Researchers allege undisclosed conflicts of interest on a National Academies of Sciences panel.

About a year ago, the prestigious National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine produced a 584-page report assessing the health, environmental, and agronomic impact of genetically modified crops. The conclusion: GMOs have so far proved to be neither a disaster nor a triumph. They haven't been shown to pose a threat to human health, as some critics have argued they do; but they also haven't discernibly raised crop yields, as some boosters insist they have.

Not surprisingly, the report did little to "end the highly polarized dispute over biotech crops," concluded New York Times reporter Andrew Martin in an article just after the report's release. He added that both sides of the debate "pointed approvingly to findings that buttressed their viewpoint and criticized those that did not."

And a new paper, published in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS-One, ups the temperature of that long-simmering debate. The authors—Sheldon Krimsky, a professor in the Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at Tufts, and Tim Schwab, a researcher at Food & Water Watch—found that 6 of the 20 scientists who contribute to NASEM's GMO report had ties to the ag-biotech industry that weren't disclosed in the paper. Five of them "had patents or industry research funding" while they served on the committee, and another one "reported receiving industry research funding" a few years before.

The federal government's push for all state and territories to ban unvaccinated children from child care is a coercive measure that may disadvantage working parents and their children, and may have other unintended consequences.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says unifying how different state and territories handle access to child care is needed to boost childhood vaccination rates.


But there are other ways of achieving this that don't disadvantage working women, in particular.

Another ceorcive measure

"No Jab No Play" follows the much discussed "No Jab No Pay" policy, which makes vaccination a condition for receiving certain government benefits and subsidies.

But there is no evidence that banning unvaccinated children from child care will be any better than excluding them temporarily during an outbreak, which already occurs.

Yes, any measure that causes hardship, inconvenience or financial disadvantage for the target population will raise immunisation rates. If vaccine-hesitant parents cannot go to work because they do not have child care, or if they depend on child care payments or family tax benefits, then they may have no option but to vaccinate their child.

Over the last seventy-five years, men have seen a sharp reduction in reproductive capacity, and evidence suggests that commonly found chemicals are to blame.

If that news isn't stark enough for the future of humankind, these chemicals are also making us dumber.

A recent piece in the New York Times drew attention to an important issue: endocrine-disrupting chemicals in everyday consumer products are killing or disabling sperm and making men sterile.

The numbers are extremely troubling. Scientists say that approximately 90% of sperm in a typical young man are misshapen, meaning they are unable to swim correctly. Additionally, sperm counts have decreased sharply over the last seventy-five years. As one researcher bluntly stated, "Not everyone who wants to reproduce will be able to."

Our grandfathers may not have been able to understand our smart phones, but their ability to produce offspring vastly outpaced our own.

Of the 2,900 babies born last year in Cabell County, West Virginia, 500 had to be weaned off of opioid dependence.

In Ohio, counties are renting refrigerated trailers to store the mounting number of bodies of drug overdose victims.

In New Hampshire, hospitals have so many overdose patients they have to treat them in operating rooms and neonatal nurseries.

And in Palm Beach County, Florida, where President Donald Trump spends his weekends, 10 people died of overdoses on Friday alone, likely from a batch of heroin tainted by fentanyl, a powerful, synthetic opioid pain medication.

After a decade and hundreds of thousands of deaths, the US opioid addiction crisis is entering a new phase. With the government finally cracking down on the free flow of prescription pain killers fueling the crisis, addicts are turning to heroin pouring in from Mexico.

And towns, cities and states are being overwhelmed.

Drinking tea is linked to a dramatic reduction in the risk of cognitive impairment in older people, new research suggests.

A single daily cup of tea reduces cognitive decline in those over 55 by 50%, the Chinese study found.

Among those with a genetic susceptibility to Alzheimer's, though, this risk reduction increased to 86%.

It did not matter which type of tea people consumed: green, black or oolong.

The only thing that mattered was that the tea was brewed from tea leaves.

A recent study has revealed even more evidence to indicate coffee has more to offer than just a boost of energy. Caffeine offers much more, actually, as it may help protect against the development of dementia.

Researchers at Indiana University discovered that caffeine and 23 other compounds kick-start an enzyme known as nicotinamide mononucleotide adenylyl transferase ², or NMNAT2, and it's this compound that scientists say may block the effects of neurodegenerative disorders.

A new study published online by Pediatrics and conducted by the Center for Injury Research and Policy and the Central Ohio Poison Center at Nationwide Children's Hospital found that there were more than 188,000 calls to US Poison Control Centers for pediatric exposure to opioids from January 2000 through December 2015, averaging 32 calls a day or one every 45 minutes.

The good news is that thanks to recognition of the problem and efforts from many organizations, the number and rate of exposures to most opioids has been steadily decreasing since 2009. One notable exception is buprenorphine, a medication primarily used to treat people for addiction to heroin and other opioids. While exposures to most other opioids have declined, pediatric buprenorphine exposures continue to climb, which is concerning given that almost half (47%) result in admission to a health care facility.

"As physicians, we need to find a balance between making sure that we are helping our patients manage their pain, and making sure we don't prescribe more or stronger medication than they need," said Gary Smith, MD, DrPH, the senior author of the study and director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's Hospital. "While overall rates of exposure to opioids among children are going down, they are still too high. We need to continue to examine our prescription practices and to increase education to parents about safe ways to store these medications at home to keep them out of the hands of children."

Overall, most of the exposures occurred among children younger than five years of age (60%) followed by teenagers (30%). The medications leading to the most calls were hydrocodone (29%), oxycodone (18%), and codeine (17%). The reason for and the severity of the exposure varied by age.

Monroe Gordon Piland III (69) has lived an amazing life according to some estimates. In the late 1960's early 70's, Piland served as a naval officer, during the Vietnam war. Upon his return to the states, he earned a degree in nutrition from The University of California - Berkeley, and later a medical degree from the prestigious Wake Forest University, formerly a Southern Baptist university. He completed his medical residency in Elizabeth City, NC, and was a board certified medical doctor from 1979-1984. Somewhere along the way, Piland discovered the healing properties of marijuana, a known fact which has been well established in medical journals since before the time Piland became a medical doctor. But that's also the same time Piland began to have trouble with the law. Now a victim of the war on drugs and a soon to be resident inside the Prison Industrial Complex, Piland will likely die in prison, all because he simply believes the so-called authorities do not have the god-given authority to criminalize the possession and distribution of a plant, something he equates to blasphemy.

In 1979, the doctor began cultivating marijuana on Hatteras Island to use in treating his patients. Hatteras Island is home to few residents, and in the late 1970's there were even less who called the North Carolina island their home. Piland successfully grew 111 marijuana plants, which he said was going to be used in his medical practice. The former naval officer, turned medical doctor, turned cannabis advocate, was truly one of the first medical marijuana pioneers, putting his medical practice on the line to bring healing to his NC community. But all that changed when he was charged with possession of a controlled substance.

According to the Citizen-Times, "in the early 1980s, when he was found guilty of growing 111 marijuana plants on his property on Hatteras Island and sentenced to 111 hours in jail, 111 hours of community service and a $1,110 fine," arguably a slap on the wrist in light of the peril he's now facing. "It was taken from me because I didn't recant," Piland said about the loss of his medical license.

Piland says he's currently working on a "therapy based on flower essences" and added, "I never stopped telling people what I see as the truth about their health."

A new study reveals that a commonly consumed painkiller, wrongly considered "harmless" by millions, is probably causing thousands of deaths from cardiac arrest each year.

According to the Sudden Cardiac Arrest Foundation, sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) is a leading cause of death among adults over 40 in the United States and other countries, with about 326,200 people experiencing an out-of-hospital SCA each year in the US alone; nine of 10 victims of SCA will die.¹

Suprisingly, however, the causes of SCA are still widely considered unknown. Instead, the medical profession opts for pointing the finger at vague risk factors, such as family history, previous heart problems, or elevated LDL cholesterol (a long debunked surrogate marker for heart disease].

But what if something so obvious and preventable as the consumption of NSAID drugs could be contributing to this health epidemic?

We all have heard of the placebo effect, but even in the medicinal circles, relatively few have heard of the nocebo effect.

In fact, this phenomenon is an evil twin of the placebo effect.

The nocebo effect refers by definition to the worsening or the induction of symptoms induced by active or sham therapies. ⁽¹⁾

While the placebo effect causes positive results, which normally shouldn't have any effect (e.g., sugar pill), the nocebo effect gives totally opposite result in health terms, due to the patient's negative thoughts and worst expectations.

These both effects are very powerful and regardless of whether the patient and the doctor are aware of it or not, it plays a significant part of the healing process.

Physicians Ignore Both Placebo And Nocebo

A large number of physicians and experts are surprisingly ignorant of the placebo effect, although it works in their favor. And if they don't want to hear about the placebo effect, you can imagine what would be their reaction to nocebo effect. Luckily, there are always exceptions!