Nutritional Freedom, Medical Marijuana and the failure of GM crops - NewsGrabs 2 September 2007
Health Supreme's NewsGrabs are a selection of alternative health and other underprivileged news. Find what you may have missed in your everyday reading - watch out for NewsGrabs ... on Sundays.
In this issue:
Nutritional Freedom - Nutrition helps prevent AIDS, Tuberculosis - Starbucks to Ban Monsanto's Bovine Growth Hormone in Milk - Pharma Ramps Up Drug Marketing to students - Parkinson's drugs create obsessions - Medical Marijuana: Feds Raid New Mexico Patient - Medical blogger persecuted - U.S. Food Aid is a Form of Colonialism - GM cotton fails in Punjab, India - No More Patents for GM Crops? - New doubts on mobile phone safety - School of Shock - Cancer in Iraq vets due to toxic Uranium exposure?
More information out there...
Of course there is much I cannot cover but other sources for this kind of information exist and are active.
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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.
Some sites to keep up to date with the other side of world affairs, the stuff you won't find on tv:
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com
http://www.commondreams.org
http://www.stratfor.com/
http://www.globalresearch.ca/
http://rawstory.com/
http://www.truthout.org/- - -
Nutritional Freedom is Naturally Occurring
The Codex authorities representing the EU have been trying to group the naturally occurring vitamins with the chemical-synthetic vitamins manufactured by laboratories, thereby banning or restricting both types of vitamins and nutrients under one law. In July 2005, ANH won a victory in court in this regard and more recently (August, 2007) a substantial victory in court related to protection of naturally occurring vitamins, minerals, and nutrients as found in foods.
South Africa: ANC says nutrition helps prevent AIDS, Tuberculosis
What our movement has argued, including all our representatives, such as Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, is exactly what Professor Esté Vorster says, that "malnutrition and poverty remained a contributing factor in many infections, including HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis." In this context, our movement and government, led in the field of health for many years, to date, by a collective that includes Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, have argued that this reality, confirmed by Professor Esté Vorster and the ASSA study, must translate into practical interventions to integrate the fight against malnutrition within our programmes against HIV and AIDS.
Starbucks Agrees to Ban Monsanto's Bovine Growth Hormone from All Its Cafes by End of Year
The Starbucks announcement follows nearly two years of pressure from Food & Water Watch, which launched the Hold the Hormones Campaign in 2006, asking consumers to demand the company buy better milk. A protest event planned for today in front of a Seattle store from 4-6pm (Westlake Center Starbucks, 401 Pine St.) will now be a victory celebration, complete with partying cows, cookies, and of course, rBGH-free milk.
As Kids Head to Class Pharma Ramps Up Drug Marketing
The U.S. government was pivotal in facilitating Big Pharma's advertising 'surge': "Called on the carpet by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, lawyers for the drug companies vowed to defend themselves under the umbrella of 1st Amendment speech rights. According to former DEA officials, the Department of Justice was unwilling to test this one in court." The U.S., the only nation to violate the U.N. treaty, consumes about 85% of the stimulants manufactured for ADHD. Children in the U.S. are 10 times more likely to take a stimulant medication for ADHD than are kids in Europe. The International Narcotics Control Board holds advertising responsible.
Do Parkinson's drugs create obsessions?
At a meeting in Toronto last month, Stacy and other experts reviewed the cases reported so far and concluded that the drugs appear to trigger a syndrome of bad behavior that includes compulsive gambling, shopping, binge eating and an unstoppable urge for sex. "Fifteen percent of all Parkinson's patients might have this syndrome," Stacy says. If he's right, that could mean as many as 150,000 people in the USA are struggling with out-of-control behavior. Even those numbers may underestimate the problem.
Medical Marijuana: New Mexico Patients Under Attack
On Tuesday, agents of the Pecos Valley Drug Taskforce in conjunction with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration searched the home of a registered medical marijuana patient who has lost the use of his legs and suffers chronic pain and muscle spasms due to a spinal cord injury. They seized his medicine and are now threatening to prosecute him in federal court where there are no legal protections for medical marijuana patients. This intimidating raid comes at the very time New Mexico officials are debating the best way to develop a state-licensed production and distribution system for medical marijuana.The raid highlights how disconnected federal law is from the people of the US. As New Mexico approved a law legalizing the cultivation and use of hemp for medical uses, federal courts and law hold on to a policy of prohibition, destined to go the way alcohol prohibition has gone decades ago.
Medical blogger persecuted for promoting transparency
The real killer here is that Pal's fitness to practice medicine is being questioned because she linked to a document that had not a thing to do with patient confidentiality and is entirely unrelated to Pal's fitness to practice medicine. Perhaps someone can explain how linking to a document makes one unfit to practice medicine... Oh, did I mention that Dr. Pal has a blog where she frequently criticizes the British National Health Service? What a great way to silence a critic -- trump up a patently ridiculously charge in an attempt to crush her career.
Leading USA-Based Hunger Organization Rejects U.S. Food Aid is a Form of Colonialism--Not Charity
One of the largest international aid organizations in the world turned the food aid industry on its head recently by declaring that they will turn down 46 million dollars in food subsidies from the U.S. government.The United States budgets 2 billion dollars a year in food aid, which buys U.S. crops to feed populations facing starvation amidst crisis or those that endure chronic hunger. But the U.S.-based CARE International has forfeited its substantial slice of the food aid pie that is the U.S. "Food for Peace" program, claiming that the way the U.S. government distributes food hurts small poor farmers in the very communities and countries the program is supposed to help.
Genetically modified cotton falls prey to mealy bug in Punjab, India
After much hype of how genetically modified cotton, which produces a bacterial poison not normally made by any plant, is safe against all kinds of predator bugs, farmers in India's Punjab province are in for a shock this year. Their crops have been attacked by the hungry beasts and the alternatives are few: Either plow under your cotton plants and lose the profit for the year, or heavily invest in toxic chemicals to save what can be saved. So much for the promises that BT cotton reduces the need for pesticides and increases yields...
Beginning of the End for Patents on GM Crops?
Monsanto has just lost four patents on GM crops in less than five months, thanks to the challenge mounted by the Public Patent Foundation. The patents were all on gene sequences involving the cauliflower mosaic virus (CaMV) promoter, which is crucial for getting engineered genes to work. It is in practically all of Monsanto’s GM crops grown commercially. The US patent office ruled that the patents should not have been granted, because the claims were not new, or were so obvious that patents were unwarranted. This could be the beginning of the end for GM crop patents, if not GM crops, and is likely to undermine Monsanto’s notorious court cases against farmers whom they accuse of patent infringement by replanting seeds from GM crops.
New doubts raised over mobile phone safety
Prof Seger said: "The real significance of our findings is that cells are not inert to non-thermal mobile phone radiation. "We used radiation power levels that were around 1/10th of those produced by a normal mobile. The changes we observed were clearly not caused by heating."
School of Shock
How many times do you have to zap a child before it's torture?
The Rotenberg Center is the only facility in the country that disciplines students by shocking them, a form of punishment not inflicted on serial killers or child molesters or any of the 2.2 million inmates now incarcerated in U.S. jails and prisons. Over its 36-year history, six children have died in its care, prompting numerous lawsuits and government investigations. Last year, New York state investigators filed a blistering report that made the place sound like a high school version of Abu Ghraib. Yet the program continues to thrive—in large part because no one except desperate parents, and a few state legislators, seems to care about what happens to the hundreds of kids who pass through its gates.
Cancer in Iraq vets raises possibility of toxic exposure
After serving in Vietnam nearly 40 years ago — and receiving the Bronze Star for it — the Tucson soldier was called back to active duty in Iraq. While there, he awoke one morning with a sore throat. Eighteen months later, Army Sgt. James Lauderdale was dead, of a bizarrely aggressive cancer rarely seen by the doctors who tried to treat it.The prime suspect in all this, in the minds of many victims — and some scientists — is what's known as depleted uranium — the radioactive chemical prized by the military for its ability to penetrate armored vehicles. When munitions explode, the substance hits the air as fine dust, easily inhaled. Last month, the Iraqi environment minister blamed the tons of the chemical dropped during the war's "shock and awe" campaign for a surge of cancer cases across the country. However, the Pentagon and U.S. State Department strongly deny this ...
posted by Sepp Hasslberger on Sunday September 2 2007
updated on Wednesday August 15 2012URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2007/09/02/nutritional_freedom_medical_marijuana_and_the_failure_of_gm_crops_newsgrabs_2_september_2007.htm
