Health & WellnessS


Health

Outrageous! Parents publicize reported link between coal plants and autism

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?


Health

Bill Would Allow Parents To Opt Out Of Vaccines

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.

Heart

United We Stand: When Cooperation Butts Heads with Competition

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.


Cow

U.S. company recalls about 286,000 pounds of meat

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.

Health

Factors in diabetes might trigger Alzheimer's disease, study says

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.

Attention

Lethal Tasers: Evidence that stun guns may stimulate the heart

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.


Health

Children more vulnerable to harmful effects of lead

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.

Health

Potentially fatal intestinal virus spreads in China

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.

Syringe

Anti-cancer jab shunned: One in three girls refuses vaccine to guard against cervical virus

A vaccine against the virus that causes cervical cancer may struggle to reach enough girls, a pilot study has found.

Almost one in three schoolgirls offered the Human Papilloma Virus vaccine in the trial failed to take up the jabs.

The results cast doubt on whether a national vaccination scheme, due to start later this year, will fully succeed.

Comment: Parents have every right to be concerned about the HPV vaccine.

The experts have been warning that the HPV vaccine is risky, expensive, lacks proof of efficiency and is unnecessary :
[..] GARDASIL safety appears to have been studied in fewer than 2,000 girls aged 9 to 15 years pre-licensure clinical trials and it is unclear how long they were followed up. VAERS is now receiving reports of loss of consciousness, seizures, arthritis and other neurological problems in young girls who have received the shot," said NVIC President Barbara Loe Fisher. [..] The cost is going to break the pocketbooks of parents and break the banks of both insurance companies and taxpayers, when the reality is that almost all cases of HPV-associated cervical cancer can be prevented with annual pap screening of girls who are sexually active.
HPV vaccine was developed by a pharmaceutical giant Merck and Co. The advancement of this vaccine is solely due to the company's extensive lobbying effort:
The massive drug company Merck and Co. developed the vaccine. Merck is helping to fund efforts to establish state laws mandating immunization of 11 and 12 year olds, according to a report released by the Life Issues Institute Jan.31. The company has admitted to funneling money through the advocacy group Women in Government, with a membership of female state legislators. (go here for one detailed account) Members of the group have backed many of the state measures to introduce mandatory immunization with Gardasil.

Merck has refused to say how much money is being spent on the lobbying efforts, but reports say their budget in Texas alone has doubled to between $150,000 to $250,000.[..]

[T]he financial boon to Merck would be significant. As it stands the company stands to reach at least $1 billion in sales per year, according to estimates by drug-industry analyst Steve Brozak with WBB Securites.
For further information about unproven claims and additional health risk related to HPV, see the following comprehensive overview.


Heart

We Can Survive but Can We Communicate?

The distance between us is holy ground
To be traversed feet bare,
Arms raised in joyous dance
So that it is crossed.
And the tracks of our pilgrimage shine in the darkness
To light our coming together
In a bright and steady light.


Raphael Jesus Gonzales
Building community as the world unravels

[As promised in my last article "Peak Civilization And The Winter Of Our Disconnect", my colleague and friend, Sally Erickson and I are offering what we believe are vitally important tools for enhancing communication with our peers as we navigate collapse.-CB]

When we think of preparing our minds, bodies, hearts, and living situations for collapse, the focus is often on our individual or household living situations. Equally important is our need to develop a circle of trusting, mutually interdependent relationships. The culture we live in is based on hierarchies of control and influence. Work relationships, kept in place largely by paychecks and ordered by project managers and bosses, are the most common experience most of us have of being part of an organized group. We have little experience outside of those hierarchies. Even more rare in our hyper-independent culture is to depend on others for mutual aid, support and comfort. So, for most people, it likely feels overwhelming to consider how to build a wider circle of people based on mutuality, as part of preparation for the ongoing collapse of basic life support systems.