UN says eco farming could feed the world - Health Supreme NewsGrabs 13 March 2011
Eco-farming could double food output of poor countries, says UN"Agriculture is at a crossroads," says the study by Olivier de Schutter, the UN special reporter on the right to food, in a drive to depress record food prices and avoid the costly oil-dependent model of industrial farming.
So far, eco-farming projects in 57 nations demonstrated average crop yield gains of 80 per cent by tapping natural methods for enhancing soil and protecting against pests, it says.
Recent projects in 20 African countries resulted in a doubling of crop yields within three to 10 years. Those lessons could be widely mimicked elsewhere, it adds.
"Sound ecological farming can significantly boost production and in the long term be more effective than conventional farming,"
Video: Jamie Olivier about the power of food"Diet related disease is the biggest killer..."
Members of European Parliament concerned over regulatory threats to natural healthcareCitizens of the European Union (EU) have been voicing their concerns, frustration and anger over the current unprecedented regulatory threats to natural healthcare for some months now. A broad coalition of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) is necessary if a more appropriate regulatory framework is to be adopted. Wednesday 2 March saw a significant step being taken along this road when, at the invitation of Marian Harkin MEP, ANH-Intl and the European Benefyt Foundation (EBF) led a briefing session for MEPs on the various aspects of the regulatory threat.
Recommendations for supplements common within various physician specialtiesThe most commonly reported product taken by these specialists was the multivitamin—with 44 percent of all cardiologists, 61 percent of all dermatologists, and 57 percent of all orthopedists indicating they had taken a multivitamin within the past year. Additionally, over 25 percent of physicians in each specialty said they had used omega-3/fish oil supplements, and over 20 percent of each of the three specialty groups said they had taken a botanical supplement in the past year, with green tea being the botanical most frequently mentioned.
Overall health and wellness was the top reason these physicians reported for taking supplements, including 32 percent of cardiologists, 42 percent of dermatologists and 43 percent of orthopedists.
Flu activity up but way behind 2009-10 seasonThe number of deaths also is down, with 115 flu-related fatalities reported to the CDC so far this season, compared with 1,994 deaths at the same point during the 2009-10 season.
Now what happened to those [obviously false] official figures of 36,000 flu deaths a year that the CDC and the press have been bandying about in recent years and that have been used to justify the push for universal flu vaccination?
The Make-Believe Billion
How drug companies exaggerate research costs to justify absurd profits.For years the government has sought to make brand-name drugs cheaper and more widely available to the public. It has tried and failed to limit to a reasonable time period various patent and other "exclusivity" protections. Or it's tried and failed to negotiate volume discounts on the drugs that the feds purchase through Medicare. Every time, the pharmaceutical lobby has used its considerable wealth and political clout to block any government action that might trim Big Pharma's profits, which typically amount to between one-quarter and one-half of company revenues. And just about every time, Big Pharma has argued that huge profit margins are vitally necessary to the pharmaceutical industry because drug research and development costs are so high.
Drugs Meta Analyses Are Corrupted By PharmaMeta-analyses — studies that combine and analyze the results of several studies on a topic — are among the most influential papers published in medical journals. They’re cited more than any other type of study, and are relied on heavily when medical groups determine their best practices.
In other words, they strongly influence the decisions your doctor makes about your medical tests, procedures and treatments.
A new study has found, however, that meta-analyses leave out a crucial bit of information: financial conflicts of interest in the studies they analyze.
An alternative to pharmaceutical patentsDespite all these negative effects, there are many people who defend pharmaceutical patents, and say they are nevertheless necessary. Pharmaceutical research is very expensive, so we have to make sure it is properly funded. Otherwise we wouldn’t get any new drugs in the future, and that would be even worse.
”Because it is so easy for anybody to copy a pharmaceutical substance that has cost billions in research money to develop, we unfortunately have to let the pharmaceutical companies have monopolies on new drugs,” those who defend pharmaceutical patents say.
But that is not true.
The first part of the argument is of course valid. One way or another we have to make sure that there is serious money available for pharmaceutical research.
But the claim that pharmaceutical patents is the only conceivable system for raising that money, is simply not true.
Science: Soft peer review - social software and distributed scientific evaluationAbstract: The debate on the prospects of peer-review in the Internet age and the increasing criticism leveled against the dominant role of impact factor indicators are calling for new measurable criteria to assess scientific quality. Usage-based metrics offer a new avenue to scientific quality assessment but face the same risks as first generation search engines that used unreliable metrics (such as raw traffic data) to estimate content quality. In this article I analyze the contribution that social bookmarking systems can provide to the problem of usage-based metrics for scientific evaluation. I suggest that collaboratively aggregated metadata may help fill the gap between traditional citation-based criteria and raw usage factors. I submit that bottom-up, distributed evaluation models such as those afforded by social bookmarking will challenge more traditional quality assessment models in terms of coverage, efficiency and scalability. Services aggregating user-related quality indicators for online scientific content will come to occupy a key function in the scholarly communication system.
See also: Open Access
No Pharma Liability? No Vaccine Mandates.From now on, drug companies selling vaccines in America will not be held accountable by a jury of our peers in a court of law if those vaccines brain damage us but could have been made less toxic.
If you get paralyzed by a flu shot or your child has a serious reaction to a vaccine required for school and becomes learning disabled, epileptic, autistic, asthmatic, diabetic or mentally retarded, you are on your own.
From now on - unless we stand up and draw the line on vaccine mandates - the government can legally use police powers to force every American to get hundreds of vaccinations or be punished while those, who are hurt by vaccination, can be more easily swept under the rug and left to fend for themselves.
Japan halts vaccines after deaths of 4 childrenJapan has temporarily stopped using vaccines from U.S. drugmaker Pfizer Inc. and Sanofi-Aventis SA of France while it investigates the deaths of four children who were inoculated, the health ministry said Monday.
The decision to halt the vaccines against pneumonia, some types of meningitis and other infections was made Saturday.
Japan reports sixth infant death after vaccinationThe ministry said the unidentified boy, aged between six months and one year, died seven days after receiving Sanofi Pasteur's ActHIB in combination with a DPT shot for diphtheria, whooping cough and tetanus on February 15.
The ministry has suspended Prevenar, made by New York-based Pfizer, and ActHIB, made by the Sanofi Pasteur wing of Paris-headquartered Sanofi-Aventis, while it investigates whether they are linked to the children's deaths.
Nearly thirty years ago I helped organize hundreds of AIDS activists to demonstrate at FDA headquarters in Silver Spring, MD, as well as organized die-ins at the agency’s regional headquarters here in Kansas City, to demand faster access to experimental new drugs to fight AIDS. I doubt if any of us realized at the time how quickly we would be co-opted as unwitting tools serving the interests of the pharmaceutical industry more than ourselves.
Now I find myself at odds once again with that underfunded, overworked and under appreciated defender of public safety responsible for protecting Americans from dangerous drugs. Despite all of these limitations, the FDA has somehow managed to find the resources to clamp down on… vitamin C! Yes, ascorbic acid. Bottled sunshine. Probably the best studied, most researched and commonly used, plant based nutritional supplement known.
The Revolution Will Not Be Properly LicensedWe see it everywhere. Corporations are trying to take control over our communications tools, citing copyright concerns. Frequently, they are assisted by hapless politicians, who are also aspiring for the same control, citing terrorist concerns or some other McCarthyist scareword of the day. We should see this in perspective of the revolts happening right now in the Arab world.
The ever-increasing desire to know what we talk about and to whom is cause for more than concern, and that desire is displayed openly by corporations and politicians alike. To make matters worse, it is not just a matter of eavesdropping...
How Wisconsin Could Turn Austerity into Prosperity: Own a BankFortunately, there is another alternative. Wisconsin could draw down the fund by the small amount needed to meet pension obligations, and put the bulk of the remaining money to work creating jobs, helping local businesses, and increasing tax revenues for the state. It could do this by forming its own bank, following the lead of North Dakota, the only state to have its own bank—and the only state to escape the credit crisis.
This could be done without spending the pension fund money or lending it. The funds would just be shifted from one form of investment to another (equity in a bank).
Cold Fusion: Edmund Storms on the Rossi device... “There will be a stampede.”"The Swedish newspapers, the Italian newspapers, the Greek newspapers, they showed an interest. The American newspapers showed none at all. It's been on a number of blogs and talked about in a number of chat rooms, but no, it hasn't reached a level of any serious importance to the American press."
"Of course, he's taking orders, and I'm sure there'll be people from all over the world, where regulations are not quite so severe and minds are more open than they are here, and they'll buy units, and put them in their factories, and suddenly the cost of energy to those companies will go down significantly, and all of a sudden people will panic, and then there'll be a stampede to buy these things."
My report on the discovery: Italian Engineer announces commercial 'Cold Fusion' reactor
Team creates most powerful optical microscope everThe trick is done by combining an optical microscope with a transparent microsphere, dubbed the 'microsphere nanoscope. And it means that scientists could now examine live viruses for the first time to see what causes them.
The new nano-imaging system is based on capturing optical, near-field virtual images, which are free from optical diffraction. It then amplifys them using a microsphere, a tiny spherical particle which is further relayed and amplified by a standard optical microscope.
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and if you like physics and technology, check out my site on physics, economy and new energyMore information out there...
There is a lot I cannot cover but other sources for this kind of information exist.
Dr Mercola has a good health blog
Mike Adams publishes Natural News.
In the UK we have the One Click Group.
The Dr Rath Foundation campaigns for a New Healthcare System.
Natural health and nutrition on La Leva di Archimede
Food, Agriculture and more on the Organic Consumers Association site.
"The individual is supreme and finds his way through intuition"
posted by Sepp Hasslberger on Sunday March 13 2011
updated on Tuesday December 13 2011URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2011/03/13/un_says_eco_farming_could_feed_the_world_health_supreme_newsgrabs_13_march_2011.htm
