Hospital Errors, Patient Complaints, Police Provocateurs in Montebello - NewsGrabs 26 August 2007

Categories

NewsGrabs

Health Supreme's NewsGrabs are a selection of alternative health and other underprivileged news. Find the news you may have missed in your everyday reading - watch out for NewsGrabs ... on Sundays.

In this issue:

VITAMIN E REDUCES HEART DISEASE - Pectin kills prostate cancer cells - Antioxidants prevent DNA damage - Medicare Won't Cover Hospital Errors - Doctors Ignore Patient Complaints Of Side Effects - Why so many Americans today are 'mentally ill' - Pain medicine use doubled - HPV Vaccine Trial Failed - Researcher blasts HPV marketing - Cancer Society in Bed with Cell Phone Industry - GM Food Toxins - Aspartame Cover-Up - E211: fear over drinks additive - Video: Dangers of MSG - US food aid 'wrecking' Africa - How the White House Drowned New Orleans - Video: Police provocateurs at Montebello Summit?

More information out there...

Of course there is much I cannot cover but other sources for this kind of information exist and are active.

You can subscribe to the Zeus Newsletter here. Appears twice monthly. If you would like to see some samples of Louise's collection of informative links, here are the archives.

The Alternative Medicine Yahoo Group is another great place to get information on what is happening in the world of nutrition and other natural health options.

For the influence of electromagnetic waves from radio, mobile phones and other radio emitting devices, check out the emfrefugee group on Yahoo.

If you are interested in a different take on the news that isn't health centered but is certainly fun, check out Robin Good TV News. You can watch when you want, but you can also send in your own video news broadcasts from your corner of the globe and likely have them published on that viral tv channel.

- - -

NATURAL VITAMIN E DRAMATICALLY REDUCES HEART DISEASE
In an absolutely unbelievable reporting of their own study information the authors erroneously concluded “There were no overall effects of ascorbic acid, vitamin E, or beta carotene on cardiovascular events among women at high risk for cardiovascular disease.” This is a flat out lie based on their own study data that they report in the American Medical Association’s Archives of Internal Medicine. They concocted this false and misleading conclusion by including the people who said they were supposed to be taking vitamin E but really didn’t take the vitamin E in the final statistical analysis.

Pectin kills prostate cancer cells
The study, published in the August issue of the journal Glycobiology, found that exposing prostate cancer cells to pectin under laboratory conditions reduced the number of cells by up to 40 percent. UGA Cancer Center researcher Debra Mohnen and her colleagues at UGA, along with Vijay Kumar, chief of research and development at the VA Medical Center in Augusta, found that the cells literally self-destructed in a process known as apoptosis. Pectin even killed cells that aren’t sensitive to hormone therapy and therefore are difficult to treat with current medications. “What this paper shows is that if you take human prostate cancer cells and add pectin, you can induce programmed cell death,” said Mohnen, a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology. “If you do the same with non-cancerous cells, cell death doesn’t occur.”

Antioxidants prevent DNA damage
A Clemson team of chemists, presenting its research at the 234th annual American Chemical Society national meeting in Boston Aug. 19-24, has found a new mechanism for antioxidant activity: the antioxidants bind to naturally present iron and copper in the body to prevent formation of reactive oxygen compounds that damage DNA. “Our studies have shown that antioxidants even at low concentrations found in these foods bind to iron and copper and prevent DNA damage,” said lead investigator and chemist Julia Brumaghim. “This goes a long way in understanding how antioxidant supplements might help treat or even prevent these debilitating illnesses.”

Medicare Won't Cover Hospital Errors
In a shift of policy, Medicare will no longer be rewarding hospitals with payments in case of preventable illness and obvious errors. The New York Times reports: "Under the new rules, to be published next week, Medicare will not pay hospitals for the costs of treating certain "conditions that could reasonably have been prevented." Among the conditions that will be affected are bedsores, or pressure ulcers, injuries caused by falls; and infections resulting from the prolonged use of catheters in blood vessels or the bladder. In addition, Medicare says it will not pay for the treatment of "serious preventable events" like leaving a sponge or other object in a patient during surgery and providing a patient with incompatible blood or blood products. "If a patient goes into the hospital with pneumonia, we don't want them to leave with a broken arm," said Herb B. Kuhn, acting deputy administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Doctors Ignore Patient Complaints Of Side Effects
A new study of 650 patients who were prescribed a cholesterol med found that 87 percent who experienced an adverse symptom, such as memory or nerve pain, or memory loss, spoke to their doc about a possible connection. “A number of patients stated their physician attributed their problems to age or imagination, dismissed the importance of their symptoms or stated that a connection of symptoms to statins was not possible,” wrote the researchers in the latest issue of Drug Safety.

Why so many Americans today are 'mentally ill'
pharmaceutical manufacturers are nervous about lawsuits over the "rare adverse effects" of their mood-altering medications. To avoid costly settlements and public relations catastrophes – such as when GlaxoSmithKline was ordered to pay $6.4 million to the family of 60-year-old Donald Schnell who murdered his wife, daughter and granddaughter in a fit of rage shortly after starting on Paxil – drug companies' legal teams have quietly and skillfully settled hundreds of cases out-of-court, shelling out hundreds of millions of dollars to plaintiffs. Pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly fought scores of legal claims against Prozac in this way, settling for cash before the complaint could go to court while stipulating that the settlement remain secret – and then claiming it had never lost a Prozac lawsuit. Meanwhile, the list of killers who happened to be taking psychiatric medications is long and chilling...

Pain medicine use has nearly doubled
More than 200,000 pounds of codeine, morphine, oxycodone, hydrocodone and meperidine were purchased at retail stores during the most recent year represented in the data. That total is enough to give more than 300 milligrams of painkillers to every person in the country.

No wonder if we consider the 'hidden' but very prevalent side effects of the most popular of medicines, cholesterol lowering statin drugs. (By the way, google refuses to index the linked article on my site. Wonder why.)

Well, actually a later embodyment of the article in USA Today titled World of hurt: Painkiller use skyrockets makes it more clear that the major part of the increase is in the sale of drugs that are commonly processed to make mind altering street drugs out of them. Here we have the legal drug industry fueling the illegal drug industry, which we are then spending good money to fight in what's laughingly called the 'war on drugs'.

Costa Rica HPV Vaccine Trial Failed
The study sheds light on the very limited potential benefit of the vaccine--give