Health & WellnessS


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As drug industry's influence over research grows, so does the potential for bias

Peter Whoriskey
Washington Post
Sat, 24 Nov 2012 16:56 UTC
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© biotech-weblog.com
For drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline, the 17-page article in the New England Journal of Medicine represented a coup.

The 2006 report described a trial that compared three diabetes drugs and concluded that Avandia, the company's new drug, performed best.

"We now have clear evidence from a large international study that the initial use of [Avandia] is more effective than standard therapies," a senior vice president of GlaxoSmithKline, Lawson Macartney, said in a news release.

What only careful readers of the article would have gleaned is the extent of the financial connections between the drugmaker and the research. The trial had been funded by GlaxoSmithKline, and each of the 11 authors had received money from the company. Four were employees and held company stock. The other seven were academic experts who had received grants or consultant fees from the firm.
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Syringe

Huge increases in parents who refuse to vaccinate their children

Ellen Feely
3AW693, Australia
Sun, 25 Nov 2012 21:04 UTC
Vaccinations
© 3AW693, Australia
The medical community has called for the anti-immunisation lobby to wind back its efforts after figures showed the number of parents refusing to vaccinate their children has increased six fold.

The Academy of Science, supported by the Australian Medical Association, is today launching a 20-page booklet to explain the benefits of immunisation and try to debunk common myths.

Neil Mitchell has said that in his non-expert view, the actions taken by parents who refuse to vaccinate their children is 'tantamount to child abuse'.

President of the Australian Vaccination Network, Meryl Dorey told Neil Mitchell the government and media had worked to 'actively suppress' information regarding the risks immunisation posed, and said she supported people's right to make their own choice.

"We believe that everyone has the right to make an informed decision about vaccination, and that includes having access to both sides of this issue," she said.

"We absolutely oppose any form of compulsory vaccination."

Ms Dorey said whooping cough vaccinations had reached their highest level, yet the number of reported cases of whooping cough had also reached a crescendo.

"We have more whooping cough now than we had since before the vaccine was added to the mass vaccination schedule in 1953," she said.
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Magnify

New molecular culprit linked to breast cancer progression


ScienceDaily
Sun, 25 Nov 2012 13:36 UTC
Johns Hopkins researchers have uncovered a protein "partner" commonly used by breast cancer cells to unlock genes needed for spreading the disease around the body. A report on the discovery, published November 5 on the website of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, details how some tumors get the tools they need to metastasize.

"We've identified a protein that wasn't known before to be involved in breast cancer progression," says Gregg Semenza, M.D., Ph.D., the C. Michael Armstrong Professor of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and director of the Vascular Program at Hopkins' Institute for Cell Engineering. "The protein JMJD2C is the key that opens up a whole suite of genes needed for tumors to grow and metastasize, so it represents a potential target for cancer drug development."

Semenza and his colleagues made their finding when they traced the activity of HIF-1, a protein known to switch on hundreds of genes involved in development, red blood cell production, and metabolism in normal cells. Previous studies had shown that HIF-1 could also be hijacked to switch on genes needed to make breast tumors more malignant.
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Health

Is 'The New Normal' Total Control?

Anne Gordon, RN
GreenMedInfo
Sun, 25 Nov 2012 05:00 UTC
Total Control
© GreenMedInfo
It appears that food, air, water, power, pets, and your physiology, etc., are targets for control. Think about it. We have already unknowingly eaten GM food, been victims of toxic environmental disasters, un-leashed depleted uranium upon the earth, yet we sit on the sidelines watching total control unfold.

Today we have diseases that did not exist in the past, with odd symptoms. Clever people name them something and they become a new normal 'abnormal'. For example, fibromyalgia, was not a popular diagnosis in the 60's, yet today, it is more common, than not. We see 'run away' morbid obesity, and people who become helpless pharmaceutical repositories obediently following their prescribed chemical path. Each in hopes to actualize their dreams of being healthy and happy again.

For a few years, genetically modified mosquitoes have been released as experiments in the Cayman Islands, Malaysia, and Brazil. Today, that manufacturer of these GM insects want to release millions in Britain, but not just mosquitos. This company has been recently working on genetically modifying the diamond-back moth in addition to the already released mosquito. The large British corporation has been working on the GM insects designed to kill off pests feeding on cabbage, broccoli, tomatoes, fruit, and olives.

This sort of insect manipulation is being sold as a 'green' alternative to spraying. (As if spraying would stop). The technology involves inserting a 'lethal' gene into male insects (to prevent the females from reproducing) which is passed on to offspring, such as caterpillars that die quickly....this theoretically boosts farm yields (profits). The original idea was that reduction of the mosquitoes could reduce Dengue fever to humans.
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Dollars

Greed: The ultimate addiction

Leon F. Seltzer, Ph.D.
Psychology Today
Wed, 17 Oct 2012 19:08 UTC
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What's the unquenchable thirst for wealth all about?

What connects the various addictions is that enough is never enough - not for long anyway. As addicts progress (or rather, regress) into their addiction, to derive sufficient gratification they must constantly seek more and more of their drug of choice. For "more" is the keyword of addiction. It doesn't matter whether they're addicted to a substance, relationship, or activity - the "ante" for getting enough of the object of their craving must continually be raised.

But of all the things one might be addicted to, nothing tops the greed-laden pursuit of wealth in its audacity, manipulativeness, and gross insensitivity to the needs and feelings of others. Not to mention its extreme, short-sighted, irresponsible covetousness. Ask a multi-millionaire or billionaire so afflicted (if you can find one willing to talk to you!), and you'll discover that their "mega-fortune quest" really has no end point. They won't be able to name the definitive "millionth" or "billionth" that, finally, will do it for them. They can't because the means by which they reap their riches has itself become the end.

Chasing every financial opportunity - and, it cannot be overemphasized, to the detriment of virtually everything else in their life - has become their be-all and end-all. For that, frankly, is where the dopamine is: the master molecule of pleasure and motivation. And the "end" for them is simply the high (or dopamine release) they receive each time they do a deal, turn a profit, or make a "killing." And just like other addicts, over time (because of the related phenomena of tolerance and dependency) they'll need to make bigger and bigger "killings" to get the ego gratification they require in order to feel good about themselves.
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Sheeple

Yes - You are what you eat

Dan and Sheila Gendron
Activist Post
Fri, 23 Nov 2012 18:46 UTC
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© proverbialchallenge.org
First of all, let me say here that we are not offering medical advice. The information here is simply our opinion, based on our own research and experience.

If you are wondering how it has been so easy for TPTB to have turned the overwhelming majority of American population into sheep who believe everything they are told and comply with outrageous demands and actions, it is partly because they have for decades been replacing our good, healthy, natural foods with foods laced with poisons.

Why would anyone take pleasure in adulterating the food supply? Try this theory - if TPTB can make the masses believe that the cheap crap they get fed (butter substitutes from hydrogenated oils, sugar substitutes, flavor substitutes, etc.) is actually good food, then the less the peons need to have money and the more money is available for TPTB to harvest.

The assault has been revved up in the recent past with MSGs (monosodium glutamates - of whatever name they call it, and there's a list a mile long), HFCS (high fructose corn syrup), Artificial Sweeteners, GMO (genetically modified organisms), Canola Oil, Hydrogenated Oils and emasculating Soy products among the worst, as well as fluoride in the water.
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Beaker

The everyday chemical that makes breast cancer 5 times more likely in high doses

Jim Morris
The Center for Public Integrity
Mon, 19 Nov 2012 13:33 UTC
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A new study exposes the high levels of breast cancer in women who work with chemicals that have entered our air and water.

Windsor, Ontario - For more than three decades, workers, most of them women, have complained of dreadful conditions in many of this city's plastic automotive parts factories: Pungent fumes and dust that caused nosebleeds, headaches, nausea and dizziness. Blobs of smelly, smoldering plastic dumped directly onto the floor. "It was like hell," says one woman who still works in the industry.

The women fretted, usually in private, about what seemed to be an excess of cancer and other diseases in the factories across the river from Detroit. "People were getting sick, but you never really thought about the plastic itself," said Gina DeSantis, who has worked at a plant near Windsor for 25 years.

Now, workers like DeSantis are the focal point of a new study that appears to strengthen the tie between breast cancer and toxic exposures.
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Syringe

New SARS-related virus has now infected six, killed two

Jennifer Yang
Toronto Star
Fri, 23 Nov 2012 10:34 UTC
A new coronavirus from the same family as SARS has now infected six people in the Middle East, two of whom have died, the World Health Organization announced Friday.

The UN health agency said four new cases have been confirmed, in addition to a previous patient from Saudi Arabia, who died in June, and another one from Qatar still undergoing treatment in the United Kingdom.

Three of the new cases are Saudis - and two are family members who lived together, the WHO said in a news release. One died and the other is recovering.

Two other relatives of that family have also shown the pneumonia-like symptoms of the novel coronavirus. One relative died but laboratory results have not yet confirmed whether he or she had the virus; the second relative is recovering and tested negative.

The fourth of the new cases is a Qatari citizen, according to the WHO. On Friday, Germany's national health institute also announced a German clinic had been treating a Qatari patient with the novel coronavirus, who fell ill in October and was released this week.
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Syringe

Oklahoma Doctors vs. Obamacare

Jim Epstein
Reason TV
Thu, 15 Nov 2012 00:00 UTC
Three years ago, Dr. Keith Smith, co-founder and managing partner of the Surgery Center of Oklahoma, took an initiative that would only be considered radical in the health care industry: He posted online a list of prices for 112 common surgical procedures. The 51-year-old Smith, a self-described libertarian, and his business partner, Dr. Steve Lantier, founded the Surgery Center 15 years ago, after they became disillusioned with the way patients were treated at St. Anthony Hospital in Oklahoma City, where the two men worked as anesthesiologists. In 1997, Smith and Lantier bought the shell of a former surgical center with the aim of creating a for-profit facility that could deliver first-rate care at a fraction of what traditional hospitals charge.


The major cause of exploding U.S. heath care costs is the third-party payer system, a text-book concept in which A buys goods or services from B that are paid for by C.

Because private insurance companies or the government generally pick up most of the tab for medical services, patients don't have the normal incentive to seek out value.

The Surgery Center's consumer-driven model could become increasingly common as Americans look for alternatives to the traditional health care market - an unintended consequence of Obamacare. Patients may have no choice but to look outside the traditional health care industry in the face of higher costs and reduced access to doctors and hospitals.
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Arrow Up

30 years of breast screening: 1.3 million wrongly treated

Sayer Ji
GreenMedInfo
Thu, 22 Nov 2012 08:00 UTC
Surgery
© GreenMedInfo
The breast cancer industry's holy grail (that mammography is the primary weapon in the war against breast cancer) has been disproved. In fact, mammography appears to have CREATED 1.3 million cases of breast cancer in the U.S. population that were not there.

A disturbing new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine is bringing mainstream attention to the possibility that mammography has caused far more harm than good in the millions of women who have employed it over the past 30 years as their primary strategy in the fight against breast cancer.[i]

Titled "Effect of Three Decades of Screening Mammography on Breast-Cancer Incidence," researchers estimated that among women younger than 40 years of age, breast cancer was overdiagnosed, i.e. "tumors were detected on screening that would never have led to clinical symptoms," in 1.3 million U.S. women over the past 30 years. In 2008, alone, "breast cancer was overdiagnosed in more than 70,000 women; this accounted for 31% of all breast cancers diagnosed."

As we revealed in a previous article,[ii] the primary form of mammography-detected breast cancer is ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), also known as 'stage zero' or 'non-invasive breast cancer.' Unlike truly invasive cancer, which expands outward like the crab after which it was named (Greek: Cancer = Crab), ductal carcinoma is in situ, i.e. situated, non-moving - an obvious contradiction in terms.
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