Why should there be exemptions to vaccines,even for health workers?

I am a retired medical researcher and physician/scientist.  My work was in immunology and immunopathology, so I know a lot of science that the general public has no understanding of and has great ignorance. Therefore, this opinion piece is well-informed, but just my opinion.

Where to take a vaccine should be personal choice. Hugh Fudenberg, who was one of the leading immunologist in the country was ostracized because he found a correlation between the number of flu shots a person gets and the chance of getting Alzheimer’s disease (increase with more flu shots was nearly linear).

Remember in Illinois alone, just one shot brings big pharm a profit of at least $33 million-15 years ago, so there is a big money interest biasing the national and state committees that determine whether to mandate a vaccine. I discovered that at one point at least 1/2 of the committee had financial connections with big pharm.

Personally, I had the Hong Kong flu, so I know I am immune to a certain strain of flu and it is rational to not take the flu vaccine when that type of influenza is circulating and the vaccine is for that type of influenza. (you can look up the strains and the strains vaccines are made to in a particular year at the CDC web site) More research is needed as I believe Dr. Fudenberg was correct. Perhaps a lawsuit is in order to protect such individual choice to lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease.

There are families with a genetic tendency towards life-threatening reactions to certain vaccines. I know of one family where the first and second child died within 24 hrs. of DTP vaccine administration. When the mother refused vaccine for the 3rd child, child protection tried to take custody and force the vaccine. Only because Illinois State Senator O’Malley intervened was this prevented. His daughter suffered a severe vaccine reaction with fever and stopped breathing. He performed CPR, but she remained mentally impaired for life due to hypoxic brain damage (caused by lack of oxygen due to the respirator arrest).

When a family has lost a child due to complications of vaccinations, then they likely have a genetic problem making them susceptible to these rare complications and they should not be forced to have their other children vaccinated. These families should be exempted until we understand how to identify the genes that permit such bad reactions and exempt such people carrying such genes. We need to devote more money to vaccine genetic research to solve this problem. Therefore, for a small number of people getting a flu shot is actually Russian roulette. They would be perfectly happy wearing masks during flu season and being vigilant about hand-washing.

The facts about the numbers of injured children and the federal compensation system are generally not told to the public and I believe messaged due to influence by Big Pharm and corrupt politicians and their accomplices.

All vaccines are different. All infections are different. They have different modes of infections, different hit rates or “infectiousness”, different types of immunity that the body uses to fight them. You should not generalize and make the same statement about all vaccines. Some are live virus and some dead virus vaccines. Live virus vaccines can endanger those with autoimmune disease and cancer or inherited problems with immunity.

Vaccination laws must have exceptions that protect those that are vulnerable to their complications or family members who are vulnerable to complications. Complications include death and brain damage. Making vaccine laws without exceptions are like making a law that everyone has to have their right hand amputated if they have cancer, despite the type of cancer they have. It is pure insanity.

Most measles deaths (145,000 annually) are in undeveloped countries where children have malnutrition. Without malnutrition, very few die of measles.

Most chicken pox deaths are actually deaths from overwhelming infection with bacteria that invade an open sore. Even this can be greatly reduced with education, hygiene, and vigilance.

On the other hand, polio is an overwhelmingly disastrous infection for the overall population and most people should get the polio vaccine if traveling abroad or show proof of it if entering this country until the all clear is given around the world. However, most baby boomers are not aware that the first few batches of polio vaccine injected were contaminated with a monkey virus that increases chances of cancer, so all is not well, even with this vaccine. In addition, the first rotavirus vaccines were pulled off of the market due to increased numbers of acute abdomens (life-threatening ) due to intussusception, which requires emergency surgery.

Tetanus is a horrible way to die and more common than one likes to see when no vaccines were available, so this vaccine falls into the probably should get it category for me. To the layman who is a natural health enthusiast. Please NEVER use any cosmetic mud for an umbilical cord (bellybutton) open wound on a baby as this often contains tetanus germs and has killed many babies over time.

I am one of the few physicians who would treat kids of parents who refused vaccinations. This is because there are some idiosyncratic reactions that can kill a child. I was often able to convince parents to give some vaccinations on a more prolonged schedule, but never would kick them out of practice for not vaccinating their kids. In addition, if the vaccines are required, they should be free. Some could not get them from local health departments and the cost was excessive.

I also believe that certain vaccines are unnecessary such as the hepatitis vaccine, unless you live in Asia, inject illicit drugs, or have unprotected sex with multiple partners.

There are many things the doctors, drug companies, and government do not tell you about vaccines, such as the enhancing antibody effect that may actually increase the chance of chronic active hepatitis B and liver cancer if your anti-hepatitis antibody titers drop and you are exposed to hepatitis B. The average person’s titers drop with time. This is an immunological phenomenon where a person who is given a cancer vaccine develops increased rather than decreased cancer growth if too little antibody is given (low zone enhancement). I believe this is the yet unknown mechanism by which babies of mothers who are hepatitis B carriers get infected and both are later susceptible to increased cancers. The vaccines are all quite different and do not necessarily give lifelong immunity as the diseases do. If you get the hepatitis vaccine, I would suggest you get your titers checked every ten years and get boosted if they drop – for at least the hepatitis B vaccine if you choose to get it.

Bottom line is that I don’t like the public being used as guinea pigs unless the evidence of risk versus benefit is overwhelming and the illness has such a high serious complication or death rate that the vaccines are rational. So, show me the data for each one over several decades. Not just the messaged data from Big Pharm. There is a long history in this country of hiding facts from the public for profit, such as in the tobacco industry and the weed killer industry.

Newton, Aurora, Virginia Tech, Columbine – type shootings WILL NOT STOP and WILL ESCALATE until we educate about, make access easy to, and fund mental health care

I am a retired pediatrician in Chicago.  I also have a PhD in pathology and trained for six months in forensic pathology observing and participating in autopsies including many gunshot victims. In addition I was medical director of a mental health care group practice. I know what I am talking about as I have treated babies and children who have been boiled, beaten, shot, and shaken.  I have smelled their burned flesh and held their brain tissue in my hand.  I have attended their autopsies. The destruction of tissue by high-powered weapons is unbelievable.  Tissues explode inside of you as the tissue is vaporized and the bullets wobble and gas from heated vaporized tissue expands the damage. There is absolutely no reason for high-powered, high magazine capacity weapons for civilian use. I fear though that it will take decades to confiscate them all as there are millions out there and millions of high capacity magazines.  Too many people do not secure their weapons and too many can buy them without background checks. The ratio of weapons to people in this country is so astonishing it is beyond belief.  No weapons ban will fully work until we start taking this ratio down.

However we have to start somewhere like limiting the availability of high-capacity magazines and certain types of bullets.  Although limiting guns in UK and Australia has worked well, it won’t work so easily in America where 5% of the world population has 50% of weapons owned  by civilians!  What are we going to do?  Have a massive confiscation campaign?  Eliminate the 2nd Amendment? NO!  We must close the loopholes concerning background checks.  We must start banning semiautomatic weapons to some extent and slow down their  proliferation.  The number in this country already is more than we will ever need. We must link all background registries at the national level. BUT! How are we going to  define mental illness that makes a person dangerous and that deserves to put them on the registry?  How are we going to help wrongfully convicted felons clear their names.  Are all felons deserving of having a ban on owning fire arms?  I think NOT!

I was wrongfully  convicted of aggravated battery of an officer for “bumping” him with my wheelchair and sentenced to two years in prison, a false charge as Sgt. Anthony Salemi actually attacked me in my wheelchair, falsified his records and committed perjury. Now Chief Judge Evans in Cook County is banning all cell phones from courthouses as the eavesdropping law was declared unconstitutional so no citizen can document corruption of Sheriff officers and judges in courthouses even outside of the courtrooms!

We have no choice with this amount of weapons in our country and t he impossibility of banning them due to the numbers already out there, but to make schools as secure as courthouses.  This is the sorry reality and it will cost us dearly – causing fear in our children and enormous government expenditures. Our 2nd Amendment with the technological advances in weapons and astonishing proliferation of weapons in the hands of citizens in America make us a dangerous overly armed population.

We MUST increase the requirements for police officers training and education.  We have a pitifully under trained and corrupt law enforcement legacy in this country. Read my blogs in the following.  We are now even killing a whole lot of people unnecessarily with Tasers!

We also must MASSIVELY increase our funding for mental health care.  We need 30,000 certified child psychiatrists but only have about 5,000 in this country.  We have been forced to choose between drugging people and providing cognitive or talking therapy.  Drugging won as our healthcare system won’t pay to talk to anyone.  I believe however that talking therapies are critical and drugging often does more harm than good!

Those doctors who do procedures (cardiac and ortho surgery for example) get obscenely high payments while psychiatrists, psychologists, and general practitioners, as well as pediatricians and family practitioners are the lowest paid.  We also pay by the pound.  My patients (Vincent triplets) are in the Guinness Book of World Records as the “lightest triplets in the world” (1997 edition), yet I was paid $50 to put in central lines into ultra premees while vascular surgeons were paid $500 to put in central lines into adults! Go figure! Our priorities are goofy.

Our justice system is so corrupt that honest  harmless people like me are wrongfully convicted (in my case in retaliation for whistle blowing against corrupt police and officials – see my other blogs links to the right) and criminals know all the loopholes.  Some of the most dangerous people are very intelligent and also mentally ill yet are not even in the mental healthcare system.

I fear the backlash against most mentally ill people who are harmless.

I fear that people with post-traumatic-stress disorder (PTSD) will be discriminated against and labeled wrongfully as dangerous. I suffer from PTSD and although I am a non-violent pacifist, I cower and swing my arms in front of my head trying to defend myself against flashbacks of being beaten by corrupt  police (I have been beaten several times and falsely accused of attacking these officers – see my blogs: http://cookcountysheriffdeputies.wordpress.com and http://cookcountyjudges.wordpress.com). This massacre in Newtown has caused me to have more flashbacks revisiting seeing wounded and dying children in the emergency rooms where I worked in Chicago 10-20 years ago.

There is NO mental health care in America; no understanding, respect and compassion for the mentally ill; no support for their families; no help available; just disdain, disrespect, hatred, blame, and ignorance. LaPierre’s and others’ descriptions of mentally ill shooters as “lunatics” and other derogatory terms I would rather not repeat makes the defamation against the mentally ill even worse.

Would you blame a person for becoming sick with cancer or being born with a deformity?  Yet we blame the criminally insane and defame them as evil!  We are a very sick society!

I treated a boy who attempted suicide and when I was releasing him from the hospital, the major university children’s hospitals in Chicago and its suburbs said they didn’t take these kids in transfer who didn’t have insurance (Loyola University, Northwestern University Medical Center, Rush Medical Center, Christ Hospital affiliated with the United Church of Christ and part of Advocate Healthcare) they had a year-long waiting list (Mt. Sinai Hospital and Medical Center), they only took transfers to their mental health unit of persons on Medicaid who lived in their zip  code (University of Chicago); or such other lame excuses all due to the country refusing to pay for mental health care.

I tried to testify in juvenile court that an aunt who was trying to help her nephew, whose parents were in prison for murder, had a child who was dangerous due to his mental illness, a liar and that the aunt was not a child abuser. Instead the child needed hospitalization and mental health care for life. He may grow up to be a mass murderer.  His aunt was falsely labeled a child abuser due to the child’s lies without a legitimate fair due process court hearing. The aunt lost custody of the boy and his brothers. The children were placed in foster care or given to their criminal drug dealing and gang member relatives who the aunt had protected them from. He has already become a rapist and was in prison for a year. His brothers have become burglars and teen drug dealers under the wings of their relatives and the lives of the brother who were doing well with the aunt have been ruined by the Cook County judges and court system.   We need extensive judicial reform!  I would love to testify before Congress.

Instead the judge threw me out of the courtroom, declared I was not a reliable witness, instead listened to a child welfare worker who had a few months training after getting a bachelor’s degree in psychology, ended up destroying my career and now corrupt officials arrested me on many false criminal charges and jailed me in retaliation after I began this campaign to get help for these  people.  Read my other blogs: here, here, here, here & here. The corrupt officials who divert Social Security Title IV-D funds from helping families to judicial pensions and fees for incompetent court-appoint hacks who claim to do mental health evaluations and claim to evaluate family situations (child representatives and guardian ad litums in divorce and custody cases), vilify anyone who tries to change the system and get the country to really look at mental health care, custody decisions, divorce courts, and misuse of government funds because we threaten their illegal funding stream. Read about that here.

Until the Affordable Care Act (ACA) known as “Obamacare”, patterned after “Romneycare” in Massachusetts, is in full swing and expanded to deal with mental health care and cover all Americans as a universal single  payer health care system, none of these mothers will have help and the shootings will continue. Victims also need access to mental health care.

See my suggested 15 point plan to address gun violence and gun deaths in America here: https://twitter.com/DrLindaShelton (1/2 of them are suicides and most are not mass murders but are murders by people known to the victims – 11,000 per year in the U.S.  – compared to about 35-50 in either England or Australia who have both banned and confiscated weapons after mass murders in schools).

Please consider joining the group “Newtown United” on Facebook here: http://www.facebook.com/NewtownUnited

The following is a MUST READ that has begun this conversation: http://anarchistsoccermom.blogspot.com/2012/12/thinking-unthinkable.html

The following poem expresses all of our grief and sadness: http://newtown.patch.com/blog_posts/dear-santa-7cbef59a

Statement by former Representative and victim of shooting Gabby Giffords husband Kelly at her shooter’s sentencing excoriating the government and Gov. for not dealing with gun violence and mental illness: http://jezebel.com/5959149/gabby-giffords-husband-stares-down-her-shooter-gabby-and-i-are-done-thinking-about-you

Evidence that we in the U.S. live in a totalitarian police state

Americans brag about our “freedom”. Yet we have very little of it. Our founding fathers would turn over in their grave if they knew how our “democracy” has turned into an oligarchy where the public is just a bunch of ignorant happy slaves.

If you are ill, the decisions between you and your physician are over-ridden by the private for-profit insurance companies that waste half our healthcare dollars on increasing their profits for shareholders and corporate CEOs. Whether you obtain needed treatment depends on the OK from a pencil pushing poorly trained nurse reviewing your request for approval for treatment. Your dog gets more rational, loving care from you and your veterinarian than you get from the healthcare system.

If you run a business you will be subject to so many regulations that don’t make sense that your head will spin, so many forms you won’t be able to do any business as you’re spending so much time filling out the forms, and you’ll be in a constant state of worry that you may have missed compliance with some regulation and will end up with a huge fine for being “in violation.”

The cost before you even begin will be huge as you may have to get a license and pay through the teeth for courses and certification and more courses and re-certification even to apply nail polish to someone’s fingers.

From retirement to buying a house, to running a small business selling nail polish we are over-regulated, overtaxed and over-papered. The only way you can avoid this is if you are one of the 1 % who has the means to pay the bribes, find the loopholes, and make your own decisions.

We are at the mercy of our masters and our despotic kings behind the scenes. The Illinois legislature is run by a handful of people who decide who will put their names on bills and which bills will be passed. Who is elected president little matters. The 1% will control him/her.

Republican or Democrat, it doesn’t matter. The 1 % is a cabal of corruption that have figured out how to exploit our “democracy” and hide the exploitation from the happy ignorant masses.

We must restore our Constitution, bring up our education to a world-class level, and strengthen our checks and balances so that patronage and corruption no longer have the upper hand. Until then there is very little hope for the masses.

We have seen in recent years that the bursting of the housing bubble has allowed the 1% to scoop up much of the assets of the 99 % at record low prices making the 1% richer than ever and in control of more of our property and assets than ever. Tax rates for the 1% in the lst 50 years have dropped from 65 % to less than 20 %. The elite are consolidating their power and wealth.

Our country is a totalitarian police state run by a few rich people and multinational corporations, sort of like the King in Robinhood and the inherited Lordships. In Illinois the King is Former Gov. Jim Thompson (R) and his inherited Lordships are the Daleys (D), the Madigans (D), the Burkes (D), the Lipinskys(D), the relatives of former Sheriff Sheahan (D), the Beavers (D), the Jacksons (D), the Brosnahans (D), and many others.

You don’t get a judicial appointment or get elected as a judge unless you have the stamp of approval of Alderman Burke and have paid a $10,000 bribe to have your campaign signs printed and posted on the lawns of employees of the Secr. of State and Cook County Sheriff’s offices. You don’t get to be a supervisor in these offices unless you post signs and sell tickets to fundraising events. You don’t get contracts with Illinois, Cook County, or Chicago unless you pay a 15% bribe from the income you make from the contract to political funds such as “Friends of Madigan”. Then the money is laundered through phony foundations such as now defunct Save-A-Life foundation, through purchases of homes for $1 where they are then resold using under the table cash (like Lisa Madigan does with a dozen homes in Maricopa County, Arizona), etc. Judges ignore the law with impunity in Cook County and likely elsewhere. I have discovered the above facts from numerous anonymous inside sources.

You can’t keep your job with the Cook County Sheriff or other Cook Count agencies unless you donate 15% of your salary to the election campaign of your boss such as the Cook County Sheriff – this was told to me by correctional officers at Cook County Jail. There are myriad of ways to get you fired from phoney job evaluations to planting drugs in your car (several Chicago Police officers went to jail when drugs were planted in their cars). Unless the masses employed by the State stand up and turn in their supervisors to federal officers by squealing, this will never change.

The gullible masses are brainwashed and ruled by fear – and hate -blinded to their masters’ greed (Corporate CEOs & Multinational behind closed doors oligarchs)

I don’t believe this will change until we have a viable united party controlled by the PEOPLE/UNIONS voting in numbers > 80% of voters to balance the cabal of corruption that consists of BOTH the Republicans and the Democrats.

As long as:
1 – a few media magnets own ALL media & can transform the “news” media into mere tabloids with failure to educate that consuming only biased extremist one-sided #FakeFoxNews or equivalent & one-sided select social media➡ brainwashed thoughtless stupid policies & acts ,
2 – the government can keep our population stupid and uneducated,
3 – the public can be appeased to be like an audience watching gladiators on the news (Anthony trial, reality shows, etc),
4 – the public remains uninformed and willing to accept as “facts” anything fed to them like geese being force fed for foie gras production,
5 – the corrupt leaders can deal with dissidents by throwing them in jail on phoney charges or defaming them as mentally ill without an objection from the public or exposure on the media,
6 – the nation is turned into a prison nation (only jobs available as jobs have been shipped overseas),
7 – our rich are allowed to ship jobs overseas for their profit,
8 – and the rich 1% in this country can continue to get richer during the economic downturn due to the above,

there is no hope.

Flushing nose with unclean water may kill you

Cleaning the nose by flushing with saline (salt) water mixed in a certain way is very helpful for people with colds or allergies.  Special spray  bottles or neti pots may be used.

However, if you live in a warm climate and amoeba contaminate the water, failure to use filtered or boiled water may kill you due to an infection with the amoeba causing encephalitis. You must let boiled water cool before using it.  Temperature of the water is important as cold water will cause pain and headache.

It is CRUCIAL that you carefully follow directions about using CLEAN water and not tap or stream water.

Two deaths have recently been reported due to encephalitis caused by amoeba contaminating water used to flush noses- read here

For more information about available products (neti pots and sinus flushing systems) go to company web sites here (SinuCleanse [registered trademark]) and here (NasoFlo [registered trademark]) and elsewhere.

Top CDC officials indicted – involved in H1N1 flu and vaccine-autism link mis-information

Money rules in America and it has now corrupted our system from stem to stern.  Now there is clear-cut evidence in the highest levels of our healthy policy makers. Big business and multi-national corporations rule America, not the people. Those of us who speak up are quashed like a bug. See details about what happened to me here and here.

Not only have the percentage of ALL income in America, for the top 20%, in personal income group, increased from 20% to 60% in the last 30 years meaning that now 80 % of the population receives only 20 % of the income, but our officials who decide our country’s policies and give our population recommendations are being increasingly shown to be greedy, morally corrupted, and unreliable. See the facts here.

Trickle down doesn’t work. As taxes for the ultra-weathy have decreased from 63% to less than 20% (considering all the loopholes), the rich are getting richer and the ranks of the poor are rapidly increasing.

The rich are getting richer off the labor of the 80% of those of us who bust our butts. The middle class is disappearing. The rich are taking possession of our property as we lose it in foreclosure; as our children, elderly, and disabled lose their rights, parents, freedom, and property through corrupt divorce and probate courts – with the government becoming their guardian; and as the wealth of the 99% crashes, which will be further diminished as the dollar’s value crashes and the stock market falls because both have been artificially bubbled just like housing stock. The present rise in stock values is an illusion.  The fundamentals are not there to sustain it. Eventually there will be a much bigger correction than we have already seen.

See the details of the charges against CDC officials here.

Our healthcare system is corrupt.  Our criminal justice system is corrupt – view numerous blog posts here. Our financial system is corrupt. Our educational system is corrupt.

Wake up America.  It is time to act.  Contact your local Occupy Wall Street affiliate.  In Chicago Contact Occupy Chicago.

Death from lack of dental care increasing in United States

Tooth and gum disease is a leading cause of infections, heart disease, and poor nutrition, especially in the elderly.  The fact that our supposedly civilized country has so neglected this necessary health care is a sorry fact.  A country is judged by the way it treats the least among it.  Poor people in the United  States have lost man of their teeth before the age of 40 and the  percentage who need dentures despite advancements in dentistry is appalling.

Several years ago our church janitor, a gentle man who had a tough life with some personal problems, lived in our church apartment and cared lovingly for our church building.  He didn’t have the money to pay for dental care and had a horrible abscess and pain from rotten teeth.  he kept buying ibuprofen (Motrin or Advil are the brand names).  He took large quantities of this drug for a long time.  The end result was that the drug caused a bleeding ulcer and we found him deaf in the church school in his 40s, having bled out from his bleeding ulcer in a  pool of blood.  This was a preventable death.

The number of Americans dying of preventable complications of dental caries is rising at an alarming rate.  There is no excuse for our country  to neglect its citizens like this.  Health care should be a right and not a privilege and this should especially be true of mental health care.

How much money are we going to waste paying for persons who come to ERs with advanced terminal illness that was preventable? How many productive years will be lost?  How many kids will grow up without a parent, under financial stress and inadequate supervision?

This news article paints this grim picture in more detail.

Woman with cancer told can’t sell her property in yard sale to pay bills

SALEM, Oregon.  Jan Cline has a bone marrow cancer that is eating holes in her bones. The treatment is expensive and her illness has taken away her independence by causing her to be unable to work.

She has been selling her treasured possessions for pennies at weekend yard sales , tucked in her back yard and kept very clean and organized. Yet the City has shut her down by enforcing an ordinance limiting yard sales to three per year.

Thousands in the United States have inadequate health insurance and are becoming bankrupt and destitute due to lack of funds or insurance.

This story reveals how America is no longer great. America is now a sad place, a heartless land, where the rich get richer and the needy are ignored and disgarded. Our “greatness” is no longer.

Stop voting for politicians who find this acceptable!  Start acting like an American.  If you have money – spend it to campaign against heartless, unethical politicians who perpetuate this disgusting system.

Protest for Liberty, Justice and Against Government Corruption before We Lose It Completely

Do you want corporations and their corrupt government puppets or people to control the United States and make its laws? 

If you want to preserve and defend YOUR democracy go to: http://t.co/vdcEEt0

What light is to the eyes,
what air is to the lungs,
what loves is to the heart,
liberty is to the soul of man.
          Robert G. Ingersoll

Our founding fathers fought for liberty in the Revolutionary War – at the Boston tea party and Concord and in the swamps around Charleston;

Our grandparents fought for liberty in WWI – in the trenches, on the sea, and on the Russian front;

Our parents fought for liberty in WWII and out of fear of communism in the Cold War –  on the beaches and hills of Guadalcanal, in the streets and on the bridges of Budapest, on the seas, and via the air over Berlin;

Our brothers, husbands, and friends fought out of fear of communism – during the Tet offensive, and in Saigon;

Our children and friends’ children are fighting to protect us from terrorism and for humanitarian reasons – in Iraq and in Afghanistan;

Our grandparents, parents, brothers and sisters, as well as countrymen protested and marched for liberty in the United States during the Civil Rights Movement – at Selma, Birmingham, and in Washington DC;

Our brothers and sisters stand up for liberty, opportunity, equality, and fairness daily regarding Health Care, Home Ownership, in the Courts, and at Work – in every town, in every prison, at every job, in every health facility, in every court, and at every rural crossroads.

In every struggle and battle and in every war, there are casualties. We accept them and do not run from the fight. That’s what it means to love others more than self, to treasure not just life, but also liberty, opportunity, equality, and justice.

The least I can do is stand up forcefully for liberty and its cousin justice at home, in memory and in honor of all those that came before, as well as for all those who come in the future!

We won’t retake it if we don’t fight. That’s what it means to love thy neighbor and one’s fellow men.

I’s rather go down standing up then grovel on my knees as a slave to the corrupt police, prosecutors, judges and politicians in America.

I will continue to expose the corrupt, enlighten the public through the Internet (our great equalizer), and challenge the corrupt.

Won’t you join me – for your children and grandchildren? Send me a comment and I’ll tell you how you can help.

Linda Lorincz Shelton, PhD, MD

 

Too many mammograms lead to unacceptable complication rate

There is an emotional outcry against the new guidelines for mammogram screening for breast cancer that recommend that  women between 40-49 years no longer obtain routine yearly mammograms, but instead consult with their physician at least every two years as to their risk and need for the test. The press is widely and inaccurately reporting that the guidelines recommend no mammograms between age 40-49.

This is an example of emotions being used to shield the facts and harm women, in addition to wasting money. The facts are that too many mammograms (yearly after several negative mammograms) are harming women by exposing them to unnecessary surgery (biopsies) and the complications associated with surgery such as emotional distress, infection, disfiguration, death, and cost.

These are NOT death panels. A panel of persons trained to understand risk verses benefits and medical issues, as well as trained to interpret statistical data has determined that more harm occurs with too many yearly unnecessary mammograms.

They have examined the facts and statistics and come up with a rational plan as to how many mammograms are necessary and at what interval to best balance the risks versus benefits. They are more in line with European and international recommendations.

Women are willing to put up with some unnecessary emotional distress, surgery, infections, costs, and even death as long as the benefits (numbers of cancers discovered early) outway the risks (numbers of complications including deaths). However irrational emotional statements that we have to do everything possible to uncover every cancer early are nonsense. Certain groups are at higher risks and patients should discuss this with their doctors. There is not a one size fits all answer here.

If we uncover one (1) cancer early for every two (2) deaths from complications due to unncecessary mammograms then the risk v. benefit calculation for the population, not the individual, suggests we are doing too many unnecessary mammograms. This is what the experts have found. This is why the overall general recommendations have been changed. This does NOT mean that those at incresed risk should follow these recommendations. Recommendations should be individualized by a person’s physician knowing their family history and risk factors.

Either way there are going to be deaths. The experts based their recommendations on reducing the OVERALL number of deaths to the minimum. When those that make decisions based on emotion instead of fact understand this, then the population will be informed. Until then, this discussion is total nonsense.

The new guidelines DO NOT apply to women with a family history of breast cancer. They should have yearly mammograms starting earlier in life, sometimes as early as age 20-30.

The bottom line is this: Do we want to make difficult decisions based on fact and risk versus benefit so that lines are drawn in favor of benefit, or do we want to make decisions based on emotions, feeling good, and with a total disregard to costs and available resources? 

The actual guidelines published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Opinions in favor of frequent mammograms for everyone over age 40 .

Recommendations of DHHS and Secretary Sebelius.

Medical News Today summary of reasons for new guidelines.

Mental Health Care Denied Poor in Illinois

The following is A SCHEME TO DENY MENTAL HEALTH CARE IN ILLINOIS TO PERSONS ON MEDICAID.

 Illinois has essentially de facto suspended Dr. Bennett’s Constitutional right to relief from a wrongful conviction by a Habeas petition. Attorney General Lisa Madigan has committed fraud upon the court and the Cook County Circuit Court Judge Lon Schultz has violated Federal and State law, the Constitution, and all morality by convicting her on a charge of Medicaid vendor fraud.

 Please read this carefully and write the Asst. U.S. Attorney General in Chicago, Patrick Fitzgerald – Office of U.S. Attorney General, 219 S. Dearborn, Fifth Floor, Chicago, Illinois, 60604; Director of the Chicago FBI, Robert Grant and the Director of the Task Force on Public Corruption, Special Agent Casanovich, Chicago FBI, 2111 S. Roosevelt Road, Chicago, Illinois 60608, as well as inform the press with letters and phone calls about this gross injustice. Help me disseminate this information far and wide around the world, until agents of the United States government intervene to stop this injustice.

 HABEAS LAW VIOLATED

In March 2009 Dr. Maisha Hamilton Bennett filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus (the grand writ guaranteed by the United States Constitution) in the Illinois Court system. It found its way to the Chancery Court Division of the Cook County Circuit Court before Judge Stuart Palmer. A habeas petition is a last resort step when the court system has failed to free an innocent person or a person whose rights under the Constitution’s Bill of Rights were so violated that they were denied a fair trial.

 Illinois law requires the petition to be heard “promptly” and the warden to bring the prisoner before the court, the court to order the State to produce evidence that the person is being legally held, and allow the prisoner to rebut this evidence and prove he/she has been illegally held because they are actually innocent, the indictment was invalid, no crime was alleged, the court had no jurisdiction, or the Bill of Rights was violated and the person did not receive a fair trial. See: 735 ILCS 5/10‑103, 106, the Illinois Habeas Statute. See: http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/ilcs4.asp?DocName=073500050HArt%2E+X&ActID=2017&ChapAct=735%26nbsp%3BILCS%26nbsp%3B5%2F&ChapterID=56&ChapterName=CIVIL+PROCEDURE&SectionID=62279&SeqStart=73000000&SeqEnd=76800000&ActName=Code+of+Civil+Procedure%2E .

 To date Judge Palmer has refused to hear the habeas petition, recently transferred it to criminal court, where presiding criminal court Judge Biebel is also delaying hearing the petition for weeks to months.  The law actually says that any judge who refuses to hear the petition “promptly” shall be referred to the States Attorney or Attorney General for prosecution of this illegal act and when found guilty should be fined $1000 and the money paid to the prisoner.

 WRONGFUL CONVICTION DR. BENNETT FOR MEDICAID FRAUD WHEN SHE WAS ACTUALLY PROVIDING EXCELLENT MENTAL HEALTH CARE

 Dr. Bennett is innocent because the indictment is legally void – it didn’t adequately state the facts charged so was impermissibly vague, the Federal Medicaid Law allows the conduct that the State says is criminal – thus the Constitutional Supremacy clause was violated – state laws are invalid if they go against federal law, the trial was conducted unfairly, the alleged prosecutor, Attorney General Lisa Madigan violated the law and committed extreme prosecutorial misconduct and the court had NO jurisdiction as a result. For case law and detailed discuss of Code pertaining to Federal Medicaid Code see:

1) Memisovski v. Maram, [Transfer Binder 2004-2] Medicare & Medicaid Guide (CCH) ¶ 301,515, in that it violates 42 U.S.C. 1396a(a)30(A) – Federal Judge Joan Lefkow ruled in 2004 that the Illinois Medicaid Rules violate the Federal Medicaid Code in that they deny access to care to persons on Medicaid for their medical insurance;

2) http://illinoiscorruption.blogspot.com/2008/10/criminal-scheme-of-il-attorney-general.html and;

3) http://illinoiscorruption.blogspot.com/2009/02/judge-jorge-alonso-overturns-federal.html .

 Dr. Bennett was wrongfully convicted of Medicaid vendor fraud in 2003 and is being held in jail without bond. (Now for over 18 months) She is alleged to have ghost-billed for mental health services either not done or done by non-physicians in her practice group practice – she is a Ph.D psychologist and owner of the group, Hamilton Wholistic Healthcare, and alleged to have caused bills to be sent to Medicaid under the name of the practice’s medical director, a physician, who did not see the patients.

 The facts are that Hamilton Wholistic Healthcare was an Illinois Certified Alcohol and Drug Treatment Center run by Trinity Hospital and then when Trinity pulled out, run by Hamilton Wholistic Healthcare. It was an INPATIENT center. Counselors who were M.S. and Ph.D. psychologists as well as physicians when they needed medication treated the patients. The patients’ children were also evaluated and treated with counseling or the parents were counseled. The law allows a service provider to bill the insurer for providing service to the child when the parent is counseled without the child present. The AMA code book for services states this fact. Insurance companies pay these bills with no problems.

 The State put a grandmother on the stand, who was caring for several grandchildren while their mother was in the inpatient drug-treatment center, and she said she was not aware the children were counseled when they visited their mother in the inpatient center. This was the “basis” for the ghost-billing charge. Under federal HIPAA laws the mental health counselors and doctors are NOT ALLOWED to inform the grandmother as she was not the legally guardian. These privacy laws forbid discussions with the grandmother without the mother’s consent. The fact that she didn’t know did not prove anything. It certainly did not prove that the children or the mother were not counseled about how to deal with the drug-addicted mother or parenting.  This was NOT explained to the jury.

 The defense attorney was incompetent in that he failed to put on the stand the counselors so they could introduce the fact the kids and mother were counseled. The law DOES NOT ALLOW the attorney to place into evidence the medical record – only testimony about the medical record, in criminal trials. This is because medical records are considered hearsay and cannot be cross-examined. He failed to put on the stand the children who were then old enough to testify. He failed to put on the stand the mother.

 The billing agent made an error that she admitted she did because the IL Medicaid Provider Service Unit representative told her to do it. This representative told the billing agent, Louise Moore owner of Data Medical Works, that only physicians names could be on bills, so Ms. Moore forged the signature of the medical director on a power of attorney form which allows Ms. Moore to put the doctor’s name on electronic bills, on a Blue Cross/Blue Shield electronic partner trading agreement which allows BC/BS to accept the bills over the wires (computer) on behalf of Medicaid, check them for errors as a service to Medicaid, and forward them to Medicaid. She also forged signatures on an alternate payee agreement so that the checks would be written by Medicaid to Hamilton Wholistic Healthcare instead of to the physician medical director. These checks were immediately deposited in the corporate bank account and not in Dr. Bennett’s bank account. None of this was told to the jury. Dr. Bennett was even charged with this forgery, but the charges of forgery were dropped. I saw the alleged forged documents. They had signatures that appeared to be in the handwriting style of Ms. Moore and many of the alleged invoices’ provider signature presented to the crime lab in the perjury charge appeared to be cut-outs from the handwriting exemplars (handwriting samples) that Ms. Bennett was forced to provide where she was told to write the medical director’s name 30 times or so on a piece of paper. Even my teenage son, at the time, was able to match specific signatures from the handwriting exemplars to specific invoices. The crime lab rejected the invoices for analysis because the man I suspect of fabricating them by cutting out handwriting exemplars, State Police Investigator William Reibel, refused to produce originals. That is why the charges were dropped, to my understanding.

 Community alcohol and drug addiction treatment centers, per Illinois Statute, separate from the Illinois Medicaid Code, are allowed to bill Medicaid under their corporate name and not a doctor’s name and to bill for services of non-physician counselors and psychologists, as long as a physician medical director sets policy – not that she sees patients.

 Hamilton Wholistic Healthcare sent patient encounter forms to Ms. Moore listing the counselor’s name and not the doctor’s name, for each clinic visit when a patient was seen by the counselor in or out of the inpatient center. Without Dr. Bennett’s knowledge (she was the CEO) Ms Moore changed the name of the provider counselor on the electronic bill she generated from these patient encounter forms to the name of the doctor medical director and sent them in to Medicaid electronically. Medicaid then paid Hamilton Wholistic Healthcare. The payments went as salaries to the counselors and to overhead. A small percent went to the CEO. The total amount received from Medicaid for several years was about $400,000.

 Therefore, Dr. Bennett is innocent because she was not involved in putting the medical director’s name on the electronic bills. She did not profit from this error. The federal and state laws allow physicians to bill for their employees. Ms. Moore should have used the name of the corporation and not the name of the medical director on the electronic bills. There was clearly no intent to defraud.  All services were actually provided and addicts received appropriate treatment, as did their children who needed counseling to cope with this situation of an addicted parent.

 There was an administrative error that WAS NOT A CRIME in that the name of a physician medical director instead of the group name was put on the bill, by order of the Medicaid Provider Service Unit representative. All services were provided; only the incorrect provider name was on the electronic invoice, at the direction of Medicaid to Ms. Moore.

As 80 % or more of mental health services are provided by non-physician psychologists, psychiatric nurse counselors, psychiatric social worker counselors, drug-addiction counselors (all licensed in Illinois) and their supervised students, it is bizarre and simply wrong for the State to claim that ONLY physicians can provide mental health services and Medicaid won’t pay for non-physician services (unless provided by a certified and licensed community mental health center.)  This would prevent access to care for Medicaid patients to ALL private psychologists, counselors, etc.  This is simply a fraudulent scheme to deny mental health care to persons on Medicaid to save the Illinois budget. This is also a scheme AG Lisa Madigan uses to claim she is “tough on fraud” and to take advantage of the present climate of hating physicians. These fraudulent indictments of Psychologists and psychiatrist are used as a smoke screen and scapegoat to hide the fact Illinois is violating the Federal Medicaid Code and the Constitution. I was also fraudulently indicted, but found NOT guilty because I had a good attorney. Dr. Bennett did not have a good attorney.

 The Illinois Attorney General’s statement about the conviction that Dr. Bennett is a scumbag who ripped the state off for $400,000 billing for mental health services for children that never were provided is nothing but a bald faced lie.  AG Lisa Madigan should be impeached for fraud upon the court and fraud upon the public.

 This is penny wise and pound foolish, as failure to treat mental health patients increases, suicide, family break-up, and crime, as well as increased cost to the state for welfare, criminal justice, prison, and hospital care.

 Mental Health care in Illinois to poor persons is virtually non-existent. The United States healthcare system is in meltdown and our legislators are acting like children instead of addressing the issues.  I miss Senator “Teddy” Kennedy deeply! God Help Us!