Influenza Vaccine Has No Effect
February 10th, 2010
The Local
There is no evidence to support the contention that the influenza vaccine administered to the over 65s is of any more use than opening the windows and washing hands, a new study from the Cochrane Collaboration claims, according to a report in the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper.
•Sweden evaluates swine flu response (17 Jan 10)
•Swine flu named year’s top Swedish news story (30 Dec 09)
•Sweden’s swine flu response wins EU praise (4 Dec 09)
The Cochrane Collaboration, an international not-for-profit organization providing up-to-date information about the effects of health care, has compiled data from 40 flu seasons worldwide.
The institute has concluded from the studies that there is no clear evidence to suggest that the flu jab offers any more protection than cheaper, hygiene-based methods such as hand-washing.
“Our analysis is compiled using millions of data from 40 seasons worldwide. What we have seen is that the influenza vaccine can at best have a very small effect,” said Thomas Jefferson, one of the authors of the report, to the newspaper.
The Swedish Welfare Board (Socialstyrelsen) has for the past 40 years advised all those over 65-years-old to take an annual dose.
Most local health authorities in Sweden pay for the flu jab at a cost to the taxpayer of 25-30 million kronor ($3.5 million) per annum.
This is not the first time the Cochrane Collaboration has sounded the alarm over the paltry effects of the vaccine with a report published four years ago drawing the same conclusions, according to the newspaper.
The institute has now selected the best 75 of the available studies for this latest review of the evidence. While conceding that the studies are not of the best research quality, it concludes there is little evidence to suggest that the flu vaccine has any real effect.
The institute thus recommends a larger international, state-financed study to examine the vaccine and existing healthcare recommendations.
Click here for the full report
The Kevin Trudeau Show: 2-23-10
Today, Kevin risks his own freedom to give YOU the truth! Find out why the FTC is going after him and not McDonald’s or Big Pharma and why the first amendment apparently doesn’t apply to him.
Plus, get the headlines you won’t hear from the mainstream media:
Big Pharma Researcher Admits to Faking Research!
GlaxoSmithKline Hid Evidence of Avandia Harm
Pfizer Found Guilty of Criminal Fraud
Hospital Infections Have Killed Over 48,000 People
Acne Drug has Side Effect of Death
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Police Push for Warrantless Searches of Cell Phones
February 22, 2010
CNet
By Declan McCullagh
When Christian Taylor stopped by the Sprint store in Daly City, Calif., last November, he was planning to buy around 30 BlackBerry handhelds.
But a Sprint employee on the lookout for fraud grew suspicious about the address and other details relating to Taylor’s company, “Hype Univercity,” and called the police. Taylor was arrested on charges of felony identity fraud, his car was impounded, and his iPhone was confiscated and searched by police without a warrant.
A San Mateo County judge is scheduled to hear testimony on Thursday morning in this case, which could set new ground rules for when police can conduct warrantless searches of iPhones, laptops, and similarly capacious electronic gadgets.
This is an important legal question that remains unresolved: as our gadgets store more and more information about us, including our appointments, correspondence, and personal photos and videos, what rules should police investigators be required to follow? The Obama administration and many local prosecutors’ answer is that warrantless searches are perfectly constitutional during arrests.
“There are very, very few cases involving smartphones,” Chris Feasel, deputy district attorney for San Mateo County, said in an interview on Wednesday. “The law has not necessarily caught up to the technology.”
Feasel said the county’s position is that a search of a handheld device that takes place soon after an arrest is lawful. “It’s an interesting issue that may decide the future of how courts handle these kinds of cases, especially smartphones and iPhones,” he said.
Attorneys for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the San Francisco civil liberties group that’s representing Taylor, have asked the court to suppress any evidence obtained from the search of his iPhone. They say the search was “unconstitutional” because it was done without a warrant–and they say it also may have violated a 1986 federal law designed to protect the privacy of e-mail messages.
Privacy advocates say that long-standing legal rules allowing police to search suspects during an arrest–including looking through their wallets and pockets–should not apply to smartphones because the amount of material they store is so much greater and the risks of intrusive searches are so much higher. A 32GB iPhone 3GS, for instance, can hold approximately 220,000 copies of the unabridged text of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
“Neither the search of (Taylor’s) vehicle nor the search of his iPhone was justified by any exception to the warrant requirement,” the EFF and its co-counsel, San Francisco attorney Randall Garteiser wrote in a brief filed earlier this month.
Sex photos drew federal lawsuit
Concerns about privacy are not merely hypothetical. In March 2008, Nathan Newhard was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving in Culpeper, Va., and his cell phone was seized. In the pictures folder of the cell phone were multiple pictures of Newhard and his then-girlfriend, Jessie Casella, nude in sexually compromising positions.
Newhard and Casella–at that point no longer a couple–filed separate civil rights lawsuits against Sgt. Matt Borders, who they said alerted the rest of the police department on the radio “that the private pictures were available for their viewing and enjoyment.” Newhard claimed that, as a result of the incident, he was nonrecommended for continued employment with the Culpeper school system, where he had worked before the arrest.
A federal judge in Virginia last year agreed that the police conduct was “irresponsible, unprofessional, and reprehensible” but said that Culpeper police officers could not be held legally responsible because they did not violate any clearly established constitutional rights. In addition, the court pointed out, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled that “officers may retrieve text messages and other information from cell phones and pagers seized incident to an arrest” to preserve evidence.
The problem for EFF and its co-counsel in the San Mateo County case is that, while the U.S. Supreme Court has not taken up the issue, a number of other courts have reached similar conclusions. In 2007, the Fifth Circuit concluded that police were permitted to conduct a warrantless search for call records and text messages during an arrest. So did the Seventh Circuit in a 1996 case dealing with information from numeric pagers (“It is imperative that law enforcement officers have the authority to immediately ’search’ or retrieve, incident to a valid arrest, information from a pager in order to prevent its destruction as evidence.”)
“There’s a very good case that the police, as awful as it sounds, should be able to go through the contents of this phone,” said Adam Gershowitz, a professor at the South Texas College of Law who has written a paper on the topic. “Courts for the most part have held that a phone is like a container, a wallet or a purse.”
Then again, does an iPhone or Nexus One really have that much in common with a numeric pager? “The Fourth Amendment requires a search to be reasonable,” Gershowitz said. “At a certain point it just becomes so excessive as to be unreasonable, and we may be getting close to that point.”
From pagers to iPhones
The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, of course, prohibits “unreasonable” searches and seizures.
Warrantless searches generally violate the Fourth Amendment. But the Supreme Court has allowed an exception permitting warrantless searches at the time that someone is being arrested, on the grounds that police should be allowed to look for weapons or items that could be linked to an alleged crime. A second exception to the warrant requirement is a “booking search” that allows police to establish an inventory of the defendant’s possessions.
The examination of Taylor’s iPhone by the Daly City police department was a two-step process. After Taylor was taken to the prisoner processing center, Daly City detective Joseph Bocci conducted what prosecutors describe as a “limited search of the iPhone.” Then, armed with a search warrant, Bocci completed an analysis of the phone’s contents.
Meanwhile, Taylor’s business seems to be languishing. The HypeUOnline.com blog, created after his arrest, features only three test posts. And the linked Twitter account features only a series of messages titled “2,218 New Followers Within 7 Days” and “Make Money On Twitter” that include links to a non-existent Web page. (Prosecutors say Taylor has prior convictions for forgery, fraud, and identity theft.)
Another reason why a search of Taylor’s phone was constitutional, said Feasel, the deputy district attorney, is because “of the transitory nature of that information, because iPhones do present interesting issues with regards to e-mails, and because the iPhone with the 3.0 operating system does have a feature known as a remote wipe.”
“The potential for destruction of evidence by a defendant further bolsters our argument regarding limited search incident to arrest,” Feasel said.
There is a dispute about whether the iPhone was protected with a password. San Mateo County said in court papers that there is no evidence “that the iPhone was locked.” Feasel said that if there had been a password, “there would need to be a search warrant.”
Click here for the full report
Study Claims “Influenza Vaccine Has No Effect”
February 17th, 2010
infowars.com
There is no evidence to support the contention that the influenza vaccine administered to the over 65s is of any more use than opening the windows and washing hands, a new study from the Cochrane Collaboration claims, according to a report in the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper.
The Cochrane Collaboration, an international not-for-profit organization providing up-to-date information about the effects of health care, has compiled data from 40 flu seasons worldwide.
The institute has concluded from the studies that there is no clear evidence to suggest that the flu jab offers any more protection than cheaper, hygiene-based methods such as hand-washing.
Click here for the full report
China Milk Whistle Blower Accused of Social Disorder
February 3rd, 2010
guardian.co.uk
By Tania Branigan
Chinese police have referred to prosecutors the case of a father who campaigned over toxic baby formula. Zhao Lianhai, whose own child was made ill by the melamine contamination, is accused of trying to provoke social disorder.
The handover to prosecutors comes one day after the government announced a fresh crackdown on tainted milk products.
Zhao was detained in November by police, who say there is “ample evidence” to support a charge of provoking a serious disturbance.
Zhao set up a website for affected families and called for the creation of a national memorial day for victims. At least six babies died and 300,000 were taken ill after drinking products made by Sanlu, a dairy firm that closed as a result. The scare led to product recalls around the world.
“From September 2008 to September 2009, Zhao Lianhai used ‘protecting rights’ as well as the Sanlu milk powder issue as an excuse to hype and agitate people who did not know the truth to disturb social order … by shouting slogans and illegal gathering,” said the police statement, published on the blog of a lawyer.
The statement also cited Zhao’s backing for a young woman who was raped by a guard while in an illegal detention house. Investigators said he had used her case “as a way to hype and agitate many people who did not know the truth and foreign media [to] gather at the [gate of the Beijing public security bureau], disturbing the area’s social order.”
The statement added that evidence included videos, witness accounts and a confession from Zhao.
Zhao’s lawyer Peng Jian said it usually took around a month and a half for prosecutors to decide whether to press charges.
He added: “I cannot predict what the result will be because I heard the case has got a large amount of evidence, which I haven’t had a chance to review yet. If he ends up being prosecuted we will defend him as not guilty.”
Zhao was detained two hours after he and another father whose baby had been taken ill received an official apology from police in Haidian over their previous detention of the other man.
Yesterday, China announced a 10-day emergency campaign to root out tainted products – at least some of which had been confiscated when the scandal first broke out in late 2008. According to the state news agency Xinhua, they had been repackaged instead of being destroyed.
Melamine is normally used to make plastics and fertilisers. But when added to watered-down or poor quality milk, it appears to boost protein levels – allowing substandard products to pass nutrition tests.
Last month, it emerged that officials in Shanghai waited almost a year before warning the public that a company in the city was producing melamine-laced products.
Click here for the full report
The Kevin Trudeau Show: 12-23-09
Today, Kevin gives you the hard evidence behind the September 11th conspiracy, the reasons why Barack Obama is merely a puppet and his solution to Obamacare!!
Plus, Dr. Jeff McCombs, the author of LifeForce, explains how Candida is polluting your body and what you can do to rid your body of this toxin! Also find out how antibiotics are hurting you and how the McCombs Plan can completely transform your body!
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Censorship Bills in UK, Australia, and U.S. Aim to Block “Undesirable” Websites
December 18, 2009
Info Wars
By Steve Watson
Internet censorship bills currently working their way into law in the UK, Australia and the U.S. legislate for government powers to restrict and filter any website that it deems to be undesirable for public consumption.
In the UK, legislation slated as the “Digital Economy Bill“, currently being debated in the House of Lords, would allow the Home Secretary to place “a technical obligation on internet service providers” to block whichever sites it wishes.
Under clause 11 of the proposed legislation “technical obligation” is defined as follows:
A “technical obligation”, in relation to an internet service provider, is an obligation for the provider to take a technical measure against particular subscribers to its service.
A “technical measure” is a measure that — (a) limits the speed or other capacity of the service provided to a subscriber; (b) prevents a subscriber from using the service to gain access to particular material, or limits such use; (c) suspends the service provided to a subscriber; or (d) limits the service provided to a subscriber in another way.
In other words, the government will have the power to force ISPs to downgrade and even block your internet access to certain websites or altogether if it wishes.
The legislation comes in the wake of amplified UK government efforts to seize more power over the internet and those who use it.
For months now unelected “Secretary of State” Lord Mandelson has overseen government efforts to challenge the independence of the of UK’s internet infrastructure.
Mandelson also wants to impose harsh policies, via the Digital Economy Bill, that would see users’ broadband access cut off indefinitely, in addition to a fine of up to £50,000 without evidence or trial, if they download copyrighted music and films. The plan has been identified as “potentially illegal” by experts.
The legislation would impose a duty on ISPs to effectively spy on all their customers by keeping records of the websites they have visited and the material they have downloaded. ISPs who refuse to cooperate could be fined £250,000.
As Journalist and copyright law expert Cory Doctrow has noted, the bill also gives the Secretary of State the power to make up as many new penalties and enforcement systems as he likes, without Parliamentary oversight or debate.
Watery “Super Earth” Spotted 40 Light Years From Earth
December 18, 2009
The Register
By Lester Haines
The body – dubbed GJ1214b – is circling dim host star GJ1214 every 38 hours at a distance of just 1.3 million miles. The star’s modest surface temperature of 2,700°C, though, means that GJ1214b itself is a balmy 200°C.
The planet has a mass and radius of 6.5 and 2.7 times that of Earth, respectively. The density obtained from these figures “suggests that GJ1214b is composed of about three-fourths water and other ices, and one-fourth rock”.
CfA graduate student Zachory Berta, who first identified the planet, said: “Despite its hot temperature, this appears to be a waterworld. It is much smaller, cooler, and more Earthlike than any other known exoplanet.”
The discovery was made as part of the ground-based MEarth Project, which uses “an array of eight identical 16-inch-diameter RC Optical Systems telescopes that monitor a pre-selected list of 2,000 red dwarf stars”.
CfA elaborates: “Each telescope perches on a highly accurate Software Bisque Paramount and funnels light to an Apogee Alta U42 camera containing a charge-coupled device (CCD) chip, which many amateurs also use.”
The ’scopes keep an eye out for dips in brightness where an exoplanet transits its host star. Whereas super-Earths (between five 5 and 10 Earth masses) transiting bright stars such as our Sun are impossible to spot from Earth, those like GJ1214b which transit a dim host are within the capability of ground-based technology.
In this case, GJ1214 is around one-fifth the size of the Sun with a luminosity “only three-thousandths as bright”.
Having made their discovery, the CfA team then used the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) spectrograph at the European Southern Observatory “to measure the companion’s mass and confirm it is a planet”.
The exact nature of GJ1214b is unknown, but Berta suggested “some of the planet’s water should be in the form of exotic materials like Ice VII”, described as “a crystalline form of water that exists at pressures greater than 20,000 times Earth’s sea-level atmosphere”.
The CfA also has tantalising evidence of an atmosphere surrounding the planet, since when the team “compared the measured radius of GJ1214b to theoretical models, they found that the observed radius exceeds the model’s prediction, even assuming a pure water planet”.
This anomaly could be explained by an inhospitable atmosphere which is “gradually boiling off”, although it will fall to space-based instruments such as the Hubble Space Telescope to determine the facts.
MEarth project head David Charbonneau concluded: “Since this planet is so close to Earth, Hubble should be able to detect the atmosphere and determine what it’s made of. That will make it the first super-Earth with a confirmed atmosphere – even though that atmosphere probably won’t be hospitable to life as we know it.”
Ex-KGB Members Might Be the ClimateGate Hackers
December 11, 2009 by Andrew
Filed under Government
December 11, 2009
Tree Hugger
By Brian Merchant
What could make a story already brimming with intrigue, flared passions, and global controversy even more outrageous? Throw in the involvement of some ex-Russian secret service members. Yes, the ongoing investigation into the hacked climate emails that the media has dumbly taken to calling ‘ClimateGate’ has revealed some startling findings–the hacking very well may have been carried out by ex-KGB members.
Ex-KGB Hackers to Blame?
According to the British newspaper the Independent,
The computer hack, said a senior member of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, was not an amateur job, but a highly sophisticated, politically motivated operation. And others went further. The guiding hand behind the leaks, the allegation went, was that of the Russian secret services.
Now that’s an interesting allegation. But what’s the evidence of ex-KGB members’ involvement? Well, the hacked emails were first posted on a server of a firm called Tomcity, in the Siberian city of Tomsk. Tomcity is an internet security firm known for harboring hackers.
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), which is comprised largely of ex-KGB officers, has been proven to “invest significant resources in hackers” and there’s been much speculation that the agency works with Tomcity in online espionage. According to the Independent, “the Tomsk office has a record of issuing statements congratulating local students on hacks aimed at anti-Russian voices,” in which the FSB is thought to have a guiding hand.
Furthermore, the “Kremlin has also been accused of running co-ordinated cyber attacks against websites in neighbouring countries such as Estonia, with which the Kremlin has frosty relations,” according to the report.
Antidepressants Alter Your Personality
December 9, 2009
Los Angeles Times
By Melissa Healy
Peter D. Kramer, the psychiatrist and author of the path-breaking 1993 book “Listening to Prozac,” said in an interview today that he felt “vindicated” by a newly published study (“Personality Change During Depression Treatment,” by Tony Z. Tang et al) finding that selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants cause dramatic personality changes in depressed patients who take them.
“It’s hard not to feel justified” in the view–offered long before it became fashionable–that antidepressants now taken by 7% of American adults do more than lift depression: They nudge underlying personalities–even those of healthy people–into brighter, more appealing territory, and in so doing, raise ethical concerns about “cosmetic psychiatry.”
The study offers evidence that people who are unassertive, pessimistic, prone to worry and prefer to be by themselves or in small groups are more likely to develop depression, and that, when they take SSRIs, those underlying personality traits change more than most peoples’ change in an adult lifetime–in the span of 16 weeks. That change in basic outlook not only seems to be the thing that lifts them out of depression; it may even reduce the likelihood that they’ll relapse. (You can read our detailed account of the study and its findings here.)
While a group of subjects undergoing cognitive therapy had some of the same effects, they weren’t nearly as powerful as those that came from a pill–which in this case was paroxetine, marketed as Paxil.
Kramer found one possible inference from the study particularly striking: that it might turn on its head the view that many clinicians have of the value of drugs and/or cognitive therapy for their patients. “It looks like medicine is good for chronic personality traits and cognitive therapy is good for acute illness,” he said. Translation: Maybe any of us who are given to sad or worried rumination should be on SSRIs, and then, if we fall into depression anyway, we can get some time-consuming and expensive cognitive therapy. (That DOES sound like a treatment algorithm that would appeal to insurance companies.)
