Health & WellnessS


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Brain Dopamine Receptor Density Correlates With Social Status


ScienceDaily
Sun, 07 Feb 2010 00:00 UTC
People have typically viewed the benefits that accrue with social status primarily from the perspective of external rewards. A new paper in the February 1st issue of Biological Psychiatry, published by Elsevier suggests that there are internal rewards as well.

Dr. Martinez and colleagues found that increased social status and increased social support correlated with the density of dopamine D2/D3 receptors in the striatum, a region of the brain that plays a central role in reward and motivation, where dopamine plays a critical role in both of these behavioral processes.

The researchers looked at social status and social support in normal healthy volunteers who were scanned using positron emission tomography (PET), a technology that allowed them to image dopamine type 2 receptors in the brain.
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Syringe

Study Linking Autism, Child Vaccine Retracted

Thomas H. Maugh II
Columbus Dispatch
Wed, 03 Feb 2010 03:04 UTC
Twelve years after Dr. Andrew Wakefield published his research in the international medical journal The Lancet purporting that the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine causes autism, the journal formally retracted the paper yesterday.

The action came less than a week after the U.K. General Medical Council's Fitness to Practice Panel concluded that Wakefield had provided false information in the report and acted with "callous disregard" for the children in the study. The council is considering whether Wakefield is guilty of serious professional misconduct. A positive finding could cause him to lose his medical practice.

Wakefield's study, conducted on only 12 children, concluded that the MMR vaccine was a primary cause of autism. He subsequently said that he could not, in good conscience, recommend that parents have their children vaccinated.
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Newspaper

UK: Medical Authorities Blast Vaccine-Autism Researcher


Columbus Dispatch
Sat, 30 Jan 2010 06:53 UTC
The British doctor whose suggestion of a link between the MMR shot and autism caused vaccination rates to plunge conducted his now-discredited research in a dishonest and irresponsible manner, British medical authorities have concluded.

It was the latest development in a long-running controversy. Measles has made a comeback among British children after being all but wiped out.

The General Medical Council, Britain's medical regulator, found that Andrew Wakefield acted unethically in the way he collected blood samples from children and in his failure to disclose payments from lawyers representing parents who believed the vaccine had hurt their children.
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Black Cat

Founders of British obstetrics 'were callous murderers'

Denis Campbell
The Guardian
Sun, 07 Feb 2010 17:19 UTC
Image
© UnknownWilliam Hunter
William Hunter and William Smellie commissioned a regular supply of corpses so they could study the physical effects of pregnancy, argues a respected historian

They are giants of medicine, pioneers of the care that women receive during childbirth and were the founding fathers of obstetrics. The names of William Hunter and William Smellie still inspire respect among today's doctors, more than 250 years since they made their contributions to healthcare. Such were the duo's reputations as outstanding physicians that the clienteles of their private practices included the rich and famous of mid-18th-century London.

But were they also serial killers? New research published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine (JRSM) claims that they were. A detailed historical study accuses the doctors of soliciting the killing of dozens of women, many in the latter stages of pregnancy, to dissect their corpses.

"Smellie and Hunter were responsible for a series of 18th-century 'burking' murders of pregnant women, with a death total greater than the combined murders committed by Burke and Hare and Jack the Ripper," writes Don Shelton, a historian. "Burking" involved murdering people to order, usually for medical research.
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Syringe

Andrew Wakefield, Scientific Censorship, and Fourteen Monkeys; A statement by Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey

Mike Adams
Natural News
Sun, 07 Feb 2010 10:36 UTC
When it comes to vaccines, Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey get it. They see how the pharma industry is engineering a campaign to silence Dr. Andrew Wakefield in order to suppress the publication of startling new evidence linking vaccines to severe neurological damage.

At great risk to their professional careers, Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey have found the courage to dare to tell the truth about vaccines and autism. Despite the vicious attacks by the pro-vaccine zealots who will stop at nothing to destroy anyone who challenges conventional vaccine mythology, McCarthy and Carrey have issued a powerful, inspired statement that reveals the truth behind the Big Pharma smear campaign that is intent on destroying the reputation of Dr. Andrew Wakefield before he can publish the final results of this important new study.

NaturalNews reprints that statement here, unedited:
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Health

Cholesterol's Link to Heart Disease Gets Clearer and More Complicated


ScienceDaily
Sun, 07 Feb 2010 01:03 UTC
By considering molecular-level events on a broader scale, researchers now have a clearer, if more complicated, picture of how one class of immune cells goes wrong when loaded with cholesterol. The findings reported in the February 3rd issue of Cell Metabolism, show that, when it comes to the development of atherosclerosis and heart disease, it's not about any one bad actor -- it's about a network gone awry.

The new findings also highlight a pretty remarkable thing, Heinecke says: "Despite 30 years of study, we still don't know how cholesterol causes heart disease." But, with the new findings, scientists are getting closer.

Earlier studies had shown that heart disease is about more than just high LDL ("bad") cholesterol. Cells known as macrophages also play a critical role. Macrophages are part of the innate immune system that typically gobble up pathogens and clear away dead cells. But they also take up and degrade cholesterol derivatives. When they get overloaded with those lipoproteins, they take on a foamy appearance under the microscope to become what scientists aptly refer to as foam cells. Those foam cells are the ones that seem to have critical importance in the development of atherosclerosis.

Comment: To get the "network" back in order, readers may want to have a look at our Diet and Health section of the forum.

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Melatonin Precursor Stimulates Growth Factor Circuits in Brain


ScienceDaily
Fri, 05 Feb 2010 00:00 UTC
Scientists at Emory University School of Medicine have discovered unexpected properties for a precursor to melatonin, the hormone that regulates sleep cycles.

Melatonin is produced from the neurotransmitter serotonin in a daily rhythm that peaks at night. Melatonin's immediate precursor, N-acetylserotonin, was not previously thought to have effects separate from those of melatonin or serotonin.

Now an Emory team has shown that N-acetylserotonin can stimulate the same circuits in the brain activated by the growth factor BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor).

The results will be published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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Blacks with MS Have More Severe Symptoms, Decline Faster than Whites, New Study Shows


ScienceDaily
Sat, 06 Feb 2010 00:00 UTC
Fewer African Americans than Caucasians develop multiple sclerosis (MS), statistics show, but their disease progresses more rapidly, and they don't respond as well to therapies, a new study by neurology researchers at the University at Buffalo has found.

Magnetic resonance images (MRI) of a cohort of 567 consecutive MS patients showed that blacks with MS had more damage to brain tissue and had less normal white and grey matter compared to whites with the disease.

Results of the study appear in the Feb. 16 issue of the journal Neurology.

Bianca Weinstock-Guttman, MD, UB associate professor of neurology in the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, is first author on the study. Weinstock-Guttman directs the Baird Multiple Sclerosis Center in Kaleida Health's Buffalo General Hospital.
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Bad Guys

Big Pharma Executive Murders 8-Year-Old Son with Xanax and Ambien

Mike Adams
NaturalNews
Sat, 06 Feb 2010 00:00 UTC
I've always said that Big Pharma executives were guilty of crimes against humanity. Now one of their wealthiest and most successful executives has been caught trying to pull off a murder-suicide in an upscale NY hotel. Gigi Jordan, who ran pharmaceutical companies selling pills to treat cancer, murdered her 8-year-old son by force-feeding him ground-up pharmaceuticals which included Xanax and Ambien.

Let's just stop right there for a moment and consider what this says about the pharmaceutical industry: Even its own executives know their drugs are toxic enough to commit murder.

Jordan had been planning the murder-suicide for some time, it seems. She had left a suicide note in the hotel room, alongside thousands of pills scattered about the room. Jordan is reportedly worth $100 million -- money she accumulated largely by selling toxic pills that harmed other people. Now, it seems, she chose to turn those pills on herself and her own family.

Why is this not surprising?
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Attention

Did Clean-Room Chemicals Cause Birth Defects?

Tammy Leitner, Morgan Loew and Sean McLaughlin
KPHO.com
Thu, 04 Feb 2010 17:59 UTC
Image
Ethelyne Glycol Ether Used To Manufacture Semiconductor Chips

Phoenix -- The picture of Bob and Janice Numkena's wedding day is old and faded, but Bob's memory of the day is clear. From the beginning, they worked as a team. They didn't have a choice.

"I worked the day shift and my wife worked the night shift," Bob Numkena said, as he sat in his Tempe living room.

They worked for the same company and raised two daughters, achieving the American dream. Another picture of the family shows them smiling while on vacation. But it doesn't show the real life, day-in and day-out struggle that has been their reality.

Both of their daughters were born with severe birth defects. Angela, the youngest who is now 27, demands round-the-clock care. She suffers from Cerebral Palsy.
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