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Fri, 15 Oct 2021
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Evil Rays

Class-action lawsuit claims Apple and Samsung phones exceed FCC radiation limits

apple iphone
© AP Photo / Charles Rex Arbogast
A lawsuit filed in the Northern District of California on August 23 alleges that radiation emitted from Apple and Samsung smartphones exceeds safety standards set by the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC), following radiofrequency tests commissioned by the Chicago Tribune.

According to the class-action lawsuit, "recent testing of the defendants' products shows that the potential exposure for an owner carrying the phone in a pants or shirt pocket was over the exposure limit, sometimes far exceeding it - in some instances by 500%."

The filing also states that Apple "intentionally misrepresented the safety of the iPhones, assuring class members that the iPhones had been adequately tested, and were safe to use on and in close proximity to their bodies at all hours of the day and night, despite information within its knowledge indicating that the radiofrequency exposure was linked to cancer and other health risks."

Comment: And this is before 5G is rolled out: And check out SOTT radio's:


Life Preserver

Did a lack of regulation for fecal transplants cost a patient's life?

fecal transplant doctors
© Anuj Shrestha / for NBC News
For decades, fecal transplants went unregulated, with doctors performing them as they pleased.

In June, after a patient died and another was sickened from a fecal transplant that contained drug-resistant bacteria, the Food and Drug Administration stepped in and set new guidelines for the procedure.

The guidelines specified that both donors and their stool should be screened for the presence of "multidrug-resistant organisms." They were included in an alert issued by the agency stating that the two patients who got sick had weakened immune systems, and that the donor stool they received had not been tested for the specific superbug that made them ill.

But no additional information on the cases was provided, such as how the stool was processed, how it was given to the patients or what it was being used to treat.

Comment: Without more information on the events surrounding the death, it's really hard to make a call here. Was it a contaminated sample? Was the death actually because of FMT, or could it have been unrelated?

Ideally, FMT would be done with a sample that has been tested thoroughly for possible 'bad actors', but considering the desperation some potential recipients feel due their dire conditions, it's unsurprising that many are just doing it themselves; especially considering the cost of going through official channels. Admittedly, there are still a lot of unknowns in regard to the procedure, but given its wild success in many cases, it's unlikely the desperate will sit back and wait.

See also:


Arrow Down

Tattoo needles leave metal particles in lymph nodes

Tattoo Needles
© KYMBERLIE DOZOIS PHOTOGRAPHY / GETTY IMAGES
Needles can leave their mark in unwanted ways.
Even clean needles may cause problems for people with tattoos, new research suggests.

It shows that particles that wear from the needle during the tattooing process could be responsible for some of the allergies usually blamed on the inks or poor sterilisation.

Tattoo needles usually contain nickel (6-8%) and chromium (15-20%), both of which prompt a high rate of sensitisation in the general population, the authors report in an article in the journal Particle and Fibre Toxicology.

Led by the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment in Germany, this project was a major undertaking, involving scientists from Germany and France and making use of the European Synchrotron (ESRF), one of the world's most intense X-ray sources.

In earlier work, the team had discovered that inks and their metal impurities are transported to the lymph nodes - an important part of the body's immune system - in a nanoform, where they can be found years after the placement of the tattoos.

However, they couldn't explain the presence in the lymph nodes of iron, chromium and nickel, which weren't part of around 50 ink samples they tested

Cheeseburger

Got it half right: Whole Foods CEO says plant-based meats good for the environment but not for your health

John Mackey Whole Foods
© Dustin Finkelstein | Getty Images
John Mackey, co-founder and co-CEO of Whole Foods Market.
There are currently two main, buzzy players in the plant-based "meat" market: Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods.

In 2013, Whole Foods gave plant-based meat start-up Beyond Meat its first shot at selling its vegan "chicken" strips at Whole Foods locations across the country. Early believers and investors in the product were billionaires Bill Gates and Twitter co-founder Biz Stone.

"We launched Beyond Meat. We were their launching pad. In fact, I think all of their new products have been introduced at Whole Foods," John Mackey, co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods, tells CNBC Make It.

Comment: The good news is that our palates don't actually need 'training' to enjoy the foods that we're designed to eat - animal foods. Why go through all the suffering involved in forcing yourself to like something you don't naturally have a taste for when you can just eat meat and get all the nutrition your body needs?

See also:


Cloud Grey

Smog & Sadness: Is there a link between mental illness and air pollution?

pollution
© Ana Gram - stock.adobe.com
Brown Coal Power Station, North Rhine - Westphalia, Germany
Could the very air we breathe have an impact on our mental health? That's the suggestion coming out of a new international study conducted in the United States and Denmark. After analyzing long-term data sets from both countries, researchers from the University of Chicago say they have identified a possible link between exposure to environmental pollution, specifically polluted air, and an increase in the onset of psychiatric and mental health problems in a population.

According to the findings, air pollution is associated with increased rates of depression and bipolar disorder among both U.S. and Danish populations. That association was actually found to be even greater in Denmark, where poor air quality exposure during the first 10 years of a person's life was found to predict a two-fold increase in the likelihood of developing schizophrenia or a personality disorder.

"Our study shows that living in polluted areas, especially early on in life, is predictive of mental disorders in both the United States and Denmark," explains computational biologist Atif Khan, the study's first author, in a media release. "The physical environment - in particular air quality - warrants more research to better understand how our environment is contributing to neurological and psychiatric disorders."

Comment: See also: Pollution Can Lead to Brain Damage and Depression Warn Scientists


Health

Study finds ketone bodies boost intestinal stem cells

intestinal stem cells
MIT biologists have discovered an unexpected effect of a ketogenic, or fat-rich, diet: They showed that high levels of ketone bodies, molecules produced by the breakdown of fat, help the intestine to maintain a large pool of adult stem cells, which are crucial for keeping the intestinal lining healthy.

The researchers also found that intestinal stem cells produce unusually high levels of ketone bodies even in the absence of a high-fat diet. These ketone bodies activate a well-known signaling pathway called Notch, which has previously been shown to help regulate stem cell differentiation.

"Ketone bodies are one of the first examples of how a metabolite instructs stem cell fate in the intestine," says Omer Yilmaz, the Eisen and Chang Career Development Associate Professor of Biology and a member of MIT's Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. "These ketone bodies, which are normally thought to play a critical role in energy maintenance during times of nutritional stress, engage the Notch pathway to enhance stem cell function. Changes in ketone body levels in different nutritional states or diets enable stem cells to adapt to different physiologies."

Heart - Black

Docs reveal Monsanto's war against cancer researchers who label their products 'dangerous'

Monsanto Roundup
© Reuters / Regis Duvignau
Agrochemical giant Monsanto has waged a full blown lobbying war to combat cancer researchers that deem its products unsafe. New documents show the firm exploited ties to government and media to keep its chemicals on the shelves.

When Monsanto's best-selling pesticide Roundup was deemed a cancer risk in 2015 by the World Health Organization's cancer research wing, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the company kicked its lobbying efforts into overdrive, according to new documents released in one of the thousands of ongoing suits against the firm related to the controversial ingredient, glyphosate.

In the years since the IARC's review of glyphosate, Monsanto has brought immense resources to bear in pressuring the US government to take a friendlier approach to the chemical, and to disregard the IARC's more alarming conclusions about its safety.

NPC

Now They're Coming After What we Eat

Weird Al
At Harvard, there was once a University. Now that once noble campus has become a luxury asylum for the terminally feeble-minded. Walter Willett, one of the inmates (in his sadly incurable delusion he calls himself "Professor of Nutrition"), has gibbered to a well-meaning visitor from Business Insider that "eating a diet that's especially high in red meat will be undermining the sustainability of the climate."

Farewell, then, to the Roast Beef of Old England. So keen are we in the Old Country on our Sunday roast (cooked rare and sliced thickish) that the French call us les rosbifs. But the "Professor" (for we must humor him by letting him think he is qualified to talk about nutrition) wants to put a stop to all that.

As strikingly ignorant of all but the IPCC Party Line as others in that hopeless hospice for hapless halfwits, he overlooks the fact that the great plains of what is now the United States of America were once teeming with millions upon millions of eructating, halating ruminants. Notwithstanding agriculture, there are far fewer ruminants now than there were then.

The "Professor" drools on: "It's bad for the person eating it, but also really bad for our children and our grandchildren, so that's something I think we should totally, strongly advise against. It's — in fact — irresponsible."

It may be that the "Professor" - look how fetchingly he adjusts his tinfoil hat to a rakish angle - does not accept the theory of evolution. If, however, that theory is correct, the Earth is somewhat older than the 6000 years derived by the amiably barmy Bishop Ussher counting the generations since Abraham.

Comment: There is an incredible amount of money to be made keeping people in the dark about what helps keep them healthy, and what doesn't. While the vast majority of healthcare workers, academics and bureaucrats probably mean well and are the unwitting tools of corporate interests and their insidious groupthink, it remains for each of us to do our own thinking and research on a subject that most individuals seem willing to abdicate responsibility for.

As the author mentioned, "hardly a month goes by without a new double-blind trial, epidemiological study or meta-analysis in the medico-scientific journals demonstrating beyond doubt that diabetes and a range of other diseases are directly and principally attributable to the misguided guidelines recommending that carbohydrates should be the staple diet."

And with that, see this small sample of the research that's been coming out on this now very rancorous topic:


Health

Massachusetts woman becomes 4th person in state to die from rare Eastern Equine Encephalitis virus

Laurie Sylvia

Laurie Sylvia, 59, fell ill last Monday and by Saturday she had died of the Eastern Equine Encephalitis virus
A Massachusetts woman has died from the rare eastern equine encephalitis (EEE) virus, making her one of four in the state to have contracted the deadly mosquito-borne virus.

Laurie Sylvia, 59, began feeling sick last Monday and by Saturday the realtor and grandmother from Bristol County had passed away, her husband of 40 years, Robert Sylvia Jr, confirmed.

Earlier this month, a Massachusetts man over 60 years old fell into a coma after contracting the disease that either comes on like a sudden, intense cold, then disappears altogether, or comes on more slowly, but severely, causing diarrhea, vomiting, headache and loss of appetite.

Between 30 and 50 percent of people that contract the rare bug-borne disease don't survive it, putting Massachusetts on high alert as Sylvia is the first death reported in the state this year.

Bug

Third locally transmitted dengue fever case confirmed in Miami-Dade County

mosquito
© DREAMSTIME TNS
Mosquito-borne illnesses like West Nile virus, dengue fever and Eastern equine encephalitis are on the rise during rainy season when these insects breed. DREAMSTIME TNSMosquito-borne illnesses like West Nile virus, dengue fever and Eastern equine encephalitis are on the rise during rainy season when these insects breed.
The third locally transmitted case of dengue fever this year has been confirmed in Miami-Dade County, the Florida Department of Health announced Friday.

The first case of the mosquito-borne ailment was confirmed in March. The second came earlier this month.

The three cases don't seem to be related, the health department said in a statement. The department issued a mosquito-borne illness alert Friday after a resident of the county was diagnosed with the virus, which is spread through bites from infected Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. The Aedes also spread chikungunya and Zika virus.

Five cases of dengue fever among international travelers have been reported so far this year in Florida. Thirty-one travel-associated cases of Zika fever have been reported this year, but zero local cases, according to health department data.