Man Sues Tuna Company for Mercury Poisoning
October 21st, 2010
AOL Health
By: Deborah Huso
A White Plains, N.Y. man is suing Bumble Bee Foods alleging mercury poisoning from eating the company’s canned tuna.
Forty-eight-year-old Lee Porrazzo says he ate about 10 cans of tuna a week for nearly two years because he thought it was a healthy way to obtain protein. When he suffered unexplained chest pains in 2008, a blood test showed he had high levels of mercury in his blood, 23 micrograms per liter, the New York Post reported.
According to Dr. Raphael Darvish with Concierge Medicine in Los Angeles, doctors testing for mercury poisoning want to see levels of 5 micrograms per liter or less. “Anything above 50 micrograms per liter is considered acute and the result of chronic exposure,” he told AOL Health.
Does Porrazzo have a valid claim? Given the fact that health professionals repeatedly advise consumers not to eat more than 5 ounces of tuna or other large fish per week, Porrazzo’s consumption does seem excessive.
Darvish says most cases of mercury poisoning are the result of fish consumption. And frequently people don’t even know they have above normal levels of mercury in their systems. “Most people don’t have symptoms,” he adds.
Darvish says there hasn’t been enough medical research to determine just how dangerous mercury poisoning is and said there is no way to rid the body of mercury. “We just tell patients [with mercury poisoning] to strictly avoid eating tuna, shark or swordfish,” he says, “but it takes a long time for the mercury to go away.”
Porazzo, who is also suing Stop & Shop, where he bought his tuna, says his mercury levels are back to normal but that he has lost weight and is worried about the long-term effects of mercury poisoning.
While some researchers have theorized mercury poisoning may lead to premature heart disease, Darvish says the relationship isn’t clear. Nevertheless, he believes it’s better to be safe than sorry and advises consumers to eat no more than one serving of tuna, shark or swordfish per week. “They’re big fish, and big fish have longer life spans, allowing more mercury to accumulate in their systems,” he explains, pointing out that fish caught close to urban areas are more likely to be infected with mercury.
Darvish does not believe people with mercury in their tooth fillings should be concerned, however, as it takes a large amount of exposure to raise mercury levels in the blood. He says pregnant women or women hoping to become pregnant should avoid eating large fish like tuna, as fetuses exposed to mercury can suffer brain damage.
A Bumble Bee spokeswoman told the Post that, to the company’s knowledge, there’s “never been a case of mercury toxicity from eating commercial seafood in the U.S.” and that “alarmism” on this issue “can have an adverse impact” on people’s health. Stop & Shop declined comment.
Darvish says mercury poisoning from consumption of fish is not likely fatal, but he still advises people to consume large fish in moderate amounts.
Click here for the full report from AOL Health
Vitamins ‘Linked’ to Illness, but Never Drugs
October 20th, 2010
Natural News
By: Ethan A. Huff
The mainstream media has an interesting way of skewing facts and manipulating language to make one thing sound like another. In a recent BBC News article, the author emphasizes a “link” between vitamin B12 and Alzheimer’s — which seemingly suggests that the vitamin somehow contributes to causing the disease — when in fact, the study being referenced shows a link between vitamin B12 and the prevention and treatment of Alzheimer’s.
The Finnish study, published in the journal Neurology, found that vitamin B12 reduces homocysteine levels in the blood. Homocysteine is linked to causing both strokes and dementia, so lowering it helps to prevent such illnesses from occurring. But the BBC News article’s subheading reads: “Evidence is mounting that levels of vitamin B12 may be connected to the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.”
This interesting choice of words suggests, at first glance, that taking vitamin B12 may cause dementia, rather than prevent or treat it, as is actually the case. The poor word choice is not only confusing, but blatantly deceptive to readers. Even the title of the article is tricky, which reads: “Vitamin B12 link to Alzheimer’s backed by study.”
Readers who make it beyond the title and subheading are then bombarded with statements about how trial results are inconclusive and that more trials must take place. Whenever a trial shows that a vitamin is good for something, it is always “too early” to make a judgment call. Experts even warn consumers not to purchase such supplements because nothing is for sure, and more “research” is necessary.
Drug trials, on the other hand, are always more than enough to prove a drug’s effectiveness and safety. Even if thousands of people are injured or killed by a drug — as is the case with Avandia — the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will often keep that drug on the market for those who allegedly “really need it”, even if the drug does not even work at all.
The truth about vitamin B12 is that it helps to prevent brain degradation that leads to dementia and other mental illnesses. So do not let the mainstream media fool you with rhetorical nonsense.
Click here for the full report from Natural News
Surgery Mix-ups Remain Surprisingly Common in U.S. Hospitals
October 20th, 2010
Natural News
By: Mike Adams
Three patients walk into a bar after recovering from foot amputation surgery due to diabetes. The first patient says, “My doctor did a great job with my amputation, but he left a little scarring that looks pretty ugly.” The second patient says, “That’s nothing. My doctor did a fantastic job with the amputation, but it was the wrong foot.” The third patient shakes his head and blurts out, “You got off easy! My doctor amputated my foot with the skill of a master surgeon, but I’m not even diabetic and was only there for a prostate exam!”
It’s all too common these days, it seems: Doctors are performing surgeries on the wrong organs and even on the wrong people. All it takes is a little paperwork mix-up — a process at which hospitals seem to excel — and you could wake up missing a perfectly good kidney, lung or foot. You might even end up having the wrong organ irradiated as a “cancer therapy.”
It happens so often that the current phenomenon of surgical mishaps has been called “catastrophic” by surgeons themselves. Catastrophic surgical errors are “a lot more common than the public thinks,” says Dr Martin Makary a professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins University. He wrote an editorial alongside the study that’s now shedding light on the seriousness of this problem. The study, led by Dr Philip Stahel, was published in the October issue of the Archives of Surgery.
The data used in the study were gleaned from a review of the database records of a medical malpractice company that insures doctors and surgeons. These records revealed that patients sometimes had entire organs removed (such as the prostate gland) after medical personnel mixed up biopsy samples and diagnosed a perfectly healthy male patient as having prostate cancer.
Catastrophic medical errors were surprisingly common, and one-third of them led to patient harm, the study authors found. Only about twenty percent resulted in malpractice claims or lawsuits, however, meaning that in about 80 percent of the cases, patients just suffered the consequences with no compensation.
This is yet another good reason, by the way, that holistic medicine is so much better for you. Even if a holistic naturopathic physician treats the wrong part of your body, the treatments are supportive, natural and non-invasive, so there’s no harm done. Given that the first principle of medicine is supposed to be “do no harm,” it’s astonishing that conventional doctors and surgeons end up harming so many people.
How to protect yourself from medical numbskulls
So how can you protect yourself from overzealous surgeons who want to start cutting into you immediately upon diagnosing you with some disease you might not even have? (I’ve heard stories of cancer surgeons scaring people into undergoing radical procedures on a same-day basis…)
First of all, don’t believe any diagnosis without a second opinion. Doctors are wrong all the time. Labs mix up results all the time. Paperwork gets shuffled around, data entry errors take place, and overworked medical staff make regrettable errors with astonishing frequency. Never take a single medical opinion as medical fact. You may find that your first doctor is full of bunk (or even that they’re all full of bunk if you’re in a cancer clinic).
Secondly, before your next surgical procedure (should you for some reason choose to undergo one), use a magic marker to write, in big letters, “WRONG LEG” on the leg your doctors shouldn’t amputate (for example). You literally need to spell it out for these people because they’re only going on what the computer records tell them, and those records might be wrong. Because you’re already unconscious under anesthesia by the time they start cutting, you have no way to tell them to stop, and a few hours later you might wake up to discover that they removed your one good kidney while leaving behind your diseased one.
Thirdly, try not to have surgery in the first place! Most conventional surgeries are medically unnecessary. From hysterectomies and tonsillectomies to mastectomies and coronary bypass surgery, most of these medical procedures are based on nothing more than pure quackery backed by no real science. They make millions of dollars for surgeons and hospitals, but scientifically speaking they offer no real benefit to patients. Most (but not all) surgical procedures can be either prevented or entirely avoided with more natural approaches to health.
The bottom line to all this is to be careful when choosing surgery because surgical mistakes are a lot more common than you might suspect. In fact, they are apparently more common than most doctors would even suspect. As Dr Makary wrote in his editorial, “Each hospital, whether they publicly admit it or not, and whether or not it’s discoverable in a lawsuit, has an episode of wrong-site or wrong-patient surgery either every year or once every few years.”
Don’t let that catastrophic mistake happen to you.
Click here for the full report from Natural News
Arctic Seabirds Loaded with Environmental Poisons
October 21st, 2010
Natural News
By: David Gutierrez
The excrement of Arctic seabirds is a cocktail of dangerous pollutants, according to studies conducted by the Canadian Wildlife Service and Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont.
Because nearly all pollution emitted by industrial societies ends up in the ocean eventually, sea creatures are among the most contaminated organisms on the planet. Sea birds such as terns, eiders and fulmars eat these organisms, thereby creating a “boomerang effect” and bringing many of the toxins back to land.
“At the end of the day, it’s a sad tale, that the oceans are polluted no matter where you are — that’s the bottom line,” said researcher Mark Mallory.
In the most recent study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, researchers identified one pond used by terns and another used by eiders on Tern Island off the coast of Cornwallis Island. They sampled the sediment from the bottom of each pond and tested them for contaminants. They found significantly elevated levels of cadmium and mercury in the pond used by terns, which eat mostly fish. In the excrement of eiders, which eat mostly shellfish, they found elevated levels of lead, manganese and aluminum.
A prior study, also conducted by Mallory, found elevated levels of PCBs and DDT in the excrement of fulmars on Devon Island, one of the most isolated locations in the world. Concentrations of the chemicals were as much as 60 times higher in ponds used by the birds than in other ponds nearby.
“The birds are like a funnel and they’re concentrating these contaminants, ” researcher John Smol said.
Although researchers say the contaminants found are not concentrated enough to pose a health threat to the indigenous Nunavummiut who eat eiders and the eggs of eiders and terns, they do pose a threat to birds themselves, and to the wider Arctic ecosystem.
Click here for the full report from Natural News
97 Percent of Men Survive Prostate Cancer Even Without Treatment
October 21st, 2010
Natural News
By: David Gutierrez
If none of the men diagnosed with early-stage prostate cancer were ever treated, 97 percent of them would still survive the disease, according to a study conducted by Swedish researchers and published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
Most prostate cancers grow so slowly that researchers have increasingly questioned whether the significant risks of treatment with hormones, surgery or radiation — all of which can cause side effects including incontinence and impotence — are actually justified by a serious threat to patients’ lives.
“What the data is showing is that for most patients with low-risk cancer, there is no need to panic,” said cancer researcher Grace Lu-Yao of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, who was not involved in the study. “Prostate cancer really is no longer a fatal disease.”
Researchers used data from Sweden’s national cancer registry to compare death rates among 6,800 men under the age of 70 who had been diagnosed with early-stage prostate cancer classified as low- or intermediate-risk. The risk factor of each cancer was calculated through a combination of tests, including the prostate specific antigen (PSA) and Gleason tests. Participants either underwent aggressive cancer treatment with hormones, surgery or radiation, or they took a “watchful waiting” approach in which their doctors monitored them for any progression in the cancer.
After eight years, 20 percent of the men in the watchful waiting group had died — the same as the proportion for the general population. Fewer than 3 percent had died from prostate cancer. The researchers estimated that after 10 years, only 2.4 percent of participants in this group would have died from prostate caner.
Although the rate of death from both prostate cancer and from all causes was lower in the treatment group, the researchers noted that men in the “watchful waiting” group tended to be sicker going into the study than men who underwent treatment.
Click here for the full report from Natural News
Garlic Oil Maintains a Healthy Heart
October 21st, 2010
Natural News
By: Ethan A. Huff
Heart disease is the number one killer in the U.S., including among those with diabetes who often eventually die from some form of cardiovascular illness. But a new study out of China Medical University in Taiwan has found that garlic oil prevents cardiomyopathy, the most common type of heart disease responsible for diabetes-related deaths, and may help to prevent heart disease from ever forming at all.
Previous studies have shown that garlic promotes heart health, but the new study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry reveals specifically how the bulbous plant helps diabetics with cardiomyopathy.
Wei-Wen Kuo and colleagues from the university fed either corn oil or garlic oil to diabetic rats, observing their health status in relation to the two treatments. They found that garlic oil improves antioxidant enzyme expression, lowers heart inflammation and stops cell death, effectively maintaining the integrity of vital heart tissue.
“[G]arlic oil possesses significant potential for protecting hearts from diabetes-induced cardiomyopathy,” says the study report, highlighting that over 20 different substances in garlic oil provide therapeutic benefits, including allicin, a powerful organosulfur compound.
Garlic is also effective at regulating blood pressure. When incorporated as part of a regular, healthy diet, garlic serves as a “multipurpose medicinal food”, says Larry Trivieri, Jr., in his book Alternative Medicine the Definitive Guide, Second Edition.
“Studies show that garlic has antibiotic properties as well as the ability to fight fungal infections, and at least twenty-eight studies have found garlic effective for lowering cholesterol levels,” explains Peggy Thomas in her book Medicines From Nature.
Click here for the full report from Natural News
Fluoridated Water Dangerous, Especially For Babies
October 21st, 2010
Natural News
By: Ethan A. Huff
Advocates of fluoridated water insist that the chemical additive is good for teeth, but actual science routinely shows otherwise, including a new study published in the Journal of the American Dental Association confirming fluoride as a toxic substance that actually destroys teeth, particularly those of developing young children and babies.
When people are exposed to excessive levels of fluoride through sources like drinking water, foods and beverages and even swallowed toothpaste, it often results in a condition known as dental fluorosis. The internal uptake of fluoride into teeth over time causes their enamel to become mottled and discolored, the end result being damaged teeth that have essentially rotted from the inside out.
Dr. Steven Levy, D.D.S., and his team found during their study that “fluoride intakes during each of the first four years (of a child’s life) were individually significantly related to fluorosis on maxillary central incisors, with the first year more important.” They went on to warn that “infant formulas reconstituted with higher fluoride water can provide 100 to 200 times more fluoride than breast milk, or cow’s milk.”
In other words, young children have the highest risk of severe tooth damage from fluoride, especially those that are six months of age or younger, a time during which children’s blood-brain barriers have not fully formed. Even low ingestion levels cause the direct depositing of fluoride into the teeth, brain and other bodily tissues and organs which, besides causing fluorosis, also causes disorders of the brain and nervous system, kidneys and bones.
And the American Dental Association (ADA) has known that fluoride exposure causes dental fluorosis since at least 2006, but the group has done nothing to warn the 200 million Americans that live in communities with fluoridated water to avoid its use in babies and infants. Many dentists still recommend that children and adults not only drink fluoridated water, but even advise parents to add fluoride drops to their children’s drinking water if the family lives in unfluoridated areas or drinks private well water.
Fluoride causes serious health problems
In 2006, a study published in The Lancet identified fluoride as “an emerging neurotoxic substance” that causes severe brain damage. The National Research Council (NRC) wrote that “it is apparent that fluorides have the ability to interfere with the functions of the brain and the body by direct and indirect means.”
About a month later, another study published in Environmental Health Perspectives found a definitive link between fluoride intake and reduce IQ levels, indicating once again that fluoride intake causes cognitive damage.
At Harvard University, researchers identified a link between fluoride and bone cancer. Published 14 years after it began, the study found that the highest rates of osteosarcoma, a fatal form of bone cancer, were occurring most in populations drinking fluoridated water. The findings confirmed those of a prior government study back in 1990 that involved fluoride-treated rats.
Kidney disease is another hallmark of fluoride poisoning. Multiple animal studies have found that fluoride levels as low as 1 part per million (ppm) — which is the amount added to most fluoridated water systems — cause kidney damage. And a Chinese study found that children exposed to slightly higher fluoride levels had biological markers in their blood indicative of kidney damage.
The NRC has also found that fluoride impairs proper thyroid function and debilitates the endocrine system. Up until the 1970s, fluoride was used in Europe as a thyroid-suppressing medication because it lowers thyroid function. Many experts believe that widespread hypothyroidism today is a result of overexposure to fluoride.
Since fluoride is present in most municipal water supplies in North America, it is absurd to even suggest that parents avoid giving it to their young children. How are parents supposed to avoid it unless they install a whole-house reverse osmosis water filtration system? And even if families install such a system, fluoride is found in all sorts of food and beverages, not to mention that it is absorbed through the skin every time people wash their hands with or take a shower in fluoridated water. Perhaps these are some of the reasons why the ADA has said nothing about the issue despite the findings.
There simply is no legitimate reason to fluoridate water. Doing so forcibly medicates an entire population with a carcinogenic, chemical drug. There really is no effective way to avoid it entirely, and nobody really knows how much is ingested or absorbed on a daily basis because exposure is too widespread to calculate. But political pressure and bad science have continued to justify water fluoridation in most major cities, despite growing mountains of evidence showing its dangers.
Ending water fluoridation is a difficult task, but concerted efforts by citizens, local authorities, and even dentists, have resulted in some significant victories.
Click here for the full report from Natural News
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Pilot Not Allowed Through Security After He Refuses ‘Naked’ Backscatter Scan
October 20th, 2010
TechDirt
There’s been a lot of talk lately about the new body scanners at airports, which create a “virtually naked” image of you — bringing up all sorts of privacy concerns, especially as reports are coming out about how the machines can record images. Many people, concerned about how these machines operate, have asked not to use them, and there are usually other options. Boing Boing points us to the story of a working, uniformed pilot (working for ExpressJet) who refused to go through the backscatter scanner. After being directed to a normal metal detector, and declared an “opt-out,” he was told he needed to be patted down by security. He refused, noting that it was intrusive and that he had made it through the normal metal detector without a problem (the same security review he’d been given for many years as a pilot — even in that same airport).
At that point, the TSA got upset, and a bunch of other folks got involved, including the airport police. He was detained, asked all sorts of questions (some he refused to answer), and not allowed to leave when he asked. At one point he was told he was free to leave, but then was stopped again and told he was not allowed to go until he spoke to one more person. The pilot, Michael Roberts, noted during his explanation of what happened that he’s actually taught the TSA-mandated security training program at ExpressJet. The whole story is yet another example of security theater in action — people just doing things because it’s on the checklist, not because it makes anyone more secure.
“What do you mean I ‘should know better’? Are you scolding me? Have I done something wrong?”
“I’m not saying you’ve done something wrong. But you have to go through security screening if you want to enter the facility.”
“Understood. I’ve been going through security screening right here in this line for five years and never blown up an airplane, broken any laws, made any threats, or had a government agent call my boss in Houston. And you guys have never tried to touch me or see me naked that whole time. But, if that’s what it’s come to now, I don’t want to enter the facility that badly.”
Click here for the full report from TechDirt
