Tag: cancer

Tennessee Teen Drenched in Glyphosate Spent Next 7 Years Fighting ‘Massive Alien’ Tumor

Within months of being soaked with a glyphosate herbicide while working on a cell tower maintenance crew, Tennessee teenager Arden Allison developed a tumor that grew into what he described as “this massive alien sucking the life off of me.”

Arden was 17 when he landed a job maintaining cell towers across the Midwest. According to his mother, Serene Allison, writing in RealClear Health, his duties included spraying weeds around tower sites with Roundup, a glyphosate-based herbicide first made by Monsanto, now owned by Bayer.

“I didn’t realize the danger,” Arden said in a recent interview on CHD.TV. During the two months he spent “mowing, weedeating and spraying around all the cell towers and access roads,” he said he experienced “several different big exposures of glyphosate.”

The worst came when a backpack sprayer malfunctioned. After Arden climbed over a fence, “the lid popped off” the sprayer. He was “completely doused … with glyphosate,” he said. The chemical soaked his neck, shoulders and upper body.

Wearing a tank top and without access to a shower, Arden rinsed off with a water bottle and finished his workday. He said the company didn’t provide protective gear.

“I was told it was … absolutely fine,” he said. But the exposure happened on a hot day when his “pores were open” and his body soaked up “all those chemicals.”

His mother said co-workers assured her son that glyphosate “wasn’t dangerous” because it was “just a regular pesticide.”

The exposure occurred in the fall of 2015. Just months later — five weeks after marrying his high school sweetheart in February 2016 — Arden was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma.

‘What’s happened out there?’ mom asked as healthy son deteriorated

Before taking the cell tower maintenance job, Arden was a healthy teenager who had been homeschooled, graduated at 16 and quickly entered the workforce.

He said he grew up in the rural “boondocks of Tennessee country,” where “there was nobody spraying any chemicals.”

When Arden returned from working out of state, his mother quickly noticed something was wrong.

“He’s always been a positive Pete kind of guy,” Serene said. “But immediately when he came home, I’m like, ‘What’s happened out there on the road?’”

Her tall, athletic son had grown pale and was losing weight rapidly. “He was getting thinner by the day,” she said.

He also developed persistent itching, night sweats and a scratchy throat. Eventually, one side of his face, neck and chest swelled dramatically.

Arden said the swelling corresponded with where the glyphosate had soaked into his body.

“I only … had an exposure, like an extreme exposure, in this area,” he said, pointing to his neck and shoulder. “I never had any cancerous lymph nodes in my whole lymphatic system besides … right here.”

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WHO Expects Cancer Cases To SOAR GLOBALLY

The World Health Organization (WHO) expects cancer cases to soar all over the globe. The WHO made this announcement in a report released on Wednesday, in which the agency said cancer remains the world’s second-leading cause of death after cardiovascular disease, claiming more than 26,000 lives daily.

But by 2050, cancer will affect 90% of the population either through diagnosis of themselves or a close relative. WHO estimates that there are currently nearly 10 million deaths and 20.6 million new cases of cancer annually. The agency is warning that without urgent action, the latest figure will rise to 35 million by 2050.

One in five people is expected to develop cancer during their lifetime, with lung cancer remaining the deadliest form, according to a report by RT.

Moderna Confirms Link Between COVID mRNA Vaccines and Cancer

Dozens of countries are currently developing cancer vaccines using different approaches. Russia has been actively working on personalized mRNA cancer vaccines tailored to individual tumors. Two experimental therapies – Neooncovac for melanoma and Oncopept for colorectal cancer – were cleared for clinical use in March. More than 40 patients have since enrolled, with the first recipients already showing a strong immune response. The vaccines are expected to be provided free under Russia’s national health insurance system once their clinical effectiveness is confirmed. –RT

All mRNA Injections, Including Cancer Vaccines, May Accelerate the Development of Cancer

Cancer is a leading cause of medical bankruptcy worldwide, and despite rapid advances in treatment, the WHO says survival increasingly depends on where patients live and their financial circumstances. Five-year survival for breast and childhood cancers exceeds 85% in high-income countries but falls below 45% in low-income nations, it estimates.

People should focus on preventing cancer by living as healthy a lifestyle as they can. Eating well and focusing on a proper human diet could be the key to preventing cancer, rather than vaccines.

Vitamin D Helps Lower the Risk of Colorectal Cancer by Up to 58%, New Study Finds

Cancer could end up as a major health crisis, if it isn’t already.

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Authorities Arrest Fugitive Behind Alleged $547 Million Medicare Fraud

A man on the FBI’s Most Wanted Fraudsters list, accused of a scheme to defraud Medicare of $547 million, was arrested by authorities on Monday.

The foreign national, Khalid Satary, 54, owned and operated multiple diagnostic testing laboratories in the United States between 2016 and 2019 that billed Medicare for “expensive and medically unnecessary genetic tests,” the Department of Justice (DOJ) said in a July 21 statement.

Satary is accused of conspiring with several patient recruiters and telemarketing services to generate unnecessary cancer genetic test samples that were reimbursed by Medicare at the rate of $10,000 to $20,000 per sample.

To run the operation, Satary allegedly paid millions of dollars in bribes and illegal kickbacks to patient recruiters and doctors.

The defendant was initially indicted in 2019. However, Satary was later released on bond, with the condition that he doesn’t work in the healthcare sector. While on bond, Satary allegedly conspired with labs in Texas to continue submitting fraudulent genetic testing claims to Medicare.

A federal arrest warrant was issued against him in December 2022. However, Satary failed to appear for a court hearing and was believed to have escaped the United States. On July 20 this year, the defendant was arrested in the Middle East with a fake Mexican passport using a fake name. He was then transferred to U.S. authorities.

The Most Wanted Fraudsters list was announced by FBI Director Kash Patel last month. The White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud partnered with the FBI to compile the list, according to a June 19 X post from Vice President JD Vance, the task force’s chairman.

The task force was established through a March 16 executive order signed by President Donald Trump, which said criminals and other individuals were exploiting various benefit programs intended to provide American citizens with a safety net.

Trump ordered the task force to “coordinate and accelerate a comprehensive national strategy to stop fraud, waste, and abuse within Federal benefit programs.”

One of those on the list, Said Abdullahi Ereg, surrendered to law enforcement on June 10, according to the FBI and federal prosecutors. Ereg is accused of laundering millions of dollars from a program that aimed to feed needy children during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Another individual on the list, Herbert Leon Kimble, accused of $1.2 billion Medicare fraud, was arrested on June 11 in the Philippines.

In its latest statement, the DOJ said that Satary has been charged with various fraud-related crimes, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and paying bribes and illegal healthcare kickbacks. He faces a multi-decade prison term if convicted.

“The arrest of Khalid Ahmed Satary and return to the U.S. is the third Most Wanted Fraudster capture from this FBI and our partners in just five weeks—continuing the historic run of success for this new initiative,” Patel said in the statement.

“This is another subject who exploited a program dedicated to helping our most vulnerable and instead stole for himself. Satary has been on the run since 2022, but we got him thanks to great work and coordination from the interagency and our overseas partners.”

The Epoch Times was unable to reach Satary’s legal representative.

According to the FBI’s website, Satary is one among nine individuals currently mentioned on the Most Wanted Fraudsters list.

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UK government’s policy of adding folic acid to flour is not safe; studies show an increase in cancer

Why Cancer Is The Question

Folic acid forms the building blocks of DNA and drives cell division. Early embryos have cells dividing at enormous speed and they need a ready supply. Anything that helps cell division presents a hypothetical risk for people with cancer and also for the initiation of cancer in healthy people. Consequently, studies have been carried out to try and measure where that hypothetical concern is present in reality.

Measuring the Harm

The strongest test for harm is a randomised controlled trial, in which people are assigned by the toss of a coin to receive either the treatment or a placebo and are then followed up to see what happens. In 2013, researchers pooled every large folic acid trial, involving around fifty thousand people, into one analysis in The Lancet. They reported no significant effect on cancer. That result became the basis of the official safety verdict.

A year earlier, a separate, more careful review split the same trials by dose given. It found an increase in cancer in the trials using lower doses, close to the amount fortification delivers, but none in the trials using much higher doses.

That headline, a six per cent increase reported as no significant effect, is an average across every dose the trials used. Split the trials into three dose groups, on both the published figures and the patient-level data behind the 2013 analysis, and the average comes apart.

The increase is seen at the exact range that fortifying flour will deliver. That is the reverse of how a drug normally behaves, since a larger dose would usually carry more risk, not less. The result below 1 milligram is the same even if the single polyp-prevention trial that critics single out is excluded and it is seen in ordinary adults rather than just in high-risk groups. 

Prostate cancer in particular is a concern. In one trial, men given 1 milligram of folic acid a day were diagnosed with prostate cancer at 2.6 times the rate of those on a placebo, a ten-year risk of 9.7 per cent against 3.3 per cent. The trial had been designed to study bowel polyps rather than the prostate. Sixteen years later, there have still been no further trials to measure this properly. Instead, researchers re-examined the data from the other folic acid trials already run. Pooled together, six trials covering around 25,000 men showed a 24 per cent increase in prostate cancer among the men given folic acid (relative risk 1.24, 95 per cent confidence interval 1.03 to 1.49). A reanalysis at a case level claimed there was no signal but they specifically excluded dosages within the fortification range. Folate obtained from food carried no such risk, which points to the synthetic form rather than the vitamin as it occurs in the diet.

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‘Unusual Cluster’ of Rare Child Cancer Cases Triggers Calls for Investigation

Families in Ladera Ranch, California, have experienced a nightmare that they believe could involve toxic chemicals from pesticides.

Bill Essayli, First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, wants the Environmental Protection Agency to investigate the matter and determine whether environmental factors explain why so many children in that community have developed rare forms of cancer.

“There has been an unusual cluster of pediatric cancers in the Ladera Ranch community,” Essayli wrote Thursday on the social media platform X.

Essayli asked that the EPA “conduct an appropriate investigation into whether there are any environmental causes, and whether any federal environmental laws are implicated.”

A letter to EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin accompanied the post.

“My office has been made aware of recent reports of multiple pediatric Ewing sarcoma cases within the Ladera Ranch community,” Essayli wrote.

“Residents are raising concerns about a potential cancer cluster and whether environmental factors may warrant further evaluation. At least six children have been diagnosed with this rare bone and soft-tissue cancer, with one 17-year-old, Brody Matteson, dying after complications during treatment.”

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Moderna Injects First Participant With Experimental mRNA-4200 Cancer Shot That Forces the Body to Produce Seven Undisclosed Tumor Proteins

On Thursday, Moderna announced that it has injected the first participant in a Phase 1 clinical trial of mRNA-4200 (NCT06880549), an experimental mRNA product that causes the body to produce seven undisclosed tumor proteins following administration.

In other words, the product does not merely introduce tumor proteins into the body—it uses the body itself to manufacture them.

On purpose.

The study raises obvious safety and informed-consent questions about how long the body produces the purportedly encoded tumor proteins, what their long-term biological effects may be, and whether the product or its outputs could be shed from the original recipient onto others through exosomes or extracellular vesicles in excreted bodily fluids.

A 2021 Journal of Extracellular Vesicles study found that cells expressing a target protein can release extracellular vesicles that “carry” that protein, demonstrating that what is produced inside the body can be exported outside the cell in membrane-bound particles.

A separate 2023 Pharmaceutics review explains that exosomes are natural transport vesicles that carry proteins and nucleic acids throughout the body and are present in bodily fluids including blood, saliva, and other secretions—meaning they are not confined to the original cell or even the original location in the body.

You can contact Moderna here and the FDA here.

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Doctor warns of ‘cancer tsunami’ as WHO projects sharp rise in cases by 2050

A new report from the World Health Organization warns that the number of people diagnosed with cancer each year is expected to surge over the next quarter-century.

The report projects annual cancer diagnoses will climb from about 20 million today to nearly 35 million by 2050.

While some cancers are declining thanks to prevention efforts, experts warn aging populations, rising obesity rates and other risk factors will place unprecedented pressure on health-care systems around the world.

“We need to focus attention on what some people are calling the cancer tsunami,” said Dr. Peter Stotland, chief of surgery and a surgical oncologist at North York General Hospital.

Stotland told Global News the findings mirror what doctors are already seeing in Canada.

“We’re seeing just higher numbers of people coming in with cancer,” he said, pointing to an aging population that is expected to drive increases in lung, prostate and colorectal cancers.

“I think it’s shocking because this is something that we’re seeing on a regional, provincial level and a national level,” he said.

At the same time, doctors are also seeing more young people diagnosed with colorectal cancer.

“We can be seeing two spikes… one in older people and another in younger people with cancer,” he said. “That’s going to put a lot of stress on the health-care system.”

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Study Finds Sunscreen Use Linked to Higher Risk of Multiple Skin Cancers

A UK Biobank study involving over 470,000 people found that individuals who reported using sunscreen more frequently had substantially higher risk of multiple skin cancers — even after researchers accounted for major confounding factors like age, sex, skin type, tanning ability, sunburn history, sunlamp use, and time spent outdoors.

The findings are worrisome:

• MELANOMA: +292% higher risk (RR = 3.92)

• BASAL CELL CARCINOMA: +140% higher risk (RR = 2.40)

• SQUAMOUS CELL CARCINOMA: +126% higher risk (RR = 2.26)

The researchers categorized sun protection habits from “never/rarely” to “always” and found the strongest associations among the most frequent sunscreen users.

In other words: the more sunscreen use reported, the higher the observed skin cancer risk.

This was an observational study, meaning it cannot prove sunscreen directly caused cancer. However, the study was also not a simplistic comparison of random sunscreen users versus non-users. Researchers statistically accounted for many of the biggest known skin cancer risk factors — including skin color, hair color, tanning ability, childhood sunburns, tanning bed exposure, outdoor time, age, and sex.

Even after all of that, the association remained.

Many chemical sunscreens contain hormone disruptors that are rapidly absorbed into the bloodstream, including compounds like oxybenzone, octocrylene, and homosalate.

Some formulations have also been found contaminated with benzene, a known human carcinogen.

And then there is the vitamin D issue. Sunlight is how the human body produces vitamin D, a hormone precursor involved in immune regulation, cellular repair, inflammation control, and cancer defense. People who never receive sunlight exposure without sunscreen are likely to become vitamin D deficient.

That does not mean people should recklessly burn in the sun. Sunburns are clearly harmful. Aim for sensible sunlight exposure — spending enough time in the sun reap the benefits without reaching the point of burning. If you’ll be out in the sun for hours on end during mid summer, consider opting for zinc-based (mineral) sunscreens rather than heavily absorbed chemical formulations.

The takeaway is not to fear sunlight, but to respect it.

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Supreme Court ruling blocks thousands of lawsuits against maker of Roundup weedkiller

The Supreme Court sided with the maker of the Roundup weedkiller Thursday in a ruling expected to block thousands of lawsuits alleging it failed to warn people the product could cause cancer.

The case came before the justices after a tidal wave of litigation that included some multibillion-dollar verdicts against the global agrochemical manufacturer Bayer, which acquired Roundup when it bought its original manufacturer Monsanto in 2018.

The decision is a victory for the Trump administration, but one that could be tricky politically since allies in the Make America Healthy Again movement want to rein in pesticide use.

The high court, in a 7-2 ruling, found that the company can’t be sued in state courts because federal regulations have found a cancer link unlikely and do not require a warning label.

The decision “is good for science, farmers, and industries that depend on regulatory clarity for innovation,” Bayer said in a statement. “It should help significantly contain the Roundup litigation after nearly a decade of legal battles.”

Though Bayer said the ruling should result in the dismissal of pending lawsuits containing failure-to-warn allegations, the company said it plans to proceed with a proposed $7.25 billion class-action settlement intended to resolve many of the remaining claims.

Lawyers for some residents pursuing Roundup litigation criticized the court’s decision.

“This Supreme Court ruling wrongly slams the courthouse door on Americans sickened by pesticides,” said attorney Christopher Seeger, who is proposed as a claimants’ representative in the settlement. But he said a settlement still would allow some people to receive compensation.

The case before the Supreme Court was filed by Missouri resident John Durnell. He developed a cancer called non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma after more than 20 years of serving as the neighborhood association’s “spray guy,” using Roundup on parks in his historic St. Louis community.

A jury agreed that the company failed to warn him about possible cancer dangers and awarded him $1.25 million. It’s one of thousands of similar cases, including some multibillion-dollar damage awards.

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Five things to know about pesticides, cancer and a pending Supreme Court ruling

After years of lawsuits against agrichemical companies and battles over environmental regulations, the nation’s highest court is expected to rule this summer on a case that could significantly alter the pesticide industry.

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule next month on whether lawsuits can be brought against pesticide and herbicide makers over claims their products have caused cancer. 

The court heard arguments in the case in April, and the justices appeared split.

With a ruling weeks away, here are five things to know about the topic of pesticide use and cancer.

1. Geographic correlation between heavy pesticide use and high cancer rates

Numerous studies and an analysis of federal data have shown a potential correlation between pesticide use and cancer. Out of the 500 U.S. counties with the highest pesticide use per square mile (largely concentrated in corn, soybean and fruit-producing states like Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, California and Florida), 60% have cancer rates higher than the national average of 460 cases per 100,000 people. A 2024 study in Frontiers in Cancer Control and Society suggests the impact of pesticide use on cancer incidence may rival that of smoking.

2. Thousands of lawsuits have been won against agrichemical companies

State courts have also found that correlation credible, as Bayer, the maker of the herbicide Roundup, has lost thousands of cases and agreed to pay more than $12 billion in settlements, including individual jury verdicts such as an initial $2 billion award in California and a recent $1.25 million verdict in Missouri. According to the company, more than 65,000 lawsuits have been filed by farmers, gardeners and other users alleging the chemical caused their cancer.

3. Companies push for ‘liability shields‘

In response to these lawsuits, agrichemical companies have aggressively lobbied for state-level bans on this type of litigation. Often referred to as “liability shield” laws, they would essentially say that because the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has not warned of a link to cancer, state-level claims would be void. Georgia and North Dakota are the only two states that have passed these liability shield laws. 

4. The Trump administration has largely sided with pesticide makers

The push for stricter pesticide regulation has created unusual alliances between left-leaning environmentalists and conservative health advocates under the “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) banner. 

After an initial Health and Human Services report linked pesticide overuse to childhood health issues, the agency’s final report last year walked back all regulatory calls and instead pivoted to promote public confidence in current EPA standards. President Trump also signed an executive order this year declaring glyphosate critical to national security, and his administration actively sided with Bayer during oral arguments before the Supreme Court.

In April, MAHA activists celebrated a win after the House voted to remove a pesticide industry-backed provision from its farm bill. The debate is expected to continue as the Senate drafts its own version of the farm bill. 

5. Supreme Court hears arguments on national ‘liability shield’ ban

In April, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in Monsanto v. Durnell, in which Monsanto (owned by Bayer) argued that because the EPA has ruled glyphosate is unlikely to be carcinogenic, federal law preempts states from requiring cancer warning labels or awarding damages through state juries. A decision is expected in July.

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