Science, Media and Loch Ness "monsters" - NewsGrabs Friday, 25 December 2009
Merry Christmas, Winter Solstice or whatever the festivity is you are observing in these days to all my friends and readers - and may this coming year of 2010 bring wellness and success for you and some healthy changes for all of our human family!Science, media, and Loch Ness “monsters”
It’s the one in a million chances that have brought genuine progress. Pre-Einstein, for instance, the chances were one in a million or less that Newton’s long-confirmed, long “proved” laws would ever be found wanting. To paraphrase Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, you can spend your life catching and dining on minnows, or you can go after the really big fish, knowing your chances are low but that any success would be a feast for all humanity. Having the courage to risk being wrong makes for progress; as George Bernard Shaw pointed out, progress depends on the unreasonable man. As Jack Good liked to point out, geniuses are cranks who happen to be right and cranks are geniuses who happen to be wrong — they all follow their muse despite the disdain of the multitudes who are too afraid to venture outside what “everyone” believes.
Is nicotinamide overload a trigger for type 2 diabetes?
Facing the increasing prevalence of type 2 diabetes worldwide in the past few decades, one may ask what is wrong with humans. Geneticists tell us that the human genome has not changed markedly in such a short time. Therefore, something must be happening in our environment or diet. As a matter of fact, dietary pattern is known to be closely linked to the development of type 2 diabetes. The increasing prevalence of type 2 diabetes following worldwide food fortification with niacin suggests that type 2 diabetes may involve excessive niacin intake.
Vitamin C boosts the reprogramming of adult cells into stem cells
Famous for its antioxidant properties and role in tissue repair, vitamin C is touted as beneficial for illnesses ranging from the common cold to cancer and perhaps even for slowing the aging process. Now, a study published online on December 24th by Cell Press in the journal Cell Stem Cell uncovers an unexpected new role for this natural compound: facilitating the generation of embryonic-like stem cells from adult cells.
Europe/USA merger of Health Freedom Activism
The Alliance for Natural Health (ANH), based in Dorking, UK, and the American Association for Health Freedom (AAHF), of Washington DC, have merged to form the Alliance for Natural Health International (ANH International). The new organisation is headed up by internationally acclaimed scientist and activist, Dr Robert Verkerk.“United we are stronger”, said Dr Robert Verkerk. “Europe has one of the most restrictive systems which we badly need to liberalise,” continued Dr Verkerk, “while the US represents one of the most liberal systems, which we must ensure is not lost. Together, we handle both sides of the issue.”
Research shows diet soda and kidney dysfunction link
The 11-year study conducted on a group of 3,000 women outlined the effects of artificial sweeteners on the human body. The results indicated that those who drank two or more artificially-sweetened beverages a day doubled their risk of more-rapid-than-normal kidney function decline.
US Environmental Protection Agency Plans to Require Disclosure of All Ingredients in Pesticides
Reversing a decade-old decision, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Tuesday that it plans to require pesticide manufacturers to disclose to the public the inert ingredients in their products. An inert ingredient is anything added to a pesticide that does not kill or control a pest. In some cases, those ingredients are toxic, but companies do not identify them on pesticide labels. For 11 years, EPA denied petitions seeking disclosure of the chemicals but now the new administration says it plans to draft a rule that will increase transparency and encourage companies to replace toxic substances.
Autism Numbers Rise Dramatically - Environmental Factors to Blame?
The US Centers for Disease Control released its long-anticipated autism figures, showing that the average rate of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) among 8-year-olds increased by nearly 60% between 2002 and 2006, with almost one percent of US kids affected."As far as I can tell, the burden of proof is upon anybody who feels that there is NOT a real increase here in the number of kids affected," Dr. Insel told me in a telephone interview on Friday. He said factors such as better ascertainment "don't really explain away this huge increase" and that "you really have to take this (increase) very seriously - from everything they are looking at, this is not something that can be explained away by methodology, by diagnosis."
Dr. Insel hinted that genetic research into autism is about to undergo a major transformation, from looking at genetic sequencing, "which is what we have been doing for the last decade," to looking at the "emerging field of epigenetics, or epigenomics." He defined this as "looking at how the DNA is bound up with all kinds of proteins. That is largely affected by experience, or by environment.
US Health Care Reform To Include Tanning Tax
Someone should probably point out to those Senators that exposure to the sun, and by extension tanning, is a very important way in which we may obtain vitamin D in biologically relevant quantities.That vitamin, of course, is implicated in many health-determining functions in a very positive way. There is much recently published research into the health promoting and disease preventing properties of vitamin D.
So to choose to tax tanning (which - it's true - was once thought to cause skin cancer) seems to be an ironic misstep in a bill that is supposed to enable provision of better health care when enacted.
Former CDC Chief To Head Merck Vaccines Unit
Julie Gerberding, who until this year was the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was named president of Merck’s vaccine division.Think about that for a minute.
When head of the CDC, she was at the center of an effort to promote swine flu as a fearsome epidemic and making governments the world over buy stocks of drugs and millions of doses of vaccines, earning pharmaceutical companies billions ...
Advisers On Vaccines Often Have Conflicts, Report Says
A new report finds that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did a poor job of screening medical experts for financial conflicts when it hired them to advise the agency on vaccine safety, officials said Thursday.Most of the experts who served on advisory panels in 2007 to evaluate vaccines for flu and cervical cancer had potential conflicts that were never resolved, the report said. Some were legally barred from considering the issues but did so anyway.
Europe To Investigate World Health Organization In January 2010
The Council of Europe member states are to launch an inquiry in January 2010 on the influence of the pharmaceutical companies on the global swine flu campaign, focusing especially on extent of the pharma‘s industry’s influence on WHO, according to reports in the German media.
Suppression of Science Within Science
For several centuries, modern science was pretty much a free intellectual market populated by independent entrepreneurs who shared the goal of understanding how the world works. Nowadays it’s a corporate enterprise where patents, pay-offs, prestige, and power take priority over getting at the scientific truth, and the powers-that-be have established knowledge monopolies.
HIV Defendant Prevails Over Pharmaceutical Propaganda
Although the outcome wasn’t perfect, Torres illustrates how easily criminal HIV cases can be won when defense counsel doesn’t stipulate to propaganda. By forcing prosecutors to prove that HIV attacks cells and causes an infectious disease that someone could actually spread, Torres proved that prosecutors never had a case to begin with.
The New World Order in Science
Widely known is that President Eisenhower had warned of the dangers of a military-industrial complex. Much less well known is that Eisenhower was just as insightful and prescient about the dangers from Big Science:in holding scientific research and discovery in respect . . . we must also be alert to the . . . danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite
That describes in a nutshell today’s knowledge monopolies. A single theory acts as dogma once the senior, established researchers have managed to capture the cooperation of the political powers. The media take their cues also from the powers that be and from the established scientific authorities, so "no one" even knows that alternatives exist to HIV/AIDS theory, to the theory that human activities are contributing to climate change, that the Big Bang might not have happened, that it wasn’t an asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, and so on.
Texting or phoning - which is safer?
The news that cell phone users are choosing to text rather than call is positive as it means that the phone is being used further away from their body. This reduces the amount of harmful radio frequency (RF) in the microwave range reaching the brain and therefore reduces long-term potential risks of developing tumours.However, the reliance on the mobile phone means people are being exposed to cell phones for longer and longer periods of the day. For many, cell phones are seen as essential accessories that are kept close to their person and left switched on, sometimes 24 hours a day.
Cell phones' waves found to disorient honeybees
According to an article published in the Times of India, a study in Kerala found that cell phone towers caused a rapid decline in their honeybee population and that they could cause a complete collapse of the bee population in 10 years. Dr. Sainuddin Pattazhy, who conducted the study, concluded that the electromagnetic waves from the towers shorted out the navigational abilities of the worker bees so they couldn't find their way back to their hive after collecting pollen.
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If you would like to contribute to these newsgrabs...
just tell me about a link to an article or a site you think is interesting. Email me at (sepp -at- lastrega -dot- com)
facebook (facebook.com/hasslberger)And, by the way, there is much more information out there...
There is a lot I cannot cover but other sources for this kind of information exist.
Dr Mercola's health blog, Mike Adams' Natural News and the One Click Group in the UK have good health information. The Dr Rath Foundation is also putting out a weekly collection of health related news. Here is the link to their Newsletter Archive.
For the influence of electromagnetic waves from radio, mobile phones and other radio emitting devices, check out the emr-updates group on Yahoo. Genetic modification and issues around agriculture and foods are reported on the Organic Consumers Association site.
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://www.truthout.org/- - -
and remember...
The individual is supreme and finds its way through intuition
posted by Sepp Hasslberger on Friday December 25 2009
updated on Friday December 3 2010URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2009/12/25/science_media_and_loch_ness_monsters_newsgrabs_friday_25_december_2009.htm
