© AFP/WHO
Nurses take care of a patient with Ebola hemorrhagic fever.

Ebola health workers in boiling hot suits, toxic chemicals

In recent articles, I stated it's a mistake to jump to a conclusion about what's really making doctors and nurses sick in African Ebola clinics. (see here and here).

Here's a missing factor in understanding what is happening to some of those doctors and nurses.

I'm not talking about Ebola. I'm talking about physiological shock, huge and sudden dehydration, and more.

On top of that, factor in a falsely positive diagnostic Ebola test for a few of those health workers, and what do you have? A nightmare.

From the Daily Mail, August 5, an article headlined, "In boiling hot suits...":

"Doctor Hannah Spencer revealed how she wills herself to feel safe inside a boiling hot air-sealed Hazmat suit..."

"Boiling: Doctors and nurses lose up to five litres in sweat during an hour-long shift in the suits and have to spend two hours rehydrating after..."

"To minimise the risk of infection they have to wear thick rubber boots that come up to their knees, an impermeable body suit, gloves, a face mask, a hood and goggles to ensure no air at all can touch their skin."

"Dr. Spencer, 27, and her colleagues lose up to five litres of sweat during a shift treating victims and have to spend two hours rehydrating afterwards."

"At their camp they go through multiple decontaminations which includes spraying chlorine on their shoes."

"Dr. Spencer: 'We would like to keep a [patient] visit between 45 minutes and one hour, but now, we're stretching it to almost two hours. We put ourselves through a very strong physiological stress when we're using personal protection gear.'"

"'We sweat, we're losing water; we're getting hotter and it wreaks havoc on the body. Our own endurance starts to wear down.'"

​Canada has offered to donate its experimental Ebola virus vaccine to West African States after the WHO said it would be ethical to use untested vaccines to try and contain the outbreak that has already claimed the lives of more than 1,000 people.

According to the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHA) the country sees the vaccine as a global resource and is in talks with the US and the World Health Organization to coordinate the best application of a limited number of doses in its possession.

The deputy head of PHA Dr. Gregory Taylor estimates that Canada has about 1,500 doses of the vaccine, which has not yet been tested on people, saying that 1,000 doses of vaccine could be sent abroad for use, Canadian Press reports.

Taylor also warned that since the drug is yet to be tested on humans, it's not clear what dosage is needed to protect a person, so those numbers could change.

Suicide rates among middle-aged Americans have risen sharply in the past decade, prompting concern that a generation of baby boomers who have faced years of economic worry and easy access to prescription painkillers may be particularly vulnerable to self-inflicted harm. More people now die of suicide than in car accidents, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which published the findings in Friday's issue of its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. In 2010 there were 33,687 deaths from motor vehicle crashes and 38,364 suicides.

Suicide has typically been viewed as a problem of teenagers and the elderly, and the surge in suicide rates among middle-aged Americans is surprising.

From 1999 to 2010, the suicide rate among Americans ages 35 to 64 rose by nearly 30 percent, to 17.6 deaths per 100,000 people, up from 13.7. Although suicide rates are growing among both middle-aged men and women, far more men take their own lives. The suicide rate for middle-aged men was 27.3 deaths per 100,000, while for women it was 8.1 deaths per 100,000.

The most pronounced increases were seen among men in their 50s, a group in which suicide rates jumped by nearly 50 percent, to about 30 per 100,000. For women, the largest increase was seen in those ages 60 to 64, among whom rates increased by nearly 60 percent, to 7.0 per 100,000.

A disturbing mystery - and a tragic end to a very young life. A 12-year-old Waukesha girl is dead - and there is seemingly no reason why - except perhaps, one.

Meredith Prohaska was an active, fun-loving 12-year-old girl one minute. A few hours later - she was unresponsive on the floor. In between that time, there was a trip to the doctor - and now, Prohaska's family wonders if that's what killed her.

"I'm a tough guy. I can take a beating - but this has ripped a hole in my heart," Prohaska's father, Mark Prohaska said.

Prohaska is describes as a girl who loved to be active - swimming and playing basketball while in sixth grade at Butler Middle School.

She loved to take part in activities at Horeb Springs Park.

"Vibrant. Full of life. She was our sunshine. Everywhere I go, everything I do - I see her," Rebecca Prohaska said.

Wonderful news. Great news. Absolutely great!

An UNDISCLOSED NUMBER of people who had contact with the Ebola virus are coming to Charlotte, North Carolina.

It was dumb to bring the infected to Atlanta, now it's become really REALLY dumb, bringing people over here to wait 21 days to find out , why not a quarantine boat, or overseas?!

How in the world is it possible that more than 170 health workers have been infected by the Ebola virus? That is the one question about Ebola that nobody can seem to answer. The World Health Organization is reporting this as a fact, but no explanation is given as to why this is happening. We are just assured that Ebola "is not airborne" and that getting infected "requires close contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person". If this is true, then how have more than 170 health workers caught the disease? These workers are dressed head to toe in suits that are specifically designed to prevent the spread of the virus. So how is this happening? I could understand a handful of "mistakes" by health workers, but this is unlike anything that we have ever seen in the history of infectious diseases. These health workers take extraordinary precautions to keep from getting the virus. If it is spreading so easily to them, what chance is the general population going to have?

Well, this isn't good:

The World Health Organization reported four new cases of Ebola in Nigeria Friday, all of them among health care workers and others who had contact with American consultant Patrick Sawyer, a spokesman said.

"They're all contacts of Patrick Sawyer," said Gregory Hartl, a spokesman for the WHO in Geneva. He said all are health care workers, cleaners or others at the hospital where Sawyer was taken after he collapsed in the airport following a flight from Liberia to Nigeria. "We know that he had contact with very few people at the airport," Hartl said.

Sawyer died in Lagos, Nigeria, on July 25. The Liberian-born American citizen collapsed in the Lagos airport after displaying symptoms of Ebola on his flight there. He had been planning to visit the U.S. weeks later to be at the birthday parties for his daughters.

The fact that four people who had contact with Sawyer have Ebola is worrisome because it raises the specter of transmitting the disease beyond Lagos, Hartl said. But the Nigerian ambassador to the U.S. said there have been no Ebola cases outside of the city.

Sawyer is one of three Americans known to be infected with Ebola. The other two - Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol - were flown back to the U.S. for treatment at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta. And the outbreak has created some concern in the U.S.; earlier this week, Mount Sinai Hospital in New York was testing a patient for Ebola, sparking fears, only for it to turn out that the patient didn't have it.

The author of this article, and a few other articles hosted on Sott.net, Samantha Chang, recently demanded that Sott.net stop republishing her articles (all of which are on the Ketogenic diet), on pain of "bad things happening" to us (see email below).

Like a good authoritarian follower, Ms. Chang backed up her 'threat' with a symbol of the totalitarian state under which she exists - an image of a United States Dept. of Justice wallet (see below), which seems to suggest that she has perhaps internalized the fascistic ideology of the police state that is the US of A.

Many writers have published information on the benefits of a Ketogenic diet, including research conducted by Sott.net that was made freely available to all. Ms. Chang, however, obviously does not subscribe to the idea of the free flow of vitally important information in an age of massive information control and subversion.

Given that Ms. Chang is obviously more interested in personal profit rather than the dissemination of information that could help many people, we will no longer be carrying her articles. In chasing after self-aggrandizement at the expense of helping others, she has clearly aligned herself with the fundamentals of our pathologically narcissistic global society.

Pfizer lawsuits mount due to Lipitor side effects as more women file claims against the gigantic pharmaceutical company. So far, close to 1,000 cases, representing over 4,000 women were filed against the huge drug manufacturer. The women allege that Pfizer did not give the public proper warning about the side effects of Lipitor.

Pfizer lawsuits mount due to Lipitor side effects

Lipitor became available to the public in 1996; it is the best-selling pharmaceutical drug, ever. Globally, sales of Lipitor are close to 130 billion dollars. It is prescribed to around 29 million patients in the United States.

Within the last five months, American women filed lawsuits in federal court against Pfizer. The women claim Lipitor caused them to develop Type-2 diabetes and Pfizer failed to warn them. Lawsuits increased substantially after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) provided a warning in 2012 linking statins, including Lipitor, to incidents consisting of "a small increased risk of raised blood sugar levels and the development of Type 2 diabetes" and reports of memory loss. Presently, the FDA substantiates that the benefits of statins and Lipitor outweigh the risks.

Statins help in lowering cholesterol levels; however, like most medication, they can cause some potentially dangerous side effects, such as liver damage, neurological side effects, muscle problems, increased blood sugar, or Type-2 diabetes. Pfizer stated they plan to fight the lawsuits and they deny any liabilities.

Researchers from the Rush University Medical Center have found that stress in the home and depression among parents increase the risk of asthma and asthmatic attacks among children.

The researchers - part of the Project CURA: The Community United to Challenge Asthma - investigated and studied the homes of Puerto Rican children between the ages of 5 and 18 years old with asthma within the city of Chicago. The research was funded by the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health.

Curiously, Puerto Rican children have a far greater risk of asthma than do white, black or hispanic children. An asthma study published in the Journal Pediatrics in 2006 found that 26% of Puerto Rican children had been diagnosed with asthma between 1997 and 2001 while only 12% of white children, 16% of black children, 12% of hispanic children had been diagnosed with asthma during the same period. This means that Puerto Rican children have more than double the asthma rates of most other children.