Daily Dose of Broccoli Halts Ulcers and Cancer
July 8, 2009
Natural News
by David Gutierrez
Eating just a few ounces of broccoli each day may significantly reduce a person’s risk of ulcers and stomach cancer, researchers from Johns Hopkins University have found.
In a study published in the journal Cancer Prevention Research, scientists assigned 50 people in Japan to eat either 2.5 ounces of broccoli sprouts or 2.5 ounces of alfalfa sprouts each day for two months.
Broccoli, a cruciferous vegetable, contains high levels of the protective phytochemical sulforaphane. Alfalfa is not a cruciferous vegetable and contains no sulforaphane.
At the beginning and end of the study, the researchers analyzed participant stool samples for a chemical called HpSA, known to be a reliable marker of infection with the Heliobacter pylori bacterium. H. pylori causes chronic inflammation of the stomach lining, significantly increasing the risk of stomach cancer and duodenal or stomach ulcers.
While 25 to 30 percent of people in the United States carry the bacteria in their stomachs, 80 percent show no symptoms of the infection. Infection rates are much higher in Japan, at nearly 90 percent, due in part to crowding.
The researchers found that among those who ate broccoli sprouts, HpSA levels decreased 40 percent by the end of the experiment. Participants were then told to stop eating broccoli sprouts. After another two months, HpSA levels had returned to pre-study levels.
Consumption of alfalfa sprouts had no effect on HpSA levels.
“H. pylori is a known carcinogen,” Fahey said. “The fact that we were able to reduce the effects of an infectious agent that is also a carcinogen gives us hope that if someone were to eat broccoli sprouts or broccoli regularly, it would reduce levels of H. pylori and, over a period of many years, reduce the chance that they would get that cancer. It is not proven, but the results are highly suggestive.”
The researchers also found that inflammation levels in the stomach were reduced by consumption of broccoli sprouts.
“The fact that the levels of infection and inflammation were reduced suggests the likelihood of getting gastritis and ulcers and cancer is probably reduced,” Fahey said.
“The evidence is all pointing toward broccoli or broccoli sprouts being able to prevent cancer in humans.”
The researchers believe that much of broccoli’s protective benefit comes from its high levels of sulforaphane. In addition to functioning as an antibiotic, this chemical stimulates the body to reduce a number of enzymes with different health benefits. Prior research has shown that some of these enzymes protect the skin from sun damage, while others act to reduce inflammation or prevent heart disease.
In a second experiment, the same team of researchers fed H. pylori-infected mice either plain water or broccoli-sprout smoothies for eight weeks. They then examined the animals’ stomachs for levels of H. pylori. Infection levels had not changed in mice drinking water, but were significantly reduced in the broccoli group. When the researchers genetically engineered another group of mice for inability to activate certain protective enzymes, however, a diet of broccoli-sprout smoothies had no effect on H. pylori infection.
Click here for the full article from NaturalNews.com
Copyright Laws Threaten Our Online Freedom
July 7, 2009
Financial Times
By Christian Engström
If you search for Elvis Presley in Wikipedia, you will find a lot of text and a few pictures that have been cleared for distribution. But you will find no music and no film clips, due to copyright restrictions. What we think of as our common cultural heritage is not “ours” at all.
On MySpace and YouTube, creative people post audio and video remixes for others to enjoy, until they are replaced by take-down notices handed out by big film and record companies. Technology opens up possibilities; copyright law shuts them down.
This was never the intent. Copyright was meant to encourage culture, not restrict it. This is reason enough for reform. But the current regime has even more damaging effects. In order to uphold copyright laws, governments are beginning to restrict our right to communicate with each other in private, without being monitored.
File-sharing occurs whenever one individual sends a file to another. The only way to even try to limit this process is to monitor all communication between ordinary people. Despite the crackdown on Napster, Kazaa and other peer-to-peer services over the past decade, the volume of file-sharing has grown exponentially. Even if the authorities closed down all other possibilities, people could still send copyrighted files as attachments to e-mails or through private networks. If people start doing that, should we give the government the right to monitor all mail and all encrypted networks? Whenever there are ways of communicating in private, they will be used to share copyrighted material. If you want to stop people doing this, you must remove the right to communicate in private. There is no other option. Society has to make a choice.
The world is at a crossroads. The internet and new information technologies are so powerful that no matter what we do, society will change. But the direction has not been decided.
The technology could be used to create a Big Brother society beyond our nightmares, where governments and corporations monitor every detail of our lives. In the former East Germany, the government needed tens of thousands of employees to keep track of the citizens using typewriters, pencils and index cards. Today a computer can do the same thing a million times faster, at the push of a button. There are many politicians who want to push that button.
The same technology could instead be used to create a society that embraces spontaneity, collaboration and diversity. Where the citizens are no longer passive consumers being fed information and culture through one-way media, but are instead active participants collaborating on a journey into the future.
The internet it still in its infancy, but already we see fantastic things appearing as if by magic. Take Linux, the free computer operating system, or Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Witness the participatory culture of MySpace and YouTube, or the growth of the Pirate Bay, which makes the world’s culture easily available to anybody with an internet connection. But where technology opens up new possibilities, our intellectual property laws do their best to restrict them. Linux is held back by patents, the rest of the examples by copyright.
The public increasingly recognises the need for reform. That was why Piratpartiet – the Pirate party – won 7.1 per cent of the popular vote in Sweden in the European Union elections. This gave us a seat in the European parliament for the first time.
Our manifesto is to reform copyright laws and gradually abolish the patent system. We oppose mass surveillance and censorship on the net, as in the rest of society. We want to make the EU more democratic and transparent. This is our entire platform.
We intend to devote all our time and energy to protecting the fundamental civil liberties on the net and elsewhere. Seven per cent of Swedish voters agreed with us that it makes sense to put other political differences aside in order to ensure this.
Political decisions taken over the next five years are likely to set the course we take into the information society, and will affect the lives of millions for many years into the future. Will we let our fears lead us towards a dystopian Big Brother state, or will we have the courage and wisdom to choose an exciting future in a free and open society?
The information revolution is happening here and now. It is up to us to decide what future we want.
Click here for the full editorial from Financial Times.
Wall St Hits 10-Week Low Amid Talk of New Stimulus
July 7, 2009
Reuters
By Edward Krudy
NEW YORK, July 7 (Reuters) – U.S. stocks fell to their lowest level in 10 weeks on Tuesday as talk of a second government stimulus plan heightened fears that the economy is not yet on the path to recovery and that the corporate earnings season starting this week will be weak.
A member of the Obama administration’s economic advisory panel said the United States should plan to possibly provide a second round of stimulus funds to prop up the economy. The comments come as investors question earlier optimism for a quick recovery, which had driven stocks as much as 40 percent higher since early March.
“It’s clear that over the last three plus weeks that investors are becoming concerned that the recovery in the economy will not come as soon as expected and will not be as strong as expected,” said Hugh Johnson, chief investment officer of Johnson Illington Advisors in Albany, New York.
“When there’s talk about another stimulus plan that adds fuel to that fire, it intensifies the concerns about the timing and strength of the recovery.”
Cyclical stocks in the materials, energy, and industrial sectors, which had ridden a recent upswing in raw material prices on recovery hopes, led the market down as commodity prices eased. Copper, a barometer of global economic strength, fell nearly 2 percent.
Caterpillar Inc (CAT.N) ,a maker of heavy machinery for construction and mining companies, shed 4.5 percent to $30.29.
The Dow Jones industrial average .DJI dropped 161.27 points, or 1.94 percent, to 8,163.60. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index .SPX fell 17.69 points, or 1.97 percent, to 881.03. The Nasdaq Composite Index .IXIC lost 41.23 points, or 2.31 percent, to 1,746.17.
The S&P 500 closed at its lowest level since May 1 while the Dow industrials closed at their lowest level since April 28.
An initial snapshot of the second-quarter performance of natural resource companies will come on Wednesday when Alcoa Inc (AA.N) kicks off quarterly earnings season. The aluminum producer, a Dow component, is expected to post a third consecutive quarterly loss. For an Alcoa earnings preview, see [ID:nN06271341].
S&P 500 corporate earnings are expected by analysts to have declined about 36 percent from a year ago, according to data compiled by Thomson Reuters. That would be roughly the same as the decline seen in the first quarter.
Doubts about the strength of an economic recovery and subsequent demand for oil have sent crude prices tumbling in the last week. New York crude CLc1 fell 1.8 percent on Tuesday and is down about 14 percent from the intraday peak hit on June 30. Its slide has pressured energy stocks.
Click here for more details on this report from Reuters.
Government Web Sites Attacked; N. Korea Suspected
July 8, 2009
Associated Press
By Lolita C. Baldor
WASHINGTON (AP) — A widespread computer attack that began July 4 knocked out the Web sites of the Treasury Department, the Secret Service and other U.S. agencies, and South Korean government sites also came under assault.
South Korean intelligence officials believe the attacks were carried out by North Korean or pro-Pyongyang forces. U.S. officials so far have refused to publicly discuss details of the attack or where it might have originated.
The Washington Post reported Wednesday that its own Web site was among several commercial sites also hit.
The U.S. government sites, which included those of the Federal Trade Commission and the Transportation Department, were all down at varying points over the holiday weekend and into this week. South Korean Internet sites began experiencing problems Tuesday.
South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, the nation’s main spy agency, told a group of South Korean lawmakers Wednesday it believes that North Korea or North Korean sympathizers in the South were behind the attacks, according to an aide to one of the lawmakers briefed on the information.
The aide spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the information. The National Intelligence Service — South Korea’s main spy agency — said it couldn’t immediately confirm the report, but it said it was cooperating with American authorities.
Amy Kudwa, spokeswoman for the Homeland Security Department, said the agency’s U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team issued a notice to federal departments and other partner organizations about the problems and “advised them of steps to take to help mitigate against such attacks.”
Others familiar with the U.S. outage, which is called a denial of service attack, said the fact that the government Web sites were still being affected three days after it began signaled an unusually lengthy and sophisticated attack.
Attacks on federal computer networks are common, ranging from nuisance hacking to more serious assaults, sometimes blamed on China. U.S. security officials also worry about cyber attacks from al-Qaida or other terrorists.
This time, two government officials acknowledged that the Treasury and Secret Service sites were brought down, and said the agencies were working with their Internet service provider to resolve the problem. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the matter.
Ben Rushlo, director of Internet technologies at Keynote Systems, said problems with the Transportation Department site began Saturday and continued until Monday, while the FTC site was down Sunday and Monday.
Keynote Systems is a mobile and Web site monitoring company based in San Mateo, Calif. The company publishes data detailing outages on Web sites, including 40 government sites it watches.
According to Rushlo, the Transportation Web site was “100 percent down” for two days, so that no Internet users could get through to it. The FTC site, meanwhile, started to come back online late Sunday, but even on Tuesday Internet users still were unable to get to the site 70 percent of the time.
Web sites of major South Korean government agencies, including the presidential Blue House and the Defense Ministry, and some banking sites were paralyzed Tuesday. An initial investigation found that many personal computers were infected with a virus ordering them to visit major official Web sites in South Korea and the U.S. at the same time, Korea Information Security Agency official Shin Hwa-su said.
Click here for full details of this report from the Associated Press.
Pope Calls For New World Order?
July 7, 2009
Reuters
by Philip Pullella
VATICAN CITY – Pope Benedict on Tuesday called for a “world political authority” to manage the global economy and for more government regulation of national economies to pull the world out of the current crisis and avoid a repeat.
The pope’s call for a re-think of the way the world economy is run came in new encyclical which touched on a number of social issues but whose main connecting thread was how the current crisis has affected both rich and poor nations.
Called “Charity in Truth,” parts of the encyclical appeared bound to upset conservatives because of its underlying rejection of unbridled capitalism and unregulated market forces, which he said had led to “thoroughly destructive” abuse of the system.
The pope said every economic decision has a moral consequence and called for “forms of redistribution” of wealth overseen by governments to help those most affected by crises.
Benedict said “there is an urgent need of a true world political authority” whose task would be “to manage the global economy; to revive economies hit by the crisis; to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis and the greater imbalances that would result.”
Such an authority would have to be “regulated by law” and “would need to be universally recognized and to be vested with the effective power to ensure security for all, regard for justice, and respect for rights.”
“Obviously it would have to have the authority to ensure compliance with its decisions from all parties, and also with the co-ordinated measures adopted in various international forums,” he said.
The United Nations, economic institutions and international finance all had to be reformed “even in the midst of a global recession,” he said in the encyclical, a booklet of 141 pages.
An encyclical is the highest form of papal writing and gives the clearest indication to the world’s 1.1 billion Catholics as well as non-Catholics of what the pope and the Vatican think about specific social and moral issues.
It was addressed to all Catholics as well as “all people of good will” and was released on the eve of the start of the G8 Summit in Italy and three days before the pope is due to discuss the global downturn with U.S. President Barack Obama.
In several sections of the encyclical, Benedict made it clear he had great reservations about a totally free market.
“The conviction that the economy must be autonomous, that it must be shielded from ‘influences’ of a moral character, has led man to abuse the economic process in a thoroughly destructive way,” he said.
“In the long term, these convictions have led to economic, social and political systems that trample upon personal and social freedom, and are therefore unable to deliver the justice that they promise,” he added.
Profit was useful only if it served as a means to a brighter future for all humanity.
“Once profit becomes the exclusive goal, if it is produced by improper means and without the common good as its ultimate end, it risks destroying wealth and creating poverty,” he said.
He said the current economic crisis was “clear proof” of what he branded as “pernicious effects of sin” in the economy.
“The economy needs ethics in order to function correctly — not any ethics whatsoever, but an ethics which is people-centred,” he said.
“Financiers must rediscover the genuinely ethical foundation of their activity . . . right intention, transparency, and the search for positive results are mutually compatible and must never be detached from one another,” he said.
The pope appeared to back government intervention “in correcting errors and malfunctions” in the economy, saying “one could foresee an increase in the new forms of political participation, nationally and internationally.”
“Today’s international economic scene, marked by grave deviations and failures, requires a profoundly new way of understanding business enterprise,” he said.
In other sections of the encyclical, his first on social issues since his 2005 election, he addressed topics such as development, migration, union rights, terrorism, sexual tourism, population issues, the environment, bioethics, and energy.
The encyclical’s release was delayed by nearly a year so the pope could address aspects of the current economic crisis.
Click here for the full story from Reuters.
Researchers: Social Security Numbers Can Be Guessed
July 7, 2009 by mike
Filed under Government
July 6, 2009
Washington Post
by Brian Krebs
Researchers have found that it is possible to guess many — if not all — of the nine digits in an individual’s Social Security number using publicly available information, a finding they say compromises the security of one of the most widely used consumer identifiers in the United States.
Many numbers could be guessed at by simply knowing a person’s birth data, the researchers from Carnegie Mellon University said.
The results come as concern grows over identity theft and lawmakers in Washington push legislation that would bar businesses from requiring people to supply their Social Security number when purchasing a good or service.
“Our work shows that Social Security numbers are compromised as authentication devices, because if they are predictable from public data, then they cannot be considered sensitive,” said Alessandro Acquisti, assistant professor of information technology and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, and a co-author of the study.
A Social Security Administration spokesman said the government has long cautioned the private sector against using a Social Security number as a personal identifier, even as it insists “there is no fool proof method for predicting a person’s Social Security Number.”
“For reasons unrelated to this report, the agency has been developing a system to randomly assign SSNs,” which should make it more difficult to discover numbers in the future, Mark Lassiter, a spokesman for the Social Security Administration, said by e-mail.
Introduced in the 1930s as a way to track individuals for taxation purposes, Social Security numbers were never designed to be used for authentication. Over time, however, private and public institutions began keeping tabs on consumers using the numbers, requiring people to present them as proof of identity, such as when applying for loans, new employment, or health insurance.
Concern over the privacy of those numbers has grown in the wake of hundreds of data breaches reported by businesses, governments and educational institutions, breaches that have exposed millions of consumer records — including SSNs.
In recent years, a number of states have passed legislation to redact or remove the numbers from public documents, such as divorce and property records, and bankruptcy filings. In addition, legislation introduced this year by Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) would prohibit the display, sale, or purchase of Social Security numbers without consent, and would bar businesses from requiring people to provide their number.
The researchers at Carnegie Mellon set out to see if they could discover people’s numbers by first exploiting what is publicly known about how the numbers are derived.
The Social Security number’s first three digits — called the “area number” — is issued according to the Zip code of the mailing address provided in the application form. The fourth and fifth digits — known as the “group number” — transition slowly, and often remain constant over several years for a given region. The last four digits are assigned sequentially.
As a result, SSNs assigned in the same state to applicants born on consecutive days are likely to contain the same first four or five digits, particularly in states with smaller populations and rates of birth.
As it happens, the researchers said, if you’re trying to discover a living person’s SSN, the best place to start is with a list of dead people — particularly deceased people who were born around the time and place of your subject. The so-called “Death Master File,” is a publicly available file which lists SSNs, names, dates of birth and death, and the states of all individuals who have applied for a number and whose deaths have been reported to the Social Security Administration.
CMU researchers Acquisti and Ph.D student Ralph Gross theorized that they could use the Death Master File along with publicly available birth information to predict narrow ranges of values wherein individual SSNs were likely to fall. The two tested their hunch using the Death Master File of people who died between 1972 and 2003, and found that on the first try they could correctly guess the first five digits of the SSN for 44 percent of deceased people who were born after 1988, and for 7 percent of those born between 1973 and 1988.
Acquisti and Gross found that it was far easier to predict SSNs for people born after 1988, when the Social Security Administration began an effort to ensure that U.S. newborns obtained their SSNs shortly after birth.
They were able to identify all nine digits for 8.5 percent of people born after 1988 in fewer than 1,000 attempts. For people born recently in smaller states, researchers sometimes needed just 10 or fewer attempts to predict all nine digits.
Records of an individual’s state and date of birth can be obtained from a variety of sources, including voter registration lists and commercial databases. What’s more, many people now self-publish this information as part of their personal profiles on blogs and social networking sites. Indeed, the researchers tested their method using birthdays and hometowns that CMU students published on social networking sites, with similar results.
Privacy and security experts praised the Carnegie Mellon study, saying it should be a wake-up call to policy makers and industry leaders, many of whom have resisted switching to a more secure consumer authentication system due to the sheer cost of changing the current system.
“We can’t pretend anymore that SSNs can be kept secret,” said Peter Swire, a law professor at Ohio State University and chief counselor for privacy during the Clinton administration. “This report puts a nail in that coffin. We’ll need new approaches, and it will cost money for the government and the private sector to build the new approaches.”
Ross Anderson, a professor of security engineering at Cambridge University, said the findings suggest that businesses using SSNs as a password are being negligent, and should find other ways of verifying the claims to identity that are being made by their customers.
“Sure, the study says that if you were born in a big state on a busy day you’re probably still safe,” from having identity thieves guess your entire SSN, Anderson said. “Still, I think many people would find it unacceptable that a system continues in use which in effect exposes tens of millions of Americans to fraud and other kinds of harm.”
Linda Foley, founder of the Identity Theft Resource Center, a San Diego based nonprofit, cited another potential problem. She said many businesses have errantly rely upon or have moved to redact all but the last four digits of a person’s SSN, the very digits that are most unique to an individual.
“Because of the way the SSN has been designed, asking for the last four numbers of the SSN puts people at risk because those are the only numbers that are unique to you and cannot be guessed easily by someone who might want to use your identity,” Foley said.
Click here for the full report from the Washington Post.
Pill for hair-pulling compulsion
July 7, 2009
BBC News
Trichotillomania suffers are blighted by uncontrollable urges to pluck the hair of the scalp and even eyebrows and lashes, often to the point of baldness.
Although seen as a behavioural and psychological problem, scientists are hopeful that the problem could be solved with an amino acid pill.
Archives of General Psychiatry reports promising early trial findings.
A group of 50 people with trichotillomania were asked to take part in a 12-week trial of the pill containing the amino acid N-acetylcysteine.
The same supplement has shown promise for treating people with compulsive disorders and is thought to work on the glutamate system, the largest nerve signal transmission system in the human brain.
Indeed, some studies suggest that abnormalities in the natural brain chemicals serotonin and dopamine may play a role in trichotillomania, although genes may also be involved.
In the trial, half of the volunteers were given the treatment and the other half a dummy pill.
After 12 weeks, patients taking the active medication had significantly greater reductions in hair-pulling symptoms than those taking placebo.
Overall, 56% of patients were considered to be “much or very much improved” with N-acetylcysteine use compared with 16% taking placebo.
Click here for the full article from BBC News
Travel More Than Doubles Risk of Blood Clots: Study
July 6, 2009
Reuters
By Amy Norton
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – A study published Monday strengthens the evidence that long-distance travel can lead to potentially fatal blood clots in some people — showing that the risk grows in tandem with the length of the trip.
In an analysis of 14 previous studies, researchers found that, in general, travel was associated with a nearly three-fold increase in the risk of venous thromboembolism (VTE) — blood clots that form in the veins, often in the legs.
If such a clot dislodges and travels to the lungs, it can cause a potentially fatal condition called pulmonary embolism.
Several high-profile deaths have brought attention to the risk of VTE among travelers, particularly those on long-haul flights. Experts think a combination of factors — including dehydration and hours of sitting in cramped conditions — explains why some people develop blood clots.
However, not all studies have found a clear link between travel and VTE. To look at the discrepancy, the researchers who conducted the current review, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, analyzed 14 studies involving more than 4,000 cases of VTE.
Some of the studies compared VTE patients with a “control” group of people who had been referred for possible VTE symptoms, but were found to not have a clot — a comparison that carries the risk of bias because the control group likely has a higher-than-average risk of blood clots.
In other studies, the control group consisted of healthy people from the general population — which are more likely to capture the true VTE risk associated with travel, explained lead researcher Dr. Divay Chandra of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.
When the researchers looked only at those studies, they found that travelers had a nearly three-fold higher risk of blood clots than non-travelers.
What’s more, the risk climbed along with the duration of the trip — rising 18 percent for every two hours of any type of travel, and by 26 percent for every two hours of air travel.
But while the current findings confirm the travel-VTE link, Chandra told Reuters Health, “there is no reason for panic” because the absolute risk to any one traveler is still low.
Still, Chandra said, “people who travel long distances should be aware of the risk of blood clots and learn to recognize the symptoms.”
Symptoms of a blood clot in the leg include pain, warmth, swelling and redness in the limb. If the clot travels to the lungs, it may cause sudden shortness of breath, chest pain or a cough that produces blood.
To help reduce the risk of VTE, experts generally recommend that long-distance travelers periodically move around and stretch their legs, and drink plenty of water to stay hydrated.
Certain people are at increased risk of blood clots, Chandra noted — including cancer patients, people who have recently had major surgery such as a joint replacement, and women on birth control pills. They may want to talk with their doctors about any precautions they should take when traveling, he said.
Click here for the full report from Reuters.
New Research: Nitrates and Nitrites May Cause Alzheimer’s, Diabetes and Parkinson’s Disease
July 07, 2009
Natural News
by Sherry Baker
According to a new study by scientists at Rhode Island Hospital, millions of Americans could be at risk of serious and even fatal diseases because of chemicals used to fertilizer and to preserve food. Scientists have found a strong link between increasing levels of nitrates and nitrites in our food supply and increasing death rates from Alzheimer’s, diabetes mellitus and Parkinson’s disease.
The research, just published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, investigated trends in death rates due to diseases associated with advancing age. They found convincing parallels between age adjusted rises in mortality from certain illnesses — Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and diabetes — and the steadily increasing human exposure to nitrates, nitrites and nitrosamines through processed and preserved foods as well as fertilizers.
Suzanne de la Monte, MD, MPH, of Rhode Island Hospital, and her research team suggest that the exposure to these chemicals is playing a direct role in the cause, development and effects of the pandemic of these diseases. “Because of the similar trending in nearly all age groups within each disease category, this indicates that these overall trends are not due to an aging population. This relatively short time interval for such dramatic increases in death rates associated with these diseases is more consistent with exposure-related causes rather than genetic changes,” Dr. de la Monte explained in a statement to the media. “Moreover, the strikingly higher and climbing mortality rates in older age brackets suggest that aging and/or longer durations of exposure have greater impacts on progression and severity of these diseases.”
Nitrites and nitrates belong to a class of chemicals called nitrosamines that are created by a chemical reaction between nitrites or other proteins. They’ve long been shown to be harmful to both humans and animals. In fact, more than 90 percent of nitrosamines have been shown in tests to be carcinogens. However, they are allowed to be freely added to the US food supply. In fact, if you pick up a processed food package such as luncheon meat or bacon, certain beers and some cheese products, you are likely to find that they contain these chemicals. In addition, exposure to nitrates and nitrites are widely found in fertilizers, pesticides and cosmetics. Exposure also occurs through the manufacturing and processing of rubber and latex products.
Nitrosamines are problematic because they become reactive at the cellular level and that means they can alter gene expression and cause DNA damage. The new research suggests that the cellular alterations that occur as a result of nitrosamine exposure create a process much like accelerated aging in the body and that could spur on the development of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Type 2 diabetes mellitus.
“All of these diseases are associated with increased insulin resistance and DNA damage. Their prevalence rates have all increased radically over the past several decades and show no sign of plateau. Because there has been a relatively short time interval associated with the dramatic shift in disease incidence and prevalence rates, we believe this is due to exposure-related rather than genetic etiologies,” Dr. de la Monte stated.
For the study, the researchers graphed and analyzed mortality rates and compared them with increasing age for each disease. Next the scientists looked at the growth of the US population and the annual use and consumption of nitrite-containing fertilizers, annual sales at popular fast food chains (which carry nitrate and nitrate containing foods), sales for a major meat processing company, and consumption of grain (often fertilized with nitrates). For a control, the research team also looked at statistics on the consumption of watermelon and cantaloupe — foods that not typically associated with nitrate or nitrite exposure.
The results show that while nitrogen-containing fertilizer consumption increased by 230 percent between 1955 and 2005, its usage doubled between 1960 and 1980 — and that’s the time period just before the insulin-resistant epidemics of type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Disease began. What’s more, the investigators also found fast food chain and the meat processing company sales increased more than eight fold from 1970 to 2005, and grain consumption increased five-fold. That means the US population has been exposed to dramatic increase in foods loaded with nitrates and nitrites.
Bottom line: the researchers think the increased prevalence rates of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and diabetes cannot be explained on the basis of gene mutations and, instead, are examples of toxin exposure-related disease. “If this hypothesis is correct, potential solutions include eliminating the use of nitrites and nitrates in food processing, preservation and agriculture; taking steps to prevent the formation of nitrosamines and employing safe and effective measures to detoxify food and water before human consumption,” Dr. de la Monte, who is a professor of pathology and lab medicine at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, said in a press statement.
Click here for the full article from NaturalNews.com
The Great American Bubble Machine
July 2, 2009
Rolling Stone Magazine
by Matt Taibbi
The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it’s everywhere. The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.
Any attempt to construct a narrative around all the former Goldmanites in influential positions quickly becomes an absurd and pointless exercise, like trying to make a list of everything. What you need to know is the big picture: If America is circling the drain, Goldman Sachs has found a way to be that drain — an extremely unfortunate loophole in the system of Western democratic capitalism, which never foresaw that in a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.
They achieve this using the same playbook over and over again. The formula is relatively simple: Goldman positions itself in the middle of a speculative bubble, selling investments they know are crap. Then they hoover up vast sums from the middle and lower floors of society with the aid of a crippled and corrupt state that allows it to rewrite the rules in exchange for the relative pennies the bank throws at political patronage. Finally, when it all goes bust, leaving millions of ordinary citizens broke and starving, they begin the entire process over again, riding in to rescue us all by lending us back our own money at interest, selling themselves as men above greed, just a bunch of really smart guys keeping the wheels greased. They’ve been pulling this same stunt over and over since the 1920s — and now they’re preparing to do it again, creating what may be the biggest and most audacious bubble yet.
