Studies show that deaths from hepatitis C (HCV) infection among US adults outnumber AIDS fatalities. And while greedy pharmaceutical giants advertise new drugs that cost a fortune, Oxford dons claim success in developing anti-HCV vaccine.

­Hepatitis C virus, or HCV, causes serious liver infection which can eventually lead to fatal liver scarring (cirrhosis) and liver cancer. It usually passes with infected blood, and therefore, most people contract the disease in medical facilities through improperly sterilized medical instruments or while injecting drugs with shared needles.

Up to 80 per cent of all cases end with chronic infection, when the virus persists for many years, quietly damaging the liver and rarely causing any noticeable symptoms.

However, hepatitis C can turn deadly very quickly, especially when alcohol is involved on a regular basis. Another piece of bad news is that HCV is extremely difficult to get rid of, as well as it is the only type of hepatitis infection which cannot be prevented by vaccination.

­Alarming trend

­Up to 170 million people are estimated to be infected with HCV worldwide, says the World Health Organization. However, the fact that the virus lacks visible symptoms could mean that the real figure is much higher. In Egypt alone, staggering 22 per cent of the population is HCV-positive, making it the world's worst-affected country.

In the past couple of years, as studies have come out sounding the alarm on the ill-effects of excessive sitting, the popularity of standing or stand-up desks has soared. Those who have read much of the coverage of this trend might be forgiven for thinking that standing to work constitutes a new hip fad.

But as it is with many things, everything old is new again. For the stand-up desk was cool long before the cats in Silicon Valley got hip to them. They've actually been a secret of great men for centuries. Today we'll explore the standing desk's place in history, discuss the benefits of using one, and outline how you can rediscover this old/new tradition.

Farmer Faces Possible 3-year Prison Term for Feeding Community Customers and Other Supporters Stand with Farmer

Baraboo, Wisconsin - Food sovereignty activists from around North America will meet at this tiny town on March 2 to support Wisconsin dairy farmer Vernon Hershberger and food sovereignty. Hershberger, who has a court hearing that day, is charged with four criminal misdemeanors that could land him in prison for three years with fines of over $10,000. The Wisconsin Department of Agricultural Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP) targeted Hershberger for supplying a private buying club with fresh milk and other farm products.

The motor skills of 2-year-olds - their ability to manipulate their body's movements - are linked to levels of a household pesticide measured in their first stool, finds a large study from the Philippines.

Higher prenatal exposure to an insecticide commonly used worldwide was associated with poorer motor development in the children at 2 years of age, suggesting that in utero carbamate pesticide exposures may have lasting consequences.

The study is one of the first to assess developmental affects of gestational exposure to the pesticide propoxur on children's growing nervous system. The study - which followed 696 children from the Philippines - is published online in the journal Neurotoxicology.

A number of human studies have reported that gestational exposure to pesticides is associated with poorer mental development in children. Most of these prior studies have relied on the mother's exposure, which is typically measured in urine or by questionnaire. This new study is unique since it was able to directly measure the infants' pesticide exposure during gestation.

Since 1978 there have been a number of studies investigating whether or not corn gluten is a problem for patients with gluten sensitivity. The answer many give is that corn is perfectly safe for celiac patients. The big question is why would this advise be given if there are multiple studies showing quite the opposite? So many products that are labeled gluten free contain corn gluten or corn byproducts.

With the rise of the booming gluten free food market (billions in revenue annually), the question needs to be asked with more scrutiny. Why?

Most people have taken an aspirin at one point or another in their life. Whether it was for a headache, a fever or any other pain, its typical use as a popular drug is something almost pervasive in the modern West.

Aspirin is also recommended to older patients as a daily use treatment for inflammation and heart health, but there are a number of considerations that should be pointed out when accepting or advocating the use of aspirin in general. In ancient times, physicians would use willow tree bark, which actually contains the salicylic acid - the same ingredient used to synthesize aspirin today. Traditional physicians would use this as a natural treatment for aches, pains and fever. Despite the fact that this is a legitimate natural cure, aspirin itself is chemically manufactured and often comes with a number of side effects.

The most common of these is gastrointestinal disturbance, often causing stomach ulcers and intestinal bleeding. Numerous studies have been conducted on daily aspirin use for over two decades, with some further shocking conclusions. Those on daily aspirin regimens had a twofold increase in hemorrhagic brain strokes, which cripple and kill. What's more? Fatal heart attacks were actually not reduced at all by taking low dose aspirin daily. The 'aspirin a day' method is supposed to help prevent heart ailments in people with heart conditions, and has been popularly pushed as a positive prevention measure for artery clogging.

It's expected that a routine aspirin user is subjecting themselves to these risks more often by doing so.

The psychiatric community as well as health and government officials have been pushing antidepressants on the people for years. Instead of addressing the underlying cause of such negative feelings, psychiatrists and medical representatives have been making you think that the only answer to depression is an antidepressant drug. However, the claims that antidepressants are the answer are completely false, but many will refuse to admit the truth to the public. Why? Perhaps it has to do with the fact that antipsychotics raked in over $14 billion in sales back in 2008.

Those pushing antidepressants would at least have an argument for their use if the drugs worked, but they aren't even effective. In fact, the pills have been shown to worsen depression. The Food and Drug Administration even admits that antidepressants are more than capable of causing suicidal thoughts and an increased risk of suicide. According to research concerning antidepressant trials, around 1 in 5 patients on popular Cymbalta and other related pharmaceuticals may actually feel worse than those given placebo pills. Despite the evidence linking popular antidepressants like Prozac to suicide, more than 1 in 10 Americans over the age of 12 are now taking antidepressants prescribed by their doctors.

Recently, thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, data was requested and received showing that big pharma has known as along that the drugs don't work. After studying placebos for over 30 years, Irving Kirsch of Havard Medical School requested unpublished studies which show that antidepressants provide almost no benefit, while placebos prove effective. Seeing as placebos are almost always more or just as effective, the push for antidepressants is both useless and irresponsible.

It is inhumane, in my opinion, to force people who have a genuine medical need for coffee to wait in line behind people who apparently view it as some kind of recreational activity. ~ David Barry

Coffee is a drug, we know that. Some of us in fact revel in its addictive properties, as it comes with a certain -- albeit a tad bit pathological -- industriousness. After all, is there anyone more disciplined/obsessed than a coffee drinker -- at least, that is, when it comes to acquiring and drinking coffee? You can set your clocks with exactitude to the performance of their daily coffee-associated machinations -- they themselves often setting their coffee makers to clocks, so as not to delay or miss an opportunity to imbibe. The type of sober religiosity required to turn drinking a beverage into a ritual is known only by a few Zen tea drinkers and quite possibly billions of habitual coffee drinkers.

Let us also not forget that one of the first documented uses of coffee over 500 years ago was in the Sufi monasteries of Yemen where coffee was known as qahhwat al-bun, or, the 'wine of the bean,' the phrase which provided the etymological origin of the word coffee. Once lauded as a "miracle drug" and used as a sacrament in late-night rituals to invoke the sensation of God within revelers, still today, coffee drinkers are known to cast themselves into bouts of coffee-drinking induced reverie and enthusiasm (literally: en "in" + theos "god" or "god-filled") by drinking this strangely intoxicating, and yet somehow still sobering concoction.

It is interesting that even addictions can be viewed as a form of ritual -- albeit degenerated ones (i.e. less regenerative than truly sacred ones), performed with less consciousness than would be expected of a holy, whole-making act. But that cup of Joe gets us up in the morning to perform our secular duties, which says a lot considering what many of us are forced or coerced to do for a living.

There's no such thing as safe and accidents are always covered up. So why let Obama build a whole new generation of reactors?

In March 2011, novelist Kristen Iversen's memoir, Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats, was waiting sedately among piles of other manuscripts at various publishing houses. Then, Japan was hit by a tsunami, and the cooling systems of the Fukushima nuclear reactor were overwhelmed, giving the world apocalyptic images of toxic floods and floating cars, of whole provinces made uninhabitable.

Immediately, Iversen's book was auctioned, and the timing of its publication, in June, could not be better - since, incredibly, in the shadow of the Fukushima disaster, and even as Japan and other nations see movements against the use of nuclear power ever again - President Obama is planning more investment in nuclear energy. The US is soon to start construction on several new reactors for the first time in three decades.

Iversen, a soft-spoken woman with a laid-back western vibe, wearing jeans and lavender scarf, seems an unlikely prophet of nuclear catastrophe. But her message is searing. She grew up in a small town near Rocky Flats, Colorado, where a secret nuclear weapons plant built over 70,000 plutonium "triggers" for nuclear bombs.

Iversen spoke with me this week about her research in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where we were at a writer's conference. She explained that "triggers" was a euphemism: the plant, which, throughout her childhood, was so secret that her mother believed they made cleaning supplies, was actually producing plutonium "buttons." In other words, these were the nuclear bombs themselves; they needed only a casing of explosives to be activated.