The Fluoride Deception Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)With the futile search for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction some Americans may just now be realizing that our government lies to us. The Fluoride Deception documents a cover-up perpetrated by a military-industrial-government complex starting in the 1930's and extending to the present day. Any person involved in the issue of fluoridation will want this excellent compendium of the history and science. The author has uncovered previously secret documents which reveal that fluoridation promotion is in the same league with "cigarette science" when it comes to distortion of science and public opinion.
After documenting all the scientific evidence for why fluoridation is a bad idea, a common response has been: "If it's so obviously bad, why do my dentist, the Surgeon General, and my toothpaste company all say it is so wonderful?" Bryson's book gives the answer. A powerful group of industries have worked behind the scenes to sell the idea of fluoridation. Their public relations campaign has been one of the most successful in history.
I long took for granted that fluoride was the reason I had much better teeth than my parents. I grew up with Crest toothpaste commercials repeating their "Look mom, no cavities!" message into my young impressionable mind ad nauseum. But not too long ago I found that rates of cavities have dropped precipitously in all industrial countries of the world over the past 50 years and most of these countries do not fluoridate their water. Countries with detailed public health records reveal the decline started before fluoride was ever added to toothpaste or water.
Bryson has uncovered secret government and industry documents showing that the aluminum, steel, atomic weapons, phosphate fertilizer, and other industries all have been aware for more than 50 years that one of the most serious and costly pollutants these industries release is airborne fluorides. The cold war obsession with building ever more nuclear weapons to win the "arms race" cemented cooperation between government and industry to promote fluoridation. The US Public Health Service during the 1940s was still a division of the Department of Commerce and its head was a top attorney for Alcoa. Bryson found meetings and letters between the military, Public Health Service, and industry where the idea of putting a shiny public relations image on fluoride by adding it to water first surfaced.
With today's increasing revelations about drug industry manipulation of science and government campaigns of deception, maybe the time is ripe for Bryson's book. Some people won't be willing to believe that their own dentist may have been duped. They won't feel comfortable reading this book. But for everyone curious enough to glimpse into the dark side of science manipulated for profit, this book is for them.
For environmentalists this book is as essential reading as Rachel Carson's Silent Spring.
For dentists and public health officials ... gather up your courage and read this book.

Click Here to see more reviews about: The Fluoride Deception

With the narrative punch of Jonathan Harr's A Civil Action and the commitment to environmental truth-telling of Erin Brockovich, The Fluoride Deception documents a powerful connection between big corporations, the U.S. military, and the historic reassurances of fluoride safety provided by the nation's public health establishment. The Fluoride Deception reads like a thriller, but one supported by two hundred pages of source notes, years of investigative reporting, scores of scientist interviews, and archival research in places such as the newly opened files of the Manhattan Project and the Atomic Energy Commission. The book is nothing less than an exhumation of one of the great secret narratives of the industrial era: how a grim workplace poison and the most damaging environmental pollutant of the cold war was added to our drinking water and toothpaste.

Click here for more information about The Fluoride Deception

Read More...

Best Care Anywhere: Why VA Health Care is Better Than Yours Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Philip Longman makes the case that current U.S. healthcare is a fragmented, market driven system that lags behind much of the industrialized world in both quality and access of healthcare. According to Longman, the problem with our healthcare system is that it isn't really a system and that it doesn't reward the one thing that it should - health improvement. In fact, he offers proof that in the U.S. doctors and hospitals are rewarded for providing treatment, but not necessarily providing health to their patients. To illustrate this, he offers examples from two of the nation's premier hospitals - Beth Israel and Duke Medical Center. Both initiated programs that were so successful at improving health that they became unprofitable and were ultimately terminated.
This book is filled with understandable, but often shocking statistics. For example, every year in the United States 98,000 people die due to medical errors while in the hospital, another 90,000 die due to infections that they get while in the hospital, and 126,000 needlessly die because their doctor failed to use evidence-based protocols for just four of the most common conditions.
The solution? Longman speaks effusively about the VA healthcare system. And rightfully so. It is the only fully functioning, evidence-based healthcare system in the country. The book explores the history of the VA and speaks honestly about some of the warts that mar the VA's reputation. But the truth of the matter is that the VA has turned all of that around and is currently at the front of the healthcare revolution.
Longman's book contains sections on safety, quality improvement, the concept of lifetime healthcare, and the Kizer Revolution at the VA, which dramatically improved quality and altered forever the course of veterans' healthcare.
The section on VistA, the software program that is revolutionizing healthcare, is worth the price of the book. This open source software program is really a bundle of 20,000 programs written in open source code. Surprisingly, it is being adopted extensively around the world - but not right here at home.
Longman proposes a reform of the U.S. healthcare system that incorporates the best of VistA and many other VA best practices and innovations. If you are interested in the healthcare debate and what is possible in future U.S. healthcare, I highly recommend this book.
For those interested in learning more about the healthcare debate and want to explore other opinions, I would also recommend the following three books: A Second Opinion: Rescuing America's Health Care; Who Killed Health Care?: America's $2 Trillion Medical Problem - and the Consumer-Driven Cure; and Redefining Health Care: Creating Value-Based Competition on Results.

Click Here to see more reviews about: Best Care Anywhere: Why VA Health Care is Better Than Yours

The long-maligned Veterans Health Administration has become the highest-quality healthcare provider in the United States. This encouraging change not only has benefited veterans but also provides a blueprint for salvaging America's own deeply troubled healthcare system. "Best Care Anywhere" shows how a government bureaucracy, working with little notice, is setting the standard for best practices and cost reduction while the private sector is lagging in both areas. Author Phillip Longman challenges conventional wisdom by explaining exactly how market forces work to lower quality and raise prices in the healthcare sector, and how U.S. medical practices have a weak basis in science. The book, expanded from a widely praised article in the "Washington Monthly," mixes hard facts with author Philip Longmans' compelling human story of the loss of his wife to cancer. Part manifesto, part moving memoir, "Best Care Anywhere" offers new hope for addressing a major problem of contemporary society that affects all of us.

Click here for more information about Best Care Anywhere: Why VA Health Care is Better Than Yours

Read More...

Smoke in Their Eyes: Lessons in Movement Leadership from the Tobacco Wars Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)In this book, Pertschuk attempts to rewrite history with
himself as a hero. He also demonstrates how little he
has learned from that history. The two may be related.
Fortunately, the history is well documented; we are
not dependent on unreliable accounts of it. The key
fact is: the tobacco industry killed the McCain bill
as soon as it started to get tough on tobacco and
good for the public. 3 out of 4 members of the Congress that
killed the bill, had taken money from the tobacco industry.
So it wasn't too hard for the industry to kill a bill it
didn't like.
Pertschuk's rewrite would have us believe that victory
for public health was almost within our grasp. The
key fact is, the industry had a veto at all times,
which it didn't hesitate to use. In this battle
there was no danger at any time of public health
prevailing over industry profits. No historic
opportunity was missed; the opportunity never existed.
Not with this Congress.
On the contrary: if anything was narrowly missed,
it was a federal bailout of Big Tobacco. This
same Congress that killed a bill that was getting
too good for the public, also had the power to give
the tobacco industry a get-out-of-jail-free card:
legal immunity, special rights in court. That
was what the industry wanted, because it would
keep it safe and profitable.
This was no hypothetical danger: various forms of
immunity appeared in the McCain bill at different times.
Indeed it was without immunity in the bill that
the industry turned against the bill and killed it.
So what was missed, if anything, was a legal device
to keep Big Tobacco profitable and powerful into
the next century.
This history forms a pattern: the tobacco industry
has many times, in many states and localities, tried
to enter into closed-door, private negotiations.
The history of such closed-door deals also forms a
pattern: they turn out to protect industry profits
and do little to protect public health. Secret
negotiations with tobacco industry lawyers have
a long, sad, history: they don't tend to produce
results notably in the public interest.
It is sad that Pertschuk has not learned from
this history. It is even sadder that he attempts
to rewrite a recent instance of it. But perhaps
this is not a coincidence. Perhaps it would indeed
be difficult to write "I later realized that
I was mistaken in my approach, and that the
predictions that I differed with at the time,
were proven correct by the plain facts of history."
And perhaps we could apply Santayana here:
those who rewrite the past, surely will not learn
from it, and are then condemned to repeat it.
That would be saddest of all, because the tobacco
industry is still fighting hard to get
special rights in court. And is still a master
of closed-door negotiations. All it needs is
a couple of public health figures to endorse them.

Click Here to see more reviews about: Smoke in Their Eyes: Lessons in Movement Leadership from the Tobacco Wars

Click here for more information about Smoke in Their Eyes: Lessons in Movement Leadership from the Tobacco Wars

Read More...

The Invisible People: How the U.S. Has Slept Through the Global AIDS Pan Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)No one can question Mr. Behrman's command of this subject as the reader walks through colorful personal accounts of the United States' action and lack of action in regards to the global AIDS epidemic over the last 20 years. But what this book does so well is provide a human element to each of the stories that allows the reader to connect to the plight of the activist and, more importantly, the devastation felt by so many mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers who innocently and unnecessarily fall victim to this pandemic.
"The Invisible People" is a well-crafted narrative that forces the reader to recognize that we can no longer passively isolate ourselves into two camps, "affected" and "not affected." We must stand outstretched between the two as we strive to redefine one camp, "no risk of being affected." An amazing feat by Mr. Behrman.
This work stands as an incredible tribute to the victims of the AIDS epidemic; do your part and read it today.

Click Here to see more reviews about: The Invisible People: How the U.S. Has Slept Through the Global AIDS Pan

Click here for more information about The Invisible People: How the U.S. Has Slept Through the Global AIDS Pan

Read More...