Smoking Makes You Stupid
August 16, 2010
Natural News
By: David Gutierrez
Smoking is directly correlated with a lower IQ, according to a study conducted by researchers from Tel Aviv University in Israel and published in the journal Addiction.
Researchers tested the IQs of more than 20,000 healthy men between the ages of 18 and 21 who were either serving in the Israeli military or who had recently completed their service. Twenty-eight percent of the men in the sample smoked, while 3 percent were former smokers and 68 percent had never smoked.
The average IQ of the smokers was 94, compared with 101 among the non-smokers. Men who smoked more than a pack of cigarettes a day had an average IQ of 90. Although a normal IQ falls between 84 and 116, the difference observed in the study is still considered significant.
In twin pairs where one brother smoked and the other did not, the smoker consistently tested at a lower IQ.
The study could not prove whether smoking caused a lower IQ or having a lower IQ predisposed people to smoke, but the researchers did rule out the possibility that low socioeconomic status produces both smoking and a lower IQ.
“In the health profession, we’ve generally thought that smokers are most likely the kind of people to have grown up in difficult neighborhoods, or who’ve been given less education at good schools,” said researcher Mark Weiser, also of Tel Hashomer Hospital. “But because our study included subjects with diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, we’ve been able to rule out socioeconomics as a major factor.”
Weiser noted that people with lower IQs are also more likely to suffer from other forms of drug addiction and to have health and weight problems.
“People on the lower end of the average IQ tend to display poorer overall decision-making skills when it comes to their health,” he said.
“Our study may help parents and health professionals help at-risk young people make better choices.”
Antibiotics On The Verge Of Becoming Useless
August 16, 2010
Natural News
By: Jonathan Benson
The journal Lancet Infectious Diseases recently published a sobering piece about how antibiotics are becoming wholly ineffective as treatments for infection. According to the report, even the most powerful antibiotics available are largely inadequate at tackling the emerging forms of new and powerful “super” bacteria.
Antibiotic overuse has become a pandemic problem. They are used in animal feed to make animals grow more quickly and they are handed out like candy by many doctors to people with almost any ailment. And they are simply not working anymore to fight infection.
Published by Professor Tim Walsh and his colleagues, the paper explains how a new gene called NDM 1 is changing the way infectious bacteria survive. The NDM 1 gene passes among bacteria like E. Coli andKlebsiella pneumoniae and makes them resistant to antibiotics. Even carbapenems, the most powerful antibiotics available, are no match for these new bacteria.
“This is potentially the end. There are no antibiotics in the pipeline that have activity against NDM 1-producing enterobacteriaceae. We have a bleak window of maybe ten years where we are going to have to use the antibiotics we have very wisely, but also grapple with the reality that we have nothing to treat these infections with,” explained Walsh in a recentGuardian piece.
According to Dr. Livermore, director of the antibiotic resistance monitoring and reference laboratory at the U.K. Health Protection Agency, the entirety of modern medicine could collapse as a result of antibiotics becoming useless.
“A lot of modern medicine would become impossible if we lost our ability to treat infections,” he emphasized.
FDA Approves ‘Week-After’ Pill
August 16, 2010
The Washington Post
By: Rob Stein
The Food and Drug Administration approved a controversial new form of emergency contraception Friday that can prevent a pregnancy as many as five days after sex.
The decision to allow the sale of the pill, which will be marketed under the brand name “ella,” was welcomed by family-planning proponents as a crucial new option to prevent unwanted pregnancies. But critics condemned the decision, arguing that it was misleading to approve ella as a contraceptive because the drug could also be used to induce an abortion.
Ella can cut the chances of becoming pregnant by about two-thirds for at least 120 hours after a contraceptive failure or unprotected sex, studies have shown. The only other emergency contraceptive on the market, the so-called morning-after pill sold as Plan B, is significantly less effective, becomes less effectual with each passing day and will not work after 72 hours.
Supporters and opponents both said the decision marked the clearest evidence of a shift in the influence of political ideology at the FDA. The last time the FDA considered an emergency contraceptive — making Plan B available without a prescription — the decision was mired in controversy amid similar concerns voiced by antiabortion activists. After repeated delays, Plan B was approved for sale to women 17 and older without a prescription.
Ella, which was approved in Europe last year and is available in at least 22 countries, was unanimously endorsed by an FDA advisory committee less than two months ago. Women will need a prescription but could keep a supply at home.
“Women’s health advocates appreciate that the review process for ella was consistent with standard FDA procedure and based on scientific evidence, not politics,” said Kirsten Moore, president of the Reproductive Health Technologies Project. “Approval of ella is further evidence that the FDA is committed to restoring scientific integrity in its decisions.”
For their part, critics said the decision reflected the abortion-rights stance of the Obama administration.
“They are choosing political ideology and the abortion industry’s radical agenda over women’s health and the safety of their children,” said David Bereit, director of the Fredericksburg-based antiabortion group 40 Days for Life.
If the history of Plan B is any indication, ella’s approval is likely to mark the beginning of many years of political and regulatory battles over the drug.
Critics are already concerned that ella’s approval as a contraceptive will make it eligible to receive federal tax subsidies, which are banned for the abortion pill RU-486,. They also are concerned that ella will be included in the services that health plans will have to pay for under the new health-care overhaul law.
“By misclassifying ella as emergency contraception, this administration has paved the way to covertly allow federal funding for abortion,” said Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.), who called on Obama to issue an executive order prohibiting federal funds from paying for ella.
Ella is also likely to exacerbate a long-running debate over whether doctors have an obligation to write prescriptions for medication they oppose on moral grounds and whether pharmacists have an obligation to fill them. Many doctors and pharmacists refuse to write or fill prescriptions for Plan B or refer patients elsewhere for it.
“I am certain that pharmacists will refuse to fill prescriptions for” ella, said Karen L. Brauer of the group Pharmacists for Life International.
Plan B prevents a pregnancy by administering high doses of a hormone that mimics progesterone. It works primarily by inhibiting the ovaries from producing eggs. Critics argue that it can also prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the womb, which some consider equivalent to abortion.
Ella, known generically as ulipristal acetate, works as a contraceptive by blocking progesterone’s activity, delaying the ovaries from producing an egg. But progesterone is also needed to prepare the womb to accept a fertilized egg and to nurture a developing embryo. That’s how RU-486 prevents a fertilized egg from implanting and dislodges growing embryos. Ella’s chemical similarity to RU-486 raises the possibility that it might do the same thing, perhaps if taken at elevated doses. But no one knows for sure whether the drug would induce an abortion, because the drug has never been tested that way.
Critics, however, are convinced it will and fear that a woman who does not realize she is pregnant will use the drug, unwittingly giving herself an abortion. They also worry that men will slip ella to unsuspecting women. And, the critics say, a woman might knowingly use ella to try to abort a fetus, putting herself at risk for potentially serious complications that have been reported among a small number of women using RU-486 and possibly damaging her developing child if it doesn’t work.
The Family Research Council and several other groups announced plans Friday to launch a campaign publicizing ella’s possible abortion potential.
“Ella is an abortion drug,” said Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America. “It operates the same way as RU-486, the abortion drug. Many women may be comfortable taking a contraceptive but would object to taking an abortion drug.”
Proponents dismiss the concerns, saying that ella has been tested only within five days of unprotected sex and there is no evidence that it works as anything other than a contraceptive. HRA Pharma of Paris, which makes ella, has no plans to test it as an abortion drug, but it did not appear to cause any problems for the handful of women who became pregnant after taking the drug, according to company officials. Studies involving more than 4,500 women in the United States show ella is safe, causing only minor side effects, such as headaches, nausea, abdominal pain and dizziness, the FDA said.
“Ella will become an important option for women,” said Vanessa Cullins of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
Watson Pharmaceuticals, which will market the drug in the United States, hopes to make ella available by the end of the year. The price has not yet been announced.
Cattle ‘Cloned From Dead Animals’
August 16, 2010
BBC News
By: Pallab Ghosh
Farmers say it is being done because it is only possible to tell that the animal’s meat is of exceptionally high quality by inspecting its carcass.
US scientists are using a variety of techniques to assess which animals have exceptional qualities.
These attributes include meat quality, productivity or longevity.
These exceptional animals are cloned to be used as breeding stock, with the aim of raising the quality of herds on beef, dairy and pig farms in the US.
There is a long tradition of resurrecting dead animals for cloning – Dolly the sheep being a case in point.
The head of the leading US animal cloning company has said that European farmers will fall behind the rest of the world unless they are allowed to use such techniques to improve the productivity of their livestock.
The aim of livestock cloning is to clone the best animals to produce the best beef.
But some cattle farmers believe it is impossible to pick the best quality animals until their meat has been properly analysed.
That is why there are cloned bulls here that have been produced from the cells taken from the carcasses of dead animals.
Brady Hicks of the JR Simplot company in Idaho said his organisation was among many that had tried out the technique successfully.
“The animals are hanging on a rail ready to go to the meat counter,” he told BBC News.
“We identify carcasses that have certain carcass characteristics that we want, but it’s too late to reproduce the genetics of the animal. But through cloning we can resurrect that animal.”
It would cost them around $4,000 to buy a high quality bull to breed from. So for cloning to be worthwhile, the technology has to produce animals that are substantially better than the ones that can be obtained via traditional methods.
At the moment, the technique is at an experimental phase. Beef, pig and dairy farmers are all trying to establish whether cloning is an economic proposition.
Two years ago, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ruled that meat and milk from cloned animals were safe to eat. Ever since then, products from the offspring of cloned animals have entered the food chain
Supporters of the technology say that costs will come down – and as farmers become better able to identify their exceptional animals, cloning technology will begin to pay big dividends.
Mark Walton believes that the use of cloning in agriculture will eventually become the norm – not just in the US but across the world.
Last Afghan WikiLeaks ‘Out In A Couple Weeks’
August 16, 2010 by Duffy
Filed under Government
August 16, 2010
BreitBart
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange vowed Saturday to publish the last batch of secret documents on the Afghan war in “a couple of weeks”, despite Pentagon pleas they would put further lives at risk.
Asked at a press conference in Stockholm when the final batch of 15,000 classified files on the Afghan war would be published, Assange said that “We’re about half way through, so a couple of weeks.”
The announcement at a seminar on the control of information came after the Pentagon on Friday renewed pressure on the whistleblower website not to release the documents, saying they posed greater risks than previously released files.
“We still are hopeful that WikiLeaks will not publish those documents and put further lives at risk,” said Pentagon spokesman Colonel David Lapan.
“We are concerned that the additional documents that they have may cause even greater risks than the ones they released previously,” he said, calling them “potentially more damaging”.
However, the Australian former computer hacker said that “We proceed cautiously and safely with this material as it was always intended… line by line.”
Assange vowed that all the documents would be published but that there would be some redactions including “the names of innocent parties that are under reasonable threat”.
WikiLeaks has already released 76,000 classified documents about the war, including of allegations that Pakistani spies met with the Taliban and that deaths of innocent civilians at the hands of international forces were covered up.
But the documents also included the names of some Afghan informants, prompting claims that the leaks have endangered lives.
The website said last month that it had delayed the release of the final 15,000 documents “as part of a harm minimization process demanded by our source”.
“After further review, these reports will be released, with occasional redactions, and eventually in full, as the security situation in Afghanistan permits.”
Daniel Schmitt, a WikiLeaks spokesman in Germany, has previously said that the site wanted to open a line of communication with the Pentagon to review the final documents, in order to “make redactions so they can be safely published.”
The Pentagon however has insisted it never received any such request from WikiLeaks, while Assange said on Thursday that the site had received “no assistance, despite repeated requests, from the White House or the Pentagon“.
The site, which styles itself as “the first intelligence agency of the people,” was founded in December 2006 and invited would-be whistleblowers from around the world to make anonymous contributions.
The Pentagon and the Federal Bureau of Investigation swiftly launched an investigation into the case when it came to light July 25.
WikiLeaks has never identified the source of the Afghan files but suspicion has fallen on Bradley Manning, a US Army intelligence analyst under arrest for allegedly leaking video of a 2007 US Apache helicopter strike in Baghdad in which civilians died.
In an open letter to Assange, media rights group Reporters with Borders said it “regrets the incredible irresponsibility you showed when posting your article ‘Afghan War Diary 2004 – 2010′ on the WikiLeaks website on 25 July.”
The group said WikiLeaks had in the past played a useful role by making public information that exposed violations of human rights committed in the name of the US “war against terror”.
“But revealing the identity of hundreds of people who collaborated with the coalition in Afghanistan is highly dangerous.
“It would not be hard for the Taliban and other armed groups to use these documents to draw up a list of people for targeting in deadly revenge attacks,” it said.
China Favors Euro Over Dollar
August 16, 2010
Bloomberg
By: Candice Zachariahs and Ron Harui
China, whose $2.45 trillion in foreign-exchange reserves are the world’s largest, is turning bullish on Europe and Japan at the expense of the U.S.
The nation has been buying “quite a lot” of European bonds, said Yu Yongding, a former adviser to the People’s Bank of China who was part of a foreign-policy advisory committee that visited France, Spain and Germany from June 20 to July 2. Japan’s Ministry of Finance said Aug. 9 that China bought 1.73 trillion yen ($20.1 billion) more Japanese debt than it sold in the first half of 2010, the fastest pace of purchases in at least five years.
“Diversification should be a basic principle,” Yu said in an interview, adding a “top-level Chinese central banker” told him to convey to European policy makers China’s confidence in the region’s economy and currency. “We didn’t sell any European bonds or assets, instead we bought quite a lot.”
China’s position may make it harder for the greenback to rebound after falling as much as 10 percent from this year’s peak in June as measured by the trade-weighted Dollar Index. The nation cut its holdings of U.S. government debt by $72.2 billion, or 7.7 percent, through May from last year’s record of $939.9 billion in July 2009, according to the Treasury Department, which releases new data today.
U.S. Concerns
Concern the U.S. economy is faltering was underscored by the Federal Reserve on Aug. 10. Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said the central bank will reinvest principal payments on its mortgage holdings into Treasury notes to prevent money from being drained out of the financial system, its first expansion of measures to spur growth in more than a year.
“The pace of economic recovery is likely to be more modest in the near term than had been anticipated,” the Federal Open Market Committee said in a statement after meeting in Washington. “The Committee will keep constant the Federal Reserve’s holdings of securities at their current level.”
Asian central banks holding some 60 percent of the world’s foreign-exchange reserves are turning away from the dollar. Concerned about weakening U.S. growth and the Treasury’s record borrowing, they are switching toward euro assets to safeguard reserves, driving gains in the 16-nation currency. South Korea, Malaysia and India reduced their holdings of Treasuries, U.S. government data show.
Cutting Treasuries
The allocations to dollars in official foreign-exchange reserves declined in the first three months of the year, to 61.5 percent from 62.2 percent in the final quarter of 2009, the International Monetary Fund said June 30.
The yen’s share was 3.1 percent, up from 3 percent, The euro’s was 27.2 percent, little changed from 27.3 percent, even after the currency tumbled 5.7 percent versus the dollar during the first quarter on speculation that nations including Greece will struggle to rein in their budget deficits.
“Short of concerns of a default, the investor community in terms of big reserve managers will probably be forced to invest in the euro zone,” said Dwyfor Evans, a strategist in Hong Kong at State Street Global Markets LLC, part of State Street Corp. which has $19 trillion under custody and $1.8 trillion under management. “They can’t be putting all of their eggs in one basket, which is U.S. Treasuries.”
Dollar Index
The Dollar Index’s 5.2 percent drop in July, the biggest decline in 14 months, failed to dissuade most foreign-exchange forecasters from predicting the greenback will strengthen against the euro and yen by December.
The dollar traded at $1.2817 per euro as of 7:13 a.m. in New York from $1.2754 last week, when it rose 4.1 percent. The greenback was at 85.60 yen after falling to 84.73 yen on Aug. 11, the weakest since July 1995.
The U.S. currency will climb to $1.23 per euro by Dec. 31 and to 92 yen, based on median estimates of strategists and economists in Bloomberg surveys. Economists forecast U.S. growth will be 3 percent this year, compared with 1.2 percent for the region sharing the euro and 3.4 percent for Japan.
“There’s no sign of panic or urgency from the Fed and that supports our view that this is a temporary soft patch and the U.S. economy will fight its way through,” said Gareth Berry, a Singapore-based currency strategist at UBS AG, the world’s second-largest foreign-exchange trader. UBS forecasts the dollar will rise to $1.15 per euro and 95 yen in three months.
Slower Growth
Japan’s economy expanded at the slowest pace in three quarters, missing the estimates of all economists polled, the Cabinet Office said today in Tokyo. Gross domestic product rose an annualized 0.4 percent in the three months ended June 30, compared with the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey for annual growth of 2.3 percent.
Slowing purchases of Treasuries by Asian nations haven’t hindered President Barack Obama’s ability to finance a projected record budget deficit of $1.6 trillion in the year ending Sept. 30. Investor demand for the safest investments compressed yields on benchmark 10-year Treasurynotes to a 16-month low of 2.65 percent today, even after the U.S.’s publicly traded debt swelled to $8.18 trillion in July.
U.S. mutual funds, households and banks in May boosted their share of America’s debt to 50.2 percent, the first time domestic investors owned more Treasuries than foreign holders since the start of the financial crisis in August 2007.
‘Concrete Steps’
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao urged the U.S. in March to take “concrete steps” to reassure investors about the safety of dollar assets. The nation, which is the largest overseas holder of Treasuries, trimmed its stockpile of U.S. debt to $867.7 billion in May, from $900.2 billion in April and a record $939.9 billion in July 2009.
Increases to its holdings made between June 2008 and June 2009 amid the global financial crisis were mostly in short-term securities, signaling a “lack of confidence” in the U.S. ability to reduce its debt, UBS said in a research note Aug. 9.
“China has confidence in Europe’s economy, in the euro, and the euro area,” Yu said. A member of the state-backed Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Yu was selected by the official China Daily to question Treasury secretary Timothy F. Geithner during his June 2009 visit to Beijing about risks the U.S.’s budget deficit will undermine the value of its debt.
Chinese Purchases
Chinese purchases of Europe’s bonds come in the wake of measures taken by European policy makers to allay concern the sovereign-debt crisis will threaten the single-currency union. In May, they announced a loan package worth as much as 750 billion euros ($956 billion) to backstop euro-area governments.
That month, foreign investors were net buyers of euro-zone debt as the 16-nation currency plummeted by the most since January 2009. Foreigners purchased 37.4 billion euros of bonds and notes after buying 49.7 billion euros in April, the latest data from the European Central Bank show.
China’s concern is mirrored by neighboring central banks that are building up foreign-exchange reserves as they sell local currencies to maintain the competiveness of exporters, according to Faros Trading LLC, which conducts currency transactions on behalf of hedge funds and institutional clients.
Indonesia’s central bank and Thailand’s prime minister said in the past month they are watching the performance of their nation’s currencies amid speculation gains will curb exports. Taiwan’s dollar has depreciated in the final minutes of trading on most days in the past four months as policy makers bought dollars, according to traders familiar with the central bank’s operations who declined to be identified. Exports account for about two-thirds of Taiwan’s gross domestic product.
‘Rapidly Diversifying’
“Asian central banks, other than China, don’t want to be caught holding all of the dollars when China is rapidly diversifying,” said Brad Bechtel, a Connecticut-based managing director with Faros Trading. “When sentiment shifts and people start getting very bearish on the euro again, beware central banks might be aggressively buying euros on the other side.”
The yen has climbed 8.4 percent against the dollar this year. China bought a net 456.4 billion yen of Japanese debt in June, after purchasing 735.2 billion yen in May, which was the largest in records dating from 2005, according to Japan’s Ministry of Finance data.
“China’s policy of steady and relatively rapid accumulation of foreign-exchange reserves means they have to be invested somewhere,” said Greg Gibbs, a currency strategist at Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc in Sydney. “It is easy to imagine that given the low yields in the U.S. and the debt crisis in Europe, China is now willing to invest more of these reserves in the yen.”
The Government Wants Me In Jail!
August 16, 2010 by KT
Filed under Kevin's Blog
As I write this, the government has a huge team working full-time to get me in jail! I believe the government wants to ban my books, stop the radio show, and get me banned for life from TV, radio and the internet. The government knows that millions listen to the information I share. They want me stopped from revealing the truth about government and corporate corruption. They do not want you to know the truth about non-drug and non-surgical ways to cure and prevent disease. They do not want you to know how the government, media, and corporations are controlling you in all aspects of your life. I need your support.
Please help me fight. Please support my legal defense fund.
I will be on trial soon fighting for my freedom. The legal costs have been in the millions. This new trial will probably cost me another million or more! Please click here to make a donation of any amount to my legal defense fund.
Remember what this case is about. I wrote the Weight Loss Cure book. I quoted it on TV. Over 5 million people bought the book. The government says I misrepresented the contents of the book yet no one complained to the FTC! There are no “victims”. The people who bought the book overwhelmingly said they loved the book! People thank me for writing and selling the book! This case is smoke and mirrors. The government wants me in jail for writing the book and quoting it on TV. And they, in effect, fined me 37 million dollars! This is an outrage!
Please support my legal defense fund now. I need your help and support. All your donations go directly to pay for legal expenses. Any amount will help no matter how small. Donate now by clicking here.
-KT
Gut Germs May Underlie Western Allergies
August 13th, 2010
Yahoo! News
By: Maggie Fox
Germs living in the gut may cause higher rates of allergies, chronic stomach upsets and even obesity among children living in rich industrialized countries, researchers reported on Monday.
They compared intestinal bacteria between European Union children and young villagers in remote Burkina Faso, and found enough differences to help explain disparities in chronic disease and obesity.
The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, may support the development of probiotic products to help restore the ancient balance and keep humans leaner and healthier, the researchers said.
“Our results suggest that diet has a dominant role over other possible variables such as ethnicity, sanitation, hygiene, geography, and climate, in shaping the gut microbiota,” Paolo Lionetti of the University of Florence in Italy and colleagues wrote.
“We can hypothesize that the reduction in richness we observe in EU compared with Burkina Faso children, could indicate how the consumption of sugar, animal fat, and calorie-dense foods in industrialized countries is rapidly limiting the adaptive potential of the microbiota.”
The study builds on a body of evidence that human health relies heavily on the trillions of microorganisms living in and on our bodies. Only a fraction cause disease directly — many more help digest food, affect other bacteria and may influence hundreds of biological functions.
Several recent studies have found that certain bacteria cause inflammation that can affect appetite as well as inflammatory bowel conditions like Crohn’s disease and colitis, including a study published in Science in March.
TRADING ONE DISEASE FOR ANOTHER
“Western developed countries successfully controlled infectious diseases during the second half of the last century, by improving sanitation and using antibiotics and vaccines,” the researchers wrote.
“At the same time, a rise in new diseases such as allergic, autoimmune disorders, and inflammatory bowel disease both in adults and in children has been observed,” they added
Lionetti’s team studied the DNA of the gut bacteria of children in Burkina Faso, who are breast-fed up to age two and eat a diet likely similar to stone-age humans, rich in whole grains such as millet, legumes such as black-eyed peas, and vegetables. They eat very little meat.
The Western diet, in contrast, is heavy in meat, processed grains, sugar and fat.
The Italian team found the African children had many bacteria that help break down fiber, but the European children were lacking these microbes. The ratios were similar to studies comparing the gut bacteria of lean people to obese people.
This bacterial balance could even be causing obesity, the researchers said. It may also be useful to test children for these bacteria to see if they are at high risk of becoming obese, they said.
“Reduction in microbial richness is possibly one of the undesirable effects of globalization and of eating generic, nutrient-rich, uncontaminated foods,” Lionetti’s team wrote in the study.
Click Here For The Full Article
WHO Says Swine Flu Pandemic Is Over… What A Shocker!
August 13th, 2010
PharmaPro
By: Frank Jordans
The World Health Organization says the swine flu pandemic is over.
WHO Director-General Margaret Chan says the world is now moving into the “post-pandemic” phase.
She told reporters on Tuesday that the pandemic has “largely run its course.”
Last week WHO said at least 18,449 people had died worldwide since the outbreak began in April 2009.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE.
earlier story is below.
The World Health Organization said it will likely decide Tuesday whether to declare the swine flu pandemic over, months after many national authorities started canceling vaccine orders and shutting down hotlines as the disease ebbed from the headlines.
The decision would be announced in the afternoon by WHO Director-General Margaret Chan after consulting with the global body’s emergency committee of top flu experts, said spokesman Gregory Hartl.
Chan can either decide to keep WHO’s pandemic alert at its current phase 6 level — the highest — or shift to the “post-peak” or “post-pandemic” stages. The latter two would effectively acknowledge that the pandemic is on hold or over.
The number of deaths from swine flu has fallen dramatically in recent months.
Last week, WHO said at least 18,449 people had died worldwide since the outbreak began in April 2009, though it noted that the true figure is likely to be higher. Still, lab-confirmed deaths globally increased by only about 300 in the past two months.
“We haven’t any pandemic anymore,” said Jean-Louis Zuercher, a spokesman for Switzerland’s Office of Public Health.
The Alpine nation gave local authorities permission in May to destroy expired swine flu vaccines after finding its stocks were full of unused supplies. A total of 20 people died from swine flu in Switzerland — out of almost 5,000 across Europe. That figure is far lower than the number of people who would normally die from seasonal flu every year, a fact that has been partly attributed to higher vaccination rates and some level of immunity among older people.
Prof. Angus Nicoll, flu program coordinator at the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, said a decision to declare the pandemic over would be consistent with the Stockholm-based body’s recent findings.
While flu activity in the northern hemisphere is seasonally low, monitoring in southern hemisphere countries shows that few people are falling seriously ill from swine flu, said Nicoll.
Local spikes in flu deaths, such as seen recently in India, are likely due to better surveillance, he said.
Nevertheless, health officials around the world should prepare for a new type of seasonal flu to appear in the near future that will combine elements of the pandemic A(H1N1) strain, and older A(H3N2) strain and several lesser strains, said Nicoll.
“It looks sort of middle of the road at the moment,” he said.
Nicoll noted that high-risk groups such as pregnant women should continue to get vaccinated because swine flu has been shown to pose a particular risk to them.
Health authorities in Britain shut down their pandemic flu hotline in February and canceled vaccine orders by a third back in April as it became clear the pandemic strain would be less dangerous than feared. Worst-case scenarios had predicted up to 65,000 deaths in Britain. In the end there were 457 confirmed deaths from swine flu.
In Germany, authorities are meeting later this week to discuss who is going to pick up the bill for the 34 million doses of vaccines that were ordered and mostly not used.
Click Here For The Full Article
Low-Dose Vitamin D Pill Cuts Breast Cancer By 24%
August 13th, 2010
Natural News
By: Ethan A. Huff
A recent research study on vitamin D has shown that even low-dose vitamin D supplementation plays a big role in preventing breast cancer. According to the study, which was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, women who take at least 400 international units (IU) of vitamin D a day lower their risk of developing breast cancer by 24 percent.
Over 6,500 patients participated in the study, which study authors believe points to vitamin D’s ability to regulate and control the growth and spread of malignant cancer cells. According to Laura Anderson, one of the study authors, breast cells have their own receptors for vitamin D, so it makes perfect sense that vitamin D exerts a positive influence on the body in terms of warding off cancer.
Several other recent studies have also shown a definitive link between vitamin D intake and decreased cancer risk, highlighting this nutrient’s powerful health-promoting and disease-preventing capabilities.
The research team also noted that vitamin D assimilates very well when coupled with calcium, and vice versa. The two vitamins work in tandem for maximum absorption of both in the body, so it is important to get plenty of both.
And although it was not specifically mentioned in the report, vitamin D is easily obtained through natural sunlight exposure. Your skin is fully capable of absorbing sunlight and processing it into vitamin D. In fact, just 15 to 30 minutes of exposure a day during the warmer months will ensure that you get the maximum amount of vitamin D for maintaining optimal health, without the need for a supplement.
During the winter months when sunlight exposure is limited, you can supplement with natural vitamin D3 as an alternative. It will effectively achieve the same results as if you were getting natural sunlight, however natural sunlight is preferable when available.
The governmental recommended daily intake of vitamin D is a mere 400 IU for adults, which many now consider to be far too low. To get a significant therapeutic effect from vitamin D, dosages upwards of 10,000 IU a day are far more appropriate. Because the body absorbs roughly 20,000 IU from the sun before shutting off for the day, it is safe to assume that supplementing with vitamin D3 in roughly this amount is safe as well.
Click Here For The Full Article
