Dhaka - The UN's World Food Programme began distributing emergency food aid on Sunday to 120,000 people facing famine in south eastern Bangladesh, where an invasion of rats led to widespread crop destruction.
People from the affected areas in the Chittagong hill tracks were struggling to feed themselves and had been eating wild roots from the jungle ever since the area was overrun by millions of rats, the WFP said.
Danger Is My Middle Name--And So Is Yours
As soon as there is life there is danger. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
- 1 -Danny Shahar wrote an excellent column for STR recently (
Paternalists Just Don't Understand) about drug prohibition. Shahar's column reminded me that I have been meaning to write a column of my own on the topic, covering only the two most basic arguments for freedom on this issue. So, with a nod of appreciation to Danny, here is that two-point column:
The United State Court of Federal Claims began another hearing on Monday to decide whether vaccines containing a toxic preservative known as thimerosal should be responsible for autism in thousands of children who received the vaccines, The New York Times reports. The results of the hearing are not expected until next year.
This hearing was said to be the second in a series of three in which the court is considering whether the government should pay millions to the families of some 4,800 autistic children. Parents in the case are claiming that thimerosal damaged their children's brains leading to development of autism. The toxic preservative was removed from pediatric vaccines starting in 2001. Now in some pediatric vaccines if not all, another toxic preservative, an aluminum compound, is used.
Insecticides in pet shampoos trigger autism spectrum disorder (ASD), according to survey results presented Thursday at the International Meeting for Autism Research in London.
According to one of the first large-scale population-based studies to look how environmental factors and their interactions with genes contribute to the condition, mothers of children with an ASD were twice as likely to have reported using pet shampoos containing a class of insecticide called pyrethrins as those of healthy children.
Monsanto-funded spokesman, Doug Johnson, recently wrote about one of Montville's main concerns with genetically modified seeds: health.
Corporations that create genetically modified organisms (and stand to make billions when on the market) do most of the testing, along with government agencies under enormous lobbying pressure.
Independent third-party testing does not exist.
How can we know if people are having adverse reactions when labels don't tell us which GMOs people are consuming?
Perhaps the recent rise in autism is due to GMO foods?
China's capital has recorded its first death from an outbreak of hand, foot and mouth disease as authorities try to contain the spread of a potent virus just three months before the city hosts the Olympic Games.
Women who are stressed during pregnancy may pass some of that frazzlement to their fetuses in the form of increased sensitivity to allergen exposure and possibly future asthma risk, according to researchers from Harvard Medical School who will present their findings at the American Thoracic Society's 2008 International Conference in Toronto on Sunday, May 18.
"While predisposition to asthma may be, in part, set at birth, the factors that may determine this are not strictly genetic. Certain substances in the environment that cause allergies, such as dust mites, can increase a child's chance of developing asthma and the effects may begin before birth," said Rosalind J. Wright, M.D., M.P.H., assistant professor of medicine at Brigham & Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
Mother's stress during pregnancy can also influence the babies developing immune system. While animal studies suggest that the combination of stress and allergen exposure during pregnancy may magnify the effects on the immune system, this is the first human study to examine this directly. The researchers analyzed levels of maternal stress and mother's exposure to dust mite allergen in their homes while pregnant with respect to cord blood IgE expression - a marker of the child's immune response at birth - in 387 infants enrolled in the Asthma Coalition on Community, Environment, and Social Stress (ACCESS) project in Boston.
People with severe obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) on commercial airline flights may have a greater risk of adverse events from cardiac stress than healthy people, according to new research to be presented at the American Thoracic Society's 2008 International Conference in Toronto on Sunday, May 18.
The researchers compared oxygen levels and ventilation of healthy people and people with severe OSA during simulated flight conditions replicating the oxygen and pressure levels of typical commercial flights that have "cabin altitudes" (a measure of the air pressure and oxygen) ranging from 6,000 feet and 8,000 feet - the maximum allowed, even if the airplane is flying at 30,000 feet. This is the first study to use these measurements to assess fitness to fly without supplemental oxygen.
Men who come to the hospital with pneumonia generally are sicker than women and have a higher risk of dying over the next year, despite aggressive medical care, according to a study being presented Tuesday, May 20, at the 104th International Conference of the American Thoracic Society. Scientific sessions are scheduled May 16 to 21 in Toronto.
"It is well known that women live longer than men. We have always assumed that these differences occur because men engage in riskier behaviors and have a greater burden of chronic diseases," said Sachin Yende, M.D., study co-author and assistant professor in the Department of Critical Care Medicine, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. "Our study showed that men were more likely to die up to a year after pneumonia, despite adjusting for health behaviors and chronic conditions. Further, our findings indicate this may be linked to differences in immune response."
The University of Pittsburgh researchers evaluated data from 1,136 men and 1,047 women with symptoms of pneumonia who were treated at 28 hospital emergency departments in the United States.
A total of 92 people, including 87 children, were hospitalized in eastern Ukraine as of early Sunday after measles vaccination, Ukraine's emergencies ministry said.
On May 13, a 17-year-old boy died after measles inoculation in the Donetsk Region. Two days later, over 60 people in eastern Ukraine were hospitalized after vaccination. A total of over 20,000 people in the region received the same vaccine.
