Health & WellnessS


Health

Nearly 12,900 Chinese children sick from milk

Scott McDonald
Associated Press
Sun, 21 Sep 2008 23:37 UTC
Beijing - The number of children in China sickened by dairy products tainted with the banned industrial chemical melamine has doubled to nearly 12,900, the government said Sunday as it vowed to crack down on those responsible for one of China's worst food safety scandals in years.

Image
©AFP
Chinese families with their babies rush to a hospital for checkups on possible affect from the tainted milk, in Chongqing. China said nearly 13,000 children were in hospital Sunday after drinking toxic milk powder in a dramatic escalation of Beijing's latest safety scandal.

More than 80 percent of the 12,892 children hospitalized in recent weeks were 2 years old or younger, the Health Ministry said in a statement posted on its Web site late Sunday. Four children have died.

The Health Ministry said that most of the hospitalized were sickened by powdered milk and baby formula. It said most of the sick children consumed baby formula from one company, the Shijiazhuang Sanlu Group Co. The dairy is at the center of the scandal.

"The hospitalized children basically consumed Sanlu brand infant milk powder. No cases have been found from ingesting liquid milk," said the ministry statement.
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Health

Reproductive Justice and Gender Kids Shouldn't Be Learning About Sex from TV

Kelli Conlin
Alter Net.
Fri, 19 Sep 2008 22:53 UTC
The New York streets are filled with posters advertising the return of the hit TV show Gossip Girl: photogenic teens embrace beneath a quote proclaiming that the show is "Every parent's nightmare." While Gossip Girl may be filled with the endless sexual encounters of high school students, the fictionalized private school is not this parent's September nightmare. My real-life nightmare is that kids are once again beginning a school year that will most likely not provide them with comprehensive sex education, leaving them at the mercy of shows such as Gossip Girl and the revamped 90210.
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Health

Tanning Beds Are Not Safe, Cause Skin Cancer, Studies Warn

Anna Boyd
eFluxMedia
Fri, 19 Sep 2008 20:37 UTC
Tanning beds have been a subject of controversy for many years with many dermatologists warning about the risk of developing skin cancer, and still, many people, especially women, are not convinced about the harmful effects of tanning. It is amazing how many of us choose a chocolate-like skin over a healthy skin although there is plenty of evidence that ultraviolet rays, no matter their source, cause skin cancer.

According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 60,000 people each year die from overexposure to ultraviolet light, mostly from malignant melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer. Skin cancer is the most common malignancy in the US, with 1 million new cases in 2008. Also one in five people is estimated to develop some type of skin cancer during their lifetime.
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Health

Salt Raises Blood Pressure, Vitamin C Lowers It

Ben Wasserman
Foodconsumer.org
Sun, 21 Sep 2008 20:30 UTC
A study presented at the American Heart Association's Fall Conference of the Council for High Blood Pressure Research, in Atlanta shows too much dietary salt can contribute to resistant high blood pressure.

Another study also presented at the same conference showed that vitamin C intravenously delivered can lower blood pressure by acting on an overactive central nervous system. Read Vitamin C lowers blood pressure for details.

Resistant hypertension refers to a condition where blood pressure remains above the target level even when three medications are used in an effort to lower it. High blood pressure is also called resistant to treatment if the condition can only get controlled by taking four or more medications.
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Cut

Chelation Study for Autism Called Off

Salynn Boyles
WebMD
Sun, 21 Sep 2008 02:01 UTC
Controversial Trial Too Risky, Panel Says

Federal officials have abandoned a proposed study of a controversial alternative therapy for autism, leaving parents who believe in the treatment disappointed and angry about the move.

Comment: What a poor excuse to shelve a promising therapy, while failing to offer any alternatives for autism sufferers.

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People

New study: Overbearing parents foster obsessive children


University of Montreal
Thu, 18 Sep 2008 17:40 UTC
New Université de Montréal study correlates parenting and a child's relationship to his or her hobby.

A new study has found that parental control directly influences whether a child will develop a harmonious or obsessive passion for their favorite hobby. Conducted by Professor Geneviève Mageau, of the Université de Montréal's Department of Psychology, the study will be published this fall edition of the Journal of Personality.

Mageau focused on 588 musicians and athletes between the ages of six and 38 who practice their hobby at different levels (beginner, intermediate and expert). Mageau used a Likert-type scale to measure how parents support the autonomy of their child.
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Gear

Shock Doctrine Applied: Some Political Views May be Related to Physiology


NSF
Thu, 18 Sep 2008 16:21 UTC
View a video interview and podcast with researcher John Hibbing of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

People who react more strongly to bumps in the night, spiders on a human body or the sight of a shell-shocked victim are more likely to support public policies that emphasize protecting society over preserving individual privacy. That's the conclusion of a recent study by researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL). Their research results appear in the Sept. 19 issue of Science magazine.
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Bulb

Duke medical team finds genetic link between immune and nerve systems


Duke University Medical Center
Fri, 19 Sep 2008 16:01 UTC
Duke University Medical Center researchers have discovered genetic links between the nervous system and the immune system in a well-studied worm, and the findings could illuminate new approaches to human therapies.

For some time, researchers have theorized a direct link between the nervous and immune systems, such as stress messages that override the protective effects of antibodies, but the exact connection was unknown.

"This is the first time that a genetic approach has been used to demonstrate that specific neurons in the nervous system are capable of regulating immune response in distant cells," said Alejandro Aballay Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the Duke Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology.

They studied a neural circuit in the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans.
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Cow

European Parliament urges commission to ban animal cloning for food supply


Cordis
Thu, 04 Sep 2008 14:59 UTC


Cow and calf
©Shutterstock

On 3 September the European Parliament adopted a resolution calling for a ban on the cloning of animals for food supply purposes, as well as an embargo on imports of cloned animals and their produce and offspring. The main concerns were threats to animal welfare, genetic diversity, consumer confidence and the image and substance of the European agricultural model.

Animal cloning is usually carried out using somatic cell nucleus transfer (SCNT). This process involves inserting genes from the donor animal into an egg that has had its nucleus removed. This egg then forms an embryo, which is transferred to a surrogate mother. Cattle and pigs that have been successfully cloned using SCNT are apparently normal; however, severe adverse health effects and developmental abnormalities are seen in animals when failures occur during the 'reprogramming' phase of cloning.
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People

Sydney lab cleared to clone human embryos

Deborah Smith
The Age
Wed, 17 Sep 2008 14:48 UTC
Sydney scientists have been given approval to attempt a world first in medical research. Researchers at fertility company Sydney IVF were yesterday issued with Australia's first licence to produce cloned human embryos.

By extracting stem cells from the cloned embryos, they hope to gain unprecedented insights into how crippling conditions including muscular dystrophy and Huntington's disease develop, and how to treat them.
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