Farming Revolution Could Feed the World - NewsGrabs 20 April 2008
Health Supreme's NewsGrabs - a selection of contrary and underprivileged news in health and a wide range of (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:
UN calls for farming revolution
The Unesco study recommends better safeguards to protect resources and more sustainable farming practices, such as producing food locally. More natural and ecological farming techniques should be used, it says.Unesco says wheat prices have risen 130% percent since March 2007 while soy prices have jumped 87%. "The status quo is no longer an option," Guilhem Calvo, a Unesco expert, told a news conference in Paris. "We must develop agriculture less dependent on fossil fuels, that favours the use of locally available resources."
Finally a step in the right direction! Check out Permaculture's low input high yield model of sustainably growing the foods we eat. Grow food local and grow it in a sustainable way, where soil fertility increases with the years.See also the following article...
Change in farming can feed the world
The report - the first significant attempt to involve governments, NGOs and industries from rich and poor countries - took 400 scientists four years to complete. The present system of food production and the way food is traded around the world, the authors concluded, has led to a highly unequal distribution of benefits and serious adverse ecological effects and was now contributing to climate change.The authors say science and technology should be targeted towards raising yields but also protecting soils, water and forests. "Investment in agricultural science has decreased yet we urgently need sustainable ways to produce food. Incentives for science to address the issues that matter to the poor are weak," said Watson.
The scientists said they saw little role for GM, as it is currently practised, in feeding the poor on a large scale . "Assessment of the technology lags behind its development, information is anecdotal and contradictory, and uncertainty about possible benefits and damage is unavoidable," said the report.
Are anti-oxidants REALLY harmful to you??
In this review, which is a rehash of their paper published last year in the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA), they first excluded over 400 trials, that had no deaths. They then decided which trials they liked (low risk bias) and did not like (high risk bias), a factor that has received criticism in mainstream medical journals.Not surprisingly, the selection process in today's review excluded many of the most positive studies. For example, quoting the review itself, 'In secondary prevention trials (meaning people with disease) with high-bias risk, mortality was significantly reduced by supplements.' In those they called 'low-bias risk' there was no significant change in mortality.
Vitamin E increases life span of Alzheimer’s patients
“Vitamin E has previously been shown to delay the progression of moderately severe Alzheimers disease. Now, we’ve been able to show that vitamin E appears to increase the survival time of Alzheimer’s patients as well,” Pavlik said. This is particularly important because recent studies in heart disease patients have questioned whether vitamin E is beneficial for survival.
Pine bark extract's osteoarthritis potential expanded
Supplements of French maritime pine bark extracts may reduce the pain associated with arthritis of the knee. The randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial involving 156 patients with osteoarthritis and using the pine bark extract, Pycnogenol, indicated an improvement in all osteoarthritis symptoms by 56 per cent, according to data published in the journal Phytotherapy Research.
UK Food Safety Authority issues health claims guidance
The UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) has issued a detailed 81-page document advising companies on how to negotiate the various European Commission processes involved in health claims submission, approval and application.The document explains all aspects of the regulation, defines the various claim options and details what is expected in scientific dossiers and how to go about submitting them to the relevant authority.
Endless red tape is being put in front of anyone providing healthy natural products. Don't say they can prevent or cure anything, is the first commandment. And then for what you CAN say, there is a multitude of hoops to jump through before you may do so.
New Zealand: Get diet drinks out of our schools!
"Following agreement with Government, beverage manufacturers are taking sugar sweetened fizzy drinks out of secondary schools, but unfortunately the manufacturers are replacing them with the more dangerous aspartame-containing drinks," said Soil & Health Association spokesperson Steffan Browning. "The isolated phenylalanine in aspartame has been shown to deplete serotonin levels and lower the seizure threshold. This can trigger mood swings, suicidal tendencies and behavioural problems – exactly the sort of problems we want to lessen in our young people, not increase."
Sweetener poses serious health risks
An article issued by the Food and Drug Administration revealed that when the temperature of aspartame exceeds 86 degrees Fahrenheit, the wood alcohol in aspartame converts to formaldehyde and then to formic acid. Formaldehyde is grouped in the same class of drugs as cyanide and arsenic, two deadly poisons. All day long, the troops drank their diet sodas which had converted themselves into poisons.
"Consumers for World Trade" - Fake Grassroots Corporate Front Group Bites the Dust
Consumers for World Trade (CWT), which describes itself as being a "network of consumers," is enthusiastic about everything from the right of the U.S. President to negotiate free trade agreements, slashing import duties and quotas on items such as footwear and apparel and opposing mandatory country-of-origin labeling. You'd be right in thinking this doesn't sound like a normal consumer group, but exactly who they are is not immediately obvious. A little digging though, reveals that CWT is just another front group trying to wrap a self-serving corporate message in a public interest name.
GM Crops a Disastrous Failure World Wide
BT cotton has revealed itself toxic in India, GM corn in the US promotes pest expansion and superweeds, GM rice illegally entered the food chain, GM canola is an economic hazard and consumers in the US are refusing to drink milk from cattle treated with Monsanto's genetically modified growth hormone. Not a pretty picture for the GM agro-industry camp.
Corrupt to the Core - Memoirs of a Health Canada Scientist - Bill 517: GE Labeling
"The experiences of the few honest whistleblowers and valiant fighters for truth within Health Canada - like Dr. Chopra, who saved Canadians from Monsanto's Bovine Growth Hormone - shows how rotten-to-the-core this agency has become - serving as the handmaiden of, and implementer for, an extremely corrupt industry."
Pharma Companies Mislead With Ads For Psychiatric Medications
"Roughly half of the adverts featured citations to primary research papers to support their claims. Yet when the team checked, they found that over a third (35 per cent) of the claims were not supported by their cited sources."'The sources are provided by the companies themselves, so it's pretty easy to cherry pick one study that backs up their claim,' Spielmans told Chemistry World. 'Despite that, many of the cited sources did not support the advertising claims.'"
Glaxo And Novartis Face Alabama Fraud Lawsuit
The Alabama Supreme Court has ruled that Glaxo and Novartis won’t get separate trials in a lawsuit claiming they inflated prices paid by the state Medicaid program. The state’s lawsuit says the drugmakers overstated the average wholesale price used to calculate state Medicaid reimbursement rates to pharmacies. Alabama has sued 70 companies over similar allegations...
Pharmaceutical Companies Oppose Patent Reform
A version of the bill passed the House last September but the White House opposes the damages portion of the House version and a similar measure in is stalled in the Senate amid vocal opposition from Lilly and Monsanto, as well as smaller tech companies that fear lower damages would leave them vulnerable to infringers.Pharma, whose drugs often have just one or two patents, says it needs the threat of high damages to protect their intellectual property.
On the other side, Boldrin & Levine, in their book "Against Intellectual Monopoly" argue that pharmaceutical patents (Chapter 9) are neither essential for providing just compensation to pharma for their research expenditures, nor are they even promoting the development of new drugs.
FDA looks at link between medications, depression
As symptoms of depression go, there is none much clearer than having thoughts of suicide. In this year alone, federal regulators have warned that a surprising array of drugs could play a role in spurring thoughts of self-destruction. Medicines that treat epilepsy, asthma and influenza are now under suspicion, as is one that helps smokers kick the tobacco habit.
Antipsychotic Drugs Increase Risk Of Developing Pneumonia In Elderly
“The risk of developing pneumonia is not associated with long-term use, but is the highest shortly after starting the drug,” say Drs. Rob van Marum and Wilma Knol, authors of the study. They caution that “all antipsychotic drugs may be associated with pneumonia in elderly patients.”In nursing homes, up to 40 percent of residents may be prescribed antipsychotics, according to the study.
Impugning the Integrity of Medical Science
The Journal of the American Medical Association has an editorial that questions - of all things - the integrity of medicine."The profession of medicine, in every aspect—clinical, education, and research—has been inundated with profound influence from the pharmaceutical and medical device industries. This has occurred because physicians have allowed it to happen, and it is time to stop."
Here's the same story in USA Today: Data on Vioxx was misused
3,000 children were given unlicensed anti-psychotic drugs despite safety fears
The increase in the use of the drugs has come at a time when Prozac and other similar drugs used to treat depression have gone out of patent.“There is a real question over whether the drugs can kill, for a number of reasons,” he told The Guardian. “One is that all anti-psychotics act on dopamine.” Professor Healy said that dopamine was known to have a role in cardiovascular regulation.
How Florida Fell In Love With Antipsychotics
Because most experts have ties to drugmakers, Tandon explains, conflicts of interest are inevitable. “There are clear conflicts of interest,” he says. “Everyone is biased. For someone to say, ‘I’m not biased,’ they are not truthful or they are not introspective.”“Were the benefits of atypical medications exaggerated? Absolutely. And was it the pharmaceutical companies doing that? Absolutely…"
Suicide and Cymbalta
Twice the expected number of suicide attempts among middle aged women were seen with the drug-- 400 per 100,000 person-years versus a baseline of 160 per 100,000 person-years--said the FDA on its Web site in June, 2005, leading Lilly to precipitously withdraw its application to sell Yentreve in the US.Safety data for duloxetine (Cymbalta and Yentreve) obtained by reporter Jeanne Lenzer under a Freedom of Information request for a Independent on Sunday article disclosed 41 deaths and 13 suicides which did not include Johnson's or the four cited by Hayes, says Lenzer.
"Unlikely" that key genes cause schizophrenia
"We did not detect a significant association of schizophrenia with SNPs in 14 candidate genes that have been of great interest to the field," wrote the authors."Our results suggest that, taken together, common DNA variants in these 14 genes are unlikely to explain a large proportion of the genetic risk for schizophrenia in populations of European ancestry."
Many Ads For Psych Meds Unsubstantiated
Half of the claims made in ads provided no attainable source that could be used to check the veracity of the claim, according to the study, which was published in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease. When sources were verified, they supported the cited claims only 65 percent of the time. And claims regarding efficacy were only supported by obtained cited sources 53 percent of the time.
1 in 15 Hospitalized US Children Harmed by Drug Overdose or Adverse Reaction
CONCLUSIONS. Adverse drug event rates in hospitalized children are substantially higher than previously described. Most adverse drug events resulted in temporary harm, and 22% were classified as preventable. Only 3.7% were identified by using traditional voluntary reporting methods.
Increase in severe pneumonia in children may be caused by vaccine
Cases of a life-threatening form of pneumonia that affects the young are rising rapidly in Britain. It now affects around 1,000 children a year. The cause of the increase is unknown but experts fear a vaccine in the immunisation programme could be contributing.This severe pneumonia infects the lining of the lungs called the pleura, making it hard to breathe. It requires hospital admission to drain the chest cavity.
Child health specialists say cases of the pneumonia, known as serotype 1, have risen tenfold in a decade. They warn that a vaccine against pneumococcal disease called Prevenar, introduced in 2006, could be fuelling the rise.
Vaccine blamed for worst flu season in years
Based on adult deaths from flu and pneumonia, this season is the worst since 2003-2004 — another time when the vaccine did not include the exact flu strain responsible for most illnesses.Each year, health officials — making essentially an educated guess — formulate a vaccine against three viruses they think will be circulating. They guess well most of the time, and the vaccine is often between 70 and 90% effective. But this year, two of the three strains were not good matches and the vaccine was only 44% effective, according to a study done in Marshfield, Wis.
Flu vaccines are essentially a lottery. The decision on how to make the vaccine must be made months before the start of the "flu season". But then - wouldn't a supplement of vitamin D be much more effective in strengthening the immune system than an injection of a viral solution combined with poisons such as aluminium and mercury?
HOW TO PREVENT VACCINE INJURY
The government’s primary goal appears to be to prevent parents, en masse, from refusing to vaccinate their children. To prevent such a “run on the public health bank” all caution is being recklessly thrown to the wind.It should not be of any great comfort to parents that scientists hardly understand how the immune system works. The simplistic idea that vaccines offer protection against disease has an element of truth and a significant element of risk. This article explores the risk in greater depth. I will first explain what is known about the nature of the risk and follow with some natural options that can really help out.
BABIES INFECT MOTHERS; CRAZY THEORY RUINS LIVES
The tragedies here are not only the wrongly diagnosed babies and mothers. What about the doctors and other medical personnel who are being charged with negligence, when they did nothing to bring about this situation?
HIV: A RACE-DISCRIMINATING SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED VIRUS!
HIV is unique not only as an infection that discriminates by race; it’s unique as a sexually transmitted infection that discriminates by race. Chlamydia, gonorrhea, herpes, syphilis seem equally able to infect humans of all racial types. No venereal disease—other than HIV/AIDS—targets primarily one racial group. This is so incredible, and the matter is so centrally important, that no amount of supporting evidence could be redundant.“HIV” discriminates by race just as though it were capable of recognizing the DNA sequences in the human genome. The tendency to test “HIV”-positive, for a given state of health, is determined primarily by race and significantly by age and sex. This is not how a sexually transmitted infection behaves.
Aids research: A billion here, a billion there . . . .
Senator Everett Dirksen is credited with the remark, about Congress’s habitual tendency to spend taxpayers’ money on all sorts of projects, that “A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon it adds up to real money”. One wonders what he would have said about HIV/AIDS, which gobbles up far more for research per patient death ($180,000) than cancer ($10,000) or cardiovascular disease ($2600).HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt has announced grants of more than $1.1 billion to provide primary care, medications and services for low-income and underinsured people living with HIV/AIDS.
Of course, you will find that only those who "take their (toxic) meds" as prescribed will get any of that help. Nothing for real research or helping those who have ideas different from the medical mainstream.
High mobile use puts us at risk of brain tumours
Australian neurosurgeon Dr Vini Khurana’s study predicts that the fallout of heavy mobile phone use would be visible soon as the nation’s love affair with mobile phone climbs to dizzying heights.In his research, Khurana says heavy usage of cell phones for a period of 10 years or more doubles the chances of brain tumour. It also, he adds, has larger public health ramification than asbestos and smoking.
Reducing Electromagnetic Frequency Exposure May Improve Your Health
Ask those who have become "electrically sensitive" (ES), people who now experience a wide range of symptoms upon exposure to even low levels of EMF radiation and have a most difficult time finding a place to live safely in our wireless age. Symptoms can range from the uncomfortable (headaches, burning sensations, tingling) and debilitating (severe "brain fog," heart arrhythmias, migraines, severe depression, chronic insomnia) to even life threatening (seizures, heart attacks). Many of today’s ES started out as healthy working citizens and through chronic and acute exposures to electric radiation (some worked directly with electronics and computers, others worked in standard school and business/office settings), they became electrically sensitive with little warning.
"Major Disaster" for Bees May Jeopardize Washington State's Crops
"It's a major disaster in Western Washington. We are into a huge emergency situation," said Yakima beekeeper Eric Olson, who runs the state's largest commercial pollination business.While his hives in Central and Eastern Washington have survived, Olson said he has lost 80 percent of his Western Washington hives - more than 4,000 in all - to the new pathogen. Other commercial pollinators with bees in Western Washington were just as hard hit. "I'm scared, and I don't mind saying so," Olson said.
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More information out there...
There is much I cannot cover but other sources for this kind of information exist and are active.
...
Dr Mercola's health blog and Mike Adams' Natural News have great health information.
The Alternative Medicine Yahoo Group is a place where you can discuss and exchange information on what is happening in the world of natural health.
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.
A few sites to keep up to date with the other side of world affairs, the stuff you won't necessarily find on your tv or in the papers:
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com
http://www.commondreams.org
http://www.globalresearch.ca/
http://rawstory.com/
http://www.truthout.org/... and remember:
The individual is supreme and finds its way through intuition
posted by Sepp Hasslberger on Sunday April 20 2008
updated on Wednesday August 15 2012URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2008/04/20/farming_revolution_could_feed_the_world_newsgrabs_20_april_2008.htm
