Open-Source Healthcare - NewsGrabs Thursday, 2 April 2009
Open-Source Healthcare
The healthcare industry is a textbook example of what Ivan Illich (in Tools for Conviviality) called a “radical monopoly.” The central function of the government’s “safety” and “consumer protection” regulations, in most cases, is either to exclude competing providers of a good or service from the market, to circumscribe the areas of competition between them, or to set a floor on the capitalization required for doing business and thus impose a mandatory minimum overhead. The overall effect, as Paul Goodman put it in People or Personnel, is to create a 300% or 400% markup in the cost of doing anything, and render us all dependent on institutional providers with bureaucratic cultures and high overhead costs...
Health insurance for $10 per year using the network
The core of this service is accepting that the care is third rate from day one. People will die because we don’t carry the right drugs. They’ll die because the expert system diagnostics are only 80% in practice. They’ll die because the trained worker is sick that day and sends his brother. They’ll die because the software had bugs. We accept that for every ten lives saved, one to three are lost.It’s this tolerance for a bad healthcare system which allows this system to work at all: you can’t provide 99.9% health care on $10 per year. But you can provide 80% health care, and right now, that’s far, far better access to medical support than the poor can get any other way.
Launch of the Medicines Transparency Alliance
MeTA is an alliance of governments, pharmaceutical companies, civil society, and other stakeholders which aims to increase access to essential medicines for people in developing countries. This will be done by working to increase transparency and accountability in medicines procurement and supply chains to tackle inefficiency, corruption, and fraud in 7 pilot countries: Ghana, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, Peru, the Philippines, Uganda, and Zambia.In this first pilot phase, MeTA aims to focus on strengthening the capacity of 7 pilot countries to collect, analyse, disseminate, and use data on the quality, availability, pricing, and use of medicines. This work intends to help improve transparency and accountability with regard to the selection, regulation, procurement, distribution, and supply of medicines - including the ways in which they are prescribed to and used by patients.
How probiotics can prevent disease
The team also used probiotics to control disease in animals that were already infected. The results of these tests proved that administering these safe bacteria to an infected animal was as effective as the best available antibiotic therapies in eliminating the infectious agent and resolving the symptoms."We have shown that we can protect and even treat animals against pathogenic bacteria by introducing harmless bacteria at the site of the infection," said Dr Hill. "In order to use similar strategies in preventing or treating human disease we must understand the molecular basis of their efficacy. This understanding will provide the basis for intelligent screening and selection of the most appropriate protective bacterial cultures to go forward into human trials".
Study shows vitamin E tocotrienols delay tumour growth
The researchers from Kyushu University evaluated the anti-tumour activities of both gamma and delta tocotrienols in mouse cancer cells. They found that supplementing the diet of the mouse with tocotrienols (in vivo) significantly delayed tumour growth. This was found to be the case for both gamma and delta tocotrienols. The researchers also found that delta tocotrienols, when studied outside the living organism (in vitro), were particularly effective in delaying tumour growth through the induction of apoptosis (programmed cell death).
Omega-3 kills cancer cells
Docosahexanoic acid (DHA), an omega-3 fatty acid found in fish oils, has been shown to reduce the size of tumours and enhance the positive effects of the chemotherapy drug cisplatin, while limiting its harmful side effects. The rat experiments, described in BioMed Central's open access journal Cell Division, provide some support for the plethora of health benefits often ascribed to omega-3 acids.
Bisphenol A: toxin in plastic bottles to be banned in the US?
Legislation has been announced by leaders from the US House of Representatives and the Senate to establish a federal ban on bisphenol A (BPA) in all food and beverage containers. The move follows an announcement by the gas and chemical company, Sunoco, that it could not be certain of the compound’s safety. They are now refusing to sell BPA for use in food and drink containers of children below the age of three.
Agricultural chemical industry shudders at organic White House garden
Here's an interesting twist in what appeared to be a piece of all-around good news: when officials at the Mid America Croplife Association discovered that the new White House kitchen garden was to be managed organically, they sent a letter to First Lady Michelle Obama asking her to consider managing the garden "conventionally"...
US Department of Agriculture jittery over GMO imports
In an apparently sharp reversal, the US Department of Agriculture is now borrowing all the arguments that it once pooh-poohed against obligatory trade of genetically engineered foods.It's ok as long as the US is exporting, GMOs should not even have to be labeled ... but since other countries develop their own GMOs (in this case it's China) to export, there suddenly is a problem. Makes me scratch my head...
CODEX Committee on Contaminants in Foods discusses Melamine - Mum's the Word
NHF raised its nameplate at the CCCF meeting to speak out and oppose the 2.5 ppm upper limit on melamine contamination proposed by the Codex draft paper. At the very least the limit should be no more than 1 ppm, we argued before the Committee. And, preferably, there should be no detectable amounts at all.The European Commission strongly opposed showing NHF’s comments in the Report, stating there was no need for the sentence. Canada and Japan both joined in the censorship move ...
The National Health Federation plans to oppose these ironically high limits on melamine contaminants. It is ironic because while touting consumer “safety” as its reason for imposing strict maximum upper levels on natural and healthy dietary food supplements in one Codex committee, the European Commission conveniently looks the other way when consumer safety is at risk by a man-made contaminant such as melamine.
Study: Housing Homeless Drunks And Letting Them Drink Saves Millions
The 98 street drunks whom the study tracked had cost the public $4,066 a month prior to entering 1811 and afterwards they cost $1,492 a month after six months in the facility and $958 a month after 12 months. That's a pretty big savings and, oddly enough, some of the residents began to drink less. Some even got sober.Now if we could just get to the same realization on drugs other than alcohol, and end the prohibition, opening the way to damage reduction strategies, things might just turn around in a big way, as much of the crime that is caused by prohibition would simply cease to be lucrative.
Medicine: 'It's an odd trial where you know the outcome before you start'
Now, Harvard and the National Institutes of Health have launched a new investigation, which has uncovered some slides Dr Biederman showed to drug company executives, outlining plans to test their drugs. One slide said the trial "will support the safety and effectiveness of [the drug] in this age group". Another, about a separate trial, said it would "clarify the competitive advantages of [the drug]" over its rivals.It is an odd kind of trial where you know the outcome before you start.
Book: MediSIN
This book is a fascinating and unique perspective of the unholy practices of allopathic medicine and the commercialization of devitalized and chemical based foods...
Doctors' Group Wants All Teens Screened For Depression
This is simply stunning stuff. While I'm not a depression denier--I know all about teen depression from personal experience--I am simply stunned that an allegedly reputable group of doctors would recommend such wholesale screening when they know damn well that psychotherapy is often inaccessible (for a number of reasons) and that doctors, with zero expertise in mental health care, will simply steer kids towards anti-depressants which have very rocky track records in terms of efficacy and safety.
Florida Docs Prescribed Antipsychotics Like Candy To Little Kids With ADHD
As a result of the approval process, prescriptions of atypicals in this population decreased by 75 percent last year and 40 percent fewer doctors even wrote prescriptions for the drugs at all. Shall we say that quite a few docs were being indiscriminate in the use of these drugs?
The Psycho-Pharmaceutical Industrial Complex - Profiting from drugging women and children
In the United States, one in three doctor's visits by women involves an antidepressant prescription, 11 percent of women take antidepressants, and a 2007 study of pregnant women enrolled in Tennessee Medicaid revealed that antidepressant use during pregnancy increased from 5.7 percent in 1999 to 13.4 percent in 2003.
Glutathione Inhibits Tuberculosis in HIV Positives and Negatives
Intracellular levels of glutathione are depleted in patients with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome in whom the risk of tuberculosis, particularly disseminated disease is many times that of healthy individuals.Treatment of blood cultures from human immunodeficiency virus infected subjects with N-acetyl cysteine, a glutathione precursor, caused improved control of intracellular M. tuberculosis infection.
TB: an 'opportunistic' infection
“HIV” has accomplished a great deal during its relatively brief existence: it has been responsible indirectly for a great many deaths (from mis-diagnoses and iatrogenic drug-induced damage); it has addled countless brains, not least among doctors and medical scientists; it has brought wasted expenditures over the years that cumulatively exceed the $170 billion that AIG “bail-outs” have cost; and, far from least, “HIV” has sapped from the media any remaining vestiges of common sense and everyday skepticism (investigative reporting? What’s that?!).Despite these notable achievements, perhaps the greatest accomplishment of decades-old “HIV” has been to convert the millennia-old scourge of tuberculosis (TB) into an “opportunistic infection”...
Clinical Trials in New York City Orphans
I think it’s clear that ICC was founded with good intentions, to assist abandoned, ill and suffering infants. But I also think that a shocking and inexcusable ethical line was crossed when the children began to be used as pharmaceutical test subjects.I will point out that the vast majority of ICC’s wards were children of crack addicts, themselves born chemically-addicted and profoundly debilitated, according to the childcare workers, nursing staff and children from ICC that I interviewed.
Further, I think, the relabeling of these children as “HIV positive” arises from the non-standardized, highly-flexible nature of HIV testing. Here is my summary of the limitations of the tests, Here is an extensive catalog of citations from the medical literature on the subject.
Geithner’s ‘Dirty Little Secret’: The Entire Global Financial System is at Risk
Today five US banks according to data in the just-released Federal Office of Comptroller of the Currency’s Quarterly Report on Bank Trading and Derivatives Activity, hold 96% of all US bank derivatives positions in terms of nominal values, and an eye-popping 81% of the total net credit risk exposure in event of default.Continuing to pour taxpayer money into these five banks without changing their operating system, is tantamount to treating an alcoholic with unlimited free booze.
UK: Report says the problem's not bankers, it's society
THE ECONOMIC system is broken, and attempts by governments to fix it by kick-starting growth and consumerism are "delusional" and "pathological", the Westminster and Holyrood governments will be warned by their own advisers this week.A ground-breaking report by the leading environmental advisers to First Minister Alex Salmond and Prime Minister Gordon Brown will deliver a damning verdict on capitalism and demand a radical shift to a fairer, more sustainable society.
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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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Dr Mercola's health blog, Mike Adams' Natural News and the One Click Group in the UK have good health information. The Dr Rath Foundation is also putting out a weekly collection of health related news. Here is the link to their Newsletter Archive.
The Alternative Medicine Yahoo Group and the healthfreedom ning group are places to 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. Genetic modification and issues around agriculture and foods are reported on the Organic Consumers Association site.
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://www.truthout.org/The individual is supreme and finds its way through intuition
posted by Sepp Hasslberger on Thursday April 2 2009
updated on Wednesday August 15 2012URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2009/04/02/opensource_healthcare_newsgrabs_thursday_2_april_2009.htm