Coroners muzzled over deadly effect of Tasers - NewsGrabs xxx May 2008

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NewsGrabs

NewsGrabs are a selection of contrary and underprivileged news in health and a wide range of (mostly) related sectors.

Doctors Condemn "Threatening" Taser Court Ruling
Doctors have condemned as corporate "intimidation" a court decision ordering a chief medical examiner to remove any reference to the use of a taser as an antecedent in the deaths of three men. Ohio examiner Dr. Lisa Kohler had noted in her autopsy reports that electrical shocks from Tasers were partially to blame for the deaths of individuals in three separate confrontations with police.

Taser International, now notorious for it's stern legal defense having won 68 out of 68 lawsuits, filed and won a civil suit, forcing Kohler to delete all mentions of the weapons and to term the deaths "accidental".

WHAT'S IN YOUR MULTIPLE VITAMIN? (Part I)
Minerals are vital nutrients for health, required for numerous enzymes in your body to work properly. Minerals in food are at low levels due to excessive processing of food, poor farming that depletes our soils, as well as the use of pesticides that interfere with the natural sulfur cycle – leaving us not only with chemically adulterated food but food that has lower nutritional value. It is now common sense to supplement fine quality minerals, including important trace minerals.

WHAT'S IN YOUR MULTIPLE VITAMIN? (Part II)
The main reason to take a multiple vitamin is to help your body make energy – as energy (ATP) is needed for anything else in your body to work properly. A good multiple vitamin should also support your mood, assist stress reduction, support immunity, and help get rid of free radicals. It should provide an array of nutrients vital to your health – covering your most fundamental nutritional needs.

Life Extension Foundation's Rebuttal to Allegation That Certain Vitamins May Shorten Lifespan
In today’s Western world, a large percentage of the population fails to ingest optimal potencies of many essential nutrients. As you will read in part two of this report, a shocking majority (93-96%) of people of people who don’t supplement with vitamin E are deficient in vitamin E.

This negative report attacking supplements is fatally flawed because it:

1. Omitted 91% of the studies that measured the effects of these vitamins on human subjects including all studies for which there was no mortality!

2. Included studies that used doses far below or far above what health conscious people actually supplement with.

3. Chose to bias the reporting of the results by emphasizing one type of statistical model that showed a significant effect rather than another statistical model that did not show a significant effect.

4. Failed to account for the 14 mechanisms involved in aging and premature death. For example, it is absurd to think that taking 1,333 IU to 200,000 IU of vitamin A is going to have meaningful impact when there are more than one hundred individual components to a science-based death reduction program.

Low blood levels of vitamin D linked to depression
“Underlying causes of vitamin D deficiency such as less sun exposure as a result of decreased outdoor activity, different housing or clothing habits and decreased vitamin intake may be secondary to depression, but depression may also be the consequence of poor vitamin D status,” the authors write.

Blood vitamin D levels were 14 percent lower in individuals with major and minor depression compared with non-depressed participants. In addition, parathyroid hormone thyroid levels were an average of 5 percent higher in those with minor depression and 33 percent higher in those with major depressive disorder than in those who were not depressed.

The findings may be important to patients because both low blood vitamin D levels and high parathyroid hormone levels can be treated with higher dietary intake of vitamin D or calcium and increased sunlight exposure.

Vitamin D linked to reduced mortality rate in kidney disease
For patients with moderate to severe chronic kidney disease (CKD), treatment with activated vitamin D may reduce the risk of death by approximately one-fourth, suggests a study in the August Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.

"Recently, there has been an increased focus on the effects of vitamin D beyond those on bone health," Dr. Kestenbaum comments. "Vitamin D deficiency has been associated with risk factors for cardiovascular disease, such as high blood pressure, diabetes, and inflammation." Previous studies have suggested that treatment with intravenous vitamin D can improve survival in patients on hemodialysis.

The new results suggest that treatment with oral activated vitamin D may also improve survival in patients with CKD who do not yet require dialysis.

Naturally-occuring protein may be effective in limiting heart attack injury and restoring function
TPO (thrombopoietin) is a hormone which is naturally produced by the liver and kidney. Dr. Baker’s investigative team had previously shown that erythropoietin, a protein and pharmaceutical currently in clinical use to treat anemia in end-stage kidney disease, protects the rat heart against injury during a heart attack. They found that although erythropoietin and TPO have separate functional roles, there were similarities in the structures of the two proteins that suggested TPO may have protective properties similar to erythropoietin.

“We hypothesized that a single treatment with TPO during a heart attack would be sufficient to protect the heart from injury,” says Dr. Baker. “Our results suggest that TPO directly protects the heart and may represent a novel approach for the treatment of acute heart attack.”

Congress Criticizes FDA Over Bioidentical Hormone Ingredient
A bi-partisan group of Congressional reps have introduced a resolution criticizing the FDA for its recent move to warn compounders about their use of estriol in their bioidentical versions of hormone replacement treatments. Last January, the agency questioned the safety and effectiveness of BHRT products, citing unsupported medical evidence, and false and misleading claims.

The issue has pitted compounding pharmacies, among others, against Wyeth, which in 2005 filed a citizen’s petition with the FDA in an effort to stop compounders from making bioidentical versions of Prempro, its controversial hormone replacement therapy.

Canada: Bill C-51 - May 8th 2008 - Canadian Coalition for Health Freedom
"THEY will make a critical decision on Thursday May 8th 2008 on whether to schedule Bill C-51 on next week’s order paper. IT IS CRITICAL THAT YOU KEEP UP THE PROTESTS AND WE HAVE CREATED A SPECIAL WEBSITE TO ASSIST IN THIS – go to www.helpstopbillc51.ca and / or www.healthcanadaabuse.com and send the E-Action Protest letters immediately."

C-51 Committee on Health Outcome - Report From The Trenches
THEY are modifying the bill now to re-introduce it as soon as possible, likely today for next week's order paper. We need to raise legal funds now through our Freedom of Choice in Health Care organization as you did in 1997 and immediately prepare and file an application to strike down the Natural Health Product regulation. This will then create a major legal and political problem for Bills C-51 and C-52.

US Government asks court to block mad cow testing
The Bush administration on Friday urged a federal appeals court to stop meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease, but a skeptical judge questioned whether the government has that authority.

Less than 1% of slaughtered cows are tested for the disease under Agriculture Department guidelines. The agency argues that widespread testing does not guarantee food safety and could result in a false positive that scares consumers.

Can you say "cover-up"?

The Best Control 2 - How to control pests without poison
by Stephen Tvedten
The Best Control 2 is a reference manual based on exhaustive research in the field of nontoxic pest control or Integrated Pest Management (IPM). This guide will teach you how to implement nontoxic alternatives to pesticides safely and easily by yourself. This information is provided as a free resource to encourage the spread of safe alternatives to chemical poisons, and thus reduce contamination to ourselves and pollution to our environment.

It's freely available for downloading. Thank you, Steve.

A Convenient Lack Of Disclosure?
The 30-member task force, which included a few dissident ceo’s from Pfizer, Lilly and Amgen (read those footnotes carefully), put their heads together over concerns that undue industry influence may raise questions about the “objectivity and integrity of academic teaching, learning and practice” and undermine the ability of academia and industry to jointly promote the public’s interest in sound health.

Drug Industry Re-writes 'Psychiatric Bible'
More than half the 28 new members of writers of the next edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) Diagnostic