Health & WellnessS


Bad Guys

GMO Scandal: The Long Term Effects of Genetically Modified Food in Humans

F. William Engdahl
Voltaire Net
Wed, 16 Sep 2009 00:51 UTC
Voltaire GMO
© UnknownGermany will ban cultivation and sale of genetically modified (GMO) corn despite European Union rulings that the biotech grain is safe, its government said on Tuesday. The ban affects U.S. biotech company Monsanto’s MON 810 maize which may no longer be sown for this summer’s harvest, German Agriculture and Consumer Protection Minister Ilse Aigner told a news conference.

One of the great mysteries surrounding the spread of GMO plants around the world since the first commercial crops were released in the early 1990's in the USA and Argentina has been the absence of independent scientific studies of possible long-term effects of a diet of GMO plants on humans or even rats. Now it has come to light the real reason. The GMO agribusiness companies like Monsanto, BASF, Pioneer, Syngenta and others prohibit independent research.

An editorial in the respected American scientific monthly magazine, Scientific American, August 2009 reveals the shocking and alarming reality behind the proliferation of GMO products throughout the food chain of the planet since 1994. There are no independent scientific studies published in any reputed scientific journal in the world for one simple reason. It is impossible to independently verify that GMO crops such as Monsanto Roundup Ready Soybeans or MON8110 GMO maize perform as the company claims, or that, as the company also claims, that they have no harmful side effects because the GMO companies forbid such tests!
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Syringe

Nano Particles used in Untested H1N1 Swine Flu Vaccines

William Engdahl
Global Research
Sun, 13 Sep 2009 00:30 UTC
Image
Vaccines which have been approved by the responsible government authorities for vaccination against the alleged H1N1 Influenza A Swine Flu have been found to contain nano particles. Vaccine makers have been experimenting with nanoparticles as a way to "turbo charge" vaccines for several years. Now it has come out that the vaccines approved for use in Germany and other European countries contain nanoparticles in a form that reportedly attacks healthy cells and can be deadly.
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Red Flag

There's Lead in Your Lipstick -- And the FDA Won't Do a Thing About It

Stacy Malkan
Alternet
Sun, 13 Sep 2009 23:28 UTC
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© Campaign for Safe Cosmetics
Cosmetic companies can do better, and they must be held accountable to make the safest products possible. Why won't the FDA do its job?

It took nearly two years, but FDA has finally published its study on lead in lipstick, and the findings are not reassuring. FDA found up to four times more lead in lipstick than previous reports.

Even less reassuring is the fact that FDA spent two years studying the problem, only to discover that, yup, there really is lead in lipstick - and then decide that, no, they're not going to do anything about it.

Wasn't FDA once the world's gold standard agency for consumer protection? Don't they exist for the purpose of ensuring that America has the safest possible food, drugs and cosmetics?
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Attention

Early Spankings Make for Aggressive Toddlers, Study Shows

Jennifer Thomas
HealthDay
Tue, 15 Sep 2009 18:49 UTC
Children who are spanked as 1-year-olds are more likely to behave aggressively and perform worse on cognitive tests as toddlers than children who are spared the punishment, new research shows.

Though the negative effects of spanking were "modest," the study adds to a growing body of literature that's finding spanking isn't good for children.

"Age 1 is a key time for establishing the quality of the parenting and the relationship between parent and the child," said study author Lisa J. Berlin, a research scientist at the Center for Child and Family Policy at Duke University. "Spanking at age 1 reflects a negative dynamic, and increases children's aggression at age 2."

The study is published in the September/October issue of Child Development.
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Magnify

Proteins Anchor Memories in Our Brain


ScienceDaily
Mon, 27 Nov 2006 10:00 UTC
Bressloff
© Lee Siegel, University of UtahUniversity of Utah mathematician Paul Bressloff has completed a study suggesting that our memories are held in our brains with the help of proteins that serve as anchors for other proteins.
A University of Utah study suggests that memories are held in our brains because certain proteins serve as anchors, holding other proteins in place to strengthen synapses, which are connections between nerve cells.

"The essential idea is that synapses are in a constant state of flux, so how can they be the seat of memories that can last a lifetime?" says mathematics Professor Paul Bressloff, a member of the Brain Institute at the University of Utah. "Part of the answer is that there are anchors inside the synapse that keep proteins in place, and these proteins help determine how strong a synapse is, which in turn contributes to forming and retaining memories."

The research is relevant not only to how memory and learning work, but to Alzheimer's disease, which is believed to involve, at least in part, a breakdown in the normal movement of proteins within synapses.

The study will be published Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2006, in The Journal of Neuroscience. Bressloff conducted the research with Berton Earnshaw, a doctoral student in mathematics. It was funded by the National Science Foundation.
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Magnify

AMPA Receptors on Cell Membrane Make Us Smarter


ScienceDaily
Tue, 15 Sep 2009 10:00 UTC
AMPA receptors are an important regulating factor in the connection between our nerve cells. However, Dutch researcher Helmut Kessels has demonstrated that it is not the amount of AMPA receptors inside the cell that are vitally important but the receptors located on the cell membrane. Changes in the strength of the connections between two nerve cells form the basis of our ability to learn.

The AMPA receptors influence our synaptic plasticity; the capacity of the connection (the synapse) between two nerve cells to change strength. To date, it was assumed that an increase in the number of receptors in a cell could also bring about a change in the connections between nerve cells and therefore in our capacity to learn. Neurobiologist Kessels has now established that the synaptic plasticity is not dependent on the quantity of receptors in the cell, but the quantity of receptors located on the cell membrane. Therefore merely increasing the production of AMPA receptors is not enough to regulate the connections between nerve cells.
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Magnify

Alterations in Brain Dopamine Pathway Appears to be Associated with Certain Symptoms of ADHD


Medical News Today
Tue, 15 Sep 2009 17:54 UTC
Results from brain scans suggest an association between a reduction in the transmission of dopamine markers with symptoms of inattention for individuals with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), according to a preliminary study in the September 9 issue of JAMA.

ADHD is a childhood psychiatric disorder that frequently persists into adulthood, and is estimated to affect 3 percent to 5 percent of the U.S. adult population, which makes it one of the most prevalent of all psychiatric disorders, according to background information in the article. Previous research has indicated that dopamine (a neurotransmitter essential for the normal functioning of the central nervous system) transmission is disrupted in some pathways of the brain in ADHD.

Nora D. Volkow, M.D., of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, Bethesda, Md., and colleagues conducted a study to determine whether there are abnormalities in the mesoaccumbens (site of the dopamine reward pathway in the mid-brain) in patients with ADHD. The researchers produced brain images with positron emission tomography (PET) to measure dopamine synaptic markers (transporters and D2/D3 receptors) in 53 nonmedicated adults with ADHD and 44 healthy controls.
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Magnify

Trust your gut? Study explores religion, morality and trust in authority


Medical News Today
Tue, 15 Sep 2009 03:00 UTC
In a world filled with dogma, doctrine and discipline, it is accurate to say most of us strive to do what we believe is "right." These convictions and beliefs permeate every aspect of our lives, including education, ethics and even common law.

Psychologists Daniel C. Wisneski, Brad L. Lytle and Linda J. Skitka from the University of Illinois at Chicago explored this interplay of moral convictions and religious beliefs as it relates to our trust in authority. Specifically, the researchers provided a nationally-represented sample of adults--53% female, 72% White, 12% Black and 11% Hispanic--with an online survey about the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling on physician-assisted suicide.

As the findings suggest in a recent issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, the more religious participants tended to trust the Supreme Court's ability to make the right decision while the group with strong moral convictions felt distrust. And both groups, as it turned out, based their beliefs on a gut reaction rather than on thoughtful, careful deliberation.
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Magnify

Eyewitness Accounts Dramatically Altered by Fake Video

Kelly Parkes-Harrison
Medical News Today
Tue, 15 Sep 2009 04:00 UTC
Researchers at the University of Warwick have found that fake video evidence can dramatically alter people's perceptions of events, even convincing them to testify as an eyewitness to an event that never happened.

Associate Professor Dr Kimberley Wade from the Department of Psychology led an experiment to see whether exposure to fabricated footage of an event could induce individuals to accuse another person of doing something they never did.

In the study, published in Applied Cognitive Psychology, Dr Wade found that almost 50% of people shown fake footage of an event they witnessed first hand were prepared to believe the video version rather than what they actually saw.

Dr Wade's research team filmed 60 subjects as they took part in a computerised gambling task. The subjects were unknowingly seated next to a member of the research team as they both separately answered a series of multiple-choice general knowledge questions.
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Family

Raising Katie: What adopting a white girl taught a black family about race in the Obama era

Tony Dokoupil
Newsweek
Tue, 15 Sep 2009 03:31 UTC
Several pairs of eyes follow the girl as she pedals around the playground in an affluent suburb of Baltimore. But it isn't the redheaded fourth grader who seems to have moms and dads of the jungle gym nervous on this recent Saturday morning. It's the African-American man - six feet tall, bearded and wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt - watching the girl's every move. Approaching from behind, he grabs the back of her bicycle seat as she wobbles to a stop. "Nice riding," he says, as the fair-skinned girl turns to him, beaming. "Thanks, Daddy," she replies. The onlookers are clearly flummoxed.

As a black father and adopted white daughter, Mark Riding and Katie O'Dea-Smith are a sight at best surprising, and at worst so perplexing that people feel compelled to respond. Like the time at a Pocono Mountains flea market when Riding scolded Katie, attracting so many sharp glares that he and his wife, Terri, 37, and also African-American, thought "we might be lynched." And the time when well-intentioned shoppers followed Mark and Katie out of the mall to make sure she wasn't being kidnapped. Or when would-be heroes come up to Katie in the cereal aisle and ask, "Are you OK?" - even though Terri is standing right there.

Is it racism? The Ridings tend to think so, and it's hard to blame them. To shadow them for a day, as I recently did, is to feel the unease, notice the negative attention and realize that the same note of fear isn't in the air when they attend to their two biological children, who are 2 and 5 years old.
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