Senior scientists have criticised the "appalling irresponsibility" of researchers in China who have deliberately created new strains of influenza virus in a veterinary laboratory.

They warned there is a danger that the new viral strains created by mixing bird-flu virus with human influenza could escape from the laboratory to cause a global pandemic killing millions of people.

Lord May of Oxford, a former government chief scientist and past president of the Royal Society, denounced the study published today in the journal Science as doing nothing to further the understanding and prevention of flu pandemics.

"They claim they are doing this to help develop vaccines and such like. In fact the real reason is that they are driven by blind ambition with no common sense whatsoever," Lord May told The Independent.

"The record of containment in labs like this is not reassuring. They are taking it upon themselves to create human-to-human transmission of very dangerous viruses. It's appallingly irresponsible," he said.

The controversial study into viral mixing was carried out by a team led by Professor Hualan Chen, director of China's National Avian Influenza Reference Laboratory at Harbin Veterinary Research Institute.

Professor Chen and her colleagues deliberately mixed the H5N1 bird-flu virus, which is highly lethal but not easily transmitted between people, with a 2009 strain of H1N1 flu virus, which is very infectious to humans.

Do Americans have the right to know what's in our food? Do we have the right to choose to NOT eat Genetically Modified (GMO) food? The next round in the years-long battle has begun, as Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Congressman Pete DeFazio (D-OR) introduce the Genetically Engineered Food Right-to-Know Act (read the Senate bill here, House bill here)

The good news:

• This is a bi-partisan bill with a bunch of co-sponsors (listed at the end of this article).
• Labeling has huge public support.

The bad news:

• Big agriculture, and corporate behemoth Monsanto in particular, HATE the idea of labeling. They claim their food is perfectly safe... so we should just shut up and buy it.
• These guys just spent $46 million to kill a ballot measure in California, Prop 37... so you can bet they're going to be spending big bucks to buy this bill a slow and quiet death.
• Monsanto has done a good job of packing Washington with their lobbyists (as well as putting many of their former employees into the very jobs that are supposed to regulate GMO food - see "Monsanto Employees in the Halls of Government Part 1" and "... Part 2".)

Promoted for decades as a "safe" sugar alternative, presumably to prevent or reduce symptoms of diabetes, Splenda (sucralose) has been found to have diabetes-promoting effects in human subjects.

The artificial sweetener sucralose, which is approximately 600 times sweeter than sucrose (table sugar), and marketed under a variety of brand names, such as Splenda, Cukren, Nevella and SucraPlus, has recently been found to diabetes-promoting effects in human test subjects, despite containing no calories and being classified as a 'nonutritive sweetener.'

A new study published in the journal Diabetes Care, lead by researchers at the Center for Human Nutrition, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri, set out to test the metabolic effects of sucralose in obese subjects who did not use nonnutritive sweeteners.

Seventeen subjects underwent a 5-hour oral glucose tolerance test on two separate occasions preceded by consuming either sucralose (experimental condition) or water (control condition) 10 min before the glucose load in a randomized crossover design.

Research from the University of Adelaide suggests that mothers who eat junk food while pregnant have already programmed their babies to be addicted to a high fat, high sugar diet by the time they are weaned.

In laboratory studies, the researchers found that a junk food diet during pregnancy and lactation desensitised the normal reward system fuelled by these highly palatable foods.

Led by Dr Bev Mühlhäusler, Postdoctoral Fellow in the University's FOODplus Research Centre, this is the first study to show the effects of maternal junk food consumption at such an early stage in the offspring's life. The study was published recently in The FASEB Journal.

Opioids are produced by the body as a reward response, including in response to fat and sugar. These opioids stimulate the production of the "feel good" hormone dopamine, which produces a good feeling.

Vegetarian diets are correlated with an increase in mental health problems

Entirely vegan diets are unknown among traditional human cultures. Back in the early part of the 19^th century, dentist and explorer Weston Price went looking for vegans, but found only cannibals*. Since vegan diets in nature provide no vitamin B12 and very little in the way of usable long chain omega3 fatty acids, it is not surprising that humans have continued to eat animals and animal-derived products. Nowadays one can obtain algae-derived DHA (the major long chain omega3 fatty acid present in the brain) and supplement B12. That wasn't possible until a few years ago, and there's little evidence that supplementation with DHA alone is helpful for the brain.

We have been encouraged to eat more plants and less animals. Various writers have suggested it is healthier for our bodies and our planet. I have no objections to a mostly plant-based diet as long as attention is paid to protein requirements and micronutrition. However, since little things in animal products (some essential like B12, some that can be created in our bodies but perhaps not in the amounts we need, such as creatine) seem to be very important for the brain, it's interesting to look at the literature on vegetarian diets and mental health. Here is the latest (and the best) observational study: Vegetarian diet and mental disorders: results from a representative community survey.

It's a German study, and for a large population-based retrospective observational design, it's actually fairly thorough and sensible. And if you are a vegetarian, it certainly doesn't say that vegetarianism causes mental health problems. But in all but two studies done in the past, vegetarianism has been linked with higher rates of depression, anxiety, and particularly eating disorders (bingeing, restricting, and purging behaviors). But to be perfectly honest, all those studies had some serious limitations (they were small, done special populations, and often measures based on just a few answers to general survey questions). I've reviewed a few of them. (My favorite has to be the one where they calculated arachidonic acid ingested to the hundredth of a gram based on data from a food frequency questionnaire, which seems very unlikely to be accurate) I don't think it is a coincidence that the two positive studies were done by the same group of researchers in the Seventh Day Adventist population.

The new feature of the antidepressant drugs of the 1990s was that they had milder side-effects than their predecessors. Combined with aggressive marketing, this meant that annual sales in Sweden increased from just under EUR 18 million to over EUR 100 million in the space of just a few years.

Most countries have an established system for self-regulation of pharmaceuticals advertising. Sweden has been held up internationally as a good example. The Swedish pharmaceutical industry's trade organisation appoints an information examiner to monitor the marketing to ensure it doesn't violate established ethical guidelines. There is also a board appointed by the industry that deals with complaints. Misleading advertising usually results in a fine.

"The system of self-regulation was established in 1969 in Sweden, but this is the first academic study of how it really works", says Shai Mulinari, who is a researcher in both social sciences and biomedicine.

Together with a colleague, he has gone through all the advertising for antidepressants published in the professional journal for doctors, The Swedish Medical Journal, between 1994 and 2003. In the study, they found that 34 per cent of all adverts had been judged as misleading by the industry's self-regulation system.

Child abuse scars not just the brain and body, but, according to the latest research, but may leave its mark on genes as well.

The research, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that abused children who develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may experience a biologically distinct form of the disorder from PTSD caused by other types of trauma later in life.

"The main aim of our study was to address the question of whether patients with same clinical diagnosis but different early environments have the same underlying biology," says Divya Mehta, corresponding author of the study and a postdoctoral student at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich, Germany.

The more we study gluten, the more we learn how antiquated and out dated the current definitions being used to define it are. Less than a year ago, it was thought that celiac disease was the only manifestation of gluten sensitivity. Today this false misconception has been dis-proven in multiple studies, trials, and anecdotally in thousands of people around the world who have gone gluten free and experienced the great benefits to their health.

Unfortunately, many doctors and patients diagnosed with celiac disease still cling to these archaic notions.

Fortunately, the efforts to raise awareness and education on this matter are paying off.

The following excerpt was taken from a recent ABC News story on gluten sensitivity based on interviews with Dr. Fasano and Dr. Peter Green (both of these doctors are leading celiac researchers):

...recognize gluten as an invader and unleash attacks on the small intestine, producing diarrhea, abdominal pain, along with fatigue, headaches and joint inflammation. Over time, celiac disease can lead to malnourishment, osteoporosis, neurological conditions, and in rarer cases, infertility or cancer.

An estimated 3 million Americans, or 1 in 133, have celiac disease (the source of the website name for Shepard's campaign, 1in133.org). However, most of them aren't aware of it, in part because it can strike at any time. Only 200,000 to 220,000 Americans have been diagnosed, said Dr. Alessio Fasano, director of the Center for Celiac Research at the University of Maryland in Baltimore, also a summit sponsor.

Gluten disruption of the nervous system can lead to nerve damage, neurological diseases, mental disorders and more.

One indicator of possible pathogenic infections is high iron levels. Host pathogens need iron for survival. There is evidence that increased levels of iron decreases certain immune cell scavenging abilities, such as neutrophils, and T cells. Simultaneously, increased levels of iron become a source of replication for certain pathogens, such as gram negative bacteria, klebsiella, aeruginosa, listeria, tuberculosis, gonorrhoae, candida albicans and others. Reduction of iron levels has demonstrated in animal studies to inhibit the promulgation of certain pathogens, such as shigella.

There is evidence that decreased serum iron may also be due to pathogens using iron for its own purposes. This may be especially true if there is a rapid and precipitous drop in iron levels.

Iron is essential for life processes. It has essential roles in the body such as red blood cell and hemoglobin formation, ATP synthesis in every cell of the body, as well as its need for the formation of the antioxidant catalase. While iron is essential for life, iron is a very toxic element that requires sufficient iron binding proteins such as transferrin, ferritin and lactoferrin. Excess iron accumulation not only can increase pathogens, but can also become a primary cause of oxidative stress and free radical activity. Iron is an extremely reactive mineral when unbound and exposed to oxygen.

There is ongoing research that demonstrates that microorganisms have developed mechanisms for stealing ferritin (the protein that stores iron and releases it) from different organs and tissues of the body. For example, listeria obtains ferritin from neurons, epithelial cells, macrophages and intestinal cells. The parasite entamoeba histolytica steals ferritin from the blood, brain, lungs and intestines. Candida Albicans can heist ferritin from the GI tract to survive.

Say so long to sloppy Joes and chicken fingers!

A Queens elementary school has become the first traditional public school in the country to serve all vegetarian all the time, replacing lunchroom legends like meatloaf with organic tofu, spinach wraps and couscous.

Education officials say PS 244 in Flushing was the natural choice to pioneer a meat- and fish-free menu because it has incorporated healthy living and eating into its academics for years.

And with much of its population hailing from East Asian countries, the diverse elementary school is home to plenty of already-committed vegetarians.