On July 13, 1994, an obituary in the Washington Post reported the death, at age 60, of Richard Joshua Reynolds, III, an heir to the founder of the R.J. Reynolds tobacco company. The headline and an accompanying photograph showed the deceased smoking a cigarette and implied that Reynolds died from emphysema, caused by smoking. Reading the obituary in detail, however, it turned out that he had quit smoking eight years prior to his death; and that there was a family history of emphysema, the deceased's own father having died from the disease at the age of 58. Furthermore, the obituary disclosed that the deceased's own doctor was unable to state the "immediate cause" of his death.

Medical opinion concerning emphysema has had an interesting history. My 1973 edition of "Diagnosis and Treatment" (a standard medical textbook), states that emphysema is a disease which involves destruction of the alveolar (lung) tissue but that the cause is unknown, although "many doctors" think it is caused by "cigarette smoking". In 1973, Chronic Pulmonary Obstructive Disease (COPD) had not yet been invented. COPD, while now discussed at length in modern medical textbooks, did not exist in 1973.

Some time subsequent to 1973, a genetic cause of emphysema was discovered. In an article in the latest on-line edition of Grolier's Encyclopedia, Howard Buechner, M.D., explains that a significant number of the people with the disease lack a gene that controls the liver's production of a protein called alpha-1 antitrypsin (AAT). This protein controls or degrades an enzyme called neutrophil elastase, produced by the white blood cells. When the enzyme is left unchecked, it destroys alveolar tissue.

Yes, it is true, smoking does not cause lung cancer. It is only one of many risk factors for lung cancer. I initially was going to write an article on how the professional literature and publications misuse the language by saying "smoking causes lung cancer"^1,2, but the more that I looked into how biased the literature, professional organizations, and the media are, I modified this article to one on trying to put the relationship between smoking and cancer into perspective. (No, I did not get paid off by the tobacco companies, or anything else like that.)

When the tobacco executives testified to Congress that they did not believe that smoking caused cancer, their answers were probably truthful and I agree with that statement. Now if they were asked if smoking increases the risk of getting lung cancer, then the answer based upon current evidence should be "yes." But even so, the risk of a smoker getting lung cancer is much less than anyone would suspect. Based upon what the media and anti-tobacco organizations say, one would think that if you smoke, you get lung cancer (a 100% correlation). You would at least expect a 50+% occurrence before someone used the word "cause."

Would you believe that the real number is < 10% (see Appendix A)? Yes, a US white male (USWM) cigarette smoker has an 8% lifetime chance of dying from lung cancer but the USWM nonsmoker also has a 1% chance of dying from lung cancer (see Appendix A). In fact, the data used is biased in the way they are collected and the actual risk for a smoker is probably less. I personally would not smoke cigarettes and take that risk, nor recommend cigarette smoking to others but the numbers were less than I had been led to believe. I only did the data on white males because they account for the largest number of lung cancers in the US, but a similar analysis can be done for other groups using the CDC data.

A new study found a majority of low-cost metal jewelry sold in Michigan stores contain toxic chemicals.

The Michigan Network for Children's Environmental Health and the Ecology Center tested 99 products from 14 retailers, including Burlington Coat Factory, Target, Big Lots, Claire's, Glitter, Forever 21, Walmart, H&M, Meijer, Kohl's, Justice, Icing and Hot Topic. Most of the stores were located in Michigan.

Researchers tested both adult and children's jewelry for chemicals including lead, cadmium, arsenic, mercury, bromine, chlorine and flame retardants.

Tests showed 59% of the products had high levels of at least one toxic chemical and 93% contained chromium.

More than a quarter of the products contained higher levels of lead than what is considered safe for children.

Researchers say toxic chemicals like lead can lead to several long-term health and mental problems, including cancer, learning disorders and birth defects.

You can see the list of products that were tested and results by visiting Healthystuff.org.

But now we know that "low serotonin"- which is what SSRI's "fix" - doesn't even cause depression!

A study conducted jointly in the Netherlands and the US has found that babies born to mothers who took antidepressants while they were pregnant had slightly slower head growth and were more likely to be born early. The study did not have any findings about whether there might be long-term effects or not.

Of nearly 8,000 pregnant women in the study, 570 had symptoms of depression during their pregnancy but did not take medication, while another 99 took SSRIs. In the womb, babies of women who were depressed gained less weight per week than babies of non-depressed mothers, and their heads grew a bit more slowly as well. With the women given SSRIs, the babies' head growth was slowed by 0.18 millimeters per week. By the time they were born, those babies' heads were about four millimeters smaller, on average, than babies of non-depressed moms. SSRIs are known to pass through the placenta, according to the lead researcher, and may reach the brain and affect its development.

On top of that, ten percent of mothers taking SSRIs had a premature birth, compared to six percent of those with untreated depression and five percent of non-depressed moms. Previous studies have suggested a slightly increased risk of some birth defects in babies of moms taking antidepressants, as well as a greater chance they will end up needing intensive care.

Perhaps one of the biggest health myths propagated in western culture and certainly in the United States, is the correlation between elevated cholesterol and cardiovascular disease (CVD). Unfortunately, despite dozens of studies, cholesterol has not been shown to actually cause CVD. To the contrary, cholesterol is vital to our survival, and trying to artificially lower it can have detrimental effects, particularly as we age.

Cholesterol seems to be one of those things that strikes fear into the hearts of many, so to speak. We have become obsessed with eating foods low in cholesterol and fat. Ask almost anyone, and they can tell you their cholesterol levels.

What is certain is that the 'little knowledge' that the media often imparts means many folks assume cholesterol is simply a 'bad' thing. Alternately, a good number of us may have heard the terms 'good' cholesterol and 'bad' cholesterol bandied about without knowing much about what this really means. In fact it is a fairly safe bet that if you asked anyone on the street for his or her instinctive response, if asked about cholesterol, they would probably say that we simply need to 'reduce it'.

The 'noddy-science' offered by marketing men to a generally scientifically-naive public has led many people to believe that we should replace certain food choices with specially developed products that can help 'reduce cholesterol'. Naturally this comes at a price and requires those who can afford it to pay maybe four or five times what a 'typical ordinary' product might cost. But is this apparent 'blanket need' to strive towards lowering our cholesterol justified? And, indeed, is it healthy?

For anyone who has had the official diagnosis of 'high cholesterol' in their bloodstream, they may even have embarked upon a program of medicinal intervention. In fact it is quite likely that they may have joined the legions of long-term pill-poppers who are already lining the pockets of the profit-oriented pharmaceutical giants.

Wheat could be driving more than your digestive system crazy.

While wheat is well known to wreak havoc on the gastrointestinal health of genetically susceptible folks, such as those with celiac disease, and more recently, irritable bowel syndrome, new research published in the journal Psychiatry Research indicates that sensitivity to one of the components in wheat known as gliadin could be driving some into states of acute mania:

"The relationship of the antibodies to the clinical course of mania was analyzed by the use of regression models. Individuals with mania had significantly increased levels of IgG antibodies to gliadin, but not other markers of celiac disease, at baseline compared with controls in multivariate analyses."

"Among the individuals with mania, elevated levels at follow-up were significantly associated with re-hospitalization in the six month follow-up period."

While correlation does not equal causation, it is interesting to note that there is already robust supportive research on the link between wheat consumption and schizophrenia. Seven such studies can be viewed on our open source wheat database, for those inclined to explore this connection further. You will also find listed there over a dozen neurological conditions linked to wheat consumption.

Otitis media (more commonly known as an ear infection) is a generic name for several conditions that can affect the middle ear, including inflammation of the middle ear, ranging from acute to chronic and with or without symptoms.

Acute otitis media (AOM) is characterized by symptoms of pain and fever. Otitis media with effusion (OME) is typified by the presence of fluid in the middle ear without signs or symptoms of infection. Ear infections account for over 35% of all pediatrician visits in the United States. Antibiotics are not always effective and may even lead to a recurrence of ear infections.

Why Do Kids Get Ear Infections?

Infant and children (more so than adults) have a natural tendency to produce a lot of mucus. As we get older and our immune system strengthens, this decreases. When too much mucus builds up - causing inflammation - the body's innate response is to get rid of it in attempt to return to a more balanced state.

Unfortunately, the way we do this is by the onset of an illness and fever. With an abundance of mucus already present in the nose and throat during an upper respiratory infection - it is no coincidence that the ears repeatedly become inflamed.

Homeopaths are facing a fight to defend their practice in Australia after the National Health and Medical Research Council flagged it might declare their work baseless and unethical.

A draft public statement seen by The Age concluded it was ''unethical for health practitioners to treat patients using homeopathy, for the reason that homeopathy (as a medicine or procedure) has been shown not to be efficacious''.

The confidential statement, which was not meant to be distributed, is based on a 2010 evaluation of homeopathy by the British House of Commons science and technology committee, which declared it was no more efficacious than a placebo.

Controversy continues to swell around the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, better known as DSM-5. A new study suggests the 900-page bible of mental health, scheduled for publication in May 2013, is ripe with financial conflicts of interest.

The manual, published by the American Psychiatric Association, details the diagnostic criteria for each and every psychiatric disorder, many of which have pharmacological treatments. After the 1994 release of DSM-4, the APA instituted a policy requiring expert advisors to disclose drug industry ties. But the move toward transparency did little to cut down on conflicts, with nearly 70 percent of DSM-5 task force members reporting financial relationships with pharmaceutical companies -- up from 57 percent for DSM-4.

"Organizations like the APA have embraced transparency too quickly as the solution," said Lisa Cosgrove, associate professor of clinical psychology at the University of Massachusetts-Boston and lead author of the study published today in the journal PLoS Medicine. "Our data show that transparency has not changed the dynamic."

Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the developed world, and yet we are still in the dark ages when it comes to treating and understanding it.

The colossal failure of conventional cancer treatments reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of what cancer - the "enemy" - actually is. For one, chemotherapy and radiotherapy are both intrinsically carcinogenic treatments. The only justification for their use, in fact, is that they are highly effective at damaging the DNA within cells - with the hope that the cancer cells will be more susceptible to being harmed than the healthy ones. The reality, however, is that the "collateral damage" from treatment is inevitable; it is not a matter of "if," but to what degree the damaging side effects will occur. As in real modern warfare, the decision to strike is often based on deciding how much collateral damage to "civilian" populations is deemed acceptable. This is not unlike the fixation in toxicological risk assessments for drugs, environmental pollutants, food additives, etc., where determining "an acceptable level of harm" (is that not oxymoronic?) to the exposed population is the first order of business.

The DNA-damaging, or genotoxic effects of chemotherapy and radiotherapy, according to the prevailing wisdom, are the #1 cause of cancer initiation and promotion. This is known as the "Mutational Theory" of cancer, and has been the dominant explanation for half a century. Therefore it is absolutely disconcerting that the standard of care in cancer treatment today is still the use of genotoxic agents versus substances that are able to selectively harm the "bad" cells, leaving the "good" ones intact; which is also known as "selective cytotoxicty," and is a property characteristic of natural anti-cancer compounds and whole plant extracts. Nowhere is this more clearly demonstrated than in the case of fruit-derived compounds, such as graviola, where research indicates that it may be up to 10,000 times more effective at killing certain cancer cells versus adriamycin -- not so affectionately named the "red devil" for its lethal side effects -- and is highly selective in which cells it kills.

Take the cancer drug tamoxifen, for example. It is classified by the World Health Organization and the American Cancer Society as a human carcinogen, and can cause over two dozen health-destroying side effects, and yet it is still being used as a first line treatment for certain types of breast cancer. Does that really make sense? Even if tamoxifen was effective (which increasingly it is not), does it really matter if it "cures" breast cancer only to cause endometrial or liver cancer (which is often far more deadly than breast cancer) as a direct result of the treatment? Tamoxifen and chemotherapy resistance is increasingly a problem. In the same way that certain pathogenic bacteria become resistant to antibiotics - even becoming stronger after being challenged with them - drug resistance and multi-drug resistance to chemoagents is the canary in the coal mine, indicating the entire paradigm, hinged as it is on patented, highly toxic chemicals, is rearing to collapse.