In the first half, Dr. Sherri Tenpenny talked about alternative medicine, viruses, and the hazards of vaccines. Regarding the coronavirus MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) which has killed 40 some people, "I think the CDC and the World Health Organization are just absolutely combing the world for their next pandemic. They did the same thing with hyping up the death rates and making us all terrified about SARS, the bird flu, and then the swine flu," she remarked. Their reports, she argued, suffer from sample bias, where only the sickest go the hospital, but millions are infected with the virus but never even get sick enough to go to a doctor. Tenpenny also put little stock in a new study that suggested fish oil supplements may be unhealthy, citing hundreds of previous studies that have reached the opposite conclusion. Further, she believes that the pharmaceutical industry helps push anti-supplement studies to the media for more coverage.
The number of mandatory vaccines for children has skyrocketed over the years. As recently as 1985, there were only three required vaccines. "Now, children get multiple doses of 16 different vaccines by the time they start kindergarten," she noted. While the vaccine industry claims their products are safe, effective, and protective, they're actually using an unproven medical hypothesis as a marketing tool," she contended. The vaccines are not doing anything to keep us healthy, but if anything they're lowering our immune systems, and making us more susceptible to illness, she continued. Dr. Tenpenny was critical of mainstream American health care in general-- "it's not health care at all; it's sick care and disease care, using a macro molecule called a drug...symptom free in the presence of a drug is not health."
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Planetary scientist and professor at Arizona State, Jim Bell has been heavily involved in many NASA robotic space exploration missions. In the latter half, he discussed the Mars rover missions, other planned explorations in our solar system, as well space and astronomy in general. The Spirit rover, powered by solar panels, lasted for six years on Mars, but eventually succumbed to dust storms and sand. The rover Opportunity is currently driving around the rim of a large impact crater, studying the different kinds of minerals and chemistry, which were altered by water a long time ago. The nuclear powered rover Curiosity (see 3D photo) is the first to drill into the Red Planet, and is finding evidence for clay minerals (formed in water), he reported. Curiosity can also detect complex organic molecules, and could even find evidence for a fossil, he said.
There's a good consensus among astronomers that in the far past Mars had rivers, or maybe small seas or lakes, but whether there was vegetation is a tough call because there's no evidence that we've seen preserved, Bell commented. He noted that a number of moons in our solar system, such as Ganymede and Europa, are larger than some of the planets like Pluto and Mercury, and have unique features. In that sense, one could say there are about 35 planets in our solar system-- "big objects that have these really interesting dynamic histories," he said. Bell also touched on such subjects as ancient civilizations' fascination with the skies, the future of manned spaceflights, and how stars and planets are formed.