Health & WellnessS


Sheeple

Corn is the key ingredient in all fast foods, should you care?

Sue Mueller
FoodConsumer.org
Sun, 16 Nov 2008 23:28 UTC
A new study suggests that all most all fast foods contain chemical elements or ingredients derived from corn either in forms of meat, oil or others.

The study led by A. Hope Jahren, a professor of geography and geophysics at the University of Hawaii and Rebecca A. Kraft found that of the hundreds of servings of fast-fast meals purchased nationwide, only about 12 servings of food could potentially be traced back to something besides corn.

For the study, the researchers sampled 480 servings of hamburgers, chicken sandwiches and fries from McDonald's, Burger King, and Wendy's chains in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, Detroit, Boston, and Baltimore.

Results of the study suggested that 100 percent and 93 percent of the cows responsible for the hamburgers and chicken sandwiches were fed exclusively corn-based diets. And only 12 Burger King burgers bought on the West Coast used meat from cows that did not exclusively eat corn-based diets.
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X

Prescription drugs can deliver high doses of phthalates

Marla Cone
Environmental Health News
Mon, 10 Nov 2008 18:01 UTC
For millions of people, medicines are a little-known, major source of the compounds, which are linked to reproductive abnormalities. Scientists warn "of the potential for high delivered doses of phthalates to vulnerable segments of the population, particularly pregnant women or young children."
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Syringe

Minneapolis and the Somali Autism Riddle

David Kirby
The Huffington post
Sun, 16 Nov 2008 06:02 UTC
Tomorrow, a few hundred very concerned citizens of Minnesota will gather to discuss a baffling and heartbreaking riddle: Why is the reported rate of autism among children of Somali refugees so alarmingly high (now an estimated 1-in-28 schoolchildren)?
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Health

Stigmata? Nameless Condition, Mysterious Bleeding

Lauren Cox
ABC News
Tue, 28 Oct 2008 06:20 UTC
Mysterious bleeding
© ABC
Every decade, people around the globe come forward to claim that they spontaneously bleed and bruise without an injury, disease or chemical to cause it.

Stigmata might first come to mind, but there are many terms for the spontaneous bleeding -- psychogenic purpura, autoerythrocyte sensitization, Gardner-Diamond syndrome -- and just as many different reactions to the claims.

Skeptics, the religious, psychoanalysts and the medical profession have all vied to explain the condition. And those who claim to have the symptoms often report they are mystified and stigmatized and unable to get help.

Take the family of Twinkle Dwivedi, a 13-year-old girl from Lucknow, India, who has spent the better part of a year asking doctors for a physical explanation to her unusual bleeding.
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Magnify

New theory says autism and schizophrenia same disease

Benedict Carey
TheChronicleHerald.ca
Sun, 16 Nov 2008 05:46 UTC
Two scientists, drawing on their own powers of observation and a creative reading of recent genetic findings, have published a sweeping theory of brain development that would change the way mental disorders like autism and schizophrenia are understood.
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Gear

Deaths uncounted in China's tainted milk scandal

Charles Hutzler
Huffington Post
Sun, 16 Nov 2008 05:06 UTC
LITI VILLAGE - Li Xiaokai died of kidney failure on the old wooden bed in the family farmhouse, just before dawn on a drizzly Sept. 10.

Her grandmother wrapped the 9-month-old in a wool blanket. Her father handed the body to village men for burial by a muddy creek. The doctors and family never knew why she got sick. A day later, state media reported that the type of infant formula she drank had been adulterated with an industrial chemical.
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Health

'Elixir of youth' drug could fight HIV and ageing

Linda Geddes
New Scientist
Sun, 16 Nov 2008 04:45 UTC
A drug extracted from a plant used in Chinese medicine has helped immune cells fight HIV and raises the possibility of slowing the ageing process in other parts of our bodies.

The method hinges upon telomeres - caps of repetitive DNA found at the ends of chromosomes. These get shorter as cells age and are thought to affect the cell's lifespan.
single human
© US National Cancer InstituteElectron microscopic image of a single human "killer" T-cell.

The caps can be rebuilt with an enzyme called telomerase, and some people have suggested it might be possible to extend human life by boosting telomerase production - though this has never been tested.

Now Rita Effros at the University of California in Los Angeles has used a drug that boosts telomerase to enhance the immune response to viruses.
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Heart - Black

What Attracts the Psychopath? Vulnerability


Newswise
Sat, 15 Nov 2008 21:50 UTC
How do psychopaths find their victims? A new study by Dalhousie researchers suggests they are deeply attuned to vulnerable people.

"It's like what you'd see on Animal Planet - the lion goes after the most vulnerable, the one they have the best chance of getting," says Kevin Wilson, a fourth-year science student who was the lead researcher on the paper, "A pawn by any other name? Social information processing as a function of psychopathic traits," published in the Journal of Research in Personality.

"This type of aggression is referred to as predatory ... it's a perceptual system geared to getting the easiest prey."
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Magnify

SOTT Focus: On the Nature of Psychopathy: A Thought Experiment

Harrison Koehli
SOTT.net
Sat, 15 Nov 2008 17:56 UTC
Andriod
Almost human.
I've lately been thinking about the "continuous vs categorical" debate in relation to psychopathy. I just started reading a book called Thinking about Psychopaths and Psychopathy edited by Harvard professor Ellsworth Lapham Fersch. It's a collection of questions and answers from seminars he's given on psychopathy, with contributions by various academics. Based on Fersch's introduction, it looks promising and insightful.

However, I wonder if Fersch really "gets it". While he talks about the importance of psychopathy quite eloquently and identifies the problems inherent in the conflation of psychopathy with antisocial personality disorder, there is a question and answer in the first chapter that is puzzling. (It is possible one of his colleagues answered this question, as the individual author is not listed for each section.)

In this question on the debate between psychopathy as either categorical (i.e. you either have it or you don't, like Turner's syndrome) or continuous (the extreme end of traits shared by everyone, as in someone with very high intelligence), he firmly takes the "continuous" side. However, I get the impression that he does so without understanding the crux of the matter, or the implications of such a position.
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Cow Skull

Austrian Government Study Confirms Genetically Modified (GM) Crops Threaten Human Fertility and Health Safety


Institute For Responsible Technology
Fri, 14 Nov 2008 21:04 UTC
Advocates Call for Immediate Ban of All GM Foods and GM Crops

Los Angeles, CA. - A long-term feeding study commissioned by the Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety, managed by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Health, Family and Youth, and carried out by Veterinary University Vienna, confirms genetically modified (GM) corn seriously affects reproductive health in mice. Non-GMO advocates, who have warned about this infertility link along with other health risks, now seek an immediate ban of all GM foods and GM crops to protect the health of humankind and the fertility of women around the world.

Feeding mice with genetically modified corn developed by the US-based Monsanto Corporation led to lower fertility and body weight, according to the study conducted by the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna. Lead author of the study Professor Zentek said, there was a direct link between the decrease in fertility and the GM diet, and that mice fed with non-GE corn reproduced more efficiently.

In the study, Austrian scientists performed several long-term feeding trials over 20 weeks with laboratory mice fed a diet containing 33% of a GM variety (NK 603 x MON 810), or a closely related non-GE variety used in many countries. Statistically significant litter size and pup weight decreases were found in the third and fourth litters in the GM-fed mice, compared to the control group.
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