Health & Wellness
Science Daily
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:55 EST
Real-life particles released by car brake pads can harm lung cells in vitro. Researchers writing in BioMed Central's open access journal Particle and Fibre Toxicology found that heavy braking, as in an emergency stop, caused the most damage, but normal breaking and even close proximity to a disengaged brake resulted in potentially dangerous cellular stress.
Barbara Rothen-Rutishauser and Peter Gehr from the University of Bern, Switzerland, and Michael Riediker from the Institute for Work and Health, Lausanne, Switzerland, worked with a team of researchers to study the effects of brake particles on cultured lung cells placed in a chamber close to the axle of a car. They said, "Brake wear contributes up to 20% of total traffic emissions, but the health effects of brake particles remain largely unstudied. We've found that the metals in brake wear particles can damage junctions between cells by a mechanism involving oxidative stress".
Christina Jewett & Sam Roe
ProPublica & Chicago Tribune
Wed, 11 Nov 2009 06:53 EST
© Tribune photo by Abel Uribe / July 30, 2009
Chanile Hayes says Dr. Michael Reinstein told her taking the anti-psychotic drug Seroquel would help her lose weight. Instead, she says, she went from 140 pounds to nearly 300 pounds within two years.
Executives inside pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca faced a high-stakes dilemma.
On one hand, Chicago psychiatrist Dr. Michael Reinstein was bringing the company a small fortune in sales and was conducting research that made one of its most promising drugs look spectacular.
On the other, some worried that his research findings might be too good to be true.
As Reinstein grew irritated with what he perceived as the company's slights, a top executive outlined the scenario in an e-mail to colleagues.
"If he is in fact worth half a billion dollars to (AstraZeneca)," the company's U.S. sales chief wrote in 2001, "we need to put him in a different category." To avoid scaring Reinstein away, he said, the firm should answer "his every query and satisfy any of his quirky behaviors."
Putting aside its concerns, AstraZeneca would continue its relationship with Reinstein, paying him $490,000 over a decade to travel the nation promoting its best-selling antipsychotic drug, Seroquel. In return, Reinstein provided the company a vast customer base: thousands of mentally ill residents in Chicago-area nursing homes.
Katherine Gustafson
FoodChange.org
Thu, 19 Nov 2009 06:00 EST
© Dan4th via flickr
The fact that there's a revolving door between government and industry will come as news to no one. What is surprising (though hardly, says the cynical devil on my shoulder) is that President Obama continues to spin it around.
What ever happened to "No political appointees in an Obama-Biden administration will be permitted to work on regulations or contracts directly and substantially related to their prior employer for two years" (as stated in Obama's
ethics rules)?
Whatever happened to "We'll tell ConAgra that it's not the Department of Agribusiness. It's the Department of Agriculture. We're going to put the people's interests ahead of the special interests" (
speech to the Iowa Farmers Union, November 2007)?
FTO South African News Blog
Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:08 EST
© Unknown
Washington, D.C. - After Barack Obama said that he will not employ lobbyists in the government the FDA (which is part of the government in the US) employs a Monsanto Lawyer that is responsible for much of the genetically [modified] milk being consumed in the US.
Michael Taylor former employee of Monsanto now takes the top job of advising Margaret Hamburg. She is the commissioner of food and drugs in the US.
It does not just stop there, we know that the US wants to outlaw vitamins and nutrition from food, if I have it correctly they are already labeled as toxins and this guy called Michael Taylor will also work as the DA Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, the Center for Veterinary Medicine, the Office of Regulatory Affairs, Congress and the White House.
Ashley Fantz
CNN
Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:00 EST
Decatur, Georgia -- Gigi reaches up into her sun salutation. She steps back into her high lunge and kicks her legs straight into plank pose, a push-up she holds without wobbling for 10 seconds before looking up impatiently at her yoga teacher.
It's close to 6 p.m. She's had a long day.
She collapses on her mat, rolls on her back and closes her eyes. And then sends one finger digging up her nose.
What? C'mon, she's only 5.
This is yoga for kids. Once an oddity reserved for only the crunchiest communities, downward dog for the grade-school set is now being taught in studios from Minnetonka, Minnesota, to Moscow, Russia. And educators, including Chicago's Namaste School, which serves mostly poor kids who speak a language other than English, are turning to yoga to connect with a generation that many say has been dismissed as deficit this or hyperactive that.
At Decatur Yoga and Pilates studio, just outside Atlanta, Georgia, Dylan Laakmann, sits quietly next to his mother. The lanky 12-year-old whose fashionably long hair hangs in his face, describes himself as a "downer" before he started taking yoga two years ago.
Paul Fassa
NaturalNews
Thu, 19 Nov 2009 05:00 EST
There has been a flurry of contradictory swine flu events reported here and from Ukraine this early fall. These coincided with a CBS news program releasing information that very few reported swine cases actually tested positive for H1N1. CBS's state by state survey discovered that less than 5 percent of flu cases reported in most American states were confirmed as H1N1.
In most states less than half the reported cases were not even a flu of any type! The CDC and WHO conveniently canceled the need for laboratory swine flu confirmations in mid-summer 2009. That makes it easier to pump up the statistics, doesn't it?
Back Ground Details
Since the WHO this year changed the criteria for declaring a pandemic from worldwide high mortality rates to infections only, it's easier to claim a pandemic with the Swine Flu. Connect these dots: Swine Flu is actually less severe than a normal seasonal flu. But it is highly contagious!
So why bother with this rule juggling to make it easy to categorize a spreading flu as a pandemic? Once the stage 6 pandemic level is called, and it has been, the WHO via the United Nations becomes a medical dictator by international law to almost 200 member nations.
And over the past few years, laws have been arranged to exclude Big Pharma and governments from being financially liable for vaccine related injuries and deaths during a pandemic. A license to kill?
ScienceDaily
Thu, 19 Nov 2009 04:00 EST
Until recently, scientists believed that, following a stroke, a patient had about six months to regain any lost function. After that, patients would be forced to compensate for the lost function by focusing on their remaining abilities. Although this belief has been refuted, a University of Missouri occupational therapy professor believes that the current health system is still not giving patients enough time to recover and underestimating what the human brain can do given the right conditions.
In a recent article for OT Practice Magazine, Guy McCormack, clinical professor and chair of the occupational therapy and occupational science department at the MU School of Health Professions, argues that health practitioners believe their clients need more time and motivation to reclaim lost functions, such as the use of an arm, hand or leg. With today's therapies, it is possible for patients to regain more function than ever thought possible, McCormack said.
"Patients are able to regain function due to the principle of neuroplasticity, or the brain's ability to change, especially when patients continue therapy long after their injuries," McCormack said. "Therapists once believed the brain doesn't develop new neurons; but, now they know neurons change their shape and create new branches to connect with other neurons, rewiring the brain following an injury or trauma."
Andrew Jack
Financial Times
Mon, 16 Nov 2009 08:02 EST
Smokers may soon be able to break their habit with an injectable vaccine that prevents nicotine in tobacco entering the brain, where it creates a highly addictive sensation of pleasure.
The NicVAX vaccine moved closer to the market on Monday after a deal between GlaxoSmithKline and the US biotech company Nabi Pharmaceuticals, which developed the product.
GSK will pay $40m (£24m) up front and as much as $500m in the future to Nabi at a time of growing concern over the heavy burden of tobacco-related diseases as one of the leading preventable causes of death worldwide.
The product potentially opens a new front in the tobacco wars, with most existing so-called smoking cessation products and methods failing to prevent many people from returning to their tobacco habits.
Graeme Paton
Guardian.co.uk
Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:01 EST
The rise of a celebrity-fuelled "therapy culture" is damaging a generation of children, according to new book.
An increase in reality TV programmes, self-help guides and confessional autobiographies is leaving young people feeling increasingly "vulnerable" and unable to cope with normal pressure, it was claimed.
Kathryn Ecclestone, professor of education at Birmingham University, said the trend had been driven by New Labour which had "responded to popular concerns about emotional vulnerability and unhappiness" by rewriting the way education is delivered in schools, colleges and universities.
Graeme Paton
Telegraph.co.uk
Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:41 EST
Growing numbers of parents are turning to drugs for a "quick fix" solution to their children's mental disorders, figures show.
Sami Timimi, consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist in the NHS and a visiting professor at Lincoln University, said the trend underlined the "McDonaldisation" of childhood mental health.
He said that, like fast food, the medical industry fed on "peoples' desire for instant satisfaction and a quick fix".
More children were taking medication to deal with emotional difficulties, anxiety, eating disorders and behavioural problems with little evidence of improvements, he said.
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