GARDINER HARRIS
NY TimesWed, 30 Apr 2008 12:19 UTC
WASHINGTON - Federal drug regulators believe that a contaminant detected in a crucial blood thinner that has caused 81 deaths was added deliberately, something the Food and Drug Administration has only hinted at previously.
"F.D.A.'s working hypothesis is that this was intentional contamination, but this is not yet proven," Dr. Janet Woodcock, director of the Food and Drug Administration's drug center, told the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations in written testimony given Tuesday.
A third of the material in some batches of the thinner heparin were contaminants, "and it does strain one's credulity to suggest that might have been done accidentally," Dr. Woodcock said.
Remember a couple of years ago how the FDA warned Americans not to buy prescription drugs from Canada because they might be "contaminated by terrorists?" I'm not making that up: That was the official announcement of an FDA spokesperson, and it was part of their fear strategy for enforcing a monopoly on U.S. consumers so that Big Pharma could continue engaging in rampant price fixing.
The implication in that warning is that drugs purchased in the United States are therefore safer, correct? What the FDA didn't tell anyone, however, is that most pharmaceuticals purchased in the United States are manufactured outside the U.S.; many from China or Puerto Rico. So they're not even made in the U.S. anyway, and drug companies are simply importing them from other countries just like a consumer might do if she drove across the border and bought her medications in Canada or Mexico.
DALLAS - "I guess I'm getting emotional right now because I don't want to be here," Christine Gianadda said. "I want my kids to be in school having friends."
But that's not an option for her 9 year old son, Gordon.
He was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome, a regressive form of autism, when he was 13 months old.
"I mean we'd put him down for a nap and he woke up screaming, beating his head, lost all language," she said.
Parents gathered in front of the federal courthouse in Dallas to show there's a link between mercury emissions from coal fire plants and autism.
Comment: The damage industrial emissions do is covered up, the damage that poisons in our food, water, household products and medicines, is suppressed; but for GOD'S sake! do NOT Smoke!
You really think they are doing that for your benefit?
By:Michelle Gabrielle Centamore
Suffolk LifeMon, 05 May 2008 10:10 UTC
In order to establish an exemption to mandatory vaccines, the Philosophical Exemption to Immunizations Act recently was introduced in the New York State Assembly. Currently, there are 18 states that give parents this right, while most other states offer only religious or medical exemptions.
Phrases such as "survival of the fittest" and "every man for himself" may seem to accentuate the presence of political and social competition in American culture; however, there obviously are similar instances of inter- and intra-group conflict across almost all known organisms. So what makes competition so prevalent for life and why does it sometimes seem to be preferred over cooperation?
Comment: Perhaps because we're ruled by psychopaths, who have instituted a psychopathic system - where lack of conscience is condoned, if not glorified. Perhaps also because our own innate insecurities are taken advantage of - and the truth of things is consistently hidden by our political masters, in the state apparatus, in religion, in business, in education. For more on this, see
here.
WASHINGTON - A New York company is voluntarily recalling about 286,000 pounds (129,700 kg) of fresh and frozen meat and poultry products that may be contaminated with bacteria, U.S. agriculture officials said on Saturday.
The products produced by Gourmet Boutique LLC of Jamaica, New York, were sent to food service and retail establishments nationwide, a U.S. Department of Agriculture statement said.
The meat may be contaminated with Listeria monocyotogenes bacteria, which can cause a rare but potentially fatal disease known as listeriosis, the USDA said. Infants, the elderly, people with HIV and patients undergoing chemotherapy are among those at risk for the disease.
Researchers at the Salk Institute and UCSD said they have uncovered one reason why diabetics are up to 65 percent more likely to develop Alzheimer's, the degenerative disease mainly associated with memory loss in old age.
On the eve of the British Columbia inquiry into the death of Robert Dziekanski, a review of scientific data in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) finds that in some cases, stun guns may stimulate the heart in experimental models. This evidence is contrary to current views that stun guns only affect skeletal muscles.
"The frequency and the shape of the pulses generated by stun guns are designed to incapacitate the target by electrically overwhelming his or her control of these muscles," state Dr. K. Nanthakumar and colleagues. "In principle, these pulses are designed to act only on skeletal muscles and to not affect internal organs such as the heart." The evidence that stun guns do not stimulate the heart is based on "...theoretical studies [that] suggest that stun guns cannot deliver the amount of energy required to stimulate the heart or cause ventricular fibrillation."
Comment: This damage control comment at the end of the article is not surprising. But the fact is, there is more than enough evidence to conclude that so called 'non lethal' stun guns are very much lethal.
Contrary to prevailing assumptions, children are more vulnerable to the harmful effects of lead exposure at the age of 6 than they are in early childhood, according to a Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center study to be presented May 4 at the annual meeting of the Pediatric Academic Societies in Honolulu.
"Although we typically worry about protecting toddlers from lead exposure, our study shows that parents and pediatricians should be just as, if not more concerned about lead exposure in school-aged children," says Richard Hornung, Dr.P.H., a researcher in the division of general and community pediatrics at Cincinnati Children's and the study's main author.
The researchers found that blood lead concentrations (BPb) at age 6, compared to those at younger ages, are more strongly associated with IQ and reduced volume of gray matter in the prefrontal cortex of the brain, which is involved in planning, complex thinking and moderating behavior.
A potentially fatal intestinal virus is spreading rapidly in China, with 766 new cases registered in the past 24 hours, national media said on Sunday.
Enterovirus 71 first appeared in March when young children were admitted to hospitals in Fuyung, a city in the central Chinese province of Anhui, suffering from fever, rashes, blisters and mouth ulcers. The virus has so far killed 22 children in the province. Over 4,500 people, mostly children, have also been infected.
China's Health Ministry has now issued a nationwide alert.
Tests revealed that an 18-month-old boy died of the virus on Friday in Guangdong, a province on China's southern coast, some 1,000 miles (1,600 kms) away from the original source of infection, China's Xinhua news agency said. Another suspected death in the same province is being investigated.
Comment: The damage industrial emissions do is covered up, the damage that poisons in our food, water, household products and medicines, is suppressed; but for GOD'S sake! do NOT Smoke!
You really think they are doing that for your benefit?