The crony capitalism in vaccines just gets worse. And don't expect any help from so-called small government candidate Gov. Rick Perry.

The US Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) has unveiled a new roadmap for increased vaccination and immunization for the 21st century, the National Vaccine Plan or NVP. It calls for new vaccines, at a time when children already get far too many vaccinations, especially when given all at once and at too young an age.

Why are the vaccines piled on top of each other in one doctor visit? Because the medical establishment is afraid to ask parents to bring their children back over and over again. So for reasons of "compliance" and "convenience" the child's immune system is assaulted all at once.

An elderly woman's sudden depression turns out to be a side effect of her high blood-pressure medication.

A new mother's exhaustion and disinterest in her baby seem like postpartum depression - but actually signal a postpartum thyroid imbalance that medication can correct.

A middle-aged manager has angry outbursts at work and frequently feels "ready to explode." A brain scan reveals temporal-lobe seizures, a type of epilepsy that can be treated with surgery or medication.

More than 100 medical disorders can masquerade as psychological conditions, according to Harvard psychiatrist Barbara Schildkrout, who cited these examples among others in Unmasking Psychological Symptoms, a book aimed at helping therapists broaden their diagnostic skills.

Getting into the habit of eating a certain snack while watching TV or some other activity could lead to mindless eating even when a person is full and even if the junk food tastes bad, a new study suggests.

The good news is the researchers have also found a way to override these eating habits.

"When we've repeatedly eaten a particular food in a particular environment, our brain comes to associate the food with that environment and make us keep eating as long as those environmental cues are present," study researcher David Neal, a psychology professor at University of Southern California, said in a statement.

In one experiment, scientists at the university handed out popcorn to people who were about to enter a movie theater. Participants either received a bucket of just-popped, fresh popcorn or stale, week-old popcorn.

The findings showed that participants who indicated they typically ate popcorn at the movies consumed about the same amount of popcorn, whether it was fresh or stale.

Two shots are better than one to ward off chickenpox, the Canadian Paediatric Society said Tuesday as it recommended a new regimen for protecting the population from the highly contagious disease.

There's evidence that without a second dose of vaccine, some children will lose immunity as they get older and they might come down with chickenpox as adults, the organization said in a position statement.

"It's being brought in now because we have good surveillance and monitoring of our vaccine programs and we are keeping up to date also with things that are going on in the world," the principal author of the statement, Dr. Marina Salvadori, said in an interview from London, Ont.

"It's becoming obvious that one dose is unlikely to give lifetime protection, and is unlikely to prevent all outbreaks of chickenpox."

The statement puts the society in step with the National Advisory Committee on Immunization, which recommended a two-dose schedule for varicella vaccination a year ago.

The American Academy of Pediatrics called for a two-step immunization process in the United States in 2007.

The extent of radioactive contamination in Fukushima Prefecture is at the center of important debates as some scientists, NGOs, and citizen's groups argue that the Japanese government has not gone far enough in dealing with the fallout from the Fukushima Daiichi accident and has deliberately downplayed the potential health effects of radiation. With so much attention focused on Fukushima, however, there has been less consideration of the impact of the crisis, ongoing since March 11, on other parts of Japan. The August 22 issue of AERA magazine, published by Japan's major progressive newspaper Asahi Shimbun, ran a feature on contamination in the Kanto region entitled Kanto no ko kara hoshano (Radiation Detected from Kanto Children), which broadens discussions of the Fukushima Daiichi crisis' potential impact. Below is a summary of the AERA article, published under the byline of editor Yamane Yusaku.

The Kanto region is a large area of central Japan that includes Tokyo and nearly 1/3 of Japan's population including Tokyo. The Japanese government has taken the position that no one outside of the vicinity of the Fukushima Daiichi plant is likely to suffer health effects from the radiation that has been released since March. Many Japanese, especially parents of young children, are doubtful. The article begins by reiterating a point that has been made frequently by critics of the Japanese government - that we simply do not know what effects low levels of radiation and the presence of isotopes in the human body will have on long-term health. The piece tells the story of a mother in Saitama Prefecture who, in the absence of direct government support, arranged to have a sample of her daughter's urine tested. The test indicated that despite stringent efforts to protect her fifth grader from exposure to contaminated food and airborne radiation, the result was 0.4 Bq of Cesium 137 per kilogram of urine. Cesium 137, with a half-life of just over 30 years, is one of main radioactive isotopes released from the Fukushima Daiichi plant. "I felt a mixture of shock and a feeling that of course this is the case", laments the girl's mother.

Evidence shows the mass antibiotics experiment is devastating our children's health. It may be the reason so many struggle for breath and can't assimilate food properly.

Emerging research shows that the harmful effects of antibiotics go much further than the development of drug resistant diseases. The beneficial bacteria lost to antibiotics, along with disease-inducing bacteria, do not recover fully. Worse, flora lost by a mother is also lost to her babies. The missing beneficial gut bacteria are likely a major factor behind much of the chronic disease experienced today. The continuous use of antibiotics is resulting in each generation experiencing worse health than their parents.

Martin Blaser, the author of a report in the prestigious journal Nature writes:

Antibiotics kill the bacteria we do want, as well as those we don't. These long-term changes to the beneficial bacteria within people's bodies may even increase our susceptibility to infections and disease.

Overuse of antibiotics could be fuelling the dramatic increase in conditions such as obesity, type 1 diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, allergies and asthma, which have more than doubled in many populations.

A recent study by researchers from Kings' college, London reveal that people with more than 100 moles on their body have less chance of osteoporosis or brittle bones.

The study conducted among 1,200 identical and non-identical twins aged between 17-89 shows that the cells in people with large number of moles have an inherent ability to repair itself because it has longer telomeres which controls cell division.

High mole numbers are directly connected with longer telomeres and longer telomeres protect skin, bones, muscles, heart and eyes from the effects of ageing.

To:

Ms. Ashley Reynolds
490 Bear Cub Drive
Ridgway, CO 81432
Phone: 617.226.9927
ashley.reynolds@mullen.com

Ms. Reynolds:

I am writing in response to the press release from the Grain Foods Foundation that describes your effort to "discredit" the assertions made in my book, Wheat Belly: Lose the wheat, lose the weight and find your path back to health. I'd like to address several of the criticisms of the book made in the release:

" . . . the author relies on anecdotal observations rather than scientific studies."

While I do indeed have a large anecdotal experience removing wheat in thousands of people, witnessing incredible and unprecedented weight loss and health benefits, I also draw from the experiences already documented in clinical studies. Several hundred of these studies are cited in the book (of the thousands available) and listed in the Reference section over 16 pages. These are studies that document the neurologic impairment unique to wheat, including cerebellar ataxia and dementia; heart disease via provocation of the small LDL pattern; visceral fat accumulation and all its attendant health consequences; the process of glycation via amylopectin A of wheat that leads to cataracts, diabetes, and arthritis; among others. There are, in fact, a wealth of studies documenting the adverse, often crippling, effects of wheat consumption in humans and I draw from these published studies.

"Wheat elimination 'means missing out on a wealth of essential nutrients.'"

This is true - if the calories of wheat are replaced with candy, soft drinks, and fast food. But if lost wheat calories are replaced by healthy foods like vegetables, nuts, healthy oils, meats, eggs, cheese, avocados, and olives, then there is no nutrient deficiency that develops with elimination of wheat. There is no deficiency of any vitamin, including thiamine, folate, B12, iron, and B6; no mineral, including selenium, magnesium, and zinc; no polyphenol, flavonoid, or antioxidant; no lack of fiber. With regards to fiber, please note that the original studies documenting the health benefits of high fiber intake were fibers from vegetables, fruits, and nuts, not wheat or grains.

A new study says firefighters who toiled in the wreckage of the World Trade Center in 2001 were 19 percent more likely to develop cancer than those who were not there, the strongest evidence to date of a possible link between work at ground zero and cancer.

The study, published Thursday in the British medical journal The Lancet, included almost 10,000 New York City firefighters, most of whom were exposed to the caustic dust and smoke created by the fall of the twin towers. The findings indicate an "increased likelihood for the development of any type of cancer," said Dr. David J. Prezant, the chief medical officer for the New York Fire Department, who led the study. But he said the results were far from conclusive. "This is not an epidemic," he said.

Cancer is not on the list of illnesses covered by the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, which has set aside $4.3 billion to treat, compensate and monitor those suffering from health problems associated with the attacks and their aftermath, like asthma and other respiratory ailments. But the law requires officials at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health to conduct periodic reviews of studies to assess whether to add illnesses to the list.

A bacterium found in soil is a showing promise as a way of delivering cancer drugs into tumours.

Spores of the Clostridium sporogenes bacterium can grow within tumours because there is no oxygen.

UK and Dutch scientists have been able to genetically engineer an enzyme into the bacteria to activate a cancer drug.

Experts said it would be some time before the potential benefits of the work - presented to the Society of Microbiology - were known.