UK.gov Uses Booze To Lure London Kids Into ID Scheme
January 26, 2010
The Register
by John Oates
Young people in London are getting the chance to get their hands on an ID card, the lucky so-and-sos.
The next stage of the Home Office’s attempts to get the cards accepted is to target those privacy-disregarding, Facebook-obsessed youths in the capital. People aged between 16 and 24 years old who hold a current or recently expired passport can apply for a card from 8 February.
Using the same lines as in Manchester, where the pilot was started, young people are told the card will help them buy booze, cigarettes, mucky movies, travel to Europe and even open a bank account.
Of course there are other ways to prove you are old enough to buy booze without handing over £30, all your personal details and a promise to always keep them up-to-date.
But the Home Office is today blaming partying youths for wantonly throwing their passports around while out drinking. Half of all passports belong to people under 30, we are told, and “a tenth of those are lost by people using them as ID on a night out.” That works out at 15,000 lost passports a year, according to a Home Office spokesman.
Here’s hoping London youths have more luck using the cards than recent travellers, who were prevented from boarding ferries and planes because their card was not considered good enough ID.
30% of Americans Approaching Poverty
January 26, 2010
The Business Insider
by Vincent Fernando
A shocking report from Brookings exposes just how massive America’s poverty problem is. While substantial reductions in poverty were made during the 1990′s, America’s poor have been rocked by the dual economic downturns since 2000.
The result is that poverty grew at twice the rate of U.S. population growth from 2000 – 2008, and now encompasses 39.1 million Americans.
If one were to expand the definition of poverty to merely ‘poor’ (yet still very poor), then a eye-popping 30% of the nation lives no higher than twice the poverty base line.
Brookings: In 2008, 91.6 million people—more than 30 percent of the nation’s population—fell below 200 percent of the federal poverty level. More individuals lived in families with incomes between 100 and 200 percent of poverty line (52.5 million) than below the poverty line (39.1 million) in 2008. Between 2000 and 2008, large suburbs saw the fastest growing low-income populations across community types and the greatest uptick in the share of the population living under 200 percent of poverty.
Here’s where it gets even more ridiculous — If you break down the data to individual areas, then there’s at least ten U.S. cities with poverty rates of around 30%. Moreover, Brookings latest research highlights how poverty has been getting worse especially fast in the suburbs, thus the U.S. is faced with the challenges of suburban poverty like never before.
California and Florida have been hit especially hard.
Finally, this bad news has likely become far worse already. This research doesn’t include 2009 since full data hasn’t come out yet. When it does, expect a huge up-tick in poverty rates given since that’s when the real brunt of the recent crisis hit ‘Main St.’.
Unfortunately, our regression analyses suggest that these metro areas are not likely to see such decreases in 2009, a year in which no metro area proved exempt from increased unemployment rates. Although the Census will not officially release poverty rates for 2009 until fall of next year, job losses alone foretell a substantially larger increase in the metropolitan poverty rate than the 0.3 percent reported from 2007 to 2008, when unemployment increases were just beginning to accelerate.
Doctors Vaccinate For Profit
January 26, 2010
VacTruth
by Christina England
Years ago children were sent up chimneys or sold as servants to earn their parents extra money. Now they are being vaccinated by doctors, to boost their takings. Doctors, Governments and Pharma see our children as their property and are making thousands of pounds/dollars/euros out of them right under our noses. This, they call ‘Health Care’, I call it the legalization of child labour.
For years now we have been told that vaccines are good for us, that vaccines eradicate illness and that vaccines will save us from killer diseases. What we are not told is that the doctors and Governments telling us this are often linked to the drug companies who are manufacturing the vaccines that they promote and many are making thousands of pounds/dollars profit from vaccinating our children.
Let us begin at the bottom and start with the GP. In the UK every time a vaccine is given to us by our trusted GP they are paid. The British Medical Journal published an article GPs make deals with local NHS to vaccinate children against swine flu explaining how that every single child who is vaccinated with the H1N1 in the UK will earn the GP £5.25.
In Ireland the GP’s are paid five times this amount, for the seasonal flu shot. The article Irish Times – Irish GP’s paid five times UK rate for flu vaccine report that in Ireland a GP will earn a staggering €38.95 per vaccine, making vaccines a very lucrative business indeed.
As far back as 2002, GP’s were so keen to get their hands on this extra money that they were striking off their lists the children who had not had the MMR because if they (the GP’s ) did not meet the Government target rate of 90% immunization, they would not earn their £2865 vaccination bonus Daily Telegraph – Children without MMR jab struck off GP’s list reports tells the full story.
In another article The campaign for Gardasil Flawed it is reported that Merck actually seeks out and trains doctors to lecture for them on Gardasil, paying them $4,500 each time they lecture on the Gardasil vaccine. Doctors are making thousands of dollars doing this.
This is nothing new and is not just attributed to vaccines. Doctors have been doing this for years.
In the article Ex-Drug Sales Rep Tells All – ABC News
one drugs representative spills the beans and tells a Congressional committee what really goes on. Speaking about Eli Lilly he told the committee:-
“To sell their drugs, pharmaceutical companies hire former cheerleaders and ex-models to wine and dine doctors, exaggerate the drug’s benefits and underplay their side-effects”
Shahram Ahari, who spent two years selling Prozac and Zypraxa for Eli Lily, told a Senate Aging Committee chaired by Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wisc., that his job involved ” rewarding physicians with gifts and attention for their allegiance to your product and company despite what may be ethically appropriate.”
Ahari claimed that drug companies like hiring former cheerleaders and ex-models, as well as former athletes and members of the military, many of whom have no background in science to wine and dine the doctors explaining the wonderful benefits of the drug they are employed to sell.
Higher up the you have leading figures in the medical profession who advise Governments on vaccine policies have strong links and alliances with the drugs companies helping them peddle their wares.
Movie Made By Chimpanzies to be Aired on BBC
January 26, 2010
BBC
by Matt Walker
The world’s first film shot entirely by chimpanzees is to be broadcast by the BBC as part of a natural history documentary.
The apes created the movie using a specially designed chimp-proof camera given to them by primatologists.
The film-making exercise is part of a scientific study into how chimpanzees perceive the world and each other.
It will be screened within the Natural World programme “Chimpcam” shown on BBC Two at 2000GMT on Wednesday 27 January.
Making the movie was the brainchild of primatologist Ms Betsy Herrelko, who is studying for a PhD in primate behaviour at the University of Stirling, UK.
Over 18 months, she introduced video technology to a group of 11 chimpanzees living in a newly built enclosure at Edinburgh Zoo, UK.
The enclosure, which contains three large interlinked outdoor arenas, as well as a series of smaller rooms in which the apes can be studied by researchers, is the largest of its kind in the world.
Despite the fact that the chimps had never taken part in a research project before, they soon displayed an interest in film-making.
Ms Herrelko set the chimps two challenges.
The first was to teach the chimps how to use a touchscreen to select different videos.
By doing so, Ms Herrelko could investigate which types of images chimps prefer to watch.
The second challenge was to give the apes a “Chimpcam”, a recording camera housed in a chimp-proof box.
On top of the box was a video screen that showed live images of whatever the camera was pointing at.
Initially, the chimps were more interested in each other than the video technology, as two male chimps within the study group vied to become the alpha male, disrupting the experiment.
But over time, some of the chimps learned how to select different videos to watch.
For example, the chimps could use a touchscreen to decide whether to watch footage of their outside enclosure, or the food preparation room, where zoo staff prepare the chimps’ meals.
The results still have to be analysed in detail, but it seems the chimps did not prefer to watch any of these images over the others.
Ms Herrelko is not sure why, but it could be that the images shown were too familiar to the chimps or because they have no way of asking to see something different.
Then in the final the final stage of her work, she investigated what happened when she gave the Chimpcam to the whole group.
20% of Hospital Patients in UK Has Diabetes
January 26, 2010
Telegraph
by Laura Donnelly
Soaring obesity levels have triggered record levels of the condition, which increases the risks of heart and kidney failure, and can result in blindness, nerve damage and amputations.
The first ever diabetes audit of NHS hospitals has found that 20 per cent of patients on hospital wards are now suffering from the disease – twice the proportion previously estimated.
Doctors said the figures, which will be published officially later this year, showed the “terrifying burden” the epidemic is placing on Britain’s population and the crippling effect it is having on NHS resources.
Some patients were being treated for direct consequences of the condition, after uncontrolled blood sugar levels caused them to fall into a coma, or suffer kidney failure, ulcers, or nerve damage.
Others suffered heart attacks and strokes, the risk of which is increased fivefold by diabetes.
While the figures include diabetics admitted for ill-health unrelated to their condition, the audit is expected to show that these patients stayed in hospital far longer than others, in some cases, because of the extra risks posed by their condition and in others, because the diabetes was not properly managed.
Experts said the existing burden on Britain’s hospitals reflected the impact of increasingly unhealthy lifestyles.
Prof Anthony Barnett, clinical director for diabetes at Heart of England NHS Foundation trust, said: “The situation we are facing as a country is absolutely terrifying.
“The obesity rates get worse and worse, the numbers with diabetes keep mushrooming, and given that these people are prone to a whole range of other serious medical conditions, it has an enormous impact on NHS resources.”
Of the 2.6 million people in the UK with the condition, 2.3 million have type 2 diabetes, where nine out of ten cases are related to lifestyle causes, such as obesity, low exercise levels, smoking and alcohol use.
Cases of type 2 diabetes have doubled since 1996, in line with the rise of obesity. If rates of obesity continue to spiral, by 2025, treatment costs for more than 4 million diabetics could consume one quarter of the NHS budget, projections show.
The Government’s diabetes tsar Dr Rowan Hillson, who is leading the audit of 200 hospitals said all patients admitted to hospital with diabetes should be given access to specialist advice, whatever the reason for their admission, so that potentially lethal complications were not missed.
She said: “This is absolutely crucial; there is evidence that the appointment of specialist nurses can reduce re-admissions of patients with diabetes, as well as drug errors, and length of stay.”
Previous research by charity Diabetes UK has found that just half of diabetes patients reported being seen by a specialist nurse during their hospital stay.
Another study found 20 per cent of diabetes patients were not given their medication at the right time, while 30 per cent said staff had been unaware they suffered from the condition.
Research has shown that the number of people undergoing lower limb amputations because of ulcers caused by diabetes has doubled in the last decade.
Around 5,000 people a year undergo a lower limb amputation, when circulation problems caused by diabetes result in foot ulcers and sores which become infected.
Surgeons say as many as half of the operations could have been avoided if expert care was received sooner.
Vascular surgeon Prof Roger Greenhalgh, from Imperial College Healthcare trust, said: “The numbers of amputations are going up, and that is partly because of the increased prevalence of diabetes, but we are also finding too many cases are not referred to specialists early enough”.
Dr Hillson, a consultant at Hillingdon Hospital in London, said the best parts of the NHS referred all diabetics with foot problems to a team made up of several types of specialists, to ensure complex problems were not missed, but said this was not yet standard practice.
She said: “One of the complications of acute diabetes is foot problems that can lead to amputation and even death.
“We know an enormous amount can be done to prevent this, and that this can save limbs, but there is variable practice across the country,” she said.
Russ Harris, from Bournemouth, was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, aged 61, in 1999.
The former salesman, who enjoyed a rich diet while on the road, working for a company which sold Danish pastries, was 19 stone when he suddenly lost five stone in just three months, and began to suffer thirst and frequent urination.
Since his diagnosis, he has been admitted to hospital several times for complications linked to diabetes, including major fluid retention, while renal problems have reduced his kidney function to one quarter.
Bill Gates Pushing Vaccines
January 26, 2010
CNET
by Ina Fried
Bill Gates thought that coming up with vaccines would be the hard part and that delivering vaccines would be the easy part.
It turns out they are both hard.
That’s one of the lessons that Gates tells CNET he has learned in his new role as full-time philanthropist. In travels to Africa, he saw firsthand the challenges of delivering vaccines, many of which have to be kept cold to be effective and are needed in places with no refrigeration.
“We were a bit naive about that, particularly getting new vaccines adopted by countries,” Gates said in an interview with CNET’s Ina Fried last week. “It had been so long since they had done it, I just assumed they would look at the numbers, it would be a very straightforward process. Well, the process doesn’t even exist.”
Plus, he said, “The cold chain is more messed up than I expected.”
In the interview, which was done in conjunction with the release of the annual letter (PDF) from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Gates talked about other surprises he encountered in his travels, including the fact that one of the ways to reduce the spread of AIDS in Africa is to promote adult circumcision–something that he wasn’t sure would be feasible.
“Male circumcision–which I thought wouldn’t be a big effect because I didn’t think adults would be that interested in it–it looks like that’s really going to help slow the disease,” Gates said.
Gates also talked about his recent foray into Twitter and the launch of his Gates Notes Web site.
“The Internet is tailor-made for the kind of activities I’m involved in,” Gates said. “When I take a trip, we have all these photos. And there were things that were fun and exciting, and people want to see that. It’s very easy to put it up there…I think it’s going to be a lot of fun to be sharing on an ongoing basis, and people who are interested in a particular topic can just find that piece and go after that.”
Gates also discussed the classes he is taking online, the response to the earthquake in Haiti, and the need for breakthroughs in clean energy.
Here below is an edited transcript of the conversation:
Q: In one recent interview I heard that Melinda said [of you] that, “Bill’s on fire.” What are some of the things that have really ignited your passion further in this past year?
Gates: Well, the opportunity to go into the field and see both the need and the progress makes this a really fun job. I was in Kenya and South Africa in December and saw the AIDS epidemic, which is still really awful in both of those countries, but I saw a lot of hope. Male circumcision–which I thought wouldn’t be a big effect because I didn’t think adults would be that interested in it–it looks like that’s really going to help slow the disease. So I’m excited that I get to take my belief in science, backing scientists doing great work, and the practical notions of how things get organized, how they get done, and do my best to apply them to the needs of the poorest.
I hear that one way that you approached this year’s [foundation] letter was to look at what it might be like to write that letter in 10 years if there weren’t any innovation. What were some of the things that went through your mind as you started thinking about it that way?
Gates: Well, innovation is often this hidden thing, because we can’t put numbers to it. And yet it’s the thing that defines the way we live, the things we’d like to have for everyone whether it’s health or education. Where does the marketplace fall short and therefore a foundation can have a catalytic effect?
What types of things is innovation critical to solving?
Gates: Well there are great examples from both the United States and from Africa. If we don’t innovate in education, the budget cuts and increasing expense of a really great university education, it’s literally going to mean less people get to go have that education at a time when more people are going to want it, and the country needs more people to get those educations. I call it the $200,000 education, because if you pay the full amount to a private university, that’s what it costs.
So how could you get that to be available to lots more people? How could you avoid that kind of bleak, “years ago things were better”-type outcome? Well the answer is that we’ve got to innovate. We’ve got to put courses out on the Web, we’ve got to put interactive learning out on the Web.
Likewise, for some of these health problems. If we don’t solve them, then the population growth that comes with bad health, we will overwhelm what Africa will be able to do in terms of jobs and education and just feeding people. And so we’ve got to make progress now in order to not just straight-line that population growth which would make Africa far worse than it has been.
The letter talks about some of the incredible traveling you did. One of those trips earlier in the year was to India, I think it was your 12th trip, if I’m not mistaken. One of the projects that you saw was something called “scuba rice,” an effort to make rice that is more flood resistant. How important is it to create more weather-resistant crop?
Gates: Even today people starve or live very poor livelihoods with not enough calories or not enough crops to sell some to get money for school fees because of weather. Weather is a super tough problem, and weather is going to get worse. That is, climate change means that there will be more rain when you don’t want it, coming all at once. There will be periods with no rain, drought. And so taking these crops, about 10 crops that are used to feed most people, and improving the common varieties–and there are a lot of varieties for some of these seeds so they can deal with the drought or flooding–is critical.
And rice, there was this amazing breakthrough where just by putting one gene in you can take it so when the rice gets flooded it will just wait until the flood goes away and then resume growth. So if you put two fields next to each other, the current rice variety and the one with this new gene, then after the flood comes, you’ll see complete die off without the gene, and great rice that’s literally unaffected where you’ve got this new gene. And we’ve been able to transfer that gene into many rice varieties. And so it’ll improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. Now the other traits like drought resistance may not be as easy, but they’re equally important and that’s why we need to invest in that science.
Mississippi Looking to Make Cold Medication Prescription-Only To Combat Meth
January 26, 2010
USA Today
Associated Press
Law enforcement officials and other groups in Mississippi are lobbying lawmakers to require a prescription to buy cold medicines containing pseudoephedrine — a key ingredient in methamphetamine — as the state’s drug problem reaches unprecedented levels.
Last year marked the first time meth arrests outnumbered those for crack and powder cocaine, 981 to 608, said Marshall Fisher, a former Drug Enforcement Administration agent who now heads the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics.
“I’ve been in the middle of this storm for three decades,” he said. “It’s tragic.”
An organization representing drug makers says similar legislation has been introduced in Georgia, Missouri and Washington. Oregon became the first in the nation to pass such a law in 2006, where the number of meth labs busted dropped from 473 to 20 in the first year, Fisher said. Some municipalities in Missouri have adopted similar ordinances for medicines such as Claritin-D and Sudafed.
The pharmaceutical industry has responded with a proposal to create a real-time electronic system that would let law officers track all sales of pseudoephedrine. In fact, opposition to the prescription proposal is so strong the industry has offered to pay for the systems in states with serious meth lab problems.
Many states already require the medicines be held behind pharmacy counters, and photo identification is needed for purchases so the buyer’s information can be logged into a database.
Such systems are already in place in Oklahoma, Kentucky and Arkansas, said Mandy Hagan, director of state government relations for Consumer Healthcare Products Association, a group that represents makers of over-the-counter medicines.
She said Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana and Missouri have passed laws and are working on implementation.
“We feel that prescription proposal goes too far, especially for a state like Mississippi that has a high rate of people who are uninsured,” Hagan said Thursday.
About 15 million Americans use products containing pseudoephedrine each year, Hagan said. She said the industry hasn’t calculated the financial impact of prescription legislation.
However, some say the drug makers’ proposed tracking system doesn’t go far enough in preventing meth abuse.
In Kentucky, State Trooper John Hawkins said the state had a record 716 meth lab busts in 2009, a 60% increase from the previous year. He said there’s a limit of nine grams — about three packages — on pseudoephedrine purchases in a 30-day period in Kentucky, and the system won’t let the buyer exceed that amount.
Chinese Milk Scare
January 26, 2010
Reuters
by Ralph Jennings
Authorities in southwestern China have ordered three batches of milk products off shelves because they contain a chemical that killed at least six children in 2008, causing global concern over the made-in-China brand.
The health department in Guizhou province stopped the sales of dairy products made by three Chinese companies, the state-run China Daily newspaper said.
The products were found to contain melamine, which can cause kidney stones and is meant for making plastics, fertilizers and even concrete. Its high nitrogen content allows protein levels to appear higher when it is added to milk or animal feed.
Guizhou health authorities were unavailable for comment.
China executed two people in November for their role in a huge melamine-tainted milk scandal that killed at least six children and sullied the made-in-China brand.
Nearly 300,000 children fell ill in that scandal in 2008 after drinking milk intentionally laced with melamine, sold mainly in that case by the now bankrupt Sanlu Group.
Thank you for always being so honest…
January 26, 2010 by Brandy
Filed under Testimonials
Kevin:
I just wanted to let you know that you are a wonderful person! Thank you for always being so honest. They will eventually get theirs for lying and hurting the people of this country and world. How can they treat human-beings like this? It is really sad! I love your radio program!
Thanks again!
Barbara J. Muldoon
El Paso, Texas
Obese Encouraged to Gain Weight to Qualify for Surgery
January 26, 2010
Guardian
by Owen Bowcott
Obese patients are being “effectively encouraged” to pile on the pounds to qualify for weight-loss operations on the NHS, the Royal College of Surgeons warns today.
The college claims lives are being put at risk as some health trusts require patients to reach higher body mass index (BMI) levels than others before they receive surgical treatments.
The postcode lottery means that access to NHS weight-loss surgery is “inconsistent, unethical and completely dependent on geographical location”, according to the college.
Last year 4,300 operations to reduce body weight were carried out on the NHS, but as many as 1 million people could meet the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) criteria for being classed as having severe obesity.
Bariatric, or weight-loss, surgery is carried out after diets, drugs and lifestyle-altering interventions are seen to have failed. It is not generally recommended for children or young people.
“Constraints on NHS funding mean that in some areas NHS decision-makers are opting to ignore professional guidelines and are denying patients’ access to surgery,” the college maintains. “In others, patients who already meet the [Nice] criteria are forced to wait until either they become more obese or develop life-threatening illness like diabetes or stroke.”
According to the Nice guidelines, bariatric surgery is recommended for adults with a BMI of more than 40, who have other significant diseases (for example, type 2 diabetes) that could be improved if they lost weight, and who have tried but failed to lose weight using non-surgical techniques.
The college, which is holding a conference on the issue today, says hospitals are assessing patients referred from primary care trusts under different eligibility criteria, resulting in some patients with a BMI of 60 or greater being refused surgery while others with a BMI of 40 or less are undergoing operations.
“Nice guidelines are meant to signal the end of postcode lotteries yet local commissioning groups are choosing not to deliver on obesity surgery,” said the college’s director of education, Prof Mike Larvin. “In many regions the threshold criteria are being raised to save money in the short term, meaning patients are being denied life-saving and cost-effective treatments, and are effectively encouraged to eat more in order to gain a more risky operation further down the line.”
One bariatric surgeon, Peter Sedman, said: “There is absolutely no doubt that some patients more needy of surgical treatment than others are being denied it. I will treat the patient, my hospital will offer the service, but unless the patient moves house they will not be referred and if they are, the treatment is subsequently blocked.”
David Haslam, chair of the National Obesity Forum, said: “Bariatric surgery is amongst the most clinically effective and cost effective specialities in any field of medicine, preventing premature death and transforming lives, whilst saving vast amounts of money for the NHS and the economy.
“Even the most cynical taxpayer should support bariatric surgery, alongside clinicians, in opposing the unethical and immoral barriers to surgery imposed by NHS purse-string holders.”
The college is calling on the Department of Health to ensure all patients have equal access to treatment. It estimates that obesity problems cost the NHS £7.2bn a year.
