(NaturalNews) When it comes to watching online publishers self destruct, it doesn't get any more bizarre than this. Left-leaning Alternet, a news source that has long enjoyed a reputation of putting out respectable content on issues like civil liberties and social justice, has just committed "integrity suicide" by publishing an article that spreads irrational fear about taking vitamins.
The article, published in Alternet's "Personal Health" section and written by Lynn Stuart Parramore, claims "vitamins could shorten your lifespan." It's an unabashed sellout to the Dr. Paul Offit "vitamin doomsday" agenda that attempts to spread total fear about vitamins and nutrition in order to prop up pharmaceuticals and vaccines. In running this article and headlining it on its website, Alternet abandons its history of questioning the status quo and just flat-out whores itself out to corporate interests. Click here to read the disinfo article yourself. It might as well be a press release from Merck.
Many great Alternet writers will be hurt by this
What a shame. There are so many other great writers on Alternet that to see its reputation ruined by Parramore is going to hurt a lot of great writers who will go down with the ship. The public isn't stupid. They see right through this Big Pharma propaganda. They know when a publication has sold out to corporate interests, and any online publication can implode almost overnight, losing its readers because it violates that sacred trust by betraying the people.As I always remind myself here at Natural News, there is zero reader loyalty to a domain name or even an author. There is only loyalty to a consistency of ideals. This is also known as "integrity." If you have integrity, readers will keep coming back. If you forfeit your integrity by selling out to corporate interests, readers will immediately label you a back-stabber and they will simply stop visiting your site. You've just been crossed off their increasingly short list of websites to visit.
This is why Alternet has just made an enormous mistake. By publishing Parramore's article, Alternet just stabbed its readers in the back with Big Pharma propaganda and agenda-driven disinformation about nutrition. The article actually implies that taking multivitamins might kill you. It's an agenda-driven propaganda message spearheaded by the vaccine pusher Dr. Paul Offit (who also makes money from vaccines) and blindly repeated in the New York Times, Washington Post, TV shows and now Alternet, which has suddenly become an enemy of nutrition.
If you're taking vitamins to stay health and prevent disease -- for example taking vitamin D to prevent cancer -- then you're a sucker for "medical myths," claims Alternet. You may even be "more likely to die," the article explains.
What total bullshit. Is this what Alternet has now become? A mouthpiece for drug company interests?
So all you people out there making superfood smoothies, boosting your nutrition with food-based supplements, eating chlorella, taking vitamin D and so on are now essentially being called idiots by Alternet. You're a retard for boosting your nutritional intake, the article implies. You'd be much better off popping pharmaceuticals and injecting yourself with vaccines than swallowing those "dangerous" things called "nutrients" for God's sake!
Nowhere in the article is there any discussion whatsoever about the fact the all the studies cited in the article were conducted on low-grade multivitamins manufactured by low-end vitamin companies largely owned by pharmaceutical interests. They intentionally formulate their vitamins with synthetic chemicals that are mislabeled "vitamins." They also use inorganic forms of minerals that can't be digested. The whole purpose of this is to make sure so-called "multivitamins" don't work.
But once you move to high-end, food-based nutrients like those offered by the Megafood company (or Pure Synergy and many others), you get extraordinary health benefits from taking these vitamins. And nutrients like vitamin D have been shown to help prevent up to 78% of all cancers, all by itself!
Alternet, it seems, chose not to mention that part of the story. Instead, they're parroting the Paul Offit quackery and fearmongering: Vitamins might kill you! Be afraid of nutrition!
Alternet readers outraged
Alternet's readers, fortunately, seem to be far better informed about nutrition than Alternet's writer (Parramore). Here are some of their actual comments found after the story:This's TOTAL bullshit. The author has a degree in literature- not science- & boy it shows. She's clearly ignorant of the political economics of health. What a useful idiot for the medical/pharmaceutical/insurance industrial complex.
This is disinformation at its worst, and coming from a supposedly alternative source of real news, which is causing AlterNet's credibility to plummet further and further. First of all, the AMA and its members are owned by the pharmaceutical giants. It would better be called the AMMA, the American Mafia Medical Association, because its motto and practice is "Pay or Die". (Unless, you get cancer, of course. Then it's "Pay AND Die," because of all the cancer cures that have been suppressed over past decades which might take away their $10 billion+ annual income from "treating" the disease rather than curing it.) Of COURSE Big Pharma wants you to stop taking your vitamins and supplements, because they cannot patent and overcharge you for them. And they want you to get sick, so they can sell you several different exorbitantly priced concoctions to "make you well". The documentation for the efficacy of certain vitamins and supplements is well established, and these contradicting conclusions of faulty and phony "research" are to be viewed as the nonsense that they are. Shame on AlterNet for not making that assertion instead of the misleading crap they promoted in this article! Has AlterNet been bought now, too?
Very weak article, skewed, with no attempt to interview responsible scientists/physicians who claim value can be received from supplements. Sad, really. Not good journalism.
When the NIH or Mayo Clinic is sited as the last word, I am suspicious. Having Lyme and knowing that the CDC lied about the report on Chronic Lyme, why would I believe a government agency, funded and motivated by large corporations in competition with pharms? I would prefer to just eat to get my vitamins.
For the record, Lynn Stuart Parramore cherry picked the studies she cited in the story, ignoring the overwhelming body of scientific evidence supporting the benefits of supplemental nutrition. And in doing that, she reveals herself to be a disgusting excuse for a sellout journalist... exactly the kind of person that Alternet used to rally against. I remember a time when Alternet was an independent, anti-establishment publication that actually challenged the status quo, especially during the Bush administration. Alternet was anti-war, anti-imperialism, anti-surveillance and anti-Bush. What the heck happened?
Join me in calling for Alternet to retract its disinformation article
I'm calling on Alternet to retract this disinfo article and issue a public apology to its readers. There's no other way to say this: Alternet is now shoveling corporate bullshit and calling it headline news. (Sorry about all the profanity in this article, folks. But sometimes it actually means something.)I mean, seriously: What's next for Alternet? Are they going to come out and announce support for Monsanto and GMOs, too? It wouldn't surprise me. Any website opposed to sensible nutritional supplementation (and pushing Big Pharma's anti-nutrition message) is sooner or later going to line up behind all the other destructive corporate interests. Pretty soon it will be, "Alternet. Sponsored by Pfizer. Free vaccine coupon for all Alternet readers!"
You can contact Alternet here:
http://www.alternet.org/feedback
Tell 'em that if they want their reputation to mean anything, they need to retract this nonsense article and ban the nutritional moron known as "Parramore" from writing about things that only prove what an ignorant fool she really is.
And by the way, I've never written about Alternet before. I've got nothing whatsoever against the publication and I've actually sourced it many times in the past. I'd like to see it restore its integrity and continue to function as a trusted alternative news source. But now I'm seriously wondering if Alternet has been bought off, sold out, hijacked or somehow turned over to corporate interests.
I guess we'll soon find out.
I will share one more thing with you all, by the way: I will NEVER allow Natural News to intentionally publish the kind of corporate-sellout crap that Alternet just put on its front page. And if you ever see something like that on Natural News, it's a sure sign that I've been kidnapped at gunpoint and am being impersonated by a doppelganger.
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