Health & WellnessS


Cow

Food, Inc.: Piercing the Veil of Corporate Agriculture

David Murphy
Civil Eats
Tue, 26 May 2009 00:41 UTC
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If you've ever been curious exactly how America produces the cheapest and "safest" food on the planet, but not quite believed all the hype that fuels the empty advertising slogans on your television, then Food, Inc. promises to be the film that explains why there's a serious disconnect between food propaganda and reality.

In exactly 93 minutes, director Robert Kenner manages to slice down to the bone the many myths of the U.S. food system in a riveting documentary that exposes how a handful of corporations determine what our nation's children eat and how America's addiction to cheaper, faster, and larger portions has managed to shorten the average lifespan of the next generation for the first time since the Black Plague.
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Calculator

Fighting Business with Business: Building the Conversation on Sustainable Food

Pooja Renee Mottl
Civil Eats
Thu, 28 May 2009 00:22 UTC
Like it or not, capitalism and business are at the heart of what makes America tick. They exist using a language all their own, influencing our economic system through terms like government spending, taxes, investment, profits, quarterly earnings, debt, revenues and growth.

And when capitalism and business speaks, America listens, particularly when the news is big - from politicians, to CEO's, to the average Joe. When taxpayers were asked to dish out billions in the case of the recent banking and auto industry bailouts, ears perked and immediate action was taken to bring about long overdue and necessary change. Business could not continue under threat and no stone was to be left unturned. The banking sector was overhauled and policed while the auto industry was told to go electric or go home.
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Cell Phone

Flashback Cancer Risk In Mobil Phones: Official

Emma Morton
The Sun
Thu, 16 Oct 2008 23:49 UTC
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Danger ... phone risk
Mobile phones DO increase the risk of brain cancer, scientists claimed yesterday.

The chances of developing a malignant tumor are "significantly increased" for people who use a mobile for ten years.

The shock finding is the result of the biggest ever study by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, part of the World Health Organization.
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Red Flag

Flashback The Pigs' Revenge

Felicity Lawrence
The Guardian
Sat, 02 May 2009 20:59 UTC
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© Christopher Furlong/Getty ImagesA litter of pigs
Just as an unsustainable financial system caused the current banking crisis, the intensive farming of animals is at the heart of the swine flu pandemic

In modern disaster management theory, when any large system experiences a major shock or failure, you assess the risk, activate an ordered emergency response, and manage the after-effects. In the world of real people hit directly by the real shock, you look for someone to blame.

For ordinary Mexicans this week, who faced the shutdown of their country by swine flu and an unknown number of deaths, it was a culprit that was needed.
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Video

Documentary on Intensive Pig Farming Faces Legal Threat

Judith Soal
Common Dreams
Sat, 30 May 2009 19:45 UTC
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© Guardian photoFilmmaker, Tracy Worcester, with a pig as seen in the documentary
A documentary about intensive pig farming due to be screened at the Guardian Hay festival on Sunday is facing a legal threat from one of the companies it investigates. Pig Business criticizes the practices of the world's largest pork processor, Smithfield Foods, claiming it is responsible for environmental pollution and health problems among residents near its factories.
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Health

Many autism cases are 'undiagnosed'


Press TV
Sat, 30 May 2009 22:43 UTC
Cambridge researchers have recently reported that for every three children with autism and related disorders two others remain undiagnosed.

Autism is the most common developmental disorder characterized by impaired social interaction, problems with verbal and nonverbal communication, and unusual, repetitive or severely limited activities and interests.

Latest reports have revealed that about one percent of school-aged children have an autistic spectrum disorder, indicating that the prevalence of the disease has increased by 12 times in the past 30 years.
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Bandaid

Bill Moyers: How Can We Expect an Industry That Profits from Disease and Sickness to Police Itself?

Bill Moyers & Michael Winship
Alternet
Sat, 30 May 2009 20:01 UTC
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The health care industry has spent $134 million on lobbying this year to keep its profits high and public health in the shadows.

In 2003, a young Illinois state senator named Barack Obama told a local AFL-CIO meeting, "I am a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program."

Single payer. Universal. That's health coverage, like Medicare, but for everyone who wants it. Single payer eliminates insurance companies as pricey middlemen. The government pays care providers directly. It's a system that polls consistently have shown the American people favoring by as much as two-to-one.
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Health

How fear makes some things clear


New Scientist
Sat, 30 May 2009 17:46 UTC
Fear changes how we see things, enhancing our ability to identify blurry shapes but impairing our perception of fine details. This may help us to escape threats.

Looking at a fearful face, which activates the brain in a similar way to feeling fear, enhances sensitivity to visual contrast, but whether it improves vision across the board wasn't clear. So Bruno Bocanegra and René Zeelenberg at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, showed people pictures of faces with either fearful or neutral expressions, followed by a "blob" covered in stripes of varying thicknesses.

Those shown a fearful face were better at identifying whether thick stripes were vertical or slightly tilted and worse at identifying the orientation of thin stripes than those shown neutral faces (Psychological Science, DOI: link).
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Health

Intestinal bacteria associated with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease


PhysOrg
Sat, 30 May 2009 05:17 UTC
Intestinal permeability and an overgrowth of bacteria in the small intestine are both associated with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). These findings are revealed in a new study in the June issue of Hepatology, a journal published by John Wiley & Sons on behalf of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD).

Previous studies have suggested that bacteria from the intestine might play a role in NAFLD, which is the hepatic component of the Metabolic Syndrome. NAFLD can worsen to nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, and some experts have wondered if liver exposure to bacteria from the gut could promote this progression.
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Red Flag

Flashback Psychological Warfare Techniques -- Used on Your Doctor


Dr. Mercola
Sat, 18 Aug 2007 19:18 UTC
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Pharmaceutical sales reps are trained in tactics that are on par with some of the most potent brainwashing techniques used throughout the world, according to an in-depth report co-written by former Eli Lilly drug rep Shahram Ahari, and Adriane Fugh-Berman, associate professor of physiology and biophysics at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C..

Pharmaceutical companies spend more than $15 billion each year promoting prescription drugs in the United States.

These campaigns are designed to effectively alter prescribing behavior, to sell more of the high-profit drugs (as opposed to the most effective, and least dangerous).
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