In Support of Breastfeeding for Healthy Babies
February 24. 2010
Natural News
By David Gutierrez
Providing breastfeeding education and support to new mothers could prevent more than one million child deaths every year, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Although the WHO recommends that infants start breastfeeding within one hour of birth and consume nothing but breast milk — not even water — for the first six months of life, less than 40 percent of mothers worldwide meet this goal. Insufficient breastfeeding is a problem in both rich and poor countries, the agency says.
Because breast milk provides the exact combination of nutrients that a developing infant needs, no artificial formula or adult food can match its nutritive value. In addition, breast milk provides important antibodies to the underdeveloped infant immune system, and helps children’s immune systems develop in a healthy way. Even a formula that provides nutrition similar to that of breast milk does not provide this critical, immune-boosting function.
If 90 percent of women met the WHO breastfeeding guidelines, the agency says, 13 percent of global deaths under the age of five could be prevented, translating into 1.3 million lives saved per year.
Although many women start out breastfeeding, large numbers abandon the practice because they are unable to get the baby to latch on properly or do not know how to breastfeed without suffering unbearable pain or discomfort.
“When it comes to doing it practically, they don’t have the practical support,” said the WHO’s Constanza Vallenas.
WHO Director-General Margaret Chan noted that during disasters, well-meaning donations of formula may encourage women to stop breastfeeding just at the time when the practice is most critical.
“During emergencies, unsolicited or uncontrolled donations of breast milk substitutes may undermine breastfeeding and should be avoided,” she said. “The focus should be on active protection and support of breastfeeding.”
Chan said that mothers in disaster zones need more support to be able to continue or resume breastfeeding.
Click here for the full report.
School Officials Still Not Coming Clean Over Webcam Surveillance
february 23th, 2010
afterdawn.com
By Rich “vurbal” Fiscus
After the lawsuit over Harriton High School’s alleged webcam surveillance triggered an FBI investigation, you would hope school officials would come clean about what they characterize as completely legitimate security activities. Yet Lower Merion School District’s response to parents seems to raise more questions than it answers.
In a statement on the district’s website, Superintendent Dr. Christopher W. McGinley seems to imply it was against school policy for students to take the laptops home. He wrote “this feature was limited to taking a still image of the computer user and an image of the desktop in order to help locate the reported missing, lost, or stolen computer (this includes tracking down a loaner computer that, against regulations, might be taken off campus).”
A FAQ on the district’s website clearly states that laptops may be taken off campus as long as the student has paid for the optional insurance offered by the district.
Superintendent McGinley acknowledges this later in his statement, which says there is “no reason to be concerned about the use of the laptop on campus or at home.” So why bring it up if it’s not relevant to the allegations?
He also indicated that the district never accessed laptops remotely “which were not lost, missing or stolen,” but once again this isn’t as clear as it seems on the surface. How exactly did the district know a laptop was missing?
You might assume it would have to be reported by the student whose computer was missing, but that doesn’t appear to be the case.
A testimonial by Lower Merion School District Network Tech Mike Perbix was used to market LANRev, the product used to remotely access the webcams. In it he describes tracking a computer he thought was missing, but which further investigation (using the webcam) determined was actually being used in a classroom.
There may be good reasons for believing a laptop was missing without a student reporting it, but why not explain the criteria if it would clear district employees?
Reports from other students also cast doubt over the superintendent’s claim. At least two different students have reported that the lights on their webcams would occasionally light up for no apparent reason.
One was reportedly told this was “just a glitch.” Another supposedly claimed to have asked “an IT guy” about it, who explained it was the result of logging out while an application was using the camera.
A discussion which Mike Perbix took part in on a system administration mailing list suggests an alternate explanation. He described how to disable the webcam for standard (user) applications while leaving it available for LANRev.
This would make perfect sense if the intention was to convince students the webcams weren’t working properly when in fact they were being used covertly.
Click here for the full report
Chronic Health Problems in Children Climb
February 24, 2010
Natural News
By S.L. Baker
Researchers from Mass General Hospital for Children in Boston gathered data about US children with health problems. They looked at conditions that limited activities and/or schooling, required medication and/or specialized equipment and health services, and that lasted for at least a year. The results of this study, just published in the February issue of JAMA (the Journal of the American Medical Association), show an alarming trend. Chronic health conditions in American kids have increased dramatically in recent years — rising from 12.8 percent in 1994 to 26.6 percent in 2006.
Over the six year study period, Jeanne Van Cleave, M.D., and her research team estimated changes in prevalence, incidence, and rates of remission in four categories: obesity (defined as a body mass index at or above the 95th percentile for age), asthma, learning or behavior problems, and other physical conditions such as diabetes and heart conditions. They compiled data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-Child Cohort, specifically looking at three groups of children who were between the ages of two through eight at the beginning of each study period. These groups were followed for three periods of six years each — from 1988 to 1994, 1994 to 2000 and 2000 to 2006.
The results showed that the prevalence of chronic conditions, including obesity, increased with each subsequent group. Male, Hispanic, and black youth were found to be at the highest risk. Bottom line: as the years pass, more and more American kids appear to have chronic health problems when compared to similar youngsters in previous years.
There seems little doubt that the increasing rate of obesity among children and teens, most likely fueled by junk food and lack of exercise, is one important explanation for the increase in children’s health problems. But in an editorial accompanying the JAMA study, Neal Halfon, M.D., M.P.H., of the University of California at Los Angeles, and Paul W. Newacheck, Dr.P.H., of the University of California at San Francisco, pointed out that other factors must be at work, too.
“The obesity epidemic seemed to develop at a time when many indicators suggested that children’s health was generally improving. The data presented by Van Cleave et al suggest that the prevalence of other chronic health conditions is also increasing among U.S. children and that obesity is not the only clinical time bomb ticking away in children. There is an urgent need to better understand why this is the case and what can be done about it,” they stated. “Addressing the increasing incidence and prevalence of chronic conditions in children will ultimately require major reforms in the child health system. The child health system needs to do a better job preventing childhood chronic illness. The possibilities for such changes are substantial, as are the implications of not acting.”
NaturalNews has previously covered a host of environmental contaminants and toxins that could well be contributing to an increase in children’s health problems. For example the chemical bisphenol A (BPA) is used in many hard plastics and can leach from toys and baby bottles. Widely found in the environment, BPA has been linked to health problems in fetuses, babies and children, including attention deficit disorder and neurological symptoms.
Click here for the full report.
Cancer Can Regrow After Radiation/Chemotherapy
February 24, 2010
Natural News
By Ethan A. Huff
Researchers from the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York have published findings in the journal Cell that explain how tumor cells can re-seed and spread throughout the body after they have been removed through conventional chemotherapy, surgery, or radiation treatments. Tiny tumor cells that circulate throughout the body often begin to send out seeds to the places where the tumor originated, essentially planting the cancer back into the body.
Joan Massague and her colleagues at the Center are finding that conventional treatments leave behind malignant cells that relocate to other areas of the body to avoid being destroyed. Eventually they return as stronger and more aggressive tumors, having gathered back the worst leftover cells from the previous cancer. The result is a second cancer that is worse than the first.
Chemicals present in the immune system also appear to signal tumor cells in circulation to return to their source. Following conventional treatment, the immune system actually works against the body by drawing the vagrant cancer cells back to where they originally seeded, kick starting a relapse.
Medical professionals typically attribute recurrences of cancer following conventional treatment to a few remaining cells that survived treatment and remained at the source. However this study illustrates definitively that lingering cells hide throughout the body and later return to self seed back where they originally started.
What these findings illustrate is that conventional cancer treatments are not effective at eradicating cancer from the body. The targeting of a specific area with surgery, radiation treatment, and chemotherapy cannot successfully remove the cancer from the body because its cells will find another place to live temporarily, only to return even stronger the next time.
Biopsies cause cancer to spread
A conventional biopsy is usually recommended as the best way to identify the presence of cancer, both before and after treatments. Needle biopsies involve taking tissue samples at various places in order to identify the presence of cancer cells. Official diagnosis of cancer cannot take place without a biopsy, resulting in the pressuring of patients to get one if they suspect a tumor.
Many doctors will insist that a person needs a biopsy, but the threat of spreading cancer far outweighs any perceived benefits. Those who receive biopsies will most likely experience unnecessary cancer spread and, following conventional treatment, will probably experience cancer reseeding. Cancer is known to develop at the puncture sites of biopsies.
Chemotherapy leads to reseeding
Chemotherapy treatments involve targeting cancer cells that are rapidly dividing and spreading with harsh chemicals designed to kill them. While treatment may kill the primary tumor, it fails to eradicate the cells that divide more slowly, resulting in a continued replication of cancer cells following treatment.
Many who believe they are in remission following their chemotherapy treatments later discover that their cancer has returned. Not only do they undergo the horrors of the treatment which leaves their body and health in shambles, but they often end up with a more severe version of their original cancer.
Conventional therapies are a failure
Conventional medicine is at a loss for how to deal with the problem of reseeding. Within their paradigm, chemotherapy, radiation, drugs, and surgery are the only options for treating someone with cancer. Now that these are proving to be largely ineffective, scientists are searching for yet another new drug to combat the tendency of cancers to re-seed in order to continue promoting these accepted forms of cancer treatment. They are even investigating the possibility of developing vaccines that will allegedly use the body’s immune system to stop vagrant cancer cells.
The problem with drugs, surgery, and radiation is that they will never be able to systematically rid the body of the problem because they are only capable of targeting a confined area. These methods are also wrought with negative side effects so severe that many people end up dying simply from the treatment.
Conventional treatment is also extremely expensive, heavily burdening an already overwhelmed health care system. It is simply assumed that there are no alternative methods by which cancer can be treated, let alone prevented.
Many recently published studies have found that pomegranates, mangoes, and other natural foods contain valuable phytonutrients that effectively prevent and stop malignant cancer cells while preserving good cells. These nutrients holistically rid the body of harmful cells, targeting them wherever they hide in the body and eliminating them.
Conventional medicine would do best to begin focusing heavily on the compounds found in nature that are designed to deter cancer without inflicting negative side effects as an alternative to the mainstream methods that are only making the problem worse. Whether in aloe vera, peach pits, raw almonds, or the many fruits and vegetables found around the world, anti-cancer nutrients are everywhere and modern medicine is only beginning to recognize them. They may not result in the next big blockbuster drug but they work and they are inexpensive. Perhaps this is the reason they are generally marginalized and looked down upon by the cancer industry.
Click here for the full report.
More Wages of Recession
February 23, 2010
MSNBC/New York Times
Even as the American economy shows tentative signs of a rebound, the human toll of the recession continues to mount, with millions of Americans remaining out of work, out of savings and nearing the end of their unemployment benefits.
Economists fear that the nascent recovery will leave more people behind than in past recessions, failing to create jobs in sufficient numbers to absorb the record-setting ranks of the long-term unemployed.
Call them the new poor: people long accustomed to the comforts of middle-class life who are now relying on public assistance for the first time in their lives – potentially for years to come.
Yet the social safety net is already showing severe strains. Roughly 2.7 million jobless people will lose their unemployment check before the end of April unless Congress approves the Obama administration’s proposal to extend the payments, according to the Labor Department.
Here in Southern California, Jean Eisen has been without work since she lost her job selling beauty salon equipment more than two years ago. In the several months she has endured with neither a paycheck nor an unemployment check, she has relied on local food banks for her groceries.
She has learned to live without the prescription medications she is supposed to take for high blood pressure and cholesterol. She has become effusively religious – an unexpected turn for this onetime standup comic with X-rated material – finding in Christianity her only form of health insurance.
“I pray for healing,” says Ms. Eisen, 57. “When you’ve got nothing, you’ve got to go with what you know.”
Warm, outgoing and prone to the positive, Ms. Eisen has worked much of her life. Now, she is one of 6.3 million Americans who have been unemployed for six months or longer, the largest number since the government began keeping track in 1948. That is more than double the toll in the next-worst period, in the early 1980s.
To continue reading this report, click here.
Alaming New Tax Increases Proposed for Illinois
February 23, 2010
NBC Chicago
By Jenel Nels
In order to crawl from beneath crushing debt and reach fiscal solvency, Illinois legislators must choose from a series of options that range from bad to worse, according to a prominent watchdog group.
The Civic Federation wants to launch an intervention that includes significant budget cuts and the largest tax increase package in Illinois history, all in an effort to save the state from a $12.8 billion budget deficit.
“Doomsday is here for the state of Illinois,” said Laurence Msall, Civic Federation President, to the Sun-Times.
The group says it would support a state income tax increase from 3 percent to 5 percent. It also recommends the state tax retirees’ pension and Social Security checks be taxed for the first time at the same rate as workers’ paychecks. They want another $1 increase on a pack of cigarettes and to eliminate $181 million in corporate tax breaks.
If implemented, the Federation’s recommendations could shave off $8 billion, but there is a catch.
In order to implement those increases, the Civic Federation says unions should pay more toward their pensions and health care — but the unions aren’t interested.
“Illinois’ fiscal crisis has been many years in the making. It was caused by more than 30 years of pension underfunding and many years of spending unfettered by the state’s shrinking revenue resources,” said Msall.
The group’s plan would help alleviate the deficit by 2012, they say.
The state’s red ink has already caused a backlog of unpaid bills to public universities and schools, transit systems and social services.
“The Civic Federation does not enjoy advocating a significant tax increase in the middle of a difficult recession. However, continuing to do nothing would be by far a worse option,” said the Civic Federation in a statement on the group’s website.
Click here for the full report.
Do Transplanted Organs Have Memories?
February 23, 2010
Care2.com
By Jurriaan Kamp
Transplant patients sometimes take on part of their donors’ personalities.
Glenda lost her husband, David, in a car crash. She made his organs available for transplant. A few years later, as part of a study by neuropsychologist Paul Pearsall, she met the young Spanish-speaking man who had received her late husband’s heart. Filled with emotion, Glenda asked if she could lay her hand on his chest. “I love you, David,” she said. “Everything’s copacetic.”
The young man’s mother, also present, was startled. “My son uses that word now,” she said. “He never said it before his heart transplant. I don’t know that word; it doesn’t exist in Spanish. But it was the first thing he said after the operation.”
Her son appeared to have changed in other ways too. Before, he had been a health-conscious vegetarian; now he craved meat and greasy food. He had loved heavy metal music; now he played nothing but fifties rock ’n’ roll. Glenda’s husband had been an ardent meat-lover and played in a rock ’n’ roll band.
Does the heart have a memory? Is part of an organ donor’s personality also transferred to the recipient in a transplant? Yes, contends Pearsall in his book The Heart’s Code, which provides other remarkable examples of transplanted hearts with memories.
An 8-year-old girl received the heart of a 10-year-old girl who had been murdered. The recipient ended up at a psychiatrist’s office, plagued by nightmares about her donor’s murderer. She said she knew who the man was. After a few sessions, the psychiatrist decided to notify the police. Following the girl’s instructions, they tracked down the murderer. The man was convicted on evidence she had provided the first clues about: the time, the weapon, the place, the clothes he wore, what his victim told him. Everything the girl said turned out to be true.
Pearsall’s book is based on 73 heart-transplant cases in which parts of the donors’ personalities appear to have been transferred to the recipients.
Pearsall argues that the brain is not the only centre of human intelligence. The heart, he says, carries equal importance. He posits that the body is made up of cells that transmit “information.” Cells communicate this information to each other electromagnetically. Thus a transplanted organ can continue to broadcast old information, something like amputees’ experience of pain in lost limbs. Phenomena like these suggest cells have memories.
Critics deny the existence of proof that memories can be transplanted along with organs, and fear such assertions will cause donor numbers to fall. Some non-believers attribute personality changes in transplant recipients to the heavy drugs they must take to prevent organ rejection.
But what should we make of the documented story of an 8-year-old Jewish boy who died in a car wreck? His death was the salvation of a 3-year-old Arab girl with a dangerous heart condition. As soon as the girl woke up from the anaesthesia after surgery, she asked by name for a type of Jewish candy she could not have known existed.
Pearsall’s book raises fascinating questions that shake the foundations of science.
Click here for the full report.
Drug Chemicals Turn Switches on and off at Wrong Times
February 23, 2010
Natural News
By David Gutierrez
Scientists are increasingly becoming aware of a new mechanism by which pollutants can damage the health of living organisms — epigenetic changes, in which a chemical changes how a gene is expressed.
While some chemicals are toxic (attacking the body’s systems directly) and others are mutagenic (changing the actual code of an organism’s genes), others do not change the way a gene is written, but instead how it acts in the body.
Epigenetic changes “can lead to increased susceptibility to disease,” said Linda S. Birnbaum, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and of the National Toxicology Program. “The susceptibility persists long after the exposure is gone, even decades later. Glands, organs, and systems can be permanently altered.”
Epigenetic changes have been identified that increase the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, asthma, breast cancer, prostate cancer, diabetes, heart disease, obesity, learning disabilities, Parkinson’s disease and more.
One example was recently uncovered by researchers at the University of Cincinnati, who conducted a study on children in New York City who had been exposed to high levels of air pollutants in the womb. These children had higher rates of asthma than children who had not had such exposure.
Upon performing genetic tests, the researchers found that all the exposed, asthmatic children had a methyl group molecule attached to the ACSL3 gene, causing it to be less active than normal. None of the unexposed children had this molecule attached to their ACSL3 gene.
Researchers have also found epigenetic changes in children conceived through in-vitro fertilization. They believe that the chemicals used to incubate the fertilized eggs before implantation might cause epigenetic changes that lead to the higher rates of abdominal wall defects and cancers observed in such children.
Like mutations, epigenetic effects can be passed on to a person’s offspring.
“There is a huge potential impact from these exposures, partly because the changes may be inherited across generations,” Birnbaum said. “You may be affected by what your mother and grandmother were exposed to during pregnancy.”
Click here for the full report.
Blood Thinner Causes Man to Lose Toes
February 23, 2010
Natural News
By Ethan A. Huff
A recent report in the West Virginia Record details a lawsuit filed against Baxter Healthcare Corp. for damage caused by their blood thinning drug, heparin. After being prescribed the drug in 2007, James Bradley quickly developed severe bodily injuries that resulted in having to have his toes amputated. He and his wife Shirley are seeking compensation for his loss and the intense pain and suffering that he experienced from the drug.
Heparin is known to cause a severe blood platelet disorder called thrombocytopenia that can cause patients to develop gangrene. The Bradley case is one of many in which patients have had to undergo amputation due to heparin-induced disease and decay.
The Bradley case is alleging that Baxter and other drug companies that market heparin are doing so falsely. They believe it is clear that the drug is not safe and that it does not work. The suit is claiming that the drug is defectively designed and fraudulent in its purpose and the claims being made by its manufacturers and marketers.
In 2008, heparin was recalled for being contaminated with a counterfeit active ingredient that was causing serious allergic reactions and even death in some patients. Chinese manufacturers that produce the drug for Baxter were found to have been using a spurious active ingredient that injured and killed hundreds of people.
Hollywood actor Dennis Quaid and his wife almost lost their twin newborn babies when multiple doses of heparin were given them rather than a more diluted form of it called HepLock. Heparin and Heplock are commonly mixed up by medical professionals which has caused many injuries and fatalities.
Nearly all of the 450,000 Americans who are on dialysis use heparin. Its listed side effects are already highly severe and are known to be possibly fatal. However the rate of amputations and death directly caused by the drug is unacceptable and demands justice.
The list of personal injury cases and class action lawsuits being filed against Baxter and the other producers of heparin is growing as increasing numbers of injured people are seeking remediation for damage caused by the drug. As the primary manufacturer of heparin prescribed in the United States, Baxter will have a lot of explaining to do concerning their apparent negligence in disclosing the truth about the dangers of heparin.
Some natural blood thinners and clot prevention nutrients include omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin E, ginseng, methyl sulfonyl methane (MSM), and white willow bark. Some foods with blood thinning properties include ginger, garlic, and onions.
Click here for the full report.
Obama’s New Climate Agency Head Accused of Trying to Suppress Data
February 22nd, 2010
Fox News
By Ed Barnes
The scientist who has been put in charge of the Commerce Department’s new climate change office is coming under attack from both sides of the global warming debate over his handling of what they say is contradictory scientific data related to the subject.
Thomas Karl, 58, was appointed to oversee the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Climatic Data Center, an ambitious new office that will collect climate change data and disseminate it to businesses and communities.
According to Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, the office will “help tackle head-on the challenges of mitigating and adapting to climate change. In the process, we’ll discover new technologies, build new businesses and create new jobs.”
Karl, who has played a pivotal role in key climate decisions over the past decade, has kept a low profile as director of National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) since 1998, and he has led all of the NOAA climate services since 2009. His name surfaced numerous times in leaked “climate-gate” e-mails from the University of East Anglia, but there was little in the e-mails that tied him to playing politics with climate data. Mostly, the e-mails show he was in the center of the politics of climate change decisions
According to a school biography published by Northern Illinois University, Karl shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore and other leading scientists based on his work at the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and he was “one of the 10 most influential researchers of the 1990s who have formed or changed the course of research in a given area.”
His appointment was hailed by both the Sierra Club and Duke Energy Company of North Carolina. Sierra Club President Carl Pope said, “As polluters and their allies continue to try to muddy the waters around climate science, the Climate Service will provide easy, direct access to the valuable scientific research undertaken by government scientists and others.” And Duke Energy CEO Jin Rogers said the new office, under Karl, will “spark the consensus we need to move forward.”
But Roger Pielke Sr., a climatologist affiliated with the University of Colorado who has crossed horns with Karl in the past, says his appointment was a mistake. He accused Karl of suppressing data he submitted for the IPCC’s most recent report on climate change and having a very narrow view of its causes.
The IPCC is charged with reviewing scientific data on climate change and providing policy makers and others with an assessment of current knowledge.
Pielke said he agrees that global warming is happening and that man plays a significant role in it, but he said there are many factors in addition to the release of carbon into the atmosphere that need to be studied to fully understand the phenomenon. He said he resigned from the IPCC in August 2005 because his data, and the work of numerous other scientists, were not included in its most recent report.
In his resignation letter, Pielke wrote that he had completed the assessment of current knowledge for his chapter of the report, when Karl abruptly took control of the final draft. He said the chapter he had nearly completed was then rewritten with a too-narrow focus.
Click here for the full report
