Organic GM foods? - NewsGrabs Monday, 25 May 2009
Do GM foods become acceptable in the context of organic agriculture?
But what if GM foods can be combined with organic agriculture, and divorced from dangerous private interests, does it become acceptable then?Here is a position on the issue, an excerpt from a editorial by Pamela Ronald in the Boston Globe.
It is followed by the counter-argument from Herve Le Crosnier. Please note Herve is a French-language speaker, and the text may be less than perfect in English, but still eminently readable and cogent.
Monsanto’s Terminator Making a Comeback? Enter the Zombie!
Plants are engineered with sterility as the default condition, but sterility can be reversed with the application of an external stimulus that restores the plant’s viability. In order to bring the “zombie” seed back from the dead, the farmer or breeder must use an external stimulus (such as a proprietary chemical) to restore the seed’s fertility.
Too much cola zaps muscle power
"With aggressive mass marketing, super-sizing of soft drinks, and the effects of caffeine tolerance and dependence, there is very little doubt that tens of millions of people in industrialised countries drink at least 2-3 l of cola per day."It follows that the serum potassium levels of these heavy cola drinkers are dropping, in some cases, to dangerous low levels."
The author of the research paper, Dr Moses Elisaf from the University of Ioannina in Greece, said it appeared that hypokalaemia (low potassium levels) can be caused by excessive consumption of three of the most common ingredients in cola drinks - glucose, fructose and caffeine.
FDA Calls Cheerios an “Unapproved Drug”
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a warning letter to cereal manufacturer General Mills for claiming on its cereal box that Cheerios can help lower cholesterol, and saying on their website that “diets rich in whole grain foods can reduce the risk of heart disease.” The letter, dated May 5, called the above claims “serious violations” of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and applicable regulations. FDA stated that based on the claims made, Cheerios is now an unapproved drug, and must go through FDA new drug approval process.
NCI Study Links Aspartame To Leukemia/Lymphoma
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) announced April 20, 2009: ..."on the basis of all the evidence currently available including the [second] published ERF study there is no indication of any genotoxic or carcinogenic potential of aspartame and that there is no reason to revise the previously established ADI (allowable daily intake) for aspartame of 40mg/kg bw/day." Truth be told: aspartame is an addictive excitoneurotoxic, genetically engineered, carcinogenic that interacts with virtually all medications.EFSA is blinded by allegiance to commercial interests so it invents objections to acclaimed medical research, disregarding the suffering, ruined lives and death their cupidity brings to Europe.
Pfizer and Sigma-Tau to Market Artemisia Based Treatment for Malaria in Africa
Eurartesim® (dihydroartemisinin + piperaquine), a Phase III product candidate, aims to treat uncomplicated Plasmodium falciparum malaria in adults and children, while reducing the potential for re-infection. The product candidate, developed jointly by Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) and Sigma-Tau, is expected to be filed for registration with the European Medicines Agency and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2009. Eurartesim® has already been granted orphan drug status by both the European and U.S. regulatory authorities.The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that all uncomplicated malaria be treated with ACTs. This policy is designed to reduce drug resistance which has rendered the most widely used monotherapies, such as chloroquine, useless in many parts of the world.
I am re-linking this because of the tremendous importance an open source approach in health care has for real reform. My attention got drawn to the article again by the latest comment on it:"Although I have often said that if I could only abolish a single department of the U.S. government it would be the murderous FDA, I do agree that other reforms–including the dismantling of the patent system, the abolition of licensing for medical personnel, and the freeing of trade with other drug-producing countries–are needed as well. The ultimate goal must be the complete and total separation of healthcare and state, for as long as the two are tied together, (1) health insurance will remain exorbitant and options limited, (2) healthcare costs will remain exorbitant, (3) life-saving drugs and medical procedures will be kept off the market, and (4) people will needlessly die."
The Multivitamin Battle
Overall, the study showed that the use of multiple dietary supplements led to better health. As the researchers themselves said, individuals who consume a number of nutritional supplements were found to have better biomarkers of health than those who do not consume any supplements or who only consumed a multivitamin/mineral.Among other benefits, multiple-supplement users also had lower levels of C-reactive protein and triglycerides and higher levels of HDL (the so-called "good") cholesterol. Other findings in the multiple supplements group included lower risks of elevated blood pressure, diabetes (73% less compared to nonusers), and coronary heart disease (52% less compared to nonusers). Subjects consuming multiple dietary supplements also reported having "good or excellent" health status 74 percent more often than non-supplement users.
Manhunt For A Boy... And The Bacteria In Hodgkins Disease
Before chemotherapy and radiation treatments were designed for HD, the disease was uniformly fatal. Now the 5-year survival rate for the average patient is about 80%. However, the patient may play a heavy price healthwise for this standard therapy. Patients who survive radiation treatment for HD can develop a second related cancer. According to Aisenberg, deaths from second malignancies are the most important cause of death other than HD itself.
Women with HD who are radiated have up to a 40 percent greater risk for breast cancer. HD patients are also at increased risk for acute leukemia and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
Video: Selective Hearing: Brian Deer and the GMC
In bringing the fitness to practice case against Dr Andrew Wakefield, Professor Simon Murch and Professor John Walker-Smith, the General Medical Council in the UK listened to the Sunday Times journalist Brian Deer and excluded the views of hundreds of parents of vaccine damaged children. Who is Brian Deer: vigilante for truth or front man for Big Pharma? Selective Hearing covers Deer’s part in the heartbreaking betrayal of vaccine damaged children by the British government.
Minnesota mental health patient Ray Sandford forced into electro-shock therapy
A three-second burst of 140 volts blasts through Sandford's brain. While he's totally unconscious, Sandford's torso jerks up and down. His arms and legs writhe only slightly, steadied by muscle relaxants coursing through his veins. Sandford's toes curl downward, as if his feet were trying ball up into fists. He's experiencing a grand mal seizure.Two minutes later, it's over. Sandford will feel a bit woozy the rest of the day, but there'll be no lasting pain. His short-term memory is the only thing that will suffer.
But he'll still remember quite clearly that he never wanted to do this.
"They can literally tie me up, put me in ambulance, and bring me in to get shock treatments," he says. "I don't fight it, because there's nothing I can do by that time. You want to know how I feel? I don't like it at all."
New Mexico Jail Dopes Many Inmates On Seroquel
Were there tons of inmates with schizophrenia? Nope. Just a psychiatrist who was convinced that he was treating undiagnosed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in inmates and helping them sleep. The paper notes several former inmates claim, however, that the doc never diagnosed them with PTSD and Seroquel is not FDA-approved for PTSD. The whole thing is very, very weird.
Lawsuit says too many psychiatric drugs killed boy
Amid a wide-ranging debate over the proper use of mental health drugs on troubled children, the mother of a disabled boy who died in 2007 is claiming in a lawsuit the boy was overdosed by a cocktail of psychiatric drugs, including two powerful anti-psychotics.Martha Quesada, the mother of 12-year-old Denis Maltez, filed a wrongful death and medical malpractice lawsuit Monday in Miami-Dade circuit court, claiming Denis' psychiatrist, Dr. Steven L. Kaplan, and the now-shuttered Rainbow Ranch group home overmedicated Denis and failed to properly monitor his condition.
Alaska Supreme Court Grants Mental Patients Constitutional Rights
(News Release of Psychrights.org - PDF file)
"One of the things they held," said Jim Gottstein, President and CEO of the Law Project for Psychiatric Rights (PsychRights) and the attorney who handled the case, "is that if the State is holding someone in a psychiatric facility, they must provide a feasible alternative to the forced drugging if the alternative satisfies the State's asserted justification. The State's only other option is to let the person go."Vera H. Sharav of the Alliance for Human Research Protection: "State laws in the US sanctioning involuntary commitment of mental patients were passed under the influence of psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey and his Treatment Advocacy Center. These laws allow psychiatrists to aggressively force mental patients to ingest highly toxic psychotropic drugs--mostly in unapproved, untested, toxic combinations. Evidence links these drugs to severe adverse effects leading to life-shortening chronic diseases with little evidence of a therapeutic benefit."
US Federal Government and 16 States Allege Medicaid Fraud By Wyeth
Philip Dawdy of Furious Seasons comments:
"You know, it must've been a cakewalk for pharma companies to rip off Medicaid because it seems like several of them have done it. The latest entrant in the Hall of Lame is Wyeth..."
Feds Turn Up the HEAT on Medicare and Medicaid Fraud
by Evie Pringle
“Every year we lose tens of billions of dollars in Medicare and Medicaid funds to fraud,” US Attorney General Eric Holder advised.“Those billions represent health care dollars that could be spent on medicine, elder care or emergency room visits, but instead are wasted on greed,” Holder said. “This is unacceptable, and the Justice Department is committed to working with the Department of Health and Human Services to eradicate it.”
Children Who Get Flu Vaccine Have Three Times Risk Of Hospitalization For Flu, Study Suggests
The inactivated flu vaccine does not appear to be effective in preventing influenza-related hospitalizations in children, especially the ones with asthma. In fact, children who get the flu vaccine are more at risk for hospitalization than their peers who do not get the vaccine, according to new research that will be presented on May 19, at the 105th International Conference of the American Thoracic Society in San Diego.
How are you surviving the Swine Flu?
The swine flu, although pushed hard from certain quarters, seems to be on its way out before it really started. All that remains is the scary rethoric from official sources such as the US CDC and the WHO.I am linking this article as the authors collected some interesting historical material on the "original flu epidemic" of 1918 here... yes, you may have guessed it, vaccines were involved then, and the preparations to scare us into mass vaccination this time are still going on.
Let's take a look at that historical flu so we don't have to make the same mistakes twice!
Mexico City ends swine flu alert
Mayor Marcelo Ebrard said the change means the risk of contagion is low, the situation is under control and the images of countless people wearing blue surgical masks in cars, sidewalks, restaurants and theaters can be consigned to history."There's no longer any need" to wear masks, Ebrard said. "Now you can come to the city without any risk."
City Health Secretary Armando Ahued said nobody has been hospitalized with respiratory infections in the last three days, and no swine flu cases have been confirmed since May 14.
Virus Myths Exposed --The True Causes of Pandemics
Contrary to common opinion, viruses don't kill people. If someone is sick and also has a virus, he or she is not sick because of the virus. A sickness must first exist before a virus can show up. Viruses are designed to induce healing, not illness. The symptoms such a healing effort produces (in this case, flu symptoms such as fever, headache, dizziness, fatigue, etc.), do not constitute the disease. Increasing body temperature (fever), for example, is one of the body's best methods to increase production of immune cells to deal with toxins and then dispose of bacteria, viruses, and fungi when they are no longer needed. Influenza is the final stage of healing an underlying disease; the disease consists of a buildup of toxins, heavy metals, acidic waste products, dead cell material, and other noxious substances that could otherwise lead to a life-threatening condition.
“HIV” tests are demonstrably invalid
To validate “HIV” tests in acknowledged absence of a gold standard, procedures are followed that are invalid if those tests pick up conditions other than “HIV infection”. Many such conditions are known. It is therefore highly unlikely that “HIV” tests could be properly validated.Nevertheless, these “tests” are used to label individuals “HIV infected” whenever the attending clinician has a strong suspicion that this may be the case, for the most important part of “testing” comes before the actual test, it’s the “pre-test probability”. As previously noted, “HIV” tests are self-fulfilling prophecies.
Clearly, submitting to an “HIV” test is akin to buying a ticket in a lottery whose “prize” is stress, ill health, and iatrogenic harm.
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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.
...
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 Monday May 25 2009
updated on Wednesday August 15 2012URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2009/05/25/organic_gm_foods_newsgrabs_monday_25_may_2009.htm