In a New Aisle, Deadly Energy Drinks Sidestep Some Rules

- By BARRY MEIER - The New York Times - March 19, 2013

Fans of Monster Energy, the popular high-caffeine energy drink, may not notice the change: its ingredients will be the same and its familiar label bearing a green, clawlike monogram will change only slightly. But the drink’s maker has decided after a decade of selling it as a dietary supplement to market it as a beverage, a switch that will bring significant changes in how it is regulated.

Among them: Monster Beverage, the nation’s biggest seller of energy drinks, will no longer be required to tell federal regulators about reports potentially linking its products to deaths and injuries.

The company’s recent move, which follows a similar regulatory makeover by another brand, Rockstar Energy, comes amid intensifying scrutiny of energy drink safety. On Tuesday, a group of 18 doctors and researchers sent a letter to the Food and Drug Administration urging it to take action to protect adolescents and children from the possible risks of high caffeine consumption. “There is evidence in the published scientific literature that the caffeine levels in energy drinks pose serious potential health risks,” the researchers wrote.

Monster Beverage’s new cans will also disclose caffeine content for the first time. A 16-ounce can of Monster’s most popular energy drinks will contain 140 to 160 milligrams of caffeine, compared with about 330 milligrams in a 16-ounce cup of Starbucks coffee.

The company is fighting back against critics on several fronts. This month, it held a news conference to dispute accusations in a lawsuit that the death of a 14-year-old girl was linked to high caffeine levels in Monster Energy. Separately, it threatened to sue a nutritionist who publishes a newsletter for elementary schools for statements that it said were defamatory.

The changes by Monster and Rockstar demonstrate the degree to which energy drink manufacturers can decide which rules to follow.

“We don’t have energy drinks defined by any regulation,” Daniel Fabricant, director of the F.D.A.’s dietary supplement division, acknowledged in an interview in October.

For a decade, Monster sold its products as dietary supplements, apparently as part of a strategy to convince consumers that they were different from beverages. But the company, like its competitors, has run into a spate of bad news, including the disclosure in October that the F.D.A. had received reports in recent years that mentioned its drinks in connection with deaths and injuries.

Since then, the F.D.A. has received three more death reports and 14 injury reports that cite Monster energy drinks, an F.D.A. spokeswoman, Tamara Ward, said in an e-mail. In recent months, the agency has also received added reports about other energy products; since October, for example, it has received 38 reports that cite the popular energy “shot” 5-Hour Energy, including five involving a death.

The mention of a product in an incident report filed with the F.D.A. does not mean the product played a role in a death or injury, and such reports may provide few details. Monster Beverage and the maker of 5-Hour Energy have insisted that their products are safe and unrelated to the reported episodes.

A spokesman for Monster, Michael Sitrick, said the company had decided to market its products as beverages for several reasons. One was to stop what he described as “misguided criticism” that the company was selling its energy drinks as dietary supplements because of the belief that such products were more lightly regulated than beverages. Another consideration, he said, was that consumers can use government-subsidized food stamps to buy beverages.

“Monster Energy drinks could equally satisfy the regulatory requirements” for either category, Mr. Sitrick said.

An executive vice president at Rockstar, Joseph Cannata, said the company had made the change because consumers found food labels easier to read. In January, all production of Rockstar energy drinks switched to those labels, he said.

Rockstar had previously disclosed its caffeine content.

A lawyer who represents supplement makers, Justin J. Prochnow, said companies like Monster and Rockstar might have had another incentive. Over the last two years, the F.D.A. has intensified its scrutiny of the supplement industry’s manufacturing practices, driving up production costs.

As beverage producers, Monster and Rockstar will face some reporting mandates, including some that are stiffer than the mandates for supplement makers. Such companies are required to notify the government when they think a product could cause injury, a rule intended mainly to limit the distribution of tainted food. In addition, they are required to maintain scientific data supporting the safety of any ingredients they use that are not already cleared by the government. They can also voluntarily notify the F.D.A. about adverse events possibly affecting individual consumers, a step Monster Beverage said it planned to take.

Mr. Sitrick said Monster’s move to list caffeine content followed its decision to join the American Beverage Association, an industry trade group, which urges member companies to make such disclosures. He estimated that half of the company’s products would list caffeine content by April, and 90 percent by May.

In a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Monster Beverage, which is based in Corona, Calif., said that negative media reports about energy drinks had created “softness” in demand. Its stock, which traded for $83.96 last spring, closed at $49.72 on Tuesday, a decrease of more than 40 percent. Rockstar is privately held.

The energy drink industry also faces several investigations from federal and state officials into claims that its products provide benefits lacking in other caffeine sources, like coffee. Researchers say there is little evidence to support these claims.

At a recent news conference, Monster Beverage denied accusations that it was responsible for the 2011 death of a Maryland teenager who had consumed two 24-ounce cans of Monster Energy. The company said that tests were never conducted on the 14-year-old, Anais Fournier, to determine caffeine levels in her blood.

A lawyer representing her family, Kevin Goldberg, said a state medical examiner had found that the teenager, who had an underlying heart condition, died of a cardiac arrhythmia caused by caffeine toxicity. A spokesman for the chief medical examiner’s office in Baltimore declined to comment, citing continuing litigation.

Monster Beverage also claimed recently that the March issue of a newsletter sent to elementary school students and their parents contained defamatory statements that had “materially damaged Monster and its well-known brand.” It objected to several statements in the newsletter, Build Healthy Kids, including one that said children had died from energy drinks and should “never drink” them.

In a letter dated March 4, the company demanded that Deborah Kennedy, a nutritionist who publishes the newsletter, retract and correct the statements within five days or face a lawsuit.

Ms. Kennedy, who lives in Connecticut, said in an interview that she was stunned by the threat, in part because the newsletter never mentioned Monster Energy or any other product by name, but focused instead on the need for children to cut down on sugar-laden beverages.

In response, she called on one of Connecticut’s United States senators, Richard Blumenthal, who is a critic of the energy drink industry. Mr. Blumenthal’s office contacted Monster, which agreed to withhold legal action pending a meeting with Ms. Kennedy.

Ms. Kennedy, who holds a doctorate in nutrition, said she thought the audience for her newsletter, children from kindergarten through fifth grade, should not consume energy drinks. “They are going after me for reaching that segment, and it boggles my mind,” she said.

Mr. Sitrick, the Monster spokesman, said that the 7-year-old son of a Monster employee had received the newsletter at his school and was upset by it. The boy showed it to his father, who brought it to the attention of a company lawyer.

“No child, much less a 7-year-old, should be falsely informed that his or her father’s employer is a child killer, especially since there are no facts to support the allegation,” Mr. Sitrick said. He added that Ms. Kennedy had yet to meet with a lawyer for Monster.

Last week, Senator Blumenthal and two other Democratic lawmakers, Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois and Representative Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, sent a letter to Monster Beverage urging it to apologize for the tone of its letter to Ms. Kennedy and asking whether the company had threatened others with lawsuits.

Mr. Sitrick said the company was still reviewing the letter but continued to believe that Ms. Kennedy’s statements were defamatory.

Vaccines: Armed and Dangerous - Gary Null Vaccine Nation

Vaccines: Armed and Dangerous - Jon Rappaport from NoMoreFakeNews airs dirty secrets of the vaccine industry -- February 2012

Vaccine Damaged Children

Secret Government Database Reveals

The general public is essentially unaware of the true number of people -- mostly children -- who have been permanently damaged or killed by vaccines. In fact, most parents would be surprised to learn that the government has a secret computer database, listed below filled with several thousand names of disabled and dead babies, children who were healthy and alive just prior to receiving the vaccines. Of course, the medical establishment and federal government don't readily disclose this information because they know it's likely to frighten parents into seeking other ways to protect their children. In other words, parents just might think this issue through on their own and decide to reject the shots.

Federal Admission of Vaccine Risks:

In 1986, Congress officially acknowledged the reality of vaccine-caused injuries and death by creating and passing The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (Public Law 99-660). The safety reform portion of this law requires doctors to provide parents with information about the benefits and risks of childhood vaccines prior to vaccination, and to report vaccine reactions to federal health officials. Doctors are required by law to report suspected cases of vaccine damage. To simplify and centralize this legal requisite, federal health officials established the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) -- operated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Ideally, doctors would abide by this federal law and report adverse events following the administration of a vaccine. However, the FDA recently acknowledged that 90 percent of doctors do not report vaccine reactions. They are choosing to subvert this law by claiming the adverse event was, in their opinion, not related to the shot. In fact, every year between 12,000 and 14,000 reports of adverse reactions to vaccines are made to the FDA (data initially accessible only through the Freedom of Information Act). These figures include hospitalizations, irreversible brain damage, and hundreds of deaths. Considering that these numbers may represent just 10 percent, the true figures could be as high as 140,000 adverse events annually. However, even this figure could be conservative. According to Dr. David Kessler, former head of the Food and Drug Administration, "Only about 1 percent of serious events [adverse drug reactions] are reported to the FDA." Thus, it is entirely possible that millions of people are adversely affected by mandatory vaccines every year.

Maybe it doesn't matter that doctors won't report vaccine reactions, because the federal government won't investigate them. Government officials claim VAERS was designed to "document" suspected cases of vaccine damage. No attempt is being made to confirm or deny the reports. Parents are not being interviewed, and the vaccines that preceded the severe reactions are not being recalled. Instead, new waves of unsuspecting parents and innocent children are being subjected to the damaging shots.

Who Pays for Compensation?

In order to pay for vaccine injuries and deaths, a surtax is levied on mandated vaccines. When parents elect to have their children vaccinated, a portion of the money they spend on each vaccine goes into a Congressional fund to compensate them if their child is hurt or killed by the shot.

The compensation portion of the law awards up to $250,000 if the individual dies, or millions of dollars to cover lifelong medical bills, pain, and suffering in the case of a living (but brain-damaged) child. To date, more than $1 BILLION has already been paid out for hundreds of injuries and deaths caused by mandated vaccines. Thousands of cases are pending.

Vaccine Injury Compensation Claims do not include private settlements, or the many families that become dependent on public assistance for medical and living expenses because of vaccine injuries. Therefore, taxpayers subsidize vaccine manufacturers and the federal government by paying for their vaccine-liability expenses.

How Are Vaccines Made?

Vaccine production is a disgusting procedure. To begin, one must first acquire the disease germ -- a toxic bacterium or a live virus. To make a "live" vaccine, the live virus must be attenuated, or weakened for human use. This is accomplished by serial passage -- passing the virus through animal tissue several times to reduce its potency. For example, measles virus is passed through chick embryos, polio virus through monkey kidneys, and the rubella virus through human diploid cells -- the dissected organs of an aborted fetus! "Killed" vaccines are "inactivated" through heat, radiation, or chemicals.

The weakened germ must then be strengthened with adjuvants (antibody boosters) and stabilizers. This is done by adding drugs, antibiotics, and toxic disinfectants to the concoction: neomycin, streptomycin, sodium chloride, sodium hydroxide, aluminum hydroxide, aluminum hydrochloride, sorbitol, hydrolized gelatin, formaldehyde, and thimerosal (a mercury derivative).

Aluminum, formaldehyde, and mercury are extremely toxic substances with a long history of documented hazardous effects. Studies confirm again and again that microscopic doses of these substances can lead to cancer, neurological damage, and death. Yet, each of them may be found in childhood vaccines.

In addition to the deliberately planned additives, unanticipated matter may contaminate the shots. For example, during serial passage of the virus through animal cells, animal RNA and DNA -- foreign genetic material -- is transferred from one host to another. Because this biological matter is injected directly into the body, researchers say it can change our genetic makeup.

Undetected animal viruses may jump the species barrier as well. This is exactly what happened during the 1950s and 1960s when millions of people were infected with polio vaccines that were contaminated with the SV-40 virus undetected in the monkey organs used to prepare the vaccines. SV-40 (Simian Virus #40 -- the 40th such virus detected since researchers began looking), is considered a powerful immunosuppressor and trigger for HIV, the name given to the AIDS virus. It is said to cause a clinical condition similar to AIDS, and has been found in brain tumors, leukemia, and other human cancers as well. Researchers consider it to be a cancer-causing virus.

What happens next, once this foul concoction -- live viruses, bacteria, toxic substances, and diseased animal matter -- is created? This witch's brew is forced into the healthy child.

Satanic Rituals:

Dr. Robert Mendelsohn often criticized modern medicine for its sanctimonious doctrine. He argued that "doctors are the priests who dispense holy water in the form of inoculations" to ritually initiate our loyalty into the larger medical industry. Dr. Richard Moskowitz agrees: "Vaccines have become sacraments of our faith in biotechnology. Their efficacy and safety are widely seen as self-evident and needing no further proof."

Others see a link between vaccinations and satanic rituals or witchcraft, where animals are sacrificed and their organs brewed in a hellish concoction of horrid substances: voodoo medicine by 21st century mad scientists. Sadly, our children are their unwilling subjects as society is slowly devoured by their insatiable appetite for human experimentation.

SECRET DATABASE!

Every year, the FDA receives thousands of reports of adverse reactions after vaccines. These include brain damage and death. This information is now available at the following link: VAERS Database. (We recommend starting with a basic search.)

Personal Stories of Vaccine Damage and Death

Preventing Vaccination’s Injuries and Deaths Support Groups