As much as I disagree with Kevin O'Leary on most things, I'm with him on this. The girl is impressively assured and sharp for her age, but a lot of what she is saying with such confidence is simply false.

For instance, she says that Golden Rice has been shown not to work. Untrue. There is plenty of scientific evidence showing that Golden Rice is a good source of vitamin A (example). Given the huge problems associated with vitamin deficiency in the third world, and the strong scientific support for the efficacy of Golden Rice, the movement against its use is basically like the anti-vaccination movement -- uninformed and dangerous.

Also, Golden Rice is distributed for free to poor farmers (thanks to Ingo Potrykus, its creator), so its not like farmers have to go into debt to pay Monsanto or something in order to use it.

There were other falsehoods in what she said (like her absurd claim that GM crops don't produce higher yields) but this one really stood out for me. Golden Rice seems like a no-brainer: an unambiguously positive scientific development that is being distributed in an ethical manner. Spreading misinformation about it in order to discourage its adoption is unconscionable.

I think its important to have people out there protesting and warning against the excesses of companies like Monsanto, which has an unfortunate stranglehold over most GMO distribution. I just wish the most vocal activists weren't also science-deniers.

How about talking up the positives of cannabis compared to most foods we eat daily? Spending money on vitamins is not looked down upon like spending money on cannabis yet cannabis has more positive effects than any vitamin.

Best vitamin D commercial ever.

@artician- You are correct in your observations the reason being....currently a recent victim of two HPD officers willing to perjure themselves before a jury in order to satisfy their egos and their state mandate to fill beds in their jails (or prison, had we decided not to take a plea down to keep them from sealing our fate).
Felony obstruction for mouthing-off in the back of a cop car to a couple of complete douchebags who could not stand that we would not let them treat us like some kid a couple of jocks would have bullied in junior high.

The official statement was alleged that their lives had been threatened which when in fact we surmised in colorful detail their mommy and daddy issues, their obvious history of abuse and or neglect, questioning their sexuality and manhood simultaneously, all while we voluntarily accompanied them into said car in cuffs from a girl's apartment after we gave them the benefit of the doubt and rendered I.D. to them and TOLD them we had a warrant for an unpaid traffic ticket.

Was in the home of a friend when her ADT system (installed a day earlier) sent a false alarm-They had tried to call her but she was passed-out with an I.V. in her arm (vitamin treatment) bed-ridden with a torn ligament. Cops came to the door, was just waking-up and (stupidly) let them in and addressed their incivility when they after determining that the alarm call was false, began to ask me what my "problem" was-Asked them why they had to act like a couple of uncivil douchebags in someone's home and asked politely if the one cop, would remove his dark sunglasses and that they were making me nervous.

This is Texas BTW, land of the most redneck fucks to be found anywhere in the planet of police.

Meet an an idiot who poked the rabid dogs with a stick and found soon that we had over-stepped our "freedom of speech."

Yeah, fucking pissed and for good reason. It's called a felony what they did, and with full-participation of the D.A. and the judge.

Ten years ago this would not have happened. we know because we have spoken our mind to arresting cunts before, as well as spoken like a gentleman to those treating us with the same consideration who represented the local constabulary.

All cops are or will be felons during the course for their tenure as a "peace officer', in the United States.

Now we must jump though many, many hoops to fulfill probation obligations, pay money we don't have, and if I make it through, will be able to have the case sealed, so that we might work again in this state without having a felony (never before) on our permanent record.

So this is Canada?? Your time is coming as well, just look at the show-out when the damn G-20 came to Canada a few years back.

They're gearing-up for chaos folks-
(collective object-pronoun used to avoid incrimination) If you are interested, we'll tell you why in a P.M. It's kind of hard not to be incensed while being kicked while prone.

Been bullied by cunts just like this on the sift before and those petty cowards are afraid to even show their asses here any longer.

Other interesting anti-science partisan issues are GMO/biotech, nuclear power, evolution, big bang, vaccines, AIDS, fracking, organic foods, vitamin supplements, and a host of others. Note that many of those are pegged in liberal circles as well, anti-science is a bipartisan issue, just depends on the issue.

Still eatin' his vitamins after all these years.

@enoch, thanks for your comments. I thought it better to respond directly to your profile than on the video, about which we're no longer discussing directly. Sorry for the length of this reply, but for such a complex topic as this one, a thorough and plainly-stated response is needed.

You wrote: "the REAL question is "what is the purpose of a health care system"? NOT "which market system should we implement for health care"?"

The free market works best for any and all goods and services, regardless of their aim or purpose. Healthcare is no different from any other good or service in this respect.

(And besides, tell me why there's no money in preventative care? Do nutritionists, physical trainers/therapists, psychologists, herbalists, homeopaths, and any other manner of non-allopathic doctors not get paid and make profit in the marketplace? Would not a longer life not lead to a longer-term 'consumer' anyway? And would preventative medicine obliterate the need for all manner of medical treatment, or would there not still remain a need to diagnose, treat, and cure diseases, even in the presence of a robust preventative medical market?)

I realize that my argument is not the "popular" one (and there are certainly many reasons for this, up to and including a lot of disinformation about what constitutes a "free market" health care system). But the way to approach such things is not heuristically, but rationally, as one would approach any other economic issue.

You write "see where i am going with this? It's not so easy to answer and impose your model of the "free market" at the same time."

Yes, as a matter of fact, it is. The purpose of the healthcare system is to provide the most advanced medical service and care possible in the most efficient and affordable way possible. Only a free competitive market can do this with the necessary economic calculations in place to support its progress. No matter how you slice it, a socialized approach to healthcare invariably distorts the market (with its IP fees, undue regulations, and a lack of any accurate metrics on both the supply-side and on the demand-side which helps to determine availability, efficacy, and cost).

"you cannot have "for-profit" and "health-care" work in conjunction with any REAL health care."

Sorry, but this is just absurd. What else can I say?

"but if we use your "free market" model against a more "socialized model".which model would better serve the public?"

The free market model.

"if we take your "free market" model,which would be under the auspices of capitalism."

Redundant: "free market under the auspices of free market."

"disease is where the money is at,THAT is where the profit lies,not in preventive medicine."

Only Krugman-style Keynesians would say that illness is more profitable than health (or war more profitable than peace, or that alien invasions and broken windows are good for the economy). They, like you, aren't taking into account the One Lesson in Economics: look at how it affects every group, not just one group; look at the long term effects, not just short term ones. You're just seeing that, in the short-run, health will be less profitable for medical practitioners (or some pharmaceuticals) that are currently working in the treatment of illness. But look at every group outside that small group and at the long run and you can see that health is more profitable than illness overall. The market that profits more from illness will have to adapt, in ways that only the market knows for sure.

Do you realize that the money you put into socialized medicine (Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, etc.) is money you deplete from prevention entrepreneurship?

(As an aside, I wonder, why do so many people assume that the socialized central planners have some kind of special knowledge or wisdom that entrepreneurs do not? And why is there the belief that unlike entrepreneurs, socialist central planners are not selfishly motivated but always act in the interest of the "common good?" Could this be part of the propagandized and indoctrinated fear that's implicit in living in a socialized environment? Why do serfs (and I'm sure that, at some level, people know that's what they are) love the socialist central planners more than they love themselves? Complex questions about self-esteem and captive minds.)

If fewer people get sick, the market will then demand more practitioners to move from treating illness into other areas like prevention, being a prevention doctor or whatever. You're actually making the argument for free market here, not against it. Socialized bureaucratically dictated medicine will not adapt to the changing needs as efficiently or rapidly as a free market can and would. If more people are getting sick, then we'll need more doctors to treat them. If fewer people are getting sick because preventive medicine takes off, then we'll have more of that type of service. If a socialized healthcare is mandated, then we will invariably have a glut of allopathic doctors, with little need for their services (and we then have the kinds of problems we see amongst doctors who are coerced -- by the threat of losing their license -- to take medicaid and then lie on their reports in order to recoup their costs, e.g., see the article linked here.)

Meanwhile, there has been and will remain huge profits to be made in prevention, as the vitamin, supplements, alternative medicine, naturopathy, exercise and many other industries attest to. What are you talking about, that there's no profit in preventing illness? (In a manner of speaking, that's actually my bread and butter!) If you have a way to prevent illness, you will have more than enough people buying from you, people who don't want to get sick. (And other services for the people who do.) Open a gym. Become a naturopath. Teach stress management, meditation, yoga, zumba, whatever! And there are always those who need treatment, who are sick, and the free market will then have an accurate measure of how to allocate the right resources and number of such practitioners. This is something that the central planners (under socialized services) simply cannot possibly do (except, of course, for the omniscient ones that socialists insist exist).

You wrote "cancer,anxiety,obesity,drug addiction.
all are huge profit generators and all could be dealt with so much more productively and successfully with preventive care,diet and exercise and early diagnosis."

But they won't as long as you have centrally planned (socialized) medicine. The free market forces practitioners to respond to the market's demands. Socialized medicine does not. Entrepreneurs will (as they already have) exploit openings for profit in prevention (without the advantage of regulations which distort the markets) and take the business away from treatment doctors. If anything, doctors prevent preventative medicine from getting more widespread by using government regulations to limit what the preventive practitioners do. In fact, preventive medicine is so profitable that it has many in the medical profession lobbying to curtail it. They are losing much business to alternative/preventive practitioners. They lobby to, for example, prevent herb providers from stating the medical/preventive benefits of their herbs. They even prevent strawberry farmers to tout the health benefits of strawberries! It is the state that is slowing down preventive medicine, not the free market! In Puerto Rico, for example, once the Medical Association lost a bit to prohibit naturopathy, they effectively outlawed acupuncture by successfully getting a law passed that requires all acupuncturists to be medical doctors. Insanity.

If you think there is no profit in preventative care or exercise, think GNC and Richard Simmons, and Pilates, and bodywork, and my own practice of psychotherapy. Many of the successful corporations (I'm thinking of Google and Pixar and SalesForce and Oracle, etc.) see the profit and value in preventative care, which is why they have these "stay healthy" programs for their employees. There's more money in health than illness. No doubt.

Or how about the health food/nutrition business? Or organic farming, or whole foods! The free market could maybe call for fewer oncologists and for more Whole Foods or even better natural food stores. Of course, we don't know the specifics, but that's actually the point. Only the free market knows (and the omniscient socialist central planners) what needs to happen and how.

Imagination! We need to get people to use it more.

You wrote: "but when we consider that the 4th and 5th largest lobbyists are the health insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry is it any wonder that america has the most fucked up,backwards health care system on the planet."

You're actually making my point here. In a free market, pharmaceutical companies cannot monopolize what "drugs" people can or cannot take, sell or not sell, and cannot prevent natural alternatives from being promoted. Only with state intervention (by way of IP regulations, and so forth) can they do so.

Free market is not corporatism. Free market is not crony capitalism. (More disinformation that needs to be lifted.)

So you're not countering my free market position, you're countering the crony capitalist position. This is a straw man argument, even if in this case you might not have understood my position in the first place. You, like so many others, equate "capitalism" with cronyism or corporatism. Many cannot conceive of a free market that is free from regulation. So folks then argue against their own interests, either for or against "fascist" vs. "socialist" medicine. The free market is, in fact, outside these two positions.

You wrote: "IF we made medicare available to ALL american citizens we would see a shift from latter stage care to a more aggressive preventive care and early diagnosis. the savings in money (and lives) would be staggering."

I won't go into medicare right now (It is a disaster, and so is the current non-free-market insurance industry. See the article linked in my comment above.)

You wrote "this would create a huge paradigm shift here in america and we would see results almost instantly but more so in the coming decades."

I don't want to be a naysayer but, socialism is nothing new. It has been tried (and failed) many times before. The USSR had socialized medicine. So does Cuba (but then you may believe the Michael Moore fairytale about medicine in Cuba). It's probably better to go see in person how Cubans live and how they have no access to the places that Moore visited.

You wrote: "i feel very strongly that health should be a communal effort.a civilized society should take care of each other."

Really, then why try to force me (or anyone) into your idea of "good" medicine? The free market is a communal effort. In fact, it is nothing else (and nothing else is as communal as the free market). Central planning, socialized, top-down decision-making, is not. Never has been. Never will be.

Voluntary interactions is "taking care of each other." Coercion is not. Socialism is coercion. It cannot "work" any other way. A free market is voluntary cooperation.

Economic calculation is necessary to avoid chaos, whatever the purpose of a service. This is economic law. Unless the purpose is to create chaos, you need real prices and efficiency that only the free market can provide.

I hope this helps to clarify (and not confuse) what I wrote on @eric3579's profile.

Just take Vitamin D.

Most people are deficient.

It's the one vitamin everybody should be taking.

Keep a-tweakin' them genes, poindexter...

Future foodstuffs of Earth:
a white, semi-translucent, gelatinous substance can be found in dispensers with spigots and eaten from suitable dishes. Its composition is given as a single-celled protein, vitamin, mineral, and amino acid colloid. Reviews are unfavorable due to its consistency. It's compared to "runny eggs" at best and "a bowl of snot" at worst."
-http://matrix.wikia.com/wiki/Food

Be damn the violence, future serial killers of America unite, be it Doom or Civilization, GTA or Mario Cart, what of the retarded social and motor skills created in 2 generations of peepatrons? I have noticed a direct correlation between lack of Vitamin D in the form of limited exposure to sunlight and Cheetos-stained crisp finger, as well as a general lack of interest in the vagina or practical skills and video-gaming, so please, "let them legalize homicide and debut this thrilling and encouraging youth-sensation, our hope-for-the-future, an exciting new video first-person-atrophizer and herding platform, Couch-Killers"!!

"New, crack with vitamins!"

Jimmims, there are generally four types of knowledge that exist in the world. Specialized, whereas only a few people highly interested in the subject would know. The burden of proof lies with the claimant to prove claims he/she makes. (E.g. What are each and every vitamin and mineral found in a GNC multivitamin?)

Then there is uncommon knowledge. Again the burden is with the claimant. (E.g. What are the names of twenty-five out of fifty-one Presidents, not including the last five Presidents. When did America go to the Gold standard—year and month.)

Then there is accessible knowledge. Not everyone knows, but many do and all can with a little research. The burden lies fifty-fifty, sometimes with the claimant, sometimes not, just depends on the situation. (E.g. Rain water is not pure water and contains parasites. Fermentation is a process that produces energy, not just alcohol.)

Then there is knowledge everyone should know—common knowledge. (E.g., Humans need calcium.)

Between the last two is where Stand Your Ground falls. The burden of this knowledge should fall on the reader to know. In no way should a claimant be responsible for providing it. Stand your ground is common knowledge or accessible at the least. It is in the newspapers, on the internet, court records, etc. When someone states, "He is going away for a long time," then it is on them to prove this claim, since SYG has commonly been known to acquit these types of cases. I find it strange, especially in light of this, that you do not ask other people to prove their claims.

I think the acquittal of Zimmerman proves that this was common knowledge in the first place. But wait, here is a link to the acquittal, in case you did not see the not guilty verdict, since I must prove even common knowledge. (http://www.nydailynews.com/news/protests-george-zimmerman-verdict-gallery-1.1398497)

Second, and last, I was snarky with no one personally—I even stated that I was being broad with my comments and did not apply them to the poster. And yet you were snarky directly with me, personally. That is why I thought you were mad. In all reality you made it seem like I was ignorant. That is why I asked you to calm down.

Exhibitionism, seasoned with vitamin deficiency, a pinch of anti-social behavior, and perhaps a dash of self-injurious tendency?

Bitch, Whatever.
Yer fucking unhealthy?!

Two tablespoons of cinnamon and two or three egg whites A half a stick of butter, melted, stick it all in a bowl Baby, stir it with a wooden spoon Mix in a cup of flour you'll be in heaven soon

Say everybody have you seen my balls? They're big and salty and brown If you ever need a quick pick me up Just stick my balls in your mouth

Oh, suck on my chocolate salty balls Put 'em in your mouth and suck 'em Suck on my chocolate salty balls They're packed vitamins And good for you, so suck on balls....


SOUTH PARK - CHOCOLATE SALTY BALLS LYRICS (partial)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnNYXgV7L-c

All you need to make music like this is some found instruments, a bit of timing, and maybe a screaming Vitamin D deficiency like these snow-dwellers!!
I mean c'mon man....I dig the vibe, would like PERFORMING this stuff with a roomfull of folks on some good drugs...but-Take's no real talent to make tuneful noise people....This is by no means outstanding-Justa buncha pasty white folks spontaneously composing an ever-increasingly UN-listenable, EMO DIRGE!!