Health & WellnessS


Ambulance

Diabetes drug linked to heart attacks, death

Widely prescribed Avandia increases risk by 43 percent, research shows.

A widely used diabetes pill raises the risk of heart attacks and possibly death, according to a scientific analysis that reveals what some experts are calling another Vioxx-like example of the government failing to protect the public from an unsafe drug.

Evil Rays

Cordless phones: the unspoken DECT hazard at home and at work



©Unk
TETRA in mast sharing. Government choice and saves planning, but with what combination effect?

Why talk about DECT phones on a TETRA website? One main reason is to help determine causes of symptoms that might be attributed falsely to TETRA. We have heard and found many reports of similar adverse symptoms that are more likely to be caused by DECT (Digital Electronic Cordless Telephones), and indeed that have been eliminated by stopping using these phones. You will be unaware of what they do, but if you have one, read the following carefully. Many people will be equally unaware of neighbours using DECT, whose pulses penetrate right through their walls. DECT comes with no guidance and no health warnings. This must be wrong.

Magic Wand

First pill meant to end periods poised for OK

Women looking for a simple way to avoid their menstrual period could soon have access the first birth control pill designed to let women suppress monthly bleeding indefinitely.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is expect to announce approval Tuesday for Lybrel, a drug from Wyeth which would be the first pill to be taken continuously.

Comment: More money to be made from women's health and bodies, to the detriment of women.

First the advertising industry creates and sells an artificial image of the 'perfect' woman and then the pharmaceutical industry follows up by selling drugs claiming to make any woman into this artificial 'wonder' woman.

Evil Rays

The classroom 'cancer risk' of wi-fi internet

Britain's top health watchdog has called for an inquiry into the use of wireless Internet networks in schools because of concerns they could be exposing children to the risk of cancer.

The demand came after it was revealed that classroom "wi-fi" networks give off three times as much radiation as a typical mobile phone mast.

Health

Poisoned Toothpaste Made in China

DANYANG, China - Chinese authorities are investigating whether two companies from this coastal region exported tainted toothpaste as more contaminated product, including some made for children, has turned up in Latin America.

A team of government investigators arrived here Sunday afternoon and closed the factory of the Danyang City Success Household Chemical Company, a small building housing about 30 workers in a nearby village, according to villagers and one factory worker. The government also questioned the manager of another toothpaste maker, Goldcredit International Trading, which is in Wuxi, about an hour's drive southeast of here.

Comment: Hmmm... this is getting to be ridiculous. Is everything Made in China tainted or poisoned? Or is it an evil plot to defame the Chinese? Who knows?


Attention

Influenza-Associated Pediatric Mortality and the Increase of Staphylococcus aureus co-infection

CDC is requesting that states report all cases of influenza-related pediatric mortality from the 2006-2007 influenza season.

Since 2004, the Influenza-Associated Pediatric Mortality Surveillance System, part of the Nationally Notifiable Disease Surveillance System, has collected information on deaths among children due to laboratory-confirmed influenza, including the presence of other medical conditions and bacterial infections at the time of death. From October 1, 2006 through May 7, 2007, 55 deaths from influenza in children have been reported to CDC from 23 state health departments and two city health departments. Data on bacterial co-infections were reported for 51 cases; 20 (39%) had a bacterial co-infection, and 16/20 were infected with Staphylococcus aureus. While the number of pediatric influenza associated deaths is similar to that reported during the two previous years, there has been an increase in the number of deaths in which both influenza and pneumonia or bacteremia due to S. aureus were identified. Only one influenza and S. aureus co-infection was identified in 2004-2005, and 3 were identified in 2005-2006. Of the 16 children reported with S. aureus so far in 2006-2007, 11children had methicillin-resistant (MRSA) isolated from a sterile site (9) or sputum (2), and 5 had methicillin-susceptible S.aureus isolated from a sterile site (3) or sputum (2). The median age of children with S. aureus co-infection was older than children without S.aureus co-infection (11 years versus 4 years, p<.01) Children with influenza and S. aureus co-infections were reported to be in good health before illness onset but progressed rapidly to severe illness. Influenza strains isolated from these children have not been different from common strains circulating in the community and the MRSA strains have been typical of those associated with MRSA skin infection outbreaks in the United States.

X

A few facts about biological agents the government and media will never tell you about

The following is a compilation of facts I extracted from a psychology thesis I wrote several years ago entitled "A STUDY FOCUSING ON THE FORMATION OF OPINION, AND THE KNOWLEDGE ASSOCIATED WITH ITS DEVELOPMENT."

The study itself is long and boring but there are some facts I'd like to bring to light about the United States government and the history of biological weapons and warfare, especially as it relates to the aforementioned government.

I want to make this absolutely clear, this particular article should not frighten the reader, the truth is that biological agents are very unpredictable and can harm those that unleash them just as it can those targetted. To sum it up neatly, after decades of research the United States government's conclusion concerning defense against biological agents is that there is no defense against them, a virus can be quickly and inexpensively "tweaked" so that all known vaccines are rendered ineffective, meaning that vaccine manufactureres would have to start all over from the beginning, which is quite time consuming and expensive, thus there really is no point if you get my meaning.

Bulb

Start school later in the morning, say sleepy teens

A survey of sleep-deprived teens finds they think that a later start time for school and tests given later in the school day would result in better grades. The survey was presented at the American Thoracic Society 2007 International Conference, on Sunday, May 20.

The survey of 280 high school students confirmed what most parents with a teenager know: they are not getting enough sleep. More sleep would translate into improved academic performance, according to the teens questioned. They all attended Harriton High School in suburban Philadelphia, where the school day begins at 7:30 a.m. and ends at 2:25 p.m.

The survey found that:

* 78% of students said it was difficult to get up in the morning

* Only 16% said they regularly had enough sleep

* 70% thought their grades would improve if they had more sleep

* 90% thought their academic performance would improve if school were to start later

Bulb

'Star Trek'-type scanning may reveal genetic activity of tumors, Stanford study shows

Peering into the body and visualizing its molecular secrets, once the stuff of science fiction, is one step closer to reality with a study from researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine.

The research team is reporting that by looking at images from radiology scans - such as the CT scans a cancer patient routinely gets - radiologists can discern most of the genetic activity of a tumor. Such information could lead to diagnosing and treating patients individually, based on the unique characteristics of their disease. The study will be published May 21 in the advance online edition of Nature Biotechnology.

"Potentially in the future one can use imaging to directly reveal multiple features of diseases that will make it much easier to carry out personalized medicine, where you are making diagnoses and treatment decisions based exactly on what is happening in a person," said co-senior author Howard Chang, MD, PhD, assistant professor of dermatology at Stanford, who led the genomics arm of the study.

The study's other senior author is Michael Kuo, MD, assistant professor of interventional radiology at UCSD, who said their work will help doctors obtain the molecular details of a specific tumor or disease without having to remove body tissue for a biopsy. "Ideally, we would have personalized medicine achieved in a noninvasive manner," said Kuo, who spearheaded the project in 2001 while he was a radiology resident at Stanford.

Magic Wand

Geographer designs computer model to predict crowd behavior

Patterns of human behavior and movement in crowded cities - the tipping point at which agitated crowds become anti-social mobs, the configuration of civic areas as defensible spaces that also promote free speech, the design of retail space that fosters active walking - are at the core of an immersive 3-D computational model under development by an Arizona State University geographer.

"Crowds are vital to the lifeblood of our cities, yet, crowd behavior is veiled to traditional academic inquiry," says Paul M. Torrens, an assistant professor in the School of Geographical Sciences.

It is impractical, Torrens says, "to establish live experiments with hundreds or thousands of people along busy streetscapes, to reproduce mob behavior during riots for the purposes of academic experimentation, or, to expect to replicate the life and death behavior under emergency situations in a fabricated fashion."

"You couldn't stage a realistic rehearsal of an evacuation because people are not going to panic appropriately, or you could never bulldoze large sections of the city to see how it affects pedestrian flow," he says. Instead, Torrens is developing a realistic computer model that can be used to assist city planners, shopping center developers, public safety and health officials, and researchers in exploring the dynamics of individual pedestrian and crowd behavior in dense urban settings.