Recently in Junk Science Category

scotsman.com
June 1, 2009
By Marisa de Andrade

MORE than 150 girls in Scotland have suffered adverse reactions after receiving the cervical cancer vaccine introduced last autumn, The Scotsman can reveal.

Campaigners are calling for the vaccination programme to be suspended, claiming there are unanswered questions about the long-term effectiveness and safety of Cervarix, the drug used for the vaccine. They are concerned that official information refers to mild side-effects, when some girls have reported serious reactions to the jab.

The families of six girls in England are suing GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), the maker of Cervarix, after the girls suffered severe reactions resulting in partial paralysis, seizures and chronic fatigue. The Scotsman has learned two more have contacted the same solicitor after suffering severe painful swelling of joints.

Farm Wars
By Barbara H. Peterson
May 18, 2008

Monsanto and its cohorts in crime promised us that they would not be using Terminator technology called GURT, or genetic use restricted technology. In fact, the United Nations actually issued a moratorium on the project. So we’re safe, right? Wrong.

As usual, the boys in the little white lab coats have not been idle. In spite of the moratorium, not only are they working heatedly on Terminator technology, but are getting ready to introduce Zombie technology. Terminator, and Traitor or Zombie technologies are just variations of GURT. Whereas Terminator technology produces plants with sterile seeds, Zombie technology carries this a step further by creating plants that could require a chemical application to trigger seed fertility every year. Pay for the chemical or get sterile seed. This is called reversible transgenic sterility. They have been working steadily on perfecting this technology, and are now poised to introduce it to the world as a solution to the current GMO contamination problem. Move over Terminator, here comes the Zombie.

NCI STUDY LINKS ASPARTAME TO LEUKEMIA/LYMPHOMA

EFSA blesses formaldehyde-forming aspartame on April 20

NCI backs study linking formaldehyde to leukemia, lymphoma on May 14

From Mission Possible International

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) announced April 20, 2009: ..."on the basis of all the evidence currently available including the [second] published ERF study there is no indication of any genotoxic or carcinogenic potential of aspartame and that there is no reason to revise the previously established ADI (allowable daily intake) for aspartame of 40mg/kg bw/day." Truth be told: aspartame is an addictive excitoneurotoxic, genetically engineered, carcinogen that interacts with virtually all medications.

EFSA is blinded by allegiance to commercial interests so it invents objections to acclaimed medical research, disregarding the suffering, ruined lives and death their cupidity brings to an entire continent.

In 2005 the renowned Ramazzini Foundation of Oncology and Environmental Sciences reported a rigorous three year study on 1800 rats, concluding: aspartame causes significant increases in lymphomas/leukemias and is a multi-potential carcinogen. EFSA invented "deficiencies" in the study to protect manufacturers pet poison. The second study, ERF 2007, entirely verified the first. Dr Morando Soffritti, who led both projects, noted that so much formaldehyde developed in aspartame-exposed rats that their skin turned yellow.

Miami Herald
April 24, 2009
Editorial

OUR OPINION: Mistakes apparent in death of seven-year-old Gabriel Myers

By the time it becomes necessary for the Department of Children & Families to intervene in a child's life, the youngster almost certainly has already been severely traumatized by neglect and abuse. The agency faces tough, agonizing choices, but the objective never changes: Always act in the best interest of the child. That didn't happen in the depressingly sad case of 7-year-old Gabriel Myers, who threw a tantrum last week and hanged himself in the shower of a foster home.

Digital Journal
April 2, 2009

South African farmers suffered millions of dollars in lost income when 82,000 hectares of genetically-manipulated corn (maize) failed to produce hardly any seeds.The plants look lush and healthy from the outside. Monsanto has offered compensation.

Monsanto blames the failure of the three varieties of corn planted on these farms, in three South African provinces,on alleged 'underfertilisation processes in the laboratory". Some 280 of the 1,000 farmers who planted the three varieties of Monsanto corn this year, have reported extensive seedless corn problems.

Urgent investigation demanded

However environmental activitist Marian Mayet, director of the Africa-centre for biosecurity in Johannesburg, demands an urgent government investigation and an immediate ban on all GM-foods, blaming the crop failure on Monsanto's genetically-manipulated technology.

Willem Pelser, journalist of the Afrikaans Sunday paper Rapport, writes from Nelspruit that Monsanto has immediately offered the farmers compensation in three provinces - North West, Free State and Mpumalanga. The damage-estimates are being undertaken right now by the local farmers' cooperative, Grain-SA. Monsanto claims that 'less than 25%' of three different corn varieties were 'insufficiently fertilised in the laboratory'.

CommonDreams.org
Published on Saturday, March 28, 2009 by St Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri)
by Jeffrey Tomich

Earlier this month, a blogger named Brad fired a virtual salvo at Jeffrey Smith, the author of "Seeds of Deception" and one of the most vocal crusaders against genetically modified foods.

In a 600-word post, Brad questioned the credibility of an online petition on Smith's website, urging the administration of President Barack Obama to require labeling of biotech foods. He called the petition "sheer political theater" and prodded the activist for purportedly being a yogic flying instructor.

More than 30 comments followed in the next few weeks. On one level, the exchange was just another online debate about GMOs. But this one was notable because of who initiated and hosted it: Monsanto Co.

For years, environmental and food activists have made good use of YouTube video and Facebook to skewer Monsanto in the blogosphere. Now, the biotech giant is turning the tables.

Washington Post
By Shankar Vedantam
March 27, 2009

Long-Term Benefit For Children at Issue

New data from a large federal study have reignited a debate over the effectiveness of long-term drug treatment of children with hyperactivity or attention-deficit disorder, and have drawn accusations that some members of the research team have sought to play down evidence that medications do little good beyond 24 months.

The study also indicated that long-term use of the drugs can stunt children's growth.

The latest data paint a very different picture than the study's positive initial results, reported in 1999.

One principal scientist in the study, psychologist William Pelham, said that the most obvious interpretation of the data is that the medications are useful in the short term but ineffective over longer periods but added that his colleagues had repeatedly sought to explain away evidence that challenged the long-term usefulness of medication. When their explanations failed to hold up, they reached for new ones, Pelham said.

OpEdNews
March 30, 2009
By Cathy Alexander

My name is Cathy Alexander, age 52, from Tennessee. Here is my story: MY BATTLE WITH ASPARTAME POISON.

In 2005 I had an operation on my abdomen, and there were 100 days of recovery time.

A week after I got up one morning and my legs folded under me. I could not walk and my mind was so cloudy I could not remember what day it was. I was very frightened because I had never felt this way before, not once in my entire life! I would hold on to whatever was near, holding unto the walls to get down the hall to the bathroom, falling along the way.

I was so scared: I had never felt this way before. I had no insurance. I went to 3 different ER's at three different county hospitals. First, they all thought I was on drugs or drunk and I wasn't. With all kinds of testing they could not find anything.

I had to come up with the money to go to a Neurologist who tested me and did spinal taps. Nothing showed up. So the neurologist and another doctor said it was acute cerebellitis and that I would be better in about 6 months. By that time it was the same or even worse.

I had no balance or any motor skills. It was like my muscles were soft and did not work. I do not take prescriptions for nervous or antidepressants, but I was very shaky and very depressed. I did not care to live.

Age of Autism
By Kim Stagliano
March 17, 2009

We've learned today that Jenny Tetlock passed away on Sunday. Her neurologists cited an unusual form of childhood ALS. Others point to Gardasil. Our sincere condolences to her family whose blog is HERE. Below is a post we ran last July.

This article on the paralysis of Miss Jenny Tetlock, perhaps from her Gardasil vaccination, is from US News and World Report, a bastion of mainstream, conservative reporting.

Note that her father is a professor at a top university. We wish the Tetlock family, especially young Jenny, well. We wrote about her tragic situation HERE. Did blogs help move this story along? We hope so.

Washington Post
Shankar Vedantam
March 18, 2009

The study would come to be called "cursed," but it started out just as Study 15.

It was a long-term trial of the antipsychotic drug Seroquel. The common wisdom in psychiatric circles was that newer drugs were far better than older drugs, but Study 15's results suggested otherwise.

As a result, newly unearthed documents show, Study 15 suffered the same fate as many industry-sponsored trials that yield data drugmakers don't like: It got buried. It took eight years before a taxpayer-funded study rediscovered what Study 15 had found -- and raised serious concerns about an entire new class of expensive drugs.

Study 15 was silenced in 1997, the same year Seroquel was approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat schizophrenia. The drug went on to be prescribed to hundreds of thousands of patients around the world and has earned billions for London-based AstraZeneca International-- including nearly $12 billion in the past three years.

The West Georgian
Cass C. Carter
March 11, 2009

Crimes against humanity and nature have been committed and hidden on the back pages of newspapers around the world. The Monsanto Corporation, with the help of corporation-friendly judiciaries around the world, has been systematically aiming for complete agricultural hegemony through abusive litigation, aggressive lobbying and questionable patent law interpretation.

In case you don't know who Monsanto is, they were founded in 1901 and helped introduce caffeine into Coca-Cola. Not too bad for the average college student, but their major spring board into becoming one of the top 10 chemical producers in the United States was the manufacture of DDT, which was a major cause in endangering the bald eagle, and Agent Orange, which was used in Vietnam and whose effects on both American soldiers and Vietnamese civilians are so notorious.

Monsanto is listed as being a "potentially responsible party" for 56 EPA "Superfund" sites, where there is a high risk of danger to human life due to toxic waste contamination, and that's just in the United States alone.

The Wall Street Journal
By Sarah Rubenstein
March 11, 2009

We've followed plenty of controversies around drug trials, from ghostwriting to keeping quiet about unflattering results. But the latest news is particularly eye-popping: A prominent Massachusetts anesthesiologist allegedly fabricated 21 medical studies involving major drugs. Yikes.

Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Mass., has asked several anesthesiology journals to retract the studies, which appeared between 1996 and 2008, the WSJ reports. The hospital says its former chief of acute pain, Scott S. Reuben, faked data used in the studies.

Some of the studies reported favorable results from use of Pfizer's Bextra and Merck's Vioxx, both painkillers that have since been pulled from the market. Others offered good news about Pfizer's pain drugs Lyrica and Celebrex and Wyeth's antidepressant Effexor XR. Doctors said Reuben's work was particularly influential in pain treatment and that they were shocked by the news.

Sott.net
Mike Adams
Natural News
March 3, 2009

There's a popular medical thriller novel in which a global pandemic is intentionally set off by an evil plot designed to reduce the human population. In the book, a nefarious drug company inserts live avian flu viruses into vaccine materials that are distributed to countries around the world to be injected into patients as "flu shots." Those patients then become carriers for these highly-virulent strains of avian flu which go on to infect the world population and cause widespread death.

There's only one problem with this story: It's not fiction. Or, at least, the part about live avian flu viruses being inserted into vaccine materials isn't fiction. It's happening right now.

Deerfield, Illinois-based pharmaceutical company Baxter International Inc. has just been caught shipping live avian flu viruses mixed with vaccine material to medical distributors in 18 countries. The "mistake" (if you can call it that, see below...) was discovered by the National Microbiology Laboratory in Canada. The World Health Organization was alerted and panic spread throughout the vaccine community as health experts asked the obvious question: How could this have happened?

By Martha Rosenberg, AlterNet
February 28, 2009

Pfizer is planting fake medical articles and issuing unbranded "PSAs" to push pills? Again? Say it ain't so.

Even as new reports surface about alleged fake medical articles Pfizer planted to sell seizure drug Neurontin for unapproved uses from 1995 to 2002, it looks like deja vu all over again.

Pfizer gave nonprofits $2.1 million in grants in 2008 for medical courses about the pain-and-fatigue ailment fibromyalgia for which its Neurontin follow-up pill, Lyrica, just happens to be approved.

Lyrica (pregablin), facetiously called Son of Neurontin at Pfizer, was discovered by Northwestern University chemist Richard Silverman in 1989, earning the university a cool $700 million when it sold royalties in late 2007.

It is funding the $100 million Richard and Barbara Silverman Hall for Molecular Therapeutics & Diagnostics, under construction now, which will employ 245 faculty, staff and research assistants and hopefully lead to other promising molecules.

Like Neurontin (gabapentin), Lyrica (Pregablin) is an antiepilepsy drug (AED) that modulates calcium channels to dampen the excitability of nerve endings and seizure activity. And, like Neurontin which made $3 billion a year from unapproved uses like bipolar disorder, attention deficit disorder and restless legs syndrome, Pfizer has high hopes for its "crossover appeal."

The New York Times
February 26, 2009
By BARRY MEIER and BENEDICT CAREY

The Justice Department charged the drug maker Forest Laboratories on Wednesday with defrauding the government of millions of dollars by illegally marketing the popular antidepressants Celexa and Lexapro for unapproved uses in children and teenagers.

In a civil complaint filed by the United States attorney’s office in Boston, federal prosecutors alleged that former top executives at Forest concealed for several years a clinical study that showed that the drugs were not effective in children and might even pose risks to them, including causing some to become suicidal.

From 2001 to 2004, Forest heavily promoted results from another clinical trial it had financed that showed that the drugs were effective, without disclosing the negative study to those researchers, its own medical advisers or its sales representatives, the complaint said.

An official of Forest, which is based in Manhattan, said the company’s lawyers were reviewing the complaint and did not have an immediate comment. Celexa and Lexapro are two versions of the same drug, citalopram. The drugs are currently approved by the Food and Drug Administration only for adults.

OpEdNews
February 25, 2009
By Sandra Thornton

After noticing a change in TV ads for Cymbalta, now only claiming to help with depression, I was led to do extensive research on the internet as well as using valuable input from my fellow victims of fibromyalgia, and what I found was appalling.

Per FDA requirements each potential drug requires three phases of testing. Phase I of testing assesses the safety and tolerability of the drug. Phase II tests the efficacy of the drug, and Phase III tests the effects from long-term use of the drug and builds on the findings of two previous phases to further evaluate safety and effectiveness. These three phases are long and grueling… The company then submits application to the FDA for approval, a process that can take up to 2 ½ years. It takes approximately an average of 12 years to get a new drug from the laboratory unto the pharmacy shelf.

"The vaccinated, but not the non-vaccinated, dogs in the Purdue studies developed autoantibodies to many of their own biochemicals, including fibronectin, laminin, DNA, albumin, cytochrome C, cardiolipin and collagen."

"Meanwhile, the study dogs were found good homes, but no long-term follow-up has been conducted. At around the same time, the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) Vaccine-Associated Feline Sarcoma Task Force initiated several studies to find out why 160,000 cats each year in the USA develop terminal cancer at their vaccine injection sites."

"It is also widely acknowledged that vaccines can cause a fast-acting, usually fatal, disease called autoimmune haemolytic anaemia (AIHA). Without treatment, and frequently with treatment, individuals can die in agony within a matter of days."

"However, no one warns the pet owners before their animals are subjected to an unnecessary booster, and very few owners are told why after their pets die of AIHA."

Spectrum
By Barbara Frischkin
February 19, 2009

As an Autism Mom, I spent last week with my head spinning. Ultimately though, I could see that the events - in a conflicted American court, a decimated American home and a misguided British newspaper - were all connected, albeit in a deep, unsettling manner. But one that also illuminates that the debate is far from over.

In America last week, our Vaccine Court very curiously threw a hearty dose of cold water over the widely reported connection between autism and vaccines. I use this phrase -- widely reported-- to emphasize that the connection between autism and vaccines has been spotted by multitudes of front line participants and observers -- parents and physicians who have seen children and patients fall apart after being vaccinated. Ignoring these eyewitness accounts is akin to dismissing testimonies from soldiers until those testimonies are "peer reviewed" by scientists who may have no first hand experience in war zones.

Sott.net
OpEd News
Linn Cohen-Cole
February 16, 2009

[Editors' note: Community-Supported Agriculture or C.S.A., is the distribution system in which people buy shares in return for a weekly allotment of local fresh farm food.]

The New York Times ran on a piece on CSAs doing well despite the economy.

Forgive me, I am so boggled by the ironies that my computer is stuttering.

The New York Times is in New York state which is responsible for the fact that CSAs are actually in terrible trouble and that trouble stems directly from a New York source, Hillary Clinton. She pushed a centralized Food Safety Department when she ran for president, one that would bring together the USDA and FDA, giving them vastly more power over food. Both agencies are grossly corrupted by Monsanto so the multiplication of power accrues powerfully to Monsanto.

NewsWithViews.com
Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, DO
February 17, 2009

For nearly a decade, the British General Medical Council (GMC), the equivalent of a U.S State Medical Board on steroids, has been taking Dr. Andrew Wakefield to task for daring to suggest that autism could be caused by the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine. This week proved that the inquisition continues. The Times UK published a report written by commissioned journalist, Brian Deer, claiming that “confidential medical documents and interviews with witnesses” have established that Andrew Wakefield manipulated patients’ data.[1] Deer claims that Dr. Wakefield’s “misleading and inaccurate” research about the MMR has lead to reduced vaccination rates and a resurgence of measles. And while the bickering about the MMR continues, the number of children who have been lost to autism continues to soar.

Before the 1990s, U.K. researchers estimated four to five cases of autism per 10,000 people in their country. By 2006, the number with autism had escalated to 39 per 10,000 and the number with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) stood at 77 per 10,000, making the total prevalence of all types of ASD 116 per 10,000, or one in every 86 children.[2] Barely one year later (2007), researchers at the Cambridge University's Autism Research Center in London released a report estimating that one in every 58 children in the U.K. (not just boys) suffers from "some form of autism disorder."[3]

AlterNet
By Paul Armentano, NORML
February 11, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/126559/

According to Google News, more than 750 media outlets — that’s 7-5-0, folks — have now weighed in on this week’s pot scare story du jour: “Smoking marijuana causes testicular cancer.”

So is there any truth behind the provocative headline? Some, but hardly enough to justify the media’s feeding frenzy.

Researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research in Seattle matched 369 men with of testicular germ cell tumors (TGCTs) with 979 healthy controls. Here’s what they found.

Men who self-reported having “ever used” marijuana had no statistically significant risk of testicular cancer compared to healthy controls who never used pot.

Men who reported currently using marijuana at least once per week, and who had started smoking pot prior to age 18, had an elevated risk compared to controls of contracting a type of testicular cancer known as nonseminoma.

Sounds scary, huh? Well here’s the catch.

OpEdNews
February 3, 2009
By Linn Cohen-Cole

People say if farmers don't want problems from Monsanto, just don't buy their GMO seeds.

Not so simple. Where are farmers supposed to get normal seed these days? How are they supposed to avoid contamination of their fields from GM-crops? How are they supposed to stop Monsanto detectives from trespassing or Monsanto from using helicopters to fly over spying on them?

Monsanto contaminates the fields, trespasses onto the land taking samples and if they find any GMO plants growing there (or say they have), they then sue, saying they own the crop. It's a way to make money since farmers can't fight back and court and they settle because they have no choice.

And they have done and are doing a bucket load of things to keep farmers and everyone else from having any access at all to buying, collecting, and saving of NORMAL seeds.

Atlanticfreepress
Written by Robert Singer
February 7, 2009

The Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC), based in Rome, Italy, is an international organization jointly created in 1962 by the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) of the United Nations “allegedly” to protect the health of consumers with guidelines for food standards.

Codex Alimentarius may present the greatest disaster for our food supply — and thus for our health — this country has ever seen, and if not stopped is likely to be implemented starting in 2011.

Let me repeat that, the greatest disaster to our health if not stopped, starting in 2011.

The Codex and regulations affecting our food sovereignty go back to 1962. Fortunately, in 1994 Congress passed the Dietary Supplements Health and Education Act (DSHEA), which for the moment preserved the definition of vitamins, minerals and herbs as foods.

Without congressional oversight the U.S. will move towards Canada and Mexico where supplements are considered drugs, not foods. Codex if implemented will reverse DSHEA and the U.S. will no longer treat dietary supplements as foods, but as toxins.

Let me repeat that, Codex treats foods as toxins!

Sott.net
David Kirby
Age of Autism
February 4, 2009

All eyes are on Vaccine Court this week, as people await rulings in the autism "test cases" on MMR and thimerosal. But another omnibus proceeding involving Hepatitis B vaccine and autoimmune disorders in adults, including MS, has already been quietly ruling in favor of several petitioners. (HERE)

The most recent case was announced about a week ago. In it, the Court ruled that the victim, an adult female, had contracted a form of demyelinating disease and MS, and eventually died, after receiving the Hepatitis B vaccine series. It was just the most recent case in a rash of rulings in the omnibus proceeding dealing with hepatitis B vaccine and "demyelinating diseases such as transverse myelitis (TM), Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS), chronic inflammatory demyelinating disease (CIDP), and multiple sclerosis (MS)," according to court papers.

"Petitioner has prevailed on the issue of entitlement. The medical records during decedent's final hospitalization reflect that she died from demyelinating disease. Not only did decedent have a vaccine injury, but also her death was vaccine-related," wrote the Special Master in the case.

Interestingly, the US government chose not to present any expert witnesses, nor to contest the case any further.

AlterNet
By Bruce E. Levine, AlterNet
February 4, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/124165/

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. -- C.S. Lewis

Psychiatry's "shock doctrine" is quite literally electroshock, and its latest victims are – I'm not kidding – young children.

On Jan. 25, 2009, the Herald Sun in Melbourne, Australia, reported: "Children younger than 4 who are considered mentally disturbed are being treated with controversial electric shock treatment." In Australia, the use of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is increasing, and the Herald Sun's report on "Child Shock Therapy" stated that last year, "statistics record 203 ECT treatments on children younger than 14 -- including 55 aged 4 and younger."

Sott.net
Ryan Wood
Ball State News Online
February 3, 2009

A group of Ball State University students are worried a preservative found in a flu vaccine meant to keep you healthy could lead to harmful side effects.

Tony Farmer, president of Ball State's Truth Movement, has been leading his group in a protest against the use of thimerosal, a preservative found in some flu vaccines. Farmer says multiple studies indicate thimerosal, used in the flu vaccine Fluzone, can lead to Alzheimer's disease and autism.

Farmer believes the evidence found in the study is convincing, but not enough is being done to rid Fluzone of the potentially harmful preservative.

"The problem is, most people don't examine the evidence either because the FDA has convinced them it doesn't exist," Farmer wrote in an e-mail to DayWatch. "Some are putting more trust in their government than in their own eyes."

Fluzone is one of two flu vaccines offered at the Health Center. The other, FluMist, is $13 more expensive.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Toxic Flu Shots (public-healthcare-issues.suite101.com)
• MMR and Asthma (and Autism) (autismvox.com)
• Really?: The Claim: Nasal-Spray Flu Vaccine Can Make You Sick (nytimes.com)

Rolling Stone
SPECIAL REPORT
By Ben Wallace-Wells
Jan 28, 2009

Zyprexa was created to treat schizophrenia, but it wound up being used on depressed moms and misbehaving kids. How one of the nation's biggest pharmaceutical companies turned a flawed, dangerous pill into a multi-billion-dollar bonanza -- and who paid the price.

In June 1992, not long after the place closed down, a Harvard-trained psychologist named Sergio Pirrotta walked out of Danvers State Hospital for the last time. The psychiatric facility, at this late date, was a baggy old thing, rectangled into a field just north of Boston; whole wings were barely occupied, and vandals had already begun to rip out the mantelpieces and furniture. The hospital had been slowly, incrementally shutting down for a decade, and the patients that remained were the hardest cases, mostly schizophrenics and those with disorders too dense and weird to classify. But now, as Pirrotta took a walk around the campus, even those patients were gone: released into the larger world to fend for themselves or bused to hospitals where the staffs had little psychiatric training.

SOTT.net
Natural News
Mike Adams
January 28, 2009

New research published in Environmental Health and conducted in part by a scientist at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy has revealed that high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is contaminated with the toxic heavy metal mercury.

That means that many of the products using HFCS may also be contaminated with mercury. Carbonated sodas are sweetened with HFCS, as are candy bars, bread, salad dressings, pizza sauce, fruit drinks and thousands of other grocery items.

Mercury is so highly toxic that it causes severe neurological disorders. It can also result in the loss of hair, teeth and nails as well as muscle weakness, loss of kidney function, emotional mood swings and memory impairment. (P.S. Somebody please update this Wikipedia page with this latest research about HFCS being a source for mercury exposure, too.)

Sott.net
Health & Wellness
Salynn Boyles
WebMD
January 26, 2009

Treatment-related hallucinations and other psychotic symptoms in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) may be more common than previously thought, FDA officials report in the latest issue of the journal Pediatrics.

In an earlier investigation, FDA researchers identified more than 850 separate incidences of hallucinations and other psychotic episodes among children taking stimulants used to treat ADHD.

The investigation prompted federal officials to require new labeling on the drugs, including Ritalin LA, Concerta, Adderall XR, Focalin, Focalin XR, Metadate CD, Daytrana, and Strattera, warning of possible psychiatric side effects.

An estimated 2.5 million children and teens take these and other stimulant-based medications to treat ADHD symptoms.

Nearly half of the cases of hallucination and other psychiatric side effects reviewed by FDA researchers involved children younger than age 11. And in more than nine out of 10 cases, the children had no reported history of psychiatric events.

OpEdNews
January 26, 2009
By Sally Stride

Sixty-four years ago, on January 25, sodium fluoride was poured into Grand Rapids, Michigan's public water supply to prove that fluoridation reduces children's tooth decay. Five years into the experiment, things weren't going as expected. Cavities declined equally in the non-fluoridated control city of Muskegon, too. So, to blur the truth or prove their expectation, Muskegon was fluoridated also.

So what's happening today?

Related articles by Zemanta

• Dangers of Fluoride in our Water - the Great Debate
• Action urged to prevent 'infectious' tooth decay in kids

The Liberty Voice
Greenpeace
January 13, 2009

India — New research from Austria shows that a commercial strain of Monsanto-made GE corn causes mice to have fewer and weaker babies. What is this doing to human fertility?

Regulators around the world said Monsanto’s GE corn was as safe as non-GE strains.

It has been approved in many countries and regions including the US, the EU, Argentina, Japan, Philippines and South Africa.

China approved the GE corn for animal feed back in 2005.

Until this research, under the Austrian Ministries for Agriculture and Health, none of the regulators had seriously questioned the safety of Monsanto’s GE corn.

The biotech industry is playing a game of genetic roulette with our food and with our health.

Rob Edwards
New Scientist
January 12, 2009

The health of millions could be at risk because medicinal plants used to make traditional remedies, including drugs to combat cancer and malaria, are being overexploited. "The loss of medicinal plant diversity is a quiet disaster," says Sara Oldfield, secretary general of the NGO Botanic Gardens Conservation International.

Most people worldwide, including 80 per cent of all Africans, rely on herbal medicines obtained mostly from wild plants. But some 15,000 of 50,000 medicinal species are under threat of extinction, according to a report this week from international conservation group Plantlife. Shortages have been reported in China, India, Kenya, Nepal, Tanzania and Uganda.

Commercial over-harvesting does the most harm, though pollution, competition from invasive species and habitat destruction all contribute. "Commercial collectors generally harvest medicinal plants with little care for sustainability," the Plantlife report says. "This can be partly through ignorance, but [happens] mainly because such collection is unorganised and competitive."

Associated Press
January 8, 2009

Anti-psychotic medications reduce symptoms, but at a high cost, study says

LONDON - Anti-psychotic drugs commonly used to treat Alzheimer's disease may double a patient's chance of dying within a few years, suggests a new study that adds to concerns already known about such medications.

"For the vast majority of Alzheimer's patients, taking these drugs is probably not a worthwhile risk," said Clive Ballard, the paper's lead author, of the Wolfson Centre for Age-Related Diseases at King's College London.

"Would I want to take a drug that slightly reduced my aggression but doubled my risk of dying? I'm not sure I would," Ballard said.

The research was published Friday in the medical journal, Lancet Neurology.

Alzheimer's disease is the most common cause of dementia and causes symptoms including aggression, delusions and hallucinations. Previous studies have shown anti-psychotic drugs, which can help control the aggression and hallucinations for a few months raise the risk of death in older patients with dementia. There are other side effects, including respiratory problems and stroke.

tv.mpp.org

December 25, 2008

As we say goodbye to the Bush Administration, we’d like to take this opportunity to give the outgoing President and his Drug Czar their final grades.

Natural News
Mike Adams
December 18, 2008

In a truly astonishing betrayal of public safety (even for the FDA), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration today revoked its warning about mercury in fish, saying that eating mercury-contaminated fish no longer poses any health threat to children, pregnant women, nursing mothers and infants.

Last week, the FDA declared trace levels of melamine to be safe in infant formula. A few weeks earlier, it said the plastics chemical Bisphenol-A was safe for infants to drink. Now it says children can eat mercury, too. Is there any toxic substance in the food that the FDA thinks might be dangerous? (Aspartame, MSG, sodium nitrite and now mercury...)

This FDA decision on mercury in fish has alarmed EPA scientists who called it "scientifically flawed and inadequate," reports the Washington Post. Even better, the Environmental Working Group issued a letter to the EPA, saying "It's a commentary on how low FDA has sunk as an agency. It was once a fierce protector of America's health, and now it's nothing more than a patsy for polluters."

WHY IS A NOBEL AWARD BEING GIVEN FOR THIS ON DECEMBER 10TH?

By Janine Roberts

There are two licensed HPV vaccines in the world.

Merck makes Gardasil. It contains proteins said to come originally from four different types of HPV. By early 2008 over 10 million doses had been distributed, three-quarters of these in the USA. It is thought to be earning the company over $1 billion a year – at $360 for a course of three injections, far more than is charged for the common vaccines. The other is Cervarix, made by SmithKline Beecham, which is not yet licensed for use in the USA (as of May 2008). It contains proteins said to come from 2 different types of HPV. Both vaccines contain aluminium adjuvants. Both manufacturers recommend that women are still regularly scanned for cervical cancer – thus the vaccine does not save costs. In fact these scans give women far better protection than does the vaccine.

On December 10th, a Nobel Prize will be awarded for finding HPV and proving its link to cervical cancer to Dr Harald zur Hausen. However there is a missing link in this – for he failed to find a way to persuade cells to make his virus.

The Independent
James Woodward
December 2, 2008

A "healthy and robust" baby who died just ten days after being given the MMR jab had earlier suffered a fever fit which can be aggravated by the vaccine, an inquest heard today.

George Fisher, aged 18 months, was discovered dead in his cot in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire by his mother Sarah Fisher just hours after he was heard "chatting away on the baby monitor", a coroner was told.

Mrs Fisher, 44, and husband Christopher, 43, believe the vaccine is "implicated" in their son's death in January 2006 as the temperature-raising effects of the drug on children who have suffered febrile convulsions were not explained to them - knowledge they say might have allowed them to act sooner.

Department of Health guidelines say the jab should be given "with caution" but does not ban child sufferers of febrile convulsions from taking it and recommends temperature monitoring.

Two doctors confirmed that giving MMR to sufferers like George, who contracted the fever four months earlier, was permitted under patient guidelines with careful watches recommended.

Sott.net
Sherry Baker
NaturalNews
November 17, 2008

Drugs like Avastin that are used to treat some cancers are supposed to work by blocking a vessel growth-promoting protein called vascular endothelial growth factor, or VEGF. With VEGF held in check, researchers have assumed tumors wouldn't generate blood vessels and that should keep malignancies from growing. In a sense, the cancerous growths would be "starved". But new research just published in the journal Nature shows this isn't true. Instead of weakening blood vessels so they won't "feed" malignant tumors, these cancer treatments, known as anti-angiogenesis drugs, actually normalize and strengthen blood vessels -- and that means they can spur tumors to grow larger.

MailOnline
By Jo Macfarlane
November 2008

Health chiefs have revealed that ten people have committed suicide after taking a controversial anti-smoking drug linked to depression.

The disclosure by the Government's drugs watchdog is the first time officials have revealed the link between Champix and suicide in this country. Earlier this year, US authorities announced they were investigating 37 similar cases there.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) website says a total of 24 people taking the nicotine-replacement have died, of whom ten took their own lives.

A further 213 claimed they had experienced suicidal thoughts and 407 said they were suffering depression.

There is no evidence that Champix has been a factor in any of the deaths. However, some experts are concerned that the drug, used by almost half a million people in Britain, may cause depressive thoughts and mood swings.

www.opednews.com

November 16, 2008

by Institute for Responsible Technology (Posted by sadelaine)

Austrian Government Study Confirms Genetically Modified (GM) Crops

Threaten Human Fertility and Health Safety

Advocates Call for Immediate Ban of All GM Foods and GM Crops

IMMEDIATE RELEASE (November 13, 2008)

(Los Angeles, CA.) - A long-term feeding study commissioned by the Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety, managed by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Health, Family and Youth, and carried out by Veterinary University Vienna, confirms genetically modified (GM) corn seriously affects reproductive health in mice. Non-GMO advocates, who have warned about this infertility link along with other health risks, now seek an immediate ban of all GM foods and GM crops to protect the health of humankind and the fertility of women around the world.

Feeding mice with genetically modified corn developed by the US-based Monsanto Corporation led to lower fertility and body weight, according to the study conducted by the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna. Lead author of the study Professor Zentek said, there was a direct link between the decrease in fertility and the GM diet, and that mice fed with non-GE corn reproduced more efficiently.

NaturalNews.com
by Joanne Waldron
November 11, 2008

(NaturalNews) The Gardasil vaccine has been linked to 78 outbreaks of genital warts, according to an article in The Fiji Times entitled "Are our girls guinea pigs?" by Matelita Ragogo. That's right. In addition to all of the other adverse reactions to this controversial vaccine, children who receive it are subject to outbreaks of genital warts. Unfortunately, not too many doctors take the time to educate parents about some of these possible reactions prior to giving little girls this expensive jab.

Deaths, Miscarriages and Other Adverse Events

While genital warts are certainly disgusting, parents who think that genital warts are the worst possible adverse reaction to the vaccine should think again. According to Ragogo, as of August 14th, including the 78 outbreaks of genital warts, there have been 9,748 adverse events reported as per Judicial Watch, a non-profit watchdog group. Judicial Watch also reports that there have been 21 deaths, not including the deaths (by miscarriage) of 10 unborn babies.

November 10th, 2008

By David Gutierrez | A report by the Florida Medical Examiners Commission has concluded that prescription drugs have outstripped illegal drugs as a cause of death.

An analysis of 168,900 autopsies conducted in Florida in 2007 found that three times as many people were killed by legal drugs as by cocaine, heroin and all methamphetamines put together. According to state law enforcement officials, this is a sign of a burgeoning prescription drug abuse problem.

"The abuse has reached epidemic proportions," said Lisa McElhaney, a sergeant in the pharmaceutical drug diversion unit of the Broward County Sheriff's Office. "It's just explosive."

In 2007, cocaine was responsible for 843 deaths, heroin for 121, methamphetamines for 25 and marijuana for zero, for a total of 989 deaths. In contrast, 2,328 people were killed by opioid painkillers, including Vicodin and Oxycontin, and 743 were killed by drugs containing benzodiazepine, including the depressants Valium and Xanax.

www.opednews.com
November 5, 2008
by DrTruth

Big business greed, selfishness, power lust, and total disregard for human life and all life in the natural world continues on with its diabolical schemes to control all food production in the world. Monsanto's attempts to patent pig genes, and subsequently, many other life forms through genetically modified organisms (GMO) is as criminal as they come.

It is bad enough that Monsanto's total vanity and ego could believe they own any aspect of the natural world, regardless of what they might do to it, for them to do this for money and control is insult to injury. This is a purely evil agenda and they are a clear example of domestic terrorists at work to subjugate others.

Imagine this: You have a field of corn you are raising cleanly... without GMO corn seed. Your neighboring fields have those GMO seeds and crops. The pollen from those fields cross with your clean corn plants, carrying the genetic material Monsanto's perverted corn contains. Now, your corn crop can be claimed as their property because of their patented gene found in your crop and they can either demand a fee from you for having this gene, or put you out of business with a lawsuit.

The Washington Post
Lyndsey Layton
September 17, 2008

The first large study in humans of a chemical widely used in everyday plastics has found that people with higher levels of bisphenol A had higher rates of heart disease, diabetes and liver abnormalities, a finding that immediately became the focus of the increasingly heated debate over the safety of the chemical.

The research, published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association by a team of British and American scientists, compared the health status of 1,455 men and women with the levels of the chemical, known as BPA, in their urine.

The researchers divided the subjects into four statistical groupings according to their BPA levels and found that those in the quartile with the highest concentrations were nearly three times as likely to have cardiovascular disease than those with the lowest levels, and 2.4 times as likely to have diabetes. Higher BPA levels were also associated with abnormal concentrations of three liver enzymes.

By Rob Kampia, AlterNet
September 8, 2008

Twenty years ago, on Sept. 6, 1988, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's chief administrative law judge issued a landmark ruling, but don't expect any celebrations or commemorations in Washington, D.C. Our government has ignored this historic decision since the day it was issued, inflicting needless misery on millions.

Indeed, most Americans don't know it ever happened.

In response to a petition asking that marijuana be moved from Schedule I of the federal Controlled Substances Act, which bars medical use, to a lower schedule that would permit physician prescriptions, Judge Francis Young held extensive hearings that began in the summer of 1986. He heard from an impressive array of expert witnesses, resulting in thousands of pages of documentation.

Sott.net
Antifascist Calling
September 6, 2008

If incorporating personal details into an RFID (radio-frequency identification) chip implanted into a passport or driver's license may sound like a "smart" alternative to endless lines at the airport and intrusive questioning by securocrats, think again.

Since the late 1990s, corporate grifters have touted the "benefits" of the devilish transmitters as a "convenient" and "cheap" way to tag individual commodities, one that would "revolutionize" inventory management and theft prevention. Indeed, everything from paper towels to shoes, pets to underwear have been "tagged" with the chips. "Savings" would be "passed on" to the consumer. Call it the Wal-Martization of everyday life.

Keith Howe
OpEdNews
September 2, 2008

"Dr. Jeffrey W. Runge, chief medical officer at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, told a congressional subcommittee on July 22 that the risk of a large-scale biological attack on the nation is significant. Runge used the terrifying example of a terrorist flying over Providence with an aerosolized sprayer releasing air-borne anthrax over the metropolitan area." (1)

I don't recall any terrorist's flying over America with an aerosolized sprayer releasing airborne weapons of mass destruction on her citizens. I am aware, however, of the U.S. government spraying weapons of mass destruction on us, in the form of toxic nerve agents (malathion, pyrenone 5,25, Checkmate OLR-F, Checkmate LBAM-F) with the excuse of protecting us from non-threatening fruit flies, light brown apple moths, and mosquitoes allegedly carrying the West Nile Virus (which is almost no threat to humans).

opednews.com

July 23, 2008
by Linn Cohen-Cole

Where does one even begin?

Do you know who Monsanto is? They are a chemical corporation which made Agent Orange and after that, PCBs, with which they drowned the town of Anniston, Alabama for decades, even after knowing for sure that PCBs were highly carcinogenic. They make organophosphates, including glyphosate (Round-up) - which are highly neuro-toxic.

With this background in illness and killing, Monsanto then began "doing" your food. It genetically engineers food.

But before you say "Oh, that's good because genetic engineering is making food better, adding vitamins, growing bigger crops, ..." I have bad news for you. Please go to http://www.responsibletechnology.org and listen to Jeffrey Smith's lecture on how genetic engineering works and what it does to organs.

And as the greater yield PR, I suggest you read: http://www.i-sis.org.uk/IBTCF.php about the Bt-cotton fraud in India while Monsanto claims to have increased yield by 160%. http://www.monsanto.com/biotech-gmo/asp/news.asp?newsId=nr20070917&yr=2007 What do Indian farmers say? Indian farmers call Monsanto's Bt-cotton seeds, the Seeds of Death. http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/indiacotton012406.cfm

Beyond India, there are also problems. http://www.slogefree.org/news07/a-disaster-in-search-of-success-bt-cotton-in

AlterNet
By Bruce E. Levine, AlterNet
July 23, 2008

American psychiatry has been rocked by Congress. Congressional investigators first exposed the financial relationships between high-profile psychiatrists and drug companies. "But now the profession itself is under attack in Congress," reported the New York Times on July 12, 2008.

Specifically under attack is psychiatry's premier professional organization, the American Psychiatric Association. The New York Times stated, "In 2006, the latest year for which numbers are available, the drug industry accounted for about 30 percent of the association's $62.5 million in financing. About half of that money went to drug advertisements in psychiatric journals and exhibits at the annual meeting, and the other half to sponsor fellowships, conferences and industry symposiums at the annual meeting."

The American Psychiatric Association is, as the New York Times notes, "the voice of establishment psychiatry." It publishes the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), which is the standard diagnostic manual. It also publishes influential professional journals. And it is the primary lobbying organization for American psychiatry.

AlterNet
By Bruce E. Levine
June 18, 2008

What Dick Cheney is to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, psychiatrist Joseph Biederman is to the explosion of psychiatric medications in American children. Recently, Biederman was nailed by congressional investigators and the New York Times for overestimating just how greedy an elite shrink is entitled to be. Beyond a peek into the corruption of psychiatry at its highest levels, the scandal is an opportunity to reconsider the Big Pharma financed view of why kids become disruptive and destructive.

On June 8, 2008, the New York Times reported the following about Joseph Biederman: "A world-renowned Harvard child psychiatrist whose work has helped fuel an explosion in the use of powerful anti-psychotic medicines in children earned at least $1.6 million in consulting fees from drug makers from 2000 to 2007 but for years did not report much of this income to university officials, according to information given congressional investigators."

Due in part to Biederman's influence, the number of American children and adolescents treated for bipolar disorder increased 40-fold from 1994 to 2003, and as Bloomberg News reported (September 2007), "The expanded use of bipolar as a pediatric diagnosis has made children the fastest-growing part of the $11.5 billion U.S. market for anti-psychotic drugs."

Planet Chiropractic News
June 9, 2008
By Michael Dorausch, DC

Call it a psycho conflict of interest affecting the health and lives of thousands of children, an Iowa senator has discovered 3 Harvard researchers earned millions of dollars in consulting fees from drug companies, for performing research and evangelizing antipsychotic drug use in children.

Charles Ernest "Chuck" Grassley, a senior United States Senator from Iowa, launched a congressional investigation to determine whether research psychiatrists were receiving drug money payments and failing to disclose that information to the federal government and university departments.

According to congressional investigators, researchers failed to report millions of dollars in income earned while consulting for various drug companies. According to news reports, these were well-known child psychiatrists practicing research out of Harvard University. Among the research doctors were psychiatrist, Dr. Joseph Biederman, of the psychiatry department at Harvard Medical School. Investigators believe the three psychiatrists may have violated federal rules created to vet out potential conflicts of interest in pharmaceutical research, some of which is financed by government grants.

Common Dreams News Center
May 13, 2008
The Washington Post
by Rick Weiss

A handful of the world’s largest agricultural biotechnology companies are seeking hundreds of patents on gene-altered crops designed to withstand drought and other environmental stresses, part of a race for dominance in the potentially lucrative market for crops that can handle global warming, according to a report being released today.

Three companies — BASF of Germany, Syngenta of Switzerland and Monsanto of St. Louis — have filed applications to control nearly two-thirds of the climate-related gene families submitted to patent offices worldwide, according to the report by the Ottawa-based ETC Group, an activist organization that advocates for subsistence farmers.

The applications say that the new “climate ready” genes will help crops survive drought, flooding, saltwater incursions, high temperatures and increased ultraviolet radiation — all of which are predicted to undermine food security in coming decades.

Company officials dismissed the report’s contention that the applications amount to an intellectual-property “grab,” countering that gene-altered plants will be crucial to solving world hunger but will never be developed without patent protections.

Sott.net
Jo Hartley
Natural News
May 10, 2008

Environmental and farm worker groups have now sued the Bush administration for allowing the continued use of four pesticides. They claim that the government brushed aside its own evidence that the chemicals are toxic to workers, children, and animals.

The suit challenged the Environmental Protection Agency's 2006 decision to reauthorize the four pesticides used on fruit and vegetable fields in California.

A 1996 federal law required the EPA to reassess the safety of all pesticides used on foods. Based on this reassessment, the EPA was to decide whether to approve their use. The EPA found that four substances posed substantial risks to human health but they concluded that the cost savings to growers outweighed the dangers to humans.

These four pesticides reportedly put thousands of farm workers and their families at risk of serious illness.

EPA spokesman Tim Lyons stated that the agency would review the lawsuit and respond in court. However, they did say: "Our mission is to protect the environment and human health."

Spiegel online
May 9, 2008
By Andrew Curry

Bees in the German state of Baden-Württemburg are dying by the hundreds of thousands. In some places more than half of hives have perished. Government officials say the causes are unclear -- but beekeepers are blaming new pesticides.

In Germany's bucolic Baden-Württemburg region, there is a curious silence this week. All up and down the Rhine river, farm fields usually buzzing with bees are quiet. Beginning late last week, helpless beekeepers could only watch as their hives were hit by an unprecedented die-off. Many say one of Germany's biggest chemical companies is to blame.

In some parts of the region, hundreds of bees per hive have been dying each day. "It's an absolute bee emergency," Manfred Hederer, president of the German Professional Beekeeper's Association, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "Fifty to 60 percent of the bees have died on average, and some beekeepers have lost all their hives."

Sott.net

Hope Shand
gristmill
May 2, 2008

A review of Claire Hope Cummings' Uncertain Peril

In October 1996, a spokesman for Monsanto told Farm Journal why his company was buying up seed companies left and right: "What you're seeing is not just a consolidation of seed companies, it's really a consolidation of the entire food chain."

Today, Monsanto is the world's largest seed company -- and makes more money selling seeds than chemicals. The company's biotech seeds and traits accounted for 88 percent of the worldwide area devoted to genetically modified seeds in 2006 -- and Monsanto earns royalties on every single one. No one needed to tell Monsanto: Whoever controls the first link in the food chain -- the seeds -- controls the food supply.

BlacklistedNews
April 30, 2008.
Source: Philadelphia Inqurier

Federal inspectors documented unwanted "fibers" on the stoppers of vaccine vials at Merck & Co. Inc.'s vast vaccine plant in Montgomery County.
They also found instances of contaminated children's vaccines and complaints that were not always investigated at the West Point plant.

Inspectors from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration spent 30 days at the plant between November and January and cited 49 areas of concern, including a failure to follow good manufacturing practices.

The findings are detailed in an unpublished 21-page FDA report obtained by The Inquirer under the federal Freedom of Information Act.

Independent experts who reviewed the report say it documents serious concerns in one of the country's premier vaccine plants. They suggested the problems could be a symptom of Merck's cost cutting in the face of rapid growth of its vaccine business.

OpEdNews
April 22, 2008
By Anthony Wade

Little Hannah Poling was just 19 months old when she received five shots as part of the usual vaccination program. These shots would severely aggravate an underlying mitochondrial disorder which would result in a brain disorder; with features of Autism Spectrum Disorder. Prior to the vaccinations little Hannah was a normal toddler with appropriate verbal development. Within 48 hours of the vaccines her life would be irreparably and irretrievably changed. She developed a high fever, inconsolable crying and would choose to no longer walk. She no longer slept through the night and soon the signs of autism were obvious. Hannah started spinning behavior, staring at lights and stopped speaking for a time. This seemingly once normal child now requires one-on-one care at all times. Her parents realized that their child developed autism from the critical point when she received her vaccines.

Common Dreams
April 20, 2008 by The Independent/UK
By Geoffrey Lean

Genetic modification actually cuts the productivity of crops, an authoritative new study shows, undermining repeated claims that a switch to the controversial technology is needed to solve the growing world food crisis.

The study - carried out over the past three years at the University of Kansas in the US grain belt - has found that GM soya produces about 10 per cent less food than its conventional equivalent, contradicting assertions by advocates of the technology that it increases yields.

Professor Barney Gordon, of the university’s department of agronomy, said he started the research - reported in the journal Better Crops - because many farmers who had changed over to the GM crop had “noticed that yields are not as high as expected even under optimal conditions”. He added: “People were asking the question ‘how come I don’t get as high a yield as I used to?’”

He grew a Monsanto GM soybean and an almost identical conventional variety in the same field. The modified crop produced only 70 bushels of grain per acre, compared with 77 bushels from the non-GM one.

Sott.net
April 22, 2008
OpenPR
New York State Coalition Opposed to Fluoridation, Inc

Fluoride exposure is rising and causing children's tooth imperfections, ranging from white spots to brownish discolorations and pitting (fluorosis), dentist Elivir Dincer reports in the New York State Dental Journal. (1)

"Such changes in the tooth's appearance can affect the child's self-esteem which makes early prevention that much more critical," writes Dincer.

Children, aged 2 to 7 years, can swallow about one-quarter milligram of fluoride with every brushing because their swallowing reflexes are not fully developed, reports Dincer.

"Children from the age of 6-months to 3-years should not have more than one-quarter milligram of fluoride per day. Brushing the teeth of a 2-year-old twice a day will expose the child to about one-half milligram, exceeding the allowable [daily] limits" [from toothpaste alone], writes Dincer.

Intentionally swallowing the toothpaste which is likely, given the pleasant flavor of children's toothpaste, increases children's fluorosis risk, Dincer reports.

Fluoridated water, supplements, mouth rinses and/or foods add to daily fluoride intake.

CNews.ru: Top Headlines
April 18, 2008

Handsets pose danger for children and teen-agers, state experts of the Russian National Committee on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection having carried out experiments with animals of different age. The oncoming generation is recommended to reduce communication through handsets, as their nerves might be badly injured.

The Russian National Committee on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (RNCNIRP) has expressed its opinion regarding the possible influence of handset electromagnetic field on children and teen-ages. The experiments, consultations and discussions held led to the resolution ‘Children and handsets: future generations’ health is under threat’. The given resolution comprises opinions of leading Russian scientists in hygiene and radiobiology of Non-Ionizing Radiation. The given resolution is based on modern scientific knowledge and fundamental submission generated in many years of research into the influence of electromagnetic fields on human health.

NaturalNews.com
by Mike Adams
April 16, 2008

(NaturalNews) The latest attack on vitamins A, C, E, selenium and beta-carotene comes from the Cochrane Library, a widely-read source of information on conventional health matters. In the paper published yesterday, these antioxidants were linked with a higher risk of mortality ("they'll kill you!"), and now serious-sounding scientists have warned consumers away from taking vitamins altogether. But with all the benefits of antioxidants already well known to the well-informed, how did the Cochrane Library arrive at such a conclusion? It's easy: The researchers considered 452 studies on these vitamins, and they threw out the 405 studies where nobody died! That left just 47 studies where subjects died from various causes (one study was conducted on terminal heart patients, for example). From this hand-picked selection of studies, these researchers concluded that antioxidants increase mortality.

Just in case the magnitude of the scientific fraud taking place here has not yet become apparent, let me repeat what happened: These scientists claimed to be studying the effects of vitamins on mortality, right? They were conducting a meta-analysis based on reviewing established studies. But instead of conducting an honest review of all the studies, they arbitrarily decided to eliminate all studies in which vitamins prevented mortality and kept people alive! They did this by "excluding all studies in which no participants died." What was left to review? Only the studies in which people died from various causes.

Brilliant, huh? This sort of bass-ackward science would earn any teenager an "F" in high school science class. But apparently it's good enough for the Cochrane Library, not to mention all the mainstream press outlets that are now repeating these silly conclusions as scientific fact.

washingtonpost.com
By Nita Farahany
April 13, 2008

Imagine a world of streets lined with video cameras that alert authorities to any suspicious activity. A world where police officers can read the minds of potential criminals and arrest them before they commit any crimes. A world in which a suspect who lies under questioning gets nabbed immediately because his brain has given him away.

Though that may sound a lot like the plot of the 2002 movie "Minority Report," starring Tom Cruise and based on a Philip K. Dick novel, I'm not talking about science fiction here; it turns out we're not so far away from that world. But does it sound like a very safe place, or a very scary one?

It's a question I think we should be asking as the federal government invests millions of dollars in emerging technology aimed at detecting and decoding brain activity. And though government funding focuses on military uses for these new gizmos, they can and do end up in the hands of civilian law enforcement and in commercial applications. As spending continues and neurotechnology advances, that imagined world is no longer the stuff of science fiction or futuristic movies, and we postpone at our peril confronting the ethical and legal dilemmas it poses for a society that values not just personal safety but civil liberty as well.

OpEdNews
By Evelyn Pringle
April 7, 2008

Washington - Government attorneys appointed by the Bush Administration have been supporting GlaxoSmithKline in a number of courts across the country in an effort to convince the courts that lawsuits filed by victims of Paxil-induced injuries should be dismissed before ever making it to a jury.

In fact, the Administration has spent a massive amount of tax dollars filing amicus briefs on behalf of just about every drug maker involved in litigation in an attempt to get the lawsuits filed by private citizens thrown out of court.

The government claims that, once a drug and the warnings on its label are approved by the FDA, claims alleging injuries caused by a company's failure to warn about a risk not listed on the label are preempted.

The Bush Administration says preemption applies even when a company (1) continues to sell a drug when a risk is known; (2) fails to warn when new risks are discovered; (3) fails to send letters notifying prescribing doctors of a known risk, and (4) fails to disclose a known risk to the FDA during the approval process, or anytime for that matter. In essence, if the FDA doesn't make the companies warn, they're off the hook.

SOTT
Associated Press
Lindsey Tanner
April 7, 2008

Medicine mix-ups, accidental overdoses and bad drug reactions harm roughly one out of 15 hospitalized children, according to the first scientific test of a new detection method.

That number is far higher than earlier estimates and bolsters concerns already heightened by well publicized cases like the accidental drug overdose of actor Dennis Quaid's newborn twins last November.

"These data and the Dennis Quaid episode are telling us that ... these kinds of errors and experiencing harm as a result of your health care is much more common than people believe. It's very concerning," said Dr. Charles Homer of the National Initiative for Children's Healthcare Quality. His group helped develop the detection tool used in the study.

OpEdNews
April 2, 2008
By Barbara Peterson

The people of the Bay area of California are about to be sprayed with a new pesticide not registered with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in a pre-emptive strive against a perceived threat from the Light Brown Apple Moth.

"In August, the California Department of Food and Agriculture plans to spray pesticides in five Bay Area counties for the invasive species" (CBS 5, 2008). One of the chemicals being used is Checkmate, manufactured by Suterra, LLC, which is owned by Stewart Resnick, one of the richest men in California, and owner of the largest farming operation of tree crops in the world. Mr. Resnick is also included in California Governor Schwarzenegger's top 100 donors. (Arnold Watch, 2008)

David Hambling
NewScientist.com
March 21, 2008

A recently declassified US Army report on the biological effects of non-lethal weapons reveals outlandish plans for "ray gun" devices, which would cause artificial fevers or beam voices into people's heads.

The report titled "Bioeffects Of Selected Nonlethal Weapons" was released under the US Freedom of Information Act and is available on this website (pdf). The DoD has confirmed to New Scientist that it released the documents, which detail five different "maturing non-lethal technologies" using microwaves, lasers and sound.

Released by US Army Intelligence and Security Command at Fort Meade, Maryland, US, the 1998 report gives an overview of what was then the state of the art in directed energy weapons for crowd control and other applications.

Alternet
By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!
March 25, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/80505/

Editor's Note: Read more about this topic on AlterNet from Wenonah Hauter of Food and Water Watch.

AMY GOODMAN: Saturday was World Water Day, and the United Nations estimates close to 1.5 billion people around the world do not have access to clean drinking water. What about here in the United States?

The Associated Press has conducted an extensive investigation into the drinking water in at least twenty-four major American cities across the country, which contain trace amounts of a wide array of pharmaceuticals. The amounts might be small, but scientists are worried about the long-term health and environmental consequences of their presence in the water supplies of some forty-one million Americans.

The five-month investigation of sixty-two metropolitan areas and fifty-one smaller cities found that many drinking water suppliers, including bottled water companies, do not even test for the presence of drugs in the water. The utilities that do test for drugs often don't tell customers about the trace amounts of medications in their water.

CommonDreams News center
March 12, 2008 by Reuters
by Carey Gillam

Widespread contamination of U.S. corn, soybeans and other crops by genetically engineered varieties is threatening the purity of organic and natural food products and driving purveyors of such specialty products to new efforts to protect their markets, industry leaders said this week.

A range of players, from dairy farmers to natural food retailers, are behind an effort to introduce testing requirements and standards for certification aimed at keeping contamination at bay. That goal is rapidly becoming harder, however, as planting of biotech corn, soybeans, and other crops expands across the United States.

“Now there is a real shortage of organic grain for animal husbandry and dairy operations,” said Organic Consumers Association national director Ronnie Cummins. “People are having to be real careful.”

Proponents of the plan are rolling it out this week at an industry meeting in Anaheim, California, seeking to get the entire organic and natural foods industry to agree on testing and standard certifications. Companies that get certified will be allowed to use a seal designating as much on their products.

NaturalNews.com
March 11, 2008
by Rami Nagel

(NaturalNews) People of the world, the US Government is planning to poison more than two million people, in California, using an untested biological "pesticide" this summer. The chemical to be sprayed is classified by the EPA as a "pesticide" and the plan is to douse cities with this chemical designed to stick on everything for 90 days or longer. This application is not a one time event, but will continue every 1-3 months for as long as five years. The pesticide to be sprayed is not designed to harm the light brown apple moth's who it is designed for, but merely to confuse its mating habits. While harmless to moths, the pesticide has been documented to harm humans.

Side effects range from vomiting and flu like systems, to male and female reproductive cycle disruption. One child nearly died from the exposure, and some people have developed asthma from being exposed to this chemical concoction. It is cause for alarm that a chemical being labeled as harmless and "safe" even in minute doses, causes severe health effects in some people. The government is racing to cover up and hide the dangerous health effects so that they can continue their aerial spray plans this summer. Your attention and action on this subject is needed in the most important way.

Sott.net
By Luke Baker
March 7, 2008

LONDON - A British company has developed a camera that can detect weapons, drugs or explosives hidden under people's clothes from up to 25 meters away in what could be a breakthrough for the security industry.

The T5000 camera, created by a company called ThruVision, uses what it calls "passive imaging technology" to identify objects by the natural electromagnetic rays -- known as Terahertz or T-rays -- that they emit.

The high-powered camera can detect hidden objects from up to 80 feet away and is effective even when people are moving. It does not reveal physical body details and the screening is harmless, the company says.

The technology, which has military and civilian applications and could be used in crowded airports, shopping malls or sporting events, will be unveiled at a scientific development exhibition sponsored by Britain's Home Office on March 12-13.

"Acts of terrorism have shaken the world in recent years and security precautions have been tightened globally," said Clive Beattie, the chief executive of ThruVision.

"The ability to see both metallic and non-metallic items on people out to 25 meters is certainly a key capability that will enhance any comprehensive security system."

The International Herald Tribune
March 3, 2008
by Doreen Carvajal

Paris, France - Thousands of garments in the sprawling men’s department at the Galeria Kaufhof are equipped with tiny wireless chips that can forestall fashion disaster by relaying information from the garment to a dressing-room screen.

The garments in the department store, in Essen, Germany, contain radio frequency identification chips, small circuits that communicate by radio waves through portable readers and more than 200 antennas that can not only recommend a brown belt for those tweed slacks but also track garments from the racks, shelves and dressing rooms on the store’s third floor.

This pioneering pilot project of the Metro Group, a retail chain in Germany, heralds a shopping experience of the future in which dress shirts can wirelessly offer accessorizing tips to shoppers. But the rapid development of RFID technology is also being regarded cautiously by the authorities in the European Union, who are moving quickly to establish privacy guidelines because the chips - and the information being collected - are not always visible.

Their goal is to raise awareness among consumers that the data-gathering chips are becoming embedded in their lives - in items like credit cards, public transportation passes, work access badges, borrowed library books and supermarket loyalty cards.

There are also policy concerns regarding whether retailers could link a customer’s credit card data to an RFID tag in a product, allowing clients to be identified when they return to a store.

DailyMail
February 23, 2008

Motorists will be targeted by a new generation of road cameras which work out how many people are in a car by measuring the amount of bodily fluid it contains.

The latest snooping device on the nation's roads aims to penalise lone drivers who abuse car-sharing lanes, and is part of a Government effort to combat congestion at busy times.

The cameras work by sending an infrared beam through the windscreen of vehicles which detects the unique make-up of blood and water content in human skin.

The system's inventors believe it will catch out motorists who try to fool existing CCTV road cameras by placing mannequins in passenger seats or fixing photographs to windscreens.

It will at first be used to police car-sharing lanes in Leeds, but councils across the country have already expressed an interest in using them.

Steve Lendman
February 22, 2008

This article discusses the potential health risks of genetically engineered foods (GMOs). It draws on some previously used material because its importance bears repeating. It also cites three notable books and highlights one in particular - Jeffrey Smith's "Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods." Detailed information from the book is featured below.

Genetically engineered foods saturate our diet today. In the US alone, over 80% of all processed foods contain them. Others include grains like rice, corn and wheat; legumes like soybeans and soy products; vegetable oils, soft drinks; salad dressings; vegetables and fruits; dairy products including eggs; meat, chicken, pork and other animal products; and even infant formula plus a vast array of hidden additives and ingredients in processed foods (like in tomato sauce, ice cream, margarine and peanut butter). Consumers don't know what they're eating because labeling is prohibited, yet the danger is clear. Independently conducted studies show the more of these foods we eat, the greater the potential harm to our health.

Scoop
Independent News
December 22, 2007
Press Release: Phoenix Organics

Phoenix Organics Says: 'Think Before You Drink' Aspartame

Phoenix Organics has launched a campaign urging people to find out more about aspartame, the controversial artificial sweetener contained in many 'diet' drinks and foods and beverages marketed as containing zero calories.

The company has turned 20,000 bottles of Phoenix Organic Cola into mini-billboards carrying its 'Think Before You Drink' message, and highlighting the concerns that have been raised about aspartame. The bottles will be given away to consumers over the summer.

Company Directors Stefan Lepionka and Marc Ellis said that the Phoenix team had become aware of the controversy that has swirled around aspartame since it was approved for use in beverages in 1983, when they started doing research for a Phoenix Organics brand campaign.

"Having read the Bressler Report of the FDA and other reports on the effects of aspartame, we had the living daylights scared out of all of us," said the Directors.

Internationally the evidence is overwhelming; There are thousands of people who claim that aspartame made them sick.

Sott.net
February 5, 2008

The first warning sign came when a sharp-eyed worker sorting pills noticed that the odd blue flecks dotting the finished drug capsules matched the paint on the factory doors.

After the flecks were spotted again on the capsules, a blood-pressure medication called diltiazem, the plant began placing covers over drugs in carts in its manufacturing areas.

But the factory owner, Canadian drug maker Biovail Corp., never tried to find out whether past shipments of the drug were contaminated - or prevent future contamination, according to U.S. regulators.

Thirteen of the 20 best-selling drugs in the United States come from plants on this island. But an investigation by The Associated Press has found dozens of examples over four years of lapses in quality control in the Puerto Rican pharmaceutical industry, which churns out $35 billion of drugs each year, most of it for sale as part of the $300 billion market in the U.S.

An AP review of 100 pages of Food and Drug Administration reports shows even modern drug plants here under the watch of U.S. regulators have failed to keep laboratories sterile and have exported tainted pills.

San Francisco Chronicle
February 3, 2008
By David Perlman

A high-security laboratory where deadly microbes are being grown by scientists seeking defenses against terrorist attacks began operating in Livermore last week without public announcement, and opponents said Friday that they will go to federal court in an effort to close the facility down.

Built inside the closed campus of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the facility has been controversial ever since it was first proposed by homeland security officials more than five years ago. Tri-Valley CARES, the East Bay watchdog group that has long fought nuclear weapons research there, has led the fight against it with protests and legal actions.

The facility is known as a Biosafety-level 3 laboratory where highly trained workers, high-tech airlocks and extremely rigorous safety measures are required by federal rules in order to contain any of more than 40 potentially lethal disease-causing bacteria, viruses and fungi stored inside.

The National Nuclear Security Administration, an agency of the Energy Department, which oversees the Livermore site, announced Monday only that it had "granted approval" for Livermore to begin operating its new biosafety laboratory.

The New York Times
January 30, 2008
By ALEX BERENSON

Eli Lilly and federal prosecutors are discussing a settlement of a civil and criminal investigation into the company’s marketing of the antipsychotic drug Zyprexa that could result in Lilly’s paying more than $1 billion to federal and state governments.

If a deal is reached, the fine would be the largest ever paid by a drug company for breaking the federal laws that govern how drug makers can promote their medicines.

Several people involved in the investigation confirmed the settlement discussions. They insisted on anonymity because they have not been authorized to talk about the negotiations.

Zyprexa has serious side effects and is approved only to treat people with schizophrenia and severe bipolar disorder. But documents from Lilly show that between 2000 and 2003, Lilly encouraged doctors to prescribe Zyprexa to people with age-related dementia, as well as people with mild bipolar disorder who had previously been diagnosed only as depressed.

Sott.net
Stan Cox
CounterPunch
January 27, 2008

A paper published January 17 in a prestigious medical journal demonstrated in the starkest of terms how pharmaceutical companies tend to publish research that's favorable to their products and leave unfavorable results tucked away in their files. It's a problem that everyone outside the industry already recognizes, but the results of this most recent study should really set off alarms.

Led by Dr. Erick Turner of the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland and published in the New England Journal of Medicine [1], the study took the results of 74 Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-registered trials of antidepressant medications (trials done by the companies that developed the drugs) and compared them with the results that the drug companies published in peer-reviewed medical journals. The study involved 12 antidepressants approved between 1987 and 2004.

The Wall Street Journal

January 17, 2008; Page D1

By DAVID ARMSTRONG and KEITH J. WINSTEIN

Sweeping Overview Suggests Suppression of Negative Data Has Distorted View of Drugs

The effectiveness of a dozen popular antidepressants has been exaggerated by selective publication of favorable results, according to a review of unpublished data submitted to the Food and Drug Administration.

ACCENTUATE THE POSITIVE
A review of research submitted to the FDA:

• Of 74 studies reviewed, 38 were judged to be positive by the FDA. All but one were published, researchers said.

• Most of the studies found to have negative or questionable results were not published, researchers found.

Source: The New England Journal of Medicine

As a result, doctors and patients are getting a distorted view of how well blockbuster antidepressants like Wyeth's Effexor and Pfizer Inc.'s Zoloft really work, researchers asserted in this week's New England Journal of Medicine.

InjuryBoard.com

by Jane Akre

December 22, 2007
It sounds like a bad joke.
Zyprexa is an antipsychotic drug effectively given to treat millions of adults with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
Among a second generation of antipsychotics, Zyprexa was an “atypical” antipsychotic wonder drug developed in the 1990’s and thought to be a silver bullet in the battle against severe mental illness because it didn’t cause the tremors and facial tics of other drugs.
Atypical antipsychotics were more expensive but much heralded and with an intense marketing campaign, Zyprexa and other atypicals were increasingly prescribed by doctors for all sorts of mental health issues including “off label” to treat depression and anxiety.

ABC News

December 20, 2007

By EMILY FRIEDMAN

A Prank Caller Duped School Officials Into Shocking Students as Many as 77 Times

Seven school officials at a Massachusetts special-needs school have been fired after mistakenly administering electric shock therapy treatment to two students, ages 16 and 19, the Associated Press reports.
"This [incident] happened, we reported it and we've taken steps necessary so that this doesn't happen again," said Ernest Corrigan, spokesman for the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center, where the shock therapy was mistakenly administered. "This was not a normal day at Judge Rotenberg."

The Wall Street Journal
December 4, 2007; Page A1
By LUCETTE LAGNADO

In recent years, Medicaid has spent more money on antipsychotic drugs for Americans than on any other class of pharmaceuticals -- including antibiotics, AIDS drugs or medicine to treat high-blood pressure.

One reason: Nursing homes across the U.S. are giving these drugs to elderly patients to quiet symptoms of Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia.

Nearly 30% of the total nursing-home population is receiving antipsychotic drugs, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, known as CMS. In a practice known as "off label" use of prescription drugs, patients can get these powerful medicines whether they are psychotic or not. CMS says nearly 21% of nursing-home patients who don't have a psychosis diagnosis are on antipsychotic drugs.

Daily Mail
By DAVID GARDNER
November 21, 2007

Top scientists at the United Nations have finally admitted they have long overblown the scale of the global Aids epidemic.

Flying in the face of its own doomsday forecasts of an ever-expanding Aids nightmare, a UN report published today reveals that the threat has been declining for nearly a decade.

Estimates of the worldwide number of people living with HIV have been slashed from last year's figure of nearly 40million to 33million.

NewsWithViews.com
Dr. Carolyn Dean, MD, ND and
Elissa Meininger
November 13, 2007

“All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed; Second, it is violently opposed; and Third, it is accepted as self-evident.” --Arthur Schopenhauer

We are in the midst of a catastrophe. As of February 2007, the Centers For Disease Control (CDC) has admitted that there are at least 1.5 million children with autism in the U.S. affecting one in every 150 children and one out of 90 boys. Even these figures are probably too low and may not take into account the other categories being created to describe our increasingly challenged children. Pervasive developmental disorder, Asperger’s disorder are two other autism spectrum disorders that describe children with variants of autism. The incidence of ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) is one in ten children. As the saying goes, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that something is seriously wrong.

Reuters
September 30, 2007
By Mike Oboh

KANO, Nigeria (Reuters) - A court case brought by Nigeria against Pfizer resumes on Wednesday with the U.S. drug maker saying it answered a call for help to save the lives of African children during a meningitis epidemic.

Nigeria alleges Pfizer deceived patients and caused the death of 11 children in 1996 when it performed clinical trials for a new drug. With the northern state of Kano, it is suing the company for $8.5 billion.

The meningitis outbreak killed more than 12,000 children in six months near Kano, a predominantly Muslim metropolis with a history of conflict with the West. Meningitis is an infection of the nervous system that can kill in hours if left untreated.

Ngozi Edozien, managing director of Pfizer in West Africa, said the company brought the experimental drug, Trovan, to Nigeria in response to an international plea for help.

"There was a compelling reason to look at Trovan because it was an oral formulation, it was known to have shown efficacy in meningitis and was a five-day treatment so it was perfect for an epidemic setting," she told Reuters.

The test involved 200 children, half of whom received Trovan while the other half received a proven meningitis treatment.

The Independent
By Steve Connor, Science Editor
September 15, 2007

Pharmaceutical companies are overstating the effectiveness of their drugs, and may be placing patients at greater risk, because animal laboratory studies they fund are biased, it was claimed yesterday.

A survey of nearly 300 animal-test studies involving six different experimental drugs suggested that such flawed methodology is rampant in the drug-testing industry.

About two-thirds of the studies, which were all aimed at testing drugs with the potential to treat stroke patients, did not use a proper "randomised blind" methodology, the British Association's Science Festival in York was told.

A similar proportion did not conform to the standard methodology where the experimenters were deliberately left "blind" as to which animals have been given the drug until the end of the experiment. "We show that animal experiments modelling human stroke often overstate how good drugs are at treating stroke," said Malcolm Macleod, a consultant neurologist at Stirling Royal Infirmary, who led the stroke study.

EHP Science Selections highlights 2nd Ramazzini study: "Aspartame Cancer Risks Revisited Prenatal Exposure May Be Greatest Concern"

A second Ramazzini bioassay on aspartame “Lifespan Exposure to Low Doses of Aspartame Beginning During Prenatal Life Increases Cancer Effects in Rats” was published in the September 2007 issue of Environmental Health Perspectives [EHP 115:1293–1297; Soffritti et al]. The issue also includes a Science Selections feature story on the Ramazzini project [EHP 115:A460] .

The Ramazzini study is a follow-up to a 2006 publication entitled “First Experimental Demonstration of the Multipotential Carcinogenic Effects of Aspartame Administered in the Feed to Sprague-Dawley Rats” [EHP 14:379–385; Soffritti et al] .

The results of this second long-term carcinogenicity bioassay not only confirm but also reinforce our first experimental demonstration of APM’s multipotential carcinogenicity at a dose level close to the human ADI. Furthermore, the study demonstrates that when life-span exposure to APM begins during fetal life, its carcinogenic effects are increased.
Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP) is the peer-reviewed journal of the United States' National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. With an impact factor of 5.86, EHP ranks first among 132 environmental sciences journals and first among 90 public, environmental, and occupational health journals. EHP is read in over 190 countries.

Ramazzini press contact
Kathryn Knowles
development@ramazzini.it

Cancer fears raised over chip implants

Radio frequency identification chips such as this Verichip device offer security and medical identification benefits, proponents say. But detractors worry that chips meant for human implantation could threaten personal privacy in the digital age.

By Todd Lewan, Associated Press
Source: http://www.usatoday.com

When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved implanting microchips in humans, the manufacturer said it would save lives, letting doctors scan the tiny transponders to access patients' medical records almost instantly. The FDA found "reasonable assurance" the device was safe, and a sub-agency even called it one of 2005's top "innovative technologies."

But neither the company nor the regulators publicly mentioned this: A series of veterinary and toxicology studies, dating to the mid-1990s, stated that chip implants had "induced" malignant tumors in some lab mice and rats.

"The transponders were the cause of the tumors," said Keith Johnson, a retired toxicologic pathologist, explaining in a phone interview the findings of a 1996 study he led at the Dow Chemical Co. in Midland, Mich.

Leading cancer specialists reviewed the research for The Associated Press and, while cautioning that animal test results do not necessarily apply to humans, said the findings troubled them. Some said they would not allow family members to receive implants, and all urged further research before the glass-encased transponders are widely implanted in people.

OpEdNews
July 18, 2007
By Peter Rost

Reading financial reports is fun. I'm not kidding.

When you get into the nitty gritty detail you discover the stuff the company press release seldom mentions.

Take Pfizer Inc.'s most recent quarterly report, filed today.

Things are going downhill pretty fast, with patent losses happening even faster than expected. It may not be as bad as the 48% drop in quarterly profits indicated, but believe me, it is bad.

Let's for instance look at Pfizer's flagship, Lipitor.

rense.com
Jeff Rense
May 10, 2007

Note - This is likely the biggest non-surprise 'study result' of the last 50 years. The vile, despicable commercial food industry has been POISONING hundreds of millions of children and destroying the lives of many of them for decades...with total, leering impunity. There has never been any question that these chemicals and 'additives' approved as 'safe' by the hideously corrupt Monsanto/Big Pharma/Factory Farming/AMA-dominated FDA - and the FSA in the UK - are toxic, life-altering, life-destroying POISONS.

NewScientist
May 11, 2007
Roxanne Khamsi

Overzealous doctors who order unnecessary body scans that use X-ray technology are placing their patients at risk of cancer, radiologists warn.

Radiation from such scans is in some cases equivalent to that received by some survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs, they say. In response, hospitals and professional associations, such as the American College of Radiologists, are taking new steps to promote more careful use of scanning technologies.

The New York Times
May 10, 2007

When Anya Bailey developed an eating disorder after her 12th birthday, her mother took her to a psychiatrist at the University of Minnesota who prescribed a powerful antipsychotic drug called Risperdal.

Created for schizophrenia, Risperdal is not approved to treat eating disorders, but increased appetite is a common side effect and doctors may prescribe drugs as they see fit. Anya gained weight but within two years developed a crippling knot in her back. She now receives regular injections of Botox to unclench her back muscles. She often awakens crying in pain.

Associated Press
By JEFF DONN,
April 22, 2007

The first hints of trouble came with vague warnings from the outer reaches of the bureaucracy. She was "pushing too hard." She was "alarmist." But it was something else - a clumsy bid to call her off the scent of the dangerous veterinary drug she was tracking - that really galled her. Maybe that was her last possible moment to keep soundless and safe.

"When enough dogs die, this product will take care of itself," a colleague said. Her reply tumbled out like a boulder that, once rolling, will no longer stop. Victoria Hampshire heard herself say: "I don't know what I'm doing here then." What she was doing - trying to do, at least - was her job: She kept count of side effects from animal drugs for the Food and Drug Administration. She made tallies, analyzed numbers, and alerted supervisors when something seemed amiss.

And something seemed amiss that spring of 2004.

A big drug maker had crafted what seemed a star performer in Proheart 6, a three-year-old injected drug to prevent heartworm, the common parasite in dogs. Hampshire's numbers showed, though, that dogs were dying at alarming rates.

ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION (AHRP)
Promoting Openness, Full Disclosure, and Accountability
www.ahrp.org and ahrp.blogspot.com
April 24, 2007

Tomorrow, a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee will hold a hearing on the unprecedented spate of drug recalls. "This administration does not like regulation, this administration does not like spending money, and it has a hostility toward government. The poisonous result is that a program like the FDA is going to suffer at every turn of the road," said Rep. John D. Dingell , chairman of the full House committee.

Drug safety is not the only area in which FDA officials get failing grades. The FDA, it seems, flunks each and every arena over which the agency has regulatory authority. None of the divisions overseeing safety in in drugs, vaccines, food, and medical devices--for human as well as animal use-can be said to be functioning for the public good. The consequences of FDA's failure to protect the public health are documented in preventable harm to humans and animals.

Prison Planet
Paul Joseph Watson
April 10, 2007

GM, toxic chemicals, chemtrails destroying eco-system, threatening very survival of humanity

The alarming decline in bee populations across the United States and Europe represents a potential ecological apocalypse, an environmental catastrophe that could collapse the food chain and wipe out humanity. Who and what is behind this flagrant abuse of the eco-system?

Many people don't realize the vital role bees play in maintaining a balanced eco-system. According to experts, if bees were to become extinct then humanity would perish after just four years.

"If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man," said Albert Einstein.
Others would say four years is alarmist and that man would find other food sources, but the fact remains that the disappearance of bees is potentially devastating to agriculture and most plant life.

The New York Times
April 3, 2007
By BENEDICT CAREY

About one in four people who appear to be depressed are in fact struggling with the normal mental fallout from a recent emotional blow, like a ruptured marriage, the loss of a job or the collapse of an investment, a new study suggests. To avoid unnecessary diagnoses and stigma, the standard definition of depression should be redrawn to specifically exclude such cases, the authors argue.

The study, appearing today in The Archives of General Psychiatry, is based on survey data from more than 8,000 Americans; it did not analyze the number of people who had been misdiagnosed.

The New York Times
March 9, 2007
By FELICITY BARRINGER

WASHINGTON, March 8 — The director of the Fish and Wildlife Service defended the agency requirement that two employees going to international meetings on the Arctic not discuss climate change, saying diplomatic protocol limited employees to an agreed-on agenda.

Two memorandums written about a week ago and reported by The New York Times and the Web site of The Seattle Post-Intelligencer on Thursday set strict parameters for what the two employees could and could not discuss at meetings in Norway and Russia.

The Wall Street Journal
By Anna Wilde Mathews
March 3, 2007; Page A1

The Food and Drug Administration has bungled its effort to build a new system for detecting the side effects of medicines after they go on the market, delaying its implementation by at least four years, according to a report commissioned by the agency itself.

As a result, the agency must continue to rely on its existing "dysfunctional" computer system as a primary tool for tracking the safety of medications sold in the U.S., according to the November 2006 report, which hasn't been made public.

The situation is "frustrating and undermining...the post-marketing drug safety work" of its staff "because they lack some of the basic tools they need to perform their jobs, e.g. a computing system that meets their requirements," says the report. It was prepared by the Breckenridge Institute, a research and consulting firm in Breckenridge, Colo.

Washington Post
By Rick Weiss
March 2, 2007

The Agriculture Department has given a preliminary green light for the first commercial production of a food crop engineered to contain human genes, reigniting fears that biomedically potent substances in high-tech plants could escape and turn up in other foods.

The plan, confirmed yesterday by the California biotechnology company leading the effort, calls for large-scale cultivation in Kansas of rice that produces human immune system proteins in its seeds.

The proteins are to be extracted for use as an anti-diarrhea medicine and might be added to health foods such as yogurt and granola bars.

THE BOSTON GLOBE
February 26, 2007
By Marcia Angell

IT'S TIME to take the Food and Drug Administration back from the drug companies. Before a prescription drug can be sold, the manufacturer must conduct clinical trials to prove to the FDA that the drug is safe and effective. Without that, doctors have no way of knowing how good or bad a drug is. Just trying it out would be not only risky, but unreliable, since individual experience can be misleading. The scrutiny that this agency exists to provide is vital to our health.

But in 1992, Congress put the fox in the chicken coop. It passed the Prescription Drug User Fee Act, which authorizes drug companies to pay "user fees" to the FDA for each brand-name drug considered for approval. Nearly all of the money generated by these fees has been earmarked to speed up the approval process.

ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION (AHRP)
www.ahrp.org
ahrp.blogspot.com
February 9, 2007

There are 61.5 million dogs in the U.S.--So with help from psychiatry and the FDA guess who has been eyeing this "underutilized" market population?

Eli Lilly is repackaging its antidepressant, Prozac, as a veterinary drug under brand name, RECONCILE.

"I've seen shy dogs become sociable, fierce dogs become friendly, and neurotic dogs become normal," says Manhattan animal psychiatrist Bert Barkowitz. And his patients seem to agree.

And Pfizer received approval for a weight loss drug, SLENTROL, for dogs!!!!!!!!!!!!!

RFID Journal
By Claire Swedberg
Jan. 31, 2007

The trial involves the RFID-tagging of individual products so customers can obtain details about each product and try on virtual makeup. It also provides statistics on how often items are sampled.

Japanese department store chain Mitsukoshi is undertaking a pilot embedding RFID tags on Shiseido cosmetics to create what the companies call the "department store of the future." The project began on Jan. 26 and will end on Feb. 12, and involves the tagging of a limited number of cosmetic products. During the pilot, customers will be able to discern details about products by holding them up to an interactive screen with an RFID reader. The in-store RFID trial is intended to test whether the system can provide an "electronic concierge" enabling customers to find information about a product without asking a sales clerk. If the system works, it will allow faster service for customers and offer the store and Shiseido greater information about how customers sample products.

By Evelyn Pringle
www.scoop.co.nz
January 29, 2007
Miamisburg Ohio

To what degree of scientific certainty can we prove that current epidemic of autism was caused by the mercury-based preservative, thimerosal, in childhood vaccines?

In response to this question, David Ayoub, MD, told Independent Media TV, ''I can state that the certainty of the science supporting mercury as a major cause of autism is probably more overpowering than the science behind any other disease process that I studied dating back to medical school.''

www.newstarget.com
Beau Hodai
January 29, 2007

(NewsTarget) A proposition before the California state legislature that would make a new vaccine mandatory for girls, is raising questions of parents’ rights.

The bill (AB 16), introduced by Assemblywoman Sally Lieber, D-Mountain View, would make inoculation with Guardasil, the human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine, mandatory for all girls 11 years of age and older in California.

OpEdNews
January 10, 2007
By Evelyn Pringle

Why would Americans trust the FDA to regulate the pharmaceutical industry? Since the Bush administration took office the FDA has become the industry's partner in crime.

The most notorious protection scheme put in place by the FDA and Big Pharma is the preemption policy that bans private lawsuits against drug companies in state courts once a drug and its label have been approved by the FDA.

ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION (AHRP)
Promoting Openness, Full Disclosure, and Accountability
http://www.ahrp.org
The New York Times
December 30, 2006

Kickbacks in American medicine have become commonplace. The evidence of wide spread corrupt practices is truly staggering. While deceptive drug marketing practices have been the major focus of AHRP Infomails, medical devices are even more prone to the proliferation of charlatans who exploit their state medical license to profiteer. Millions of Americans undergo unnecessary surgical procedures at the recommendation of surgeons who do it for the money.

"This is an area that is new and growing," according to Vicki L. Robinson, a senior attorney in the Federal Office of Inspector General who wrote a letter to a device industry trade group that the "ventures should be closely scrutinized under the fraud and abuse laws." The New York Times reports about the spinal-fusion industry that has generated billions of dollars for hospitals and doctors without a benefit for patients suffering from back pain.

The New York Times
December 14, 2006
By BENEDICT CAREY

SILVER SPRING, Md., Dec. 13 — Strong warning labels about the suicide risk associated with antidepressants, which now include children and adolescents, should be extended to adults under 25, a federal advisory panel concluded Wednesday.

The panel, which voted 6 to 2 to recommend the warnings after a daylong hearing, also advised the Food and Drug Administration to require including information in the drugs’ labels highlighting the risks of untreated depression.

By Jonathan Amos
Science reporter, BBC News, San Francisco
http://news.bbc.co.uk

Some 10,000 US researchers have signed a statement protesting about political interference in the scientific process.

The statement, which includes the backing of 52 Nobel Laureates, demands a restoration of scientific integrity in government policy.

According to the American Union of Concerned Scientists, data is being misrepresented for political reasons.

It claims scientists working for federal agencies have been asked to change data to fit policy initiatives.

The following articles and research show the present status of this huge raging issue of autism and childhood autoimmune disease which is epidemic in our children.

This issue and the articles presented may have great relevance to national politics. If you do nothing more than read the first 15 or so articles which appear below, you will be doing yourself a great favor in understanding this critical issue. This issue has huge implications for our society. It also raises truly historical issues regarding ethics and medical care.

Baltimoresun.com
By Matthew Dolan
SUN REPORTER
December 9, 2006

Scientist made deal with drug firm

A senior government scientist originally from Baltimore pleaded guilty yesterday to accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in undisclosed fees from the same drug manufacturer whose public-private research collaboration he oversaw.

As part of his agreement with federal prosecutors, Pearson "Trey" Sunderland III, chief of the geriatric psychiatry branch of the National Institute of Mental Health, which is part of the National Institutes of Health, is expected to receive a sentence of two years' supervised probation and must forfeit $300,000 in illegal proceeds and reimbursements.

Sarah Boseley, health editor
December 8, 2006
The Guardian

A world-famous British scientist failed to disclose that he held a paid consultancy with a chemical company for more than 20 years while investigating cancer risks in the industry, the Guardian can reveal.

Sir Richard Doll, the celebrated epidemiologist who established that smoking causes lung cancer, was receiving a consultancy fee of $1,500 a day in the mid-1980s from Monsanto, then a major chemical company and now better known for its GM crops business.

The New York Times
nytimes.com
December 4, 2006
By ALEX BERENSON

The news came to Pfizer’s chief scientist, Dr. John L. LaMattina, as he was showering at 7 a.m. Saturday: the company’s most promising experimental drug, intended to treat heart disease, actually caused an increase in deaths and heart problems. Eighty-two people had died so far in a clinical trial, versus 51 people in the same trial who had not taken it.

Within hours, Pfizer, the world’s largest drug maker, told more than 100 trial investigators to stop giving patients the drug, called torcetrapib. Shortly after 9 p.m. Saturday, Pfizer announced that it had pulled the plug on the medicine entirely, turning the company’s nearly $1 billion investment in it into a total loss.

Source: The Times May 29, 2006

US study supports claims of MMR link to autism
By Sam Lister, Health Correspondent

THE safety of the MMR innoculation, the combination vaccine given to young children and widely supported by scientists, will be questioned again this week in a presentation that claims to provide proof of a link to autism.

American researchers say that their study supports the findings of Andrew Wakefield, the discredited gastroenterologist who raised fears that the measles, mumps and rubella injection might be causing autism.

Uptake of the vaccine decreased sharply after Dr Wakefield suggested that MMR should be avoided in favour of single vaccinations. His research, published in The Lancet in 1998, detected traces of the measles virus in the guts of 12 children with autism.

By David Batty
Guardian Unlimited
Wednesday May 3, 2006

Fraudulent research regularly appears in the 30,000 scientific journals published worldwide, a former editor of the British Medical Journal (BMJ) said today.

Even when journals discover that published research is fabricated or falsified they rarely retract the findings, according to Richard Smith, who was also chief executive of the BMJ publishing group.

05 May 2006
EUROPEAN RAMAZZINI FOUNDATION STANDS BEHIND ASPARTAME STUDY RESULTS, ANNOUNCES ONGOING RESEARCH ON ARTIFICIAL SWEETENERS
Response to EFSA’s AFC panel decision

The European Foundation of Oncology and Environmental Sciences “B. Ramazzini”, the sole sponsor of a long-term carcinogenesis study demonstrating that aspartame is a multipotential carcinogenic agent in rodents, responded today to the opinion announced by the European Food Safety Authority’s Panel on Food Additives, Flavorings, Processing Aids and Materials (AFC).

Scientific Director of the European Ramazzini Foundation and primary author of the aspartame study, Dr. Morando Soffritti, M.D., underlined the importance of EFSA’s interest in the European Ramazzini Foundation’s aspartame study saying, “as the Director of an independent, non-profit institution, I consider it an important recognition to have our data carefully considered by EFSA.” Prior long-term carcinogenesis studies on aspartame (4 total) were conducted over 20 years ago by the producers of the artificial sweetener using a small number of animals per sex per group. The results of these studies provided the basis for the current opinion regarding the non-carcinogenicity of aspartame.

NewsTarget.com
by Mike Adams

April 21, 2006

Conventional medicine, as practiced today, is actually pretend medicine. Doctors and drug companies pretend to make patients healthier by giving them drugs. The FDA pretends to protect the safety of the public. Medical journals pretend to print only rigorous, scientifically-sound research papers. Drug companies pretend to care about the lives and health of patients. Non-profit disease front groups pretend to be searching for the cure while, in reality, most of them are only searching for more ways to recruit patients into conventional medicine treatments like drugs, surgery, chemotherapy and radiation.

Feds alarmed by psychosis in kids
Possible tie to attention-deficit-disorder meds

BY PAUL H.B. SHIN
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

More than 500 children on medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder have reported bouts of psychosis, federal health officials revealed yesterday at a hearing to determine if tougher warnings were warranted for the popular stimulants.

And at least five kids on Adderall XR - one of the most prescribed ADHD drugs - have died from possible heart failure since it was approved for pediatric use in October 2004, the Food and Drug Administration said.

March 17, 2006
By Pam Killeen Interviews Dr. Julian Whitaker
Source: Crusador Enterprises
CRUSADOR EXCLUSIVE* ®2006,
www.HealthLiesExposed.com

Pam Killeen Interviews Dr. Julian Whitaker About His Public Support For Tom Cruise Who Spoke Out Against Psychiatric Diagnoses and Psychotropic Medications

By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 19, 2006; Page A01

Gambling, Sex Manias Called Surprise Risks Of Parkinson’s Drugs

When Wayne Kanuch received a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease in 1993, the last thing he imagined was that the drug prescribed to treat his illness would turn him into a compulsive gambler and put his libido into overdrive

The New York Times
March 11, 2006
By ANDREW POLLACK

Joseph A. Brocato's weekly self-injections of a drug to treat hepatitis C left him so feverish and fatigued, he said, he often thought of quitting. He didn't, thanks to a nurse who urged him by phone to stay the course.

The nurse, Colleen Dinsdale, did not work for Mr. Brocato's doctor. Rather, Ms. Dinsdale was paid by the drug's maker, Roche, and its distributor, McKesson. Each month that Mr. Brocato took the drug, Pegasys, and its companion pill, ribavirin, meant $3,000 in sales - most of it paid by his insurance company. His share was a $50 co-payment.

"The main advantage of individual failures is that they give a pretext for virtuous protestations from those whose success is based upon systemic failures." Dr. Marc Girard

For a number of weeks now, we have been treated to a revelations of dishonest medical research reporting, starting with Woo Suk Hwang's stem-cell research in South Korea. Next Jon Sudbo, a Norwegian scientist, was charged with inventing hundreds of patients and making up figures, yet publishing his "research" in a respected journal. Another example is the story of Japanese professor Kazunari Taira, accused of fabricating papers on human enzymes produced by bacteria.

These stories, for whatever truth they may contain, may well act to cover up a larger problem: The research policies that induce dishonesty in science. Pressures on researchers to "publish or perish" and pressures on journals to come up with supportive articles or lose pharma advertising are an open secret to those who work in the sector.

An essay by French mathematician and physician Dr. Girard gives us an interesting view on the subject of fake research and "virtuous protestations" ... (thanks to Vera Hassner Sharav of the Alliance for Human Research Protection who forwarded the essay). Vera introduces the article and says:

An original essay by Dr. Marc Girard, a mathematician and physician who serves on the editorial board of Medicine Veritas, (The Journal of Medical Truth) a peer reviewed, open source journal "Dedicated to Leveling out the Medical Playing Field."

Dr. Girard is not impressed with the disingenuous displays of "outrage" at individual scientists who got caught committing fraud - e.g., Hwang Woo Suk: "the main advantage of individual failures," he writes, "is that they give a pretext for virtuous protestations from those whose success is based upon systemic failures."
Scientific integrity: "Truth" versus method

Here is Dr. Girard's article:

Dr. Jonathan Fishbein, a scientist and former department head at the National Institute of Health's AIDS division, who was sacked for exposing sloppy research done in Africa on the AIDS drug Nevirapine, has been reinstated to employment, but the AIDS drug he fingered as dangerous is still in use, and the NIH AIDS division has so far refused to clean up its act and take steps to restrict the drug's use on newborns.

Liam Scheff, the investigative reporter who broke the story on forced drug trials in New York's Incarnation Children's Center has interviewed Dr. Fishbein.

Vera Hassner Sharav of the Alliance for Human Research Protection summarizes and comments the interview:

“Science has become so severely politicized that one has to be skeptical of nearly every research result that is reported.”

An interview in with Dr. Jonathan Fishbein, the former Director of the Office for Policy in Clinical Research Operations, NIH-AIDS Division, whose (official) job was “to create, implement, and enforce research policy in the Division of AIDS,” to ensure studies were being conducted according to ethical research standards.

But when Dr. Fishbein, a 20-year veteran in drug safety research, found gross research irregularities in an NIH-AIDS study testing Nevirapine (HIVNET 012) in Uganda, he was confronted with a hostile AIDS Division whose entrenched management was “guided more by politics than sound science.” He describes “an atmosphere of intimidation” that made it impossible to properly address and correct the institutional flaws that led to scientifically flawed, unethical AIDS studies.

The AIDS drug, Nevirapine, had been around since the early 1990s; it had a bad reputation for toxicity, and by 1998 it had earned the FDA’s black-box label, announcing its known toxic potential, including the ability to cause organ failure and bloody skin loss – both of which had resulted in death in patients taking the drug.

The Nevirapine study in Africa is a case example of bad faith, bad science, misplaced trust in those who have a financial stake in salvaging the drug, and the seductive power of money. The study focused on finding a use for this toxic drug among poor, rural Africans.

Here is what the NIH-AIDS Division administrators tried to hide, and when that failed, they fired Dr. Fishbein.

“In 1998 in Kampala, Uganda, the Nevirapine study to prevent transmission of HIV from mother to child was underway. The study put 645 expectant mothers on the drug. The problems started immediately. First, the study was carried on without a control group – everyone received one drug or another – AZT or Nevirapine.

A 20 percent rate of “serious adverse events” was reported in newborns in both the Nevirapine and AZT groups, including blood and tissue infection, pneumonia and severe rash. Eighty percent of mothers exhibited laboratory and clinical abnormalities. Twenty-two babies had grade 3 anemia.” 

Thirty-eight babies died. Sixteen on Nevirapine, twenty-two on AZT.

According to Dr. Fishbein, the major flaw in the Nevirapine study, was the scientists’ failure to report all “serious adverse events” in the trial population.

That fatal “flaw” is pervasive in clinical research because those who control clinical trials have a financial conflict of interest: disclosure of all the risks may undermine marketability of the drug. 

For those who thought The Constant Gardener was fiction, think again. Think about the efforts to cover-up the deaths of those 38 babies ... until Dr. Fishbein blew the whistle.

Dr. Fishbein was successful in his two year battle with NIH. He has been reinstated, though not to his former position in the AIDS Division. Like Dr. David Graham at the FDA, he won’t be assigned to the work he is most suited for because there are too many other cover-ups that the administrators are intent on keeping under the lid.

- end of Vera Hassner Sharav comment -

Here is the article by Liam Scheff:

Italian magistrates probe Astra, other drug firms

MILAN (Reuters) - Magistrates in the southern city of Bari are investigating the Italian businesses of AstraZeneca , Novartis , Bristol-Myers Squibb and Recordati , the drug companies said on Monday.

Judicial sources said magistrates planned to ask for the suspension of activities of the Italian units of eight pharmaceutical firms for an alleged 20 million euro ($24.2 million) fraud over bribing doctors to prescribe their drugs.

The New York Times
By Barry Meier
January 28, 2006

Federal prosecutors have opened a new front in their investigation into the Guidant Corporation by issuing a subpoena seeking records disclosed in a Texas lawsuit that indicate the company knew that some heart devices could catastrophically fail.

The subpoena, issued Tuesday by the United States attorney in Minneapolis, specifically sought Guidant documents disclosed this month in a Texas state court. Among other things, the records indicate that company executives debated whether to warn doctors that some heart defibrillators could short-circuit. The records suggest that Guidant might have sold potentially flawed devices.

The document request, which was served on lawyers representing plaintiffs in the Texas case, also indicated that federal prosecutors had merged their inquiry with an earlier one by the Food and Drug Administration's Office of Criminal Investigations. The subpoena shows that the government is investigating Guidant for possible violations of health care statutes.

...."There is a simple way to tell whether the stories you are reading about avian flu are likely propaganda or legitimate. Apply this list of questions:

1. Who wrote it? 2. Who funded it? 3. Is it short on fact, long on interpretation and editorializing? 4. Does it cite sources for the statements made and the statistics mentioned? 5. Does it make scientific presumptions it does not back up? 6. Is the only solution to the problem presented a drug or a vaccine? 7. Is there an abundance of emotional trigger words throughout the report? 8. How many times is the word pandemic used? 9. Is there any suggestion that the avian flu threat might just fade out on its own? 10. Is there any mention of how the birds were actually tested? 11. Is there any mention of how the people were actually tested? 12. Is there any suggestion that perhaps germs are not the only cause of disease? 13. Does the article pretend like H5N1 is a proven cause of avian flu? 14. Does the report assume that germs are the only possible cause of disease?
That should do it. At least consider the possibility that there is a subtext here, and that it's a pattern we have seen before: invent a disease, hype the extent of the threat, create a drug or vaccine, spend the money, threat disappears."....

Daily Mail
November 3, 2005
by James Tozer

Medical blunders kill an estimated 34,000 patients a year, according to an official report.

Almost one million incidents and lapses in hospital care were recorded in the latest survey of National Health Service standards.

Some 300,000 episodes of hospital infections, including MRSA, were also reported, said the National Audit Office.

It said the lapses cost the Health Service an estimated £2billion in extra bed days and £540million in litigation and compensation.

The report said 2,081 avoidable deaths had been reported for April 2004 to March 2005. But because many deaths went unrecorded the real figure based on previous research could be nearer 34,000.

ADHD advice secretly paid for by drugs companies
By Daniel Foggo
(Filed: 09/10/2005)

Support and advice groups for parents of children with so-called behavioural disorders are being secretly funded by pharmaceutical firms, it can be revealed.

The groups give out advice on stimulant drugs and other controversial medical treatments for young children diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Their internet sites provide extensive details of medications that doctors can prescribe.

Science of Low Level Toxicities

International Medical Veritas Association
Mark Sircus Ac., OMD

It is the inability to see the effects of chronic, low level toxicities on human health that has been, and remains, our greatest failing as intelligent beings.
Dr. Boyd Haley

One of the greatest alarm calls in human history has gone unnoticed for years and as such, the low levels of toxicities are moving higher. Even with the rising tide of reports of chemical pollution in human blood streams, among newborn babies and adults alike, we get reporters and medical officials dismissing concerns of chemical toxicity. The WallStreet Journal published last week, "For years, scientists have struggled to explain rising rates of some cancers and childhood brain disorders. Something about modern living has driven a steady rise of certain maladies, from breast and prostate cancer to autism and learning disabilities." The last thing the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Federal Drug and Food Commission (FDA) care to admit is that these increases are being driven by the rising tide of chemical poisons entering peoples' blood streams.