The Muddled World of Medicine - NewsGrabs 10 February 2008
Health Supreme's NewsGrabs - a selection of contrary and underprivileged news in health and related sectors. Find what you may have missed - watch out for NewsGrabs.
Here is this week's selection:
Supplements 'reduce malaria toll'
Many people living in malaria endemic areas suffer from malnutrition so researchers in Burkina Faso experimented with adding vitamin A and zinc supplements to the diets of children aged from six months to six years. Half of the children were given a placebo. After six months the scientists observed a 34% decrease in incidence of malaria in those children taking the supplements. Among those children who did catch the illness, those taking supplements were more resistant to the disease and suffered fewer fever episodes.The researchers, from Institut de Recherche en Sciences de la Santé, believe the combined supplements boosted the children's immune system, making them more naturally resistant to malaria. They believe the supplements could be an effective long term strategy to reduce the impact of malaria.
Folate deficiency associated with tripling of dementia risk
The onset of dementia was significantly more likely in those whose folate levels then fell further over the two years, while their homocysteine levels rose. People who were folate deficient to begin with, were almost 3.5 times more likely to develop dementia. The authors suggest that changes in micronutrients could be linked with the other typical signs that precede dementia, including weight loss and low blood pressure.
Vitamins, Minerals 'to cut prison violence'
Prisoners will be given vitamins and mineral supplements in an attempt to improve their behaviour and cut down on violence behind bars. The Ministry of Justice will fund pioneering research into the connection between the diet of young offenders and their behaviour.This item was in last week's newsgrabs. I am repeating it here to point to additional information, a recent report of an inquiry held by the Associate Parliamentary Food and Health Forum. The report is titled The Links Between Diet and Behaviour and is available here as a PDF file. It discusses the influence of nutrition on behavior and mental health and the implications for public policy.
Button mushrooms contain as much anti-oxidants as expensive ones
Dr Jean-Michel said: “It can be reasonably assumed that white button mushrooms have as much, if not more, radical scavenging power as mushrooms currently touted for their health benefit. The good thing is button mushrooms are available all year round, are cheap and may be an excellent source of nutrition as part of a healthy diet.”
Action Alert: Bio-Identical Hormone Replacement Therapy
On January 9, 2008, the FDA sent numerous pharmacies, large and small, an order to stop using Estriol, and the term “bio-identical” in their hormone replacement formulas. This is an unprecedented attack on compounders, patients and physicians because until now NO compounded drug component with a USP monograph has been withdrawn from circulation unless there has been evidence of harm to patients. Yet that is what the FDA is doing! If they can do it to Estriol, they can do it to anything they wish to!
ROAD MAP TO AFFORDABLE HEALTH CARE
Message by the Dr Rath Foundation published as a (paid) public service announcement in the New York Times
On January 15, 2008, the New York Times and others reported about a clinical study with a combination of two cholesterol lowering drugs (statins) that showed shocking results: Patients receiving these statin drugs developed coronary artery plaques – the cause of heart attacks – twice as fast as the control group. Worse, the drug makers had withheld this crucial data for almost 2 years – despite the fact that 5 million people are currently taking these drugs. Statin drugs are a $40 billion annual business built entirely on the perception that they prevent heart attacks.We are not only faced with a tyranny of oil. As long as the fraudulent business with disease remains unchallenged today's major diseases can not be controlled. If we stay indifferent, the problem of skyrocketing health care costs that drive millions of people into unemployment and personal bankruptcy can never be solved...
Marketing Overdose
The pharmaceutical industry spends US$60 billion on drugs marketing each year, twice as much as it spends on research and development. Yet consumers know next to nothing about where this money is going. To expose where pharma companies spend this money, how it increases drugs sales, and why this irresponsible behaviour is putting consumer health at risk, Consumers International has produced a series of short films for the Marketing Overdose campaign.I am not a great friend of "consumer" organizations. Most of them are little more than a fig leaf for government and big industry to show they care about you and me. It is a sign of the times though for one of these consumer federations actually being critical of big pharma. Of course it's only the advertising and marketing that's at fault. Nothing wrong with the drugs killing hundreds of thousands - yet.
Prescription Drugs that Can Kill You - Is there a safer way?
(link from stephentvedten.blogspot.com - blog censored by Blogger)
Too many pharmaceuticals just aren't safe. The shocking truth is that drug complications are the third leading cause of death in America! Only heart disease and cancer cause more deaths than our pharmaceutical armamentareum! How necessary is it to use drugs that can cause problems serious enough to put you in the hospital, cause permanent disability, or even kill you?
HIV drugs, Abacavir and Didanosine increase the risk of heart attack
A study to assess the adverse effects of anti-retroviral drugs shows that two widely-used HIV drugs are associated with an increased risk of heart attack/the formation of blood clots in the heart. With the use of Didanosine, the risk of developing a heart attack increases by 49%, with Abacavir; the increased risk is 90%. The effect is most pronounced in patients with a high underlying cardiovascular risk. The research findings also show that the adverse effect is reversible, if patients discontinue use of these particular drugs.
Medicaid and Psychiatric Drug Prescriptions
Psychiatrist Dr. Mark Olfson of Columbia University, had expressed astonishment at the findings of two studies that he had conducted (2006, 2007): one, showed a 40-fold increase in children diagnosed as "bipolar disorder." His study found that "psychiatrists made almost 90% of the diagnoses, and two-thirds of the young patients were boys."Dr. Olfson's other study finding: "nearly one in five psychiatric visits for young people included a prescription for antipsychotics." These startling findings led him to acknowledge an "urgent need" to evaluate the drugs' safety and effectiveness.
Pharmalot reports that New York State Senator Tom Morahan says he wants answers about the money spent by the state’s Medicaid program on psychiatric meds for children after reading a report in The New York Post, which found Medicaid paid $82.8 million in 2006 for numerous pills for thousands of children, even though many of the meds were never approved by the FDA for treating kids.
UK: Care homes sedating Alzheimer patients could lead to early death
Dangerous drugs are being prescribed to sedate thousands of Alzheimer's sufferers in care homes, campaigners claimed yesterday. An official inquiry will be told today that the use of the so-called "chemical cosh" has serious side effects and can even lead to premature death. The campaigners say that dementia patients with behavioural problems are being "killed" to make life easier for staff looking after them.
UK and Irish Politicians Denounce Canadian Government Agent’s Dirty Tricks over GMOs
UK’s ex-environment minister, the Rt. Hon. Michael Meacher MP tabled an Early Day Motion in the UK Parliament, now signed by 27 MPs from different parties, the latest being Alex Samond, the leader of the Scottish Nationalist Party and Scotland's First Minister. The motion succinctly points the finger at the corporate corruption of science, most visible and ruthless when it comes to promoting GM crops, and every part of the corporate structure is complicit, the scientific establishment, the learned journals and big government held to ransom by the biotech industry.
Epilepsy Drugs double suicide risk
The risk of suicide or other suicidal behavior doubles for patients taking any one of 11 drugs prescribed to millions of people for epilepsy, pain, psychiatric illnesses and other disorders, the Food and Drug Administration said in an alert to physicians Thursday.
Glaxo Hid Suicide Data In Paxil Studies
That's the angle the New Scientist takes on recently released court documents from a lawsuit against Paxil's maker, GSK."An analysis of internal GSK memos and reports, which were released to US lawyers seeking damages, suggests that the company had trial data demonstrating an eightfold increase in suicide risk as early as 1989. Harvard University psychiatrist Joseph Glenmullen, who studied the papers for the lawyers, says it's 'virtually impossible' that GSK simply misunderstood the data - a claim the company describes as 'absolutely false.'..."
Merck Will Pay $650M To Settle Medicaid Fraud Charges
The drugmaker failed to pay the appropriate rebates to Medicaid and other goverment health care program, and also paid kickbacks to doctors and hospitals to induce them to prescribe various meds. The allegations were brought in two separate lawsuits filed by whistleblowers under the False Claims Act. Merck has also agreed to a Corporate Integrity Agreement, which means good behavior is now required for the next five years.
Novartis Fungal Med Tied To Deaths
Three people have died and several others suffered serious reactions after taking Lamisil, which is used to treat ringworm and nail fungal problems, according to Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration. The agency, which notes Lamisil can cause liver problems, received 722 adverse event reports, including 70 liver reactions
Side Effects Made Simple: Shopper's Guide to 22 Worthless Drugs
From Abilify and Adderall to Xanax, Zoloft and Zyprexa, this page lists 22 drugs for which side effects as reported to the FDA's MedWatch program have been listed in alphabetical order. Most of these drugs have more than a thousand distinct side effects, and some of them as many as 2000.If you ever need convincing not to take one of these drugs, visit the bonkersinstitute's side effects shopper's guide.
Consumers Union: Tell the FDA what you think about drug ads
Goal: 50,000 signatures in two weeks!
Fed up with TV ads that sell you the “good news” about prescription drugs but gloss over the shortcomings? Do these drugs actually work? And how common are those side effects? The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will soon decide whether these TV ads should include a toll-free number and web address where you can report side effects or other problems. The drug companies don't like this idea. They don’t want their ads used to help identify potential problems with their products. But if we have to watch these endless ads, we should at least be able to easily report to the FDA how these medicines really work! Add your name to the FDA petition!
ECT - "Penicillin of Psychiatry" - Review of Shorter and Healy
The history of psychiatry is a story of megalomania. A confounding problem for psychiatry is the profession’s failure to examine its therapeutics from patients’ perspectives or to put psychiatry’s therapeutics to a valid scientific test to determine whether the benefit outweighs the risks from patients’ perspective.Relevant to this article is another one on the same site, of Professor Peter Sterling discussing the side effects of ECS or electroconvulsive shock.
Using tattoo needle to deliver HPV vaccine?
Tattoos are far more effective at generating antibodies than the old needle-and-plunger, Müller reports in the journal, Genetic Vaccines and Therapy. Müller specializes in vaccines against the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus, which causes cervical cancer. Some governments and pharmaceutical companies want to make the HPV vaccine mandatory for all children – girls, and boys.
Lilly - Settlement Talks With U.S - But what about the death toll?
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.
The Muddled World Of Medicine
For the last 30 years in our culture, we've been doing medical research on a scale never seen in human history and doctors have been making sweeping pronouncements about how individuals should live and how society should order human behavior. We've got food bans, smoking bans and depression screenings in schools, and yet none of that seems to be having the effect on human health that the proponents of various theories claimed they had evidence of. That's just weird.So what happened? How did medicine become so muddled? I don't even have a theory. Do you?
Book: Are You Positive?
26-year-old Tyree Johnson stands accused of first degree murder in a prominent South Carolina courtroom. But his murder weapon is not a gun or a knife; in fact, there was no violent crime at all. His "victim," Beth Ann Brooks, dated Tyree for a few months, and they made love more than once. However, Tyree Johnson had been diagnosed HIV-Positive, and the prosecution claims that Beth Ann Brooks was infected with HIV by Tyree and died some months later.
Are You Positive? raises serious questions about whether anyone has ever been properly diagnosed as HIV-Positive, and whether most AIDS victims are dying from the side-effects of the HIV medications prescribed by their doctors – all in a spell-binding novel. You be the judge.
Cordless Phones increase likelihood of Malignant Brain Tumours
Cancer researchers in Sweden found strong links between malignant brain tumours and using cordless phones, which are comparable to those for using mobile phones. The cancer research team led by Lennart Hardell at the University of Orebro showed that people who have used mobile phones or cordless phones for more than 2 000 h are all at greatly increased risks of getting malignant brain tumours. The odds of getting malignant brain tumours compared with those who have never used these phones - expressed as odds ratio, OR – was 5.9 times for analogue mobile phones (older type of mobile phones), 3.7 times for digital mobile phones and 2.3 times for cordless phones.
The Cell Phone "Tower of Doom"
Orange mobile phone company agreed to remove its cell phone mast -- dubbed the “Tower of Doom” -- from the top of a five-story London apartment building after seven of its residents got cancer. The cancer rate among those living on the top floor, where residents from five of the eight flats were affected, is 20 percent -- 10 times the national average.The mast, along with a second mast owned by Vodafone, was put up in 1994. Since then, residents have battled cancer, headaches and other health problems they say are caused by radiation from the masts. Three residents have died from cancer, while another four are still fighting the disease.
FDA Calls For Re-Examination OF Cell Phone Health Risks
Long-term and low-intensity radio frequency exposure from mobile devices considered dangerous to pregnant women and kids.With the proliferation of mobile devices and their extensive use, past studies on health risks related to cell phone radiation need to be re-examined, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which this week asked the National Research Council to identify further research that shows the effects of long-term exposure to these devices.
Discovery backs theory oil not 'fossil fuel'
A study published in Science Magazine today presents new evidence supporting the abiotic theory for the origin of oil, which asserts oil is a natural product the Earth generates constantly rather than a "fossil fuel" derived from decaying ancient forests and dead dinosaurs.The lead scientist on the study – Giora Proskurowski of the School of Oceanography at the University of Washington in Seattle – says the hydrogen-rich fluids venting at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in the Lost City Hydrothermal Field were produced by the abiotic synthesis of hydrocarbons in the mantle of the earth.
The abiotic theory of the origin of oil directly challenges the conventional scientific theory that hydrocarbons are organic in nature, created by the deterioration of biological material deposited millions of years ago in sedimentary rock and converted to hydrocarbons under intense heat and pressure.
The truth about those “suicide bombers” in Iraq
The myth is that fanatic Al Qaeda suicide bombers are blowing themselves up. The fact is that someone is attaching bombs to and remotely detonating people, now for example, two women (whose faces indicate they had trisomy 21 a genetic disorder which can include profound mental disability) in Baghdad.Mobile phones can be used as detonators by setting an alarm or by calling them. The alarm method isn’t reliable, so you need someone with line of sight to make the call and set off the bomb. The phone company would know the exact time of the call, as would the US military who monitors all communications in Baghdad, so they would be able to find out what phone number dialed the women to set off the explosions, right? Find out who last had that phone, trace it, and you find the real killers. Why is this not being talked about?
Internet cable cuts - sabotage
The last week has seen a spate of unexplained, cut, undersea communications cables that has severely disrupted communications in many countries in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia. As I shall show, the total numbers of cut cables remain in question, but likely number as many as eight, and maybe nine or more.
Money As Debt
An excellent introduction to some of the major problems with our current economic system. Want to know what is at the root of the current breakdown of banking? It seems that what's happening today is only a logical consequence of the way our money is created.Our whole economy is hostage to those issuing money (the banks) and a necessary consequence of today's system is that money tends to end up in just a few hands, leading to exquisite and varied problems for the rest of us ... we need some smart changes here. The video identifies the problem and proposes one possible solution. There may be others.
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More information out there...There is much I cannot cover but other sources for this kind of information exist and are active.
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The Alternative Medicine Yahoo Group is another great place to get information on what is happening in the world of nutrition and other natural health options.
For the influence of electromagnetic waves from radio, mobile phones and other radio emitting devices, check out the emfrefugee group on Yahoo.
If you are interested in a different take on the news that isn't health centered but is certainly fun, check out Robin Good TV News.
Some more sites to keep up to date with the other side of world affairs, the stuff you won't find on tv:
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com
http://www.commondreams.org
http://www.vialls.com/
http://www.globalresearch.ca/
http://rawstory.com/
http://www.truthout.org/
"The individual is supreme and finds its way through intuition."
posted by Sepp Hasslberger on Sunday February 10 2008
updated on Wednesday August 15 2012URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2008/02/10/the_muddled_world_of_medicine_newsgrabs_10_february_2008.htm
