We already know the U.S. government doesn't care enough about us to tell us whether we are eating genetically modified organisms - they've maintained their right to keep that fact from us, knowing that if we are armed with the knowledge, we might take down the huge GMO industry with the power of our purchasing dollar. In fact, just during the holiday break the FDA quietly pushed through GMO salmon toward the final acceptance process. But, what else do we not know?

If you believe GMO labeling is the only way the U.S. is flying under the radar with potentially dangerous food, you are sadly mistaken. In addition to the GMO-labeling controversy and the obvious promotion of Big Pharma over preventative, natural health, much of our food is given doses of the same stuff that destroyed Hiroshima and continues to wreak havoc on Fukushima - radiation.

It's done in the name of food safety and preservation. Zapping foods with gamma-radiation is used as a method for sterilization, ridding food of harmful contaminants that may have arisen in potentially unsanitary mass-farming practices. It is also said to delay perishability, making the food last longer so it can be sent all over the world, increasing food globalization. But more than that, food radiation could be having unknown effects on our health.

Margaret Lamkin doesn't visit her grandchildren much anymore. She never flies. She avoids wearing dresses. And she worries about infections and odors.

Three years ago, at age 87, Lamkin was forced to wear a colostomy bag for the rest of her life after a virulent meat-borne pathogen destroyed her large colon and nearly killed her.

What made her so sick? A medium-rare steak she ate nine days earlier at an Applebee's restaurant.

Lamkin, like most consumers today, didn't know she had ordered a steak that had been run through a mechanical tenderizer. In a lawsuit, Lamkin said her steak came from National Steak Processors Inc., which claimed it got the contaminated meat from a U.S. plant run by Brazilian-based JBS - the biggest beef packer in the world.

"You trust people, trust that nothing is going to happen," said Lamkin, who feels lucky to be alive at 90, "but they (beef companies) are mass-producing this and shoveling it into us."

The Kansas City Star investigated what the industry calls "bladed" or "needled" beef, and found the process exposes Americans to a higher risk of E. coli poisoning than cuts of meat that have not been tenderized.

The process has been around for decades, but while exact figures are difficult to come by, USDA surveys show that more than 90 percent of beef producers are now using it.

Mechanically tenderized meat is increasingly found in grocery stores, and a vast amount is sold to family-style restaurants, hotels and group homes.

The American Meat Institute, an industry lobbying group, has defended the product as safe, but institute officials recently said they can't comment further until they see the results of a pending risk assessment by the meat safety division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Although blading and injecting marinades into meat add value for the beef industry, that also can drive pathogens - including the E. coli O157:H7 that destroyed Lamkin's colon - deeper into the meat.

Winter flu has reached epidemic levels in many regions of France.

According to GPs' network Sentinelles-Inserm, there were 130,000 new cases in the past week - 204 cases per 100,000 population.

The south-west is one of the worst-hit areas, along with Champagne region and the Nord department.

The epidemic level for seasonal flu is set at 174 new cases per 100,000 inhabitants.

Last winter the government says only about half of people in at-risk groups were vaccinated against seasonal flu - the level fell 26% since winter 2009-2010.

According to the UK Health Protection Agency (HPA), over a million people have contracted the norovirus this winter, which is nearly double the number from this time last year.

The norovirus is a winter vomiting bug that struck earlier than usual this year and cases this time around are running at a level normally seen about a month later into the season.

Figures show that 1.018 million have been hit with the vomiting virus this winter so far, according to HPA.

Laboratory tests by HPA confirmed 3,538 cases of norovirus this season, up from 3,046 cases last week.

The latest figures are 83 percent higher than the number of cases reported at this point last year when there were 1,934 cases.

While most work on samples from homes and hospitals, officials are working on a ratio of one laboratory case that could yield 288 more cases among people who do not need medical treatment and are not tested.

There were 70 hospital outbreaks reported during the two weeks up to December 23, compared to 61 in the previous fortnight, bringing the total of outbreaks for the season to 538.

Foie Gras will no longer be served in the House of Lords restaurant when the peers return from their Christmas break.

The catering department has withdrawn the delicacy after protests from the campaign group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) were backed by a number of peers. A Lords spokesman said: "It will not feature on menus from January."

Peta complains that the geese and ducks are force-fed corn to grossly enlarge their livers before they are killed.

Its associate director, Mimi Bekhechi, said: "We are delighted that the House of Lords will join the House of Commons in taking a stand against cruelty and removing this most un-British of products from its menus."

Brussels sprouts aren't necessarily good for everyone. A man with a mechanical heart had to be rushed to the hospital last Christmas after eating too many helpings of the leafy green vegetable, the BBC reports.

Initially baffled, doctors at Golden Jubilee Hospital in Clydebank, Scotland concluded that the man's plentiful plateful of sprouts were to blame for his sudden sickening.

The nutrient-rich vegetable contains vitamin K, which promotes blood clotting. The doctors discovered that the sprouts interfered with the man's anticoagulent regimen, needed to maintain his mechanical ticker.

The curious case, which was reported in an Australian medical journal, illustrated that too much of a good thing -- even one's veggies -- isn't always a good idea.

"Patients who are taking anticoagulants are generally advised not to eat too many green leafy vegetables, as they are full of vitamin K, which antagonize the action of this vital medication," cardiologist Dr Roy Gardner stated in the study.

The patient, who was not named, was eventually stabilized and released.

© GreenMedInfo

Whereas the flu is self-limiting, the FDA's capacity for bad decisions is not...

The recent decision by the FDA to approve the use of the antiviral drug Tamiflu for treating influenza in infants as young as two weeks old, belies an underlying trajectory within our regulatory agencies towards sheer insanity.

Tamiflu, known generically as oseltamivir, has already drawn international concern over its link with suicide deaths in children given the drug after its approval in 1999. In fact, in 2004, the Japanese pharmaceutical company Chugai added "abnormal behavior" as a possible side effect inside Tamiflu's package. The FDA also acknowledged in its April, 2012 "Pediatric Postmarket Adverse Event Review" of Tamiflu that "abnormal behavior, delirium, including symptoms such as hallucinations, agitation, anxiety, altered level of consciousness, confusion, nightmares, delusions" are possible side effects.[i]

Recent animal research on Tamiflu has found that the infant brain absorbs the drug more readily than the adult brain,[ii] [iii] lending a possible explanation for why neuropsychiatric side effects have been observed disproportionately in younger patients.

The very mechanism of Tamiflu's anti-influenza action may hold the key to its well-known neurotoxicity. Known as a neuromindase inhibitor, the drug inhibits the key enzyme within the flu virus that enables it to enter through the membrane of the host cell. So fundamental is this enzyme that viruses are named after this antigenic characteristic. For instance, the "N" in H1N1 flu virus is named for type 1 viral neuromindase.

Mammals, however, also have neurimindase enzymes, known as 'sialidase homologs,' with four variations identified within the human genome so far; NEU1,NEU2,NEU3 and NUE4. These enzymes are important for neurological health. For example, the enzyme encoded by NEU3, is indispensable for the modulation of the ganglioside content of the lipid bilayer, which is found predominantly in the nervous system and constitutes 6% of all phospholipids in the brain.

It is therefore likely that neurimindase-targeted drugs like Tamiflu are simply not selective enough to inhibit only the enzymes associated with influenza viral infectivity. They likely also cross-react with those off-target neurimindase enzymes associated with proper neurological function within the host. This "cross reactivity" with self-structures may also explain why the offspring of pregnant women given Tamiflu have significantly elevated risk of birth defects (10.6%) relative to background rates (2-3%), according to a 2009 safety review by the European Medicines Agency.

Dolphin therapy has helped a five-year-old autistic child become "aware" and "alert".

Dolphin-assisted therapy is a unique technique that helps treat children with mental disabilities. According to China Daily, while the technique has already made a splash in western countries, it is now growing in popularity among Chinese mental health patients.

The young Chinese boy showed significant improvements in his symptoms after just 15 sessions with a pair of bottle-nosed dolphins at Hangzhou Polar Ocean Park.

The boy's father, Zheng Jun, believes that the unusual therapy has been more effective than any other treatment in helping his son.

"Now, you can't tell he's different from his classmates," Zheng said.

A new, potentially deadly strain of MRSA superbug has been found in British milk for the first time, revealing that the bacteria are spreading through the UK livestock population.

The new strain of MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), known as ST398, is resistant to antibiotics and can cause serious and even deadly infections in humans.

The superbug, which has become an increasingly frequent cause of udder infections in dairy cows, was discovered from tests on 1,500 samples. Researchers found seven cases of RSA ST398 from five farms in England, Scotland and Wales.

Cambridge University scientists who first identified MRSA in milk in 2011, say that the latest discovery of a different strain is troubling, adding that it shows that the superbug is gaining an increasing hold in the dairy industry.

In theory, bacteria germs are destroyed in the pasteurization process, when the milk is heat-treated before it is bottled and delivered to groceries for consumer use. According to experts, there is no risk of MRSA infection to consumers of dairy products as long as the milk is pasteurized.

However, the problem comes from farmers, vets and abattoir workers who may become infected through contact with cows and could transmit the bug to others. This has happened in the Netherlands where the same strain of MRSA has caused an outbreak among residents in a nursing home.

Federal regulators have warned more than 350 medical practices that Botox they may have received from a Canadian supplier is unapproved and could be counterfeit or unsafe.The Food and Drug Administration said in a letter sent last month, a letter released publicly last week, that batches of the wrinkle treatment shipped by suppliers owned by pharmacy Canada Drugs have not been approved by the FDA and that the agency cannot assure their effectiveness or their safety.

The FDA said Canada Drugs was previously tied to shipping unapproved and counterfeit cancer drugs.

The agency warned doctors about buying drugs from sources other than licensed U.S. pharmacies. It is the fifth warning the agency has made this year about foreign suppliers providing unapproved drugs.