The day I ate as many E numbers as possible
Yet how many consumers would believe that such additives may actually be good for us? The boom in organic and natural foods in recent years betrays our trust in nature over science. Yet a survey by Which? magazine has found terms such as "natural", "fresh", "pure" and "real", which readily appear on the front of food packaging, are confusing consumers because they are largely unregulated.
Conversely, it is the additives tucked way in the small print of a product's ingredients list that are heavily regulated. And when you look at clinical rather than anecdotal evidence, and speak to clinical dieticians, it appears these are actually good for us - and many seem to be very good for us indeed.
Chemical additives are good for us?
Give me a break!
"How many E numbers can I eat in one day and will I be poisoned from this?" is really the wrong question to ask. Most of the chemical substances act by accumulation in the body and many interact with each other. Additives show their toxicity (some of them at least) in long term continuous consumption and accumulation, not necessarily on a one-day binge.
It is true, many of the additives are perfectly innocuous and some are even good nutritional substances.
But the major problem with e numbers is not what they designate but how they designate it. Be honest with yourself. Do you know what E 222 or E 951 means when you read it on a food label? THAT is the problem. Instead of informing us, those E numbers actually conceal the identity of the additive they designate. Why not write the word on the label so we can immediately understand?
It comes from the work of Theodore Litovitz, who discovered that by adding low-frequency electronic “white noise” over the top of the cell phone signal, most of the biological effects of the radiation that were known at the time could be reversed.
We now know how this may work at the molecular level. If you read my “Witness Statement” at http://tinyurl.com/34gvn29, you will see that most of the effects of the radiation can be attributed to the loss of calcium from cell membranes, which occurs only in very narrow “windows” of field strength, above and below which there is little or no effect. By adding a low-frequency "noise" signal with a random amplitude, very few cells stay within their windows for long enough to remove much calcium before they leave their respective windows, and the lost calcium floods back. Consequently, little or no permanent damage is done.
Just reducing the power will not give the same effect.
Vitamin D 'influences over 200 genes'
Scientists, including an Indian-origin researcher, claim to have achieved a major breakthrough by mapping the points at which vitamin D interacts with human DNA and identified over 200 genes that it directly influences.
The scientists found 2,776 binding sites for the vitamin D receptor along the length of the genome. These were unusually concentrated near a number of genes associated with susceptibility to autoimmune conditions like Crohn's disease, rheumatoid arthritis, and even cancers.
It is estimated that one billion people worldwide do not have sufficient sunshine vitamin. This deficiency is due to insufficient exposure to sun and in some cases due to poor diet.
Flu jab linked to convulsions in kids under five
Up to one in 100 children given the jab, made in Australia by CSL and marketed in the UK by Pfizer, suffered febrile convulsions in the following hours and days.
USA: ‘Blue Flu’ cases spreading around Gulf
Some people are calling it the BP Flu. But it is commonly being called the Blue Flu, because the alleged symptoms include blue lips and skin; and it’s scaring the hell out of people all around the Gulf area –from Texas to Florida.
USA: New York State Orders Dr. to Stop Treating Patients for $79/month
... he charges his patients $79 per month plus $10 per visit. In other words, for about $1,000 per year, his patients do not have to worry about routine illnesses or anything else that can be taken care of in Dr. Muney's offices.
Who could possibly have a problem with that plan? Apparently, the New York state insurance regulators do. The state told Dr. Muney that his plan is an insurance policy and he has to be licensed to sell insurance.
GMO Crop Sabotage on the Rise: French citizens destroy trial vineyard
Early Sunday morning, French police stood helpless as sixty people, locked inside an open-air field of genetically modified grapevines, uprooted all the plants. In Spain last month, dozens of people destroyed two GMO fields. On the millennial cusp, Indian farmers burned Bt cotton in their Cremate Monsanto campaign.
Monsanto in Gates' Clothing? The Emperor's New GMOs
... if you are part of the growing population who gets their information about GMOs from scientists who are not beholden to corporate funding, has a problem with anti-trust issues, or is getting queasy about the increasing monopoly power of philanthropy capital... it's time to say the Emperor has no clothes.
Under the guise of "sustainability" the [Bill and Melinda Gates] Foundation has been spearheading a multi-billion dollar effort to transform African into a GMO-friendly continent.
Encephalitis kills 215 in India, toll expected to soar
At least 215 people, mostly children, have died in an outbreak of Japanese encephalitis in an impoverished region of northern Indian and the death toll is likely to soar, officials said Saturday.
V.S. Nigam, in charge of Uttar Pradesh's encephalitis prevention programme, said a mammoth project to contain the disease had ended with 35 million children vaccinated in the state's 34 districts.
But as soon children are vaccinated against Japanese encephalitis, they fall sick with acute encephalitis syndrome "because when one virus is suppressed by vaccines, others become dominant," he said.
Are we looking at the "side effects" of a widespread vaccination program here?
Video:Big Bucks, Big Pharma: Marketing Disease & Pushing Drugs Big Bucks, Big Pharma pulls back the curtain on the multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry to expose the insidious ways that illness is used, manipulated, and in some instances created, for capital gain. Focusing on the industry’s marketing practices, media scholars and health professionals help viewers understand the ways in which direct-to-consumer (DTC) pharmaceutical advertising glamorizes and normalizes the use of prescription medication, and works in tandem with promotion to doctors.
Drugmakers Actually Make Lemons, Not Medicines?
According to his study, which is not yet published, independent reviewers found that about 85 percent of new drugs offer few if any new benefits. At the same time, though, prescription drugs are now a significant cause of death in the US due to toxic side effects or misuse. He notes that drugmakers spend “two to three times more on marketing than on research,” which are dollars used to persuade docs to prescribe new drugs. But the docs, he maintains, may get misleading info and then pass along the same info to patients. In his view, this is a “two-tier market” for lemons.
USA: Pediatric Drug Trials Benefit Pharma Not Children
A Duke University study published in the journal Pediatrics examined the effects of the Pediatric Exclusivity Provision of FDAMA (enacted in 1998). FDAMA provides six months of patent exclusivity to pharmaceutical companies to conduct safety and efficacy studies of drugs in children.
There is no evidence to indicate that children have been the beneficiaries of the Pediatric Exclusivity Provision of FDAMA (enacted in 1998): there is evidence that pharmaceutical companies have increased their profits from the legislation by at least $14 billion.
The judgment is the first of its kind to be revealed since concerns were raised about the safety of the triple jab.
Robert Fletcher, 18, is unable to talk, stand unaided or feed himself.
Child Autism Epidemic Firmly Linked to Environment
Since the '70's, there has been a 60-fold increase in American children with autism. Currently one in every 100 U.S. children and one in every 58 boys are being diagnosed with autism. That's over 2.6 percent of all male children in America.
Experts agree that the primary explanation for the dramatic increase in autism is toxic environmental exposure and gene-environment interactions. New research shows that even low-dose, multiple toxic and infectious exposures may be a key factor to the onset of autism.
Just Say No To Drugs
My frustration at the Machiavellian turn that medicine had taken into the rabbit hole of drugs is why I wrote Death by Medicine in 2003. You can obtain that paper freely on the Internet. Two years later I expanded it into Death by Modern Medicine, now available as an eBook.
As I said, I don’t like to focus on the negative and this is the only one of my 20 books that sheds light on the sickening turn of medicine to the dark side. If you or your friends think that drug companies are looking out for YOUR best interests and want to see you healthy and off drugs, think again.
America’s mental illness epidemic: It turns out that the drugs are the problem
Tens of millions of innocent, unsuspecting Americans, who are mired deeply in the mental “health” system, have actually been made crazy by the use of or the withdrawal from commonly-prescribed, brain-altering, brain-disabling, indeed brain-damaging psychiatric drugs that have been, for many decades, cavalierly handed out like candy -- often in untested and therefore unapproved combinations of drugs -- to trusting and unaware patients by equally unaware but well-intentioned physicians who have been under the mesmerizing influence of slick and obscenely profitable psychopharmaceutical drug companies.
An expert review published in 2009 found the drugs are overused in many cases and are responsible for up to 1,800 deaths in the UK every year.
Paxil-caused birth defects: Glaxo pays millions
While no amount of money can adequately compensate for a life-altering birth defect allegedly caused by or linked to the use of the antidepressant Paxil, the average settlement in a Paxil birth defect lawsuit appears to be in excess of $1.2 million for each family involved. The Newark Star-Ledger noted in July that Paxil manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline (Glaxo) has put aside $2.4 billion for the resolution of litigation involving Paxil and one other drug in Glaxo's product line.
AIDS Drugs Cause AIDS
AIDS drugs have “side effects” which are indistinguishable from “primary effects.” Death is among them. The process can be quick, but is usually slow, a degeneration of fat and protein assimilation and assembly in the body, the poisoning and death of the intestinal villi, ending absorption of nutrients. It can take time, with drugs at low doses.
The drugs kill yeasts and fungi, which can be a relief in the short-term for people suffering from debilitating candida. But quit the drugs, and the yeasts come back in force. Start the drugs, and you kill your own intestines.
EU food-supplement clampdown overrides consumer choice
In 2011, hundreds of food supplements and thousands of health-benefit claims concerning food supplements will be banished from the European market as each European Union member state enforces the EU Supplements Directive of 2002.
The system discriminates against small companies and new market entrants in favor of large companies and incumbent sellers because it presumes all products sold without incident to be unlawful unless proven – based on clinical trial evidence – to be safe and bioavailable. Proof, in the form of scientific dossiers, must establish to EFSA’s satisfaction that products intended for sale are safe and bioavailable. No claims may henceforth be made unless scientific dossiers establish to EFSA’s satisfaction that the claims are proven to a near conclusive degree. The dossiers are expensive, roughly[B1] US$500,000 or more per submission. At least 90 per cent of the companies in this market cannot afford to submit a dossier and so must either cease sales altogether or reduce product offerings to those that others succeed in getting approved.
Drug companies accused of 'conning' the public
An estimated 85 per cent of drugs coming onto the market offer only slight advances on existing treatments while having the potential to cause serious harm due to toxicity or misuse, the study concluded.
And invariably costing more than the drugs they replace, one might add.
Professor Donald Light described the pharmaceutical industry as a ''market for lemons'' - one in which the seller knows much more than the buyer about the product, and takes advantage of this fact. ''Sometimes drug companies hide or downplay information about serious side-effects of new drugs and overstate the drugs' benefits. Then, they spend two to three times more on marketing than on research to persuade doctors to prescribe these new drugs. Doctors may get misleading information and then misinform patients about the risks of a new drug. It's really a two-tier market for lemons.''
Sweden opens inquiry into suspect flu vaccine
Sweden's Medical Products Agency opened an inquiry Wednesday into vaccinations for swine flu made by British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline, suspected of provoking narcolepsy.
The reports concern children aged between 12-16 years who developed symptoms compatible with narcolepsy, a chronic sleeping disorder, that occurred one to two months after vaccination against the H1N1 pandemic.
India: Four Babies Killed By Measles Vaccine
Minutes after they were given the measles vaccine, four infants - Kumari, Sanya, Rekha and Sahil fell acutely ill. They became breathless, began to sweat and their pulse fell rapidly - all symptoms of anaphylactic shock or a serious allergic reaction to the vaccine, and before they could get medical help at the local hospital, all four had died.
Such measles vaccine related deaths are rare but have been reported in the past. In 2008, four children died under similar circumstances in Tamil Nadu.
Vitamin D may treat or prevent allergy to common mold
"We found that adding vitamin D not only substantially reduced the production of the protein driving an allergic response, but it also increased production of the proteins that promote tolerance," notes Dr. Jay Kolls, Professor and Chair of Genetics at LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans.
Antibiotics on the Verge of Becoming Completely Useless
The journal Lancet Infectious Diseases recently published a sobering piece about how antibiotics are becoming wholly ineffective as treatments for infection. According to the report, even the most powerful antibiotics available are largely inadequate at tackling the emerging forms of new and powerful "super" bacteria.
Antibiotic overuse has become a pandemic problem. They are used in animal feed to make animals grow more quickly and they are handed out like candy by many doctors to people with almost any ailment. And they are simply not working anymore to fight infection.
Book:Seeds ... of germination ... or termination The American Confederacy – 2084. Nayla, a top scientist and respected board member of the mighty Carsanto Corporation, becomes the country’s most wanted fugitive when she impulsively steals the company’s only germinator seeds to protect the planet and her daughter’s future. The act endangers Carsanto’s malicious plan to take control of the world through genetically modified terminator seeds. With Carsanto’s ruthless security officer in hot pursuit, Nayla flees to the United Canadian Communities where a solitary mountain trapper guides her on a soul-searching adventure as they strive to bring the seeds to safety.
At first torn between the simple cultures she discovers on the journey and the comforts of the old world she recklessly left behind, Nayla slowly begins to open her heart to the miracles of life. Yet as her old worldview crumbles, it leaves her fragile and confused about who she really is, and uncertain if she has the heart to complete her mission. Will she be able to recreate herself and escape? Will she be able to save her daughter and allow the seeds of life to germinate on earth?
My friend who passed on the link and who read the book, says:
"There is a book I just finished, it is called "SEEDS" ... of germination or termination.
It is written by Hugo Bonjean. ISBN 978-0-9737542-2-3.
It is a futuristic story about the power struggle on this planet. I am sure you would like it."
Drug firms hiding negative research are unfit to experiment on people
After the New York attorney general sued GlaxoSmithKline over its "illegal and deceptive" reporting of the risks of its anti-depressant paroxetine (tradename Seroxat), GSK agreed to publish all trial data on a website. But, several years later, we saw last month that GSK and the Food and Drug Administration had sat on data showing that rosiglitazone (tradename Avandia) increased the risk of heart problems.
I can't see why any company withholding data should be allowed to conduct further experiments on people. I can't see why the state doesn't impose crippling fines. I hope it's because politicians don't understand the scale of the harm.
Janssen-Cilag applies for adult ADHD drug approval in Europe
Janssen-Cilag, a subsidiary of the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical company, has filed an application to get methylphenidate (sold as Ritalin and Concerta) approved for ADHD - Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder ... in adults.
There are a series of grave concerns with the drug's safety, which Larssen has outlined in a letter to the European Medical agencies and the EU Commission. He argues that the pharmaceutical company has not fulfilled its obligations even to keep the drug on the market, much less expand its use to a new indication.
FDA Set To Recall Unproven Drug after 14 Years
The Food and Drug Administration approved Shire Laboratories' drug ProAmatine in 1996 based on promising early results in treating low blood pressure. But the company has never submitted a mandatory follow-up study to actually prove the long-term benefits of the drug.
In letter to the company posted online Monday, the FDA proposes withdrawing the drug from the market and gives Shire an opportunity to schedule a hearing to discuss the matter. The letter marks the first time the FDA has threatened to pull a drug off the market due to missing follow-up data, though it has long held that power.
'The age of electronic medicine'
As part of its new iMedEd Initiative, the UC Irvine medical school has developed a comprehensive, iPad-based curriculum, reinventing how medicine is taught in the 21st century and becoming the first in the nation to offer entering students a completely digital, interactive learning environment.
“We are committed to using evolving technology to benefit the education of our medical students,” says Dr. Ralph V. Clayman, dean of the School of Medicine. “It is our firm belief that a digitally based curriculum will be the wave of the future, and UCI seeks to be a leader in the innovative presentation of information to students.”
P2P Medicine: How Patients and Doctors can collaborate
The July 2010 issue of Gordon Cook’s Report on Internet Protocol, Technology, Economics, and Policy examines Dr David Zakim’s Clinical Expert Operating System, an internet-based application that could literally change the future of medicine. Dr Zakim’s aim is to bring patients and doctors together in a common effort to arrive at a proper diagnosis so a decision can be made what treatment is needed in each individual case. The system also has another major purpose. Data collected on individual patients can eventually combine to construct an extensive database of facts that would act as an ongoing clinical trial and could bring important new insights to medicine as a whole.
(Note: We follow up a question first asked in Food Chain Radio #662: Why do we have 90 times more autism than the Amish?)
When it comes to vaccinations, I have had them all. At least, it seems that way!
From very early childhood, when the parents happily held up my bare bottom for the nurses needle, to the assembly-line air guns of the US Navys welcome to foreign ports, to vaccination cards laden with protection for trips to Egypt or the headwaters of the Amazon, to all those yearly flu vaccinations manufactured in a garage on the outskirts of Kowloon, I have willingly or not lined up for them all.
In fact, my blood now contains so much mercury-laden thimerosal preservative its probably good for 500 years, give or take.
And so when I featured Dan Olmsteads Amish autism anomaly in Food Chain Radio #662, I became fascinated by the apparent relationship of autism and vaccinations: Why do we who vaccinate have a rate of autism of 1 in 166, whereas the Amish who do not vaccinate have a rate of autism of 1 in 15,000?
Then I learned of another anomaly within the population of 30,000 patients of Homefirst Health Services, a clinic in metropolitan Chicago where no autism can be found. And so once again we pause to ask
Why do we have autism and they dont?
PTSD, infertility and other consequences of war
Boot camp and combat is bad enough; and such forced inhumanity as committing war crimes against civilians causes soldiers to suffer the mental trauma of PTSD. In addition, there is an unseen agent or disease vector at work here as well.
There, on the battlefield, the happy boys sent off to war by Mayor Gavin Newsom’s Fleet Week – an event responsible for a big chunk of the enlistments in the U.S. Navy and Marines – will probably come in deadly contact with another San Francisco Bay Area product: depleted uranium, aka DU, and weaponized ceramic uranium oxide gas and aerosols, UO.
WHO Declares End to H1N1 Pandemic
Director-General of the World Health Organization Margaret Chan, MD, MPH, has declared an end to the H1N1 influenza pandemic, following the advice of an emergency committee convened to address the issue.
It is about time this declaration was made. In reality, there should not have been a pandemic declaration to begin with - H1N1 was never anything but a mild affliction that did not infect a great number of people.
WHO Identifies Conflicted Pandemic Panel Members
Now that the World Health Organization has officially declared that the swine flu pandemic is over (see this), the agency has finally released the names of the scientific advisors who helped with pandemic decisions and their declared conflicts of interest, such as paid work for drugmakers.
The revelation will prompt speculation that the 'pandemic' was wildly overestimated and largely fuelled by the drugs industry who stood to benefit from the panic.
'“I think it would be a disaster to remove a useful agent like that. I don’t care what the controlled clinical trials show.”
Then–apparently realizing what he’d just blurted out–he added, “Well, I do but I don’t think it’s knock down complete.”
Wow! That’s pretty candid… Don’t show me the data! I already made up my mind!'
AstraZeneca Settles 4,000 Seroquel Lawsuits
AstraZeneca is only the latest big drugmaker to strike settlments with a large number of plaintiffs in ongoing product-liability litigation. Recently, GlaxoSmithKline has done the same concerning lawsuits filed over its Avandia diabetes med and Paxil antidepressant (see here and here). The goal, of course, is to dispense with the litigation before associated costs spiral upwards and further distract managers, all of which combines to unhinge investors if court battles are lost and no end appears in sight.
With billions made from those drugs every year, the costs of settlements like this are just part of the cost of doing business. Dirty business, if you hurt your patients, and then pay off those few that actually get a lawyer and sue.
Drug Companies Face Federal Inquiries
At least a dozen major drug and device makers are under investigation by federal prosecutors and securities regulators in a broadening inquiry of bribery allegations as to whether the companies may have made payments to foreign doctors and health officials.
In previous investigations, federal officials have charged that many of these kinds of payments were made to encourage doctors to order their products.
BMJ ‘limiting’ analysis of calcium studies ‘finds’ cardiovascular risk
Two decades after nutritional experts began to avoid supplemental calcium (paticularly inorganic calcium carbonate) given in isolation, as a treatment for conditions such as osteoporosis, in favour of more synergistic combinations of the range of essential nutrients needed for bone formation (which include adequate intakes of zinc, magnesium, manganese, boron, vitamin D, vitamin C, vitamin K2, folates and Vitamin B6); a British Medical Journal (BMJ) meta-analysis has finally brought into question, the pharma-favoured calcium treatment!
Female Infants Growing Breasts: Disaster From Hormones in Milk Production
According to the official Chinese Daily newspaper, medical tests performed on the babies found levels of estrogens circulating in their bloodstreams that are as high as those found in most adult women. These babies are between four and 15 months old. And the evidence is overwhelming that the milk formula they have been fed is responsible.
Synutra, the company that makes the baby formula consumed by these babies, says it's not their fault.
The writer of the article asks: "If this problem appears in the U.S., who will be held responsible? The retailers? The importers? The Chinese producers? Will anyone be called to account? "
Well, apparently it's not a problem of "if". The US has its own problems of premature puberty in girls as young as 7 or 8 years. No one has looked into the food they get, like the Chinese did. In the US the question the article brings up is why are African American and Latino American kids more affected...
Fluoride Could be Contributing to Early Puberty, Studies Show
The medical and public health community is shocked by the news that young American girls are reaching puberty at ages as young as 7 years. However, according to Paul Connett, PhD, Director of the Fluoride Action Network, "If fluoride's dangers had not been taken off the scientific radar screen by the US Public Health Service when it prematurely endorsed fluoridation in 1950, maybe key warning signals would not have been ignored for over 50 years."
Acetaminophen use in adolescents linked to doubled risk of asthma
New evidence linking the use of acetaminophen (Tylenol) to development of asthma and eczema suggests that even monthly use of the drug in adolescents may more than double risk of asthma in adolescents compared to those who used none at all; yearly use was associated with a 50 percent increase in the risk of asthma.
Cancer cells feed on fructose, study finds
Pancreatic tumor cells use fructose to divide and proliferate, U.S. researchers said on Monday in a study that challenges the common wisdom that all sugars are the same.
Tumor cells fed both glucose and fructose used the two sugars in two different ways, the team at the University of California Los Angeles found.
So much for that "high fructose corn syrup" that is sweetening a majority of soft drinks and many other foods today.
Of course all sugars of the refined variety are highly problematic for our health. If it's not cancer, they cause all kinds of other havoc with our cells.
Rethinking statins: A wonder drug or 'false hope'?
"There's a conspiracy of false hope," says Harvard Medical School's Dr. John Abramson, who has co-written several critiques of statins' rise, including one published in June in the Archives of Internal Medicine. "The public wants an easy way to prevent heart disease, doctors want to reduce their patients' risk of heart disease and drug companies want to maximize the number of people taking their pills to boost their sales and profits."
Statins and Heart Failure (Statins are cholesterol-lowering drugs)
A paper titled simply "Lovastatin decreases coenzyme Q levels in humans" states unequivocally in the abstract: "It is established that Coenzyme Q10 is indispensable for cardiac function." The heart is a muscle, and hence it is subject to all the same laws of physics as the skeletal muscles. It faces the same problem of fuel deficiency due to the various effects statins have on metabolism.
An article published in 2004 provides a plausible theory for the process by which muscle cells in the heart become dysfunctional with old age, leading ultimately to heart failure. The argument blends perfectly with the logical deductions associated with the mechanism by which statins damage cells, and leads to the unavoidable conclusion that statins make you age at an accelerated pace.
Calcium supplements linked to increased risk of heart attack
Calcium supplements, commonly taken by older people for osteoporosis, are associated with an increased risk of a heart attack, finds a study published in the British Medical Journal.
Calcium supplements are commonly prescribed for skeletal health, but a recent trial suggested they might increase rates of heart attack (myocardial infarction) and cardiovascular events in healthy older women.
Another report on the same study: Calcium Supplements May Carry Heart Attack Risk
"As calcium supplements are widely used, these modest increases in risk of cardiovascular disease might translate into a large burden of disease in the population," the researchers wrote. "A reassessment of the role of calcium supplements in the management of osteoporosis is warranted."
Considering the available evidence, they wrote, "patients with osteoporosis should generally not be treated with calcium supplements, either alone or combined with vitamin D, unless they are also receiving an effective treatment for osteoporosis for a recognized indication."
There is not a word about magnesium. Too much calcium, taken in isolation, can unbalance magnesium and cause a deficiency of this vital mineral. Everyone in the natural health movement who knows anything about nutrition knows, and certainly those researchers should know, about the importance of magnesium, a mineral which needs to be balanced with calcium. Magnesium is vital for the heart muscle to work properly. Why are those researchers not looking at the very obvious? Is there a hidden agenda here to push medication at the expense of nutrition?
Also check out Dr Carolyn Dean's thoughts on calcium and magnesium here: Cancel the Calcium
Flavanol-rich foods may help heart disease patients
Study results indicate that flavanols may increase a population of certain cells in the blood that scientists think help to repair the inner walls of blood vessels, improving blood flow and potentially lowering blood pressure.
This suggests that, in the future, isolated flavanols or flavanol-rich foods might be useful in preventing or possibly even treating coronary artery disease, in which the arteries narrow as plaque builds up on the endothelium lining the inner artery walls, said study co-author Carl Keen. A UC Davis nutrition professor, Keen is an authority on the potential health benefits of this class of phytonutrients.
The gel, which is being developed by scientists in France, works by prompting cells in teeth to start multiplying. They then form healthy new tooth tissue that gradually replaces what has been lost to decay.
Toxic legacy of US assault on Fallujah 'worse than Hiroshima'
Dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by US Marines in 2004, exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, according to a new study.
Iraqi doctors in Fallujah have complained since 2005 of being overwhelmed by the number of babies with serious birth defects, ranging from a girl born with two heads to paralysis of the lower limbs. They said they were also seeing far more cancers than they did before the battle for Fallujah between US troops and insurgents.
Pharma: Sanofi-Aventis Sues FDA Over Approval of Generic Blood Thinning Drug
In arguing its case, Sanofi claims the FDA is allowing a generic to be sold that is not similar in safety or efficacy to Lovenox, which generated $4 billion in sales last year. And so Sanofi is seeking a temporary restraining order to force the FDA to withdraw approval, which would prevent Momenta and its partner, the Sandoz generic unit of Novartis, from moving forward. Sanofi has moved aggressively before to thwart generic Lovenox, filing a citizen’s petition with the FDA in 2003 and again last year, although in that instance, the document was filed by scientists with ties to the drugmaker.
Pharma is BIG business. As long as there is more money to be made, pharmaceutical manufacturers will do everything in their power to prevent cheaper drugs from becoming available, even going to court against the FDA. No wonder our health care system is becoming so expensive it can no longer be paid for.
Malicious drugging of kids
Researchers analyzed information from the U.S. National Poison Centre Data System from the past decade and found a small but steady number of young children, median age two, who were exposed to at least one sedating agent, including street drugs, antipsychotics, cough medicines and ethanol.
"It's an aspect of child abuse that is not often considered," said Dr. Shan Yin, a pediatrician at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital and author of the study published in the Journal of Pediatrics. "I think this is going on, probably throughout the country, and we're not paying attention to it."
The majority of persons who committed suicide in Sweden in 2007 had received extensive treatment with psychiatric drugs within a year of committing suicide.
None of these suicide cases were reported to the registry for adverse drug events.
A psychiatric drug withdrawal primer
Whether you want to completely withdraw from meds or simply wish to minimize what you take, the first thing I will refer you to is a paper written by Joanna Moncrieff. It refers mostly to withdrawal from neuroleptics, but much can be inferred about most psychiatric medication. This paper may induce fear in those hoping to withdraw from drugs, but I think it important that people understand that there are, indeed, real dangers and risks associated with drug withdrawal–most notably in precipitous withdrawal or withdrawal without appropriate supports.
Sweeping changes are being made to the U.S Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), which influences practitioners around the world.
However, leading British mental health experts have warned the revisions could devalue the seriousness of mental illness and label almost everyone as having some kind of disorder.
Translation: For psychiatrists, almost everyone is crazy (and needs to be drugged)
Sudden Deaths after Pentavalent vaccination: 'Experts' blow off vaccine connection
According to an expert on the committee investigating the Pakistan deaths, one child died within half an hour of receiving the vaccine and 2 others died within 12 to 14 hours. No alternate cause of death was found for any of the deaths but the experts misleadingly suggest that ‘two cases were diagnosed as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) but we (the experts) were not sure of the third case’. Yet in no case was the vaccine blamed for the deaths.
The 'expert report' on the 8 deaths in Bhutan is not available in the public domain as far as we can ascertain. A WHO spokesperson is reported to have said the cause of death in Bhutan was not vaccination, but they were due to a three other causes namely ‘sudden death, convulsions and meningitis’.
World Health Organization Cover-Up of Child Vaccine Deaths
The report by a group, including paediatricians, professors, health activists and a former Indian health secretary, cautions against the introduction of the five-in-one vaccine that combines antigens against five diseases - diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus (DPT), hepatitis B and Haemophilus Influenzae type B (HIB) - in a single shot.
'Our article describes how the World Health Organisation (WHO), in an elaborate cover-up, changed its own criteria for classifying adverse effects to say the vaccine was not responsible for the deaths in Sri Lanka,' Jacob Puliyel, head of paediatrics at St Stephen's Hospital in Delhi and key author, told IANS.
The Rockefeller Foundation Drafts A Post Pandemic Scenario
“Will you walk into my parlour?” said the Spider to the Fly,
‘Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy;
The way into my parlour is up a winding stair,
And I’ve a many curious things to shew when you are there.”
Oh no, no,” said the little Fly, “to ask me is in vain,
For who goes up your winding stair can ne’er come down again.”
Out of control: AIDS and the corruption of medical science
Joyce Ann Hafford was a single mother living alone with her thirteen-year-old son, Jermal, in Memphis, Tennessee, when she learned that she was pregnant with her second child. She worked as a customer service representative at a company called CMC Call Center; her son was a top student, an athlete and musician. In April 2003, Hafford, four months pregnant, was urged by her obstetrician to take an HIV test. She agreed, even though she was healthy and had no reason to think she might be HIV positive. The test result came up positive, though Hafford was tested only once, and she did not know that pregnancy itself can cause a false positive HIV test...
A friend recently forwarded an article pointing to a major trend: Widespread male infertility sweeping the globe
While the article acknowledges that environmental factors probably play a role in the reduced fertility we are seeing, a twist is introduced.
"But what scientists believe may be the biggest cause of poor semen quality in men has more to do with what their mothers were exposed to during pregnancy, than what the men themselves are exposed to throughout their lifetimes. A case in point is the disastrous chemical accident that occurred in 1976 in Seveso, Italy."
Still environmental, but pointing to "accidental" pollution, leading us away from a search for anything currently happening. As I was looking into this, following a hunch, I found that boron is one of the substances clearly identified as a cause of infertility. Indeed, it is named, together with very few other things, on a Stanford University document on what causes male infertility. The document lists, as environmental factors: "Exposure to environmental hazards and toxins such as pesticides, lead paint, radiation, radioactive substances, mercury, benzene, boron, and heavy metals".
So we have "depleted" uranium in munitions, mercury in our teeth and in vaccines, benzene in "green" gasoline and boron as well as barium and aluminium in the air. My reaction to the friend who forwarded the article and who pointed to Depleted Uranium as a possible cause, was the following:
It seems like pollution of all kinds is a recipe for causing infertility, and according to the story Paul links, it seems to be working... Radioactive substances would of course include Depleted Uranium. But I am also, and especially, thinking here of boron. There is heavy spraying of chemtrails over populated areas.
Chemtrails over Rhein river, Germany - Image credit Glenn Boyle
Boron is one of the principal substances being sprayed into the atmosphere, together with barium, aluminium and other assorted poisons. And boron causes infertility.
According to the following page on chemtrails and analyses that were done on rain water, boron was found to be present at 4000 times over the safe level.
With just these few dots joined together, the spraying of chemtrails might finally start to make some sense. Infertility is population control. Could population control through artificially induced infertility be at least one purpose of those chemicals sprayed daily in our atmosphere?
More than half the world's population gets insufficient vitamin D
Anthony Norman, a distinguished professor emeritus of biochemistry and biomedical sciences and an international expert on vitamin D, notes that half the people in North America and Western Europe get insufficient amounts of vitamin D.
"Elsewhere, it is worse," he says, "given that two-thirds of the people are vitamin D-insufficient or deficient. It is clear that merely eating vitamin D-rich foods is not adequate to solve the problem for most adults."
Currently, the recommended daily intake of vitamin D is 200 international units (IU) for people up to 50 years old; 400 IU for people 51 to 70 years old; and 600 IU for people over 70 years old.
"There is a wide consensus among scientists that the relative daily intake of vitamin D should be increased to 2,000 to 4,000 IU for most adults," Norman says. "A 2000 IU daily intake can be achieved by a combination of sunshine, food, supplements, and possibly even limited tanning exposure."
'Meat' the enemy: Food for thought from noted biochemist
Pat Brown hates animals. On your plate, that is. And he's going to do something about it. The School of Medicine biochemist is taking a yearlong sabbatical — starting now — to figure out how to get you, me and, yes, even the rest of the world to stop bolting down hamburgers, chicken and ribs, and turn instead to beans, carrots and avocados. Why? The environmental cost of meat is just too high.
“People are sort of in denial about whether this is even an issue,” said Brown, MD, PhD, a professor of biochemistry and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. “But eating one 4-ounce hamburger is equivalent to leaving your bathroom faucet running 24 hours a day for a week. We can’t go on like this.”
The Case Against GM - for Organic Ag
To compound the ecological crisis, senior US scientists who have researched glyphosate and Roundup (Monsanto’s formulation for glyphosate) tolerant crops for decades have now revealed how the herbicide poisons crops and soil, it has led to a general increase in the number of plant diseases in the past 15 to 18 years, especially since herbicide tolerant crops were first planted and increased the use of glyphosate 15 fold on all major crops. Four fungal pathogens have become more active, especially Fusarium, which causes head blight of cereal crops, and produces a mycotoxin that could enter the food chain. More than 40 diseases have been reported with the use of glyphosate, and the number keeps growing.
Frankenfoods: India blocks harvesting of GM crops
In October 2009, the country’s Genetic Engineering Approval Committee gave approval for the planting of a GM eggplant produced by Maharashtra Hybrid Seeds Co., in partnership with Monsanto. The brinjal-variety eggplant had been engineered with genes from the bacteria Bacillus thuringniensis (Bt) to produce pesticide in its tissues.
The approval of the country’s first GM food crop sparked an uproar among farmers, environmentalists, health advocates and other GM critics across India. Critics objected to the unknown health effects of consuming or working near GM foods, as well as the risks that the plants could produce “genetic pollution” by crossing with non-GM varieties.
Farmers also object to the fact that GM seeds not only cost roughly three times as much as unmodified seeds, but must also be purchased each year from the company rather than saved from prior harvests, as farmers have traditionally done.
Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh responded by holding a series of public consultations across the country. After hearing critics’ concerns, he placed a moratorium on any cultivation of Bt brinjal until “independent scientific studies” can prove “the safety of the product from the point of view of its long-term impact on human health and environment.”
The European Commission today published proposals that it said were designed to give countries more freedom and flexibility over the cultivation of genetically modified crops.
But opponents of 'Frankenstein foods' warned that the changes would speed up the approval regime for the controversial crops and ensure that efforts by some states to block them will be side-stepped."
Smog may trigger cell death in the heart
The study found that exposure to ground-level ozone over several weeks increased the activity of a substance that triggers cell death in the heart.
Ozone (O3) is a highly reactive gas made up of three oxygen molecules. In the upper atmosphere, it protects Earth from the sun's radiation. However, O3 becomes a major component of smog when it forms near the ground through reactions between sunlight, nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons from fossil fuels and industrial processes.
Forget About Fluoride
I told her that the use of fluoride in water treatment and in dentistry to prevent cavities is not scientifically validated. It is merely based on surveys where fewer cavities were found in areas with high levels of natural fluoride in the water. However, based on a completely unscientific report, fluoride has been promoted as an anti-cavity miracle for decades!
Fluoride during infancy and early childhood may damage the developing tooth-forming cells and lead to defective enamel referred to as “dental fluorosis.” This condition is characterized by white spotting, yellow, brown and/or pitted permanent teeth. But you don’t even know that until the teeth have erupted.
Several U.S. and Chinese studies have shown that young children who drink water with fluoride levels >1.0 mg/L have a significantly lower IQ. Learning disabilities, including diminished reading and writing ability are attributed to fluoride.
Health Federation Challenges Codex Alimentarius Rubberstamp Politics
Ractopamine is a veterinary drug (a growth hormone) developed by a subsidiary of drug company Eli Lilly. It is approved in 22 countries, but either banned or not approved for use in 160 countries worldwide. Administered in the feed of animals in the last few weeks before they are slaughtered, this drug “beefs up” the animal so that more will be paid for them at market. Lost in the shuffle are any concerns about the health and welfare of the animals themselves as well as the health of the humans who consume ractopamine-saturated meat.
Pfizer Sued By Nigerians For $384B Over Trovan
Yet another legal headache for Pfizer over the 1996 Troval scandal in Nigeria. The drugmaker recently agreed to pay $75 million to resolve civil and criminal charges brought by the Kano State government in Nigeria. The move, effectively, settled most outstanding litigation. Until now. Another 192 victims have filed yet another lawsuit and are seeking a mere $384 billion, AllAfrica reports.
The 1996 Trovan study was conducted on about 200 children and took place during a meningitis epidemic that killed 12,000 children, but Nigerians claim Pfizer didn’t obtain proper regulatory approval for the trial and misled parents. The study allegedly left 11 children dead and the others were deformed. Pfizer denied the charges and settled most lawsuits last fall.
Prescription drug epidemic spreads to babies
Dr. Mary Newport sees the symptoms more and more in the babies she treats: oddly stiff limbs, severe tremors, vomiting, diarrhea, insomnia, crying that never stops.
The common denominator: Their mothers were taking prescription drugs, mostly painkillers like OxyContin and Vicodin, and antianxiety drugs like Xanax during pregnancy.
Some of the moms had no idea these medications would hurt their developing babies — after all, it's not like it's heroin or cocaine, many think.
Chantix Smoking Cessation Pill & Violence: What Patients Have In Common
or the past three years, the Chantix smoking cessation pill has caused a stir after being associated with suicidal behavior and vivid dreams. Consequently, the government banned the Pfizer drug for pilots and licenses wouldn’t be issued to truck drivers taking the med. The FDA subsequently imposed a risk management program and Pfizer added warnings.
Now, a new study in The Annals of Pharmacotherapy finds Chantix is not only associated with violent and aggressive thoughts and acts, but has also identified some of the common characteristics among people using the pill and their subsequent behavior. The drug “does have warnings about psychiatric side effects, but it skims over aggression/violence towards others to focus mainly on suicidal behaviors,” says Thomas Moore, one of the co-authors and a senior scientist at the Institute for Safe Medication Practices.
Avandia: Ghostwriting and Academic Medicine
Pharmaceutical companies are masters of marketing, as witnessed by their impressive ability to create blockbuster drugs. Unfortunately, those include medicines like Vioxx (which was withdrawn from the market in 2004), Paxil (whose use in young people is being questioned), Fen-phen (the diet drug that was recalled), Zoloft, (which requires a "black box" warning about side effects), Zyprexa, (for which Eli Lilly agreed to pay up $500-million to settle lawsuits), hormone-replacement therapy, (which has come into question), and the now much-debated Avandia.
While most Americans are familiar with the ubiquitous direct-to-consumer advertising found on television, the greatest marketing triumph of the pharmaceutical industry arguably lies elsewhere: the ghostwritten manuscript, composed by the employees of pharmaceutical companies in cooperation with their marketing departments and then published under the byline of academic researchers.
They are being sedated with drugs and kept in psychiatric units with no therapeutic treatment and thus little real hope of overcoming their illnesses.
Secret Government Database of Vaccine-Damaged Children
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 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.
GlaxoSmithKline takes a big hit; the story of Avandia and Paxil
I've been experiencing a strong sense of deju vu ever since Gardiner Harris' story in The New York Times earlier this week that GlaxoSmithKline hid negative findings about a bestselling drug and misrepresented data in a clinical trial of the drug. This time, the drug is Avandia for diabetes, and there is evidence that Glaxo not only knew the drug increased the risk of heart attacks in patients and suppressed the data for 11 years. But according to The Times, the company also omitted cases of patients who were taking Avandia and suffered serious heart problems in the trial's tally of adverse events.
Where have we heard this before? As I revealed in Side Effects two years ago, GlaxoSmithKline pulled the same shenanigans with its blockbuster antidepressant, Paxil. Not only did the drug manufacturer suppress negative findings about the safety and effectiveness of Paxil in treating depression in children, but in one of the clinical trials it conducted of Paxil in the mid-90s, there is evidence that researchers actually omitted from the final study results, cases of adolescents who became suicidal after taking the drug. I revealed this pattern of deception in Side Effects...
Former FDA Reviewer Says Glaxo Withheld Study
Three years after FDA medical reviewer Rosemary Johann-Liang left the agency amid controversy over her work on GlaxoSmithKline’s Avandia diabetes pill, she’s back in the news. Now, Johann-Liang is telling laywers, who are suing the drugmaker, how a study was withheld from the FDA showing a link to heart attacks, Bloomberg News writes. The 2001 study, according to a deposition cited by the news service, found Avandia posed a greater risk than other diabetes meds.
Whether she will play a role in the two-day advisory committee starting tomorrow remains to be seen, but Johann-Liang caused a stir three summers ago, claiming she was harassed from the FDA for raising red flags about Avandia. Some FDA officials were upset with the recommendation for a Black Box warning and waited 17 months to implement it, but meanwhile, she was no longer allowed to make such recommendations and excluded her from safety review meetings, prompting a probe by the US Senate Finance Committee.
Glaxo Hid A Study On Avandia Risks For A Decade
Nothing like dropping a bombshell on the morning of a crucial FDA advisory committee meeting. But GlaxoSmithKline quietly began a study in 1999 to determine if the cardiovascular risks of its Avandia diabetes pill were greater than with Actos, a similar drug, and instead of publishing the results, the drugmaker spent 11 years trying to cover them up, according to The New York Times.
The results were never provided to the FDA or posted on the Glaxo web site...
Five Years of Paxil Litigation History
A limited review of the company's involvement in the legal system over just the last five years reveals a clear pattern of habitual corruption. However, although Glaxo has paid billions of dollars in accumulated fines, penalties and awards to plaintiffs in civil cases, not one company official has been arrested and charged with a crime.
Mulberry fruit protects dopaminergic neurons in toxin-induced Parkinson’s disease models
Parkinson’s disease, one of the most common neurodegenerative disorders, is characterised by the loss of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta to the striatum, and involves oxidative stress. Mulberry fruit from Morus alba L. is commonly eaten, and has long been used in traditional oriental medicine. It contains well-known antioxidant agents such as anthocyanins.
Vitamin D deficiency increases the risk of cognitive decline in the elderly
Compared to participants with healthy levels of vitamin D, participants who were severely deficient were 60 per cent more likely to experience substantial general cognitive decline, and 31 per cent more likely to experience new problems with mental flexibility.
Dr. Llewellyn commented: "This is the first study to identify a clear link between low vitamin D levels and cognitive decline. Previous research has been cross-sectional but we have now been able to demonstrate a connection between having low levels of vitamin D and going on to develop cognitive problems. It is estimated that 1 billion people worldwide have insufficient levels of vitamin D, so this is cause for real concern. Few foods contain vitamin D, synthesis from sunlight is not possible for much of the year at northern latitudes, and skin becomes less efficient at producing vitamin D with age."
Video:The Toxicology of Mercury and Current Sources of Exposure Dr Haley testifies before the Institute of Medicine
"I was here yesterday and I listened to the talk about mad cow disease and I looked around at the faces of people. We talked about one mad cow - and everybody paid rapt attention and our government spent hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars to investigate this.
What I'm gonna to talk to you about today is what I consider one of the major disasters. If you're talking about terrorist and someone affecting America, you have to talk about what's happening to our children. And we're gonna call this mad child disease because that's exactly what it is. The psychiatrists will give it a lot of names. They'll call it attention deficit disorder, autism, autism spectrum disorder, aggressive disorders.
What it is - it's just a different level of mercury toxicity. It's the difference between being a little bit drunk and being totally intoxicated with alcohol. It's that kind of difference. And we fight it. And the people to blame are the people sitting right out here right now because you guys don't read, you don't follow science, you don't do anything, and you don't speak out when there is a disaster that's hitting you and that's reported in the newspapers every day... "
Do sweeteners bring on early birth? How fizzy drinks can harm an unborn child
Mothers-to-be who down cans of fizzy drink containing artificial sweeteners could be at greater risk of having a premature baby. Research funded by the EU found a correlation between the amount of diet drink consumed and an early birth among the 60,000 women studied.
Many had switched from sugary drinks to those with artificial sweeteners believing they were a healthier option. But this study suggests that drinks using sweeteners, such as aspartame, carried dangers for the unborn child.
But the "world's largest research-based pharmaceutical company" which sits between Goldman Sachs and Marathon Oil on the Fortune 500, is also closely associated with a seemingly never-ending series of scandals.
To say Pfizer's been accused of wrongdoing is like saying BP had an oil spill. Other drug companies have a portfolio of products, Pfizer has a portfolio of scandals including, but not limited to, Chantix, Lipitor, Viagra, Geodon, Trovan, Bextra, Celebrex, Lyrica, Zoloft, Halcion and drugs for osteoarthritis, Parkinson's disease, kidney transplants and leukemia.
Cholesterol Is Not the Enemy
by Carolyn Dean MD ND
In 1913 a Russian study found that rabbits fed cholesterol developed yellow plaque in their arteries. However, the cholesterol they were fed was rancid and led directly to the abnormal finding. But by the time those facts were revealed, cholesterol’s fate was sealed. It became the bad guy and the “cause” of heart disease.
We require cholesterol as the main building block to make all our hormones. When cholesterol is down, so is your libido.
Cholesterol coats every cell in the body with a fatty membrane. This is especially important for brain cells. The brain is a very fatty tissue!
Cholesterol is an important antioxidant...
Pfizer & Other Drugmakers Face Price Fixing Lawsuit
The California Supreme Court has overturned a lower court decision that dismissed a price-fixing lawsuit brought by a group of pharmacies. They had charged the largest drugmakers agreed to set artificially high prices, and acted in concert to restrain reimportation of their lower-priced foreign drugs into the US and restrict price competition from generics. As a result, the drugmakers were able to maintain prices 50 to 400 percent higher than for the same drugs sold outside the US.
The drugmakers - which included Abbott Labs; AstraZeneca; Novartis; Allergan; Boehringer Ingelheim; Eli Lilly; Johnson & Johnson; Janssen Pharmaceutica; Ortho McNeil; Ortho Biotech; GlaxoSmithKline; Pfizer; Hoffman-LaRoche; Aventis Pharmaceuticals; Amgen; Purdue Pharma; Merck; Bristol-Myers-Squibb, and Wyeth - a so-called “pass-on” defense. In other words, they argued they weren’t liable for any illegal pricing because the pharmacies had passed the alleged overcharge to consumers and, therefore, did not suffer any harm or damages.
Pilots on SSRIs - Unfriendly Skies
"The FAA should reverse its ruling before it's too late and hundreds of lives are lost when a pilot becomes impulsive, suicidal or violent--or just loses his sharpness--under the influence of antidepressant medication," said SSRI expert, Dr Peter Breggin, in an April 19, 2010 Huffington Post commentary.
The Citizens Commission on Human Rights is also calling on the FAA to rethink allowing pilots to take SSRI in light of a new report issued last month by the National Transportation Safety Board, on a February 1, 2008 plane crash in North Carolina, by a crazy acting pilot on Zoloft, that killed all six persons on board.
Psychotropic Drugs and Children
Robert Whitaker, author of Anatomy of an Epidemic, discusses the disturbing effects of psychotropic drugs prescribed for children. Such medications, used for ADHD, depression, and anxiety, for example, have become commonplace over the past 30 years. This practice profoundly alters the lives of the children, and so now we, as a society, urgently need to address this question: do the medications help the children thrive and grow up into healthy adults? Or does this practice do more harm than good over the long term.
H1N1 Vaccine Surplus From 2009 Reveals Growing Distrust of Governments & WHO Cost To Taxpayers Exceeds 2.5 Billion
VACCINE SURPLUS FROM 2009 – Canada: $200,000,000+ worth of unused H1N1 vaccine. United States: $455,000,000+ worth of unused H1N1 vaccine. France: approximately $750,000,000 worth of unused H1N1 vaccine supply. Britain: $250,000,000 worth of unused H1N1 vaccine supply (3.8 million doses). Germany: $300,000,000 (approximately 48 million doses wasted). Italy: $260,000,000 worth of H1N1 vaccine supply unused (40 million doses). Netherlands & other Euro countries: comparable waste.
Study Shows Vaccines Cause Brain Changes Found in Autism
The results indicate that multiple vaccine exposures during the previous 3-4 months may have had a significant impact on brain growth and development in ways that are consistent with the published data on autism.
In an accompanying editorial Dr. Kris Turlejski, the Editor-in-Chief, described the findings as “alarming”, “support[ing] the possibility that there is a link between early immunization and the etiology of autism.”
Video:Michael Parenti -- Beware the Doctors What we call science is often something very unscientific. What gets funded and marketed as a scientific finding may have little to do with disinterested inquiry and perhaps more to do with corporate profit and ideology.
According to the research, between 1996 and 2006 in Belo Horizonte a total of 4924 victims died of cancer types that may be caused by electromagnetic radiation, such as tumors in the prostate, breast, lung, kidneys and liver.
After finding on the map nearly 300 points with active antennas of cellular phone networks in the city, the researcher found that 80 percent of those victims lived within 500 meters of one of these locations.
Study links Vatican Radio's waves to cancer risk
"There has been an important, coherent and meaningful correlation between exposure to Vatican Radio's structures and the risk of leukaemia and lymphoma in children," the report said, according to the daily La Stampa.
The report also warned of "important risks" of dying of cancer for people who had resided at least 10 years within a nine-kilometre radius of the radio's giant antenna towers near Cesano, some 20 kilometres north of Rome.
According to Information the manufacturer of this vaccine presented to the FDA prior to approval, if a person has already been exposed to HPV 16 or 18 prior to injection Gardasil increases the risk of precancerous lesions, or worse, by 44.6%.
That statement bears repeating, if you have been exposed to HPV 16 or 18 prior to injection and take the vaccine, you increase your risk of precancerous lesions, or worse, by 44.6%.
Buyer beware: Gardasil, given under the wrong conditions, may increase the risk of cervical cancer.
This interview discusses the two HPV vaccines, Gardasil and Cervarix and the problems and chemistry related to them.
It's a great insight into these two particular vaccines and explains why these three journalists do what they do.
Health Fascism in Australia
Over the last year the international corporate lobby Skeptics, have been behind a campaign against the Australian Vaccination Network (AVN). In 2009, one of their trolls, a lay person with no standing in medicine or government complained about the web site of the AVN to the office of the State Government funded Health Care Complaints commission (HCCC) an organisation that accepts complaints against groups found be giving out false information about health.
The remit of the HCCC, did not actually cover parent groups which discussed the pros and cons of vaccination, so the State government slightly changed the remit to satisfy the Skeptics. The government then proceeded with a year long investigation into Meryl Dorey the woman who established and runs the AVN and the AVN itself.
Vitamin E Reduces Risk of Alzheimer’s, Swedish Study Finds
High levels of several vitamin E components in the blood are associated with a decreased risk for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in advanced age, suggesting that vitamin E may help prevent cognitive deterioration in elderly people. This is the conclusion reached in a Swedish study published in the July 2010 issue of the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.
“Vitamin E is a family of eight natural components, but most studies related to Alzheimer’s disease investigate only one of these components, alpha-tocopherol,” says Dr. Francesca Mangialasche, who led the study. “We hypothesized that all the vitamin E family members could be important in protecting against AD. If confirmed, this result has implications for both individuals and society, as 70 percent of all dementia cases in the general population occur in people over 75 years of age, and the study suggests a protective effect of vitamin E against AD in individuals aged 80+.”
American Farmland Trust: The United States Needs 13 Million More Acres of Fruits and Vegetables to Meet the RDA
American Farmland Trust has sponsored the nationwide America’s Favorite Farmers Markets contest to promote the value of farmers markets in communities, and to make the connection between fresh local foods and the local farms and farmland that supply them. Farmers markets play a critical role in keeping farmers on the land. Keeping farms viable, by providing them with a venue where they can provide their much sought after products is one of the best ways to save the land that sustains us.
Scientists Identify a Secret Ingredient in Honey That Kills Bacteria
A new research published in the July 2010 print edition of the FASEB Journal explains for the first time how honey kills bacteria. Specifically, the research shows that bees make a protein that they add to the honey, called defensin-1, which could one day be used to treat burns and skin infections and to develop new drugs that could combat antibiotic-resistant infections.
Nobel laureate gives homeopathy a boost
French virologist Luc Montagnier stunned his colleagues at a prestigious international conference when he presented a new method for detecting viral infections that bore close parallels to the basic tenets of homeopathy.
Although fellow Nobel prize winners -- who view homeopathy as quackery -- were left openly shaking their heads, Montagnier's comments were rapidly embraced by homeopaths eager for greater credibility.
Montagnier told the conference last week that solutions containing the DNA of pathogenic bacteria and viruses, including HIV, "could emit low frequency radio waves" that induced surrounding water molecules to become arranged into "nanostructures". These water molecules, he said, could also emit radio waves.
He suggested water could retain such properties even after the original solutions were massively diluted, to the point where the original DNA had effectively vanished. In this way, he suggested, water could retain the "memory" of substances with which it had been in contact -- and doctors could use the emissions to detect disease.
Surviving A Hospital Stay
I know this title might make you think that I’ll offer you a list of supplements to take with you to the hospital. Maybe I’ll do that in a future blog. But today I want to give you a tip from a friend on the best way to survive your hospital stay.
What he did was keep a journal. That’s right. Turn your stay into a novel with the characters being everyone who walks into your room.
Antibiotics for Farm Animals—Is the FDA Serious?
Last Wednesday, the FDA announced that it wanted to reduce the use of growth-promoting antibiotic drugs for meat-producing animals because it contributes to drug resistance in humans. Good intentions, perhaps—but it doesn’t go nearly far enough...
World's top sweetener is made with GM bacteria
THE MOST widely used sweetener in the world, found in fizzy drinks and sweets, is being made using a secret genetic engineering process, which some scientists claim needs further testing for toxic side-effects.
As the G8 summit of rich country leaders decided last night to launch an inquiry into the safety of genetically modified (GM) food, an investigation by the Independent on Sunday revealed that Monsanto, the pioneering GM food giant which makes aspartame, often uses genetically engineered bacteria to produce the sweetener at its US production plants.
"We have two strains of bacteria - one is traditionally modified and one is genetically modified," said one Monsanto source. "It's got a modified enzyme. It has one amino acid different."
Genetically Engineered Soybeans May Cause Allergies
Beginning in 1996, genes from bacteria and viruses have been forced into the DNA of soy, corn, cotton, and canola plants, which are used for food. Ohio allergist John Boyles is one of a growing number of experts who believe that these genetically modified (GM) foods are contributing to the huge jump in food allergies in the US, especially among children.
Weed killer kills human cells. Study intensifies debate over 'inert' ingredients.
Used in yards, farms and parks throughout the world, Roundup has long been a top-selling weed killer. But now researchers have found that one of Roundup’s inert ingredients can kill human cells, particularly embryonic, placental and umbilical cord cells.
The new findings intensify a debate about so-called “inerts” — the solvents, preservatives, surfactants and other substances that manufacturers add to pesticides. Nearly 4,000 inert ingredients are approved for use by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Glyphosate, Roundup’s active ingredient, is the most widely used herbicide in the United States. About 100 million pounds are applied to U.S. farms and lawns every year, according to the EPA.
Until now, most health studies have focused on the safety of glyphosate, rather than the mixture of ingredients found in Roundup. But in the new study, scientists found that Roundup’s inert ingredients amplified the toxic effect on human cells—even at concentrations much more diluted than those used on farms and lawns.
One fine example is their deletion of Martin Walker's page, yet comparatively inconsequential namesakes, one a director of Hull City football club and another a reporter are granted Wiki pages!
Tracking the American Epidemic of Mental Illness Part IV - Non-Profit Advocacy Groups
As a main component of the Psychopharmaceutical Industrial Complex, the so-called "patient advocacy" organizations have become the leading force behind the American epidemic of mental illness over the past two decades.
Drug makers, and their foundations, funnel millions of dollars to these non-profits every year. In return, the leaders recruit their members as foot soldiers to carry out the latest marketing campaigns and to provide a fire-wall so that no money trail can be tracked back to the drug companies.
UK: Ministers declare war on Britain's tranquilliser crisis
Ministers are poised to demand a dramatic reduction in the millions of tranquillisers prescribed in the UK every year, amid growing concerns about the long-term effects on patients who become addicted to them.
A review of the problem of patient addiction – campaigners claim about 1.5 million people are affected – is expected to recommend a huge decrease in the availability of benzodiazepine tranquillisers, including Valium.
Creating Disease: Big Pharma and Disease Mongering
You may think there is enough disease in the world already, and that no one would want to add to the diseases that we humans must deal with. But there is a powerful industry in our society that is working overtime to invent illnesses and to convince us we are suffering from them.
Pass the Mustard, or Just Pass on the Hot Dog?
More hot dogs are eaten at the 4th of July holiday than at any other time of the year. The National Hot Dog and Sausage Council (yes, an all-too-real trade organization) says that "during the Independence Day weekend, 155 million will be gobbled up" and that Americans will consume more than seven billion hot dogs over the summer. "Every year," they proudly proclaim, "Americans eat an average of 60 hot dogs each."
What the article doesn't say (probably assuming everyone knows...) is that mustard contains curcumin, which is an anti-cancer agent.
"The next time you have a hot dog, don't forget to load it up with mustard. Research over 50 years has shown that the substance in mustard can prevent and treat cancer. This comes from the MD Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas and is not some 'dicey' miracle cure that will set you back thousands of dollars and probably not work. This amazing stuff costs nearly nothing and you may have some in your cupboard or refrigerator right now."
(That is the same stuff that's in mustard... see story above)
Antioxidants help arteries stay healthy
"Antioxidant supplementation significantly increased large and small artery elasticity in patients with multiple cardiovascular risk factors. This beneficial vascular effect was associated with an improvement in glucose and lipid metabolism as well as significant decrease in blood pressure".
UK: Major Cancer Charity to Admit It Was Wrong About Suntanning!
Hold onto your hat! Cancer Research UK is about to change its advice on suntanning! After more than 20 years of warning people to avoid the sun's rays as deadly and to coat themselves in toxic sunscreens, the premier cancer charity will soon start advising people that they should catch some rays.
Unfortunately, they can't seem to get it all right. They're still going to tell people to slather the sunscreen lotion on. But, hey! At least they're going to get part of it right. For a change.
Environmental Illness: Urgent Appeal to European Environment, Health Ministers
Greatly concerned, participants noted the increasing prevalence of chronic multisystem illnesses such as multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS), chronic fatigue syndrome (CSF), fibromyalgia (FMS) as well as cardiovascular diseases, metabolic syndrome, neurodegenerative diseases, auto immune diseases, and cancer.
At the conference it was impressively demonstrated that these chronic diseases are based on similar pathological mechanisms. Common mechanisms are chronic inflammatory processes influenced by environmental factors including chemical pollutants, biological infectious agents, and electromagnetic field (EMF) triggers.
Video: A QUESTION OF SOVEREIGNTY a film by Kevin P. Miller
In this patriotic and sentimental film, international award winning Writer/Director Kevin P. Miller (GENERATION RX, WE BECOME SILENT) exposes how Canadians are being stripped of their personal sovereignty by government agencies — and how free trade deals and other international agreements imperil Canadian democracy.
Quietly, over a period of many years, unconstitutional legislation encompassed in Bills C-51, C-6, and the current Bill C-36 have placed not only basic civil liberties and freedoms at risk, but Canada's national sovereignty as well. The film shares how entangling alliances with groups like the World Trade Organization, the World Health Organization, Codex Alimentarius, the United States and even multinational corporate interests have become so powerful that they literally threaten to make elected officials in Parliament irrelevant.
A QUESTION OF SOVEREIGNTY discusses why this dramatic shift in the balance of power puts the nation and its people at a vital crossroad early in the 21st century — and why some of the past giants of Canadian politics may hold the answers to Canada's future.
A comment from Vince Boehm:In answer to the question this article poses, it is absurdly easy to fake a mental illness because labeling of this sort depends almost exclusively on self-disclosure.
In 1972, a psychologist named David Rosenhan convinced some of his friends to fake their way into psychiatric wards across the US.
The pseudopatients were to present themselves and say words along these lines: "I am hearing a voice. It is saying thud." Rosenhan specifically chose this complaint because nowhere in psychiatric literature are there any reports of any person hearing a voice that contains such obvious cartoon angst.
Upon further questioning, the eight pseudopatients were to answer honestly, save for name and occupation. They were to feign no other symptoms. Once on the ward, if admitted, they were immediately to say that the voice had disappeared and that they now felt fine. Rosenhan then gave his confederates a lesson in managing medication, how to avoid swallowing it by slipping it under the tongue, so it could later be blurted back to the toilet bowl.
Once in the admissions unit, Rosenhan was led to a small white room. "What is the problem?" a psychiatrist asked.
"I'm hearing a voice," Rosenhan said, and then he said nothing else.
"And what is the voice saying?" the psychiatrist questioned, falling, unbeknown to him, straight into Rosenhan's rabbit hole.
"Thud," Rosenhan said, smugly, I imagine.
"Thud?" the psychiatrist asked. "Did you say thud?"
"Thud," Rosenhan said again.
Rosenhan was led down a long hallway. Across the country, the eight other pseudopatients were also being admitted. Rosenhan must have been scared, exhilarated. He was a journalist, a scientist at the apex, putting his body on the line for knowledge. He was taken to a room and told to undress.
"When will I get out?" we can imagine Rosenhan asked, his voice perhaps rising now, some panic here - what had he done, my God.
"When you are well," a doctor answered, or something to this effect. But he was well: 110 over 80, a pulse of 72, a temperature that hovered in the mid-zone of moderate, homeostatic, a machine well greased. It didn't matter. He was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and kept for many days.
The strange thing was, the other patients seemed to know that Rosenhan was normal, even while the doctors did not. One young man, coming up to Rosenhan in the dayroom, said "You're not crazy. You're a journalist or a professor." Another said, "You're checking up on the hospital."
And then one day, for a reason as arbitrary as his admission, he was discharged.
Rosenhan's paper describing his findings, On Being Sane In Insane Places, was published in Science, where it burst like a bomb on the world of psychiatry.
The experiment was greeted with outrage, and then, at last, a challenge. "All right," said one hospital, its institutional chest all puffed up. "You think we don't know what we're doing? Here's a dare. In the next three months, send as many pseudopatients as you like to our emergency room and we'll detect them. Go ahead."
Now, Rosenhan liked a fight. So he said, "Sure." He said in the next three months he would send an undisclosed number of pseudopatients to this particular hospital, and the staff were to judge, in a sort of experimental reversal, not who was insane, but who was sane. One month passed. Two months passed. At the end of three months, the hospital staff reported to Rosenhan that they had detected, with a high degree of confidence, 41 of Rosenhan's pseudopatients. Rosenhan had, in fact, sent none. Case closed. Match over. Psychiatry hung its head.
In the 1970s, Spitzer and a group of colleagues completely revised the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual on Mental Disorders, or DSM for short, tightening the diagnostic criteria, taking away from it signs of subjectivity and psychobabble... "No," repeats Spitzer, "that experiment could never be successfully repeated. Not in this day and age."
Case Closed.
Dumbing Down Society Part I: Foods, Beverages and Meds
Is there a deliberate effort by the government to dumb down the masses? The statement is hard to prove but there exists a great amount of data proving that the ruling elite not only tolerates, but effectively introduces policies that have a detrimental effect on the physical and mental health of the population. This series of articles looks at the many ways the modern man is being dumbed down. Part I looks at the poisons found in everyday foods, beverages and medications.
Why are Bees Dying? Your Cell Phone May Hold a Clue
The researchers fitted cellphones to a hive and activated them for specific lengths of time. After three months of the experiment, honey production ceased, the queen laid half as many eggs, and the hive population dropped. Andrew Goldsworthy a British biologist told CNN that a pigment called cryptochrome, which the bees use for navigation and is compromised by cellphone radiation and affects the insects ability to find their hives.
But he suggests the solution would be to change cellphone frequency so it wouldn't harm the bees. "It's possible to modify the signal coming from the [cell] phones and the base station in such a way that it doesn't produce the frequencies that disturb the cryptochrome molecules," Goldsworthy said.
What Causes Obesity?
He finally found that the cause of obesity disease is a damaged gland in the brain. This gland is called the hypothalamus and it controls such things as fat storage and metabolism. If the hypothalamus becomes damaged it will send out wrong signals to every part of the body. These signals cause the body to store fat. The body will never go into those fat stores unless that gland is healed or the body is exposed to some extreme measure such as gastro-bypass surgery.
The third cause for obesity disease did not exist when Dr. Simeons was doing his research. It is caused by the chemical additives to our food, specifically MSG and aspartame. These chemicals are called excitotoxins. Excitotoxins will activate nerves in our bodies and cause them to remain in an excited state. The nerves will never shut down so they begin to die. The hypothalamus is nothing but a bunch of neurons (nerve endings.) The death of these neurons cause what are called hypothalamic lesions. These lesions will cause obesity because the hypothalamus is not functioning properly.
Major JAMA Study Shows Statins Do Not Prevent Heart Disease
Statins, the drug that Big Pharma has convinced leading doctors to push on nearly everyone, have finally been subjected to the study that should have been done before being approved for sale. The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reports that a large metastudy has shown that statins do not reduce death rates in people without established heart disease. Statins have no benefit for most people subjected to them.
Nigerian families sue over 'drug tests' on their kids
The Families alleged that Pfizer breached international law when it tested, Trovan on the children without consent. Trovan was tested on 200 Nigerian children from Kano, in northern Nigeria, during a bacterial-meningitis outbreak in 1996. Eleven children died and others were blinded, paralysed or brain-damaged.
Remember John Le Carré's "The Constant Gardener"?
USA: Millions of vaccine doses to be burned
About a quarter of the swine flu vaccine produced for the U.S. public has expired — meaning that a whopping 40 million doses worth about $260 million are being written off as trash.
Video:Does HIV cause Aids? Graduation of an Italian medical student
This is a student doing his university exams to become a medical doctor at the University of Bologna, Italy. He proves to the satisfaction of the examining members of the faculty that HIV is not a sufficient cause for Aids and discusses the damaging effects of current Aids treatment protocols.
Is HIV to Gallo as kuru is to Gajdusek?
The first discovered pathogenic “slow virus” thought to infect human beings was the agent responsible for the invariably fatal kuru disease that affected members of the Fore tribe in New Guinea. The discovery was credited to Carleton Gajdusek, who was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1976 for uncovering thereby “new mechanisms for the origin and dissemination of infectious diseases”.
Basil Mathioudakis, head of the EU Commission's Food Law Unit
The occasion of this unusual coincidence of views was a lunchtime seminar convened by Irish (North West constituency) independent Member of the European Parliament (MEP), Marian Harkin. The debate’s title, “Towards a scientifically and legally rational regulatory approach to natural health products in Europe” ensured that polarised viewpoints would be aired. The audience in Brussels was a mix of other MEPs, their assistants and a sprinkling of stakeholders who were there because of their concerns over their futures as consumers, retailers or distributors of natural health products.
Not surprisingly, Mr Mathioudakis’ talk centred around the ‘what’ of the situation, with a specific focus on food supplements. There was no attempt to explain ‘how’ the legislation had come into being. An even greater omission was the failure to explain ‘why’ this complex framework of legislation affecting natural health was needed.
In exposing the nonsensical nature of the legal framework that has been proposed by the Commission and supported by EFSA, Dr Verkerk homed in on three main areas: the proposal to harmonise EU-wide maximum levels of vitamins and minerals, the fact that the simplified medicinal licensing system for ‘traditional herbal medicinal products’ which comes fully into force in April 2011 was not fit for purpose and the wayward health claims process that was set to infringe the ability of individuals and companies to inform consumers about the health properties of food and supplement products.
Call to action: Calling all European citizens: have you corresponded with or spoken to your MEP recently about these issues? Find out what you can do on the Get Involved page.
Flashback to November 2003:Mathioudakis says nutrition and prevention of illness have no connection
The other major player [in Codex Alimentarius Nutrition Committee meetings] is Basil Mathioudakis, the EU "Observer", representing a solid block of nations whose officials attend the meetings but have practically lost any possibility of independent action.
You will also find out that for these two officials, nutrition has "nothing to do with prevention" and that prevention "is the province of medicine". Let us stop and think for a moment: International legislation, which will deeply affect our health choices, not to speak of the laws and health expenditures of a multitude of countries, is being formed by an obscure Committee of government bureaucrats, which in turn appears to be controlled or "steered" by a very small number of individuals who think that health and nutrition are complete strangers!
Considering the view that "nutrition has nothing to do with preventing illness", is it any wonder that health expenditures in most countries are on the rise, while health of the population seems to be at an all-time low?
Orthorexia: You are Sick if You Want to Eat Right
First of all, we are not making this up. "Healthy food obsession sparks rise in new eating disorder: Fixation with healthy eating can be sign of serious psychological disorder" was an actual article headline from UK's The Observer, founded 1791, the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.
And now, eating right has an official disease name, too: orthorexia nervosa.
It is our time to make salt - People’s Movement Assembly on Food Sovereignty
Over a half-century ago, Mahatma Gandhi led a multitude of Indians to the sea to make salt-in defiance of the British Empire's monopoly on this resource critical to people's diet. The action catalyzed the fragmented movement for Indian independence and was the beginning of the end for Britain's rule over India. The act of "making salt" has since been repeated many times in many forms by people's movements seeking liberation, justice and sovereignty: Cesar Chavez, Nelson Mandela, and the Zapatistas are just a few of the most prominent examples. Our food movement- one that spans the globe-seeks food sovereignty from the monopolies that dominate our food systems with the complicity of our governments. We are powerful, creative, committed and diverse.
It is our time to make salt.
Honey as an antibiotic: Scientists identify a secret ingredient in honey that kills bacteria
Sweet news for those looking for new antibiotics: A new research published in the July 2010 print edition of the FASEB Journal explains for the first time how honey kills bacteria. Specifically, the research shows that bees make a protein that they add to the honey, called defensin-1, which could one day be used to treat burns and skin infections and to develop new drugs that could combat antibiotic-resistant infections.
Gauging Magnesium Deficiency Symptoms
Lately people have been asking me how much magnesium to take. Serum magnesium blood tests are no great help, because only 1% of the body’s magnesium is in the blood, so I made a list. I found 100 factors that are associated with magnesium deficiency and I put them in my book, The Magnesium Miracle.
The Doctor of the Future
When Dr. Sinatra first met me he immediately called me the doctor of the future because he was very impressed that I had both an MD and an ND degree.
“With the understanding that knowledge empowers, our mission at [Dr. Sinatra's] Heart MD Institute is to educate patients and medical professionals alike about integrative medicine, with a special focus on metabolic cardiology. Heart MD Institute aims to inspire a restructuring of the doctor/patient relationship where together, both actively participate in the patient’s healing process. The pervading philosophy at Heart MD Institute is “prevention is easier than cure.”
MEDICALLY CAUSED DEATH IN AMERICA
The pharmaceutical giants stand back and carve up the populace into "promising markets." They seek new disease labels and new profits from more and more toxic drugs. They do whatever they can--legally or illegally--to influence doctors in their prescribing habits. Some drug studies which cast new medicines in a negative light are buried. FDA panels are filled with doctors who have drug-company ties. Legislators are incessantly lobbied and supported with pharma campaign monies.
Nutrition, the cornerstone of good health, is ignored or devalued by most physicians. The FDA continues to attack nutritional supplements, even though the overall safety record of these nutrients is good, whereas, once again, the medical drugs the FDA certifies as safe are killing 106,000 Americans per year.
Physicians are trained to pay exclusive homage to peer-reviewed published drug studies. These doctors unfailingly ignore the fact that, if medical drugs are killing a million Americans per decade, the studies on which those drugs are based must be fraudulent or, at the very least, massively incompetent. In other words, the whole literature is suspect, unreliable, and impenetrable.
UN Calls Shock Treatment at Mass. School 'Torture'
The Boston-area's Judge Rotenberg Center educates and treats enrollees ages 3 to adult, all of whom are struggling with severe emotional, behavior, and psychiatric problems, including autism-like disorders. And for about half of the 250 students here, undesirable behavior means getting hooked up to a special machine and administered an electric shock.
"To be frank, I was shocked when I was reading the report," said Manfred Nowak, the UN's Special Rapporteur on Torture. "What I did, on the 11th of May, was to send an urgent appeal to the U.S. government asking them to investigate."
Psychiatric Drugs Proven To Cause Suicide
The purpose of this investigation has been to find data about the preceding psychopharmacological treatment for all persons who committed suicide in Sweden 2007.
The conclusion is that a large percentage of the persons who committed suicide in Sweden in 2007 had received extensive treatment with psychiatric drugs within a year of and close to the suicide.
This is a report about suicides committed in Sweden (with around 9 million citizens) in 2007 and the psychiatric drug treatment that preceded these suicides.
Video:Sara Carlin, Paxil And Drug Safety In Canada
There have been numerous claims that a medication caused a suicide, but few lead to sweeping changes. In Canada, however, the suicide of 18-year-old Sarah Carlin, who had taken the Paxil antidepressant, is a clear exception. Following a coroner’s inquest, Canada’s provincial and federal governments were told to ensure patients are better informed about drug risks, tighten regulations on drugmakers and establish an independent agency to regulate medications.
100,000 Americans Die Each Year from Prescription Drugs, While Pharma Companies Get Rich
The industry spends hundreds of millions of dollars on physicians every year. In one survey, 9 out of 10 doctors said they had recently taken something of value from the drug industry. And some of those doctors take hundreds of thousands of dollars each year from the industry. The drug companies pay doctors to be their so-called consultants. They also pay them to sit on corporate advisory boards and to give lectures to other doctors. They pay for up to 80 percent of the continuing medical education that doctors need to maintain their licenses. If you ask a doctor if this is a problem, they will more than likely tell you no...
When is a drug too risky to stay on the market?
Drug safety questions arose again this week, as calls mount for the diabetes pill Avandia to be withdrawn. Surprisingly, the Food and Drug Administration has no firm rules for deciding such cases - just a murky guideline of "when the risks exceed the benefits."
Jumpin’ Jupiter: When Should Statins Be Prescribed?
Now, a “critical reappraisal” has appeared in The Archives of Internal Medicine that calls the trial “flawed,” because there were all sorts of methodological problems and that a “strong commercial interest” may have resulted in biased outcomes. Why? Nine of 14 Jupiter authors have financial ties to AstraZeneca and the principal investigator, Paul Ridker of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, is a co-holder of the patent for the CRP test, which was known previously, and the head of the Data Safety Monitoring Board. And a second article also questions the veracity of the trial (see here).
Myoglobin exists in at least three distinct forms, which can be characterized as Mg+2 (Ferrous), Mg+3 (Ferric), and Mg+4 (Ferryl), depending upon the amount of charge that is present on the central Iron atom. As Mg+2, its healthy state, it will readily take up oxygen and store it, whereas, when converted to Mg+3 by the addition of a proton, it becomes inert. However, with the addition of yet another proton, it becomes Mg+4, a highly toxic reactive agent that will begin to break down the fatty acids contained in the outer cell wall of the muscle cell (so-called peroxidative damage), and go on to destroy the cholesterol in the cell wall as well. Myoglobin becomes Ferryl myoglobin in the presence of excess amounts of free radicals, i.e., under oxidative stress induced by highly reactive oxygen compounds like hydrogen peroxide. Recall that, with statin therapy, hydrogen peroxide is generated in the mitochondria because the process of breaking down oxygen and converting it to water is incomplete -- due to the insufficient supply of coenzyme Q10.
The federal agency says it has the power to ban the practice, but it's starting by issuing "draft guidance" in hopes the food industry will make voluntary changes. After a 60-day public comment period, the guidance will become FDA policy.
The FDA is a bit late, there. It has been known for years that antibiotics in animal feed are problematic and cause anitbiotic resistant bacterial strains to develop. What made them change course and act now?
Norway: Merck Paying Experts to Recommend Gardasil
According to the Norwegian newspaper the VG NETT in their report Fikk betalt av vaksineprodusent – VG Nett om Helse og medisin the Norwegian experts received money from Merck and then advised their government on the HPV vaccine Gardasil, which at the time was only in it’s experimental stages, thus putting their own financial gain above the lives of the innocent children of Norway.
“Four of the experts who advised the government to vaccinate all 12-year-old girls with the HPV vaccine Gardasil have received money for research from the U.S. pharmaceutical giant Merck.
A fifth expert, senior research worker Ellen Nilsen, went directly from the group which gave Health Minister Sylvia Brustad advice, to a position with the company that markets the vaccine in Norway.
There are 13 persons in the expert group."
The Marvellous Health of Unvaccinated Children
As a concerned, compassionate and considerate paediatrician, I can only arrive at one conclusion. Unvaccinated children have by far the best chance of enjoying marvellous health. Any vaccination at all works to cripple the chances of this end.
AIDS - What everyone should know: like about gut bacteria
A continuing revelation for me is the importance of the bacteria in our gut, which I first learned about from Tony Lance [What really caused AIDS: Slicing through the Gordian Knot, 20 February 2008]. Apparently I’m not the only one for whom this was a revelation, because the media keep mentioning pertinent new aspects, all of which have so far confirmed and extended Lance’s insights about the connections between the gut microflora and “AIDS” and testing “HIV-positive”.
They say that the low level beam does deliver a small dose of radiation to the body but because the beam concentrates on the skin - one of the most radiation-sensitive organs of the human body - that dose may be up to 20 times higher than first estimated.
Dr David Brenner, head of Columbia University's centre for radiological research, said although the danger posed to the individual passenger is 'very low', he is urging researchers to carry out more tests on the device to look at the way it affects specific groups who could be more sensitive to radiation.
He says children and passengers with gene mutations - around one in 20 of the population - are more at risk as they are less able to repair X-ray damage to their DNA.
U.S. scores dead last again in healthcare study
Americans spend twice as much as residents of other developed countries on healthcare, but get lower quality, less efficiency and have the least equitable system, according to a report released on Wednesday.
Every other system covers all its citizens, the report noted and said the U.S. system, which leaves 46 million Americans or 15 percent of the population without health insurance, is the most unfair.
"The lower the performance score for equity, the lower the performance on other measures. This suggests that, when a country fails to meet the needs of the most vulnerable, it also fails to meet the needs of the average citizen," the report reads.
USA: Obama's Executive Order brings more Healthcare Bureaucracy but does not usher in Codex - National Health Federation
On June 10th, Barack Obama issued an Executive Order creating the “National Prevention, Health Promotion, and Public Health Council. As with all government programs and bureaucracy, this additional layer of bureaucracy is ostensibly intended to do good, in this particular case to develop and promote a national strategy for improving Americans’ health. As the Executive Order puts it, this Public Health Council will write up and give to the President “a list of national priorities on health promotion and disease prevention to address lifestyle behavior modification (including smoking cessation, proper nutrition, appropriate exercise, mental health, behavioral health, substance-use disorder, and domestic violence screenings) and the prevention measures for the five leading disease killers in the United States.”
Vitamin C and Cardiovascular Disease
The low levels of vitamin C that are available through diet are inadequate to prevent many people developing arterial plaques, and over time this may result in cardiovascular disease. Post mortem examinations showed that 77% of young American soldiers killed in the Korean war (average age 22) already had well-advanced atherosclerosis (heart disease), and post mortem studies from the Vietnam war gave similar results. Heart disease is not just a disease of the elderly, although it does not usually become life threatening until later in life.
How can we prevent it? Pauling believed that once we start taking high levels of vitamin C, the disease process is halted, or at least slowed, as Lp(a) cholesterol is no longer needed as a repair material. He also believed that when we take adequate levels of vitamin C, existing arterial plaques may start to be removed from the arteries. He found that the removal of plaques is more rapid if the amino acid lysine is taken along with vitamin C. Lysine appears to attach to the Lp(a) in existing plaque deposits and helps to loosen them. Linus Pauling recommended at least 3000mg of vitamin C per day as a preventive dose, and significantly higher levels of both vitamin C and lysine for the treatment of existing heart disease. Dosage is a key factor: low doses are ineffective.
“This finding supports an active role of vitamin D in the development of Type 2 diabetes,” said study co-author Esther Krug, MD, an assistant professor of medicine at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and an endocrinologist at Sinai Hospital, Baltimore.
Protect your rights to natural medicine!
When something is broken, it should be fixed or replaced. This applies to the many defective parts of the legal system that regulators, both in the USA and Europe, are building around natural health products. Lobbying, advocacy or even riots in the street will resolve little, unless accompanied by carefully planned legal challenges that are set to fix the bad laws that have been imposed to either stop us speaking freely about the health benefits of natural health products, or accessing them.
USA: Dieticians Playing Monopoly With Health
The American Dietetic Association (ADA) wants to create a monopoly on state nutritional licensure. This organization—which lists among its corporate sponsors soft drink giants Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, cereal manufacturers General Mills and Kellogg’s, candy maker Mars, and Unilever, the multinational corporation that owns many of the world’s consumer products brands in foods and beverages—already has a stranglehold on who can dispense nutritional counseling at the state level.
By accepting only a single credentialing agency—one run by the dieticians, not nutritionists—the Michigan board is establishing a “one-size-fits-all” dietician standard for both nutritionists and dietitians. This removes all competition, essentially handing the ADA a monopoly over nutritional therapy.
Doctor's Data Laboratory files lawsuit against 'Quackbuster' Stephen Barrett
On Friday June 18th, 2010 Doctor's Data Laboratory filed an eleven count lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois against Stephen J. Barrett, MD, the National Council Against Health Fraud Inc (NCAHF), Consumer Health Digest, and Quackwatch, Inc.
The lawsuit seeks $5,000,000 in damages and an additional $15,000,000 in punitive damages from the Defendants, temporary and permanent injunctions preventing re-occurrence, plus whatever else the Court deems suitable.
Mexico Fines Six Drugmakers For Collusion
Rejecting an appeal, the Federal Competition Commission voted 4 to 1 to fine the companies $11.6 million for conspiring to raise prices of meds sold to a social-services agency, Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social.
According to the CFC, the drugmakers engaged in monopolistic practices during public bidding organzied by the agency and, in doing so, eliminated competition, which forced the IMSS, as its known, to pay artificially high prices. Those fined include Eli Lilly, Laboratorios Cryopharma, Probiomed, Fresenius Kabi Mexico, Baxter and Laboratorios Pisa. The meds involved were insulin and injectable saline solutions. Each drugmaker was fined $1.7 million and several execs who ‘directly particpiated’ in the schemes were also fined $1.6 million each.
Mercury promotes blood clots, which increases heart disease risk
Researchers have determined that exposure to low levels of mercury can encourage clotting of red blood cells, a dangerous condition called thrombosis that contributes to cardiovascular disease.
In short, the research shows that red blood cells, when dying after exposure to mercury, release proteins that encourage blood cells and platelets to clot and clump together – or coagulate – inside vessels. The increased clots can worsen existing cardiovascular disease and raise its risk in others.
Mercury is a global environmental contaminant with almost universal human exposure. The metal is linked to an increased risk for developing cardiovascular disease. Its association with one of the top human diseases has vast public health implications.
The laboratory study is the first to identify the specific cell responses that may play a role in why exposure to the metal elevates the risk of heart and circulatory disease. The results validate that changes seen in red blood cells exposed to very high levels of mercury also occur in cells exposed to low levels of the metal.
Merck To Pay $8M In Damages In Fosamax Trial
In replay of a courtroom battle that ended in a mistrial last fall, a federal jury today voted unanimously that Merck’s Fosamax osteoporosis drug was responsible for causing jawbone deterioration suffered by a Florida woman, who was awarded $8 million in compensatory damages.
Fosamax Follies
Fosamax is marketed to treat osteoporosis (i.e. thin bones). Apparently it strengthens bones by destroying them. While the issue with jaw bones seems to be the most common there have also been recent case reports of, "low impact femur fractures" i.e. people stepping off a bus or the like and fracturing their thigh bone.
I realized bisphosphonates were problematic but I still have trouble wrapping my mind around the sheer arrogance and stupidity of this approach. It is not a good idea to begin killing off whole classes of cells in an otherwise healthy person or for that matter in a very ill person either, that's not medicine it's poison. Secondly what genius decided it would be a good idea to kill off the cells involved in bone remodeling (i.e bone maintenance) in people with weakened bones.
Indian Children Blinded, Crippled By Fluoride In Water
The controversy over adding sodium fluoride to water supplies in both the U.S. and the UK is intensifying as two separate stories out of India reveal that children are being blinded and crippled partly as a result of the neurotoxin being artificially added to drinking water.
In the Indian village of Gaudiyan, well over half of the population have bone deformities, making them physically handicapped. Children are born normally but after they start drinking the fluoridated water, they begin to develop crippling defects in their hands and feet.
“Due to the excess fluoride content in drinking water, the calcium intake is not absorbed in the body, causing disabilities and deformities,” said Dr Amit Shukla, a neurophysician.
In a report written for the Council of Europe and to be presented to it later in the week, Mr Flynn argues governments wasted huge sums of money on vaccines that were not needed.
Health authorities across Europe found their priorities diverted in their response to the declaration of a swine flu pandemic, he said, allegedly made after the WHO changed its definition of a pandemic so that it no longer considered how many infections or deaths had taken place.
100,000 Americans Die Each Year from Prescription Drugs, While Pharma Companies Get Rich
The study estimating that 100,000 Americans die each year from their prescriptions looked only at deaths from known side effects. That is, those deaths didn’t happen because the doctor made a mistake and prescribed the wrong drug, or the pharmacist made a mistake in filling the prescription, or the patient accidentally took too much. Unfortunately, thousands of patients die from such mistakes too, but this study looked only at deaths where our present medical system wouldn’t fault anyone. Tens of thousands of people are dying every year from drugs they took just as the doctor directed. This shows you how dangerous medications are.
These articles are brought to you strictly for educational and informational purposes. Be sure to consult your health practitioner of choice before utilizing any of the information to cure or mitigate disease. Any copyrighted material cited is used strictly in a non commercial way and in accordance with the "fair use" doctrine.
