Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Planetary Poisons and Bird Flu: Closer Than You Think, May 1, 2006
Fowl! Bird Flu: It's Not What You Think by Dr. Sherri J. Tenpenny, Insight Publishing, 2006
Review by Karen Davis, PhD, President of United Poultry Concerns
The poultry industry would like everyone to think that the avian influenza virus that is currently infecting migratory waterfowl and domestic chickens is the result of birds running wild in the fresh air and open skies. The way to control the virus is to lock up every domestic chicken, turkey and duck, and when that doesn't work, exterminate them en masse and start over, ad infinitum. Between government subsidies, reimbursements and protective insurance policies, companies like Tyson and its Russian, Asian and South American allies can exterminate thousands, even millions, of birds without losing a cent.
Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, an osteopathic medical doctor with an integrative medical practice located in Cleveland, Ohio and the author of Fowl!, is one of a growing group of reputable people who argue that the big poultry companies and the genetics and pharmaceutical conglomerates of which they're a part "are positioned to capitalize on the opportunity presented by bird flu" to industrialize poultry farming worldwide.
Dr. Tenpenny shares the view presented by GRAIN (www.grain.org/go/birdflu), an international nongovernmental organization focusing on agriculture, in its February 2006 report "Fowl play: The poultry industry's central role in the bird flu crisis." GRAIN maintains that wild and free roaming birds "are not fuelling the current wave of bird flu outbreaks stalking large parts of the world." The geographical spread of bird flu does not match migratory bird routes and seasons so much as it matches proximity to industrialized poultry farms and trade routes.
Nor is the mass-killing of birds confined to "traditional" cultures, whose brutal live burials and live burnings of birds are glimpsed in the news. Chickens, turkeys and ducks on North American factory farms, like those in China, Thailand, India and elsewhere, are routinely, and with equal brutality, "culled" (exterminated) to control the virulent strains of avian flu and other transmittable diseases that rage in the squalid confines of the football-field long, sunless poultry sheds. As noted by GRAIN, "Rare are photos of the booming transnational poultry industry. There are no shots of its factory farms hit by the virus, and no images of its overcrowded trucks transporting live chickens or its feed mills converting `poultry byproducts' [diseased dead birds and manure] into chicken feed."
Planetary Poisons and Bird Flu
Dr. Tenpenny probes even further. She argues in Fowl! that toxic residues of dioxin and thousands of other poisonous chemicals added through nuclear radiation and nuclear waste are contributing to illness in migratory birds, domestic fowl, and humans. In particular she cites the Vietnam era "Agent Orange," coupled with irresponsible environmental policies in Southeast Asia, China and other parts of the world, including the toxic waste dumps in which chickens are raised. Instead of blaming wild birds for bird flu, she says:
"More likely, the horrific living conditions of industrially raised chickens and the exposure of wild birds to substantial environmental toxicities - including pesticides - have suppressed the immune system of both sets of birds. During long migrations, the birds undergo stressful conditions that utilize energy reserves. Increased utilization of fat stores will mobilize the chemicals that are stored in fat, creating acute poisoning of the birds. The combination of environmental toxicities - dioxin, radiation, and other POPs [persistent organic pollutants], combined with H5N1 - has led to deadly inflammation in the tissues in both types of fowl, leading to their demise. Wild birds and domestic chickens may well be described as the victims of bird flu, not the vectors, and H5N1 is a contributing factor to the demise of birds loaded with toxicities rather than the causative factor. What is happening to the birds around the world should be serving as a resounding wake-up call for the foul condition of the planet Earth" (pp. 195-196).
What About Vaccines?
Vaccines are part of the pollution. The pharmaceutical industry, Dr. Tenpenny and others assert, is using bird flu to rev up the vaccine business by creating a wave of hysteria so people will rush out and buy Tamiflu or its evil twin, products more likely to add to their body's toxic burden than save them from the flu. In lively prose, she charts the history of flu epidemics, pseudo-epidemics and vaccine promotions, past and present, on the part of government and industry armed with free publicity from the media. "Hundreds of millions of dollars," she writes, "have been lavished by Congress to ensure every part of the vaccine development process is in place for the new bird flu vaccine: Development grants, tax credits, advanced purchase commitments, and most importantly, laws that will absolve the companies from all product liability issues that may arise from use of an unsafe product" (pp. 67-68).
To learn how vaccines are made, read the chapter "Influenza Vaccines: What's In That Needle?" Everything from formaldehyde to mercury is involved, not to mention the "accidental" viruses that get loaded into the shot. Flocks of chickens are kept in sterile laboratory cages to produce the tens of millions of fertile eggs in which influenza viruses are grown. When the embryos' lungs are sufficiently infected, the eggs - with the live birds in them - are placed in coolers and subsequently centrifuged. The final product contains residual egg proteins, so people with egg allergies are advised not to get a flu shot.
What Can We Do?
Dr. Tenpenny writes: "After detailing this vivid description of the manufacture of the influenza vaccine, the thought of injecting this into your body - or the body of your baby - should be repugnant" (p. 72). What else can a person do besides avoiding flu shots and rejecting the hype? "Clean up your diet," she says. Get rid of the white sugar and flour, food additives and genetically modified products. But she shies from the most important thing - eliminating the repugnant ingestion of poultry and eggs, the mass consumption of which products is the root source of bird flu, many human illnesses, and a guarantee that the mass exterminations and other vicious treatment of wild and domestic birds will not end ever.
At the same time, Dr. Tenpenny urges people to get publicly active, and her list of things to do includes "animal rights" and "humane handling of poultry." Citing information from United Poultry Concerns, and encouraging readers to support United Poultry Concerns, she makes it clear that the life of birds on factory farms is horrible: "Unknown to most, chickens have a carefully regulated social life and a cohesive social structure; extreme crowding stresses the birds and increases the possibility of illness. Beyond the crushing confinement, conditions within most [poultry houses] are filthy, forcing birds to be reared in complete squalor" (p. 171).
Dr. Tenpenny was a featured speaker at United Poultry Concerns' Forum in Columbus, Ohio in April on "Using the Media Effectively to Promote Farmed Animal and Vegetarian Issues." She spoke vividly on issues raised in her book. Having heard Dr. Tenpenny, I can vouch that she is a terrific, very professional and informative lecturer who welcomes speaking engagements. She's been very kind in acknowledging the contribution of United Poultry Concerns to her understanding of chickens and their plight. Just after the conference, she wrote to me, "Before I came across your information for the book, I was clueless about the farm animal issue. I never gave it much of a thought, and really didn't think of chickens as having feelings." I'm glad she found us.
And I like what she says at the end of FOWL!. "Speaking out," she says, "is not being a zealot or a fanatic. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Patrick Henry were all branded extremists and radicals by agents of the British Crown. If your friends label you as such, you are in pretty good company." There you have it. Stick up for chickens, don't eat animals, go vegan, and tell the world why.
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Karen Davis, PhD is the President of United Poultry Concerns, a nonprofit organization that promotes the compassionate and respectful treatment of domestic fowl (www.upc-online.org). She is the author of Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs: An Inside Look at the Modern Poultry Industry; More Than a Meal: The Turkey in History, Myth, Ritual, and Reality; and The Holocaust and the Henmaid's Tale: A Case for Comparing Atrocities.
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Truth about Bird Flu , July 13, 2006
This is an excellent book - a thorough systematic and well researched book which documents the REAL reasons for birds and people to be dying of 'bird 'flu'namely toxic residues of pesticides and herbicides including those persisiting form the agent orange bombings in vietnam, the appalling, cruel and inhumanely toxic conditions in which poultry are factory famed and the vested interests behind decimation of the traditional family poultry breeders and the pushing of a useless and dangerous vaccine. It includes what you really need to know to be healthy which is the only real immunity.
An excellent read, I couldn't stop turning the pages
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
ALERT: The coal mine canaries are dying, May 29, 2006
FOWL!
Bird Flu: It's Not What You Think
Nearly everyone on earth is aware that global public health authorities are preparing for the day when avian flu virus variant H5N1 jumps species into people and spreads like wildfire around the globe, indiscriminately killing tens of millions of innocent, defenseless people.
But what if it were a bold-faced lie? What if the medical literature and recent history proves that the international bird flu-scare effort is an elaborate hoax? What if birds are being set up as patsies by a conspiracy of powerful government agencies and multinational corporations? What if sick migratory birds and domestic fowl are canaries and the entire planet is a coal mine?
Dr. Tenpenny is a practicing osteopathic physician from Cleveland. She proved her capabilities as a fearless researcher by adventuring into the salt mines of published vaccine literature to prove that vaccines neither safely nor effectively prevent the spread of infectious diseases--and the CDC knows it.
Alarmed by what she felt was a curious overreaction to a few human deaths attributed to a species-jumping avian virus, Dr. Sherri Tenpenny directed her research talents to getting to the bottom of this bird flu hype. She began by asking the following questions: Why are so many birds sick? Who wants all the chickens dead? Why are the human cases clustered primarily in SE Asia and what is the connection to cases elsewhere? Why are vaccine manufacturers being given a blank check to develop a vaccine that will be mandatory? Are global conditions similar to those extant at the time of the 1918 flu pandemic? "From those questions," Dr. Tenpenny assures us, "the story begins to unfold."
Dr. Tenpenny found no scientific evidence to suggest that the H5N1 avian flu would virulently "jump species" and decimate human populations in pandemic proportions.
Dr. Tenpenny did, however, discover a study showing how normally dormant viruses can come alive to fatally overwhelm the immune systems of animals who carry toxic levels of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) such as dioxin and polychlorinated biphenyls in their tissues. She also found that the vaccine and antibiotic-intensive, vertically-integrated corporate farming of genetically-modified poultry is the primary cause of epidemic illnesses among domestic birds.
The research for FOWL! scientifically supports the notion that germs do not cause disease; dis-ease causes germs. In other words, the truth about bird flu reveals that the development of symptoms and their subsequent severity or potential lethality, are dependent upon the relative health of the host--be he bird, beast or human.
Though she cites and references scores of scientific studies and technical articles that prove it's the chemicals, not the viruses, that we should be concerned about, Dr. Tenpenny is able to convert the complex material into language that we can all understand. The truths she uncovered are much more interesting than the fictions the "experts" are telling us to believe.
Bird flu is not a species-jumping virus threatening all of mankind. The bird flu threat to humanity is a fiction spun by opportunists in government and industry attempting to increase their own wealth and power while continuing their perverse mission of chemically contaminating our planet.
The easiest way to explain the bird flu fiction is to watch bird flu fiction. The ABC TV production, "Fatal Contact," which aired May 9, 2006, portrayed what would happen if...but the entire plot was built around the masses' fear of the unknown, their faith in government emergency planners and trust in pharmaceutical companies. In the movie (and in real life) there is no science to support the theory that a bird virus will mutate and spread all over the world on cocktail napkins and incidental contact, en route to killing hundreds of millions of people in the span of few months.
We should not be confused. The evidence Dr. Tenpenny unearthed shows that the seeds of bird flu were sown by the U.S. military's chemical contamination of SE Asia with dioxin-containing Agent Orange during the Vietnam War and is now coming of age in an era of nuclear effluent, chemical farming and the detonation of depleted uranium munitions in a wireless era of perpetual war.
FOWL! is not just another book. Everyone we know who has read it is stunned by what it reveals and impressed with the clear logic and language Dr. Tenpenny uses to deliver what is, perhaps, the most important message of our time: "Coal mine canaries" are dying all around us and we, as communities of people and nations, can either stop our indiscriminate spewing of toxic chemicals or perish of our own folly.
The Idaho Observer
P.O. Box 457
Spirit Lake, Idaho 83869
Phone: 208-255-2307
Email: observer@coldreams.com
Web: http://idaho-observer.com
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