Government Poisoned Citizens During Prohibition?
February 26, 2010
Slate
By Deborah Blum
It was Christmas Eve 1926, the streets aglitter with snow and lights, when the man afraid of Santa Claus stumbled into the emergency room at New York City’s Bellevue Hospital. He was flushed, gasping with fear: Santa Claus, he kept telling the nurses, was just behind him, wielding a baseball bat.
Before hospital staff realized how sick he was—the alcohol-induced hallucination was just a symptom—the man died. So did another holiday partygoer. And another. As dusk fell on Christmas, the hospital staff tallied up more than 60 people made desperately ill by alcohol and eight dead from it. Within the next two days, yet another 23 people died in the city from celebrating the season.
Doctors were accustomed to alcohol poisoning by then, the routine of life in the Prohibition era. The bootlegged whiskies and so-called gins often made people sick. The liquor produced in hidden stills frequently came tainted with metals and other impurities. But this outbreak was bizarrely different. The deaths, as investigators would shortly realize, came courtesy of the U.S. government.
Frustrated that people continued to consume so much alcohol even after it was banned, federal officials had decided to try a different kind of enforcement. They ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols manufactured in the United States, products regularly stolen by bootleggers and resold as drinkable spirits. The idea was to scare people into giving up illicit drinking. Instead, by the time Prohibition ended in 1933, the federal poisoning program, by some estimates, had killed at least 10,000 people.
Although mostly forgotten today, the “chemist’s war of Prohibition” remains one of the strangest and most deadly decisions in American law-enforcement history. As one of its most outspoken opponents, Charles Norris, the chief medical examiner of New York City during the 1920s, liked to say, it was “our national experiment in extermination.” Poisonous alcohol still kills—16 people died just this month after drinking lethal booze in Indonesia, where bootleggers make their own brews to avoid steep taxes—but that’s due to unscrupulous businessmen rather than government order.
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Duh! Study of the Week: Energy Drinks, Alcohol a Dangerous Mix
February 12, 2010
Business Week
By Robert Preidt
Mixing caffeine-laden energy drinks and alcohol is popular among young Americans, but it can lead to higher rates of drunkenness and impaired driving, a new study suggests.
University of Florida researchers surveyed more than 800 college-age patrons leaving bars between 10 p.m. and 3 a.m. The participants were asked about their energy drink and alcohol consumption and then had their breath-alcohol concentration levels measured.
The 6.5 percent of participants who said they’d been drinking alcohol mixed with energy drinks were three times more likely to be drunk than those who consumed alcohol only. The average breath-alcohol reading for those who consumed alcohol and energy drinks was 0.109, well above the legal limit of 0.08, the study authors noted.
The researchers also found that bar patrons who mixed alcohol and energy drinks left the bar later, drank for longer periods of time, and were four times more likely to say they planned to drive within the hour, compared to those who drank alcohol only, according to the report in the April issue of the journal Addictive Behaviors.
“There’s a very common misconception that if you drink caffeine with an alcoholic beverage the stimulant effect of the caffeine counteracts the depressant effect of the alcohol, and that is not true,” study co-author Bruce Goldberger, director of toxicology in the University of Florida College of Medicine, said in a news release from the school.
Caffeine simply reduces the sleepy feeling caused by alcohol. This condition, described as “wide awake and drunk,” can lead to risky behaviors, Goldberger explained.
It’s believed that as many as 28 percent of college drinkers consume alcohol mixed with energy drinks in a typical month.
“This study demonstrates that there definitely is reason for concern and more research is needed,” study author Dennis Thombs, an associate professor in the department of behavioral science and community health at the University of Florida College of Public Health and Health Professions, said in the news release.
“We don’t know what self-administered caffeine levels bar patrons are reaching, what are safe and unsafe levels of caffeine, and what regulations or policies should be implemented to better protect bar patrons or consumers in general,” Thombs added.
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Convicted Man Disputes HIV Risk
February 12, 2010
Winnepeg Sun
By Dean Pritchard
An HIV-positive man convicted of not disclosing his health status to his sex partners is seeking to overturn his 14-year prison sentence, arguing he posed no significant health risk to the victims.
Clato Mabior was convicted in 2008 of six counts of aggravated sexual assault in relation to six victims and one count each of sexual touching and sexual interference.
Mabior appeared Wednesday before the Manitoba Court of Appeal, where his lawyer Ian McNair argued Mabior’s “viral load” was so low his sex partners were at no significant risk of infection.
But what constitutes a significant risk, countered Crown attorney Liz Thompson.
“If one complainant is infected, can you say to them ‘Well, the chance was one in 100,000, so you’re out of luck?’
“We’re not criminalizing people with HIV,” Thompson said. “We’re saying as a person, you cannot put anybody in harm’s way.”
One of Mabior’s victims was 12-years-old at the time of the offences and three were 17. None of his victims have been diagnosed with HIV.
McNair said Mabior used a condom every time he had sex with two of the victims.
At the time of his March 2006 arrest, police believed as many as 45 girls and women may have been victimized by him. He stood trial in relation to 11 alleged victims.
Prior to his arrest, the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority issued a public warning Mabior was defying medical advice about his HIV and knowingly having sex with unsuspecting partners.
Police said they believed Mabior had been luring runaways to his Sherbrook Street home with the promise of intoxicants and a place to stay. At his trial, court heard Mabior plied some of his victims with alcohol and drugs.
At his sentencing, Mabior was credited five years for time served. His remaining sentence is just under 71/2 years.
Mabior is from Sudan and is expected to be deported once he has served his sentence.
The appeal court reserved its decision.
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Teenage Girls Live on Junk Food
February 11, 2010
Times Online
By Valerie Elliott
Teenage girls are eating a worse diet than they did ten years ago and putting their long-term health at risk, a national nutrition survey suggests.
Girls of secondary school age are not only living on junk food such as crisps, cakes, biscuits and fizzy drinks, but they are also smoking and drinking more than boys.
The pattern of consumption suggests that many girls are being influenced by fashion models. However, while girls aim to be slim, the study found that 37 per cent of teenage girls are overweight and 22 per cent are classified as obese. Among boys of the same age, 35 per cent are overweight but only 16 per cent are obese.
The preliminary findings of the National Diet and Nutrition Survey, released yesterday, have made such depressing reading for health chiefs that civil servants have turned to social networking sites such as Facebook and Bebo to see if 13 to 16-year-olds can be weaned on to healthy eating by their own friends.
The tactics are radical, but officials from the Food Standards Agency and Department of Health are dismayed that, despite all the healthy eating messages, only 7 per cent of girls are eating their “five a day” portions of fruit and vegetables and the average girl’s consumption is 2.8 portions.
Almost half of all girls are also failing to eat food rich in iron, such as cereals and red meat. A deficiency can lead to anaemia, which causes fatigue and lethargy and is a factor in some women failing to become pregnant.
Eleven per cent of girls aged 13 to 15 also admitted drinking alcohol every week, compared with 1 per cent of boys the same age, while 29 per cent of the young teenage girls said that they smoked cigarettes, compared with 16 per cent of boys.Dr Alison Tedstone, head of nutrition research at the agency, said: “Broadly, teenage girls don’t eat enough. Overall, they are a stand-alone group of the population whose diets are poor.”
An analysis of eating diaries found that the average teenage girl eats 54 grams of chips or fried potatoes every day while the average woman aged 19 to 65 eats just 40g. Each day the teenager also eats 14g of crisps or other salty snacks, 22g of sweets and choocolate, and 37g of cakes and biscuits.
The average older woman, however, will eat just 6g a day of crisps, 10g of sweets and chocolate, and 27g of cake and biscuits.
Researchers also found that teenage girls and boys were eating too much sugar and saturated fat. It is recommended that only 11 per cent of energy should come from food with sugars, yet secondary school age boys are consuming 16.3 per cent sugars a day and girls 15 per cent.
High levels of saturated fat which is linked to heart disease are also being eaten. The average recommended daily intake is 11 per cent, yet girls are eating 13.1 per cent a day and boys 12.7 per cent.
Dr Tedstone said she hoped that diets would improve as manufacturers reformulated products and lowered saturated fat and sugar content.
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Sweet Tooth in Kids Tied to Family’s Mental Health
February 1oth, 2010
BusinessWeek
Depression and a family history of alcoholism may play a role in how much of a sweet tooth a child has, new research suggests.
“We know that sweet taste is rewarding to all kids and makes them feel good. In addition, certain groups of children may be especially attracted to intense sweetness due to their underlying biology,” study author Julie A. Mennella, a developmental psychobiologist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, said in a news release from the center.
The new study included 300 children, aged 5 to 12, who were given tastes of five amounts of table sugar (sucrose) in water to determine their most preferred level of sweetness. The children were asked about the presence of depressive symptoms, and their mothers provided information on family alcohol use. About one-quarter of the children had depressive symptoms and 49 percent had a family history of alcoholism.
A liking for intense sweetness was greatest in the 37 children with both depressive symptoms and a family history of alcoholism, the researchers found. Among these children, their most preferred level of sweetness was 24 percent sucrose, equivalent to about 14 teaspoons of sugar in a cup of water and more than twice the sweetness of typical cola. This level of sweetness is one-third more intense than the 18 percent sucrose preferred by the other children.
It’s known that sweet taste and alcohol activate many of the same reward circuits in the brain. But Mennella said the study findings don’t necessarily mean there’s a link between a child’s sweet preferences and the risk of alcoholism later in life.
“At this point, we don’t know whether this higher ‘bliss point’ for sweets is a marker for later alcohol use,” she said.
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Exercise Removes Risk of Gallstones
February 9, 2010
BBC News
Doing lots of exercise drastically cuts the risk of developing painful gallstones, UK researchers have found.
Gallstones are common but only 30% of cases have symptoms and complications.
A University of East Anglia study of 25,000 men and women found those who were the most active had a 70% reduced risk of those complaints.
The team, writing in the European Journal of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, said one reason might be reduced cholesterol levels in the bile.
They said exercise also raised levels of “good” cholesterol and help improves movement through the gut, all of which could contribute to the lowered risk.
Those taking part in the study were split into four groups depending on how much exercise they did and the researchers found that those who did moderate amounts of exercise also had a lower risk of painful symptoms from gallstones than those who were the most inactive.
They worked out that if everyone increased the amount of exercise they did by one category 17% of gallstones that need medical treatment could be prevented.
Using the same data the researchers had previously discovered that drinking a moderate amount of alcohol is protective against gallstones.
Consuming two units a day cuts the chance of developing gallstones by a third, the earlier study showed.
Cholesterol
Gallstones form in the gallbladder from bile and are generally made up of hardened cholesterol.
It is thought that around one in three women and one in six men get gallstones at some point in their life but they are more common in older adults.
Other factors which increase the chances of them forming include pregnancy, obesity, rapid weight loss and some medications.
Many people who have gallstones may never know they have them but for some they cause severe pain, inflammation and infection and jaundice.
And almost 50,000 people have to have their gallbladders removed every year in the UK.
Study leader Dr Paul Banim, a clinical lecturer at the University of East Anglia and a specialist registrar in gastroenterology said: “It is difficult to prove a link between lifestyle and disease but we weren’t surprised to see these results.
“If everyone was to achieve the impossible and do the same amount of exercise as those in the most active category, gallstones could be reduced by 70%.”
Dr Charlie Murray, secretary of the British Society of Gastroenterology, said the study seemed to show a direct protective effect of higher levels of exercise.
“The study does not however tell us how much exercise is effective in prevention of gallstones as this would require specific recording of exercise activity, nor the mechanism by which exercise is protective.
“It does however demonstrate that as with the prevention of many disease processes, exercise improves your chances of staying healthy.”
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Experts Say 40% of Cancers Can Be Avoided
February 5, 2010
Reuters
A report by the Geneva-based International Union Against Cancer (UICC) highlighted nine infections that can lead to cancer and urged health officials to drive home the importance of vaccines and lifestyle changes in fighting the disease.
“If there was an announcement that somebody had discovered a cure for 40 percent of the world’s cancers, there would quite justifiably be huge jubilation,” UICC president David Hill told Reuters in a telephone interview.
“But the fact is that we have, now, the knowledge to prevent 40 percent of cancers. The tragedy is, we’re not using it.”
Cervical and liver cancer, both caused by infections which can be prevented with vaccines, should be top priorities, the report said, not only in rich nations, but also in developing countries where 80 percent of global cervical cancer occur.
Cancer is a leading cause of death worldwide and the total number of cases globally is increasing, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
The number of global cancer deaths is projected to rise by 45 percent from 2007 to 2030 from 7.9 million to 11.5 million deaths, driven partly by a growing and aging global population.
The UICC said it wanted to focus policymakers’ attention on cancer-preventing vaccines — like ones made by GlaxoSmithKline and Merck & Co against the human papillomavirus (HPV) which causes cervical cancer, and others against hepatitis B, which causes liver disease and cancer.
“Policymakers around the world have the opportunity and obligation to use these vaccines to save people’s lives and educate their communities toward lifestyle choices and control measures that reduce their risk of cancer,” Cary Adams, UICC’s chief executive, said in a commentary on the report.
Other cancer-causing infections include hepatitis C, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and Epstein Barr, a herpes-type virus transmitted by saliva.
The experts said the risk of developing cancer could potentially be reduced by up to 40 percent if full immunization and prevention measures were deployed and combined with simple lifestyle changes like quitting smoking, eating healthily, limiting alcohol intake and reducing sun exposure.
Hill said national health authorities should also work to dispel widespread myths about cancer, in particular a sense of fatalism felt by many people in the face of the disease.
As part of this, the UICC is launching a campaign called “Cancer can be prevented too” on World Cancer Day on February 4 to encourage people to face up to the fact that smoking, poor diet and some infections carry high cancer risks.
European cancer experts issued a report last year warning that a wave of cancer now threatens developing countries, estimating that around half of the 12.4 million new cases in 2008 occurred in low and middle income countries.
Despite the availability of so much scientific knowledge about the disease’s causes, Hill said there was great concern among health experts that “the opportunity to prevent this huge escalation of cancer may be missed.”
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Vitamin D Fights Bowel Cancer
January 22nd, 2010
Telegraph.co.uk
According to a study published in the British Medical Journal, those with the highest levels of the vitamin were at 40 per cent lower risk of developing the disease compared with those with the lowest levels.
Scientists looked at vitamin D quantities in 1,248 people with bowel cancer and 1,248 controls in the largest ever study of the subject.
The research was carried out by scientists at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in Lyon, France, and Imperial College London, and was funded by World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF).
It comes after medical experts expressed concern yesterday about the rising number of cases of rickets – caused by vitamin D deficiency – and called for it to be added to milk and other food products.
The main source of vitamin D is sunlight, through skin exposure, but it is also present in a small number of foods, such as oily fish or cod liver oil.
According to the research team, although the latest study provides evidence of a link between vitamin D and bowel cancer it does not prove that taking vitamin D supplements prevents the disease.
More studies are needed to find out the potential impact on other cancers and the effects of taking extra vitamin D doses, scientists said.
Dr Panagiota Mitrou, science programme manager for WCRF, said: ”This is the biggest ever study on this subject and there is now quite a lot of evidence from studying populations that people who have low levels of vitamin D are more likely to develop bowel cancer.
”The next step is to carry out new clinical trials to try to confirm whether vitamin D supplementation can reduce the risk of bowel cancer and whether there are any harmful effects of higher levels of vitamin D.
”Looking at the figures in this latest study, it suggests that increasing the UK’s vitamin D intake by 10% could prevent 7% of cases.
”And when you think that there are about 37,500 cases diagnosed in the UK every year, that could have a big impact.
”But we need to emphasise that, for the moment, the findings need to be treated with caution and they are certainly not enough evidence to suggest that we should be taking supplements to increase levels of vitamin D.
”The best advice for reducing risk of bowel cancer remains to stop smoking, maintain a healthy weight, be regularly physically active, to eat more fibre and less red and processed meats and to cut down on alcohol.”
Dr Mazda Jenab, the lead author of the study from the International Agency for Research on Cancer, said: ”Our results support a role for vitamin D in the etiology of colorectal cancer, but this has to be balanced with caution regarding the potential toxic effects of too much vitamin D and the fact that very little is known about the association of vitamin D with either increased or reduced risk of other cancers.”
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Alcohol and Heart Disease – Not What You’d Think
January 14, 2010
Natural News
By E. Huff
A Spanish study on alcohol consumption revealed that men who consume large amounts of alcohol cut their risk of heart disease by more than a third. At the same time, excessive alcohol consumption, which is responsible for 1.8 million deaths a year, will increase one’s risk of developing many other diseases.
The study analyzed 41,500 people, both men and women, between the ages of 29 and 69. Participants were followed for ten years and were asked to keep documentation about their drinking habits. What researchers found was that men who consumed alcohol daily reduced their risk of developing heart disease by 35 percent. Women did not experience the same results.
More extreme levels of alcohol consumption among men, between three and eleven (or more) shots of hard liquor a day, suggested a 50 percent decrease in heart disease. It is believed that women do not experience the same effects from alcohol as men do because of differences in female hormonal activity and the methods by which females process alcohol.
While partially unclear as to how it works logistically, scientists understand that consumption of alcohol tends to raise high-density lipoproteins, also known as “good” cholesterol, which prevents bad cholesterol from accumulating in the arteries.
Intake of alcohol is linked to the development of another type of heart disease called cardiomyopathy, which is a weakening of the heart’s ability to adequately function. Such a condition can result in death if not dealt with properly.
Experts reiterated the fact that while alcohol consumption may reduce one type of heart disease, it can cause many other problems including liver, brain, and pancreatic illnesses. The Stroke Association noted that high alcohol consumption increases one’s risk of having a stroke by 300 percent.
While adding to existing literature on the subject of the alleged benefits of alcohol, experts from across the board warned people not to take the study as a license to binge drink. The risks far outweigh the benefits and, unless a person is very careful in monitoring his or her intake, he or she may easily go over what is considered moderate alcohol limits.
Better ways to prevent heart disease include limiting intake of unhealthy fats and excess processed foods. Some nutrient-dense foods that are known to assist in maintaining healthy cholesterol levels include blueberries, grass-fed meats, wild salmon, garlic, avocados, coconut oil, dark green vegetables, apples and raw almonds.
Monsanto Making Genetically Modified Wheat
December 22, 2009
The Guardian News
By Henry Miller and Colin Carter
Wheat is a critical staple crop, supplying much of the world’s dietary protein. In 2007 world production was 607m tonnes, making it the third most-produced cereal after maize and rice. The grain is used to make breads, biscuits, cakes, breakfast cereal, pasta, noodles, and couscous, and for fermentation to make beer, vodka, and grain alcohol. Up to now, wheat has not benefited from the application of modern genetic engineering that has revolutionised the farming of maize, cotton, canola and soy. But that is about to change.
By 2004, Monsanto, the world’s leader in the production of seeds for genetically-engineered crops, had made substantial progress in the development of genetically-engineered wheat varieties for North America. But suddenly in that year, the company scrapped its wheat programme, in part because of opposition from North American grain merchants and growers, as well as concerns that some major foreign importers would reject imports of all American wheat because they could be “contaminated” with genetically engineered varieties. European countries and Japan, which have traditionally imported about 45% of US wheat exports, have been resistant to genetically engineered crops and food derived from them.
In addition, food manufacturers doubted that the introduction of genetically engineered wheat would lead to a significant improvement in their profits because the cost of wheat is typically only a small fraction of inputs for most processed food products, and food processors were afraid of losing market share if environmental and consumer activists were to organise boycotts of food products containing “biotech” wheat. For the last 25 years, activists have opposed agricultural biotechnology, in spite of proven environmental, humanitarian and economic successes.
Monsanto’s abdication gave competitors outside the US the opportunity to become the first to adopt new technologies for genetically improved and lower cost wheat, relinquishing what could have been a first-mover advantage – the privileged position of the initial occupant of a market segment.
However, American growers and millers have had a change of mind. In 2006, a coalition of US wheat industry organisations called for access to genetically-engineered wheat varieties with enhanced traits, and a survey released in February 2009 by the US national association of wheat growers found that more than three-quarters of US farmers wanted access to genetically engineered varieties with resistance to pests, disease, drought and frost. Such varieties are important as plant scientists and farmers continue to battle diseases such as leaf rust, the world’s most common wheat disease, which can lead to yield loss of up to 20%. In Kansas, the heart of the US wheat belt, for example, leaf rust is the most significant pest, in 2007, it destroyed a shocking 14% of the wheat crop.
American growers, caught in the middle between the inclinations of some of their largest customers and the developers of new wheat varieties, lost out on substantial benefits when Monsanto opted not to follow through with creating genetically-engineered wheat. This left the field (literally and figuratively) to countries such as Australia and China, which are now ahead in their research and field trials of genetically-engineered wheat. For example, the German plant science and chemical company Bayer and Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) are collaborating to develop wheat varieties with higher yield, more efficient nutrient use and greater tolerance against drought.
These developments are important for several reasons. Wheat farming is a struggling industry in the US, in large part because it has not received the technological boost from recombinant DNA technology that has benefited the corn and soybean industries. US wheat acreage is down by about one-third from its peak in the early 1980s, due to reduced profitability compared with alternative crops – in spite of the price of a bag of wheat flour having soared from $10 to a peak of $36 during the past 36 months. As a result, the US’s position as a leading wheat exporter has declined over several decades, from a high of 50% of world exports in 1973-74 to only around 20% currently.
Five years after letting their biotech wheat research program wither, Monsanto recently revealed plans to resurrect it. The agribusiness company not only announced in July 2009 that it would resume development of genetically engineered wheat varieties, it also further demonstrated its commitment by buying WestBred, a Montana-based wheat-breeding company that specialises in wheat germplasm, the plant’s genetic material.
Greater productivity in wheat farming achieved with improved varieties would confer an important environmental dividend: wheat is the largest crop in the world in terms of area cultivated (220m hectares) and is the second largest irrigated crop (each bushel produced requires 11,000 gallons of water on average), so enhanced productivity would conserve both farmland and water. (A more direct approach is being taken by scientists at Egypt’s Agricultural Genetic Engineering Research Institute, who have performed at least five years of field trials of drought- and salt-tolerant wheat created by transferring genes from barley into a local wheat variety.)
Monsanto’s volte-face reflects the company’s assessment that the various relevant factors – technology, business, public policy and customer acceptance – had now become favourable, and was spurred by the world food crisis that saw a tripling of the price of wheat and certain other food crops during 2008. But it will likely take at least eight years until the first varieties of Monsanto’s genetically-engineered wheat could be commercialised in the United States.
Monsanto and the US wheat industry may already have been relegated to the position of second mover, and whoever wins the race to get desirable genetically engineered wheat varieties to the marketplace will enjoy a strong cost advantage and attract market share in many importing countries.
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