The Latest Twist In My Court Case
October 25, 2010 by KT
Filed under Kevin's Blog
On September 10th, 2010, we presented a Memorandum in Support of Motion for Recusal with Judge Gettleman. He denied the motion for recusal, but nevertheless chose to have the criminal case reassigned to another judge.
Click here to read the Memorandum in Support of Motion for Recusal.
And click here to support my fight for your freedoms!
-KT
Idiot Researchers Suggest Viagra For Young Boys
October 22nd, 2010
Natural News
By: Ethan A. Huff
New research out of the University of Washington (UW) has some astounding new propositions for the use of Viagra, an erectile dysfunction drug made by Pfizer Inc. According to the report, young boys with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) can benefit from taking the drug because it allegedly treats the heart problems that typically emerge as a result of the disease.
Eager to expand the scope of Viagra’s prescribed uses, some researchers are now claiming that the drug helps to treat all sorts of diseases, even though it is linked to hearing loss, infertility, and nerve damage, among other things. But none of this has stopped co-authors Stanley Froehner, a professor of physiology and biophysics at UW, and Joseph Beavo, a professor of pharmacology at UW, from suggesting that Viagra now be used on adolescent boys.
DMD is a severe degenerative disease that eats away at spinal muscles, confining people who have it to wheelchairs by the time they are roughly ten years old. DMD can eventually cause heart failure as well, which is what the study authors claim Viagra will help prevent. But such a proposition is not only irresponsible based on the drug’s many side effects, but insane when considering the repercussions.
Froehner and Beavo have even suggested that young boys between the ages of eight and twelve be given Viagra as a preventive measure, before they even show any signs of heart problems. And they say that the dosage amounts for such purposes will most likely be higher than those given to older men to treat erectile dysfunction.
Click here for the full report from Natural News
Treat Anxiety With Herbs & Nutrients
October 22nd, 2010
Natural News
By: S.L. Baker
Who hasn’t felt anxious before a test, or after some personal upset or accident? But sometimes anxiety can become chronic. And ongoing feelings of apprehension, fear or nervousness can rob people of their quality of life and even negatively impact their health. According to the American Psychological Association, panic disorder is an especially serious type of anxiety that is experienced by one out of every 75 people in the U.S. — they can feel like they are having a heart attack, breathing difficulties, blacking out or even dying.
Mainstream medicine treats anxiety disorders with psychotherapy and, often, drugs including side-effect laden serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) like Prozac and addictive benzodiazepines (including Xanax). But a new study involving a comprehensive review of research into the use of nutritional supplements for the treatment of anxiety disorders has come up with good news for anyone wanting to relieve anxiety through natural means. According to the review of 24 studies involving a total of more than 2000 participants, which was just published in BioMed Central’s Nutrition Journal, specific nutritional and herbal supplements can effectively treat anxiety, without the risk of serious side effects.
The research analysis was conducted by Shaheen Lakhan and Karen Vieira, scientists with the Global Neuroscience Initiative Foundation, a non-profit charity organization for the advancement of neurological and mental health patient welfare, education, and research, based in Los Angeles. “Our review and summary of the literature on herbal remedies and dietary supplements for anxiety should aid mental health practitioners in advising their patients and provide insight for future research in this field,” Lakhan said in a statement to the media.
The studies Lakhan and Vieira investigated for their review included 21 randomized controlled trials — the kind of research that is considered the “gold standard” in science. Of these, 15 showed positive anti-anxiety effects from either a nutritional or herbal remedy. The most consistently effective natural anxiety treatments appeared to be the herbs passionflower and kava and the amino acids L-lysine and L-arginine. St. John’s Wort, which is traditionally used for depression, not anxiety, was not found to be an effective anxiety treatment.
“For all three of the herbal supplements we reviewed, more research needs to be done to establish the most effective dosage and to determine whether this varies between different types of anxiety or anxiety-related disorders,” Lakhan stated. “Herbal medicines hold an important place in the history of medicine as most of our current remedies, and the majority of those likely to be discovered in the future, will contain phytochemicals derived from plants.”
Click here for the full report from Natural News
MRI Scans Lead To Unnecessary Breast Surgery
October 22nd, 2010
The Telegraph
By: Stephen Adams
Magnetic resonance mammography (MRM) is particular good at finding tumours that are hard to spot using standard x-ray mammography.
Younger women with a genetically high risk of breast cancer can be offered MRMs on the NHS if recommended by a clinician.
But Malcolm Kell, a consultant surgeon at the Eccles Breast Screening Unit at University Hospital, Dublin, said there was “no compelling evidence that this technique should be routinely used in newly diagnosed breast cancer”.
While he said MRM was invaluable for assessing advanced breast cancer and to assess responses to chemotherapy, he argued in the British Medical Journal that its routine use at an early stage could do more harm than good.
The only robust trial of its use in the management of early stage breast cancer showed that it failed to reduce the proportion of women (19 per cent) who had to return for a second operation because initial surgery had not removed all the potentially cancerous tissue.
The number who consequently had a mastectomy was seven times higher (seven per cent compared to one per cent) in those who had an MRM, while there was no evidence that the increased rate of more aggressive surgery had saved lives.
Prof Kefah Mokbel, a consultant breast surgeon at St George’s Hospital and the London Breast Institute at the Princess Grace Hospital, said about one in four indications of breast cancer from MRMs was inaccurate, known as a “false positive”.
But he said it was an essential tool for checking younger women with firmer breasts who were at a high genetic risk of cancer.
A study published in The Lancet in 2007 found MRI scans picked up 92 per cent of early lesions, which could lead to breast cancer, compared to only 56 per cent by x-ray mammography.
Click here for the full report from the Telegraph
FDA Warns Of Heart Problems When Combining HIV Drugs
October 21st, 2010
Reuters
U.S. health officials are cautioning patients and doctors about possible deadly side effects when using two HIV drugs together: Roche Holding’s Invirase and Abbott Laboratories’ Norvir.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which first warned about the potential heart problems in February, said the caution is now being added to the product labels, saying they could cause an abnormal heart rhythm if used together.
In some cases, the condition, known as torsades de pointes, can lead to a life-threatening irregular heart beat called ventricular fibrillation, the FDA said.
Mixing the drugs can also cause another type of abnormal heart rhythm called “heart block” that can trigger lightheadedness or fainting, it added.
The agency urged HIV patients to talk to their doctors and to make sure they disclose any other medications, vitamins or supplements they are taking in addition to their HIV drugs.
Separately, the European Medicines Agency said it reviewed all the available data on potential heart risk and recommended that patients start off treatment with a lower dose of Invirase for a week as a precaution.
It added that the benefits of the drugs outweighed the potential heart risks.
Invirase is made by Roche’s Genentech subsidiary.
Click here for the full report from Reuters
Choline, Betaine May Cut Breast Cancer Death Risk
October 21st, 2010
Reuters
By: Lynne Peeples
Eating lots of carrots and cruciferous vegetables — collard greens, cabbage, broccoli — could reduce breast cancer risk, particularly an aggressive form common among African American women, suggests a large new study.
The researchers looking at data from the ongoing Black Women’s Health Study did not find a similar benefit from fruit intake.
Previous studies of the relationship between fruit and vegetable consumption and breast cancer in white women have led to conflicting results, and no prior research has investigated this link separately among African American women, lead researcher Dr. Deborah A. Boggs, of Boston University, told Reuters Health in an e-mail.
Boggs noted her team’s earlier work showing that a so-called “prudent diet” high in vegetables, fruits, whole grains and fish led to a lower risk of estrogen receptor-negative breast cancers among African American women.
The ER-negative form of breast cancer, which is insensitive to the hormone estrogen, is more common in this population than among white women. It is also more difficult to treat and more often fatal than estrogen-sensitive cancers.
Overall, breast cancer is the second leading cancer-killer for both African American and white women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Approximately 1 in 8 American women will develop the disease at some point in life, although age, heredity and environmental factors can increase an individual’s risk.
Boggs and her colleagues wanted to find out whether fruits and vegetables drove the beneficial effect they saw in women eating the prudent diet and whether specific varieties are particularly protective.
They tracked the diets and health of more than 50,000 African American women from across the U.S. for 12 years. About 1,300 of the women developed new cases of breast cancer during that period, 35 percent of them ER-negative.
The researchers found, however, that women who ate at least two servings of vegetables a day had a 43 percent lower risk of ER-negative breast cancer compared with women who ate fewer than four servings of vegetables each week.
Further, they identified certain types of vegetables that appeared to reduce the risk of all types of breast cancer, including broccoli, collard greens, cabbage and carrots.
Women who ate three or more servings a week of carrots, for instance, had a 17 percent lower risk of developing breast cancer than women who ate carrots less than once a month.
The results for all vegetables held after accounting for other potential breast cancer risk factors, such as physical activity, smoking, alcohol consumption and education level, as well as consumption of other components of the prudent diet, the researchers report in the American Journal of Epidemiology.
Still, it is too early to determine if this is a true cause-and effect-relationship, they note. High vegetable consumption could mark a healthier lifestyle in general or some other unknown mechanism that accounts for the apparent protection. Vegetables’ cancer-staving power needs to be confirmed in further studies, the researchers write.
“Most Americans do not meet the recommendation of five servings of vegetables per day, based on a 2,000-calorie diet, and African Americans in particular eat fewer vegetables on average than do whites,” said Boggs.
“It is clear that, in addition to potential protective effects against breast cancer, higher vegetable consumption can lead to many health benefits, including lower risk of cardiovascular disease,” she added. “Therefore, we recommend that African American women try to increase their daily intake of vegetables to meet the established guidelines.”
Click here for the full report from Reuters
Rich People Live Longer Life
October 21st, 2010
Fox News DC
A hormone found predominantly in wealthy people was linked to a longer life, according to British research published Thursday.
Scientists from University College London studied thousands of over-50s for the English Longitudinal Study of Aging and found that wealthier participants had higher levels of the life-lengthening hormone DHEAS.
The natural steroid hormone is produced by the adrenal glands, sex organs and brain, and its production has been linked to regular exercise, a good diet and companionship.
The research suggested that in the future, the hormone could be artificially produced to help people live longer.
Professor Sir Michael Marmot, of the university’s Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, said, “A striking new finding is that the hormone dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate [DHEAS] that predicts life expectancy also follows a social gradient: less wealth, lower levels of DHEAS.”
The research also found higher levels of a second hormone — the insulin-like growth factor I (IGF-I) — in those who are wealthier. The two hormones help control the body’s response to stress and regulate various body processes.
Click here for the full report from Fox News DC
Diabetes To Double or Triple in US By 2050
October 22nd, 2010
Reuters
By: Xavier Briand
Up to a third of U.S. adults could have diabetes by 2050 if Americans continue to gain weight and avoid exercise, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention projected on Friday.
The numbers are certain to go up as the population gets older, but they will accelerate even more unless Americans change their behavior, the CDC said.
“We project that, over the next 40 years, the prevalence of total diabetes (diagnosed and undiagnosed) in the United States will increase from its current level of about one in 10 adults to between one in five and one in three adults in 2050,” the CDC’s James Boyle and colleagues wrote in their report.
“These are alarming numbers that show how critical it is to change the course of type-2 diabetes,” CDC diabetes expert Ann Albright said in a statement.
“Successful programs to improve lifestyle choices on healthy eating and physical activity must be made more widely available because the stakes are too high and the personal toll too devastating to fail.”
The CDC says about 24 million U.S. adults have diabetes now, most of them type-2 diabetes linked strongly with poor diet and lack of exercise.
Boyle’s team took census numbers and data on current diabetes cases to make models projecting a trend. No matter what, diabetes will become more common, they said.
“These projected increases are largely attributable to the aging of the U.S. population, increasing numbers of members of higher-risk minority groups in the population, and people with diabetes living longer,” they wrote.
Diabetes was the seventh-leading cause of death in the United States in 2007, and is the leading cause of new cases of blindness among adults under age 75, as well as kidney failure, and leg and foot amputations not caused by injury.
“Diabetes, costing the United States more than $174 billion per year in 2007, is expected to take an increasingly large financial toll in subsequent years,” Boyle’s team wrote.
Click here for the full report from Reuters
Washington To Give Pakistan Military $2 Billion
October 22, 2010 by Andrew
Filed under Government
October 22nd, 2010
BBC
By: Kim Ghattas
The US has announced a $2bn (£1.3bn) package of military and security aid to Pakistan over five years on the final day of US-Pakistan strategic talks.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton unveiled the deal, which is subject to Congressional approval.
But the Obama administration will make clear it expects Islamabad to do more in the fight against Islamic militants.
The US has given Pakistan more than $1bn of military aid a year since 2005; last fiscal year, it gave nearly $2bn.
US officials said Pakistan needed further, specific assistance for the fight against militants and needed to know it could rely on the US in the long term.
So unlike previous military aid approved on a yearly basis, this is a five-year package.
The aid will pay for equipment needed in counter-insurgency and counter-terror operations, among other things.
‘Reducing threats to US’
Vali Nasr, a senior adviser on Pakistan and Afghanistan at the state department, told the BBC that the battle against Pakistani militants had expanded over the last year, but the summer’s monsoon floods had undone a lot of the Pakistani army’s efforts.
“We believe that we have made a great deal of progress and we believe that that progress has reduced the threat to our homeland, while not eliminating it,” Richard Holbrooke, the US special representative on Afghanistan and Pakistan, said this week.
But officials in Washington have also been frustrated at the limits of Pakistan’s desire and ability to help.
A White House report sent to Congress earlier this month lamented the Pakistani army’s inability to hold territory it had seized from insurgents, a failure that means gains are likely to be short-lived.
“The Pakistan military continued to avoid military engagements that would put it in direct conflict with Afghan Taliban or al-Qaeda’s forces in North Waziristan,” the report said, referring to the region in north-western Pakistan seen as a Taliban and al-Qaeda haven.
“This is as much a political choice as it is a reflection of an under-resourced military prioritising its targets.”
The report also said the civilian leadership did not have the trust of the people and faced “broad-based” challenges that had “the potential to impact the stability of the government”.
Cross-border attack
Mr Nasr said the solution was not to withdraw US investment from Pakistan, but rather to help the Pakistani government and military strengthen the country’s institutions.
The Pakistani government is in fact crucial to that strategy, and this can make Washington vulnerable.
A crisis in ties between the two countries last month has highlighted the fine line the Obama administration must walk as it cajoles and pressures its ally.
After at least two Pakistani troops were killed in a Nato cross-border attack in September, a furious Islamabad blocked the main transit route for military supplies to Afghanistan until it received a formal apology.
During the row, dozens of lorries laden with fuel and supplies were destroyed by militants in Pakistan while en route to the frontier.
The US-Pakistan strategic dialogue, which started last year, is designed to build trust and keep the conversation going between the two countries, not just about security, but about a wide range of issues from healthcare to education and water projects.
‘Not enough sticks’
The five-year package announced on Friday is meant to complement a $7.5bn package of civilian aid over five years that was approved by the US in 2009.
It is all designed to reduce Islamic militants’ allure and to win Pakistanis’ hearts.
“We want to expand the security relationship that Pakistan and the US had in the past under the Bush period to be much broader,” Mr Nasr said, “to involve things that also matter to Pakistanis and impacts their daily lives.
“A relationship means that we don’t focus only on things that are important to us, but also things that are important to Pakistanis.
“Average Pakistanis have to see value in their engagement with the US before they subscribe to that relationship.”
But some question the Obama administration’s approach, saying there are too many carrots and not enough sticks, and not enough conditions attached to the carrots.
In a piece published in the New York Times this week, the former ambassador to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, urged Washington to “offer Islamabad a stark choice between positive incentives and negative consequences”.
Click here for the full report from the BBC
General: Clinton Administration Lost Nuclear Codes
October 22, 2010 by Andrew
Filed under Government
October 22nd, 2010
CBS News
No, it’s not the plot of a Tom Clancy book or a Steven Segal movie. Bill Clinton lost the card containing launch codes for a nuclear strike for “months” during his presidency, according to a top military leader’s memoir.
Gen. Hugh Shelton, who served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Clinton, makes the claim in his new book “Without Hesitation,” ABC News first reported Thursday.
“At one point during the Clinton administration, the codes were actually missing. That’s a big deal, a gargantuan deal,” Shelton writes in the book.
Shelton is the second military leader to make the startling claim. Retired Air Force Lt. Col. Robert Patterson released a memoir in 2003 in which he said that the launch codes went missing in 1998. Shelton’s book says the code card – known as “the biscuit” – disappeared for a period in 2000.
It is unclear whether they represent separate incidents or differing accounts of the same incident.
There are a few other accounts of “the biscuit” going missing. ABC says that President Jimmy Carty once left it in a suit that went to the dry cleaners.
The biscuit is replaced every four months and is not itself sufficient to launch a nuclear strike; in fact, it would likely be meaningless in the hands of anyone but the president and a few other top officials. The biscuit is used to open the briefcase – known as “the football” – that contains launching orders and communication equipment.
Clinton is on the road this week stumping for Democratic candidates ahead of the Nov. 2 elections.
Click here for the full report from CBS News
