From Free Software to the Free Drugs Movement - NewsGrabs 24 February 2008

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NewsGrabs

Health Supreme's NewsGrabs - a selection of contrary and underprivileged news in health and (mostly) related sectors. Find what you may have missed - watch out for my NewsGrabs.

Here is this week's selection:

Book: In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
Humans used to know how to eat well, Pollan argues. But the balanced dietary lessons that were once passed down through generations have been confused, complicated, and distorted by food industry marketers, nutritional scientists, and journalists - all of whom have much to gain from our dietary confusion. As a result, we face today a complex culinary landscape dense with bad advice and foods that are not "real." These "edible foodlike substances" are often packaged with labels bearing health claims that are typically false or misleading. Indeed, real food is fast disappearing from the marketplace, to be replaced by "nutrients," and plain old eating by an obsession with nutrition that is, paradoxically, ruining our health, not to mention our meals.

People missing five-a-day target
Many people still do not manage to eat the recommended five portions of fruit and vegetables a day, but they now have more than before, a survey suggests.

The Food Standards Agency survey suggests diets are slowly improving but people from poorer backgrounds struggle to achieve the five-a-day target. The survey found 58% of 2,627 people surveyed last year had eaten at least five portions the day beforehand.

Yet here we have the European Commission getting ready to slam on the brakes on what they consider "excessive doses" of nutrients in food supplements. Go figure.

Vitamin deficiency may cause modern ills
A chronic shortage of vitamins and other "micronutrients" in the diet may be responsible for triggering many of the ills of modern life such as cancer, obesity and the degenerative diseases of ageing.

U.K. Government Moves to Hide GM Crop Trials From Public
Genetically modified crops may be grown in hidden locations in Britain amid fears that anti-GM campaigners are winning the battle over the controversial technology.

Officials at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) confirmed they are looking at a range of options to clamp down on vandalism to GM crop trials, after intense lobbying by big crop biotech companies. The firms have warned that trials of GM crops are becoming too expensive to conduct in Britain because of the additional costs of protecting fields from activists.

Hmmmm - government by the people ... for the people. They're not even pretending any more, it seems.

BASF's Genetically Engineered "Frankenpotato' Faces Strong Opposition in EU
The potato contains an antibiotic resistance marker gene (ARMG)(1) known as nptII, which conveys resistance to antibiotics and which should already have been phased out under EU law since 2004(2). Despite this and despite a number of legal concerns, the European Food Safety Authority gave a positive opinion on the BASF potato, paving the way for Monday's vote.

"This potato is blighted by too many inconsistencies for the Council to legally approve it. The EFSA opinion upon which the Commission proposal is based contradicts the scientific opinions of other international institutions and also EFSA's own previous opinions on the same issue. Therefore, the Commission proposal is unlawful," said Marco Contiero, Greenpeace EU GMO policy director.

Monsanto Continues Battle to Deny Consumers' Right to Know Whether Their Milk is Tainted by Growth Hormone
ALL these efforts are attempting to take away the consumers' right to know what's in their foods and how they're produced. I'm not going to sugar-coat this. Although we've enjoyed a remarkable level of success in fighting Monsanto's attempts, this is one of the most serious challenges we've ever faced. This is nothing short of censorship, suppressing the freedom of speech of dairies and farmers and their ability to simply tell the truth on their labels.

Germany to Introduce Non-GMO Labels on Foods
"The new labeling will give consumers the choice to buy dairy products from animals that have not been fed with genetically modified plants," said Gerd Billen from the Federation of German Consumer Organizations in Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.

Some oppose the new label because food containing GM ingredients such as additives, vitamins, and amino acids can also be labeled non-GM. They say such labeling is misleading.

WiFi and EM Radiation - The Rest of the Autism Story
Carlo developed a theory that low frequency cell phone signals are harmful to cell function. This results in cells protecting themselves by stopping movement of nutrients and waste products through the cellular membrane. Inability to move wastes outside cells results in a buildup of toxins. This led him to suspect a connection with the enormous increase in autism. His hypothesis suggests that autistic children are less able to process heavy metals, so they remain in their bodies (primarily the brain) and cause neurological damage, including autism.

Hawaii Aspartame Bill: Lobbyists closing in for the kill
"Consumer Protection efforts to ban Aspartame/Methanol/Formaldehyde as an artificial sweetener in Hawaii have run into curious tactics by lobbyists compounded by indifference and inertia on the part of the key legislators," says Stephen Fox, the promoter of a previous effort to ban the controversial sweetener in New Mexico.

Hawaii Ban Aspartame Bill Ends in Political Paralysis
Paralysis is one of the 92 disabilities the Food & Drug Administration named in their 1995 list of aspartame reactions (PDF) which they now deny ever existed. FDA derived these from over 10,000 complaints volunteered by American consumers; more than those reported to FDA for any other additive. FDA slammed the complaint window shut in 1996 and have ignored all testimony and research, including over 100 damning scientific peer reviewed studies on the devastating consequences of consuming aspartame. Seizures, sexual dysfunction, birth defects, blindness, paranoia, diabetes, migraines, obesity, and its a multi-potential carcinogen concluded an award winning 3-year study on 1,800 rats by Dr. M. Soffritti of the Ramazzini Institute. The 2005 study was peer reviewed by 7 world experts. His second study showed it only takes a small amount to cause cancer and if pregnant women use it and their baby survives, the offspring can get cancer.

Update: Hearing on aspartame bill scheduled for Monday 25 February
THIS AFTERNOON, Thursday, I am happy to report that Sen. David Ige, Majority Floor Leader and Chairman Hawaii Senate Health Committee, came to realize the merit in scheduling a hearing for Senate Bill 2506, to ban aspartame in Hawaii. This was against all odds, because Rep. Josh Green, M.D., Chairman of the House Health Committee, "deferred" hearing the bill, thus killing the House Bill, carried by Rep. Mele Carroll.

Anyone interested in testifying about experience they had with aspartame, please contact
Stephen Fox
Managing Editor, Santa Fe Sun News
stephen@santafefineart.com

Excess in the pharmaceutical industry
(Marcia Angell)
Although the pharmaceutical industry claims to be a high-risk business, year after year drug companies enjoy higher profits than any other industry. In 2002, for example, the top 10 drug companies in the United States had a median profit margin of 17%, compared with only 3.1% for all the other industries on the Fortune 500 list.

Excess profits are, of course, the result of excess prices — and prices are excessive principally in the United States, the only advanced country that does not limit pharmaceutical price increases in some way.

Drug Wholesale Prices Rose 7.82 Percent In ‘07
Drugmakers increased wholesale prices for the 50 top-selling branded drugs by an average of 7.82 percent last year, after increases of 6.73 percent and 6.22 percent in the previous two years, according to Delta Marketing Dynamics. The most recent increase is almost double the overall US economy’s 4.1 percent annual inflation rate last year, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Some individual drugs had double-digit price increases over three years. Glaxo, for instance, raised the price of its Wellbutrin XL antidepressant by 44.5 percent from 2005 to 2007. Sanofi-Aventis boosted the price of its Ambien sleeping pill by 70.1 percent. Shire hiked the price of its Adderall XR ADD drug by 33.5 percent. And Pfizer increased Lipitor’s price by 16 percent.

Can you say price gouging? I knew you could.

Pharma Spent $22M To Lobby Washington In ‘07
The industry trade group, that is. And that amounts to a 25 percent increase from the previous year. But while propos