That Monsanto has a phenomenal level of influence over American legislators and regulators is well known, but the latest gift to the biotech industry is really over the top. A stunning rider, ironically named "the Farmers Assurance provision" (Section 733), has been added to the 2013 Agricultural Appropriations bill, aka the Farm Bill. This provision, if passed into law, will essentially grant biotech companies like Monsanto free reign to act with impunity.

This rider would allow biotech crops to be planted even if a federal court has ordered planting to be halted until an Environmental Impact Statement has been completed. It also puts restrictions on regulations, and allows fast-track approval of genetically engineered (GE) crops, despite the fact that the US is already the only developed country that does not require safety testing of GE plants.

Danielle Stuart, a Monsanto spokeswoman, has stated the bill "provides an assurance for farmers growing crops which have completed the U.S. regulatory review process that their harvest won't be jeopardized by subsequent legal disputes."¹

Are Biotech Companies About to Gain Immunity from Federal Law?

The rider was added by the agricultural sub-committee chair Jack Kingston (R-Ga.). Not surprisingly, Kingston was voted "legislator of the year for 2011-2012" by the Biotechnology Industry Organization. The featured article by Alexis Baden-Mayer and Ronnie Cummins² spells out the many problems with this "Monsanto protection act," snuck in by biotech's inside man:

• The Monsanto Rider is an unconstitutional violation of the separation of powers. Judicial review is an essential element of U.S. law, providing a critical and impartial check on government decisions that may negatively impact human health, the environment or livelihoods...
• Judicial review is a gateway, not a roadblock... The ability of courts to review, evaluate and judge an issue that impacts public and environmental health is strength, not a weakness, of our system...
• It removes the "legal brakes" that prevent fraud and abuse. In recent years, federal courts have ruled that several USDA GE crop approvals violated the law and required further study of their health and environmental impact. These judgments indicated that continued planting would cause harm to the environment and/or farmers and ordered interim planting restrictions pending further USDA analysis and consideration. The Monsanto rider would prevent a federal court from putting in place court-ordered restrictions, even if the approval were fraudulent or involved bribery.
• It's unnecessary and duplicative. Every court dealing with these issues is supposed to carefully weigh the interests of all affected farmers and consumers, as is already required by law. No farmer has ever had his or her crops destroyed as a result. USDA already has working mechanisms in place to allow partial approvals, and the Department has used them, making this provision completely unnecessary.
• It shuts out the USDA. The rider would not merely allow, it would compel the Secretary of Agriculture to immediately grant any requests for permits to allow continued planting and commercialization of an unlawfully approved GE crop. With this provision in place, USDA may not be able to prevent costly contamination episodes like Starlink or Liberty Link rice, which have already cost farmers hundreds of millions of dollars in losses. The rider would also make a mockery of USDA's legally mandated review, transforming it into a 'rubber stamp' approval process.
• It's a back-door amendment of a statute. This rider, quietly tacked onto an appropriations bill, is in effect a substantial amendment to USDA's governing statute for GE crops, the Plant Protection Act. If Congress feels the law needs to be changed, it should be done in a transparent manner by holding hearings, soliciting expert testimony and including full opportunity for public debate.

The incidence of caesarean sections has risen dramatically in the past decade due to mostly convenience for doctors and patients. However, sometimes convenience comes at a cost. Vaginal births trigger the expression of a protein in the brains of newborns that improves brain development and function in adulthood, a new study has revealed.

An increasing number of women, including some first-time mothers, are requesting a C-section, even when it's medically unnecessary. The medical profession is only happy to oblige. It's much faster and it's scheduled.

Most women are unaware that babies born by elective C-section are much more likely to develop health problems that many newborns who are delivered naturally do not experience. The babies may miss out on critical hormonal and physiological changes during labour which help babies develop.

A Danish study examining 34,000 deliveries suggests babies born by C-section were up to four times more likely to have respiratory problems than those born naturally.

A recent study also showed that caesarean born babies are also at double the risk of becoming obese children as those delivered naturally.

Women who have their first child by caesarean are also more likely to have placenta-related problems in their second pregnancy, research suggests.

For the latest study, Yale School of Medicine researchers found that this protein expression is impaired in the brains of offspring delivered by C-sections.

Some children who are given the pain reliever codeine after surgery may be at risk of life-threatening breathing problems, the Food and Drug Administration warned today (Aug. 15) as it investigated three deaths.

The FDA announced it is reviewing the cases of three children who died and one who experienced serious breathing problems after taking codeine, which followed surgery to remove their tonsils or adenoids. In each instance the codeine dose was typical of those given to children, the FDA said.

The agency said parents and caregivers should be aware of the warning signs that could indicate their child is experiencing a codeine overdose.

Signs of codeine overdose include unusual sleepiness, difficulty being aroused or awakened, confusion, and noisy and difficult breathing. If parents observe these signs, they should stop giving the child codeine and seek medical attention immediately, according to the FDA statement.

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania - The Pennsylvania Department of Health is once again providing free potassium iodide tablets to help residents of the commonwealth prepare for public health emergencies involving nuclear facilities.

People who live, work or attend school within a 10-mile radius of the state's five nuclear power plants can get the tablets, which can help protect the thyroid gland against harmful radioactive iodine.

I'm sure some of you saw the video above from CBN TV about the new miracle potion for Alzheimers? For once, it's not a drug. It's not even a high-carb, low fat diet! Quite the opposite: it's coconut oil and lots of it. The news is breaking that a ketogenic diet can help people with Alzheimer's keep their symptoms at bay. A ketogenic diet is a diet that uses ketones converted from dietary fat instead of carbs as energy. To be in "ketosis", people generally need to eat fewer than 50 grams of carbs per day. The average American eats around 300 grams of carbs a day, just to put that in perspective.

One percent of non-Hispanic whites in the U.S. - close to two million Americans - have celiac disease, but most are not aware they suffer the gluten-intolerance problem, according to a new study.

The results back up earlier estimates of how common celiac disease is in the U.S. and Europe, the researchers say. They also support evidence that the condition is far more rare among Hispanics and blacks.

"This one...is pretty much in line with what was shown before," said Dr. Alessio Fasano, director of the Center for Celiac Research at the University of Maryland, who was not involved in the study.

Fasano said that despite how common the condition is in the U.S, he's not surprised that few people have been diagnosed with it.

"The symptoms are so vague and non-specific that it's very difficult to point to celiac disease when you have (for instance) chronic fatigue or anemia or joint pain," Fasano said.

Celiac disease is mainly a gastrointestinal disorder, and when people who have it eat gluten, they experience an immune reaction that damages the intestinal lining.

Most studies to determine how widespread the condition is have been done in Europe, so the researchers sought to get a sharper estimate of celiac disease in the U.S.

Dr. James Everhart, at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, along with colleagues at the Mayo Clinic and in Sweden, used data from a large, ongoing national study of health and nutrition.

People with type AB blood may have a higher risk of heart disease compared with those whose blood type is O, according to a new study.

Researchers reviewed two studies that tracked nearly 90,000 people for more than 20 years and found that coronary heart disease risk varied with participants' blood types. People with type O blood had the lowest incidence of coronary heart disease, and compared with them, those with type AB blood were 23 percent more likely to have heart disease, while those with type B blood were 11 percent more likely, and people with type A were 5 percent more likely.

"While people cannot change their blood type, our findings may help physicians better understand who is at risk for developing heart disease," said study author Dr. Lu Qi, assistant professor of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.

The researchers considered two Harvard studies, one that tracked 62,000 women over 26 years, and one that tracked 27,400 men over 24 years. In total, more than 2,500 people were diagnosed with heart disease.

The association with blood type held even after the researchers took into account variables that affect people's risk of heart disease, such as cholesterol levels, diabetes and hypertension.

Many agencies and clinics that use websites to recruit women to donate their eggs to those with fertility problems do not follow ethical guidelines, a new study says.

One-third of the websites examined in the study paid donors more for having presumably desirable traits, and more than half omitted the procedures' potential risks.

Among websites that mentioned specific donor traits, 64 percent said they paid more to women who had successfully donated eggs in the past, meaning the provided eggs resulted in a birth.

"Recipients often request to be matched to a 'proven' egg donor although there is no evidence that they are better gamete donors than women who have not previously donated or provided a success," said study researcher Dr. Mark Sauer, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Columbia University Medical Center.

The findings raise concerns over the possible exploitation of donors, and the risk that people will be devalued by paying them for a part of their body, rather than what is ethically allowed, which is to pay for their time and discomfort, the researchers said.

Paying women for prior successful donations is particularly concerning, the researchers said, because it creates an incentive for women to donate repeatedly. Some sites paid women an extra $500 for each previous successful donation. The American Society of Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) recommends women donate no more than six times in their lifetime.

The findings raise questions over how effective current guidelines (set by the ASRM) are at regulating the egg donation industry, and whether there is a need for stronger regulations, the researchers said.

The idea that exercise is more important than diet in the fight against obesity has been contradicted by new research.

A study of the Hadza tribe, who still exist as hunter gatherers, suggests the amount of calories we need is a fixed human characteristic.

This suggests Westerners are growing obese through over-eating rather than having inactive lifestyles, say scientists.

One in 10 people will be obese by 2015.

And, nearly one in three of the worldwide population is expected to be overweight, according to figures from the World Health Organization.

The Western lifestyle is thought to be largely to blame for the obesity "epidemic".

Researchers are raising the alarm over triclosan - an antibacterial chemical commonly found in soaps, deodorants, mouthwashes, toothpastes and even toys and trash bags - after a study found that the compound might impair muscle function.

The researchers at the University of California, Davis and the University of Colorado studied heart muscle cells and skeletal muscle fibers exposed to triclosan in test tubes. They applied electrical stimulation, which would normally make the muscles contract, but the triclosan seemed to impair two proteins involved in contractions, causing the skeletal and cardiac fibers to fail at the cellular level.

The team also tested two groups of live animal subjects. They exposed sedated mice to the chemical and observed up to a 25 percent reduction in heart function levels within 20 minutes.

And to mimic the effect of triclosan in marine environments, the researchers exposed fathead minnows to the chemical in the water for seven days. The exposed fish showed significantly diminished swimming ability compared to controls, the researchers reported in a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.