US: Stevia sweetener approved - NewsGrabs 28 December 2008
Will 2009 be the year of pharma transparency and ethics in medicine? I certainly hope so.
US: Stevia gets green light from FDA
The US Food and Drug Administration has given the green light for stevia to be used in food and drink applications after deciding the ingredient poses no health risks.The agency has granted the all-natural sweetener status as generally recognised as safe (GRAS) after being pressed to do so by sweetener suppliers Cargill and Merisant Company.
There is some hope after all, that neurotoxic and cancer-causing aspartame can be replaced by a more natural sweetener which should be less damaging to our health.In Europe, the sale of stevia was effectively forbidden after an application under the "novel foods" directive by a Belgian University had been turned down. That application apparently was never meant to obtain approval for the sale of stevia but merely to "test" the application of the novel foods directive. Isn't it time someone made a serious application for approval under EU law?.
Is the EU shifting against high-dose vitamins and minerals?
HFMA chairman John Redman contacted NutraIngredients to air his organisation’s concerns after the meeting that occurred between major UK-based health food chain, Holland & Barrett, and Robert Madelin, the director general of DG Sanco Health & Consumer Protection at the EC.“Alarm bells are ringing,” Redman said. “What we are concerned about is that contrary to what we were led to believe before, the EC has indicated it will not consider any potencies that may result in minor and reversible side-effects. More alarming was the fact Madelin said the EC considers the loss of higher potency substances a fair price to pay for harmonisation in the EU.”
So it seems that dosage limits for vitamins and minerals in food supplements will be set in early 2009, and that the German view of restricting nutrient availability to the insufficient levels present in foods is gaining ground in the European Commission. All in the name of harmonization. Got nothing whatsoever to do with protecting consumers let alone giving them the freedom of choice the Commission has trotted out as a "carrot" on various occasions.
Why Coffee is good for you
Top 10 Reasons to Drink Coffee1 Drinking Coffee has been used as an emergency treatment for asthma
2 Drinking Coffee lowers your risk of developing cavities
3 Drinking coffee may relieve the symptoms of Parkinson's disease and may aid in prevention
4 Drinking Coffee has been shown to reduce the risk of chronic liver disease & cirrhosis (toxic effects of alcohol on the liver)
5 Drinking Coffee enhances short-term memory
6 Drinking Coffee may protect against bladder cancer
7 Drinking Coffee may inhibit the development of colon cancer
8 Drinking Coffee has been linked to a lower risk of diabetes
9 Drinking 4 or more cups of coffee a day may help to prevent gout
10 Drinking Coffee has been used as a treatment for headaches
UK: Massive crackdown on the use of scores of toxic pesticides
Scores of pesticides suspected of causing cancer, DNA damage and "gender-bender" effects are to be phased out under new EU rules, which are being hailed as a revolution in the way the public is protected against poisonous chemicals. The use of all pesticides in public places is to be dramatically reduced, with aerial spraying banned anywhere in the country.Nick Mole, of the Pesticides Action Network, said: "This is a landmark, the biggest ever crackdown on poisonous chemicals... It says that anything hazardous to health or the environment will have to go, rather than taking the position... that if it is used properly it can be tolerated."
Scientist: GM Food Safety Testing Is "Woefully Inadequate"
To date, most of these types of studies have been done by biotechnology companies or scientists associated with biotechnology companies. Of the few independent studies being done, a study by the Austrian government recently made public found reduced fertility in mice fed GM corn. Another recent study done in Italy showed immune system problems in mice fed GM corn. The studies done by biotechnology companies tend to show no health problems associated with eating GM food. The independent studies are finding adverse effects.
Study Finds GM Corn Disturbs Immune System of Mice
Italy's National Institute of Research on Food and Nutrition recently published a report online in the Journal of Agricultural Food Chemistry documenting significant disturbances in the immune system of young and old mice that have been fed the genetically modified corn MON 810.
Bee Learning Behavior Affected by Eating Toxin from GE Corn
The new finding is particularly interesting since it lends weight to a previous suggestion that Bt toxins may have other, non-lethal effects which become apparent only when the normal (i.e. lethal) effect is absent. If there were to be multiple modes of Bt action then many more non-target organisms would likely be at risk from GM Bt corn.
FDA fails to protect health - wishes to "improve morale"
As several FDA safety reviewers have described (anonymously to protect themselves from harassment), the agency's safeguarding mission has been turned on its head: "ex-industry VPs have come to FDA and implemented new processes over the past several years that will prevent the detection of serious adverse events including death, and detection is instead moving to post marketing rather than pre-marketing evaluation."In March 2008, the Readers Digest provided an excellent overview of what ails the FDA:
"Lurching from one disaster to another, the 102-year-old agency learns of dangers too late and then moves too slowly to remedy them. Instead of depending on the FDA, Americans are doubting it -- and for good reason."
Did the FDA Miss Signals on a Troubled Heart Drug?
Vera Hassner Sharav of the Alliance for Human Research Protection:
A major investigative report documenting FDA's systemic failure to use its authority to take action or even to issue warnings to physicians about the potential lethal consequences of prescribing an FDA-approved drug, by Jeanne Lenzer was commissioned by the Center for Public Integrity. It documents FDA officials' failure to take action - even when they had documented evidence dating back years demonstrating that Actavis, the manufacturer of Digitek, continuously violated fundamental manufacturing standards.
FDA Reverses Its Order on Antibiotics in Animals
This past summer the FDA instituted an order banning the off-label use of drugs in food-producing animals, while noting that the same family of drugs was important to treat disease in humans. This fall, the FDA echoed again the same sentiment, taking note of the increasing evidence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in cattle. But the FDA’s action met with harsh industry criticism.On November 25 the FDA revoked their earlier order, to the profound dismay of the Keep Antibiotics Working coalition and researchers like Dr. Stuart Levy at Tufts University, who leads the Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics.
FDA Warns Anti-Seizure/ "Mood Stabilizers" Increase Suicide Risk
However, FDA only issued a half hearted warning--no Black Box Warning of suicidality as required on the labels of the SSRI antidepressants. This is strange inasmuch as anti-seizure drugs are prescribed mostly with other psychotropic drugs--such as SSRIs and antipsychotics--and these drugs ALSO increase the risk of suicide!One would think that a cumulative increased risk of such a serious drug-induced effect would warrant bolder warnings rather than a muted one.
Pennsylvania: State pharmacist convicted of conflict of interest
Fiorello was director of pharmacy for the Department of Public Welfare's Office of Mental Health, Substance and Abuse Services and was secretary of a committee that approved Medicaid-paid drugs in state hospitals, prisons and juvenile centers.Fiorello paid more than $27,000 in civil fines after the Pennsylvania Ethics Commission cited him for state ethics violations in connection with the same allegations in 2005.
Attorney General Tom Corbett filed criminal charges against Fiorello a year later, accusing him of accepting money from drug companies for consulting work, honorariums and trips between 1998 and 2003, while he was the secretary of a panel that oversaw Medicaid drug guidelines for state hospitals.
This is the official whom whistleblower Allen Jones exposed as involved in the pharma financed Texas Medical Algorithm Project, just before being fired in an attempt to cover up the corruption.
Glaxo To End Political Contributions
“We continue to believe that it is important for Glaxo to be engaged in policy debates and the political process. However, we need to ensure that there is no implication whatsoever that corporate political contributions provide us with any special privileges. We do not believe they have, and in the few countries we have given contributions we have done so in full compliance of the law,” Glaxo ceo Andrew Witty says in a statement.Slowly slowly, some transparency creeps into pharmaceutical lobbying.
Electroshock: Brain destroying 'treatment' still in use
In an Aug. 2008, editorial, Shock and Panic, ECT proponent, David Healy, MD, dismisses critics' concerns about ECT to "psychiatry's dark past": "Some of the unease about ECT," he writes, "stems from psychiatry's dark past, when patients in many countries had fewer legal rights than prisoners. Not so long ago, physical treatments such as lobotomy and ECT could be inflicted on patients without their consent, and sometimes for punitive purposes."Well, in Minnesota, Ray Sanford, a 54 year old man living in the community, has been forced to undergo weekly seizure-producing electroshock (ECT) "treatments," since the end of May. After 12 sessions, a COURT AUTHORIZED more ECT treatments to be administered as often as every week for up to a year.
He has already had 36 electroshock zaps administered against his will. He complains that ECT is wrecking his memory.
Nano-sized voltmeter measures electric fields deep within cells
"The basic idea behind this field of research is to follow cellular processes—both normal and abnormal—by monitoring physical properties inside the cell. There's a long history of research on the chemistry happening inside the cell, but now we're getting interested in measuring the physical properties, because physical and chemical processes are related," said Kopelman, who is the Richard Smalley Distinguished University Professor of Chemistry, Physics and Applied Physics.Tyner's measurements revealed surprisingly high electric fields in cytosol—the jellylike material that makes up most of a cell's interior.
"The standard paradigm has been that there are zero electric fields in cytosol," Kopelman said, "but all of the 13 regions we measured had high electric field strength—as high as 15 million volts per meter."
If cells have highly differentiated voltage potentials in their interior make-up, we might assume that anything that changes those potentials (such as microwave radiation used in mobile phones and other wireless applications) could conceivably have serious health effects. Research into this is urgently needed.Official wisdom has it that only a thermal (or heating) effect of microwaves is damaging, but this could be terribly wrong.
Video: Vaccine Nation (Trailer)
In his documentary film Vaccine Nation, award-winning investigative film director Dr. Gary Null challenges the basic health claims by government health agencies and pharmaceutical firms that vaccines are perfectly safe. This is one of the most critical questions facing today's children and future generations to come. If inoculation with a large regimen of vaccines is safe, what can account for the rapid increase in autism and other mental disabilities that are now at epidemic proportions? And why isn't the sudden onset of neurological illnesses in children being treated as an urgent crisis by our government and medical industries?
LEDs And Smart Lighting Could Save Trillions Of Dollars, Spark Global Innovation
A new generation of lighting devices based on light-emitting diodes (LEDs) will supplant the common light bulb in coming years, the paper suggests. In addition to the environmental and cost benefits of LEDs, the technology is expected to enable a wide range of advances in areas as diverse as healthcare, transportation systems, digital displays, and computer networking."What the transistor meant to the development of electronics, the LED means to the field of photonics."
In general LEDs will require 20 times less power than today's conventional light bulbs, and five times less power than "green" compact fluorescent bulbs.
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There is much I cannot cover but other sources for this kind of information exist and are active.
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Dr Mercola's health blog and Mike Adams' Natural News have good health information.
The Alternative Medicine Yahoo Group and the healthfreedom ning group are places where you can discuss and exchange information on what is happening in the world of natural health.
For the influence of electromagnetic waves from radio, mobile phones and other radio emitting devices, check out the emr-updates group on Yahoo.
A few sites to keep up to date with the other side of world affairs, the stuff you won't necessarily find on your tv or in the papers:
http://therealnews.com/
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com
http://www.commondreams.org
http://www.globalresearch.ca/
http://rawstory.com/
http://www.truthout.org/and remember ...
The individual is supreme and finds its way through intuition
posted by Sepp Hasslberger on Sunday December 28 2008
updated on Wednesday August 15 2012URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2008/12/28/us_stevia_sweetener_approved_newsgrabs_28_december_2008.htm