Charleston, West Virginia -- People across the Kanawha Valley are all asking themselves the same questions: Is my water safe to drink? Can I shower in it? Can I even rinse off my toothbrush?

After thousands of gallons of a relatively-obscure chemical leaked into the Elk River on Jan. 9 and then into the water plant that supplies nine counties, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention set 1 part per million as the safe level for crude MCHM in drinking water based on limited information available, mostly tests on rats.

However, the CDC took a step back on Jan. 15 - two days after the first zone had been lifted from the do-not-use order - and advised pregnant women not to drink tap water until undetectable levels of crude MCHM are found in the tap water.

In a press conference at the state Capitol this month, Dr. Tanja Popovic, acting director of the National Center for Environmental Health within the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the CDC doesn't like to use the word "safe," and that the advisory was meant to "empower" pregnant women.

"What we want them to do is we want them empowered to feel that they can follow their instincts and do what they feel is good for them," Popovic said.

If you ask Elizabeth Brown, an internal medicine doctor from South Charleston, about the safety of your tap water, her advice to you will be simple: "I don't think it's really safe for anyone at this point."

Brown has seen the effects of what she believes is MCHM exposure first-hand. She continues to see them daily.

"My patients who are coming in with strange rashes and irritated eyes they connect with the water, I'm telling them to avoid it for now and use extra caution," Brown said.

My father used to eat a fairly healthy bacon-and-eggs breakfast every morning before heading off to his job at the factory - that is, till we all got word from the medical powers-that-be that this sort of fare would kill us. Dutifully, my dad swapped his heart-healthy but now anathema bacon for a big bowl of Rice Krispies sweetened with a top layer of Cheerios, over which he would slice half a banana and pour a cup of 2 percent milk. At 9 p.m. every night it was his habit to have milk and cookies, which he'd share with our five dogs. And he loved candy. My parents had a special cupboard in our kitchen set aside for themselves that housed nothing but sweets.

My father also made a point of eating plenty of vegetables, which he also believed were good for his heart, and, I think, just because he liked them. He ate this way, as far as I know, for decades, obediently and unquestioningly following the low-cholesterol dictates of medical authority, just as a lot of people did. On the day I started naturopathic medical school, my dad died of a massive stroke. He was dead, I was told three thousand miles away, before he could even be got to the hospital. I don't know how many countless lives have been lost owing to the absolutely unsubstantiated medical advice that cholesterol and saturated fat are bad for us and that we should eat a bunch of carbohydrate in all its various guises, but my father, as you now know, was one of them.

While it isn't Monsanto getting away with murder this time around, Dow and DuPont Chemical companies have been given a seal of approval by the European Union to grow their GMO corn. The vote which took place that could have vetoed the proposition lost 19 to 28, with 4 member states abstaining from voting. This means only five states wanted GM corn, but the way the weighted voting system is set up in the EU, the Commission is now obliged to pass the GMO crop initiative.

Without a negative qualified majority against the proposal the Commission says it will pass it, according to the Health and Consumer Policy Commissioner, Tonio Borg.

Germans who didn't want GMO crops in their country are furious at their representatives from abstaining to vote, since their single vote would have made a difference. Peter Simone from the Green's said:

"Today the Federal government missed an historic opportunity to be a clear voice against genetic engineering in Europe. The approval of genetically modified maize on European soil puts genetically modified food on consumer's plates. Almost all Germans oppose that."

Want to know your brain a little better? Here's an intro to one of your main inhibitory neurotransmitters - GABA.

Inhibitory sounds like a bad thing, but there's a balance between the excitatory and the inhibitory aspects of all function; just as there's light/dark, up/down, fast/slow and cold/hot. If we were to run on hot all the time, like most of us do in modern times, we'd get burnt out. Sick... Tired...

And often oddly wired at the same time.

We've all heard of placebos. They're dummy pills. They can't do anything real. After all, there's nothing in them.At least, that's what we thought. But in recent years, evidence has built up to suggest that placebos can be highly effective - particularly in treating pain, depression, and even alleviating some of the symptoms of Parkinson's disease.

And it isn't just dummy pills that seem to be able to work: you could get life-changing improvements from a pretend potion that's actually just water; or perhaps fake acupuncture with needles that don't even puncture your skin.

The key is simply that you think it might help you. But when it comes to placebos, it doesn't get much more dramatic than what's been called sham surgery - as Dr David Kallmes discovered a few years ago.

He's a successful radiologist at the Mayo Clinic, one of the world's leading hospitals - it's where the Presidents of the United States often get treated. For the past 15 years, he's been fixing broken backs by injecting them with a special kind of medical cement.

Dr Kallmes regularly performed the procedure - called vertebroplasty - and found it hugely effective. 'We saw terrific results from the procedure, really amazing results,' he told me.

However, there were some questions as to exactly what was going on - because some people seemed to get better even when the operations went horribly wrong.

University of British Columbia scientists have found for the first time an infectious form of the cat parasite Toxoplasma gondii in western Arctic Beluga, prompting a health advisory to the Inuit people who eat whale meat.

The same team also discovered a new strain of the parasite Sarcocystis, previously sequestered in the icy north, that is responsible for killing 406 grey seals in the north Atlantic in 2012.

Presenting their findings today at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Michael Grigg and Stephen Raverty from UBC's Marine Mammal Research Unit say that the "big thaw" occurring in the Arctic is allowing never-before-seen movement of pathogens between the Arctic and the lower latitudes.

"Ice is a major eco-barrier for pathogens," says Michael Grigg, a molecular parasitologist with the U.S. National Institutes of Health and an adjunct professor at UBC. "What we're seeing with the big thaw is the liberation of pathogens gaining access to vulnerable new hosts and wreaking havoc."

One of the most surprising absurdities of our times is the continuing practice of fluoridating our water supply and supplementing dental and oral healthcare products with this toxic by-product of the aluminum industry. The evidence demonstrating the harmfulness of this is beyond abundant, and the case against fluoride continues to grow. Across the United States the movement against this wholesale poisoning of our people and the creatures downstream also continues to grow, in tandem it seems with even more research studies and scientific evidence further proving that fluoride is a grave public health issue.

The history and known dangers of fluoridation is easy to find and easy to digest online, however, each new study warrants media, or alternative media, attention because for some odd reason mass public opinion on this issue is critically slow to tip in favor of non-fluoridation.

A Failed War On Cancer

Ever since Richard Nixon officially declared a war on cancer in 1971 through the signing of the National Cancer Act,[i] over a hundred billion dollars of taxpayer money has been spent on research and drug development in an attempt to eradicate the disease, with trillions more spent by the cancer patients themselves, but with disappointing results.

Even after four decades of waging full-scale "conventional" (surgery and chemo) and "nuclear" (radiotherapy) war against cancer, one in every four Americans will be diagnosed with the disease within their lifetimes - and this number is projected to grow - unabated -- not unlike the process of cancer itself.

Could this colossal failure reflect how profoundly misunderstood the condition is, and misguided are our attempts to prevent and treat it?

The Question That Must Be Answered Anew: What Is Cancer?

Perhaps we need to return back to the fundamental question of 'What Is Cancer'? After all, until we find an accurate answer to this question, all attempts to 'prevent' and 'treat' a disease we do not understand are doomed to fail.

Several years ago the general public was completely unaware of GMOs and GE foods (genetically modified organisms or genetic engineering), but today the topic is becoming rather well known, thanks to growing education and alternative media coverage. The general public is becoming better informed about the potential harms and health issues associated with biotechnology and bioengineered foods, but the smoke and mirrors the mega-corporations use to obfuscate deeper understanding of the dangers inherent in such 'mad science' increases in tandem with growing awareness.

Ok, so a lot of people know they are eating GMO's and what they are, but the real question is: are GMOs actually safe, as proponents and supporters of biotechnology claim, or are they not? Should we be worried about the long-term health and environmental effects of genetically altered foods? In the following article I hope to present clear evidence and data for stating very definitively: YES! We should be very concerned!

As an organic farmer, agriculture consultant and researcher, I became interested in the GMO issue over seven years ago, particularly their effects on the soil and the contamination or mutation of various plant species. 'Connecting the dots', so to speak, it dawned on me how serious this issue is, not just in terms of the environmental effects of GMOs, but also the consequences of eating GMO foods for human health.

A very disturbing picture began to emerge.

One of the largest and most meticulous studies of mammography ever done, involving 90,000 women and lasting a quarter-century, has added powerful new doubts about the value of the screening test for women of any age.

It found that the death rates from breast cancer and from all causes were the same in women who got mammograms and those who did not. And the screening had harms: One in five cancers found with mammography and treated was not a threat to the woman's health and did not need treatment such as chemotherapy, surgery or radiation.

The study, published Tuesday in The British Medical Journal, is one of the few rigorous evaluations of mammograms conducted in the modern era of more effective breast cancer treatments. It randomly assigned Canadian women to have regular mammograms and breast exams by trained nurses or to have breast exams alone.

Researchers sought to determine whether there was any advantage to finding breast cancers when they were too small to feel. The answer is no, the researchers report.

The study seems likely to lead to an even deeper polarization between those who believe that regular mammography saves lives, including many breast cancer patients and advocates for them, and a growing number of researchers who say the evidence is lacking or, at the very least, murky.

"It will make women uncomfortable, and they should be uncomfortable," said Dr. Russell P. Harris, a screening expert and professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, who was not involved in the study. "The decision to have a mammogram should not be a slam dunk."