Monday, December 30, 2019

HITLER'S LEGACY


Researcher’s Note: The media and politicians of today are reminiscent of the socialists of the 1940’s.

HITLER'S LEGACY
The power of the press can be used to deliberately lead people astray, and to make them believe whatever propagandists want them to believe. In honor of the first man to use them I call modern propaganda and information-management techniques "Hitler's Legacy".

When Adolph Hitler took power in Germany he also took over the media, and he used it to shape a modern, civilized country to his ends. With full control of the national press his propaganda minister Paul Josef Goebbels developed sophisticated and very effective tools of propaganda to control public opinion in Germany, and even in other countries.

He proved that if you repeat a lie often enough in mass media, most people will accept it as the truth.

That's powerful stuff, and propaganda may be the most dangerous weapon developed in the Second World War. The atom bomb scared so many people that we had mass movements trying to control it, but the general public seems to have missed the significance of the power of propaganda.

While governments spent billions to improve nuclear weapons and to test a very few of them in isolated areas, private companies in the advertising industry spent even more money to develop new propaganda techniques and they tested and used them on all of us.

Now some advertising agencies have bigger budgets and more actual power than Goebbels did. Their power is not as naked as his but, because they control the money, they control the media.

And while Goebbels controlled relatively few radio stations, newspapers and billboards, the power of advertising is exerted over a much more powerful and efficient net of media.

We like to pretend that advertising agencies use their power only to sell commercial goods, but we know they also plan election campaigns for politicians, and "manage" public perception of governments. Politicians pretend that their advertising managers have no political power, but it's obvious that the man who controls the election also controls the politician.

There are some limitations on advertising -- it's supposed to be illegal to use subliminal advertising on movies and TV, for example -- but the limits are not enforceable.

When Vance Packard thought he saw subliminal imagery in magazine advertisements, he wrote a book about them. {Hidden Persuaders} was a best seller, but the images are still there.

Are there other techniques we don't know about? It sounds paranoid, but we have to assume there are techniques that even some advertising people don't know about. We are talking about a multi-billion dollar business in which one agency's secret technique can give it an advantage over another. The only thing we can be sure of is that they have millions of dollars a year to fund research, and that they have good reason to keep their discoveries secret.

But even without secret techniques, advertising in general has effects the advertisers do not plan and may not understand. The problem is that the best way to sell something is to make people unhappy with what they already have.

If I want to sell you a new car my first move is to convince you that your old car -- or whatever form of transportation you're using now -- is no longer adequate for your needs.

It does me no good to prove that the Drof car I am trying to sell is better than the Egdod that someone else offers unless I have already convinced you that you need a new car.

So first I have to convince you that you need a new car, and so do the people who sell Egdods, Kcuibs and other cars.

Meanwhile the people who sell appliances tell you that your refrigerator is inadequate, and so-forth. The message is buried in each ad but it's always there, and the effect is cumulative.

And because of that it's very powerful. With a dozen or more other car makers making conflicting claims I may not be able to convince you that a Drof car is better than the others, but between us all we can probably convince you that your present form of transportation is not adequate.

Other advertisers' claims conflict too, but the one point on which they all agree is that whatever you have now, you need more and will not be happy until you get it. The message is buried as a secondary part of each ad but it is there and, because the media is controlled by the advertisers, it also pervades the supposedly non-advertising component of the media.

Many salesmen will spend more to have some "responsible" journalist spread a message than they will for advertising. A "puff" article is a good investment because a reader may be suspicious of advertising, but may accept the journalist's comments as an honest judgment. That's why some advertisements are disguised to look like news stories.

North American public relations agencies have more employees than North American news media have reporters, and in 1990 a study found that nearly 40% of the contents of American newspapers began with press releases or other information from public relations agencies.

Most reporters would say that the media is not controlled by advertisers and they would think they were telling the truth. When I worked as a newspaper reporter, I wrote what I believed.

But as a reporter I have had some very pleasant vacations in Europe, Mexico and resort areas of the U.S.A. and Canada, and dozens of expensive meals, at the expense of advertisers. They didn't buy my opinions, but they did spend a lot of money to make friends.

And I have seen deliberate manipulation of the news. In the late 1960's I shot free-lance newsfilm for several TV stations in southern Ontario. At that time a pressure group wanted the Canadian military to lend a Hercules transport plane to a group that was trying to get aid to one side or the other in the Nigerian civil war.

CFTO-TV assigned me to cover the group's "demonstration" outside the Air Transport Command station at Trenton, Ont. By the time I got there several other TV crews were waiting, but there were no "demonstrators". On schedule, a car and a couple of small vans arrived. A PR man from the car spoke to us, then to the guards outside the station, then waved his people out of the vans.

For about five minutes about a dozen "demonstrators" marched in circles, waved signs and chanted slogans in front of the gate while we of the press took pictures, choosing our camera angles to make the dozen people look like a mob. Then the PR man asked if we had enough.

The others said okay but I pointed out that there was a Hercules plane parked in the airfield across the road. If I used a long lens and the "demonstrators" marched in exactly the right place, I could get a shot of them marching with the plane in the background.

I did and they did, until I got the shot. Then they all climbed into the vans and went home. The marchers didn't give a damn about the planes or about Nigeria, all they cared about was that they had all been paid to march in front of the cameras.

I told the news editor about this when I handed in my film. He told me that he already knew about it, and that it had all been properly "arranged". So much for the integrity of the press.

That was deliberate manipulation by a pressure group, but the media is mostly controlled by the big advertisers who control it because they control the money. And it's hard to fault them because they spend money where they think it will do the most good, on media that appeals to people who may buy their products. If I advertise cars, I will use media that I think will appeal to people who might buy the kind of cars I want to sell.

If the media looks good to me that's because the publisher shares my view of the world, and he hires editors and reporters who share his view of the world. There is no need for an organized plot because the advertisers hold the purse strings and they decide which media will prosper, and therefore which view of the world will be disseminated.

The view of the world that advertisers like is the one that says you can't be happy until you have bought every single thing they have to sell. Obviously you will never succeed but that's no problem for the advertisers, because you will keep trying.

And you can bet that you will not be content for long with anything you buy, because most modern products have flaws built into them. In earlier years skilled craftsmen built deliberate flaws into their work because the gods might become jealous of perfect craftsmanship. Modern designers do it to avoid the fate of Singer and Underwood.

For more than 100 years Singer made some of the best sewing machines in the world and at one time it was probably the biggest maker of sewing machines in the world. The hitch was that the original Singer sewing machines were so good they almost never broke down or wore out, and after they filled their market with sewing machines the business faded. Singer was taken over and another company now operates under the Singer name. The original is gone.

Until the arrival of computers in the late 1970's and early 1980's newspaper reporters around the world used Underwood typewriters made in the 1930's and 40's. The "number five", made in the 1940's was a special favorite. Underwood typewriters dating back to the 1920's may still be in use, but the company was taken over by Olivetti in the 1960's.

Tire makers did very well in the days when good tires for cars and trucks lasted perhaps 30,000 miles each. Now car tires last 50,000 to 100,000 miles and with retreads some truck tires will last several hundred thousand miles. One-time industry giant Firestone has been taken over by Bridgestone, most small tire companies are dead or dying and some of the big ones are in trouble.

Most manufacturers have learned the lesson and some modern products will last very well, but they won't give satisfaction for long.

In some cases that takes careful design because car makers, for example, can't afford basic flaws in their products. Cars with serious flaws must be recalled, and recalls cost millions.

Car manufacturers can't afford to skimp on basic durability either, because if they did some cars would fail within the warranty period and be very expensive to maintain. In fact modern cars last so long that car makers would have real problems if they didn't build in some petty flaws and minor inconveniences to make their products less than perfect.

Your car may work perfectly well but as it ages some unimportant function will fail and fail again. Petty inconveniences will add up and media hype of the latest gizmos will make you look at the ads for new cars.

The classic example of hype and flaws is the fashion industry. Designers know that almost any change can look good if it's presented in a fashion show with media hype and they all offer completely "new" lines every year. Some do better than others but most prosper, thanks partly to a barrage of magazine articles and TV "news" items which in fact add up to free advertising for the fashion industry.

Mass market clothes follow the same trends, with a bit of a twist. Basic designs may not change much but some products have petty flaws built into them to make sure they do not last, or do not give satisfaction for too long.

Some products are just plain cheap, but modern merchandising can sell them too. In mass-market stores many goods are blister-packed, so you can't actually tell what you're buying. If it looks good it will sell, and you won't find out what it's really like until too late.

These are all petty annoyances but they add up and they help set the stage for another development of propaganda. In a country of happy Germans Hitler might never have taken power but, thanks to economic problems created by the Treaty of Versailles, most Germans were poor and desperate for a change.

We have no Treaty of Versailles but the general low-level malaise and discontent created by the advertising industry and by "creative" merchandising makes us more vulnerable to manipulation.

This next bit is speculation, but it's speculation on the level of "if I jump out of the window I may fall to the ground."

Through the late 1960's and most of the 1970's the US fought a hot war in Vietnam and a cold war throughout the world. We know that there was considerable opposition within the States to the Vietnam War, and we know that Russian intelligence services had access to some very powerful propaganda and persuasion techniques and a spy network that spread through most of the free world.

I have no proof or even evidence that Russian undercover agents taught propaganda techniques to activists at American universities, but if they did not the Russian intelligence service did not do its job.

Idealistic professors also taught propaganda techniques during this period and probably some semi-secret techniques leaked out of advertising agencies. One way and another, the science of persuasion and manipulation made a quantum leap in the years from 1960 to 1980.

And however they learned their techniques I also know that since the 1970's some of the people who protested the Vietnam War have done very well in the social action business. Organizations that began as idealistic crusades for equal rights or to save the whales or the seals or other animals now have budgets of tens of millions of dollars a year.

They're all non-profit, of course, but what does that mean? A private company works for profit, and the management of the company turns that profit over to its shareholders. A non profit organization has no shareholders and is not allowed to make a profit -- so management is required to spend all the income on wages, staff perks and other expenses.

One of the few politicians to worry about propaganda-based businesses is Hamilton-Wentworth MP John Bryden, who published one report on the funding of special-interest groups in 1993 and another on charities in 1996.

The 1996 report says Canada has 73,000 registered charities and another 66,000 non-profit organizations, with total revenues that Bryden estimates at more than $100 billion. The report has to estimate the total because financial information on the 66,000 non-profit organizations is "confidential" -- bureaucratic for secret -- but numbers for the 73,000 "charities" are available.

Between them they share a total income of about $86 billion dollars -- about 13% of Canada's total economic activity -- they have about $109 billion in assets and they employ about 1.3 million people, or about 12% of Canada's total work force. The numbers are not quite so mind-blowing when you remember that hospitals and universities are "charities", but they are still pretty big.

We expect governments to contribute to hospitals and universities but most of the 73,000 registered Canadian charities are neither universities nor hospitals, and some of them are open to serious question. By definition a charity helps people in need but some Canadian charities confine their activities to special groups.

In 1990 the Auditor General reported that one Canadian corporation had donated $5 million to several foundations whose directors were related to the corporation, and that the foundations had immediately loaned the money back, plus interest charges. Because the money was given to registered charities the gifts were deductible for tax purposes, and loans are not taxable.

Financial records for most non profit organizations are a closed book -- Revenue Canada sees them but the information is privileged -- but the salaries paid to top executives of Canadian charities are supposed to be public information. Bryden reports that about 25% of Canadian charities -- more that 18,000 organizations -- do not report the salaries they pay to top executives.

By law a public charity is supposed to devote 80% of the money it receives in donations to charitable works, but most Canadian charities get most of their money from the government or from business, rather from donations, and there is no control on how they spend it.

Bryden reports that in 1994 The Standards Council of Canada received $33,000 in donations, $6 million in funding and $3 million as payment for services. Gross revenues were $8,877,974, management and administration costs were $8,515,864 and the council spent $8,916 on "charitable activities".

A non-profit organization can run on a lean budget and do good work but it can also take very good care of the people who run it. Anyone who understands propaganda techniques can make a very good living at good works, and some do.

Sunday, December 29, 2019

Researcher’s Note: Sometimes we need to see all the information in one place. Let’s start with IG Farben.


IG Farben
IG Farben head office, Frankfurt, completed in 1931 and seized by the Allies in 1945 as the headquarters of the Supreme Allied Command. In 2001 it became part of the University of Frankfurt.
Interessengemeinschaft Farbenindustrie AG (German for 'Dye industry syndicate corporation'), commonly known as IG Farben, was a German chemical and pharmaceutical conglomerate. Formed in 1925 from a merger of six chemical companies—BASF, Bayer, Hoechst, Agfa, Chemische Fabrik Griesheim-Elektron, and Chemische Fabrik vorm. Weiler Ter Meer[1]—it was seized by the Allies after World War II and divided back into its constituent companies.[a]
In its heyday, IG Farben was the largest company in Europe and the largest chemical and pharmaceutical company in the world.[4] IG Farben scientists made fundamental contributions to all areas of chemistry and the pharmaceutical industry. Otto Bayer discovered the polyaddition for the synthesis of polyurethane in 1937,[5] and three company scientists became Nobel laureates: Carl Bosch and Friedrich Bergius in 1931 "for their contributions to the invention and development of chemical high pressure methods",[6] and Gerhard Domagk in 1939 "for the discovery of the antibacterial effects of prontosil".[7]
The company had ties in the 1920s to the liberal German People's Party and was accused by the Nazis of being an "international capitalist Jewish company".[8] A decade later, it was a Nazi Party donor and, after the Nazi takeover of Germany in 1933, a major government contractor, providing significant material for the German war effort. Throughout that decade it purged itself of its Jewish employees; the remainder left in 1938.[9] Described as "the most notorious German industrial concern during the Third Reich",[10] IG Farben relied in the 1940s on slave labour from concentration camps, including 30,000 from Auschwitz.[11] One of its subsidiaries supplied the poison gas, Zyklon B, that killed over one million people in gas chambers during the Holocaust.[b][13]
The Allies seized the company at the end of the war in 1945[a] and the US authorities put its directors on trial. Held from 1947 to 1948 as one of the subsequent Nuremberg trials, the IG Farben trial saw 23 IG Farben directors tried for war crimes and 13 convicted.[14] By 1951 all had been released by the American high commissioner for Germany, John J. McCloy.[15] What remained of IG Farben in the West was split in 1951 into its six constituent companies, then again into three: BASF, Bayer and Hoechst.[a] These companies continued to operate as an informal cartel and played a major role in the West German Wirtschaftswunder. Following several later mergers the main successor companies are Agfa, BASF, Bayer and Sanofi. In 2004 the University of Frankfurt, housed in the former IG Farben head office, set up a permanent exhibition on campus, the Norbert Wollheim memorial, for the slave labourers and those killed by Zyklon B.

Bayer

Bayer played a key role in the Wirtschaftswunder in post-war West Germany, quickly regaining its position as one of the world's largest chemical and pharmaceutical corporations. In 2006 the company acquired Schering, in 2014 it acquired Merck & Co.'s consumer business, with brands such as Claritin, Coppertone and Dr. Scholl's, and in 2018 it acquired Monsanto, a leading producer of genetically engineered crops, for $63 billion.[11] Bayer CropScience develops genetically modified crops and pesticides.

Monsanto
Sale to Bayer
In September 2016, Monsanto agreed to be acquired by Bayer for US$66 billion.[93][94] In an effort to receive regulatory clearance for the deal, Bayer announced the sale of significant portions of its current agriculture businesses, including its seed and herbicide businesses, to BASF.[95][96]
The deal was approved by the European Union on March 21, 2018,[97][98] and approved in the United States on May 29, 2018.[99] The sale closed on June 7, 2018; Bayer announced its intent to discontinue the Monsanto name, with the combined company operating solely under the Bayer brand.

Roundup Weed Killer Cancer: What’s the Risk?
In recent years, Monsanto has become the subject of thousands of Roundup lawsuits due to the claim that its active ingredient (glyphosate) causes cancer, including non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Plaintiffs are seeking compensation claim to cover medical costs and other expenses related to their cancer diagnosis.

Bayer

Bayer AG (/ˈbeɪ.ər, ˈbaɪ.ər/; German: [ˈbaɪɐ]) is a German multinational pharmaceutical and life sciences company and one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. Headquartered in Leverkusen, Bayer's areas of business include human and veterinary pharmaceuticals; consumer healthcare products; agricultural chemicals, seeds and biotechnology products. The company is a component of the Euro Stoxx 50 stock market index.[5] Werner Baumann has been CEO since 2016.[6]
Founded in Barmen in 1863 as a dyestuffs factory, Bayer's first and best-known product was aspirin. In 1898 Bayer trademarked the name heroin for the drug diacetylmorphine and marketed it as a cough suppressant and non-addictive substitute for morphine until 1910. Bayer also introduced phenobarbital; prontosil, the first widely used antibiotic and the subject of the 1939 Nobel Prize in Medicine; the antibiotic Cipro (ciprofloxacin); and Yaz (drospirenone) birth control pills.
In 1925 Bayer was one of six chemical companies that merged to form IG Farben,[7] the world's largest chemical and pharmaceutical company. The Allied Control Council seized IG Farben after World War II,[a][8] because of its role in the Nazi war effort and involvement in the Holocaust, which included using slave labour from concentration camps and the purchase of humans for dangerous medical testing. It was split into its six constituent companies in 1951, then split again into three: BASF, Bayer and Hoechst.[9][10]
Bayer played a key role in the Wirtschaftswunder in post-war West Germany, quickly regaining its position as one of the world's largest chemical and pharmaceutical corporations. In 2006 the company acquired Schering, in 2014 it acquired Merck & Co.'s consumer business, with brands such as Claritin, Coppertone and Dr. Scholl's, and in 2018 it acquired Monsanto, a leading producer of genetically engineered crops, for $63 billion.[11] Bayer CropScience develops genetically modified crops and pesticides.

Sidley Austin Clears PR Firm of Wrongdoing in Work for Monsanto
The firm concluded that FleishmanHillard did not break the law when it compiled lists to be used in Monsanto's PR campaign to obtain reregistration in Europe of the controversial pesticide glyphosate, known commercially as Roundup.
By Simon Taylor | September 09, 2019 at 03:07 PM

Authorisation of the pesticide glyphosate, known commercially as Roundup, was up for renewal in the EU this year. Photo by Sheila Fitzgerald/Shutterstock.com
The lobbying firm working for agrichemical company Bayer did not break the law by compiling information about stakeholders, according to a report by law firm Sidley Austin that was commissioned by Bayer.

Bayer HealthCare paid Sidley Austin $200,000 to lobby government on Medicare reimbursement
WASHINGTON AP - Bayer HealthCare, a subsidiary of German drug maker Bayer AG, paid Sidley Austin LLP $200,000 to lobby the federal government in the first half of 2007, according to a recent disclosure form.The firm lobbied Congress and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on Medicare reimbursement issues and other matters, according to form posted online Aug.
September 20, 2007 at 12:00 AM
WASHINGTON AP – Bayer HealthCare, a subsidiary of German drug maker Bayer AG, paid Sidley Austin LLP $200,000 to lobby the federal government in the first half of 2007, according to a recent disclosure form.

Bill Ayers wife, Bernadine Dohrn, worked with Michelle Obama at Sidley Austin in the 1980's?!
Various sources | 10-09-08 | Me
Posted on 10/9/2008, 6:55:42 AM by jrooney
Bill Ayers wife, Bernadine Dohrn who was a leader of the weather undergound and a domestic terrorist that advocated violence against innocent Americans, worked with Michelle Obama at Sidley Austin in the 1980's it has been reported by various sources.

Obama connection to Sidley Austin still strong
The future president was an intern in 1989. The future first lady was an associate. Barack Obama turned down a job offer at the end of his internship, Michelle Obama left the firm, and the two married in 1992. wo decades later, Sidley Austin is faring well under the Obama administration.
Sidley Austin also lobbies for clients with big stakes in Washington, including the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, Bayer HealthCare and Grifols, a global healthcare company. In 2011, the firm had 21 registered lobbyists in the capital and pulled in nearly $3 million in lobby fees.

President Obama on the 65th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz and Birkenau
Jan 27, 2010
President Obama delivers remarks commemorating the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and Birkenau in a taped message for the ceremony in Krakow, Poland, and Auschwitz-Birkenau. The ceremony brought together Polish officials, Holocaust survivors, and European and world leaders, including Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. January 27, 2010.

Obama Mocks & Attacks Jesus Christ And The Bible / Video / Obama Is Not A Christian
Oct 12, 2008
Obama Mocks and Attacks Jesus Christ And The Bible. A top U.S. evangelical leader is accusing Sen. Barack Obama of deliberately distorting the Bible and taking a "fruitcake interpretation" of the U.S. Constitution.

Obama thanks Muslims for 'building the very fabric of our nation'
By Cheryl K. Chumley - The Washington Times - Tuesday, July 29, 2014
President Obama and his wife sent out a joint statement to Muslims in America for the Eid-al-Fitr holiday, thanking them for their contributions in “building the fabric” of the country.
The statement, as posted on the White House website, reads in part: “As Muslims throughout the United States and around the world celebrate Eid-al-Fitr, Michelle and I extend our warmest wishes to them and their families. … [The holiday] celebrates the common values that unite us in our humanity and reinforces the obligations that people of all faiths have to each other, especially those impacted by poverty, conflict and disease.”
The Obamas then express appreciation to the Muslim community for helping forge America.
“In the United States,” the statement continued, “Eid also reminds us of the many achievements and contributions of Muslim Americans to building the very fabric of our nation and strengthening the core of our democracy. … On behalf of the Administration, we wish Muslims in the United States and around the world a blessed and joyous celebration. Eid Mubarak.”
The greeting “Eid Mubarak” means “blessed celebration.”

IG Farben
IG Farben head office, Frankfurt, completed in 1931 and seized by the Allies in 1945 as the headquarters of the Supreme Allied Command. In 2001 it became part of the University of Frankfurt.
Interessengemeinschaft Farbenindustrie AG (German for 'Dye industry syndicate corporation'), commonly known as IG Farben, was a German chemical and pharmaceutical conglomerate. Formed in 1925 from a merger of six chemical companies—BASF, Bayer, Hoechst, Agfa, Chemische Fabrik Griesheim-Elektron, and Chemische Fabrik vorm. Weiler Ter Meer[1]—it was seized by the Allies after World War II and divided back into its constituent companies.[a]
In its heyday, IG Farben was the largest company in Europe and the largest chemical and pharmaceutical company in the world.[4] IG Farben scientists made fundamental contributions to all areas of chemistry and the pharmaceutical industry. Otto Bayer discovered the polyaddition for the synthesis of polyurethane in 1937,[5] and three company scientists became Nobel laureates: Carl Bosch and Friedrich Bergius in 1931 "for their contributions to the invention and development of chemical high pressure methods",[6] and Gerhard Domagk in 1939 "for the discovery of the antibacterial effects of prontosil".[7]
The company had ties in the 1920s to the liberal German People's Party and was accused by the Nazis of being an "international capitalist Jewish company".[8] A decade later, it was a Nazi Party donor and, after the Nazi takeover of Germany in 1933, a major government contractor, providing significant material for the German war effort. Throughout that decade it purged itself of its Jewish employees; the remainder left in 1938.[9] Described as "the most notorious German industrial concern during the Third Reich",[10] IG Farben relied in the 1940s on slave labour from concentration camps, including 30,000 from Auschwitz.[11] One of its subsidiaries supplied the poison gas, Zyklon B, that killed over one million people in gas chambers during the Holocaust.[b][13]
The Allies seized the company at the end of the war in 1945[a] and the US authorities put its directors on trial. Held from 1947 to 1948 as one of the subsequent Nuremberg trials, the IG Farben trial saw 23 IG Farben directors tried for war crimes and 13 convicted.[14] By 1951 all had been released by the American high commissioner for Germany, John J. McCloy.[15] What remained of IG Farben in the West was split in 1951 into its six constituent companies, then again into three: BASF, Bayer and Hoechst.[a] These companies continued to operate as an informal cartel and played a major role in the West German Wirtschaftswunder. Following several later mergers the main successor companies are Agfa, BASF, Bayer and Sanofi. In 2004 the University of Frankfurt, housed in the former IG Farben head office, set up a permanent exhibition on campus, the Norbert Wollheim memorial, for the slave labourers and those killed by Zyklon B.

Bayer

This article is about the Life Science, chemical and pharmaceutical company. For other uses, see Bayer (disambiguation).
"Bayer Aspirin" redirects here. For the pharmaceutical product, see aspirin.

FDA Reverses Its Position on Daily Aspirin
August 04, 2014
By Dr. Mercola
If you haven't had a heart attack, step away from the aspirin bottle... If you are one of the 40 million Americans who take an aspirin every day, you may want to heed the latest warning from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
After many decades of promoting aspirin, the FDA now says that if you have not experienced a heart problem, you should not be taking a daily aspirin—even if you have a family history of heart disease. This represents a significant departure from FDA's prior position on aspirin for the prevention of heart attacks.
On its website, the FDA now says:1, 2
"FDA has concluded that the data do not support the use of aspirin as a preventive medication by people who have not had a heart attack, stroke or cardiovascular problems, a use that is called 'primary prevention.' In such people, the benefit has not been established but risks — such as dangerous bleeding into the brain or stomach — are still present."
Their announcement was prompted by Bayer's request to change its aspirin label to indicate it can help prevent heart attacks in healthy individuals. Aspirin generated $1.27 billion in sales for Bayer last year,3 and from Bayer's request, it appears they want everyone to be taking their drug.
But the FDA says "not so fast"—and rightly so. Evidence in support of using aspirin preventatively has gone from weak to weaker to nonexistent. This is why I've been advising against it for more than a decade. It looks as though aspirin, even "low-dose aspirin" (LDA), may do far more harm than good.
In fact, it is debatable whether or not aspirin has ANY protective benefits against cardiovascular disease, even if you have suffered a heart attack or stroke. Recent scientific studies have uncovered a number of serious side effects, suggesting that whatever aspirin may offer may be overshadowed by its risks, especially when safer natural alternatives exist.
As is true for nearly all medications, the longer we watch for side effects, the more we tend to find—even for drugs like aspirin that have been around for more than 100 years. Just because aspirin is an over-the-counter drug and has been around for more than a century does not mean that it's harmless.
Aspirin May Conceal a Cardiac Event in Progress
Roughly 800,000 Americans die from cardiovascular disease annually, which includes heart attacks and stroke. This is why heart health has been such a major focus, and why aspirin was hailed as a "wonder drug" by those who believed it was a safe and effective preventative. But that ship has sailed.
Nearly 10 years ago, Dr. John G. F. Cleland, a cardiologist from the University of Hull in the UK, wrote an excellent article published in the British Journal of Medicine4 casting doubt upon the efficacy of aspirin therapy for prevention of heart attacks.
Based on a series of meta-analyses from the Antithrombotic Trialists' Collaboration,5 which is an enormous body of research following more than 100,000 patients at high risk for cardiac events, Dr. Cleland concluded that aspirin therapy was not saving lives. Rather, aspirin seems to change the way vascular events present themselves.
The number of non-fatal events may be reduced, but the number of sudden deaths is actually increased, because what most physicians don't realize is that surprisingly aspirin can mask a cardiac event in progress.
Dr. Cleland also found that studies touting aspirin's benefits are seriously flawed and interpretation of those studies is biased. Since Cleland's original study, a deluge of scientific studies have further exposed aspirin's failure, which I have summarized in the next few sections.
Studies Show Aspirin Is a Dismal Failure at Preventing Heart Attacks
The following table lists, chronologically, a sampling of studies showing that taking aspirin may do more harm than good. Regardless of whether you're a man, woman, or diabetic, aspirin has failed miserably. This list of studies is not comprehensive. 
Aspirin Increases Your Risk of Bleeding
Not only has aspirin failed to reduce the prevalence of heart attacks and strokes, but the list of its adverse effects seems to grow greater the more that it is studied. Chief among these is gastrointestinal bleeding, as aspirin interferes with your platelets—the blood cells that allow your blood to clot. According to one article, long-term low-dose aspirin therapy may double your risk for a gastrointestinal bleed.14
Aspirin also increases your risk for a brain bleed, especially if you are older. One study found a high mortality rate for elderly individuals who had been taking aspirin prophylactically when they suffered a head trauma, resulting in deadly brain hemorrhage.15
Aspirin Destroys the Lining of Your Gastrointestinal Tract
Regular aspirin use also destroys the lining of your gastrointestinal tract, increasing your risk for duodenal ulcers, H. Pylori infection,16 Crohn's disease,17 diverticular disease, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), and intestinal perforations. More than 10 percent of patients taking low-dose aspirin develop gastric ulcers. The damage to your duodenum—the highest part of your intestine into which your stomach contents pass—can result in duodenal ulcers, which are prone to bleeding. Even low-dose aspirin is proven to cause problems.
A Japanese study found a higher incidence of bleeding at the ulcer sites of patients with duodenal ulcers taking low-dose aspirin (LDA) therapy, versus those not taking LDA.18 An Australian study also showed that aspirin causes gastroduodenal damage even at the low doses used for cardiovascular protection (80mg).19 And Japanese researchers found that aspirin had caused "small bowel injuries" to 80 percent of study participants after only two weeks of aspirin therapy.20
Even MORE Bad News for Bayer
Each year, 15,000 people die and 100,000 people are hospitalized as the result of aspirin and other NSAIDs—and these are probably conservative estimates. But aspirin may be one of the oldest killer drugs! Strong historical evidence points to aspirin overdose as a major contributor to high death tolls during the 1918 influenza pandemic. Aspirin toxicity can result in hemorrhage and fluid buildup in your lungs, which can result in death. If you are interested in the evidence for this, please read Dr. Karen Starko's fascinating paper in Clinical Infectious Diseases.21
Lending even more weight to Starko's work, an animal study in 2010 suggests that treating the flu with antipyretics (such as aspirin) may increase your risk of death. This study involved animals, but the results were compelling enough for the researchers to make an "urgent call" for human studies.22 Aspirin also depletes your body of important nutrients, including vitamin C, vitamin E, folic acid, iron, potassium, sodium, and zinc,23 as well as impairing your melatonin production.24 And in addition to aspirin's growing list of bodily assaults, routine aspirin use has been associated with even broader health problems, such as:
·        Increased risk of one type of breast cancer in women (ER/PR-negative)25
·        Increased risk of kidney failure
·        Cataracts, macular degeneration, and blindness26
·        Hearing loss27 and tinnitus28
·        Erectile dysfunction: Aspirin and other NSAIDs have been linked to a 22 percent increase in your risk of erectile dysfunction (ED), according to Kaiser researchers who studied more than 80,000 men29
The Real Key to Protecting Your Heart Is Reducing Chronic Inflammation
Getting back to the subject of your heart, with all of these adverse effects, why risk taking aspirin when there are safer and more effective alternatives? About one in three deaths in the US are attributed to cardiovascular disease—but 25 percent of those are preventable.
The key is to address chronic inflammation, which can be accomplished by making specific lifestyle changes that encompass diet, exercise, sun exposure, and bare skin contact with the earth. In the remainder of this article, I will focus on heart-health strategies that work FAR better than aspirin. For additional information, please refer to our prior article about cardiovascular disease.
Heart Health Tip #1: Adopt a TRULY Heart-Healthy Diet
My "heart-healthy diet" is vastly different from what government regulators and most conventional cardiologists recommend—because mine is actually based on science. The following table summarizes my basic nutritional recommendations, all of which will help quell chronic inflammation. For further guidance about how to proceed with your diet, I suggest reviewing my Optimized Nutrition Plan.