Health & WellnessS


Cow

Got Antibiotics in Your Food? Thank the FDA

The July 3 FDA directive was straightforward.

Routine dosing of farm animals with cephalosporin antibiotics to prevent disease and promote growth would be prohibited effective October 1, 2008.

"We are issuing this order based on evidence that extralabel use of these drugs in food-producing animals will likely cause an adverse event in humans and, as such, presents a risk to the public health."

No kidding. The American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, Infectious Disease Society of America, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Pew Commission have all indicted livestock antibiotics for creeping human antibiotic resistance--including to last chance antibiotics.

"Antibiotic-Resistant Bugs in the 21st Century--A Clinical Super-Challenge," read an article in the January 29, 2009 New England Journal of Medicine.

But on November 25 after getting a trough full from agribusiness and big pharma--70 percent of whose antibiotic sales are agricultural--the FDA quietly revoked the ban to "more fully consider the many substantive comments it received" about the prohibition.

Sun

Vitamin D is ray of sunshine for multiple sclerosis patients

Multiple sclerosis could be prevented through daily vitamin D supplements, scientists told The Times last night.
TOL MS
© Time OnlineAn MRI scan of the brain of a multiple sclerosis sufferer

The first causal link has been established between the "sunshine vitamin" and a gene that increases the risk of MS, raising the possibility that the debilitating auto-immune disease could be eradicated.

Syringe

Vaccine Court: Hepatitis B Shot Caused MS

All eyes are on Vaccine Court this week, as people await rulings in the autism "test cases" on MMR and thimerosal. But another omnibus proceeding involving Hepatitis B vaccine and autoimmune disorders in adults, including MS, has already been quietly ruling in favor of several petitioners. (HERE)

Syringe

Flashback World Health Organization Vaccine Recommendations: Scientific Flaws, or Criminal Misconduct?

ABSTRACT

While much information concerning World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations on vaccines, particularly against hepatitis B, remains secret, there is sufficient evidence in the open literature to suggest scientific incompetence, misconduct, or even criminal malfeasance. The benefits are overstated and toxicity greatly understated. Influenza vaccine recommendations falsely imply that the available vaccines could help prevent avian influenza.

After the universal campaign of vaccination against hepatitis B was launched in France in September 1994 upon the recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO), a criminal inquiry was opened because of the demand by the relatives of people, some of them children, who had died after being immunized.

Having been commissioned as a medical expert witness by the French judge, I have spent thousands of hours on this subject, and had access to dozens of confidential documents. Although my reports are still secret by court order, a number of my findings were leaked after being transmitted to the litigants. Thus, it is possible to find a significant echo of my observations in published data. The main points of this paper were taken from an open letter sent to WHO's Director General in Nov. 2005, which remains unanswered.

Pills

Synthroid Sucks! The Rallying Cry of Thyroid Patients vs. Clueless Doctors

The advent of the Internet plopped into the laps of hapless hypothyroid patients like gold by the turn of this century-the seed of a now-fervent global movement against a 50-year medical scandal.

In 1955, Knoll Pharmaceuticals of Germany developed the ever well-known Synthroid, a synthetic T4-only thyroid storage hormone pill. It was not the first time T4 was used. T4 was first isolated in 1914, then produced and used intravenously in 1926-27. But it lost favor due to its light and air instability, besides due to the fact that another treatment, desiccated thyroid, was working anyway.

When Knoll reintroduced it years later, they used strategic marketing, promoting it as a "new and modern" treatment and convincing doctors to switch nearly all hypothyroid patients to Synthroid by the 1960's. Later, other pharmaceuticals followed suit, promoting their brands of synthetic T4. Newly diagnosed hypothyroid patients followed suit.

Pills

Doctors: Under the drug industry's influence?

Reports of undisclosed financial ties between researchers and drugmakers have eroded public confidence, and restoring it will require an end to some "free" perks, health policy experts said on Tuesday.

Doctors may have to give up not just pens and prescription pads, but cozy seminars put on by drug companies in the guise of education, while the companies may need to give up direct-to-consumer ads, the experts wrote in a series of commentaries in the British Medical Journal.

People

How to Control a Herd of Humans

Human
© UnknownActivities performed in unison, like marching or dancing, increase loyalty to the group.

Hitler and Mussolini both had the ability to bend millions of people to their fascist will. Now evidence from psychology and neurology is emerging to explain how tactics like organized marching and propaganda can work to exert mass mind control.

Scott Wiltermuth of Stanford University in California and colleagues have found that activities performed in unison, such as marching or dancing, increase loyalty to the group. "It makes us feel as though we're part of a larger entity, so we see the group's welfare as being as important as our own," he says.

Wiltermuth's team separated 96 people into four groups who performed these tasks together: listening to a song while silently mouthing the words, singing along, singing and dancing, or listening to different versions of the song so that they sang and danced out of sync. In a later game, when asked to decide whether to stick with the group or strive for personal gain, those in the non-synchronized group behaved less loyally than the rest (Psychological Science, vol 20, p 1).

Comment: This brings to question "Are Americans just sheep following the herd?" when considering President Obama's popularity and charisma. Are we more susceptible to the conformity of the mass...or to Obama's powerful hypnosis?


Attention

Psychiatry's 'Shock Doctrine': Are We Really OK With Electroshocking Toddlers?

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. -- C.S. Lewis

Psychiatry's "shock doctrine" is quite literally electroshock, and its latest victims are - I'm not kidding - young children.

On Jan. 25, 2009, the Herald Sun in Melbourne, Australia, reported: "Children younger than 4 who are considered mentally disturbed are being treated with controversial electric shock treatment." In Australia, the use of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is increasing, and the Herald Sun's report on "Child Shock Therapy" stated that last year, "statistics record 203 ECT treatments on children younger than 14 -- including 55 aged 4 and younger."

Magnify

Behind Closed Eyes

Even when our eyes are closed, the visual centers in our brain are humming with activity.

Weizmann Institute scientists and others have shown in the last few years that the magnitude of sense-related activity in a brain that's disengaged from seeing, touching, etc., is quite similar to that of one exposed to a stimulus. New research at the Institute has now revealed details of that activity, explaining why, even though our sense centers are working, we don't experience sights or sounds when there's nothing coming in through our sensory organs.

The previous studies of Prof. Rafael Malach and research student Yuval Nir of the Neurobiology Department used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure brain activity in active and resting states. But fMRI is an indirect measurement of brain activity; it can't catch the nuances of the pulses of electricity that characterize neuron activity.

Together with Prof. Itzhak Fried of the University of California at Los Angeles and a team at the EEG unit of the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, the researchers found a unique source of direct measurement of electrical activity in the brain: data collected from epilepsy patients who underwent extensive testing, including measurement of neuronal pulses in various parts of their brain, in the course of diagnosis and treatment.

Einstein

Rapid Thinking Makes People Happy

Accelerated thoughts may trigger the brain's novelty-loving reward system.

Lousy day? Don't try to think happy thoughts - just think fast. A new study shows that accelerated thinking can improve your mood. In six experiments, researchers at Princeton and Harvard universities made research participants think quickly by having them generate as many problem-solving ideas (even bad ones) as possible in 10 minutes, read a series of ideas on a computer screen at a brisk pace or watch an I Love Lucy video clip on fast-forward. Other participants performed similar tasks at a relaxed speed.

Results suggested that thinking fast made participants feel more elated, creative and, to a lesser degree, energetic and powerful. Activities that promote fast thinking, then, such as whip­ping through an easy crossword puzzle or brain-storming quickly about an idea, can boost energy and mood, says psychologist Emily Pronin, the study's lead author.