First in a three-part series

The criminal brain has always held a fascination for James Fallon. For nearly 20 years, the neuroscientist at the University of California-Irvine has studied the brains of psychopaths. He studies the biological basis for behavior, and one of his specialties is to try to figure out how a killer's brain differs from yours and mine.

About four years ago, Fallon made a startling discovery. It happened during a conversation with his then 88-year-old mother, Jenny, at a family barbecue.

"I said, 'Jim, why don't you find out about your father's relatives?' " Jenny Fallon recalls. "I think there were some cuckoos back there."

Fallon investigated.

"There's a whole lineage of very violent people - killers," he says.

One of his direct great-grandfathers, Thomas Cornell, was hanged in 1667 for murdering his mother. That line of Cornells produced seven other alleged murderers, including Lizzy Borden. "Cousin Lizzy," as Fallon wryly calls her, was accused (and controversially acquitted) of killing her father and stepmother with an ax in Fall River, Mass., in 1882.

A little spooked by his ancestry, Fallon set out to see whether anyone in his family possesses the brain of a serial killer. Because he has studied the brains of dozens of psychopaths, he knew precisely what to look for. To demonstrate, he opened his laptop and called up an image of a brain on his computer screen.

The Escambia County Health Department lifted a health advisory on Pensacola Beach on Friday on the advice of a beach official and against the advice of a federal environmental official.

But the advisory was not lifted for Gulf Islands National Seashore's Fort Pickens beach, immediately west of Pensacola Beach or Johnson Beach on Perdido Key.

And hours after the Pensacola Beach advisory was lifted, the health department asked for state approval to issue an oil-impact advisory that leaves the decision to swim in the Gulf of Mexico up to the discretion of individual beachgoers.

The signs would be posted on 41 of the 43 miles of Escambia County beaches - from the Florida-Alabama line to just west of Portofino Beach - impacted by oil.

In its never-ending attempt to fabricate "mental disorders" out of every human activity, the psychiatric industry is now pushing the most ridiculous disease they've invented yet: Healthy eating disorder.

This is no joke: If you focus on eating healthy foods, you're "mentally diseased" and probably need some sort of chemical treatment involving powerful psychotropic drugs. The Guardian newspaper reports, "Fixation with healthy eating can be sign of serious psychological disorder" and goes on to claim this "disease" is called orthorexia nervosa -- which is basically just Latin for "nervous about correct eating."

But they can't just called it "nervous healthy eating disorder" because that doesn't sound like they know what they're talking about. So they translate it into Latin where it sounds smart (even though it isn't). That's where most disease names come from: Doctors just describe the symptoms they see with a name like osteoporosis (which means "bones with holes in them").

According to a report from Florida's Department of Health, there's no amount of lead in the blood that's safe. Yet last year, the FDA tested for lead in 22 brands of lipstick and found lead in every single one of them.

It's estimated that the average woman inadvertently consumes four pounds of lipstick in her lifetime and even low levels of lead in the body have been linked to developmental delays, aggression, hyperactivity, irreversible brain damage, being antisocial, and having attention and learning problems. Newborns are regularly found to have lead in their umbilical cord blood, so this neurotoxin is affecting them long before their blood brain barrier has even formed. All this, and the FDA says the lead in lipstick isn't a problem.

One study found that children with higher levels of lead in their blood were more apt to be arrested later in life. This is because having lead in the body regularly makes people violent and aggressive. But who'd think that by applying lipstick each day while you're pregnant you'd be even slightly increasing the chances that your child will behave aggressively with playmates - or increasing the chances that your child will end up behind bars later in life? It sounds farfetched, but if you connect the dots, it's really not.

Writing in Forbes magazine, Yale cardiologist Harlan Krumholz notes that in spite of his desire to believe in the good intentions of the pharmaceutical industry, the actions of companies such as GlaxoSmithKline continue to disappoint him.

"I want to believe in America's pharmaceutical companies," Krumholz wrote on Feb.25. "I want to believe that people in these companies believe that the best strategy for success is to do what is best for patients. I want to believe that they are interested in scientific truth and eager to know of any safety issues and ready to share that information with the public.

"This week I was disappointed again."

Krumholz was referring to a report, issued by the Senate Finance Committee, concluding that even as Glaxo scientists were voicing warnings about the safety of the blockbuster diabetes drug Avandia, the company was taking aggressive measures to discredit critics who publicly raised similar concerns.

A recent study conducted by researchers at Columbia University in New York has found that people who eat a diet rich in olive oil, fish, nuts, poultry, and fruits and vegetables, lower their risk of developing Alzheimer's disease by 40 percent.

Dr. Yian Gu, one of the researchers involved in the study, commented on what most in the natural health community already know. "Diet is probably the easiest way to modify disease risk," she explained concerning the research.

In comparison to other Alzheimer's studies that focus on isolated nutrients, this study focused on food groups that are commonly associated with lowering Alzheimer's disease risk. These include brain-boosting foods that are rich in omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, B vitamins, folate and vitamin E.

"People who adhered mostly to this dietary pattern compared to others have about a 40 percent reduction in the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease," explained Gu in a Reuters interview.

Lung cancer, which usually develops in the cells lining air passages, will be diagnosed in about 222,520 Americans this year, according to the National Cancer Institute (NCI). In addition, the NCI says nearly half that many people -- about 157,300 -- will die from the disease in 2010.

Although lung cancer is notoriously difficult to treat successfully, French scientists have discovered several natural substances that offer substantial protection from the malignancy. In a huge study of almost 400,000 participants, those who had higher blood levels of vitamin B6 and the essential amino acid methionine (found in many forms of protein) had the lowest risk of lung cancer -- even those who were former or current smokers.

For the study, which was just published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Paul Brennan, Ph.D., of the International Agency for Research on Cancer, Lyon, France, and colleagues documented B vitamins and methionine levels based on serum samples from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) cohort study. In all, they investigated 385,747 research subjects from 10 European countries. By 2006, 899 had been diagnosed with lung cancer; they were compared to 1,770 control participants and all were individually matched by country, sex, date of birth, and date of blood collection.

The Los Angeles Times recently reported that the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) is planning to sue fast-food giant McDonald's if the company does not comply with its demands to remove toys from "Happy Meals". CSPI claims that marketing unhealthy food with toys is contributing to the childhood obesity epidemic and should be stopped immediately.

The announcement by CSPI comes just weeks after a California county banned not only toys but all other promotions aimed at children that involve McDonald's Happy Meals. By doing this, the county believes that children will be less attracted to fatty foods that are high in salt and calories.

According to the same article, back in April, Santa Clara County, California, also banned toy promotions from fast food meals sold in unincorporated parts of the county.

In America, chemicals are innocent until proven guilty. It's a rule that's been in place for one hundred years and still applies to compounds used every day in industry and in your home.

This may be changing at last. In April Congressman Henry Waxman, chair of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, made regulation of toxic chemicals a priority by proposing the Safe Chemicals Act of 2010. A companion bill was introduced in the Senate by Frank Lautenberg.

Under Waxman's legislation, the Environmental Protection Agency would at last gain some real powers to control the chemical soup we live in. Manufacturers would be required to test their chemical products. Procedural obstacles that have hobbled regulators would be swept away. Vital safety information could no longer be kept secret. Testing of especially dangerous products would be required within eighteen months.

Seen a fly in your soup lately? Well, that's nothing compared with what you don't see in your strawberry yogurt or the sprinkles on your doughnut.

Crushed bugs. You've been eating them for years. You just didn't know it.

That's right. The "color added" ingredient in some red, pink and purple foods is carmine, the dried and crushed bodies of the female cochineal insect. The cactus-loving insect is used to color ice cream, yogurt, fruit juices and more.

"They're harvested in Mexico, processed in large plants. I've seen them," said Gary Reineccius, professor of food science at the University of Minnesota.

You may not have known, because they were hiding under the "color added" listing on the label, but you soon will. Starting in January, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is requiring manufacturers to switch from the "color added" label listing to "carmine" or "cochineal extract."

Consumers should know what's going into their food "to promote safe, healthy diets," said Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) and part of the effort to require manufacturers to change their product labels.

Ingredients such as carmine have come under fire because they have been known to cause severe allergic reactions in some people. Those allergic reactions, along with a few subsequent lawsuits, have led some manufacturers to stop using carmine.

Other people with dietary restrictions, such as Jews and Muslims, may not consider some products kosher if these ingredients are included. But even those without restrictions might be a little squeamish if they knew just what was going into some of their food. The CSPI wants the FDA to go even further, labeling carmine as insects on packaging. After all, few people recognize carmine or cochineal as something that comes from insects, and even fewer would be curious enough to look it up online or in a dictionary to find out exactly what they're eating.