Health & Wellness
A weight-loss drug banned in the U.S. over fears it can heighten the risk of suicide has been given the go-ahead in Britain.
Acomplia will be available to overweight or obese patients who cannot take, or who have had no success with, the two other weight-loss drugs available on the Health Service.
But a series of scientific studies have raised concerns that it can induce suicidal thoughts in those already suffering from depression.
The drug, taken orally as a pill once a day, has not been authorised in the U.S. because of safety fears, although it is available in France and Germany.
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| ©Daily Mail
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| Obese patients in Britain will be offered Acomplia despite its known unsafe side-effects
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As the number of overweight and obese people is on the rise in the U.S., it is no surprise that there are nearly 24 million people having diabetes, an increase of more than 3 million in two years, the latest statistics from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, based on data from 2007, show. A quarter of people ages 60 and older had diabetes in 2007, the CDC found.
There are also almost 6 million who are unaware they are diabetic. The good news is that the percentage of people in this situation fell from 30 percent to 25 percent, according to the report. And there are at least 57 million people having prediabetes, a condition that puts people at greater risk of the disease.
In 1986, Nancy Reagan made it clear that there is "no moral middle ground" when it comes to drug use. You either don't take drugs - which means you are a "good" person - or you do take drugs, which means you are a "bad" person."
The Reagan-era outlook on drug addiction has dominated our political culture for nearly three decades, though not without sharp criticism. In March, for instance, the writers of "The Wire," the critically-acclaimed HBO series that brought the Realpolitik of Baltimore's war on drugs to the small screen, made it clear what they thought of the Reagan approach: "what once began, perhaps, as a battle against dangerous substances, long ago transformed itself into a venal war on our underclass. Since declaring war on drugs nearly 40 years ago, we've been demonizing our most desperate citizens, isolating and incarcerating them and otherwise denying them a role in the American collective. All to no purpose. The prison population doubles and doubles again; the drugs remain."
It seemed like a typical art show opening. Happy people mingling and snacking on cheese and strawberries, scrutinizing each painting and piece of sculpture. Proud artists interpreting their work and explaining their creative processes to admiring family and friends.
But the Spring Art Gallery show at the Children's Health Council in Palo Alto is special. The young artists all struggle with emotional or social disabilities. The nearly 200 paintings, photographs and sculptures were created in art therapy sessions at the Health Council's Esther B. Clark School, where children ages 8-16 who have trouble coping in public schools receive intensive help from teachers and therapists.
This month, researchers from several institutions including the University of Oulu in Finland and the Imperial College in London reported the
results of a study which found an association between high-dose vitamin D supplementation in infancy and an increased risk of atopy, allergic rhinitis, and asthma later in life. Atopy, or atopic syndrome, is an allergic hypersensitivity affecting parts of the body not in direct contact with an allergen. It may involve eczema (inflammation of the upper skin layers), allergic conjunctivitis, allergic rhinitis and asthma.
A Bahraini woman has given birth to sextuplets, three boys and three girls, national media reported on Tuesday.
The sextuplets, weighing between 460 and 650 grams, are reportedly in a "stable and good condition." They were delivered on Sunday by caesarean section, with 35 minutes between the first and last baby.
Fifty residents along Escambia Bay are suing the companies they say are responsible for polluting the water and fish near their property with cancer-causing industrial chemicals.
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| ©Washington State Department of Health
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Comment: Has Mr. Young or Monsanto not read the facts? The facts state that levels of PCBs in the Escambia are higher river than the safety limit. Can you see how this case will be held up on court? By arguing trifles, tiny bits of data and semantics nothing will be done. It's this way all over the world thanks to the mind of the psychopath.
Geelong's water is expected to be fluoridated by this time next year, with infrastructure now being developed.
A spokesman for the state health department said yesterday Geelong would need at least three fluoride treatment plants for the project because of the configuration of its water supply.
The city's water is drawn from the Barwon catchment to the west and the Moorabool catchment to the north.
Fluoridation equipment was installed at Anakie, She Oaks and Wurdee Boluc Reservoir in 1986, but union bans stopped their commissioning just days before the tap was turned on, and the original equipment was dismantled many years ago.
The way mothers interact with their babies in the first year of life is strongly related to how children behave later on. Both a mother's parenting style and an infant's temperament reliably predict challenging behavior in later childhood, according to Benjamin Lahey and his team from the University of Chicago in the US. Their findings1 have just been published online in Springer's Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology.
The researchers looked at whether an infant's temperament and his mother's parenting skills during the first year of life might predict behavioral problems, in just over 1,800 children aged 4-13 years. Measures of infant temperament included activity levels, how fearful, predictable and fussy the babies were, as well as whether they had a generally happy disposition. The researchers looked at how much mothers stimulated their baby intellectually, how responsive they were to the child's demands, and the use of spanking or physical restraint. Child conduct problems in later childhood included cheating, telling lies, trouble getting on with teachers, being disobedient at home and/or at school, bullying and showing no remorse after misbehaving.
Twenty-three people have died in the past five years after a routine flu jab.
Official figures show that a further 123 people given the winter vaccine suffered a suspected reaction so severe they were taken to hospital.
Causes of death included heart attacks, blood infections and pneumonia, while asthma and kidney failure were among reported side-effects.
The statistics, revealed by Health Minister Dawn Primarolo, raise fears over the safety of the vaccine, which is taken by eight million people in Britain every year.
Comment: Apparently not safe enough, especially when there is an
overwhelming evidence that vaccinations sabotage natural immune systems and cause a host of invasive infections.
Comment: Has Mr. Young or Monsanto not read the facts? The facts state that levels of PCBs in the Escambia are higher river than the safety limit. Can you see how this case will be held up on court? By arguing trifles, tiny bits of data and semantics nothing will be done. It's this way all over the world thanks to the mind of the psychopath.