Sustainable Pulse are excited to interview Carey Gillam, the author of the stunning new book Whitewash, which unveils the truth about the world's most used herbicide - glyphosate.

It actually was simply a process of doing my job - researching and reporting on the evolving big business of agriculture. Reuters assigned me in 1998 to cover Monsanto and its corporate peers as they competed in what was at that time a new and different way of farming built around genetically engineered seeds. I kept hearing about all the consumer and environmental benefits that these GMO seeds were going to bring, but the reality that was playing out on the ground did not match up with the messaging the corporations were pushing.

Newly released research could strike a blow to the body-positivity movement because it shows that the normalization of larger body sizes is leading to increasing numbers of people underestimating their weight. Consequently, some individuals are not making an effort to lose weight or maintain a healthy weight.

The study by Raya Muttarak, DPhil, from the University of East Anglia and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria, published today in the journal Obesity, showed that the number of overweight people who who underestimate their weight has increased over time, from 48.4 percent to 57.9 percent in men and 24.5 percent to 30.6 percent in women between 1997 and 2015.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) has launched efforts to create a vaccine that would protect people from most flu strains, all at once, with a single shot.

Over the years, I've written many articles refuting claims that vaccines are safe and effective, but we'll put all that aside for the moment and follow the bouncing ball.

Massachusetts Senator and big spender, Ed Markey, has introduced a bill that would shovel no less than a billion dollars toward the universal flu-vaccine project.

Here is a sentence from an NIAID press release that mentions one of several research approaches:

"NIAID Vaccine Research Center scientists have initiated Phase 1/2 studies of a universal flu vaccine strategy that includes an investigational DNA-based vaccine (called a DNA 'prime')..."

This is quite troubling, if you know what the phrase "DNA vaccine" means. It refers to what the experts are touting as the next generation of immunizations.

Aroused
Randi Hutter Epstein
W.W. Norton & Co.

The first scientific experiment on hormones took an approach that sounds unscientific: lopping off roosters' testicles. It was 1848, and Dr. Arnold Berthold castrated two of his backyard roosters. The cocks' red combs faded and shrank, and the birds stopped chasing hens.

Then things got really weird. The doctor castrated two more roosters and implanted a testicle from each into the other's abdomen. As Randi Hutter Epstein writes in a new book, each rooster "had nothing between his drumsticks but a lone testicle in his gut - yet he turned back into a full-fledged hen-chaser, red comb and all." It was the first glimpse that certain body parts must produce internal secretions, as hormones were first known, and that these substances - and not just nerves - were important to the body's control systems.

Two years ago, a group of scientists published an editorial in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease asking the scientific and medical community to investigate a possibility that the herpes virus could contribute to the onset of Alzheimer's disease. It's a controversial topic among scientists, who have long resisted the idea that Alzheimer's might be influenced by microbes. The prevailing hypothesis is that the disease is a result of built-up substances called amyloid beta brain plaques. Now, however, it seems the call to investigate herpes has paid off - big-time.

According to research led by Dr. Joel Dudley - a geneticist and genomic scientist from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai - examinations of genetic material in 876 brains led his team to discover a pattern they hadn't expected (and weren't looking for). Viral DNA from herpes virus 6A was much more common in brains affected by Alzheimer's - as was RNA from HHV-6A and a related form of herpes, HHV-7. Even more striking was the fact that this viral genetic material seemed to interact with genes that affected one's risk of developing Alzheimer's. According to Dudley: "What I believe is that in genetically or physiological susceptible individuals, the virus is acting as an agonist of the disease."

For decades, American consumers have been buying water-resistant packaging and clothing, stain-resistant carpets and Teflon cookware. Now there is growing alarm that the chemical components that give those products their appeal are ending up in the water supply.

Drinking water in 33 states from New Jersey to California has been tainted by per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, more commonly referred to as PFAS. Now they are also showing up in human blood: A 2015 study found PFAS in 97 percent of blood samples tested.

A newly released draft of a report by the Environmental Protection Agency says the substances that have made their way into drinking water are more dangerous to human health than previously thought. Its release was delayed for months after a Trump administration aide said it would create a "public relations nightmare."

The substances are uncommonly difficult to break down. PFAS, of course, are water-resistant, but they are also used in firefighting foam and cookware for their ability to stand up against high temperatures.

Despite that resistance, microscopic particles break off and end up in the food chain, causing health problems from high cholesterol to cancer.

The discovery of the gene editing method known as CRISPR¹ eventually led to a novel gene editing tool called CRISPR-Cas9,² a form of molecular scissors that allows for far more accurate DNA editing for the removal, addition or altering of sections of a DNA sequence. A layman's explanation of the technology is presented in the video above.

CRISPR is the acronym for clustered regularly interspaced short palindrome repeat, and its function was initially discovered in 1993 by Spanish researcher Francisco Mojica.³ Mojica hypothesized CRISPR is an adaptive immune system, which has since been confirmed. Two decades later, in 2013, the technology known as CRISPR-Cas9 was successfully used to edit the genome in eukaryotic cells for the first time, demonstrating targeted genome cleavage could be achieved in mouse and human cells.

As reported by Nature⁴ in 2016, "Researchers use CRISPR-Cas9 to make precise changes to genomes that remove or edit a faulty gene. It has worked on nearly every creature on which they have tested it, including human embryos." In the wake of these discoveries, a number of CRISPR-based companies have sprung to life with the hopes of furthering gene editing in everything from food and medicine⁵ to eventually producing "designer babies" that have had unwanted genetic traits edited out.

However, while CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing is more precise in that you can target a specific area of the genome, two recent studies call for a rethink, as the process of gene editing can trigger cancer.^6,7 As noted by STAT News⁸ these findings could be "a potential game-changer for the companies developing CRISPR-based therapies."

In a breakthrough for medical marijuana use, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the US' first drug made from cannabis oil, designed to treat two rare forms of epilepsy.

The drug, Epidiolex, is made from cannabidol, or CBD, a component of marijuana known for its muscle-relaxing and pain-relieving properties. Administered as a thick oil, CBD was found in clinical trials to drastically reduce seizures in patients suffering from Dravet and Lennox-Gastaut syndromes.

Unlike THC, cannabis' other active component, CBD does not induce a high. Before Epidiolex can be brought to the market, however, the FDA will have to reclassify CBD, which is currently listed as a Schedule 1 drug alongside cocaine, heroin and LSD.

While Epidiolex will only be available to people suffering from two rare conditions, the approval represents a step forward for medical marijuana research, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said in a statement. The FDA has previously approved synthetic versions of THC to treat nausea in chemotherapy patients, but has never approved any medication directly extracted from the cannabis plant.

Natural killer (NK) cells, a specific type of white blood cell, are an important component of your innate immune system. Your immune system consists of two different branches - cell-mediated immunity (innate) and humoral immunity (adaptive). When you contract a viral disease, the pathogen enters your body and infects your cells.

The subsequent disease process involves your cell-mediated immune response, which activates your NK cells, along with chemicals that attract them to the site of infection, where the white blood cells basically chew up and spit out the infected cells. This process clears the virus and rejuvenates the gel-like water inside your cells.

During recovery, your humoral immune system kicks in and starts generating antibodies against the virus to help prevent the same kind of disease process and symptoms from occurring again, should you be exposed to the same virus later on. As long as your cell-mediated immune system is activated first and the humoral immune system is activated second, you will have long-lasting immunity against that pathogen.

On a side note, naturally acquired herd immunity in a population comes into play when a very high percentage of individuals have gone through this sequence of cell-mediated and humoral immune response. This sequence is not followed during vaccination, which is why vaccine-induced "herd immunity" is a misnomer.

The 'melanopic display' is able to reduce or increase the colour.

Cyan - the greenish-blue colour that smartphones and other devices emit - could stop people sleeping properly.

People exposed to screens which emit less cyan felt more sleepy and had higher levels of the 'sleep hormone' melatonin in their system, new research finds.

However, those exposed to more cyan felt more awake and had lower levels of melatonin in their system.