup
Justice Department Refuses to Release Interpretation of NDAA
P.A.N.D.A. People Against The NDAA
June 8, 2013

In April of 2012, Matt Ehling, President of Public Record Media, LLC, made a formal request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to the Obama Administration’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), which is part of the Department of Justice (DOJ). Ehling requested the administration’s legal opinions and notes about subsections 1021 and 1022 of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, which are the parts of the NDAA involved in much public controversy and litigation since 2001. The FOIA mandates the OLC respond within twenty days.
At first, the OLC said they would not respond in the time period allowed because of all the other requests for information made to them, but would reply as soon as possible. Ehling asked how long that might be. They said maybe in a few months, but couldn’t guarantee it. When questioned further, the OLC refused to comply with the FOIA at all. They said they were exempt, citing the administration’s opinions were “protected by the deliberative process privilege”, and “not appropriate for discretional release”. On the surface, these two excuses seem more plausible than “We’re too busy”, but on closer inspection, this claim also violates the FOIA.
Exemptions to the FOIA are specific. To qualify as an exemption, the material must be both “deliberative” and “pre-decisional”. The deliberative process is similar to private conversations protected under attorney-client privilege in a court case. Pre-decisional refers to discussions which take place before a case is concluded or a law is enacted. However, Ehling only requested post-decisional information, that is, material after the NDAA was passed, material which determines how the law will be carried out. Therefore, since the information requested was not both deliberative and pre-decisional, the OLC’s objection is invalid. As OLC attorneys specialize in this area of law, they knew this all along.
The OLC also claims that material in the 2012 NDAA subsections 1021 and 1022 is not appropriate for release. Under those two subsections, President Obama and all future presidents can accuse anyone of being a terrorist, incarcerate them, deny them trial, forbid them access to council and send them to a foreign prison. It is not only appropriate, but essential that U.S. citizens and anyone visiting this country know how the government plans to use this law. That the government is forbidden from developing “secret laws” has been upheld in court.
What is so damning in the Obama administration files that the OLC is willing to violate the law to hide them? They must obey the law, specifically, the FOIA.
As Obama’s Department of Justice has frequently refused to comply with legally binding requests for information, other questions comes to mind.
Does the DOJ consider the concept of obeying the law tiresome? Do they consider themselves above the law? Since the crafters of the NDAA seem to consider the Constitution an annoyance, this would be consistent behavior.
If you would like to see Ehling’s appeal, go to http://www.publicrecordmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/FOIAOLC20122_pd_011.pdf
–by Ed R. Green
VIDEO — Dan Dicks Speaks At Bilderberg 2013
Press For Truth
June 11, 2013
Dan Dicks speaks at the Bilderberg 2013 Fringe Fest in Watford England.
Watch “The Turning Point”
http://www.pressfortruth.ca/featured-…
Get The Turning Point on DVD:
http://www.pressfortruth.ca/pft-shop/…
Support independent media by contributing to the Press For Truth Fundraiser: http://www.gofundme.com/2sghd4
or
Donate through Paypal: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr…
Get updates like this everyday and support independent media by joining Press For Truth TV: http://pressfortruth.tv/register/
We rely on you the viewer to help us continue to do this work. With your help I can continue to make videos and documentary films for youtube in an effort to raise awareness all over the world. Please support independent media by joining Press For Truth TV!
As a Press For Truth TV subscriber you’ll have full access to the site’s features and content including Daily Video Blogs on current news from the PFT perspective and High Quality Downloads of all Press For Truth Films, Music and Special Reports! Subscribe to Press For Truth TV:
http://pressfortruth.tv/register/
For more information visit:
http://pressfortruth.tv/
You can also support Press For Truth and help us continue to do this work by donating or becoming a sponsor at pressfortruth.ca
http://www.pressfortruth.ca/donatebec…
http://www.facebook.com/PressForTruth
http://www.youtube.com/weavingspider
https://twitter.com/PressForTruth
http://twitter.com/#!/DanDicksPFT
Study: Regular Marijuana Use May Prevent Diabetes and Make You Skinnier
Current marijuana users have 16 percent lower fasting insulin levels compared to non-users, according to the American Journal of Medicine
Activist Post
May 15, 2013
Regular marijuana use is associated with favorable indices related to diabetic control, say investigators. They found that current marijuana users had significantly lower fasting insulin and were less likely to be insulin resistant, even after excluding patients with a diagnosis of diabetes mellitus. Their findings are reported in the current issue of The American Journal of Medicine.
Marijuana (Cannabis sativa) has been used for centuries to relieve pain, improve mood, and increase appetite. Outlawed in the United States in 1937, its social use continues to increase and public opinion is swinging in favor of the medicinal use of marijuana. There are an estimated 17.4 million current users of marijuana in the United States. Approximately 4.6 million of these users smoke marijuana daily or almost daily. A synthetic form of its active ingredient, tetrahydrocannabinol, commonly known as THC, has already been approved to treat side-effects of chemotherapy, AIDS-induced anorexia, nausea, and other medical conditions. With the recent legalization of recreational marijuana in two states and the legalization of medical marijuana in 19 states and the District of Columbia, physicians will increasingly encounter marijuana use among their patient populations.
A multicenter research team analyzed data obtained during the National Health and Nutrition Survey (NHANES) between 2005 and 2010. They studied data from 4,657 patients who completed a drug use questionnaire. Of these, 579 were current marijuana users, 1,975 had used marijuana in the past but were not current users, and 2,103 had never inhaled or ingested marijuana. Fasting insulin and glucose were measured via blood samples following a nine hour fast, and homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance (HOMA-IR) was calculated to evaluate insulin resistance.
Participants who reported using marijuana in the past month had lower levels of fasting insulin and HOMA-IR and higher levels of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C). These associations were weaker among those who reported using marijuana at least once, but not in the past thirty days, suggesting that the impact of marijuana use on insulin and insulin resistance exists during periods of recent use. Current users had 16% lower fasting insulin levels than participants who reported never having used marijuana in their lifetimes.
Large waist circumference is linked to diabetes risk. In the current study there were also significant associations between marijuana use and smaller waist circumferences.
“Previous epidemiologic studies have found lower prevalence rates of obesity and diabetes mellitus in marijuana users compared to people who have never used marijuana, suggesting a relationship between cannabinoids and peripheral metabolic processes, but ours is the first study to investigate the relationship between marijuana use and fasting insulin, glucose, and insulin resistance,” says lead investigator Murray A. Mittleman, MD, DrPH, of the Cardiovascular Epidemiology Research Unit at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston.
“It is possible that the inverse association in fasting insulin levels and insulin resistance seen among current marijuana users could be in part due to changes in usage patterns among those with a diagnosis of diabetes (i.e., those with diabetes may have been told to cease smoking). However, after we excluded those subjects with a diagnosis of diabetes mellitus, the associations between marijuana use and insulin levels, HOMA-IR, waist circumference, and HDL-C were similar and remained statistically significant,” states Elizabeth Penner, MD, MPH, an author of the study.
Although people who smoke marijuana have higher average caloric intake levels than non-users, marijuana use has been associated with lower body-mass index (BMI) in two previous surveys. “The mechanisms underlying this paradox have not been determined and the impact of regular marijuana use on insulin resistance and cardiometabolic risk factors remains unknown,” says coauthor Hannah Buettner.
The investigators acknowledge that data on marijuana use were self-reported and may be subject to underestimation or denial of illicit drug use. However, they point out, underestimation of drug use would likely yield results biased toward observing no association.
Editor-in-Chief Joseph S. Alpert, MD, Professor of Medicine at the University of Arizona College of Medicine, Tucson, comments, “These are indeed remarkable observations that are supported, as the authors note, by basic science experiments that came to similar conclusions.
“We desperately need a great deal more basic and clinical research into the short- and long-term effects of marijuana in a variety of clinical settings such as cancer, diabetes, and frailty of the elderly,” continues Alpert.” I would like to call on the NIH and the DEA to collaborate in developing policies to implement solid scientific investigations that would lead to information assisting physicians in the proper use and prescription of THC in its synthetic or herbal form.”
Contact: Jane Grochowski
ajmmedia@elsevier.com
406-542-8397
Elsevier Health Sciences
Read other articles from Activist Post Here

