Russian epidemiologists have made a series of discoveries, while studying the Ebola virus in Guinea, establishing a link between Ebola and hepatitis B, the head of Russia's state health watchdog, Rospotrebnadzor, said Tuesday.

"As a result of their [colleagues in Guinea] active work, we have obtained new scientific information and have established a statistically significant association between Ebola and hepatitis B. Hepatitis B was much more frequently recorded in the cases of those infected with Ebola," Anna Popova said during the second day of the Civil BRICS Forum taking place in Moscow.

Popova revealed that another way the Ebola virus could spread was through long-term preservation of the virus in breast milk.

Yesterday the NZ media featured coverage of a new proposal that has been put forward by two "senior" academics from the University of Otago, who would like to see all young New Zealand females temporarily sterilised with long-acting chemical contraceptive implants.

In their ideal vision for the future of New Zealand young people, these academics would like temporary sterilisation to be the default policy that young girls would have to deliberately be opted out of if they didn't want their new and still-developing fertility to be chemically shut down for months or years at a time.

No, this is not the plot of some dystopian novel or film, this really is a policy that a couple of NZ academics apparently now seriously consider to be a good idea.

To put things mildly: there is a lot to be concerned about with this proposal.

Firstly, these academics don't seemed to have considered the possible impacts that temporarily sterilising an entire population of females from a very young age could have.

As far as I am aware, no attempt at the population-wide temporary sterilisation of very young females, whose physiology is still new and still developing, has ever been attempted - meaning that the outcome of such an experimental scheme is totally unknown.

We are talking here about synthetic hormonal interference with the female fertility system while that system is still very young and developing, and there is no reliable way of knowing how such interference could turn out (for all of us) in the long-run.

We already know that chemical contraceptives are an environmental pollutant that end up in waterways, and from there cause harms to wildlife populations. Imagine how devastating this environmental impact could become if every female in NZ was temporarily sterilised with these agents at a young age?

Then there are the eugenic memories from recent history that make mass sterilisation (even if it is reversible) a very unpalatable idea for most people today - the Nazis experimented with ways of trying to sterilise entire female Jewish populations, and in Apartheid South-Africa a similar sterilisation scheme was attempted on Black Africans.

Then there were the forced sterilisations of those considered to be 'defective' that took place in the United States of America prior to, and after World War II - not to mention those that took place in other parts of the world as well last century.

I think people are right to be extremely wary of any attempt to introduce any sort of mass sterilisation programmes - even temporary chemical sterilisations - because these can very easily morph into state-mandated sterilisation programmes for economic or social reasons (the old saying: 'absolute power corrupts absolutely' is still as true today as it was the day when it was first uttered.)

And none of this even touches on the negative impact that synthetic hormonal contraceptives can have on female health and wellbeing, or the fact that such a scheme would not actually do anything to alleviate the far more serious problem of sexually transmitted diseases.

(By the way, I hoped everyone took notice of the fact that these academics have rightly pointed out that condoms have a failure rate of 18% per annum (that's 18 pregnancies per year, for every 100 couples using condoms) - which makes condoms only 4% more effective than the woefully unreliable withdrawal method! This is important, because pregnancy can only occur for a very limited window each month (due to the way that female fertility works). Sexually transmitted diseases, on the other hand, can be transmitted 24/7 - meaning that condoms are a far less reliable form of protection against sexual disease than some people wrongly believe and tout them to be.)

Most Americans have never heard of it, but according to new federal data, sepsis is the most expensive cause of hospitalization in the US.

Sepsis is a complication of infection that leads to organ failure. One million patients are hospitalized for sepsis each year (across all types of health insurance). This is more than the number of hospitalizations for heart attack and stroke combined. Sepsis can be a particular risk for older people. In 2013 alone, 400,000 Medicare beneficiaries were hospitalized because of sepsis at a cost of US$5.5 billion.

And it is deadly. Between one in eight and one in four patients with sepsis will die during hospitalization. In fact sepsis contributes to one-third to one-half of all in-hospital deaths.

Despite these grave consequences, fewer than half of Americans know what the word sepsis means.

The chemicals that we're exposed to in our daily lives are often approved by the government under the assumption that they're safe in small doses, even over a long period of time. For years, regulators relied on the old adage "the dose makes the poison" to try to explain their logic. While that might have appeared true for certain chemicals for many years, we now live in a world where exposure to a large variety of chemicals is unavoidable and it's finally becoming clear that we can't evaluate these chemicals in isolation.

Think about a simple picnic in a city park. The air you breathe is filled with particulate matter from car exhaust, the landscaping was likely treated with chemical fertilizers and Roundup or another weedkiller, the plastic surrounding your food or drink items might contain BPA or phthalates, your drinks could contain preservatives, the antibacterial spray you use on your hands after eating might contain triclosan and the sunscreen you apply on your skin probably contains nanomaterials. Now extrapolate that scenario to each and every activity you partake in on a daily basis.

I find it absolutely fascinating when I meet new folks of like mind who offer to teach me numerous additional skills that would be beneficial in the bleak future that seems likely. I adore the idea of exchanging knowledge. It is not possible to learn every skill in life via books or YouTube videos (though I have certainly tried). Regardless of how much an individual may try, there are topics that come easier to some people than others. For instance, I only know a little about radio communications, and although I have my ham license, I find the area of radio waves to be a tad confusing. But give me a sickly plant and I will nourish it back to health in no time if I have the right tools. We all have skills we excel at and lack at. Thus forming communities with people with different skills is ideal, as no one individual has to know it all. While it is impractical to become an expert in all areas, it is not a bad idea to develop a basic understanding of all the key areas you will need to survive.

But there is one area of prepping that is not too difficult, and yet, I see relatively few people try to develop the knowledge and skills for it, and even fewer practicing it: nutritional preventive medicine.

More water fluoridation = more ADHD

The evidence from a new scientific research study shows that children who live in water districts where the water supply is systematically fluoridated suffer with ADHD at a significantly higher rate.

"A multivariate regression analysis showed that after socioeconomic status was controlled each 1 percent increase in artificial fluoridation prevalence in 1992 was associated with approximately 67,000 to 131,000 additional ADHD diagnoses from 2003 to 2011."

For those who are not initiated in the realm of medical statistics, the number of additional diagnoses cited above is extraordinary by any standard of measurement. This study conclusively demonstrates that fluoride exposure among children and adolescents has significant consequences, primarily because of their formative stage of growth and development.

Drinking fluoridated water as a child certainly increases the likelihood that both the assimilation and uptake of a toxic chemical will start a process of bioaccumulation at a young age. Because young bodies are smaller and more sensitive, there is considerably less body mass to buffer the adverse effects of fluoride (such as fluoride lowering IQ).

"In the 1990s, Harvard University conducted a 14-year study that found a link between fluoride and bone cancer. Kidney disease, arthritis, impaired thyroid function, bladder cancer and an increased risk of Alzheimer's disease are all additional risks associated with fluoride toxicity."

A pharma company with generic drugs meets microchip and biotech in a marriage of implantable devices that are shockingly close to the finish line of commercialization.

Deals were made. Money exchanged. Development in process - this is actually going to happen.

Is this the next phase of The Singularity? The complete bypassing of pills, injections - things that one actively chooses and takes - to a passive acceptance of remote controlled wireless chips quietly and somehow pumping substance for up to 16 years? Or is it more public relations for the long-time push for the coming ''brain chip''?

But first to roll out will probably be the wirelessly controlled birth-control implanted device backed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

If you love the taste of an ice cold soda, you may want to determine whether the flavor is actually worth the risk. Sugary drinks are killing around 184,000 people each year, according to a new study.

The research, published in the American Heart Association's Circulation journal, points the finger at sugar-laden drinks ranging from sodas to sweetened iced tea, fruit drinks, and sports/energy drinks.

"Many countries in the world have a significant number of deaths occurring from a single dietary factor, sugar-sweetened beverages," said study author Dariush Mozaffarian from Tufts University in Boston.

According to the research, most of the 184,000 global deaths are from people who die of diabetes due to the consumption of "sugar-sweetened beverages" (SSBs).

A new report details how Big Food appears to have captured yet another key nutrition group, the American Society of Nutrition.

You may remember that a few weeks back we reported on the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics' (AND) ill-fated partnership with Kraft Foods. Kraft was permitted to place the AND's "Kids Eat Right" logo on their Kraft Singles synthetic "cheese product." After the story broke, AND backpedaled.

This week saw the release of another report, this time exposing the ties between the American Society of Nutrition (ASN)—whose membership includes some of the nation's leading nutrition scientists and researchers—and junk food giants like Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Nestlé, Monsanto, McDonald's, and Mars.

France is the latest country to ban the private sale of Monsanto's favorite carcinogen - glyphosate. France has been in the alternative news quite a bit lately, asking the makers of Nutella to stop using palm oil, insisting all new rooftops be covered in solar panels or plants, and mandating the donation of all supermarket food waste. This new move by their Ecology Minister is the latest result of their forward thinking.

The French aren't the only people around the world waking up to the effects of Roundup. Governments are now more likely to look for independent research to explain the uptick in the rates of diseases like cancer. Monsanto continues to bleat about the safety of glyphosates and their inability to harm humans, claiming that "the dose makes the poison." With the levels of glyphosates on the rise in our food, our soil, our air, and water, at what magic point does the saturation of our environment turn from harmful to poison? Are we willing to wait until that switch has been flipped with no hope of going back?