News from the left

A glass of wine with a meal - image by Sepp Older Alcohol Drinkers Live Longer Than Teetotalers ... a recent study set out to find the truth by factoring in all those rationalizations. The results are startling. Without question, in older adults, moderate drinkers have less than half the risk of death than do abstainers when confounders are not factored in, and they do 51% better when confounders are included. ‘Magic mushrooms’ ingredient beneficial to cancer patients The study is considered a first step in restoring the hallucinogen’s respectability.The psychedelic drug psilocybin, the active ingredient in “magic mushrooms,” can improve mood and reduce anxiety and depression in terminal cancer patients, Los Angeles researchers reported Monday. A single modest dose of the hallucinogen, whose reputation was severely tarnished by widespread nonmedical use in the psychedelic ’60s and ethical lapses by researchers such as Timothy Leary, can improve patients’ functioning for as long as six months, allowing them to spend their last days with more peace, researchers said. Natural health movement achieving key victories It's hard to see it sometimes, but the natural health community has achieved many important victories over the last few years in exposing the truth about dangerous chemicals and food ingredients. Here are some of the major victories we've collectively achieved... Caring For Your Cholesterol Cholesterol was not created to give us health problems. Au contraire! Cholesterol is the essential precursor to all the hormones that our body produces. Therefore, it’s crucial to your body’s operating system. Lowering it unnecessarily can cause hormone deficiency symptoms and brain neurotransmitter misfiring. The normal cholesterol when I was in medical school was about 240. Since the introduction of statin drugs, pharmaceutical companies have been clamoring to create a new rating system for high cholesterol. Consequently, your doctor may tell you that a level of 200 is in fact too high... Ban TV to protect children's health, top psychologist tells EU politicians Dr Aric Sigman claims that millions of children spending hours slumped in front of TVs and computers is 'the greatest unacknowledged health scandal of our time'. He says it is linked to ills ranging from obesity and heart disease to poor grades and lack of empathy. Dr Sigman, an Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society, believes that the youngest children, whose brains are undergoing massive development, should not watch any TV at all. 150,000 Farmer Suicides in India - Monsanto blamed Since GM seeds are patented by Monsanto, their repeated use each year requires constant licensing fees that keep farmers impoverished. One bad yield due to drought or other reasons, plunges farmers so deep into debt that they resort to suicide. One study estimates that 150,000 farmers have killed themselves in the past ten years. Genetically Manipulated Crops: GMO Catastrophe in US a Lesson for the World What is carefully kept out of the Monsanto and other agribusiness propaganda in promoting genetically manipulated crops as an alternative to conventional is the fact that in the entire world until the present, all GMO crops have been manipulated and patented for only two things—to be resistant or “tolerant” to the patented highly toxic herbicide glyphosate chemicals that Monsanto and the others force farmers to buy as condition for buying their patented GMO seeds. The second trait is GMO seeds that have been engineered genetically to resist specific insects. Contrary to public relations myths promoted by the agribusiness giants in their own self-interest, there exists not oné single GMO seed that provides a greater harvest yield than conventional, nor one that requires less toxic chemical herbicides. Video: Genetically modified trees: the growing threat - David Suzuki "This isn't science fiction. There are currently hundreds, perhaps thousands of test plots of GE trees already being grown in the open around the world. My name is David Suzuki. I am, by training and profession, a geneticist. And for 25 years, I had an active career in science, once having the largest genetics lab in Canada. I'm narrating this film because I am concerned about the unseemly haste with which my colleagues and my peer group seem to be ready to rush in and begin to apply ideas, in this revolutionary area, to apply ideas that I think are far too early to expose people either in our drugs, in our food or out in open fields." Pressures mount against EU herb laws The European Benefyt Foundation and the Alliance for Natural Health International (ANH-Intl) presented yesterday their united strategy to a range of stakeholders representing Chinese and Ayurvedic traditions of herbal medicines. The proposed strategy aims in particular to address the grave regulatory situation facing thousands of products representing non-European herb-based healthcare traditions. It will also help to keep on the market products associated with minor European herbal traditions that are struggling to cope with the raft of EU laws affecting them. Pharma Companies mess with research safety data An editorial in The New England Journal of Medicine, by its editor Jeffrey M. Drazen, M.D., and Alastair J.J. Wood, M.D. calls attention to the fact that pharmaceutical companies have tampered with the independent function of the DSMB (data safety monitoring board), and have planted promotional reports in The NEJM--and other scientific journals-- thereby undermining the integrity of "the whole clinical-trial enterprise." DSMBs are charged with protecting human subjects, being privy to the ongoing trial data so as to ensure that clinical equipoise is maintained during the course of a clinical trial. That is, the DSMB is supposed to ensure that uncertainty continues to exist about which treatment is safer and effective. UK: Heart attack risk of diabetes drug: Experts call for Avandia to be withdrawn Diabetes expert Professor Edwin Gale told Panorama the drug should already have been withdrawn. 'How long do you wait, how important is it to be absolutely certain and at what point do you start saying this game isn't worth it, people's lives may be at risk,' he said. Clinical pharmacologist Dr Yoon Loke, of the University of East Anglia, estimated that the drug causes around 1,000 extra heart attacks and another 600 extra cases of heart failure a year. GlaxoSmithKline's Avandia. Are the Regulators in Bed With the Industry? If investigative journalists such as Evelyn Pringle and Shelley Jofre [BBC] can expose dangerous drugs then questions should be asked why the MHRA are not doing the same. UK Regulator Says Avandia Should Go There is a flurry of activity surrounding the controversial Avandia diabetes pill. The UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency says the GlaxoSmithKline drug “no longer has a place on the UK market.” The chair of the European Medicines Agency scientific advisory group on diabetes argues the pill should be withdrawn. And the same sentiment is expressed by the BMJ, a leading medical journal, in an editorial that accompanies an investigation into regulatory footdragging. Moreover, the EMA on Wednesday will hold an extraordinary meeting to review Avandia in advance of a regularly scheduled meeting later this month... Child’s Ordeal Shows Risks of Antipsychotic Drugs A “must read” front page article by New York Times reporter, Duff Wilson, “Child’s Ordeal Shows Risks of Antipsychotic Drugs,” (below) should prompt responsible public health officials to take action to protect children from irresponsible doctors who prescribe dangerous toxic drugs to control behavior—not for any medical justification. In particular, children need to be protected from child psychiatrists whose radical prescribing practices have caused children irreparable harm. The article describes the plight of Kyle Warren, a young boy who, at 18 months was prescribed Risperdal, a powerful antipsychotic drug that had been approved only for adults with schizophrenia or acute manic episodes. However, by age 3, he was on a regimen that included 5 psychotropic drugs--including Risperdal, Prozac, two sleeping pills, and a drug for so-called attention-deficit disorder. Latest Report on Flu Fatalities: A Shocking Fabrication Last week the CDC released new figures: rather than 36,000, the three-decade average is actually 23,607 deaths, a full one-third fewer people than previously cited. But even these new figures are actually fabricated and false. The CDC has always used a mathematical estimate based on an assumption that if a death certificate had “respiratory or circulatory disease” listed as a cause of death, then it should be counted as a “flu-related” death! The Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons has been highly critical of the CDC’s methodology. A closer examination of the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) figures shows that in 2001, there were only 257 deaths directly attributable to flu, and in only eighteen cases was the flu virus positively identified. Cancer vaccine warning - MEET the Gardasil girls Jessica Ericzon was one of the first recorded Gardasil-associated fatalities. Until receiving her third injection of HPV vaccine, Jessica was healthy, happy, active, never smoked or took drugs. On February 20, 2008, less than 48 hours after her last Gardasil shot, her parents found her dead on the bathroom floor. She was only 17. According to her coroner, the death was unexplainable. Vaccine Pushed On Infants Causes Drug-Resistant Pneumonia: JAMA Study A drug-resistant strain of pneumonia is the result of a highly-praised vaccine routinely given to infants three times in their first year of life, according to a study that will be published in today's Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). There can be no reasonable doubt that pneumonia vaccinations are creating a new, more virulent and less treatable form of the disease. Human Endogenous Retroviruses can resolve HIV/AIDS puzzles The beautiful photographs of HIV published in both lay and scientific journals are embellished with special effects from computerized image reconstruction. Since they come from cell cultures, which are likely to be contaminated, the particles may be “elegant artifacts” rather than the exogenous virus—a virus of external origin—believed to cause AIDS, de Harven states. About 8 percent of the human genome consists of sequences incorporated from retroviruses. When cells break down, DNA fragments are released into the circulation—including these viral sequences. Patients with clinical AIDS carry a large spectrum of infectious diseases, so a high level of circulating DNA is expected. HAART Exposed: Sustiva Causes AIDS Symptoms Last year, OMSJ identified the HIV drug Sustiva (Efavirenz) as little more than a highly addictive anti-retroviral (ARV) placebo that, when interrupted, produces withdrawal symptoms that AIDS clinicians routinely use to misdiagnose the onset of AIDS. When HIV clinicians identify these signs, they typically inform patients that the symptoms are directly “related to the onset of AIDS.” Some clinicians get angry, warning that unless they resume treatment of Sustiva drugs (like Atripla) “they will be dead within months.” When terrified patients resume their addiction, the symptoms subside – leading many to believe that the drug is staving off the effects of AIDS rather than perpetuating a physician-caused addiction....

The day I ate as many E numbers as possible Yet how many consumers would believe that such additives may actually be good for us? The boom in organic and natural foods in recent years betrays our trust in nature over science. Yet a survey by Which? magazine has found terms such as "natural", "fresh", "pure" and "real", which readily appear on the front of food packaging, are confusing consumers because they are largely unregulated. Conversely, it is the additives tucked way in the small print of a product's ingredients list that are heavily regulated. And when you look at clinical rather than anecdotal evidence, and speak to clinical dieticians, it appears these are actually good for us - and many seem to be very good for us indeed. Chemical additives are good for us? Give me a break! "How many E numbers can I eat in one day and will I be poisoned from this?" is really the wrong question to ask. Most of the chemical substances act by accumulation in the body and many interact with each other. Additives show their toxicity (some of them at least) in long term continuous consumption and accumulation, not necessarily on a one-day binge. It is true, many of the additives are perfectly innocuous and some are even good nutritional substances. But the major problem with e numbers is not what they designate but how they designate it. Be honest with yourself. Do you know what E 222 or E 951 means when you read it on a food label? THAT is the problem. Instead of informing us, those E numbers actually conceal the identity of the additive they designate. Why not write the word on the label so we can immediately understand? If you would like to know what those numbers mean, don't look for an official publication. There is none that's easily accessible. But here is a list of numbers with corresponding names compiled by La Leva di Archimede: http://www.laleva.cc/food/enumbers/Enumbers.html Low-frequency electronic “white noise” could eliminate biological effects of cell phone radiation ... the cell phone industry must have known for well over a decade exactly how to prevent most of the adverse health effects of cell phone radiation but did nothing about it. It comes from the work of Theodore Litovitz, who discovered that by adding low-frequency electronic “white noise” over the top of the cell phone signal, most of the biological effects of the radiation that were known at the time could be reversed. We now know how this may work at the molecular level. If you read my “Witness Statement” at http://tinyurl.com/34gvn29, you will see that most of the effects of the radiation can be attributed to the loss of calcium from cell membranes, which occurs only in very narrow “windows” of field strength, above and below which there is little or no effect. By adding a low-frequency "noise" signal with a random amplitude, very few cells stay within their windows for long enough to remove much calcium before they leave their respective windows, and the lost calcium floods back. Consequently, little or no permanent damage is done. Just reducing the power will not give the same effect. Vitamin D 'influences over 200 genes' Scientists, including an Indian-origin researcher, claim to have achieved a major breakthrough by mapping the points at which vitamin D interacts with human DNA and identified over 200 genes that it directly influences. The scientists found 2,776 binding sites for the vitamin D receptor along the length of the genome. These were unusually concentrated near a number of genes associated with susceptibility to autoimmune conditions like Crohn's disease, rheumatoid arthritis, and even cancers. It is estimated that one billion people worldwide do not have sufficient sunshine vitamin. This deficiency is due to insufficient exposure to sun and in some cases due to poor diet. Flu jab linked to convulsions in kids under five Up to one in 100 children given the jab, made in Australia by CSL and marketed in the UK by Pfizer, suffered febrile convulsions in the following hours and days. USA: ‘Blue Flu’ cases spreading around Gulf Some people are calling it the BP Flu. But it is commonly being called the Blue Flu, because the alleged symptoms include blue lips and skin; and it’s scaring the hell out of people all around the Gulf area –from Texas to Florida. USA: New York State Orders Dr. to Stop Treating Patients for $79/month ... he charges his patients $79 per month plus $10 per visit. In other words, for about $1,000 per year, his patients do not have to worry about routine illnesses or anything else that can be taken care of in Dr. Muney's offices. Who could possibly have a problem with that plan? Apparently, the New York state insurance regulators do. The state told Dr. Muney that his plan is an insurance policy and he has to be licensed to sell insurance. GMO Crop Sabotage on the Rise: French citizens destroy trial vineyard Early Sunday morning, French police stood helpless as sixty people, locked inside an open-air field of genetically modified grapevines, uprooted all the plants. In Spain last month, dozens of people destroyed two GMO fields. On the millennial cusp, Indian farmers burned Bt cotton in their Cremate Monsanto campaign. Monsanto in Gates' Clothing? The Emperor's New GMOs ... if you are part of the growing population who gets their information about GMOs from scientists who are not beholden to corporate funding, has a problem with anti-trust issues, or is getting queasy about the increasing monopoly power of philanthropy capital... it's time to say the Emperor has no clothes. Under the guise of "sustainability" the [Bill and Melinda Gates] Foundation has been spearheading a multi-billion dollar effort to transform African into a GMO-friendly continent. Encephalitis kills 215 in India, toll expected to soar At least 215 people, mostly children, have died in an outbreak of Japanese encephalitis in an impoverished region of northern Indian and the death toll is likely to soar, officials said Saturday. V.S. Nigam, in charge of Uttar Pradesh's encephalitis prevention programme, said a mammoth project to contain the disease had ended with 35 million children vaccinated in the state's 34 districts. But as soon children are vaccinated against Japanese encephalitis, they fall sick with acute encephalitis syndrome "because when one virus is suppressed by vaccines, others become dominant," he said. Are we looking at the "side effects" of a widespread vaccination program here? Video: Big Bucks, Big Pharma: Marketing Disease & Pushing Drugs Big Bucks, Big Pharma pulls back the curtain on the multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry to expose the insidious ways that illness is used, manipulated, and in some instances created, for capital gain. Focusing on the industry’s marketing practices, media scholars and health professionals help viewers understand the ways in which direct-to-consumer (DTC) pharmaceutical advertising glamorizes and normalizes the use of prescription medication, and works in tandem with promotion to doctors. Drugmakers Actually Make Lemons, Not Medicines? According to his study, which is not yet published, independent reviewers found that about 85 percent of new drugs offer few if any new benefits. At the same time, though, prescription drugs are now a significant cause of death in the US due to toxic side effects or misuse. He notes that drugmakers spend “two to three times more on marketing than on research,” which are dollars used to persuade docs to prescribe new drugs. But the docs, he maintains, may get misleading info and then pass along the same info to patients. In his view, this is a “two-tier market” for lemons. Review Of FDA Drug Trials Shows Antidepressants Useless "In other words, if you're trying to look at sustained benefit, you're only looking at 2.7%, which is a pretty jaw-dropping number," added Dr. Pigott. USA: Pediatric Drug Trials Benefit Pharma Not Children A Duke University study published in the journal Pediatrics examined the effects of the Pediatric Exclusivity Provision of FDAMA (enacted in 1998). FDAMA provides six months of patent exclusivity to pharmaceutical companies to conduct safety and efficacy studies of drugs in children. There is no evidence to indicate that children have been the beneficiaries of the Pediatric Exclusivity Provision of FDAMA (enacted in 1998): there is evidence that pharmaceutical companies have increased their profits from the legislation by at least $14 billion. UK: Family win 18 year fight over MMR damage to son: £90,000 payout is first since concerns over vaccine surfaced A mother whose son suffered severe brain damage after he was given the controversial MMR vaccine as a baby has been awarded £90,000 compensation. The judgment is the first of its kind to be revealed since concerns were raised about the safety of the triple jab. Robert Fletcher, 18, is unable to talk, stand unaided or feed himself. Child Autism Epidemic Firmly Linked to Environment Since the '70's, there has been a 60-fold increase in American children with autism. Currently one in every 100 U.S. children and one in every 58 boys are being diagnosed with autism. That's over 2.6 percent of all male children in America. Experts agree that the primary explanation for the dramatic increase in autism is toxic environmental exposure and gene-environment interactions. New research shows that even low-dose, multiple toxic and infectious exposures may be a key factor to the onset of autism. Just Say No To Drugs My frustration at the Machiavellian turn that medicine had taken into the rabbit hole of drugs is why I wrote Death by Medicine in 2003. You can obtain that paper freely on the Internet. Two years later I expanded it into Death by Modern Medicine, now available as an eBook. As I said, I don’t like to focus on the negative and this is the only one of my 20 books that sheds light on the sickening turn of medicine to the dark side. If you or your friends think that drug companies are looking out for YOUR best interests and want to see you healthy and off drugs, think again. America’s mental illness epidemic: It turns out that the drugs are the problem Tens of millions of innocent, unsuspecting Americans, who are mired deeply in the mental “health” system, have actually been made crazy by the use of or the withdrawal from commonly-prescribed, brain-altering, brain-disabling, indeed brain-damaging psychiatric drugs that have been, for many decades, cavalierly handed out like candy -- often in untested and therefore unapproved combinations of drugs -- to trusting and unaware patients by equally unaware but well-intentioned physicians who have been under the mesmerizing influence of slick and obscenely profitable psychopharmaceutical drug companies. Anti-psychotic drugs double fatal pneumonia risk in elderly A study of almost 2,000 patients found the increased risk starts soon after treatment begins and concluded that patients should be closely monitored. An expert review published in 2009 found the drugs are overused in many cases and are responsible for up to 1,800 deaths in the UK every year. Paxil-caused birth defects: Glaxo pays millions While no amount of money can adequately compensate for a life-altering birth defect allegedly caused by or linked to the use of the antidepressant Paxil, the average settlement in a Paxil birth defect lawsuit appears to be in excess of $1.2 million for each family involved. The Newark Star-Ledger noted in July that Paxil manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline (Glaxo) has put aside $2.4 billion for the resolution of litigation involving Paxil and one other drug in Glaxo's product line. AIDS Drugs Cause AIDS AIDS drugs have “side effects” which are indistinguishable from “primary effects.” Death is among them. The process can be quick, but is usually slow, a degeneration of fat and protein assimilation and assembly in the body, the poisoning and death of the intestinal villi, ending absorption of nutrients. It can take time, with drugs at low doses. The drugs kill yeasts and fungi, which can be a relief in the short-term for people suffering from debilitating candida. But quit the drugs, and the...

EU food-supplement clampdown overrides consumer choice In 2011, hundreds of food supplements and thousands of health-benefit claims concerning food supplements will be banished from the European market as each European Union member state enforces the EU Supplements Directive of 2002. The system discriminates against small companies and new market entrants in favor of large companies and incumbent sellers because it presumes all products sold without incident to be unlawful unless proven – based on clinical trial evidence – to be safe and bioavailable. Proof, in the form of scientific dossiers, must establish to EFSA’s satisfaction that products intended for sale are safe and bioavailable. No claims may henceforth be made unless scientific dossiers establish to EFSA’s satisfaction that the claims are proven to a near conclusive degree. The dossiers are expensive, roughly[B1] US$500,000 or more per submission. At least 90 per cent of the companies in this market cannot afford to submit a dossier and so must either cease sales altogether or reduce product offerings to those that others succeed in getting approved. Drug companies accused of 'conning' the public An estimated 85 per cent of drugs coming onto the market offer only slight advances on existing treatments while having the potential to cause serious harm due to toxicity or misuse, the study concluded. And invariably costing more than the drugs they replace, one might add. Professor Donald Light described the pharmaceutical industry as a ''market for lemons'' - one in which the seller knows much more than the buyer about the product, and takes advantage of this fact. ''Sometimes drug companies hide or downplay information about serious side-effects of new drugs and overstate the drugs' benefits. Then, they spend two to three times more on marketing than on research to persuade doctors to prescribe these new drugs. Doctors may get misleading information and then misinform patients about the risks of a new drug. It's really a two-tier market for lemons.'' Sweden opens inquiry into suspect flu vaccine Sweden's Medical Products Agency opened an inquiry Wednesday into vaccinations for swine flu made by British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline, suspected of provoking narcolepsy. The reports concern children aged between 12-16 years who developed symptoms compatible with narcolepsy, a chronic sleeping disorder, that occurred one to two months after vaccination against the H1N1 pandemic. India: Four Babies Killed By Measles Vaccine Minutes after they were given the measles vaccine, four infants - Kumari, Sanya, Rekha and Sahil fell acutely ill. They became breathless, began to sweat and their pulse fell rapidly - all symptoms of anaphylactic shock or a serious allergic reaction to the vaccine, and before they could get medical help at the local hospital, all four had died. Such measles vaccine related deaths are rare but have been reported in the past. In 2008, four children died under similar circumstances in Tamil Nadu. Vitamin D may treat or prevent allergy to common mold "We found that adding vitamin D not only substantially reduced the production of the protein driving an allergic response, but it also increased production of the proteins that promote tolerance," notes Dr. Jay Kolls, Professor and Chair of Genetics at LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans. Antibiotics on the Verge of Becoming Completely Useless The journal Lancet Infectious Diseases recently published a sobering piece about how antibiotics are becoming wholly ineffective as treatments for infection. According to the report, even the most powerful antibiotics available are largely inadequate at tackling the emerging forms of new and powerful "super" bacteria. Antibiotic overuse has become a pandemic problem. They are used in animal feed to make animals grow more quickly and they are handed out like candy by many doctors to people with almost any ailment. And they are simply not working anymore to fight infection. Book: Seeds ... of germination ... or termination The American Confederacy – 2084. Nayla, a top scientist and respected board member of the mighty Carsanto Corporation, becomes the country’s most wanted fugitive when she impulsively steals the company’s only germinator seeds to protect the planet and her daughter’s future. The act endangers Carsanto’s malicious plan to take control of the world through genetically modified terminator seeds. With Carsanto’s ruthless security officer in hot pursuit, Nayla flees to the United Canadian Communities where a solitary mountain trapper guides her on a soul-searching adventure as they strive to bring the seeds to safety. At first torn between the simple cultures she discovers on the journey and the comforts of the old world she recklessly left behind, Nayla slowly begins to open her heart to the miracles of life. Yet as her old worldview crumbles, it leaves her fragile and confused about who she really is, and uncertain if she has the heart to complete her mission. Will she be able to recreate herself and escape? Will she be able to save her daughter and allow the seeds of life to germinate on earth? My friend who passed on the link and who read the book, says: "There is a book I just finished, it is called "SEEDS" ... of germination or termination. It is written by Hugo Bonjean. ISBN 978-0-9737542-2-3. It is a futuristic story about the power struggle on this planet. I am sure you would like it." Drug firms hiding negative research are unfit to experiment on people After the New York attorney general sued GlaxoSmithKline over its "illegal and deceptive" reporting of the risks of its anti-depressant paroxetine (tradename Seroxat), GSK agreed to publish all trial data on a website. But, several years later, we saw last month that GSK and the Food and Drug Administration had sat on data showing that rosiglitazone (tradename Avandia) increased the risk of heart problems. I can't see why any company withholding data should be allowed to conduct further experiments on people. I can't see why the state doesn't impose crippling fines. I hope it's because politicians don't understand the scale of the harm. Janssen-Cilag applies for adult ADHD drug approval in Europe Janssen-Cilag, a subsidiary of the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical company, has filed an application to get methylphenidate (sold as Ritalin and Concerta) approved for ADHD - Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder ... in adults. There are a series of grave concerns with the drug's safety, which Larssen has outlined in a letter to the European Medical agencies and the EU Commission. He argues that the pharmaceutical company has not fulfilled its obligations even to keep the drug on the market, much less expand its use to a new indication. FDA Set To Recall Unproven Drug after 14 Years The Food and Drug Administration approved Shire Laboratories' drug ProAmatine in 1996 based on promising early results in treating low blood pressure. But the company has never submitted a mandatory follow-up study to actually prove the long-term benefits of the drug. In letter to the company posted online Monday, the FDA proposes withdrawing the drug from the market and gives Shire an opportunity to schedule a hearing to discuss the matter. The letter marks the first time the FDA has threatened to pull a drug off the market due to missing follow-up data, though it has long held that power. 'The age of electronic medicine' As part of its new iMedEd Initiative, the UC Irvine medical school has developed a comprehensive, iPad-based curriculum, reinventing how medicine is taught in the 21st century and becoming the first in the nation to offer entering students a completely digital, interactive learning environment. “We are committed to using evolving technology to benefit the education of our medical students,” says Dr. Ralph V. Clayman, dean of the School of Medicine. “It is our firm belief that a digitally based curriculum will be the wave of the future, and UCI seeks to be a leader in the innovative presentation of information to students.” P2P Medicine: How Patients and Doctors can collaborate The July 2010 issue of Gordon Cook’s Report on Internet Protocol, Technology, Economics, and Policy examines Dr David Zakim’s Clinical Expert Operating System, an internet-based application that could literally change the future of medicine. Dr Zakim’s aim is to bring patients and doctors together in a common effort to arrive at a proper diagnosis so a decision can be made what treatment is needed in each individual case. The system also has another major purpose. Data collected on individual patients can eventually combine to construct an extensive database of facts that would act as an ongoing clinical trial and could bring important new insights to medicine as a whole. Another Autism Anomaly - Why do we have autism and they don't? (Food Chain Radio #694) (Note: We follow up a question first asked in Food Chain Radio #662: Why do we have 90 times more autism than the Amish?) When it comes to vaccinations, I have had them all. At least, it seems that way! From very early childhood, when the parents happily held up my bare bottom for the nurses needle, to the assembly-line air guns of the US Navys welcome to foreign ports, to vaccination cards laden with protection for trips to Egypt or the headwaters of the Amazon, to all those yearly flu vaccinations manufactured in a garage on the outskirts of Kowloon, I have willingly or not lined up for them all. In fact, my blood now contains so much mercury-laden thimerosal preservative its probably good for 500 years, give or take. And so when I featured Dan Olmsteads Amish autism anomaly in Food Chain Radio #662, I became fascinated by the apparent relationship of autism and vaccinations: Why do we who vaccinate have a rate of autism of 1 in 166, whereas the Amish who do not vaccinate have a rate of autism of 1 in 15,000? Then I learned of another anomaly within the population of 30,000 patients of Homefirst Health Services, a clinic in metropolitan Chicago where no autism can be found. And so once again we pause to ask Why do we have autism and they dont? PTSD, infertility and other consequences of war Boot camp and combat is bad enough; and such forced inhumanity as committing war crimes against civilians causes soldiers to suffer the mental trauma of PTSD. In addition, there is an unseen agent or disease vector at work here as well. There, on the battlefield, the happy boys sent off to war by Mayor Gavin Newsom’s Fleet Week – an event responsible for a big chunk of the enlistments in the U.S. Navy and Marines – will probably come in deadly contact with another San Francisco Bay Area product: depleted uranium, aka DU, and weaponized ceramic uranium oxide gas and aerosols, UO....

Today the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit stayed U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker's injunction barring enforcement of Proposition 8, California's voter-approved gay marriage ban. That means new gay marriages cannot be legally performed at least until the 9th Circuit decides the case and possibly until the Supreme Court has its say (even longer, of course, if Walker's decision is ultimately overturned).

More on the case here.

WHO Declares End to H1N1 Pandemic Director-General of the World Health Organization Margaret Chan, MD, MPH, has declared an end to the H1N1 influenza pandemic, following the advice of an emergency committee convened to address the issue. It is about time this declaration was made. In reality, there should not have been a pandemic declaration to begin with - H1N1 was never anything but a mild affliction that did not infect a great number of people. WHO Identifies Conflicted Pandemic Panel Members Now that the World Health Organization has officially declared that the swine flu pandemic is over (see this), the agency has finally released the names of the scientific advisors who helped with pandemic decisions and their declared conflicts of interest, such as paid work for drugmakers. Swine flu advisers' ties to drug firms: Five WHO experts linked with vaccine producers Five of the 15 specialists who sat on the emergency committee had received funding from pharmaceutical giants, or were linked to them through their research. The revelation will prompt speculation that the 'pandemic' was wildly overestimated and largely fuelled by the drugs industry who stood to benefit from the panic. FDA Avandia Expert on Glaxo Payroll The Health Sciences Institute picked up on a really choice quote from this same physician, '“I think it would be a disaster to remove a useful agent like that. I don’t care what the controlled clinical trials show.” Then–apparently realizing what he’d just blurted out–he added, “Well, I do but I don’t think it’s knock down complete.” Wow! That’s pretty candid… Don’t show me the data! I already made up my mind!' AstraZeneca Settles 4,000 Seroquel Lawsuits AstraZeneca is only the latest big drugmaker to strike settlments with a large number of plaintiffs in ongoing product-liability litigation. Recently, GlaxoSmithKline has done the same concerning lawsuits filed over its Avandia diabetes med and Paxil antidepressant (see here and here). The goal, of course, is to dispense with the litigation before associated costs spiral upwards and further distract managers, all of which combines to unhinge investors if court battles are lost and no end appears in sight. With billions made from those drugs every year, the costs of settlements like this are just part of the cost of doing business. Dirty business, if you hurt your patients, and then pay off those few that actually get a lawyer and sue. Drug Companies Face Federal Inquiries At least a dozen major drug and device makers are under investigation by federal prosecutors and securities regulators in a broadening inquiry of bribery allegations as to whether the companies may have made payments to foreign doctors and health officials. In previous investigations, federal officials have charged that many of these kinds of payments were made to encourage doctors to order their products. BMJ ‘limiting’ analysis of calcium studies ‘finds’ cardiovascular risk Two decades after nutritional experts began to avoid supplemental calcium (paticularly inorganic calcium carbonate) given in isolation, as a treatment for conditions such as osteoporosis, in favour of more synergistic combinations of the range of essential nutrients needed for bone formation (which include adequate intakes of zinc, magnesium, manganese, boron, vitamin D, vitamin C, vitamin K2, folates and Vitamin B6); a British Medical Journal (BMJ) meta-analysis has finally brought into question, the pharma-favoured calcium treatment! Female Infants Growing Breasts: Disaster From Hormones in Milk Production According to the official Chinese Daily newspaper, medical tests performed on the babies found levels of estrogens circulating in their bloodstreams that are as high as those found in most adult women. These babies are between four and 15 months old. And the evidence is overwhelming that the milk formula they have been fed is responsible. Synutra, the company that makes the baby formula consumed by these babies, says it's not their fault. The writer of the article asks: "If this problem appears in the U.S., who will be held responsible? The retailers? The importers? The Chinese producers? Will anyone be called to account? " Well, apparently it's not a problem of "if". The US has its own problems of premature puberty in girls as young as 7 or 8 years. No one has looked into the food they get, like the Chinese did. In the US the question the article brings up is why are African American and Latino American kids more affected... (See Is Environmental Injustice Morphing Little Girls’ Bodies?) Fluoride Could be Contributing to Early Puberty, Studies Show The medical and public health community is shocked by the news that young American girls are reaching puberty at ages as young as 7 years. However, according to Paul Connett, PhD, Director of the Fluoride Action Network, "If fluoride's dangers had not been taken off the scientific radar screen by the US Public Health Service when it prematurely endorsed fluoridation in 1950, maybe key warning signals would not have been ignored for over 50 years." Acetaminophen use in adolescents linked to doubled risk of asthma New evidence linking the use of acetaminophen (Tylenol) to development of asthma and eczema suggests that even monthly use of the drug in adolescents may more than double risk of asthma in adolescents compared to those who used none at all; yearly use was associated with a 50 percent increase in the risk of asthma. Cancer cells feed on fructose, study finds Pancreatic tumor cells use fructose to divide and proliferate, U.S. researchers said on Monday in a study that challenges the common wisdom that all sugars are the same. Tumor cells fed both glucose and fructose used the two sugars in two different ways, the team at the University of California Los Angeles found. So much for that "high fructose corn syrup" that is sweetening a majority of soft drinks and many other foods today. Of course all sugars of the refined variety are highly problematic for our health. If it's not cancer, they cause all kinds of other havoc with our cells. Check out Sugar Blues: Alcoholism, Diabetes and Hypoglycemia Rethinking statins: A wonder drug or 'false hope'? "There's a conspiracy of false hope," says Harvard Medical School's Dr. John Abramson, who has co-written several critiques of statins' rise, including one published in June in the Archives of Internal Medicine. "The public wants an easy way to prevent heart disease, doctors want to reduce their patients' risk of heart disease and drug companies want to maximize the number of people taking their pills to boost their sales and profits." There are several warnings about statin drugs on this site. Start here and follow links (or do a site search): Lipitor: Side Effects And Natural Remedy Statins and Heart Failure (Statins are cholesterol-lowering drugs) A paper titled simply "Lovastatin decreases coenzyme Q levels in humans" states unequivocally in the abstract: "It is established that Coenzyme Q10 is indispensable for cardiac function." The heart is a muscle, and hence it is subject to all the same laws of physics as the skeletal muscles. It faces the same problem of fuel deficiency due to the various effects statins have on metabolism. An article published in 2004 provides a plausible theory for the process by which muscle cells in the heart become dysfunctional with old age, leading ultimately to heart failure. The argument blends perfectly with the logical deductions associated with the mechanism by which statins damage cells, and leads to the unavoidable conclusion that statins make you age at an accelerated pace. Why antidepressants are simply a confidence trick: A leading psychologist claims taking sugar pills would work just as well They are not much better than sugar pills, they have nasty side - effects, such as sexual dysfunction, and they increase young people's risk of suicide. New research shows they don't even work on the brain in the way we thought they did. Association between number of cell phone contracts and brain tumor incidence in nineteen U.S. States The very linear relationship between cell phone usage and brain tumor incidence is disturbing and certainly needs further epidemiological evaluation. In the meantime, it would be prudent to limit exposure to all sources of electro-magnetic radiation....

Poll maven Nate Silver believes "it has become increasingly unclear whether opposition to gay marriage still outweighs support for it." Charting rising support against falling opposition, he sees the trend toward acceptance accelerating in recent years. He also questions the notion that court rulings striking down bans on gay marriage (such as last week's decision by U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker) ultimately hurt the cause by arousing popular resentment:

While there is not necessarily zero risk of backlash resulting from things like court decisions—support for gay marriage slid backward by a couple of points, albeit temporarily, after a Massachusetts' court's ruling in 2003 that same-sex marriage was required by that state's constitution—it seems that, in general, "having the debate" is helpful to the gay marriage cause, probably because the secular justifications against it are generally quite weak.

Steve Chapman worries about the backlash here. I note the weak secular justifications here.

[via Outside the Beltway]