Health & WellnessS


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Flashback 8 more deaths connected to HPV vaccine: Adverse reactions from Gardasil number in thousands


World Net Daily
Sat, 06 Oct 2007 02:55 UTC
vaccine
© Unknown
Another eight deaths in just the past few months are being connected to Gardasil, Merck & Co.'s vaccine that targets the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus and is being considered by many states as mandatory for all schoolgirls, according to documents released by Judicial Watch.

There also have been another 1,824 adverse reactions to the drug, bringing the "known total" of such problems to 3,461, according to the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption.

"In light of this information, it is disturbing that state and local governments might mandate in any way this vaccine for young girls," said Tom Fitton, the group's president. "These adverse reactions reports suggest the vaccine not only causes serious side effects, but might even be fatal."
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Pills

Flashback Documentary Reveals the Unhealthy Profits of the Pharmaceutical Industry


The Bureau of Investigative Journalism
Wed, 11 Aug 2010 00:00 UTC
The United States health-care industry is the world's biggest - with $300 billion a year spent on prescription drugs alone, and rising. But recent months have seen health scandal after health scandal, with some of the world's biggest pharmaceutical companies fined billions of dollars.

These cases are beginning to reveal vast corruption in the drug industry, with revelations of fraud, of cover-ups of fatal side effects and huge kickbacks paid to doctors. Our investigation reveals the story of how health-care became unhealthy profit.
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Book

Killer Coke: A Review of The Coke Machine

Jerusha Klemperer
Civil Eats
Thu, 18 Nov 2010 18:26 UTC
Image
© Civileats
My dirty truth is that I have a collection of Coke bottles from around the world: one from Mexico, one with Arabic script, one covered in unrecognizable lettering and filled with Yugoslavian beach glass, and so on. I was a teenager when I amassed them and totally oblivious to the implications behind this international menagerie of emptied glass. This drink was everywhere, tailored slightly through variations in local water and variations in bottle size, but ultimately the same. I loved that I could find it anywhere.

Michael Blanding's book, The Coke Machine: The Dirty Truth Behind the World's Favorite Soft Drink aims to tell the real story behind that happy global picture of people who speak different languages, have different skin color, but happily drink Coke. His story begins in 1886, with Coke's origin as a snake oil tonic, and extends all the way up to its present incarnation as a multinational beverage corporation.
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Cow

3 Lies Big Food Wants You to Believe


Dr. Mercola
Wed, 17 Nov 2010 17:43 UTC
Image
© Cafothebook.org
Lie #1: Industrial Food is Cheap

The retail prices may be low, but they fail to include impacts on human health, the environment, and other shared public assets.

You will ultimately foot a much bigger bill, paying your part of hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies, medical expenses, insurance premiums, declining property values, and mounting cleanup costs.

Lie #2: Industrial Food is Efficient

Industrial food animal producers rely on heavily subsidized agriculture, large infusions of capital, and lax enforcement of regulations. High productivity and domination of market share should not be confused with efficiency. When you measure total cost per unit of production, or even net profit per animal, you find that confinement operations come with hidden costs.

Lie #3: Industrial Food is Healthy

Industrial animal food production heightens the risk of the spread of food-borne illnesses. And it is no coincidence that rates of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and obesity are at an all-time high. What's more, respiratory diseases and outbreaks of illnesses are increasingly common among CAFO and slaughterhouse workers - and spill over into neighboring communities.

According to AlterNet:
"Food production that is safe for the environment, humane to animals, and sound for workers and communities gives us the best chance for a food system that is safe and healthy for eaters and producers alike."
Source

AlterNet October 21, 2010
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Bug

First cholera case in Florida found in Naples area

Bob LaMendola
Sun Sentinel
Thu, 18 Nov 2010 15:11 UTC
A Naples-area woman has been confirmed as the first Floridian to contract cholera after visiting Haiti, and other potential cases in other areas also are being tested, state health officials said Wednesday.

But Department of Health doctors said the woman's infection poses virtually no risk to the public in Florida because U.S. sewer and water systems eliminate the bacteria from drinking water, which is primarily how it spreads.

"We don't anticipate we will see any transmission as a result of exposure in Haiti in Florida or anywhere else in the U.S. ... because our water and sanitiation system minimizes the risk," said Dr. Thomas Torok, a disease investigator with the health department.

The only real risk to Floridians would occur if they had direct contact with bodily fluids from an infected person, including if the patient worked in a job with public contact, cholera experts said. The woman does not work in such a job.
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Light Saber

Vitamin C: A life-saving treatment for sepsis

Kathy Wallis
University of Western Ontario
Thu, 18 Nov 2010 07:02 UTC
Image
Physicians caring for patients with sepsis may soon have a new safe and cost-effective treatment for this life-threatening illness. Research led by Dr. Karel Tyml and his colleagues at The University of Western Ontario and Lawson Health Research Institute have found that vitamin C can not only prevent the onset of sepsis, but can reverse the disease.

Sepsis is caused by a bacterial infection that can begin anywhere in your body. Your immune system goes into overdrive, overwhelming normal processes in your blood. The result is that small blood clots form, blocking blood flow to vital organs. This can lead to organ failure. Babies, the elderly and those with weakened immune systems are most likely to get sepsis. But even healthy people can become deathly ill from the disease.

According to Dr. Tyml, a professor at Western's Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, patients with severe sepsis have a high mortality rate, nearly 40 percent, because there is no effective treatment.

Comment: Alternative medicine has already been saving lives with this treatment for the longest time. For more information, please read our forum discussion on Vitamin C.

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Recycle

Lead found in reusable shopping bags


CBC
Mon, 15 Nov 2010 01:11 UTC
reausable grocery bags
© iStockAn investigation by a Florida newspaper found high levels of lead in some of the reusable shopping bags it had tested.
An investigation by a Florida newspaper has found concentrations of lead in reusable shopping bags.

Most of the two dozen bags tested by Thornton Laboratories, on behalf of the Tampa Tribune, had more than five parts per million (ppm) of lead, with some containing more than 100 ppm.

Health Canada says that most toy manufacturers voluntarily conform to European standards that limit the amount of extractable lead in toys to 90 ppm.

The only chain included that has outlets in Canada, Wal-Mart, tested below five ppm for the bags it sells. It's unknown whether any Canadian retailers are selling the same types of reusable bags that tested for higher concentrations of lead.

Thornton labs found that reusable bags with elaborate illustrations were more likely to contain higher levels of lead. Yellow and green paints tend to have higher levels of lead.
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Question

Distorted Body Image Means People Don't Know the Back of Their Own Hands

Alok Jha
The Guardian, UK
Sun, 14 Nov 2010 14:00 UTC
Image
© PNASTrue locations of knuckles and tips of each finger (black dots) and subjects' judgements of where they are (white dots). Average hand shape is given as solid lines for the actual hand and as dotted lines for subjective judgements
A study suggests our brains have highly distorted representations of the size and shape of our own hands. The distortion may extend to other body parts, skewing body image

You may think you know the back of your hand like, well, the back of your hand. But think again. Scientists have found that our brains contain highly distorted representations of the size and shape of our hands, with a strong tendency to think of them as shorter and fatter than they really are.

The work could have implications for how the brain unconsciously perceives other parts of the body and may help explain the underpinnings of certain eating disorders in which people's body image becomes distorted.

In the study, neuroscientists at University College London asked more than 100 volunteers to place their left hand palm-down on a table. The researchers covered the volunteers' hands with a board and then asked them to indicate on it where they thought landmarks such as fingertips and knuckles lay underneath. This data was used to reconstruct the "brain's image" of the hand.

The results, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed a consistent overestimation of the width of the hand. Many of the volunteers estimated their hand was around 80% broader than it really was.
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Pills

How Super Skinny TV Stars Are Harming Our Health

Aric Sigman
The Daily Mail, UK
Thu, 18 Nov 2010 05:10 UTC
Image
© AP PhotoMTV host Alexa Chung
Jutting collar bones, ­Twiglet legs and razor-sharp cheek bones. It wasn't so long ago that these were unenviable signs that a woman had lost too much weight or, worse, was suffering from an eating disorder.

Now, however, it's hard to think of a female celebrity who isn't that thin - not just models and actresses, but news­readers and children's TV presenters. So much so that women and children not only view skeletal frames as normal, but as something they wish to emulate.

There has been an 80 per cent rise in young girls being hospitalised with ­anorexia in the past ten years. And body dissatisfaction is affecting younger and younger children.

In a recent study ­published in the British Journal of ­Developmental Psychology, almost half of the three to six-year-old girls surveyed said they worried about being fat.

Yet any serious correlation between visual media and the rise of eating disorders has largely been dismissed. Until now, so-called 'body politics' has been a cultural and psychological debate, owned by feminists and eating-disorder therapists. They dismissed blaming the visual media as too simplistic.
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Bug

DHS Report: 70% Chance Disease Will Escape Proposed Biodefense Laboratory

Martin Matishak
Global Security Newswire
Tue, 16 Nov 2010 13:38 UTC
agro ,defense, facility
© U.S. Homeland Security Department imageA rendering of the U.S. National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility planned for Manhattan, Kansas. In a report issued yesterday, the National Research Council said a government safety evaluation for the proposed facility contained "several major shortcomings".

This November 16 article should have stated that a calculation that there is a nearly 70 percent chance a pathogen could escape the planned Bio and Agro-Defense Facility in Kansas was made by a National Research Council panel based on data from a U.S. Homeland Security Department risk assessment. The NRC panel also estimated economic losses of between $9 billion and $50 billion from a postulated foot-and-mouth disease outbreak.

Washington -- An expert panel said yesterday the U.S. Homeland Security Department has not adequately gauged the potential risks associated with a proposed multimillion-dollar infectious-disease research laboratory in Kansas (see GSN, May 20 ).

There are "several major shortcomings" in a department risk assessment of its planned National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility near Manhattan, Kansas, according to a report by the National Research Council, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences. The proposed site is roughly 120 miles west of Kansas City.

The facility's construction is expected to cost between $500 million and $700 million. The 520,000-square-foot center, slated to begin construction in 2012, would study highly infectious animal-borne pathogens, some of which could pose a threat to humans. It would replace the Plum Island Disease Center located near Long Island, New York, which was established in 1937.

The new site would also be the world's third Biosafety-Level 4 Pathogen laboratory to work with large animals. The other two such facilities are in Australia and Canada.
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