At least five people in the Balkans have died from West Nile virus and several dozen others have been hospitalized in the past four weeks, according to health authorities in Serbia, Kosovo, Macedonia and Croatia.

West Nile virus is a mosquito-borne disease usually found in temperate and tropical regions. While many cases are mild and have no symptoms, severe disease symptoms can include headaches, high fever, neck stiffness, coma, tremors, convulsions, muscle weakness and paralysis.

Kosovo confirmed its first fatality on Wednesday, saying the victim was a woman from central Kosovo who died on Sept 14. Macedonia's health officials said on Thursday one woman had died and two other people were infected with the virus.

The first-ever lifetime feeding study¹ evaluating the health risks of genetically engineered foods was published online on September 19, and the results are troubling, to say the least. This new study joins a list of over 30 other animal studies showing toxic or allergenic problems with genetically engineered foods.

The study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Food and Chemical Toxicology, found that rats fed a type of genetically engineered corn that is prevalent in the US food supply for two years developed massive mammary tumors, kidney and liver damage, and other serious health problems.

A shocking report shows that one in ten American teens are now suffering from liver disease - a direct result of the distortion and pollution of our food system that allows fructose to be treated as if it's perfectly safe.

In a shocking report that bodes ill for the future health of the generation now entering adulthood, ten percent of today's teens in the United States suffers from nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).

Data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) was examined by Marilyn Vos of Emery University. NHANES recorded data on 10,359 teenagers aged 12-18 from 1988-2008. Vos and co-researchers found that 9.9% have NAFLD.

Even more ominously, Vos stated that NAFLD "seems to be increasing faster than the prevalence of obesity." Previously, the disease has been very closely associated with obesity. Now, though, it's clear that there's more than excess weight driving the increase in liver disease.

Pharmaceutical companies have been fined a record $11 billion over the past 3 years for unethical and illegal practices. But leading researchers says companies will carry on breaking the law, regarding fines as "the cost of doing business."

­Eight out of 10 of the biggest pharmaceutical producers in the world have been caught breaking the law in this period. All in all 26 healthcare companies have signed "corporate integrity agreements" with US authorities, a form of probation following serious fraud.

Above all else, the United States is the marketing capital of the world. Our society is built around products and services and all the ways they are advertised to us in a way designed to outpace the competition. While it may be unethical to do so, marketing fosters its share of lying, truth-twisting and censorship by omission. The food industry is a model food chain - the big guys try to swallow the small guys, which is why organic foods are slandered by food giants and Big Agra.

Over the years I have read several so-called "studies" that would have us believe that organic foods are no different than non-organic foods. While these may be confusing for many people, those who have been eating organically for many years remain unmoved. The scientific evidence of the dangers of pesticides and other chemicals used in growing and processing non-organic foods is too great to ignore.

One simple question cuts to the heart of the matter

Ultimately, to cut through the confusion, we can ask this one question to appeal to reason over the organic food issue: In what instance would it ever be advantageous and beneficial to ingest pesticides? The question is easy for health-minded people to answer, but impossible for conventional food producers to answer honestly.

Clearly, it is never a good idea to eat pesticides, for many sound reasons.

Despite piles of research suggesting that Roundup is dangerous, the Big Apple continues to douse its parks with the stuff - potentially exposing millions of New Yorkers to toxic effects.

On Monday morning, a group plans to assemble in New York City's Times Square to protest Monsanto, one of the largest suppliers of herbicides in the world. New York City might seem like an unlikely place to rail against a company that deals mostly with agriculture. But the protesters don't have to look much farther than the surrounding streets and parks for their connection to the company.

According to the Department of Health's report on city pesticide use in 2011, Roundup, the weed-killing key to Monsanto's agribusiness empire, is the city's most heavily used liquid herbicide. Roundup is Monsanto's signature blend of glyphosate - a compound that works by disrupting an enzyme key to plant growth - and other ingredients to destroy weeds.

Monsanto's Roundup brand alone was applied by the city nearly 500 times last year - about a dozen bathtubs' worth in undiluted form, according to DOH's annual pesticide figures - mostly via the Roundup Ultra formulation, a more concentrated version of the original. The Parks Department, responsible for most of the city's Roundup use, declined to answer my request for a description of where it uses Roundup and how much, though did confirm its use in iconic locations like Central, Prospect, and Riverside parks. Roundup applications are done "at various locations throughout the city system under careful supervision and in very limited quantities," was the extent of Parks' disclosure on the subject.

Millions of contact lens users are at risk of contracting a disease caused by a parasite that feeds on bacteria found on contact lenses. It nibbles through the eyeballs causing permanent visual impairment or blindness, scientists have warned.

Many people underestimate the risks of contact lenses, continuing to wear them when their eyes become tired or irritated and not cleaning them as directed.

Such practices increase the risk of permanent damage to the cornea, the transparent outer layer of the eye, including a loss of corneal cells, a thinning of the cornea and a change in the cornea's shape, referred to as warpage.

"Contact lenses have more of an effect on the cornea than most people realize," said Dr. Thomas J. Liesegang, an ophthalmologist at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida. He published a review of the literature on the topic in an issue of The CLAO Journal, a publication of the Contact Lens Association of Ophthalmologists. "In some cases, the effects can be reversible and in some they can be permanent."

An outbreak of Acanthamoeba keratitis (AK), a rare, potentially blinding, corneal infection has been increasing since 2004. Acanthamoeba is a genus of amoebae, one of the most common protozoa in soil, and also frequently found in fresh water and other habitats. The parasite is also found in dust, sea, showers and swimming pools.

The actual number of infections is small but treatment is long, painful and not completely effective.

In the United States, an estimated 85% of cases of this infection occur in contact lens users.

With Breast Cancer Awareness Month (BCAM) less than two weeks away, the latest bombshell GMO/Roundup study produced by a French research team, and presently making international headlines, is well-timed. The researchers found, in the first long-term GM corn and Roundup feeding study of its kind, that female rats, exposed to concentrations well below official safety limits, developed massive, progressive mammary tumors which either lead to premature death, or required euthanasia due to their great suffering.

Why would this be of concern to BCAM? After all, BCAM is the annual pinkwashing celebration, where people collectively and forcibly remove the thought of there being preventable and treatable causes of breast cancer from their minds, hurl themselves over the lemming-like cliff of cause-marketing, e.g. Buckets for a Cure, sacrificing their time, energy and money raising billions more for a pharmaceutical cure for a pharmaceutically incurable condition. This annual ritual celebrates ribbon-wearing vacuity, pretending like "carcinogens" don't exist, or that it doesn't matter that a carcinogen-producing chemical company, now defunct Imperial Chemical Industries, and its pharmaceutical subsidiary, Zeneca, co-founded Breast Cancer Awareness Month in 1985.

Zeneca, of course, merged with Astra AB in 1999, becoming AstraZeneca, manufacturer of the breast cancer blockbuster drugs Arimidex and Tamoxifen. By pushing for widespread adoption of breast screenings they generated millions of new and future customers (mammography-induced breast cancer), even while one of the main forms of mammography-detected cancer, Ductal Carcinoma In Situ (DCIS), is often intrinisically benign, better left untreated with conventional, highly toxic "therapies" like radiation and chemotherapy.

The conflict of interest here is as devastating as it is obvious, which is why we hope the new finding linking GM corn and Roundup herbicide to breast cancer will compel BCAM to respond, and change their awareness strategy to become more patient- versus industry-friendly. One thing is for sure. The study's findings were not vague or equivocal, but disturbingly clear...

Research carried out at The University of Manchester has found further evidence that a simple solution, which is already used in IV drips, is an effective treatment for reducing inflammation.

The researchers also identified that hypertonic solution, which is a solution with an elevated concentration of salt, can ease inflammation purely through bathing in it - proving the Victorians were right to visit spa towns to "take the waters" for ailments like rheumatoid arthritis.

The research team, led by Dr Pablo Pelegrin, was investigating how cell swelling can control inflammation; the immune system's first response to injury or infection.

They discovered that white blood cells swell in a similar way to how tissue swells around a wound. The team then went on to look at what causes the swelling.

The researchers injected solutions with low ions into mice. They found that these solutions acted as a danger signal, causing cells to swell. The swelling then activates a group of proteins called NLRP3 which then release inflammatory mediators. These activate neighbouring cells to increase inflammation.

However, when a hypertonic solution was administered to the mouse it drew the water out of the cells shrinking them back to their original size. This in turn deactivated the signal for inflammation.

Dr Pelegrin's research provides further evidence for the use of hypertonic fluid therapy for the reduction of inflammation in the brain, a treatment that can reduce the amount of damage caused by illnesses such as stroke and epilepsy. His team has been able to show for the first time why the solution works at a molecular level.

Implications for wide range of disorders - - hypertension to mental health problems.

Just as women are advised to get plenty of folic acid around the time of conception and throughout early pregnancy, new research suggests another very similar nutrient may one day deserve a spot on the obstetrician's list of recommendations.

Consuming greater amounts of choline - a nutrient found in eggs and meat - during pregnancy may lower an infant's vulnerability to stress-related illnesses, such as mental health disturbances, and chronic conditions, like hypertension, later in life.

In an early study in The FASEB Journal, nutrition scientists and obstetricians at Cornell University and the University of Rochester Medical Center found that higher-than-normal amounts of choline in the diet during pregnancy changed epigenetic markers - modifications on our DNA that tell our genes to switch on or off, to go gangbusters or keep a low profile - in the fetus. While epigenetic markers don't change our genes, they make a permanent imprint by dictating their fate: If a gene is not expressed - turned on - it's as if it didn't exist.

The finding became particularly exciting when researchers discovered that the affected markers were those that regulated the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal or HPA axis, which controls virtually all hormone activity in the body, including the production of the hormone cortisol that reflects our response to stress and regulates our metabolism, among other