Paracelsus<\/a>,\u00a0a 16th century Swiss German physician, alchemist, astrologer, is traditionally thought to have founded\u00a0the discipline of toxicology<\/a>, an important branch of medicine, physiology, and pharmacology. Paracelsus wrote one of the most important principles of toxicology:<\/p>\n All things are poisons, for there is nothing without poisonous qualities. It is only\u00a0the dose which makes a thing poison.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n In other words, if you’re speaking about substances in foods or vaccines or anything, the most important principle is that the dose makes the poison (or toxin). Everything that we can consume or breathe is potentially toxic, but what is the most overriding principle must be the dose.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This is one of the major issues with throwing around the term “toxic” or “poisonous” so freely.\u00a0If you drink pure water that was ultra-purified and taken from an ancient aquifer uncontaminated by man’s activities, you might think you are drinking the least toxic substance ever.<\/p>\n But once again, the dose makes the poison. Drink a few glasses, and you will be properly hydrated, and there’s probably nothing that’s going to happen to you (unless you’re doing so because of an underlying chronic disease, but let’s not digress).<\/p>\n On the other hand, there is a condition called water intoxication, also known as water poisoning or dilutional hyponatremia<\/a>. Essentially, if one drinks too much water, it causes a sudden imbalance between water and sodium (along with other cations) which leads to unconsciousness and even death. But again, there’s a point in between\u00a0the amount of water in a few glasses and the amount of water to cause water poisoning \u2013 the toxic dose.<\/p>\n But it’s more complicated than that. Some people have genetic or other adaptation to various compounds in the environment. Some toxic compounds can accumulate (although by doing so, there\u00a0is some\u00a0bio-availability of said compounds, which could eventually be toxic). Moreover, many compounds don’t stick around for a long period of time, being quickly cleared out of the blood through the kidneys.<\/p>\n As I’ve said many times, the human organism is vigorous\u00a0and powerful. We are not weaklings that have evolved to live in enclosed chambers with purified air, food and water. We actually evolved with a robust and highly adaptive immune system and detoxification system that allows us to survive with a widely varied diet and environment.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Back to the \u00a0dose makes the poison. One of the most important aspects of toxicity is that the size of the organism consuming the substance is critical. That’s why the toxic dose is almost always expressed as mg\/kg weight (it also can be expressed in a volume amount for a liquid or gas per kg weight). So a fixed amount of a compound may be \u00a0toxic to a 10 kg child, and\u00a0safe to a 100 kg man, because the man can tolerate 10X more of the compound.<\/p>\n Finally, and most importantly, toxicity does not necessarily mean death. A toxic dose may cause minor effects like bleeding or headache, or it could cause something more serious like depression or a coronary event \u2013 of course, some dose might cause death (like water poisoning can).<\/p>\n Generally, there is a clear transition in the dose from no effect to major effect (whether measuring efficacy or toxicity), there is usually not a point where it magically changes from non-poisonous to poisonous.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The fundamental tool in toxicology is the dose-response relationship,<\/a>\u00a0a statistical measurement that\u00a0describes the change in effect on an organism caused by different doses of a chemical (anything from drugs to foods to environmental contaminants)\u00a0after a certain exposure time.<\/p>\n For pharmaceuticals and almost any chemical, the\u00a0dose-response relationship measures two key parameters \u2013 first, the proper dose that provides the most efficacy, and second, the dose that induces any toxic effects. Efficacy, in this case, means the effect that is claimed for the compound, so a new cancer drug needs to show at what dose it causes remission of the cancer, and for a new pesticide, how much is needed to cause the effect necessary. Some chemical compounds aren’t used for some biological effect, so we may just examine the toxicity.<\/p>\n Dose-response relationships are amongst the earliest studies done on any new drug, pesticide, and many chemicals. Cancer drugs require highly advanced statistical analyses of dose-response, because sometimes the best dose for efficacy is just below the toxic level dose. This is because cancer cells are really just corrupted versions of your own cells, so what kills them probably kills “normal” cells.<\/p>\n As you can see above, two curves are generated, the blue one measures the efficacy and the red one, the toxicity. One can then determine how much of margin of safety there might be between the effective dose and a toxic dose. This matters in biology.<\/p>\n Dr. Cami Ryan<\/a>, who holds her doctorate in biotechnology and agriculture, designed a brilliant and colorful chart about the toxic dose of numerous “natural” and man-made chemicals<\/a>. You will be surprised.<\/p>\n First of all, “natural” compounds like nicotine, cyanide, vitamin D, and botulin (the favorite of wrinkle-removing plastic surgeons everywhere) are some of the most toxic and scary compounds on the planet. That’s why the appeal to nature<\/a>\u00a0is probably one of the most silly and illogical arguments that you can make.<\/p>\n One of the most important issues in determining whether a pharmaceutical or agricultural pesticide should or should not be on the market is examining not only the toxicity but also the efficacy.<\/p>\n For many, DDT is considered to be one of the big “science” mistakes of history.<\/a><\/p>\n DDT\u00a0was used extensively during\u00a0World War II<\/a>\u00a0by the\u00a0Allies<\/a>, in both the Pacific and Europe,\u00a0to control the insect\u00a0vectors<\/a>\u00a0of\u00a0typhus<\/a>,\u00a0dengue fever<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0malaria<\/a>, nearly eliminating the disease\u00a0in Europe. DDT was spectacularly successful in eradicating\u00a0these diseases in Australia, the South Pacific, South America and other areas of the world after WWII.<\/p>\n In fact, DDT has eliminated malaria in the USA<\/a>. Yes, the United States used to have a serious problem with malaria, something that is rarely remembered. In 1947, malaria was endemic to wide sections of the USA, mostly in the south, Mississippi Valley and California’s Central Valley. Within 5 years, through draining wetlands and widespread use of DDT, malaria was nearly eliminated in the USA.<\/p>\n In the 1920’s, there were thousands of outbreaks of malaria every year, with hundreds of deaths. Since 1963, there have been only\u00a063 outbreaks of malaria, all as a result of one mosquito biting one person who carried the malaria parasite from an endemic area (South America, South Asia, or Africa). Here’s one infectious disease that was not prevented by vaccines, but it was stopped by DDT.<\/p>\n By the early 1960\u2019s, upon publication of Rachel Carson\u2019s book,\u00a0Silent Spring<\/a><\/em>, which described some\u00a0scientific,\u00a0but mostly anecdotal\u00a0evidence that DDT had harmful and long-lasting effects on the environment, the tide turned against DDT and it was mostly banned or strictly controlled by the late 1960\u2019s.<\/p>\n But if I look back in time, is there some margin of safety between the obvious deleterious effects on the environment compared to the thousands of lives saved from malaria? Maybe we used too much DDT and could have used it more safely, something we would do today. Of course, we also drained a massive number of wetlands, also an environmental disaster, to stop this disease.<\/p>\n But eliminating a dangerous disease that harms or kills? That should take priority.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Glyphosate<\/a>\u00a0(Monsanto\u2019s Roundup)\u00a0 is a broad-spectrum systemic herbicide used to kill weeds, especially annual broadleaf weeds and grasses that are known to compete with commercial crops grown around the world. It has several advantages over many herbicides in that it breaks down in the soil into non-toxic organic molecules, reducing or eliminating contamination of groundwater and lower soils.<\/p>\n Monsanto has developed genetically modified (GMO) grains that are resistant to glyphosate, so that agriculture can apply the herbicide to kill the competitive weeds while not harming the crop. This\u00a0allows farmers to suppress the weeds while allowing better production out of the grain crop. And use a lot less Round Up.<\/p>\n In fact, there is substantial evidence that GMO plus glyphosate corn crops provide higher yields<\/a> under most conditions (especially when there are environmental stressors such as weather).\u00a0So, there is some, relatively significant, positive effect from glyphosate use in producing more food. Productivity increases lead to both lower prices and more food for the world. Sounds good to me.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n And once again, the dose makes the poison. Maybe drinking a glass of Round Up would be insane<\/a>, since that’s definitely far above the toxic dose for glyphosate<\/a>. But glyphosate isn’t really that toxic, because according to the graphic from Dr. Cami Ryan above, the LD50 (the dose at which 50% of test organisms die) is 5600 mg\/kg. A 100 kg human would need to consume 560,000 mg (or 1.23 pounds for barbarians who refuse to use the metric system), a thoroughly ridiculous amount of that\u00a0chemical.<\/p>\n The US Environmental Protection Agency\u00a0(EPA) regulates the use of and environmental contamination from\u00a0glyphosate. They concluded that<\/a>:<\/p>\n EPA conducted a dietary risk assessment for glyphosate based on a worst-case risk scenario, that is, assuming that 100 percent of all possible commodities\/acreage were treated, and assuming that tolerance-level residues remained in\/on all treated commodities. The Agency concluded that the chronic dietary risk posed by glyphosate food uses is minimal.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n From their research, the EPA has determined\u00a0that a maximum dose of about 2 mg\/kg\/day is very safe.<\/p>\n So, let’s put this in some sort of simple math.<\/p>\n So, the amount of glyphosate that you consume is almost nothing, but far below the 2 mg\/kg\/day limit that has been established as very conservatively safe. And mountains of research has shown that glyphosate and GMOs (often conflated in arguments) are safe at current environmental levels<\/a>.<\/p>\n As I thoroughly deconstructed\u00a0previously<\/a>,\u00a0a\u00a0review from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), recently published<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0Lancet Oncology,\u00a0<\/em>an extremely high impact factor journal, probably one of the most respected journals in cancer research, seemed to indicate that glyphosate causes cancer.<\/p>\n And the\u00a0IARC<\/a>, one of the intergovernmental agencies within the World Health Organization, is widely respected for\u00a0their research into the causes of cancer. According to the IARC, glyphosate was characterized as a\u00a0Group 2A compound: Probably carcinogenic to humans. Oh no.<\/p>\n Do you know what else is a carcinogen? A\u00a0common chemical \u00a0produced by fruits and your own body causes cancer \u2013\u00a0formaldehyde<\/a>, the boogeyman of every antivaccine nut out there. \u00a0According to the IARC, it\u2019s a Group 1 carcinogen, meaning it\u2019ll definitely\u00a0cause a cancer. In other words, much more dangerous than glyphosate.<\/p>\n And formaldehyde occurs naturally everywhere.\u00a0It\u2019s in apples, up to\u00a022 ppm (parts per million)<\/a>. Maybe that old saying about an apple a day should be ended, because each apple (and many other fruits) have fairly high levels of formaldehyde, but still below what is considered dangerous.<\/p>\n In other words, the dose response shows that the level of glyphosate consumed is far below what is considered even slightly dangerous, below the actual level to detect the first point on a dose-response curve.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Just like glyphosate, there’s a world of myths about vaccine ingredients<\/a>. But let’s boil it down to simple math, once again.<\/p>\n And we’re going back to that “dangerous” chemical that contaminates our vaccines (and apparently our apples)\u2013formaldehyde. This simple biochemical\u00a0is used in the purification of the vaccine (the last thing we want is contamination from viruses or bacteria)\u2013 99.9% of the formaldehyde\u00a0is removed during the final steps of manufacturing.<\/p>\n The\u00a0package labeling<\/a>\u00a0of a typical vaccine does not include the amount of formaldehyde in the vaccines because it is so tiny, so minuscule, so veritably invisible, that the amount actually cannot be measured.<\/p>\n It\u2019s possible that there is actually no formaldehyde in solution, because it cannot be measured, but the chances are good there is some because the manufacturing process can\u2019t dilute out the vaccine sufficiently to guarantee that every picogram (that\u2019s one trillionth of a gram) is removed, because it would dilute the vaccine\u2019s antigen too.<\/p>\n So here’s some simple math:<\/p>\n Now one\u00a0\u00a0might wonder how a child, even one that consumes nothing but “organic” foods (obviously glyphosate free) and has never been vaccinated, got 9 mg of formaldehyde floating in her blood.<\/p>\n The body produces formaldehyde as a byproduct of metabolizing alcohols (not necessarily just from a beer, but the alcohol that is produced in the body and in other foods). And lots of foods contain formaldehyde, including fruits, nuts, and other yummy things. Apples have hundreds of thousands times more formaldehyde than one vaccine.<\/p>\n But more than all of that, formaldehyde is filtered from the blood rather quickly (because animals evolved to remove it), and its\u00a0half-life, that is the average time one-half of the molecules of formaldehyde stay in the blood, is around 1 minute<\/a>. It does not accumulate, so even if you got that 10-20 million doses of vaccines, the tiny amount of formaldehyde injected would be gone in 1-2 minutes. It is simple math.<\/p>\n Yes, formaldehyde is a carcinogen, it\u00a0can<\/em>\u00a0cause cancer. Let’s go back to simple math:<\/p>\n Let me keep repeating it \u2013 it’s all simple math.<\/p>\n I know, after 2500 words, your eyes are glazing over. But let me reduce\u00a0all my verbiage about the dose makes the poison into a few key points:<\/p>\n <\/p>\nDefinition of toxicity<\/h2>\n
Size matters<\/h2>\n
How do we determine the toxic dose<\/h2>\n
![\"dose_response\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.skepticalraptor.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/dose_response.png?resize=474%2C356\")
<\/a><\/p>\nToxic chemicals<\/h2>\n
![\"toxicity-table4\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.skepticalraptor.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/toxicity-table4-e1432752554146.png?resize=500%2C1105\")
<\/a><\/p>\nGlyphosate, again<\/h2>\n
But glyphosate causes cancer<\/h2>\n
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Myths about vaccine ingredients<\/h2>\n
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The dose makes the poison<\/h2>\n
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Key citations<\/h2>\n
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