Jonathan Emord, Author of “The Rise of Tyranny”
Click the picture or link below to hear Kevin’s interview with Jonathan Emord and click here to purchase “The Rise of Tyranny.”
Jonathan Emord on The Kevin Trudeau Show 04/22/09
1 in 3 Breast Cancer Patients Overtreated
July 10, 2009
Associated Press
by Maria Cheng
LONDON (AP) — One in three breast cancer patients identified in public screening programs may be treated unnecessarily, a new study says. Karsten Jorgensen and Peter Gotzsche of the Nordic Cochrane Centre in Copenhagen analyzed breast cancer trends at least seven years before and after government-run screening programs for breast cancer started in parts of Australia, Britain, Canada, Norway and Sweden.
The research was published Friday in the BMJ, formerly known as the British Medical Journal. Jorgensen and Gotzsche did not cite any funding for their study.
Once screening programs began, more cases of breast cancer were inevitably picked up, the study showed. If a screening program is working, there should also be a drop in the number of advanced cancer cases detected in older women, since their cancers should theoretically have been caught earlier when they were screened.
However, Jorgensen and Gotzsche found the national breast cancer screening systems, which usually test women aged between 50 and 69, simply reported thousands more cases than previously identified.
Overall, Jorgensen and Gotzsche found that one third of the women identified as having breast cancer didn’t actually need to be treated.
Some cancers never cause symptoms or death, and can grow too slowly to ever affect patients. As it is impossible to distinguish between those and deadly cancers, any identified cancer is treated. But the treatments can have harmful side-effects and be psychologically scarring.
“This information needs to get to women so they can make an informed choice,” Jorgensen said. “There is a significant harm in making women cancer patients without good reason.”
Jorgensen said that for years, women were urged to undergo breast cancer screening without them being informed of the risks involved, such as having to endure unnecessary treatment if a cancer was identified, even if it might never threaten their health.
Doctors and patients have long debated the merits of prostate cancer screening out of similar concerns that it overdiagnoses patients. A study in the Netherlands found that as many as two out of every five men whose prostate cancer was caught through a screening test had tumors too slow-growing to ever be a threat.
“Mammography is one of medicine’s ‘close calls,’ … where different people in the same situation might reasonably make different choices,” wrote H. Gilbert Welch of VA Outcomes Group and the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Research, in an accompanying editorial in the BMJ. “Mammography undoubtedly helps some women but hurts others.”
Experts said overtreatment occurs wherever there is widespread cancer screening, including the U.S.
Britain’s national health system recently ditched its pamphlet inviting women to get screened for breast cancer, after critics complained it did not explain the overtreatment problem.
Laura Bell of Cancer Research UK said Britain’s breast cancer screening program was partly responsible for the country’s reduced breast cancer cases.
“We still urge women to go for screening when invited,” she said, though she acknowledged it was crucial for women to be informed of the potential benefits and harms of screening.
Click here for the full report from the Associated Press.
Smart Clothes Could Take Photos
July 10, 2009
BBC News
Clothes could one day take snaps of everything happening around whoever is wearing them.
US researchers have made smart fabric that can detect the wavelength and direction of light falling on it.
The research team has found a way to accurately place sensors in each fibre and co-ordinate the electrical signals they send when light falls on them.
The results were a step towards “ambient light imaging fabrics” said the researchers.
Led by Dr Yoel Fink from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the researchers have extended earlier work that placed sensors in relatively large polymer fibres.
Dr Fink and colleagues found a way to stretch the 25mm strands of polymer into much thinner fibres while maintaining the relative positions of the sensors.
This earlier work has led to the creation of very long and flexible light and temperature sensors that may find a role in smart fabrics for soldiers or those working in hostile environments.
In their latest work, described in a paper in Nano Letters, these thinner strands were woven into a 0.1m square section of fabric. The careful creation of the fibres and positioning of the light-sensitive elements meant that the team knew which signals were being sent by which sensors.
This enabled the team to reconstruct, albeit crudely, an image projected onto the small square of fabric. The researchers said their work was an “important step” towards finding ways to get many nanoscale devices working together.
Click here for the full report from BBC News.
The Best And Worst States for Heart Attack
July 10, 2009 by mike
Filed under Government
July 10, 2009
ABC News
by Radha Chitale
In the event of a heart attack or heart failure, the best course of action is to head directly to a hospital. And if that hospital is in New Jersey, so much the better.
The Garden State was among the states with the least deaths and fewest hospital readmissions following a heart attack or heart failure, according to a new study published in the journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.
The study examined data on heart attack and heart failure patients from about 600,000 hospitals across the country between July 2005 and June 2008. The results showed that, while there was room for improvement in care across the board, the hospitals in some states — like New Jersey, for example — consistently outperformed hospitals in other states in terms of patient mortality or hospital readmission in the 30 days after they received treatment.
“While hospitals know what their financial performance is like, they are much less aware of what their clinical performance is because they lacked metrics,” said Dr. Harlan Krumholz, professor of medicine in the section of cardiology at Yale University School of Medicine and the lead author of the study. “Being transparent galvanizes action at the hospital level, at the board level, and at the community level to improve performance.”
The Best States:
Some of the states in the top fifth of the country for preventing death and hospital readmission before 30 days after treatment included:
New Jersey
Vermont
New Hampshire
Washington
Oregon
An average of 16.6 percent of heart attack patients died within 30 days of hospital admission across the country, but this number dropped to about 10.9 percent in hospitals in the best performing states. The average number of heart failure patients who died nationally was 11.1 percent but was 6.6 percent in hospitals in the best performing states.
The Worst States:
The percentage of people who died following heart attack or heart failure within 30 days of hospital admission jumped significantly in the worst performing states:
Oklahoma
Arkansas
Tennessee
Missouri
Louisiana
Deaths from heart attack were about 24.9 percent and deaths from heart failure were about 19.8 percent in these states, significantly higher rates than the better-performing states.
But the study authors pointed out that hospital performance overall was poor, particularly regarding hospital readmission rates. One in four heart failure patients and one in five heart attack patients were readmitted to a hospital within 30 days of their first admission because of anything from trouble with medication, infection, poor follow up care, or another heart attack or failure.
“Being able to prevent preventable deaths is very important. Preventing early hospitalization again is also very important,” said Dr. Gregg Fonarow, professor of cardiovascular medicine at UCLA and another author on the study. “The large difference highlights that more could be done.”
But the authors noted that the data do not imply that every hospital in a state follows a rubric that makes them equally good at treating patients and an acute heart problem leaves little time to dally with hospital choice.
Click here for the full report from ABC News.
Study Finds Low-Calorie Diet Extends Lifespan of Monkeys
July 10, 2009
Wall Street Journal
by Keith J. Winstein
Sharply cutting calories in the diets of rhesus monkeys was found to reduce aging-related deaths, according to a study that followed 76 monkeys for two decades.
The findings, published Thursday in Science magazine by researchers at the University of Wisconsin, give new impetus to researchers and companies, including GlaxoSmithKline PLC, that are searching for a drug to mimic the beneficial effects of a meager diet in humans without the feeling of near-starvation.
For thousands of people who already attempt to sharply restrict their food intake — by as much as 30% below a normal diet of roughly 2,200 calories a day — in an effort to live longer, the findings appear to validate a technique called calorie restriction as a way to live longer.
Scientists have known since the 1930s that the technique lengthens the lives of mice. But until now, no study had shown the technique worked in monkeys, which are more genetically similar to humans. One difficulty: Monkeys live almost 30 years on average, meaning any study to measure a difference in death rates would need to wait a long time.
The Wisconsin study, which began in 1989 with 30 rhesus monkeys and added 46 more in 1994, is the first to yield a definitive finding. Researchers began restricting half the monkeys’ diets, reducing their calories by 30%, when the monkeys were fully grown, or about 10 years old.
Thursday’s findings are “all consistent with what human practitioners of calorie restriction have always believed,” said Brian Delaney, president of the Calorie Restriction Society, which claims about 3,000 members. “Any degree of restriction beyond what you’re currently eating will confer health benefits and will slow the aging process,” he said.
After almost 20 years, 14 of 38 monkeys in the control group had died of what were considered age-related causes, such as heart disease and cancer. That compares with only five of 38 monkeys in the restricted-diet group, a significant decrease. However, the difference wasn’t statistically significant when considering all causes of death, including monkeys who died from injuries and complications from anesthesia.
Calorie restriction also appeared to slow the loss of gray matter in the brain.
“It’s a pretty simply story, really,” said Richard Weindruch, a Wisconsin professor who led the study. “We’ve been waiting all these years for the monkeys to become old enough to get meaningful data on lifespan and brain aging and diseases.”
Dr. Weindruch described himself as an imperfect adherent to calorie restriction. “I found it difficult to adhere to such a diet, despite studying it for so many years,” he said, adding he had been able to cut his calories by about 20% for only a few months. “I’m not the poster child for human application,” he said.
He is the co-founder of a Wisconsin company, LifeGen Technologies LLC, that works with drug makers to quantify the effect of possible life-extending drugs.
Click here for the full report from the Wall Street Journal.
Hospital-Acquired Superbug Infections Soar in Newborn Babies
July 10, 2009
Natural News
by Sherry Baker
It’s scary enough to have a newborn baby in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) because he or she is premature or has health problems. But now there’s reason to worry that many NICUs, places that are supposed to be dedicated to healing and protecting the youngest and most fragile of babies, are actually dangerous environments for neonates. According to a new study just published in The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal, superbug infections — specifically antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections — in US NICUs increased over 300 percent in less than ten years.
Researchers Dr. Fernanda C. Lessa and colleagues at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) used a national database on hospital-acquired infections and analyzed data voluntarily reported by NICUs between the years of 1995 and 2004. In all, the study involved information collected on nearly 5.9 million patient-days in 149 NICUs across the country.
In newborns, infections that occur during the first three days of life are most often acquired during labor and delivery. On the other hand, late-onset infections, defined as infections that developed more than three days after a child was born, are known to be primarily transmitted by parents, doctors, nurses and other health care personnel. The investigators focused on late-onset infections and found that out of about 4,400 Staph infections with antibiotic resistance, 23 percent were found to be the result of a MRSA superbug.
From 1995 to 2004, the rate of late-onset MRSA infections soared from less than one for every 10,000 hospital days to three infections per 10,000 hospital days — an enormous increase of 308 percent. The types of MRSA infections were not found to change during the years studied. About 30 percent involved bloodstream infections. Other frequent kinds of MRSA infections that were identified included pneumonia and eye infections (conjunctivitis).
For some reason, the steepest rise in MRSA infections occurred after 2002. While the tiniest babies with extremely low birth weights of 1,000 grams (about 35 ounces) had the sharpest increase in MRSA infections, the superbug infection rate actually rose in all birth weight groups.
The ever increasing rate of superbugs has become a worldwide public health problem, with Staph bacteria developing resistance to commonly used antibiotics. MRSA infections have increasingly been found within communities and not just in hospitals. However, in the new study the Staph strains found in NICUs were clearly in the class of superbugs responsible for hospital-acquired infections, not those which have been reported in the non-medical community setting.
So what’s the bottom line result of the study? According to researchers Dr. Fernanda C. Lessa and colleagues at the CDC there is clearly a need for healthcare workers to follow routine infection control steps that are already well-known to be effective in preventing the spreading of MRSA infections. They aren’t high tech chemicals or vaccines, either. Instead, the most important is simple hand washing.
As reported earlier in Natural News, one approach to fighting superbugs in hospitals has already backfired. A study showed that instead of killing potentially dangerous infections, disinfectant wipes may actually spread drug-resistant and sometimes deadly bacteria.
Click here for the full report and links from NaturalNews.com
ADHD Drugs Proven Absolutely Useless for Children – Plus, They Stunt Growth
July 10, 2009
Natural News
by David Gutierrez
Stimulant drugs such as Ritalin provide no long-term benefit in the treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), according to the latest findings of the ongoing Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with ADHD (MTA), published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
According to previous analysis of MTA data, stimulant drugs do improve the social functioning and reduce symptoms of inattention and hyperactivity in children with ADHD for the first year of treatment. In the current analysis, however, researchers followed 485 children for eight years and found that children who remained on medication for that entire time showed no improvement in symptoms over those who had stopped taking the drugs.
“If you put a child on medication, he or she is far better right at that time. The question for parents is: Is this going to make a benefit for my child long term?” said researcher William Pelham, of the University of Buffalo. “The answer is no. Behavioral treatments are going to have much better benefit in the long term.”
Another analysis of MTA data, published in the same journal, found that use of ADHD drugs appeared to stunt children’s growth. Children who had never taken stimulant drugs were an average of six pounds heavier and 0.75 inches taller than children of the same age who had taken the drugs for three years. This height and weight difference was permanent.
According to Pelham, behavioral treatments for ADHD can be harder to find than drugs, and often insurers will not cover them. Nevertheless, such treatments are available and have been proven to work without the side effect risk of pharmaceuticals.
“It’s wrong for a doctor to say to a parent, this treatment is harder to find, so instead we’re going to put your child on a drug that will have no long-term benefit,” he said.
Click here for the full story on NaturalNews.com
Swine flu shots at school: Bracing for fall return
July 10, 2009
Associated Press
by Lauran Neergaard
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. swine flu vaccinations could begin in October with children among the first in line — at their local schools — the Obama administration said Thursday as the president and his Cabinet urged states to figure out now how they’ll tackle the virus’ all-but-certain resurgence.
“We may end up averting a crisis. That’s our hope,” said President Barack Obama, who took time away from the G-8 summit in Italy to telephone another summit back home — the 500 state and local health officials meeting to prepare for swine flu’s fall threat.
No final decision has been made on whether to vaccinate Americans, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius stressed. That depends largely on studies with experimental batches that are set to start the first week of August — to see if they’re safe and seem to work and to learn whether they require one or two doses.
But if all goes well, the federal government will buy vaccine from manufacturers and share it for free among the states, which must then “try and get this in the arms of the targeted population as soon as possible,” Sebelius said.
First in line probably will be school-age children, young adults with risky conditions such as asthma, pregnant women and health workers, she said. Unlike regular winter flu, the swine flu seems more dangerous to these groups than to older people.
“Schools are natural places” to offer those vaccines, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said.
Go home and get schools, mayors and other community leaders to spread that message, Sebelius said.
“The last thing we want is millions of parents to be surprised” the day the get-your-kid-vaccinated-at-school note comes home, she said.
Schools do occasionally team up with local health officials for special flu vaccination clinics, but it’s not common. More than 140 schools around the country scheduled flu vaccination days last fall, some providing free vaccine. Some vaccinated only students bearing parent consent forms; others opened their doors to entire families.
It will be a confusing fall, Sebelius acknowledged. Doctors’ offices, clinics and even grocery stores will be in the midst of dispensing 100 million-plus doses of regular winter flu vaccine — and the swine flu vaccine, which will roll out slowly, will require at least one completely separate inoculation.
“We know a mass vaccination program of even modest scale will involve extraordinary effort on your part,” Sebelius told state health workers.
She also announced $350 million in grants to help states prepare, money to be used partly to brace hospitals for a surge of demand from the truly sick and the well-but-worried.
“We want to make sure we are not promoting panic but we are promoting vigilance and preparation,” Obama told the gathering.
State officials welcomed the funds but had more practical questions for the feds, starting with what they learned from the chaos when swine flu first burst on the scene last spring and schools around the country closed because of sick students.
Since then, the virus has infected an estimated 1 million Americans and still is spreading, remarkable considering influenza usually can’t tolerate summer’s heat and humidity.
“What I need from all of you is an idea of when it is best to close, when it is necessary to close and when it’s not,” said Belinda Pustka, superintendent of Texas’ Schertz-Cibolo-Universal City Independent School District.
“Closing school is a last resort not a first resort,” Duncan stressed, but he said schools need to plan how they’ll keep students learning if they do have to close for extended periods.
Pustka’s schools posted assignments online. But Sue Todey of Wisconsin’s Department of Public Education said that between rural geography and poverty, many students don’t have the necessary Internet access and she’s exploring using public television or old-fashioned sending home of paper assignments.
An even bigger problem: When schools close and working parents need to stay home — or any worker gets sick — too often, they don’t get paid, said Paul Jarris of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. So they come to work, spreading infection.
“How are we going to assist people who don’t have benefits?” he asked.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said she was working with the Labor Department to address that question, and she urged employers to allow telecommuting and make other provisions should swine flu hit their workplaces this fall.
Swine flu outbreaks in the fall are all but certain given its continued spread here — 50 outbreaks in children’s summer camps so far — and abroad, with major problems in parts of the Southern Hemisphere.
What doctors can’t predict is how bad it will be during the U.S. flu season, but Obama’s team of heavy-hitters spent Thursday warning against complacency.
Even if swine flu proves no more deadly than regular winter flu, that kills 36,000 Americans a year — and with swine flu, teenagers and young adults are being disproportionately hit, said Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And both types could very well spread at the same time this fall.
“If it doesn’t happen, we’ll be fortunate,” Sebelius added.
Click here for the full report and links from the Associated Press.
Up To 10,000 Illinois Prisoners May Be Released
July 9, 2009 by mike
Filed under Government
July 9, 2009
CBS News
by Mike Flannery
Up to 10,000 convicted criminals could soon be released early from prisons across Illinois. It’s all because of the state’s budget mess. Gov. Pat Quinn says cutting those prisoners loose could save more than $100 million. But at what cost to you?
CBS 2 Political Editor Mike Flannery reports that some people are worried. They don’t want to pay higher taxes. And they don’t want these prison reductions set for Sept. 30, either.
“Oh, my God. I don’t agree with that at all,” one woman said. “They can pull money out of some other things.”
The proposed prisoner release stems from plans to lay off more than 1,000 corrections workers at Stateville Prison and a half-dozen facilities downstate.
The state’s making a list of thousands of so-called non-violent inmates with less than one year left to serve who could be released early. The governor says it could save taxpayers $125 million.
But some don’t like the idea.
“I don’t like that at all,” a woman said. “You know, because I think people have been placed there for a reason.”
“If you cut the prison guards, that’s gonna just about give the prisoners control of the jails,” a man said. “Which will make that job very hazardous, more so than what it is.”
Critics say Pat Quinn does not have authority to release thousands of Illinois inmates early.
“I don’t like it. I threw a lot of those guys in prison back in the ’90s, and they probably, a number of them, belong there,” said Ill. Rep. Jim Durkin. “Public safety? Not the place to cut. That is the last place you should cut the budget is public safety. The greatest responsibility of the governor and the legislature is to keep the citizens safe. And I don’t agree with this approach.”
“What it’s being done for is to try, through fear-mongering, cause people to support an income tax increase,” said Bob Schillerstrom, Candidate for Governor. “It’s the wrong thing to do.”
Union leaders meeting in Springfield Wednesday were told the state may give early release to up to 10,000 non-violent inmates. While Corrections Director Michael Randle was mum on his plans for Stateville today, he did give union leaders a list of more than 500 layoffs effective by Sept. 30th.
Click here for the full report from CBS 2 Chicago.
USDA to Oversee School Snack Food
July 9, 2009
Reuters
by Roberta Rampton
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Agriculture Department would be given the power to regulate all food sold in schools — including vending machine snacks — when Congress renews child nutrition programs, the chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee said on Tuesday.
Chairman Tom Harkin said he hopes the committee will start work on legislation to reauthorize school lunch programs in October or November, with a goal to conclude the work by the end of the year.
“I can tell you it won’t be this month,” Harkin told reporters who asked when work would begin. He said precedence must go, for now, to his work on health care reform and on drafting the annual federal spending bills.
Agriculture Committee work on child nutrition will begin with a draft that gives the USDA the authority to oversee all food in schools, so nutrition programs are not “undermined” by junk food in vending machines, Harkin said at a confirmation hearing for the head of the USDA’s nutrition programs.
Earlier this year, Harkin co-sponsored a bill focused on setting nutritional standards for food in school vending machines and stores to combat childhood obesity rates.
Kevin Concannon, the Obama administration’s nominee to run USDA’s food and nutrition programs, told Harkin he wants to work with other federal and state agencies to address health issues caused by poor eating habits.
“It’s a cultural thing. We’ve evolved to this over the past 30 or 40 years, and it’s going to take efforts on a number of fronts,” Concannon said.
Roughly 17 percent of school-age children are obese, triple the rate in 1980 and “an epidemic in the United States,” says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Obesity increases the risk of diabetes, heart disease, arthritis and other chronic illnesses.
At present, USDA oversees the contents of school lunches and bars the sale of foods with minimal nutritional value, such as soda in the lunchroom. It does not control food sold in a la carte lines or school stores.
Concannon, who ran food stamp and public nutrition programs in Iowa, Maine and Oregon during his career, noted he has seen “pushback” from schools that count on revenue from vending machines to pay for student activities.
Concannon also said he wants people who rely on USDA food programs to be able to buy more food from farmers’ markets.
Food stamps, school lunch programs, and other nutritional assistance account for more than $75 billion, or two-thirds of USDA’s annual spending.
One in nine Americans uses food stamps to buy groceries, a record number due to recession and job losses, and more than 30 million children count on USDA-funded school programs for lunch.
The Obama administration, which has a goal of eliminating childhood hunger by 2015, proposed a $1 billion a year increase in child nutrition programs but has provided few details of how it would spend the money.
Click here for the full report from Reuters.
