Health Supreme NewsGrabs - 18 February 2007
Sepp Hasslberger's News Grabs - a selection of alternative health news and related bits of interesting information ...
In this issue:
World Health Organisation Corruption -
US Senators want to fix health care -
GM Food - 'Ignorance is Bliss' -
Clinical Trials Under Scrutiny -
Texas Governor's Vaccine Order has no Force -
Rotavirus Vaccine May Harm Infants -
Video: Motivational Deficiency Disorder -
Animal antibiotics back in Congress -
Pharma in Oil for Food Scandal -
Attorney battles drug giant -
Warming blamed on cosmic rays -
- - -
How the World Can Stop Bush
The Bush Regime has taken the US outside the boundaries of international law and is acting unilaterally, falsely declaring American military aggression to be "defensive" and in the interests of peace. Much of the world realizes the hypocrisy and danger in the Bush Regime's justification of the unbridled use of US military power, but no countries except other nuclear powers can challenge American aggression, and then only at the risk of all life on earth. The solution is nonmilitary challenge. If the rest of the world would simply stop purchasing US Treasuries, and instead dump their surplus dollars into the foreign exchange market, the Bush Regime would be overwhelmed with economic crisis and unable to wage war.
It is difficult to fathom how neither the American people, nor Congress, nor the Judiciary seem to be able to put an end to what can only be characterized as insane war mongering by Bush and the circle of his top advisers. As Craig Roberts says in his article, the solution cannot be a military one. We must simply withhold support from the war machine, which cannot live without our complicity. .
'Vulture funds' threat to developing world
President Bush declared the United States was taking on the challenges of global hunger, poverty and disease, and urged support for debt relief, which he called the best hope for eliminating poverty. But what exactly are wealthy nations doing to reduce the debt of impoverished countries? Today we take a close look at companies known as "vulture funds." Vulture fund companies buy up the debt of poor countries at cheap prices, and then demand payments much higher than the original amount of the debt, often taking poor countries to court when they cannot afford to repay. Greg Palast’s BBC report on vulture funds: Today a high court judge in London ruled on the case that a vulture fund can extract more than $20 million from Zambia for a debt which it bought for just $4 million.
The World Health Organisation, the drugs company and the $10,000 funding offer
Patients' group 'was asked to act as covert channel'
"Our legal office will reject the donation. WHO can only receive funds from government agencies, NGOs, foundations and scientific institutions or professional organisations. Therefore I suggest that this money should be given to EPDA and eventually EPDA can send the funds to WHO which will give an invoice (and acknowledge contribution) to EPDA, but not to GSK." He added: "This is in line with what we have done so far with other contributions to the report which are all coming from other professional organisations."
Why is the US Health Care System Failing?
Incompetent Management at DHHS... says Tim Bolen in a long article that looks into the reason that no billing codes were ever established for the services of alt med professionals. A pilot project showed these services to be more effective than normal medical intervention, and to save money for insurers, but DHSS is not budging.
Ten US Senators say: "We want to fix health care NOW..."
Ten US Senators, two days ago, wrote a bi-partisan letter to President George W. Bush saying: Each of us believes our current health system needs to be fixed now. Further delay is unacceptable as costs continue to skyrocket, our population ages, and chronic illness increases. In addition, our businesses are at a severe disadvantage when their competitors in the global market get health care for 'free.'
When It Comes to GM Food, Some Say Ignorance is Bliss
A Report on the February 2007 Oslo Codex Working Group on GM Labelling
Tamara Thèrésa Mosegaard, who was the NHF delegation spokesperson at the Oslo meeting and is on the NHF Advisory Board, notes, “However, it was very strange to hear the European Community (EC) talk about scientific risk assessment proving the safety of the GM foods, and the need for consumers to be well informed, when I remember the many years of discussions at the Codex Alimentarius (CCNFSDU) Committee meetings about establishing ‘upper safe (maximum) levels of vitamins and minerals through scientific risk (safety) assessment based upon scientific data.’ Strange, when in the EC many health products are now registered as pharmaceuticals and are either waiting to be tested by very costly procedures because of ‘risk assessment,’ or have already been banned. So, in essence, we – the consumers – have been told that vitamins and minerals can be dangerous to our sensitive health but that we will only stay healthy by eating a balanced, GM functional-food diet. Maybe some people believe this, but most consumers are not that ignorant.”
Suppressed report shows cancer link to GM potatoes
UK Greenpeace activists said the findings, obtained from Russian trials after an eight-year court battle with the biotech industry, vindicated research by Dr Arpad Pusztai, whose work was criticised by the Royal Society and the Netherlands State Institute for Quality Control. The disclosure last night of the Russian study on the GM Watch website led to calls for David Miliband, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, to withdraw permission for new trials on GM potatoes to go ahead at secret sites in the UK this spring. Alan Simpson, a Labour MP and green campaigner, said: "These trials should be stopped. The research backs up the work of Arpad Pusztai and it shows that he was the victim of a smear campaign by the biotech industry. There has been a cover-up over these findings and the Government should not be a party to that."
Clinical Trials Under Scrutiny: How Medical Information Should Be Made Publicly Available
The new model we propose would start with posting a systematic review of the existing trial evidence on the Web to show what is already known about the effectiveness of a particular treatment and what further research is needed. If there is uncertainty about the effectiveness of the treatment, such that a further trial is needed, a new trial would be registered and the trial protocol would also be posted on the Web.
Mercury Laced Flu Shots Recommended For Pregnant Women & Children
US data on influenza deaths are a mess. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) acknowledges a difference between flu death and flu associated death yet uses the terms interchangeably. Additionally, there are significant statistical incompatibilities between official estimates and national vital statistics data. Compounding these problems is a marketing of fear - a CDC communications strategy in which medical experts "predict dire outcomes" during flu seasons.
Texas Governor's HPV Vaccine Order Carries no Force of Law
When Texas governor Perry ordered mandatory vaccination of school-age girls against the sexually transmitted human papilloma virus he may have been more concerned with lobby dollars than the health of Texans. The order ran into a barrage of criticism, only to discover that the governor had no spending authority to mandate the purchase of vaccines. That power belongs to the Texas legislature.
FDA: Rotavirus Vaccine May Harm Infants
The government warned on Tuesday of potentially life-threatening twisting of the intestines in infants vaccinated against a virus that is the leading cause of early childhood diarrhea. The condition, called intussusception, is the same that led to the withdrawal of the first rotavirus vaccine eight years ago. The earlier rotavirus vaccine, Wyeth's RotaShield, was pulled from the U.S. market in 1999 after it was linked to a small increase in intussusception. It had been on the market a year.
Video: (Humor) Motivational Deficiency Disorder
"In its mild forms, persons can't get off the beach...." how pharmaceutical companies are inventing diseases when they have a need to sell a new cure. See also: Fake drug, fake illness -- and people believe it!
Limits on antibiotics go back to Congress
A years-long battle to end the widespread practice of adding antibiotics to animal feed is headed back to Congress. Prominent doctor groups are backing bills, one of which was introduced Monday, that they say are necessary to keep antibiotics working effectively for humans. The American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and others point to a body of research indicating that overuse of antibiotics in animal feed has led to the development of hard-to-kill germs. The result, they contend, is that doctors are running out of treatment options.
Firms accused of bribing Saddam to be investigated by fraud office
The Serious Fraud Office has launched an investigation into allegations that a number of major UK-based firms paid bribes to Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. The firms being targeted include the drug giants GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), AstraZeneca and Eli Lilly.
The three pharma multinationals are accused of having paid varying amounts of bribes. The companies deny any wrongdoing.
More Zyprexa Postcards From the Edge
by Evelyn Pringle
Mr Gottstein argues that the public has a right to know the truth about the risks associated with the drug. "The files show that the manufacturer hid vital information about the drug's safety," he states, "not only from patients, but also from doctors." - "Zyprexa has killed and permanently sickened thousands of people who have taken it," he says. Mr Gottstein openly admits that he wanted to get the information out to save lives. "The bottom line is patient safety," he said.
Anchorage attorney battles drug giant
An advocate against forced medication in the treatment of mental illness, Gottstein obtained documents about the drug that had been sealed in Outside lawsuits against Eli Lilly and provided them to a New York Times reporter. According to the Times, the records showed a decade-long effort to downplay the drug's health risks
in order to protect sales.
Vioxx whistle-blower weighs in on demoted antibiotic Ketek
More than two years after David Graham told a Senate panel that the Food and Drug Administration was "incapable of protecting America against another Vioxx," the FDA scientist was back on Capitol Hill on Tuesday to tell a House panel that "nothing has really changed." Graham told panel members that CDER "regards industry as the agency's main client." Asked if he had concerns about other drugs, Graham said off-label use of atypical anti-psychotic medications to sedate nursing home residents kills roughly 15,000 people a year.
The politics of global warming
The whole world is preparing for warming, but I mentioned that we have been cooling since 1998 and the climate scientists that I respected -- particularly the Russians and Chinese -- are predicting that we’re going to be much, much cooler by 2030. So we’ve got completely the wrong adaptive strategy.
Warming climate blamed on cosmic rays
Scientists claim that cosmic rays from outer space play a far greater role in changing the Earth's climate than global warming experts previously thought. In a book, to be published this week, they claim that fluctuations in the number of cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere directly affect the amount of cloud covering the planet.
posted by Sepp Hasslberger on Sunday February 18 2007
updated on Monday November 29 2010URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2007/02/18/health_supreme_newsgrabs_18_february_2007.htm