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.
Research Says HIV Can Hide in Bone Marrow
March 8, 2010
Google News
By Associated Press
The virus that causes AIDS can hide in the bone marrow, avoiding drugs and later awakening to cause illness, according to new research that could point the way toward better treatments for the disease.
Finding that hide-out is a first step, but years of research lie ahead.
Dr. Kathleen Collins of the University of Michigan and her colleagues report in this week’s edition of the journal Nature Medicine that the HIV virus can infect long-lived bone marrow cells that eventually convert into blood cells.
The virus is dormant in the bone marrow cells, she said, but when those progenitor cells develop into blood cells, it can be reactivated and cause renewed infection. The virus kills the new blood cells and then moves on to infect other cells, said.
“If we’re ever going to be able to find a way to get rid of the cells, the first step is to understand” where a latent infection can continue, Collins said.
In recent years, drugs have reduced AIDS deaths sharply, but patients need to keep taking the medicines for life or the infection comes back, she said. That’s an indication that while the drugs battle the active virus, some of the disease remains hidden away to flare up once the therapy is stopped.
One hide-out was found earlier in blood cells called macrophages. Another pool was discovered in memory T-cells, and research began on attacking those.
But those couldn’t account for all the HIV virus still circulating, Collins said, showing there were more locations to check out and leading her to study the blood cell progenitors.
Finding these sources of infection is important because eliminating them would allow AIDS patients to stop taking drugs after their infection was over. That’s critical in countries where the treatment is hard to afford and deliver.
“I don’t know how many people realize that although the drugs have reduced mortality we still have a long way to go,” Collins said in a telephone interview. “That is mainly because we can’t stop the drugs, people have to take it for a lifetime.”
The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, Burroughs Wellcome Foundation, University of Michigan, Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship, National Science Foundation and a Bernard Maas Fellowship.
Click here for the full report.
Bill Gates’ Vaccination Scam Looks to Generate Money, Not Cures
Rense.com
By Thomas C. Mountain
The “richest man in the world,” Microsoft’s Bill Gates, recently announced that he was making a $10 billion donation towards finding vaccines to prevent some of the world’s worst diseases.
Malaria is the number one killer in Africa. From what I’m hearing about $1 billion of Bill Gates donation/tax write-off is for research to find a vaccine to prevent malaria.
The African country of Eritrea, where I live, has reduced malaria mortality by 85 percent in the last seven years. How? By using basic public health methods. By distributing pesticide treated mosquito nets and organizing the pesticide retreatment every three months of mosquito nets. By habitat eradication. And by community medical clinics for immediate treatment.
Malaria is a parasite-based disease noted for its variety and quick development of resistance to medication. Any “vaccine,” if even a billion dollars is able to produce such, would have a limited lifetime and new, patented medications would have to be bought by Africa’s poor every few years.
So “donating” a billion dollars to develop a malaria “vaccine” could turn into tens of billions of dollars in drug sales in Africa alone, and Bill Gates, through his drug company investments, will quietly pocket more African blood money.
All the while a very successful malaria mortality reduction program is operating, effectively, safely and affordably, in Eritrea.
Why isn’t this being publicized internationally? Could it be that such a program is not going to put billions into the pockets of the drug lords of Western finance?
Bill Gates and other assorted financial terrorists through their control of the Western media and “aid” organizations are suppressing implementation of a successful malaria mortality program while investing in a malaria drug addiction for Africa’s people.
These financial terrorists are perfectly willing to see millions die in Africa while they search for their next highly profitable “wonder drug” to cure malaria, all the while deliberately ignoring, worse, engineering a white out/cover up of what could prevent millions of deaths, let alone uncounted suffering.
And HIV/AIDS, Africa’s N0.2 killer? Bill Gates is said to be providing over a billion dollars for research into developing an AIDS vaccine. AIDS, a virus based disease, has already shown to have varieties and to have developed resistance to the medications developed to treat it. Like the flu vaccine, a new AIDS vaccine would most likely have to be developed every few years to combat the latest strain of the AIDS virus; another gold mine of new, patented medications for sale to Africa’s sick.
Eritrea has reduced HIV/AIDS infection rates by 40 percent, according to Physicians for Peace, and is the only country in Africa to reduce HIV/AIDS. How? By using public health education promoting condom use everywhere in the country. Over a billion for a “vaccine” that may never work while an effective program that can reduce HIV/AIDS infection by 40 percent, safely and affordably can be immediately implemented?
Remember, Western billionaires didn’t get that way by being out to really help anyone. Millions die in Africa as the Western drug lords and their financial terrorist stockholders reap their billions in blood money. All the while real heroes in the Eritrean public health service struggle to save people’s lives.
So don’t believe that Bill Gates is up to any good when he donates $10 billion to vaccine research, just the opposite. And don’t forget that as far at the USA is concerned in Africa, no good deed goes unpunished, and, once again, Eritrea is subject to UN Security Council sanctions.
Stay tuned to Online Journal for more news from Africa’s Horn that the so called free press in the west refuses to cover.
Click here for the full report
Mad Cow Disease Able to Mutate and Evolve
March 1, 2010
Natural News
By Ethan A. Huff
The Scripps Research Institute has published a study in the journal Science alleging that prions, lifeless protein particles that are believed to cause serious brain diseases, are able to mutate and develop resistance to drugs in the same way that bacteria and other living things do.
Associated with over 20 different brain diseases, prions have typically been thought to morph only once and in the presence of living transformation agents but recent research is suggesting that these proteins can continue to mutate as they transfer from host to host, becoming more virulent each time.
In the presence of infections like mad cow disease, prions are converted from their normal state into an abnormal, malignant state. As the disease gets passed around, it often becomes more deadly due to the ever changing characteristics of the prions which develop increasingly resistant to drugs.
Charles Weissman, head of the department of infectology at Scripps in Florida, remarked that prions have similar adaptive characteristics as viruses, yet without the DNA or RNA. Interestingly, lab tests showed that prions which were removed and placed into a new environment ended up out-performing those that remained in the original host. Each time prions are moved to a new environment, those that survive and adapt do so more quickly and effectively than did the ones at the original source.
Prions are normal and likely exist throughout the body. Though excited about their findings, researchers noted that the implications of their discovery reveal much about the dangers of continually mutating disease. Their solution is to investigate new drugs that can block normal prion proteins in order to prevent them from ever adapting and causing the host to develop resistance to other drugs.
Drugs, drugs, and more drugs seem to be the answer to every medical science problem in the Western world, even when the problem in question was likely caused by drugs. Similar to “superbugs” that are emerging due to overuse of antibiotics, the emergence of mutating proteins which develop resistance to drugs cannot be remedied by more drugs.
Mad cow disease is the result of feeding cows ground cow meal and other animal byproducts. Rather than pursue yet another drug to solve the problem, perhaps the best option is to reassess what cows eat and reformulate it to what is proper and healthful. The same strategy can and should be pursued with other diseases that easily morph and become increasingly virulent.
Click here for the full report
CDC Calls For Flu Vaccine For All
February 26, 2010
WEbMD
By Daniel J. DeNoon
Everybody, not just those at risk of complications, should get a yearly flu shot, the CDC’s immunization advisory panel says.
The CDC almost certainly will make universal flu vaccination official U.S. policy for this fall’s 2010-2011 flu season, as it consistently follows the advice of the panel of outside experts, called the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP).
Now flu vaccination will be advised even for healthy adults ages 19 to 49 who do not come into contact with infants or elderly people, who are at highest risk of flu complications.
That’s only 15% of the U.S. population. But the ACIP say the effect of the universal recommendation will affect far more people. That’s because a lot of people for whom the flu vaccine already is recommended don’t think of themselves as being at high risk.
Moreover, the universal recommendation simplifies the extremely complicated current recommendations that create confusion about who should and should not be vaccinated. And it makes it likely that insurers will cover flu shots for all healthy adults.
ACIP members also said that the universal recommendation would assure Americans that the nation’s public health experts are fully confident in the safety and effectiveness of the flu vaccine — particularly the H1N1 swine flu vaccine.
The 2010-2011 seasonal flu vaccine will include the H1N1 swine flu vaccine, as the pandemic virus appears to have replaced the seasonal H1N1 virus covered by previous vaccines. The new seasonal vaccine will also include protection against the predominant “Perth” H3N2 type A and “Brisbane” type B flus.
Click here for the full report
Deadly Hybrid Flu Possible
February 22, 2010
HealthDay News
Research in mice suggests the avian flu virus and the ordinary seasonal flu virus could combine to create a new deadly kind of flu, researchers say.
A single bit of genetic material from the seasonal virus converted the avian flu — officially known as H5N1 — into a very dangerous form, the scientists report in a study published in the Feb. 22-26 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Some hybrids between H5N1 virus and seasonal influenza viruses were more pathogenic than the original H5N1 viruses. That is worrisome,” study senior author Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said in a news release.
Avian flu, also known as bird flu, has killed 262 people, according to the World Health Organization, but it hasn’t become very infectious between people.
The researchers warn that swine flu — H1N1 — could also play a role in viral combinations.
“With the new pandemic H1N1 virus, people sort of forgot about H5N1 avian influenza. But the reality is that H5N1 avian virus is still out there,” Kawaoka said. “Our data suggests that it is possible there may be reassortment between H5N1 and pandemic H1N1 that can create a more pathogenic H5N1 virus.”
Click here for the full report
WHO Advising Swine Flu Vaccine to be Combined With Regular Flu Vaccine
February 22, 2010
Associated Press
The World Health Organization is recommending that swine flu be added to the regular flu vaccine next season.
WHO said in a statement Thursday that it held a meeting this week to decide which flu strains should be recommended to drug makers for their vaccines during the northern hemisphere’s next flu season, which begins in the fall.
Flu vaccines have three virus strains — which experts decide on after estimating which strains made the most people sick last season.
Last year, the swine flu pandemic virus, or H1N1, emerged too late to be added to the regular flu vaccine and a new vaccine was needed.
Click here for the full report
Scientists Looking into Non-refridgerated Vaccines
February 22, 2010
BBC News
By Jane Dreaper
Writing in Science Translational Medicine, they say the breakthrough could significantly help efforts to immunise more children in rural Africa.
The researchers mixed the vaccines with two types of sugar before slowly drying them on a filter paper.
This preserved the jabs, which were then easily reactivated when needed for injection.
The need to keep vaccines cool – to stop them deteriorating – is often difficult in developing countries where fridges, clinics and an electricity supply cannot be taken for granted.
Writing in the journal Science Translational Medicine, the scientists describe how they managed to keep vaccines stable for up to six months at 45C.
They used sucrose and another sugar called trehalose, which is known for its preservative properties.
‘Simple and cheap’
The research was funded by the foundation set up by Bill and Melinda Gates. It involved a collaboration between the university scientists and a company, Nova Bio-Pharma Technologies.
The lead investigator, Professor Adrian Hill, said: “If we could convert all the standard vaccines to a solution like this, it would mean they’re cheaper to deliver, because they’d survive at room temperature – and so there’d be scope to vaccinate more children.
“The technology is simple and extremely cheap – and there are no more scientific hurdles to overcome.
“Our tests were pretty tough as we used live viruses. So we feel that having stabilised those more fragile vaccines, this method should work for other vaccines containing dead protein.
“It’s now just a matter of developing the technique, trying it out in Africa and seeing if it can be made on an industrial basis. This could happen within five years.”
Another member of the research team, Dr Matt Cottingham, said: “Without the need for refrigeration, you could even picture someone with a backpack taking vaccine doses on a bike into remote villages.”
The GAVI Alliance, a public-private partnership working to accelerate immunisation in 72 of the world’s poorest countries, welcomed the news.
“Keeping vaccines at the correct temperature all the way from the factory to children in the poorest and most remote communities is always an enormous challenge so new ideas to remove barriers to the life-saving benefits of immunisation are extremely welcome,” said the alliance’s communication director, Dan Thomas.
Click here for the full report
CDC Says Swine Flu Killed 17,000 in U.S.
February 15th, 2010
infowars.com
By Neka Sehgal
According to new estimates by the U.S. heath authorities, the dreaded H1N1 pandemic, which has shown sustained human-to-human transmission since its outbreak in April may have killed close to 17,120 people.
The new report released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provides an assessment of infections, hospitalizations and deaths from H1N1 since its emergence in April until mid January.
It estimates 57 million citizens have been infected by the virus since the outbreak and the total could be as high as 84 million.
Younger generation hit hard by virus
Unlike the regular flu that strikes the elderly more viciously, the report shows the circulating virus targeted the younger generation, comprising kids, teens and adults.
Click here for the full report
Girl Gets Rare Disease After Swine Flu Shot
February 12, 2010
KTBS
By Chrissi Coile
A Shreveport girl is battling a rare disease.
In December 5 year old Hannah Pham started complaining her leg was numb. When her parents took her to the hospital doctors diagnosed her with Tranverse Myelitis. It’s a disease doctors say infects about 1 in a million people.
Experts say the disease is a neurological disorder which typically follows a virus.
Hannah got an swine flu shot in early December. The Pham family is worried that’s what caused the illness, but the CDC hasn’t reported any cases of Tranverse Myelitis following swine flu shots.
Hannah has been hospitalized for five weeks, meanwhile her family is praying for her recovery.
Employess at Spa Concepts where Hannah’s parents work are collecting donations and raffeling off spa treatments to help the family pay medical costs. They also set up an account at Capital One. If you would like to help out the account number is 573-240-4947.
Click here for the full report
