Ingredient in Bananas May Prevent HIV Transmission
March 16, 2010
Topnews.us
By Jacob Ramsey
A new study reveals that a chemical has been found in bananas which may help prevent the transmission of virus causing AIDS.
The scientists from the University of Michigan said that the chemical lectin in bananas has been found as effective as two anti-HIV drugs, when tested in a laboratory. The scientists are now examining how this lectin could help combat AIDS.
Condoms and drugs are still in use to prevent the transmission of virus during sexual intercourse that causes AIDS. Scientists revealed that women living in poor countries require other forms of treatment to prevent the disease.
Lectin may help prevent the disease as it is very useful and is less expensive.
Lectins are sugar-binding proteins which play a vital role in recognition phenomena. This protein helps to identify the virus.
“That’s particularly true in developing countries where women have little control over sexual encounters so development of a long-lasting, self-applied microbicide is very attractive”, revealed study Senior Author Dr. David Marvovitz.
Click here for the full report.
Asthma Risk Increases For Children Exposed to BPA
March 1, 2010
BusinessWeek.com
By Amanda Gardner
Mouse pups whose mothers were exposed to a common but controversial chemical developed allergic asthma, new research has found.
Bisphenol A (BPA) is a chemical commonly found in polycarbonate plastic bottles and the aluminum lining of food and beverage cans. Production of the chemical started about 40 years ago, a timing that scientists note coincides with increasing asthma rates.
Various U.S. health agencies recently pledged $30 million toward short- and long-term research aimed at clarifying the health effects of BPA. It has caused problems in lab animals and in people who have had occupational exposure. On Thursday, Maryland became the third state to tackle the issue, when the state legislature passed a ban on BPA in cups and bottles used by children younger than age 4. Minnesota and Connecticut passed similar laws last year.
Although the newest study looked only at mice, several experts believed that the findings could be worrisome for humans.
“They’re using what are probably going to be reasonable estimates of human neonatal exposure, and that seems to have an effect on the developing immune system or sensitivity to asthma,” said Dr. Steve Georas, chief of pulmonary and critical care medicine and director of the Mary Parkes Center for Asthma, Allergy and Pulmonary Care at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York. “If you take it together with some epidemiologic studies, I would consider it cause for concern.”
Dr. Erick Forno, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine added that “the mice they used are very well-accepted models for asthma and allergies so it should be a very good model of what we would expect to happen in humans, although that is not always the case.”
The findings were to be presented Sunday in New Orleans at the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology annual meeting.
Previous studies by the same group had also suggested that pups born to mothers who had been exposed to BPA had an increased susceptibility to allergic asthma. The new study focused on which doses might tip the scale.
The researchers put 0.1, 1 or 10 micrograms per milliliter of BPA in the drinking water of female mice before, during and after pregnancy. Once born, their pups were injected with ovalbumin to make them susceptible to asthma.
Mice born to mothers who had been exposed to 10 micrograms of BPA developed airway problems, though that did not occur among mice born to mothers with lower or no exposure.
“It’s an exciting finding, an initial finding,” Forno said. “I think the next thing is going to have to be not only the level of exposure but also how much or how prolonged does the exposure have to be and if there are any other factors involved.”
The study’s senior author, Dr. Terumi Midoro-Horiuti, an associate professor of pediatrics and biochemistry and molecular biology in the Child Health Research Center at Children’s Hospital, University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, said her group is now collecting cord blood in humans, grouping that according to BPA exposure and following offspring to see if they develop asthma.
A second study being presented at the meeting found that children whose mothers had high levels of folate, a B vitamin, during pregnancy were more likely to develop asthma by the age of 3.
Too little folate, or folic acid, can contribute to neural tube defects in babies.
“This goes along the lines of thinking if some is good, more is better, and we have seen certainly with vitamin supplements, especially with antioxidants, that more is not necessarily better and may be worse,” Horovitz said. “Here we’re seeing it again.”
Data came from 507 mothers of children with asthma and 1,455 mothers of children without asthma, all part of the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study.
“In both cases, these studies illustrate how much prenatal environmental influence there is,” Horovitz said.
Click here for the full report.
Using Pharmaceuticals as Weapons
March 1, 2010
Natural News
By Mike Adams
Most people are familiar with traditional weapons of mass destruction such biological weapons, nuclear weapons and chemical weapons. The point of all such weapons of mass destruction is to inflict a large number of casualties on civilian populations as a way to cripple a nation into political or military submission.
When it comes to actually deploying weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) against civilian populations, no country has murdered more innocent civilians than the United States of America through its bombing of two Japanese cities during World War II. (This isn’t rhetoric, it’s an historical fact.)
Atomic bombs were very visible WMDs deployed in World War II as a way to force the empire of Japan to surrender to western forces. Since that time, full-scale nuclear weapons have never again been used directly on civilian targets, meaning the United States of America maintains the distinction of being the only nation in the history of human civilization to have dropped atomic weapons on civilian populations.
It begs the question: If national leaders believe dropping atomic weapons on civilian populations is justified, what other weapons might they feel justified in unleashing upon civilian populations?
Weapons of Mass Prescription
What if a nation wanted to reduce its own civilian population but do it covertly? One way to accomplish that would be to slowly poison the civilian population through exposure to toxic chemicals, heavy metals, hormone-disrupting molecules and nerve toxins.
And as any terrorist can tell you, the most covert way to accomplish that would be to inject such chemicals into the everyday products that people routinely consume: Water, food, personal care products and medicines. I even published a cartoon with this theme a couple of years ago.
Here’s another interesting fact: If you examine what’s in the water, food, products and medicines sold across North America, you’ll discover a dangerous assortment of chemicals that, taken together, could quite reasonably be considered weapons of mass destruction.
Interestingly, the fluoride dumped into public water supplies was originally an offshoot of the enrichment processing facilities for uranium to be used in nuclear weapons. These days, however, fluoride is usually just the toxic waste from fertilizer manufacturing factories or the waste from smokestack scrubbers of coal-fired power plants. Either way, it’s not good for your teeth: The entire fluoride agenda largely a convenient, low-cost way to dispose of industrial waste chemicals while calling it a public health program.
Antibacterial soaps derive their antibacterial properties from chemicals that are molecularly quite similar to the infamous Agent Orange used in the Vietnam War. And yet these products are openly marketed for use by children.
Similarly, children and adults continue to be poisoned by heavy metals like mercury thanks to the highly toxic practices of modern dentistry — an industry which astoundingly has still failed to admit to the obvious toxicity of a heavy metal its practitioners continue to install in people’s mouths as “silver fillings” (which actually contain more mercury than silver).
There are hormone-disrupting chemicals in most of the plastics used in the processed food industry — especially canned soups which are often highly toxic for a variety of other reasons. MSG and other nervous system destroyers are used throughout the food supply in soups, snack foods, salad dressings, flavorings and dips.
These are all chemical assaults of one kind or another, but the greatest assault on the minds and bodies of western consumers comes in the form of pharmaceutical chemicals. That’s why I call them ‘Weapons of Mass Prescription.’
Destroy any nation by destroying the health of its citizens
If you want to destroy any nation, simply unleash Big Pharma into its medical system. Within just two generations, its people will suffer widespread organ damage, sharp decline in cognitive function and rampant degenerative disease brought on by the side effects of everyday pharmaceuticals.
Click here for the full report
The Active Intelligence in Plants
February 22, 2010
Natural News
By Ethan A. Huff
Most vegetarians believe that by not eating animals, they are preserving life. Everyone knows that plants are alive but they are not viewed with the same level of intelligence as animals are. As science continues to uncover the complex nature of plants, it is becoming more apparent that plants are actively intelligent life that pursue their continued existence in similar ways as do animals.
Research on the subject naturally flies in the face of strict vegetarianism which often insists that eating animals is murder but eating plants is just fine. Yet the facts illustrate that the characteristics of animals used to argue that eating them is murder also apply to plants. In other words, in order for strict vegetarians to be consistent in their beliefs, they would also have to stop eating fruits and vegetables.
Plants are very sensitive to environmental changes and they have many built-in mechanisms to ward off attackers. They strive to find the best resources and have been observed to actually anticipate hurdles to survival and work to overcome them in advance.
According to Monika Hilker from the Institute of Biology at the Free University of Berlin, plants are intelligent life that communicate through chemical signals. They are capable of listening, talking, seeing, and feeling, all senses for which most people think only animals have the capability.
Linda Walling from the University of California agrees, noting that animals actively ward off predators in order to survive. Many plants release chemicals or other deterrents when a bug nips at their leaves or stems, similar to how the immune system releases antibodies to ward off infection or disease. Plants are also able to identify nearby plant competitors and alter their growth patterns away from other plants.
Researchers from Pennsylvania State University analyzed plant responses to predators and found that in less than 20 minutes, a plant being eaten by a caterpillar was able to convert carbon from the air into a chemical compound designed to deter the caterpillar from continuing. It appeared to perform this task entirely from scratch.
Plants also send signals that are the equivalent of a cry for help, often attracting predators of their predators who snatch up the attackers and eat them. This is just one of many ways in which plants communicate with the living world around them in order to survive.
Rather than serve as a point of contention, the facts about intelligent plant life merely call into question the alleged ethics of eating only plants rather than animals. Both are intelligent creatures designed to maintain survival. Humans are even more intelligent creatures, choosing to survive by eating plants, animals, or both.
Click here for the full report
The Forced Vaccine Argument – Act of Violence?
February 22, 2010
Natural News
By Mike Adams
This parody cartoon grew out of the idea that vaccines are “shots” that are being increasingly forced upon children and teens. At times, these vaccines are enforced at gunpoint or with the presence of vicious guard dogs — as happened in Maryland two years ago when a court judge ordered thousands of parents to bring their children to court for vaccination or face gunpoint arrest and possible jail time.
Most modern vaccinations are, of course, a form of chemical violence against children. If they were all formulated without chemical preservatives (like thimerosal) and dangerous adjuvants (which can harm the nervous system), that might be a different story. But far too many of today’s vaccines are chemical concoctions that are entirely unnatural to the human body. To force them into the bodies of innocent children is an act of medical violence.
The method of introducing the vaccines is unnatural and highly interventionist: These chemicals and DNA / RNA fragments are injected directly into the tissues and blood, bypassing the skin (a normal protective defense) and bypassing the digestive system, too. An injected mandatory vaccine dumps foreign material directly into the bloodstream of children without the consent of either the child or the parents — that’s what qualifies mandatory vaccines as “chemical violence” against children.
The Mad Doctor is in
The doctor in this parody cartoon was intentionally created to depict a “crazed” mad doctor because nothing turns an ordinary doctor into a mad man faster than an argument about vaccines. While he may seem to be a reasonable person on all other subjects, once you challenge him on the dangers of over-vaccination of children, all reason gets thrown out the window and he morphs into a raging lunatic of unscientific emotion.
The complete lack of scientific evidence supporting the safety and efficacy of vaccines makes no difference to him. “Vaccines need no science,” he’ll say, “Because everybody knows they work!”
My offer of $10,000 to anyone who can produce a scientific study proving the safety and effectiveness of H1N1 vaccines remains utterly unclaimed.
Vaccine failures are common
Meanwhile, in the real world vaccines are failing miserably. A recent outbreak of mumps in the New Jersey / New York area occurred almost entirely among children who had already been vaccinated against mumps.
Clearly if vaccines really worked, then an outbreak should have only occurred among those who were NOT vaccinated against mumps, right? But as I reported here on NaturalNews, 77 percent of the children who got infected had already been vaccinated!
A similar truth emerges when you look at H1N1 deaths: Thousands of those who were vaccinated against H1N1 swine flu had already received the vaccine shots (http://www.naturalnews.com/027956_H…). We still don’t know the exact number of how many vaccinated people died because the CDC is hiding that data from the public, making sure the mainstream media doesn’t learn the truth that even many of those who were vaccinated still died.
What the CDC and its Big Pharma cohorts want people to mistakenly believe is that vaccines always offer protection against infectious disease. (100% protection). But this is blatantly false. In fact, because vaccines introduce a weakened virus into the body, they may hamper the normal immune response, creating systemic weakness that makes people more vulnerable to future infectious disease. In essence, weakened viruses create weakened immune responses, “training” the immune system to be more passive against future threats. That’s why people who received vaccines in the past are far more likely to die of infectious disease in the future.
Click here for the full report
Pesticide Linked to Honey Bee Threat
February 22, 2010
Natural News
By Ethan A. Huff
A U.S. District Judge from Manhattan has banned the sale of spirotetramat, a pesticide produced by Bayer CropScience. Citing allegations by environmental groups and commercial beekeepers that the pesticide is toxic and is killing off the nation’s honeybee population, Judge Denise Cote has declared that sales of spirotetramat must cease after January 15.
According to Cote, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) did not follow proper procedure when approving spirotetramat. The EPA did not take public comment about the pesticide before approving it and the agency failed to publish both the Bayer application and the approval documents in the Federal Register. The EPA and Bayer CropScience have 60 days to appeal the decision.
According to Bayer CropScience, spirotetramat is perfectly safe and does not harm honeybees, insisting that the pesticide has been extensively tested. The company laments the fact that the chemical was banned because of procedural faults but did not indicate how it would proceed.
According to Aaron Colangelo, an attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), spirotetramat is a potentially hazardous insecticide that should be pulled from the market and evaluated further. The NRDC in conjunction with the Xerces Society, a wildlife conservation group based in Portland, jointly sued the EPA over its approval of the pesticide.
Amazingly, the EPA admits that it approved spirotetramat illegally but has argued that its actions should have no consequences. This speaks volumes to the agency’s arrogance in how it views its role as a regulatory agency.
Dave Hackenberg, one of Pennsylvania’s largest beekeepers, is appreciative of the judge’s decision. After all, he has been losing more than half of his bees every winter due to what he believes are pesticides. He leases his bees out to various growers every year to assist in pollination but he says that each year, more and more bees are dying. This past year, he lost about half of his bees by midwinter which was the largest amount to date.
Maryann Frazier, a researcher from Penn State University, agrees with the notion that pesticides play a large role in what is now being termed “Colony Collapse Disorder” (CCD), the massive die-off of bees with no clear explanation as to why they died. She believes that a number of factors contribute to CCD and that further research must be done.
Bees are a necessary insect that must be preserved. Without them, there would be no food. According to the Department of Agriculture, bees pollinate over $15 billion worth of U.S. crops.
Click here for the full report
Agriculture Chemical Linked to Serious Birth Defects
February 22, 2010
Natural News
By S.L. Baker
Gastroschisis is a birth defect in which the intestines, and sometimes other organs, develop outside the fetal abdomen and poke out through an opening in the abdominal wall. Long considered a rare occurrence, gastroschisis has mysteriously been on the rise over the last three decades. In fact, the incidence of the defect has soared, increasing two to four times in the last 30 years. But why?
Researchers think they’ve found the answer. The culprit behind the suffering of babies born with this condition appears to be the agricultural chemical atrazine. That’s the conclusion of a study just presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM) held in Chicago.
Researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle were alerted to a higher than normal number of cases in of the birth defect in babies born in eastern Washington. So they began investigating to see if the increased incidence was due to some kind of environmental exposure in that area.
“Our state has about two times the national average number of cases of gastroschisis,” Dr. Sarah Waller, one of the study’s authors, said in a statement to the media. “The life expectancy for fetuses with this diagnosis is better than 90 percent; however it requires delivery at a tertiary care center with immediate neonatal intervention which often separates families and can cause serious financial and emotional stress.”
The condition can lead to poor function of the bowel after delivery and potential long term feeding problems. Bottom line: babies with this birth defect must undergo the trauma of surgery right after birth. And while most survive, some babies with gastroschisis have significant damage to the bowel due to direct contact between the intestine and amniotic fluid or because the intestine was twisted. These infants may develop a condition known as “short gut” which can lead to stunted growth and a host of feeding and other problems.
For the new study, Dr. Waller and her research team went to work investigating all cases of live born infants with gastroschisis during the period between 1987 and 2006. They matched birth certificates with databases from the U.S. Geological Survey that revealed where agricultural spraying took place and what chemicals were used. It turns out the chemicals atrazine, nitrates, and 2, 4 dichlorophenoxyacetic acid were heavily sprayed in the area.
Of the 805 cases and 3,616 controls in the study, gastroschisis developed far more frequently among babies whose mothers lived less than 25 km from the site of high surface water that was specifically contaminated with one of the chemicals — atrazine. What’s more, the risk of gastroschisis was found to especially rise in babies of women who conceived in the spring, from March through May. Those are the months when use of the chemical is the most prevalent.
The problem with atrazine
According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), atrazine is applied to crops (especially corn, sorghum, and sugarcane) before and after planting to control broadleaf and grassy weeds. It is used most heavily in the Midwest on agricultural crops but it is also applied to residential lawns, particularly in Florida and the Southeast.
Problems linked to atrazine have been in the news previously. Earlier research showed it causes sexual abnormalities in frogs and the chemical has also been linked to prostate cancer in workers at an atrazine manufacturing plant.
So why is it still widely used? Unfortunately, the EPA has done little to address the mounting evidence that atrazine is harmful to humans as well as animals. Last fall the agency announced it was going to start a new assessment of the chemical in 2010 that could take months to years to complete. In the meantime, tons of atrazine will continue to be sprayed on crops and lawns — and mothers and their unborn babies will continue to be exposed to this chemical now linked to a serious and potentially deadly birth defects.
Click here for the full report
Government Pushing Toxic Chemical to Farmers for Crops
February 22, 2010
Natural News
By Ethan A. Huff
The federal government is pushing farmers to use a toxic byproduct of the coal burning industry to fertilize and loosen the soil in their crop fields. Initiated under the Bush administration as a beneficial use for the substance, efforts by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) in conjunction with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) continue to advocate for the widespread use of synthetic gypsum in agriculture.
Called flue gas desulfurization gypsum, or FGD gypsum, this synthetic powder is produced by coal plant “scrubbers” that remove sulfur dioxide from plant emissions. Sulfur dioxide is the chemical that causes acid rain to occur. FGD gypsum is a white, powdery substance that some believe will help to enrich crop field soil.
The current administration has been pushing for the agricultural use of FGD gypsum despite the fact that it is known to contain toxic heavy metals such as lead, mercury, and arsenic. According to the EPA, the mercury contained in FGD gypsum does not affect plants and runoff into water supplies at “significant” levels. As far as the other heavy metals are concerned, the EPA is holding to the mantra that the levels are minute, contending that using in in crop fields is perfectly safe.
Last year, a coal ash pond just outside of Knoxville, Tennessee, spilled, flooding about 300 acres of land with ash and killing many fish in the area. The spill damaged many homes as well and cleanup costs are expected to be upwards of $1 billion. This catastrophe has prompted the EPA to draft regulations on how to handle toxic coal waste safely.
The EPA would not comment, however, about its support for FGD gypsum in agricultural use in light of the spill and the damage it caused. If the waste from coal plants is toxic and must be dealt with in a manner that keeps it contained, many are wondering why the EPA would promote the same waste for use on crops.
In 2001, the USDA partnered with the EPA to promote FGD gypsum use. Since that time, the amount of the substance used by farmers on their fields has triple. According to the American Coal Ash Association (ACAA), nearly 280,000 tons of the byproduct was spread on fields last year.
Thomas Adams, executive director of the ACAA indicated that almost nine million tons of the roughly 18 million tons of FGD gypsum produced last year was used to make drywall. He believes that finding new ways to recycle the substance is preferable to dumping it in landfills.
Click here for the full report
Avoid Chemicals and Use Common Herbs as Pesticides
February 15, 2010
Natural News
By David Gutierrez
Essential oils extracted from common kitchen herbs and spices can be used as safer, less destructive pesticides, according to research led by Murray Isman of the University of British Columbia and presented at the Fall Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Washington, D.C.
“We are exploring the potential use of natural pesticides based on plant essential oils — commonly used in foods and beverages as flavorings,” Isman said.
Isman’s team has been researching the pest control properties of clove, mint, rosemary and thyme for 10 years, and has found that diluted mixtures of the essential oils from two to four of the plants can be used to both repel and kill agricultural pests. These natural pesticides have been effectively used to fight aphids and mites that would otherwise prey on spinach, strawberry and tomato crops.
The essential oils provide several major advantages over synthetic pesticides. They are significantly less toxic to farm workers and the surrounding environment than synthetic chemicals. Because they break down quickly, they are less likely to cause lasting harm to the environment or human health. Researchers also claim that insects are less likely to evolve resistance to the plant compounds.
Because they are not engineered but simply extracted from foods already deemed safe, essential oil pesticides do not need regulatory approval and can be used on organic crops.
Because the essential oils degrade so quickly in the environment, however — lasting as little as a few hours — they need to be applied relatively frequently. In comparison, synthetic pesticides may remain in the soil for months and resist breakdown long after this time, which is part of what makes them so dangerous. The herb and spice-based pesticides also need to be applied in larger doses than synthetic pesticides.
“They’re not a panacea for pest control,” Isman said. “It comes down to what’s good for the environment and what’s good for human health.”
Click here for the full report
Babies Testing for BPAs in the Womb
January 28th, 2010
Natural News
By E. Huff
For the first time in the history of its testing, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) has found bisphenol A (BPA) in the umbilical cord blood of American babies. Nine out of ten samples tested positive for the chemical, a shocking number when considering the laundry list of chronic illnesses that are associated with BPA exposure.
Used in the production of polycarbonate plastics and epoxy resins, BPA has come under increasing scrutiny over the past several years for its role in contributing to the development of cancer, endocrine damage, reproductive problems, and neurological dysfunction. Many plastics manufacturers have begun removing the additive from their products, despite continued reassurances by the FDA that the chemical is safe.
Studies continue to show that BPA is dangerous, even at minimal levels, and that it should not be used in consumer products. Several groups, including the Endocrine Society and the American Medical Association (AMA), have expressed opposition to the use of BPA. Scientists are finding that low-dose exposure, especially during early developmental years, can actually cause more endocrine and reproductive problems than larger-dose exposure due to the way the body recognizes the chemical.
Not only was BPA found in babies, but 231 other chemicals were detected as well, indicating that human beings are exposed to more toxic chemicals than ever. Experts fear that such an onslaught of toxicity may cause permanent damage to the next generation of Americans.
Public outcry over the FDA’s continued approval of BPA despite numerous studies revealing its dangers has led the agency to express that it will reevaluate its position. The agency was supposed to issue an updated review about BPA safety on November 30 but it never actually followed through. The FDA most recently claimed that the report will be made available before the end of the year.
Experts and analysts believe the food industry is behind the push to keep BPA legal, exerting influence on the FDA to conceal the truth about its dangers. Many manufacturers have voluntarily been able to eliminate BPA from their products, illustrating that there is no reason why it should continue to be used by anyone.
The AMA, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists have all endorsed a resolution that calls on Congress to minimize or eliminate the use of BPA in consumer products. The EWG hopes that top priority will be given to the issue in light of the group’s recent discovery.
Click here for the full report
