Health Supreme NewsGrabs - 26 February 2007
Sepp Hasslberger's News Grabs - a selection of alternative health news and related bits of interesting information ...
In this issue:
Scientists grow teeth from single cells -
Superberry -
OMNS: NO DEATHS FROM VITAMINS -
Eli Lilly Effort to Censor Zyprexa Documents -
Video: Confessions of an RX Drug Pusher -
Courts Seize "Quackbuster" Bank Accounts -
Merck Suspends Vaccine Lobby -
Texas Gov Perry took Merck money -
Gambian president's AIDS cure -
Dow Chemical bribing Indian officials -
Man-Made Global Warming a 'Myth' -
Water Vapor Rules the Greenhouse System -
Video: Domination of Space -
- - -
Japanese scientists grow teeth from single cells
They used primitive cells, not quite as early as stem cells, and injected them into a framework of collagen, the material that holds the body together. After growing them, they found their structures had matured into the components that make teeth, including dentin, enamel, dental pulp, blood vessels, and periodontal ligaments. They were "arranged appropriately when compared with a natural tooth," the researchers reported in the journal Nature Methods. The teeth grew and developed normally when transplanted into a mouse, said Takashi Tsuji of the Tokyo University of Science in Chiba, Japan and colleagues.
Just One Pill Away
Humanity is on the verge of a gigantic leap forward in health promotion with rapid-fire discoveries that a single vitamin pill may vanquish cancer and heart disease, the two leading causes of mortality in the U.S., as well as quell autoimmune disease (rheumatoid arthritis, lupus), diminish the occurrence of diabetes, reduce obesity, and effectively treat multiple sclerosis, osteoporosis, Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia and high blood pressure, plus conquer the common cold and even defeat tuberculosis, an infectious lung disease that affects one-third of the people of the world.
The Times: Superberry may be squashed by EU rules
Goji berries, the latest super-food advocated by celebrities such as Madonna, Kate Moss and Liz Hurley, may have to be removed from sale. The berries, full of antioxidants, vitamins and minerals and little-known on the high street two years ago, have become such a fashionable “miracle” food that they have caught the attention of the regulators. The Food Standards Agency (FSA) has warned supermarkets and health food shops that it may ban the fruit unless it receives proof that the berry has been commonly eaten in Britain, or another European Union country, for more than ten years.
From the Orthomolecular Medicine News Service:
NO DEATHS FROM VITAMINS: Poison Control Statistics Prove Supplements’ Safety
(OMNS Feb 23, 2007) There was not even one death caused by vitamins in 2005, according to the most recent statistics available from the US National Poisoning and Exposure Database. The 129-page annual report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers published in the journal Clinical Toxicology (1) shows zero deaths from multiple vitamins; zero deaths from any of the B vitamins; zero deaths from vitamins A, C, D, or E; and zero deaths from any other vitamin.
Over half of the U.S. population takes daily vitamin supplements. Even if each of those people took only one single tablet per day, that makes 145,000,000 individual doses per day, for a total of over 53 billion doses annually. Since many persons take additional vitamins, the numbers are considerably higher, and the safety of vitamins all the more remarkable.
Reference: Lai MW, Klein-Schwartz W, Rodgers GC et al. 2005 Annual Report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers' national poisoning and exposure database. Clin Toxicol (Phila). 2006; 44(6-7): 803-932. Download from here. Vitamins statistics are found in Table 22, towards the end of the report.
NHS Has A Drugs Problem
The NHS needs to "radically overhaul" its system of paying drug companies for medicines, according to the Office of Fair Trading. The consumer watchdog says the move could save up to £500m per year. It has been conducting a long investigation into drugs pricing, and has identified a number of drugs where prices are "significantly out of line with patient benefits". These include treatments for cholesterol, blood pressure and stomach acid. Currently, the health service spends £7bn a year on branded prescription drugs.
'Multi-million pound overspend' on NHS drugs
The OFT has concluded that the Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme (PPRS) should be overhauled so that drugs companies will be forced for the first time to evaluate the benefit to the patient and the NHS when they set the prices. The report, drawn up in conditions of the utmost secrecy, has found that the pricing regime is too heavily weighted in favour of the drugs companie, such as Pfizer and GlaxoSmith-Kline, whose combined annual profits last year exceeded £10 billion.
Eli Lilly Loses Effort to Censor Zyprexa Documents Off the Internet
A U.S. District Court judge refused Eli Lilly's request to ban a number of websites from publishing leaked documents relating to Zyprexa, Eli Lilly's top-selling drug. Although the judge rejected the First Amendment arguments made by a variety of individuals eager to publish the documents, the court concluded that "it is unlikely that the court can now effectively enforce an injunction against the Internet in its various manifestations, and it would constitute a dubious manifestation of public policy were it to attempt to do so." The order is a victory for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which represents an anonymous individual who was previously barred by the court's earlier orders from posting links to the Zyprexa documents on the zyprexa.pbwiki.com wiki.
Video: Confessions of an RX Drug Pusher
Gwen Olsen, former pharmaceutical sales representative speaks out.
Courts Seize "Quackbuster" Bank Accounts, Property...
"Quackbusters" Stephen Barrett and Terry Polevoy are in trouble. They sued for defamation, lost the case as vexatious under legislation designed to stop lawsuits designed to shut up someone by overwhelming them with litigation, and after losing appeals up to the California Supreme Court, Barrett and Polevoy now have to pay the costs - which apparently amount to more than they have on their collective bank accounts.
Merck Suspends Lobbying for Vaccine
Merck & Co. is immediately suspending its lobbying campaign to persuade state legislatures to mandate that adolescent girls get the company's new vaccine against cervical cancer as a requirement for school attendance, the company said Tuesday. The drug maker had been criticized by parents and doctors' groups for quietly funding the campaign via a third party to require 11- and 12-year-old girls get the three-dose vaccine in order to attend school.
Texas Governor Perry took Merck money before mandating cervical vaccine
Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) says that it's just a coincidence that he and eight other lawmakers received donations of $5,000 each from Merck lobbyists just a few days before mandating the drug giant's HPV cervical cancer vaccine for all females in Texas ages 12 and up. The main lobbyist for Merck previously worked as Chief of Staff for Gov. Rick Perry.
Our neurotoxic world: Chemotherapy and the brain
Your brain is a resilient organ, but vulnerable to nasty environmental insults too. This week, in the first of two shows navigating our neurotoxic world: it's been dubbed 'Chemofog' and 'Chemobrain' by cancer survivors: short-term memory loss, foggy thoughts, fatigue - lingering sometimes years after chemotherapy. Could chemo be doing more than killing off cancer cells? New research suggests it may be more toxic to your nerve cells than cancer itself. Natasha Mitchell investigates.
Compare that with a barely 2 % success rate of chemotherapy in lengthening the patient's survival time, and you have a cure you want to avoid.
As HIV/AIDS Unravels ...
Unravels is the right word. I never wanted to be here talking about this, I only got involved when I saw how insane the HIV/AIDS industry is and how many people suffer unnecessarily as a result so I had to say something. So here are some happenings.
Blog post with links to the latest happenings on the HIV/AIDS front
Gambian president's claim of AIDS cure causes alarm
The biggest concern is that the Gambian leader requires patients to cease their anti-retroviral drugs, a move that risks weakening their immune systems and making them even more prone to infection, said Dr. Antonio Filipe Jr., head of the World Health Organization in neighboring Senegal.
Suspending medication that destroys the immune system makes them "even more prone to infection"? Some would differ with that assessment, seeing the nastyside effects of anti-retroviral drugs.
HIV on Trial in Australia: Court Weighs Evidence for Claims of Isolation, Transmission and Testing
Geiger says, "It's difficult to tell if Gallo was defending HIV or if his testimony is a public admission of guilt." Geiger urges transcript readers to note: Page 1294 where Gallo agrees that he found evidence of HIV in only 40% of the AIDS patients in his original study, and that 40% is not enough to prove HIV is the cause of AIDS...
Dow Chemical fined for bribing Indian officials to allow pesticide
The Securities and the Exchange Commission (SEC) in the US on Tuesday slapped a civil penalty of $325,000 on Dow Chemical in an effort to settle the charge that the company’s subsidiary, DE-Nocil Crop Protection Ltd, made “improper” payments to Indian government officials. Dow Chemicals agreed to settle the matter without admitting or denying wrong-doings and to desist from future violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
President of Czech Republic Calls Man-Made Global Warming a 'Myth' - Questions Gore's Sanity
Global warming is a false myth and every serious person and scientist says so. It is not fair to refer to the U.N. panel. IPCC is not a scientific institution: it's a political body, a sort of non-government organization of green flavor. It's neither a forum of neutral scientists nor a balanced group of scientists. These people are politicized scientists who arrive there with a one-sided opinion and a one-sided assignment. Also, it's an undignified slapstick that people don't wait for the full report in May 2007 but instead respond, in such a serious way, to the summary for policymakers where all the "but's" are scratched, removed, and replaced by oversimplified theses.
Water Vapor Rules the Greenhouse System
Just how much of the "Greenhouse Effect" is caused by human activity? It is about 0.28%, if water vapor is taken into account-- about 5.53%, if not. This point is so crucial to the debate over global warming that how water vapor is or isn't factored into an analysis of Earth's greenhouse gases makes the difference between describing a significant human contribution to the greenhouse effect, or a negligible one. Water vapor constitutes Earth's most significant greenhouse gas, accounting for about 95% of Earth's greenhouse effect (4). Interestingly, many "facts and figures' regarding global warming completely ignore the powerful effects of water vapor in the greenhouse system, carelessly (perhaps, deliberately) overstating human impacts as much as 20-fold.
Video: Domination of Space
How far are we from a time when anyone on Earth can be cooked from space? Perhaps not far. This video also talks about Theater Missile Defense, which finally explains to me why we need bases all over the world. The video says we had a war game recently where the US launched a preemptive attack on China using the newest Space Shuttle and then a space based laser. No wonder China recently blew up one of their own satellites!
posted by Sepp Hasslberger on Monday February 26 2007
updated on Saturday December 25 2010URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2007/02/26/health_supreme_newsgrabs_26_february_2007.htm