The AIDS Vaccine "Challenger Disaster" - NewsGrabs 23 March 2008

Categories

NewsGrabs

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

Here is this week's selection for you:

AIDS Vaccines: A ‘Catastrophe’ Like The Challenger
The two-decade search for an AIDS vaccine is in crisis after two field tests of the most promising contender not only did not protect people from the virus but may actually have put them at increased risk of becoming infected.

Both field tests were halted last September, and seven other trials of similarly designed AIDS vaccines have either been stopped or put off indefinitely. Some may be modified and others canceled outright, the paper reports. Numerous experts are now questioning both the scientific premises and the overall strategy of the nearly $500 million in AIDS vaccine research funded annually by the US government.

“This is on the same level of catastrophe as the Challenger disaster” that destroyed a NASA space shuttle, Robert Gallo, co-discoverer of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes AIDS, and head of the Institute for Human Virology in Baltimore, tells the Post.

New Evidence Confirms the Nutritional Superiority of Plant-Based Organic Foods
This is the first major, indepth review of the published scientific literature on the nutritional benefits of organic food completed since 2003.

Vitamins Reduce the Duration and Severity of Influenza
Vitamins fight the flu by boosting the body's own immune response and by accelerating healing. Individuals can be better prepared for an influenza epidemic by learning how to use vitamin supplements to fight off ordinary respiratory infections. The most important vitamins are vitamins C, D, niacin, and thiamine...

POTASSIUM QUESTIONS INTENSIFY
While not exactly news, this article asks a legitimate question: Why is it, considering humans have a daily need for potassium somewhere between 3.5 and 4.7 grams, we can only buy supplemental potassium at less than 100 milligrams, that is, less than one thirtieth of the quantities that are recommended to be contained in our foods daily.

California Proposition 65 - Regulating Beneficial Nutrients
The California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment is preparing to regulate vitamins and minerals as you would toxic chemicals.

"Certain chemicals or compounds such as vitamins and minerals are necessary to promote human health or to ensure the healthy growth of food crops. Excessive exposures to these same chemicals or compounds can cause cancer or adverse reproductive effects. OEHHA is seeking a way to balance the need for these nutrients with the necessity for providing Proposition 65 warnings for exposures to listed chemicals in foods."

Are they taking their cues from the European Union and Codex Alimentarius?

Don't Let Them Succeed

New Zealand: Phoenix Organics Calls For Aspartame Investigation
Phoenix Organics’ CEO Stefan Lepionka has committed $2000 to help send Abby Cormack to the U.S. to undergo a series of SPECT scans aiming to prove aspartame consumption has an effect on brain function, and wants Govt and Coca Cola to do the same.

“$2000 for Coca Cola would represent a fraction of the amount they recently paid for full page advertisements asserting the safety of this chemical,” said Stefan Lepionka. “It would be a small price to pay to put to rest global concerns that aspartame is dangerous.”

History of Aspartame and Stevia

This is a College biology report prepared by Tom Theimer, who brought together a lot of the background on the artificial sweetener Aspartame and how, in the US, the natural sweetener of the Stevia plant was kept off the market by FDA intervention in order to protect Aspartame from competition. Not really the job an official food control agency should be doing, but unfortunately money, political influence and plain corruption distort things in a bad way, even in a country that is praised for its promotion of "free enterprise".

Instability of transgenes puts patentability of GM in doubt
Arguing that genetic modification is a less-than-exact science, and that genetically modified plants or other organisms are subject to changes and rearrangements in subsequent generations, ISIS says that there is no ground to grant patents for GM seeds and/or animals.

Book: Shedding Light on Genetically Engineered Food
"It is easy to see how unsuspecting consumers in America have been kept in the dark about GE food and why the biotech industry has grown significantly, even though evidence or scientific consensus that GE food is safe for human consumption has never been established. Americans are risking their health in return for non-existent and largely unproven consumer benefits; yet U.S. taxpayers unknowingly prop up the biotech industry and multinational corporate profits by massively funding GE crop and dairy subsidies, state initiatives, tax breaks, foreign aid, and other biotech support doled out by the U.S. government."

'Brain fog' hinders independence of elderly
Nearly one of four people over age 70 experience mild forgetfulness that can disrupt the ability to carry out daily routines, a study reports today.

These people don't have full dementia or Alzheimer's, but they do have symptoms of mild cognitive impairment, such as confusion and some memory loss, says Brenda Plassman, a psychologist at the Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C.

Wonder how many of those people are on Lipitor or another statin drug to "prevent heart attacks". Memory loss is a common side effect of these drugs.

Bad Break For Merck - Fosamax associated with unusual fractures
Researchers report that long-term use of its Fosamax osteoporosis drug is associated with unusual fractures of the thigh bone. The fractures were low-energy fractures, meaning that they all occurred from a fall from standing height or less, and the bone cracks were in an unusual horizontal pattern. About one-third of women with these types of fractures were on long-term therapy to prevent osteoporosis, and of these women, two-thirds were taking Fosamax for an average of more than seven years.

BRANDING PREGNANCY AS MENTAL ILLNESS
The Mothers Act is pending legislation that will indoctrinate hundreds of thousands of mothers into taking dangerous psych drugs. It is a great example of how the Big Pharma lobby controls Congress to the detriment of health, as well as needlessly and dramatically inflating the costs of our health care system for everyone. Like any piece of legislation it purports to address a troubling issue – in this case the mood distress of mothers following birth known as postpartum depression. It is true that 10% - 15% of women need some assistance in dealing with this topic – but the majority of them sure don’t need it from Big Pharma.

Video: If you have any doubts about this proposed legislation, here is a case story that illustrates why it is a bad idea to give mothers psychiatric drugs...

Frisco Mother Fights Postpartum Depression Bill

Media Perpetuates Unsubstantiated Chemical Imbalance Theory Of Depression
"The media's presentation of the theory as fact is troublesome because it misrepresents the current status of the theory," Lacasse said. "For instance, there are few scientists who will rise to its defense, and some prominent psychiatrists publicly acknowledge that the serotonin hypothesis is more metaphor than fact. As the current study documents, when asked for evidence, reporters were unable to cite peer-reviewed primary articles in support of the theory."

Curbing Conflicts of Interest in Medicine
One hypothesis this committee might consider is that excessive financial entanglements between physician-researchers and the private sector is actually harming innovation by channeling scarce scientific resources into medically insignificant research endeavors; inhibiting scientific collaboration; fostering a culture of secrecy; and creating an anti-commons effect through the extensive early-stage patenting of basic science insights and research tools.