Fish Oil Helps Arthritis

October 29, 2009

Telegraph.co.uk

By Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent

Researchers found that the body converts a fatty acid in fish oils into a powerful anti-inflammatory chemical called resolvin D2.

It was this compound that accounted for the ability of the oil found in fish such as salmon and mackeral to combat diseases.

Britons spend £60 million a year on fish oil supplements after research suggesting they are good for the brain, bones and heart and can even protect against cancer, eye problems and back pain.

But the mechanism for this “elixir of health” had not been known until British and US researchers showed how the body makes Resolvin D2 from DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) and discovered its exact chemical structure

The British and American scientists believe resolvin D2 could provide the basis of new treatments for a range of serious diseases which involve inflammation.

The list includes sepsis – a potentially deadly reaction to infection which causes inflammation to rage through the body – stroke, and arthritis.

Laboratory experiments showed how the body converts the fish oil fatty acid DHA into resolvin D2, and revealed the chemical’s structure.

Professor Mauro Perretti, from Queen Mary, University of London, who led the UK team, said: “We have known for some time that fish oils can help with conditions like arthritis which are linked to inflammation. What we’ve shown here is how the body processes a particular ingredient of fish oils into resolvin D2.

“We’ve also looked in detail at this chemical, determining at least some of the ways it relieves inflammation. It seems to be a very powerful chemical and a small amount can have a large effect.

“This research is important because it explains at least one way in which fish oils can help in different types of arthritis. We can also work on this chemical and see if it can be used not only to treat or even prevent arthritis, but also as a possible treatment for a variety of other diseases associated with inflammation.”

Inflammation, caused when the immune system goes into “overdrive”, is known to play a role in many health problems ranging from heart disease and stroke to arthritis and cancer.

Previous research has shown that a key step in the inflammatory process occurs when white blood cells stick to the inner lining of blood vessels.

The scientists, whose findings are reported in the journal Nature, discovered that resolvin D2 helps prevent this happening by generating small amounts of nitric oxide.

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CDC: Swine Flu Infects 5.7 Million in First Wave

Psychiatric Meds in Children Leading to Rapid Weight Gain

October 27, 2009

U.S News

By Nathan Seppa, Science News

Many young children and adolescents taking drugs for severe psychiatric problems gain substantial weight and, in some cases, show increased levels of LDL cholesterol and triglycerides in their blood, researchers report in the Oct. 28 Journal of the American Medical Association.

Although the data from this study need to be replicated over a longer time frame, the findings nonetheless raise worrisome questions about anti-psychotic drugs that often benefit children who have schizophrenia, autism, tics, severe bipolar disorder or aggressive behavior.

“We are between a rock and a hard place here,” says study coauthor Christoph Correll, a psychiatrist at the Zucker Hillside Hospital in Glen Oaks, N.Y. These mental disorders are severe and can lead to suicide or to educational problems and emotional scars, he says. On the other hand, weight gain during youth predisposes an individual to chronic health problems later in life, he says.

Weight gain has been noticed before in children and adolescents taking commonly prescribed drugs for severe psychiatric problems. But studies seeking to link that weight gain to the medications were often muddied because patients had taken one of the drugs beforehand at some point—and may have already put on weight from it or reset their body metabolism to adjust to the drug somehow.

In the new study, Correll and his colleagues monitored 272 children, ages 4 to 19, between 2001 and 2007. Of these, 257 were getting psychotropics for severe problems for the first time, and 15 others refused the drugs but agreed to be seen by a doctor. The drugs were olanzapine (Zyprexa), quetiapine (Seroquel), risperidone (Risperdal) or aripiprazole (Abilify). Restricting the study to first-timers eliminated problems encountered in earlier studies.

After a median follow-up period of nearly 11 weeks, these patients had gained 10 to 19 pounds on average, depending on the drug. Kids on Zyprexa gained the most, on average, while those taking Abilify gained the least. The 15 patients who had refused drug treatment gained less than one pound on average during the monitoring period.

The pace of weight gain seems to level off over time, Correll says, but further study will be needed to clarify that trend.

“This is a really good study of relatively short-term effects,” says Christopher Varley, a child psychiatrist at the University of Washington School of Medicine and Seattle Children’s Hospital. But longer-term data are needed, he says, “because you never really treat a kid with one of these conditions for only 12 weeks—it’s more like six to nine months or a year or two.”

Correll’s team intends to monitor as many of the patients as possible over a longer time period.

Child psychiatrist Linmarie Sikich of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine says that she and her colleagues have seen many patients lose weight after coming off these drugs. So far, researchers don’t have enough data to clarify why some patients lose the weight and others don’t, she says.

The biological mechanism underlying the weight gain also remains obscure, Varley says. But some effects are evident, such as carbohydrate cravings. “The appetite of these youngsters dramatically goes up,” he says. At the same time, the drugs have a mild sedative effect. “They’re not out running around, expending calories.”

Sikich says some evidence suggests that the drugs may block the body’s satiety signal.

Meanwhile, patients in this study taking Zyprexa showed increased LDL cholesterol and triglycerides, types of fat in the blood. Patients getting Seroquel also had higher triglycerides. The other drugs showed little change in these metabolic markers.

“This does leave a difficult decision, but I think we’re getting increasing guidance,” Sikich says. Clinicians would prefer to prescribe the drugs with the mildest side effects, she notes.

While all four drugs are cleared for adults, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has specifically approved only Abilify and Risperdal for pediatric use thus far. Earlier this year, a panel of experts recommended that the FDA approve all four drugs for certain severe psychiatric problems in children. The regulatory body has yet to rule on that.

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H1N1 Vaccine May be Discarded if Unused

October 28, 2009

Reuters

by Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

The U.S. government may end up throwing away unused doses of swine flu vaccine if people cannot get it soon enough, the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Tuesday.

Members of Congress questioned whether federal officials were too rosy in their estimates of how much vaccine would be available and when, and companies said they were still struggling to produce immunizations against H1N1.

CDC director Dr. Thomas Frieden said 22.4 million doses were now available to states, which can get them a day after they order them.

“It’s quite likely that too little vaccine is one of the things that’s making people more interested in getting vaccinated, frankly,” Frieden told reporters.

“We think it will get easier to find vaccine in the weeks that come.”

President Barack Obama’s daughters found it. “Malia and Sasha were both vaccinated for H1N1 last week, after the vaccine became available to Washington, D.C. schoolchildren,” a White House blog reads.

“President and Mrs. Obama have not yet been vaccinated for H1N1, and they will wait until the needs of the priority groups identified by the CDC — including young people under the age of 24, pregnant women, and people with underlying conditions — have been met.”

Many states and cities say they have received about one-tenth as much vaccine as they originally had expected by this time. Frieden said the delays may discourage people who are lining up for vaccine.

“It is likely also as we produce more vaccine and as both people are given the opportunity to get vaccinated, and as disease maybe wanes in the future, we will have significant amounts of vaccine that can’t be used,” Frieden said.

“One of the messages for states, localities and health providers is not to reserve vaccine that they have available, to give it out as soon as it comes in, because more is on the way.”

In September, U.S. officials said 40 million vaccine doses would be available by the end of October and they estimated 20 million doses a week would be delivered, with a goal of 250 million doses by the end of flu season in March or April.

UNRELIABLE ESTIMATES

Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins asked why the estimates were so far off.

“It now appears that much of the vaccine could arrive only after many people have already been infected with H1N1,” she said in a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, released late on Monday.

“It seems that HHS gave its assurance of sufficient supply in August without adequate information to make such a commitment.”

Connecticut independent Senator Joseph Lieberman weighed in

on Tuesday.

“Unfortunately, these missteps in estimating available doses of H1N1 vaccine have effects beyond just growing public frustration; they have the potential to critically undermine our vaccine distribution efforts, which depend on accurate estimates of vaccine availability,” he said.

But HHS spokeswoman Jenny Backus said the agency was simply passing on information as it became available.

“We have been very clear and open and told the American people what we know when we know it,” she said in a telephone interview.

“We have passed on the manufacturing estimates, and as they have changed, we have conveyed the information to the American people, too.”

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Toxic Chemicals Found in Face Pain

October 27, 2009

Campaign for Safe Cosmetics

PRNewswire-USNewswire

Ghosts and goblins aren't the only spooky things lurking around this Halloween.
A new report by the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics reveals that popular children's
face paints contain lead, a potent neurotoxin, as well as nickel, cobalt and chromium,
which can cause lifelong skin sensitization and contact dermatitis.

Creepier yet, these metals were not listed on any of the product labels, so
parents have no way of knowing what children are really putting on their
faces.

The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, a national coalition of nonprofit health
groups, sent 10 children's face paints to an independent lab to test for heavy
metals, and also reviewed ingredient labels of Halloween products sold at a
seasonal holiday store. The findings, compiled in the report Pretty Scary,
include:

    --  Ten out of 10 children's face paints contained lead ranging from 0.05 to
        0.65 parts per million (ppm). The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
        Prevention recommends that parents avoid using cosmetics on their
        children that could be contaminated with lead.

    --  Six out of 10 children's face paints contained nickel, cobalt and/or
        chromium, which are top allergens in children. The metals were found at
        levels ranging from 1.6 to 120 ppm - many of them far exceeding industry
        safety recommendations of 1 ppm.

    --  Snazaroo Face Paint, labeled as "non-toxic" and "hypoallergenic,"
        contained some of the highest levels of lead, nickel and cobalt found in
        the study.

"Parents should not have to worry that face paint contains lead and other
hazardous substances, and they have a right to know what's in these products.
Clearly, companies are not making the safest products possible for children,
even though kids are particularly vulnerable to toxic exposures," said Lisa
Archer, national coordinator of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics at the Breast
Cancer Fund.

"Lead and other hazardous chemicals have no place in face paints kids use for
dress-up and play on Halloween or any other day of the year," said Rep. Jan
Schakowsky (D-Ill.).  "Strengthening our cosmetics laws and providing ample
resources are essential to ensure the FDA has the authority and tools it needs
to protect the health of our children from chemicals in cosmetics."

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Veggie Juice Your Way to Healthy Weight

October 29, 2009

NaturalNews

by David Gutierrez, staff writer

Daily consumption of vegetable juice may not just help increase vegetable consumption, but also improve the effectiveness of weight loss strategies, according to a study conducted by researchers from the University of California-Davis and presented at the Experimental Biology Conference in New Orleans.

The study was funded in part by the Campbell Soup Company.

The researchers conducted the study on 81 adults with metabolic syndrome, three-quarters of them women. Metabolic syndrome refers to a cluster of symptoms — central obesity, high blood levels of trigylcerides and fasting glucose, high blood pressure, and low levels of HDL (“good”) cholesterol — that significantly raise a person’s risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes. All the participants were advised to follow an American Heart Association-recommended diet high in fiber, fruit, vegetables, minerals and low-fat diary, and low in salt and saturated fat. They were also told to drink 0, 1 or 2 cups of low-sodium, high-potassium V8-brand vegetable juice daily.

After 12 weeks, participants who drank either one or two cups of vegetable juice per day lost an average of four pounds, while those who drank no vegetable juice lost only one pound. The researchers also found that people in the vegetable juice groups had significantly higher vitamin C and potassium intake, and a significantly lower intake of carbohydrates.

Drinking vegetable juice also made people significantly more likely to reach the recommended intake of five fruits and vegetables per day. Among those not drinking vegetable juice, less than 25 percent reached the daily fruit and vegetable goal, in contrast with more than 50 percent of those in the one-cup-per-day group and 100 percent of those in the two-cups-per-day group.

“What we found in this study is that drinking vegetable juice seemed to address some of the key barriers to vegetable consumption such as convenience, portability and taste, so individuals were more likely to meet their daily recommendations,” researcher Carl Keen said. “Furthermore, vegetable juice drinkers reported that they actually enjoyed drinking their vegetables, which is critical to adopting dietary practices for the long-term.”

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House to Unveil Health Care Bill

October 29, 2009

Yahoo News

By Erica Werner

House Democrats reached agreement Wednesday on key elements of a health care bill that would vastly alter America’s medical landscape, requiring virtually universal sign-ups and establishing a new government-run insurance option for millions.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi planned a formal announcement Thursday morning in front of the Capitol. Lawmakers said the legislation could be up for a vote on the House floor next week.

The rollout will cap months of arduous negotiations to bridge differences between liberal and moderate Democrats and blend health care overhaul bills passed by three separate committees over the summer. The developments in the House came as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., tried to round up support among moderate Democrats for his bill, which includes a modified government insurance option that states could opt out of.

Reid met Wednesday with Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln, who faces a potentially tough re-election next year.

The final product in the House, reflecting many of President Barack Obama’s priorities, includes new requirements for employers to offer insurance to their workers or face penalties, fines on Americans who don’t purchase coverage and subsidies to help lower-income people do so. Insurance companies would face new prohibitions against charging much more to older people or denying coverage to people with health conditions.

The price tag, topping $1 trillion over 10 years, would be paid for by taxing high-income people and cutting some $500 billion in payments to Medicare providers. The legislation would extend health coverage to around 95 percent of Americans.

Republicans criticized the bill even before it was unveiled.

“Americans’ health care is too important to risk on one gigantic bill that was negotiated behind closed doors,” said Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich. “The Medicare cuts will hurt seniors, the tax increases will kill jobs and the government takeover of health care will increase premium costs.

One change expected to be revealed Thursday is that some of the provisions of the bill, which were set to take effect mostly in 2013, have been moved up so Americans would see the benefits of the legislation more quickly, according Pelosi spokesman Nadeam Elshami.

“I’m pretty confident that we’ve got the right pieces in place,” said Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., chairman of the Education and Labor Committee, one of the three panels involved in writing the bill. “We can quibble over parts of it, but the fact is when you’re taking a 60-year-old system that grew up in a rather haphazard fashion and you’re trying to bring some coherence to it, these are sort of the things you have to do at the beginning of that process.”

Plenty of work remains to be done before a bill could land on Obama’s desk — and there’s still no guarantee that Congress can complete the legislation before year’s end, as the president wants. If Obama does sign a health overhaul bill, he will have bucked decades of failed attempts by past administrations, most recently by former President Bill Clinton in the 1990s.

House leaders hope to finish the bill before Veteran’s Day, Nov. 11. The Senate is aiming to start debate sometime in the next several weeks.

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Donated Organs Not Always Healthy yet Still Implanted

October 29, 2009

NaturalNews

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

Matthew Millington, 31, was an Iraq war veteran who served in the British army. Suffering from an unspecified “serious long condition”, doctors told him he would be dead in two years unless he underwent a lung transplant. With tens of thousands of people world-wide awaiting organ transplants, the young man was one of the “lucky” patients who soon received his lungs from a donor. The problem was he was given lungs riddled with a fast growing cancer — and Millington died less than 10 months after his operation.

This is just a horrible, rare, mistake right? Not necessarily, according to a warning just issued by the UK health service. It specifically lists other examples of diseased and damaged organs being inappropriatedly donated for transplantion — in addition to cancer, these include “fatty” organs, which can be caused by a donor’s obesity or alcoholism and result in cirrhosis in a transplant patient, and organs containing cuts and other damage resulting from the organ retrieval process. Most horrific was a report of a donor patient found to be infected with vCJD, the human form of mad cow disease, as well as hepatitis B. In addition, the report notes problems with patient identification errors and incorrectly matched tissue types.

The British report does not include any information about diseased transplanted organs in the U.S. or other countries. However, it does point out that the quality of transplant organs isn’t always the best, in large part because there is a huge, critical need for transplanted organs. And this organ shortage has hit the U.S., too. For example, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, around 17,000 Americans have received organ transplants this year but another 104,335 are waiting for organs.

In the UK, according to the British newspaper The Telegraph information has emerged revealing that donated organs are being accepted from drug addicts because of the critical organ shortage in that country. In fact, an investigative report in that publication found a reluctance by patients and transplant surgeons alike to reject any organs offered unless there are extremely compelling reasons.

A spokesman for Papworth Hospital, Huntingdon, where Matthew Millington received his deadly transplant, told The Telegraph: “Using lungs from donors who have smoked in the past is not unusual. During 2008/09 there were 146 lung transplants carried out in the UK. During the same period 84 people died on the waiting list. If we had a policy that said we did not use the lungs of those who had smoked, then the number of lung transplants carried out would have been significantly lower.”

Because of the critical shortage of organs for transplants and the fact more people are needing transplants every year, there is a push world-wide to encourage organ donation. Unfortunately, the same amount of resources and energy doesn’t seem to be directed into preventing the need for transplants in the first place. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services lists the major reasons for organ failure as being conditions that are almost always preventable or treatable with healthy diets, exercise and other natural measures: obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, and lifestyle choices ( including drug and alcohol abuse).

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New Film Questions Health Industry on HIV and AIDS

October 29, 2009

NaturalNews

By Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

Canadian filmmaker Brent Leung isn’t winning any friends in the pharmaceutical industry these days. His breakthrough documentary “House of Numbers” features jaw-dropping interviews with doctors, researchers and even the co-discoverer of HIV himself (Luc Montagnier), all of whom reveal startling information calling into question the “official” explanation of HIV and AIDS.

The film isn’t publicly available yet, as it’s been screened in film festivals around the world. Check the available screening events at the film’s website: www.HouseOfNumbers.com

Because of the game-changing statements heard from numerous health authorities in this film, it threatens the very foundations of the HIV / AIDS industry. Pharmaceutical companies are fronting a specific mythology about AIDS that maximizes their profits from AIDS drugs and (failed) vaccines, but that mythology is about to be dismantled when House of Numbers is released in theaters nationwide over the next few months.

This could be the documentary that shatters Big Pharma’s false paradigms about HIV and AIDS.

The AIDS testing hoax
In the film, Brent Leung subjects himself to an HIV test and discovers that a “diagnosis” of being HIV positive has more to do with the answers you provide to lifestyle questions than any specific microbe appearing in your blood. The diagnosis of AIDS — as well as the very definition — is also apparently so wishy-washy that increasing numbers of well-trained scientists are now questioning whether AIDS exists at all.

“The presently available data does not prove the existence of HIV,” says one health expert interviewed for the film. Another expert says, “The more diseases they could lump into these AIDS categories, the more patients they could catch.”

“I think HIV totally has turned out not to be the cause of AIDS. HIV has turned out not to be!” says another interviewee.

“We can be exposed to HIV many times without being … infected,” says Dr Luc Montagnier, the Nobel prize-winning virologist credited with the co-discovery of HIV. “Our immune system creates [antibodies] within a few weeks, if you have a good immune system.”

The documentary film exposes the sharp contradictions in current scientific opinion about HIV / AIDS. “As I started questioning scientists and delving further into testing protocols and statistical modeling and science, I began to see a lot of the contradictions that they had amongst themselves,” said filmmaker Brent Leung. “One of the things that became apparent to me is how important it is to question everything that we’re told and not automatically accept any fact as truth.”

One bizarre thing the film exposes is the ever-shifting definition of “AIDS.” In the United States, the official definition has been rewritten three times, and definitions vary widely around the world. AIDS isn’t simply the presence of the HIV virus; it’s a fictitious disease label that’s attached to a list of symptoms that continues to expand as the drug companies attempt to ensnare yet more victims into the AIDS label trap.

The experts sound off
House of Numbers is not a “fringe” film featuring dissenting opinions from conspiracy theorists. Rather, it is a lucid, intelligent collection of conversations with some of the world’s top virologists and Nobel prize-winning scientists, including former experts from the CDC, the WHO and UNAIDS. Many are speaking out against the conventional AIDS mythology for the first time on camera.

Those interviewed for the film include Dr. Robert Gallo, Dr. Luc Montagnier, Dr. Michael Gottlieb, Dr. Joe Sonnabend, Dr. Kary Mullis, James Curran, Dr. Peter Piot, Dr. James Chin, Dr. Peter Duesberg and many others.

The film has already received “Best Documentary” and other awards from the many film festivals where it has been featured. Momentum is building for the film, and mainstream distribution looks like a healthy possibility for 2010.

“My main hope is that it educates people about the fact that this isn’t a clear cut issue,” says Leung. “I also hope it empowers people – that it causes them to question not just HIV and AIDS, but all facets of issues which impact our lives. I think we should further explore what we don’t know, and to welcome further discussion, because that will help us to know more and become more informed.”

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The NSA to Store American’s Private Data Permanently

October 29, 2009

NewAmerican.com

By Thomas R. Eddlem

The National Security Agency is building huge new storage facilities to store the unconstitutionally gained data on the American people’s telephone calls and Internet traffic permanently, including new buildings in suburban Salt Lake City, Utah, and San Antonio, Texas.

The NSA has been keeping permanent records of all American’s telephone call habits and Internet traffic since shortly after September 11, 2001, according to major news reports, without the constitutionally required warrants from a court.

No longer able to store all the intercepted phone calls and e-mail in its Ft. Meade, Maryland, headquarters, the NSA is engaging in its own housing boom. How much data will these giant, multibillion dollar new facilities hold? According to James Bamford of the New York Review of Books, the facility in Utah alone could hold data that will be measured in Yottabytes. Never heard of Yottabytes? You’re not alone. Most computers sold at stores still measure their storage at gigabytes, or billions of bits of data. A few store a terrabyte of information, or one trillion bits of information. That’s 1,000,000,000,000 pieces of information. Yottabytes is the highest number that has yet been named in computer information. The number is septillions of billions of bits of data, or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bits of data.

In his review of Matthew M. Aid’s new book on the NSA, The Secret Sentry: The Untold History of the National Security Agency, Bamford noted that the NSA assault on the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment has taken place without public opposition or even public debate. “Unlike the British government, which, to its great credit, allowed public debate on the idea of a central data bank,” Bamford wrote, “the NSA obtained the full cooperation of much of the American telecom industry in utmost secrecy after September 11.” And when the British government held that debate, the people rose up against such a “big brother”-style plan:

When the plans were released by the UK government, there was an immediate outcry from both the press and the public, leading to the scrapping of the “big brother database,” as it was called. In its place, however, the government came up with a new plan. Instead of one vast, centralized database, the telecom companies and Internet service providers would be required to maintain records of all details about people’s phone, e-mail, and Web-browsing habits for a year and to permit the government access to them when asked. That has led again to public anger and to a protest by the London Internet Exchange, which represents more than 330 telecommunications firms.

Not so in America, where economically challenged communities are welcoming the multibillion dollar construction work to create the facilities. Freedom can be traded for temporary prosperity, according to local officials in Utah, as reported by a news segment on KSL, Salt Lake City’s NBC affiliate.

“The data center is estimated to be 1 million square feet, sitting on 200-acres, and it couldn’t come at a better time for Utah’s economy,” KSL reported, and will cost taxpayers nearly $2 billion. The report went on to enthuse that “even Congressman Jason Chaffetz is excited. From Washington he told KSL News: ‘It’s a benefit to our economy and our national security.’”

In San Antonio, the NSA is dramatically expanding an existing facility rather than creating a new one. San Antonio Current writer Greg M. Schwartz explained how the expanded facility would be 470,000 square feet, almost the size of the Alamodome. Schwartz revealed that San Antonio officials actually courted the NSA, sending trade delegations to Ft. Meade to win the expansion. “The new facility is a potential boon to the local economy since it’s reportedly going to employ around 1,500 people,” Schwartz noted, “but questions remain about whether there will be adequate oversight to prevent civil-rights violations like Uncle Sam’s recent notorious warrantless wiretapping program.” Actually, there’s no honest question about that. Schwartz is just politely saying in journalistic kant that, like Salt Lake City, San Antonio expects to profit from the destruction of the Constitution’s Bill of Rights. Temporarily, anyway.

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