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Could antibiotics routinely added to animal feed be a contributing factor to the raising levels of antibiotic resistance in human diseases?

David Wallinga from Keep Antibiotics Working: the Campaign to End Antibiotic Overuse in Animal Agriculture told the BMJ online that he thinks that the use of antibiotics in livestock has a "critical role" in the resistance levels to the drugs in humans.

He believes that physicians and policy makers have overlooked this theory, and advises the relevant parties to consider it before developing new, stronger antibiotics.

Overall reductions in antibiotic use should come before any new development, he says. In 2009-11, 72 per cent of the US sales of antimicrobials were intended for water or animal feed for livestock.

The Iron Elephant - What you should know about the dangers of excess body iron (Vida Publishing Inc.) - is a book written by journalist Roberta Crawford which was first brought to my attention via sott.net's discussion board. As it happens, one of the members was suffering from extreme fatigue and joint problems related to an autoimmune condition that was not responding to either vitamin C or dietary measures. In fact, she was getting progressively worse. A blood test analysis revealed high ferritin levels which indicated high iron stores. Furthermore, there was a history of hemochromatosis within the family. This prompted much research and learning which was posted on our Forum thread Hemochromatosis and Autoimmune Conditions.

Slowly but surely, the picture of iron overload toxicity began to emerge and the final pieces of the puzzle fell into place. Several people who were having trouble recovering their health on a diet that was basically bulletproof were found to have iron overload.

The healing diet which is a gluten and dairy free ketogenic diet with moderate intake of protein and plenty of animal fats does not work as it should be as long as there is excess iron in the body.

Iron overload may affect any organ in the body and may include symptoms such as fatigue, depression, arthritis, irregular heart beat, high blood sugar and/or diabetes, shortness of breath, swelling of the abdomen and legs, jaundice, loss of sexual drive, premature menopause, loss of body hair, shriveling of the testicles, hypothyroidism, and redness of the palms of the hands. A suntan that does not fade in winter may or may not be present.

The excess iron oxidizes in your body and can literally rust your organs leading to diseases such as cancer, thrombosis, cirrhosis, arthritis and so forth.

The Iron Elephant describes the bitter journey of many people who suffered needlessly from iron's toxicity effects. It is a warning for the rest of us who might be unaware of silent iron overload. Let's have a closer look to the key concepts and warnings.

Monsanto is the same company that manufactured DDT, Agent Orange, PCB, dioxin and aspartame. Cancer is being linked to PCB exposure. Thousands of U.S. soldiers as well as Vietnamese civilians have cancer because of being exposed to Agent Orange during the Vietnamese war. These people are suffering the horrible consequences of this chemical being sprayed in the jungles, leaching toxic and deadly chemicals into the water, soil and the air. Children are being born with birth defects, and thousands are dying of cancer caused by the exposure. There are many cover-ups and lies about these toxic effects. And no one wants to take responsibility for this travesty.

My best friend's husband was exposed to Agent Orange during the Vietnamese war, and he is now 100 percent disabled with skin cancer on his arms. He routinely goes to the VA hospital to have the cancer removed. He has hundreds of scars and cannot work as a result of all the treatments. The government is responsible for taking care of the medical and disability needs of these veterans for the rest of their lives.

If you are taking a brand-new prescription med, you are part of the great ongoing clinical trial - whether you know it or not.

And so a team of Harvard University medical professors advises physicians NOT to prescribe the new medications to their patients "unless they represent an important medical advance" in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). The editorial shows the safety of new drugs is not established - despite FDA approval.

Aren't drugs thoroughly tested before going on the market?

"Actually, the American public is the primary guinea-pig for new medications. The FDA views the first years after some drugs hit the market as Phase 4 of a clinical trial, because that's when it's really put to the test," states Jay S. Cohen, M.D., associate professor of family and preventative medicine at the University of California at San Diego.

Before FDA approval of a new drug, only a few hundred or thousand of carefully screened patients have used it, and then only for a few weeks or months. It's only after FDA approval that drug-makers sell their new drugs to a diverse cross-section of the population for long-term use.

A cup of joe is the world's favorite "upper." But is caffeine really a drug whose use merits inclusion in the psychiatric bible? The man who headed the entire addiction revision says yes.

Caffeine is part of many people's daily lives - mainly in the coffee we drink, but also in the tea, soda and energy drinks we consume, the candy and cereal we eat, the pain relievers and weight-loss pills we take. It's found so often in common products that people may not realize caffeine is indeed a drug - the world's most widely used one. We love it because it is a stimulantof the central nervous system; a cup of joe focuses our concentration and energizes us, increasing our heart rate. Most people consume caffeine with no ill effects, although there is substantial evidence that too much caffeine, or abrupt changes in its use, can have negative consequences for some people. These symptoms include headaches, muscle twitching and vomiting. Extremely high amounts of caffeine can even be fatal.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) published by the American Psychiatric Association in May details both "caffeine intoxication" and "caffeine withdrawal" to help clinicians identify patients who are experiencing serious effects of caffeine use - a problem that is not exactly "front of mind" and so is easily overlooked. Although the most severe symptoms are rare, they can hinder a person's ability to work, socialize or manage family responsibilities.

All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out. - I. F. Stone

In this new age of instant information, navigating the pitfalls of overload (too much); uncertainty (lack of); misinformation (poor quality); disinformation (intentional distortion, lies); is key in determining the scope of the Fukushima nuclear disaster and assessing immediate and long-term impacts on the international and Japanese public health. Fortunately we have one of the first attempts from researchers to set the record straight and calculate the death toll from the Fukushima nuclear disaster. The report comes from the courageous men and women of International Physicians for Preventing Nuclear War (IPPNW) who expose the Big Lie being perpetrated by the World Health Organization (WHO) that few ill health effects will occur.

Consider that it is standard operating procedure for governments and industry to obfuscate, cover-up and lie about a nuclear disaster as soon as it occurs. The chaos that unfolds during a nuclear disaster such as Fukushima is used in a carefully orchestrated Big Lie process whereby damage control and perception management allow the perpetrators of the Big Crime - Tokyo Electric Power Company, the Japanese government and the international nuclear apologists and nuclear industry - to eventually get off scot free (1).

Even though the Japanese government was fully aware that three reactors had melted down and another one severely damaged, and that people should have been evacuated in a much more bold and expedient manner, the phrase that will live in infamy, "there is no immediate danger," was repeated during the worst days of the nuclear crisis by the government. In Orwellian fashion they might as well have announced over loudspeakers across the entire country that "The Moon Is Made Of Green Cheese, The Moon Is Made Of Green Cheese," in order to prove that whatever the government says is true and no one should question it.

The extent and quantity of radiation released from the accident has intentionally been suppressed, and unless the public can gain access to the highest echelons of governmental secrets, we will never know the full truth of how much radiation was released, where it was deposited and whose health was or will be affected.

Researchers Find Main Source of Pain in Blood Vessels

Researchers have found the main source of pain in Fibromyalgia patients, and contrary to what many believe, it does not stem from the brain. The findings mark the end of a decades-old mystery about the disease, which many doctors believed was conjured in patients' imaginations. The mystery of Fibromyalgia has left millions of sufferers searching for hope in pain medications. Up until recently, many physicians thought that the disease was "imaginary" or psychological, but scientists have now revealed that the main source of pain stems from a most unlikely place- excess blood vessels in the hand.

Living in an area with high levels of air pollution may increase a woman's chances of having a child with autism, according to the first national study to date that investigates the possible link.

"Women who were exposed to the highest levels of diesel or mercury in the air were twice as likely to have a child with autism than women who lived in the cleanest parts of the sample," study author Andrea Roberts, a research associate with the Harvard School of Public Health, told The Huffington Post.

Earlier studies have established a potential connection between air pollution and autism risk, but have concentrated on a few individual states. The latest study, published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives on Tuesday, draws on a large sample of women across the whole country.

Researchers crossed U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data on the level of air pollutants from year to year with data from the Nurses' Health Study, one of the longest running investigations of women's health in the U.S. They looked for associations between levels of pollutants in the time and place that a woman was pregnant and whether that woman went on to have a child with a diagnosed autism spectrum disorder.

The researchers split up the locations into fifths, and women who lived in the most polluted sections -- those with the highest levels of diesel particulates or mercury in the air -- were twice as likely to have a child with autism compared to those in the cleanest sections. Other types of air pollution, including lead, manganese and other hard metals, were also linked to a greater risk of autism, although the risk was not quite as high.

"All of the chemicals studied are known neurotoxins," Roberts said. "They are also known to pass from mother to baby while a woman is pregnant. It's very plausible that the 'stuff' the mother is taking in through the air is affecting her baby's brain development."

A study, Pre-Polluted by Canada's Environmental Defence examines the contaminants that are found in the blood of newborns in two of Canada's largest urban centres. Let's first put our chemical world into perspective.

At this point in time, there are 84,000 chemicals in use in North America. Around the globe, an estimated 143,000 chemicals are in use.

In Canada, only 200 of these chemicals have been reviewed for their impact on human health and the United States EPA has reviewed only 200 chemicals since 1976.

Scientists tested the umbilical cord blood from three newborns whose mothers live in the Greater Toronto/Hamilton areas and found a rather surprising cocktail of contaminants.

While the actual sample size is very small, the results mimic those found in larger studies undertaken in various nations.

The chemicals that were screened for in this study include the following groups:

Small increases in air pollution that are well below current safety limits can raise the risk of lung cancer and heart attacks, according to two new studies.

Researchers found that long term exposure to microscopic particles of soot at levels similar to those found in suburban areas of Britain can increase the risk of lung cancer by up to 36 per cent.

The short term impact of the same levels of these sooty particles, which are produced by diesel exhausts, also increased the risk of being admitted to hospital or dying from heart failure by two per cent.

The particles, which are more than 100 times small than a human hair, can become lodged in the lungs and pass through into the blood stream, causing inflammation.

The scientists behind the two studies say that their findings indicate that current safety limits on air pollution are still too high and need to be lowered.

"Everybody is exposed to air pollution and it is difficult to escape," said Dr Anoop Shah. "Our results indicate that the lower the levels, the better it is.