Last month, we reported on a mysterious global epidemic of fatal kidney disease, focusing on a study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health¹ that laid down evidence showing the herbicide Roundup (glyphosate) is responsible for an epidemic of kidney-related deaths in a rural farming region of Northern Sri Lanka, as well as other rural regions around the world, including Costa Rica and Nicaragua. You can review the report here: Roundup Weedkiller Linked To Global Epidemic of Fatal Kidney Disease.

This information, while shocking to many who still consider glyphosate herbicide and the GM food produced with it to be relatively non-toxic, is not surprising to those who have been tracking the published research on glyphosate's wide ranging harmful effects, and which now shows a link between glyphosate and several dozen health conditions. You can view the first-hand toxicological citations here: Adverse Health Effects of Glyphosate Formulations.

Food is big business, everyone eats. Global food production is about profit.

In the North, store shelves are always full. It's cheap, we're told it's safe, healthy and suddenly it's sustainable, because sustainable sells.

Sustainable agriculture used to be defined by peasant farmers, by organic farmers; farmers who avoided using pesticides on their crops, farmers who avoided using antibiotics and hormones on their livestock, farmers who relied on integrated farming practices to make their farms regenerative - sustainable.

Now, Monsanto bills itself as a leader and innovator in sustainable agriculture. Elanco tells us technology yields sustainability and Elanco president Jeff Simmons tells us that "access to safe, proven, efficiency-enhancing technologies ensures: the three rights", Food as a basic human right, Choice as a consumer right, and Sustainability as an environmental right.

What? Biotechnology giants are standing up for the rights of people and the environment? The same corporations who for decades have ridiculed consumer protests and environmental concerns because their technology, their GMO's (Genetically Modified Organisms), their crop protection chemicals, their seed patents were all based on "sound science"?

A bill currently being debated in Colorado would force parents who attempt to opt out by seeking a personal exemption from getting their kids vaccinated, "to watch a video that discusses the benefits and risks of immunization to the student," according to ABC 7News Denver.

Not everyone thinks subjecting people to government propaganda just so they are allowed to make their own decisions about what's injected into their children is a good idea:

Susan Lawson testified against the bill, recalling how her daughter suffered brain injuries seven years ago after taking a vaccine to prevent measles, mumps and rubella when she was one year old.

"It's about choice and it's about not pressuring and using coercion to get parents to do what the government wants them to do, which is to vaccinate," Lawson told 7NEWS.

You can't live without this vitamin. But the FDA wants to reserve the natural form for monopoly drug companies, leaving only the synthetic form for supplements.

The FDA has just released a new 109-proposed rule on the revision of nutrition and supplement labels. (You can read more about the implications of the new labeling rules in our other article this week.)

On page 69, the agency slipped in two little paragraphs that could risk the health of millions of people who desperately need folate. It's a sneak attack so quiet and unobtrusive that few people will even realize it's there.

According to the guidance, the word "folate" will be banned from the Supplement Fact labels - only the term "folic acid" will be allowed.

Folate is the naturally occurring form of the water-soluble vitamin B9. It is found in foods such as black-eyed peas, chickpeas and other beans, lentils, spinach, turnip greens, asparagus, avocado, and broccoli, but is also available as a supplement.

It's called Zohydro.

Clinical Psychiatry News (3/13) has the story. West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin is protesting FDA approval of the drug. He's written a stunning letter to US Health and Human Services head, Kathleen Sebelius.

"...Sen. Manchin noted that the FDA approved the drug 'despite strong opposition from its own Anesthetic and Analgesic Drug Products Advisory Committee.'"

This is highly significant. The FDA turned its back on its own panel of new-drug reviewers.

Senator Manchin continues:

"Simply put, the FDA's approval of Zohydro ER, in its current form, must be stopped before this dangerous drug is sold to the public... [Zohydro] has up to 10 times as much hydrocodone as Vicodin and Lortab and will come in a formulation that can be easily crushed, snorted, and injected."

In other words, Zohydro, used as a pain killer, is a nightmare. If you've ever taken Vicodin, imagine a pill with ten times the strength.

About three out of four older Americans have multiple chronic health conditions, and more than 20 percent of them are being treated with drugs that work at odds with each other -- the medication being used for one condition can actually make the other condition worse.

This approach of treating conditions "one at a time" even if the treatments might conflict with one another is common in medicine, experts say, in part because little information exists to guide practitioners in how to consider this problem, weigh alternatives and identify different options.

One of the first studies to examine the prevalence of this issue, however, found that 22.6 percent of study participants received at least one medication that could worsen a coexisting condition. The work was done by researchers in Connecticut and Oregon, and published in PLOS One.

In cases where this "therapeutic competition" exists, the study found that it changed drug treatments in only 16 percent of the cases. The rest of the time, the competing drugs were still prescribed.

"Many physicians are aware of these concerns but there isn't much information available on what to do about it," said David Lee, an assistant professor in the Oregon State University/Oregon Health & Science University College of Pharmacy.

"Drugs tend to focus on one disease at a time, and most physicians treat patients the same way," Lee said. "As a result, right now we're probably treating too many conditions with too many medications. There may be times it's best to just focus on the most serious health problem, rather than use a drug to treat a different condition that could make the more serious health problem even worse."

More research in this field and more awareness of the scope of the problem are needed, the scientists said. It may be possible to make better value judgments about which health issue is of most concern, whether all the conditions should be treated, or whether this "competition" between drug treatments means one concern should go untreated. It may also be possible in some cases to identify ways to treat both conditions in ways that don't conflict with one another.

A common issue, for example, is patients who have both coronary heart disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD. Beta blockers are often prescribed to treat the heart disease, but those same drugs can cause airway resistance that worsens the COPD.

Want to improve your posture quickly, for free, with almost zero effort?

I recently did it. So can you.

I don't deserve any credit for this accomplishment. I didn't invent the technique, nor, as I mentioned, did implementing it ask much of me. I can, however, vouch for its effectiveness.

I was introduced to this magic bullet by an acupuncturist, and I have an acupuncture theory on why it's so beneficial (see below), but getting acupuncture is not required.

This solution to better posture is something you can do completely on your own, anywhere, anytime, without ever opening your wallet. You don't even have to get up from the couch.

Just recently, police in Tampa Bay reported an entire family had to be hospitalized after meat purchased from their local Walmart was found to contain LSD - a psychoactive drug that causes intense hallucinations. Though unrelated, a case from more than 50 years ago shows just how serious LSD-tainted foods can be, particularly when they are administered by the CIA.

The Morales family of Tampa Bay had eaten bottom round steak for dinner one night last week. One by one, they fell ill.

The father, Ronnie, was the first. His pregnant girlfriend took him to St. Joseph's hospital. While there, she also became ill and was rushed across the street to St. Joseph's Women's Hospital, where she was induced and delivered her baby.

Both children in the house,7-year old Elyana and 6-year old Rayna, experienced hallucinations and felt sick. The kids and their father had to receive tracheal intubation while hospitalized.

After collecting various foods from the home, officials discovered the meat had been contaminated with LSD. Though Walmart has received no other similar complaints, they are said to be cooperating fully with the investigation and removed all similar cuts of meat from that store location.

This isolated incident is frightening, to be sure, but it is nothing like the LSD contamination that took place in Pont-Saint-Esprit in southeast France in 1951. According to an American investigative journalist, it was there that the CIA laced local food with the hallucinogen to study mind control during the cold war.

The American Academy of Pediatrics and the Canadian Society of Pediatrics state infants aged 0-2 years should not have any exposure to technology, 3-5 years be restricted to one hour per day, and 6-18 years restricted to 2 hours per day (AAP 2001/13, CPS 2010). Children and youth use 4-5 times the recommended amount of technology, with serious and often life threatening consequences (Kaiser Foundation 2010, Active Healthy Kids Canada 2012). Handheld devices (cell phones, tablets, electronic games) have dramatically increased the accessibility and usage of technology, especially by very young children (Common Sense Media, 2013). As a pediatric occupational therapist, I'm calling on parents, teachers and governments to ban the use of all handheld devices for children under the age of 12 years. Following are 10 research-based reasons for this ban. Please visit zonein.ca to view the Zone'in Fact Sheet for referenced research.

I have a great friend who was a Pulitzer Prize nominated Wall Street Journal investigative reporter for over a dozen years. Based on his experience there, he occasionally gives two-day seminars on how to deal with the press. He always starts out on day one by asking the question, What is news?

What is news? Think about it and try to come up with your own answer before reading on.