Health Supreme NewsGrabs - 25 January 2007
Sepp Hasslberger's News Grabs - a selection of alternative health news and related bits of interesting information ...
In this issue:
Human guinea pigs -
Gambian cure for AIDS, asthma -
Selenium supplements reduce HIV load -
Four Papers on “Aids” -
Video: Lee Evans discusses HIV tests -
Law Review Criticises Codex -
1918 flu virus brought back to life -
Delays in Generic Drugs -
Medical Experiments In Developing Countries -
Marketing Disease -
Statins Raise Risk of Parkinson's? -
Pfizer cuts 10,000 jobs -
FDA Feels The Heat -
Mobile Phones the cigarettes of the 21st century? -
Decertifying Global Warming Skeptics -
Inconvenient Facts About Climate Change- - -
Human guinea pigs eat "ape diet" for 12 days, experience remarkable health improvements
The overall cholesterol drop for the entire group was 23 percent, which is a number that scientists have only attained through use of statin drugs in the past. The average blood pressure level of the group bordered on hypertension at 140/83 at the beginning of the trial, but it had been reduced to 122/76 after the 12 days were up.
Gambian leader Jammeh, claims cure for HIV/AIDS, asthma
"Since 1994, there are many Gambians who know what I can do. A lot of people have been treated in silence and under conditions of strict confidentiality," Jammeh was quoted as telling a gathering at the State House Thursday. "I am not speculating on my medicine. There are living witnesses to what my medicine can do. Now, I have the mandate to cure people publicly. I can treat asthma and HIV/AIDS. Within three days the person should be tested again and I can tell you that he/she will be (HIV) negative," he added.
Selenium supplements may contribute to reduced HIV viral load
"The intervention resulted in no adverse events related to the study supplement," the authors write. The two groups had similar selenium levels at the beginning of the study, but after nine months of treatment, the average change in blood selenium level was greater in the treatment group. Higher blood selenium levels predicted a decreased HIV viral load, which in turn predicted increased CD4 count. "The exact mechanism by which selenium exerts its effects on HIV-1 viral replication is not known, although the literature suggests several possibilities," the authors write. One hypothesis holds that selenium's antioxidant properties may repair damage done to immune cells by oxygen, which is produced at higher levels in the bodies of patients with HIV. However, future research is needed to confirm this relationship.
Four Papers on “Aids” That Make You Say, WTF?!
Malaria Causes Aids, Nevirapine Doesn’t Help (even though it hurts), Viral Load Tests Don’t Really Work, Viral Load Tests Don’t Work For Sh*t. Feel free to thread the needle with these, and tell me how they weave together…
Video: Olympic Gold Medal winner Lee Evans discusses the myriad of problems with the HIV tests that are incorrectly diagnosing people as HIV-Positive. Lee Evans tested HIV positive, which prematurely ended his athletic carreer. A later negative test could not undo the damage. Evans explains why you should believe the test makers when they say that their tests are not able to establish "HIV infection". The video is less than 5 minutes long - please go watch it now. Share with friends and family.
New York University Law Review Criticises Codex
A paper published in 2006 in the New York University Law Review, a respected academic journal, examines the increasing prominence and power of international institutions through a study of the Codex Alimentarius Commission. Sponsored by the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Codex is the highest international body on food standards.
Codex Alimentarius, for all intents and purposes, makes international laws on food and nutrition, to be followed by member countries. These laws are made without participation or ratification of national parliaments. Nominally, the enforcement of such laws is voluntary, but in fact they form the basis on which trade disputes are decided, thus acquiring the coercive character of international law.
Researchers bring 1918 flu virus back to life
In experiments that entailed infecting monkeys, the researchers have shown the virus sends the immune systems into overdrive, flooding the lungs with fluids that drown its victims. The scientists say this helps explain why so many healthy young adults died as the 1918 flu pandemic swept the world killing up to 50 million - more people than died in the First World War.
FTC: Delays in Generic Drugs on the Rise
Drug companies increasingly are reaching legal settlements that delay the introduction of cheaper generic medicines and cheat Americans of billions of dollars a year in savings, federal regulators on Wednesday told lawmakers seeking to ban the agreements.
Clinical Trials: The Growing Business Of Medical Experimentations In Developing Countries
“Most of the patients sign on the dotted line without understanding the nature and the consequences of what is being administered to them” said Dr Shashank Joshi. During the testing of an anti-psychotic drug developed by Johnson & Johnson at a psychiatric hospital in Gujurat, some patients reported they were told they had to take new “American” tablets because old drugs were discontinued and were no longer available in the pharmacies.
Big Bucks, Big Pharma: Marketing Disease & Pushing Drugs
by Amy Goodman - This new documentary looks at how illness is used, manipulated, and in some instances created by pharmaceutical companies to make greater profits. [Video - includes rush transcript]
Do Statins Raise the Risk of Parkinson's?
A study in the United States has found that patients with low levels of LDL cholesterol are three times more likely to have Parkinson's disease. The researchers are planning largescale trials to determine whether the drugs are the cause ... experts sought to reassure patients that statins were safe and should not be stopped.
Drug firm Pfizer cuts 10,000 jobs
Pfizer is to cut 10,000 jobs as the US drugs giant seeks to slash annual costs by up to $2bn. Pfizer said it planned to close three research sites and two factories in the US, as well as a factory in Germany and research sites in Japan and France.
My comment: Gotta keep those profits for the shareholders coming out of the operation ... and to hell with people working for a living. Those cuts, by the way, come in a time of HUGE pharmaceutical profits. (The company earlier reported a sharp rise in full-year profits to $19.34bn, from $8.9bn in 2005.)
FDA Feeling The Heat
The Government Accountability Office has identified serious problems within the FDA. In an April 21, 2006, report, the GAO found the FDA's performance "disorganized," "bureaucratic," and undermined by infighting between drug evaluation administrators whose allegiance is with the pharmaceutical industry, and the Office of Drug Safety.According to the GAO, the drug safety office is under-funded, lacks independence and lacks decision-making responsibility. It also criticized the way FDA scientists were prevented from speaking at advisory committee meetings on drugs they were studying.
Investigators point to a major conflict within the Office of New Drugs because it is not only responsible for approving a drug in the first place, it is also responsible for taking regulatory action related to the safety of drugs once they are on the market.
Mobile Phones: Could these be the cigarettes of the 21st century? . . . 'Absolutely'
“Some people say, why do you even start the research? And I say, nobody can know what is going to cause us problems or not. This is the first time anyone’s stuck a transmitter right near to their ear, apart from a few people using walkie-talkies. And the exposure you get from mobile phones is thousands — tens of thousands sometimes — times more than you get from a television broadcast or a mobile phone mast. “And about 40 per cent of the radio energy of that phone is absorbed into your head.”
Weather Channel Climate Expert Calls for Decertifying Global Warming Skeptics
The Weather Channel’s most prominent climatologist is advocating that broadcast meteorologists be stripped of their scientific certification if they express skepticism about predictions of manmade catastrophic global warming. This latest call to silence skeptics follows a year (2006) in which skeptics were compared to "Holocaust Deniers" and Nuremberg-style war crimes trials were advocated by several climate alarmists.
Inconvenient Facts About Climate Change (Global Warming)
"All the planets in our solar system are presently showing signs of increased temperature." If the planet is getting steadily warmer due to Industrial Age greenhouse gases, why did it get cooler when industries began belching out carbon dioxide at full tilt at the start of World War II? The amount of debris spewed into the atmosphere by volcanic activities alone could swamp the effect of greenhouse gases.
posted by Sepp Hasslberger on Thursday January 25 2007
updated on Sunday November 21 2010URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2007/01/25/health_supreme_newsgrabs_25_january_2007.htm