A strong case can be made that the cell has turned out to be a lot more complicated than Darwin or his contemporaries imagined. Not only did they vastly underestimate the complexity of the cell, but it's probably vastly more complex even than we imagine today.
For the last 33 years, David Healy, an Irish psychiatrist and professor at Cardiff University School of Medicine in Wales, has written heavily researched university press books and academic journal articles on various aspects of psychopharmaceuticals. His output includes 20 books, 150 peer-reviewed papers and 200 other published works. He is not only well-pedigreed, with degrees and fellowships from Dublin, Galway and Cambridge medical schools, he is a widely recognized expert in both the history and the science of neurochemistry and psychopharmacology. Yet Healy says his output and reputation have had little to no effect—both on the pharmaceutical industry he argues buries relevant information about prescription drug harms, and on the psychiatric and medical professions he claims are being “eclipsed” by drug companies. Americans consume 80 percent of opiate painkillers produced in the world. A January 2011 report from Stanford University Medical School warned that antispychotics are now regularly being prescribed to treat conditions for which they have not been approved, including anxiety, attention-deficit disorder, sleep difficulties, behavioral problems in toddlers and dementia. According to a Feb. 7, 2013 report from Drugs.com, the No. 1 best-selling U.S. drug (in dollar volume) is an atypical antipsychotic for schizophrenia treatment called Abilify. Sales for the last quarter of 2012 soared to $1.5 billion, because Abilify is widely prescribed off-label—i.e., not for schizophrenia in adults, but, for example, for irritability in children. Although Bristol-Myers Squibb, the maker of Abilify, was fined $515 million in September 2007 for recommending off-label uses of Abilify, doctors are still doling out the drug. Why?
The White House’s sweeping mental health initiatives—which rely on psychiatry’s diagnostic procedures—do not take into account the major controversy currently raging over the lack of science behind psychiatry’s methods of diagnosing mental disorders. Should the conversation suggested by the President be restricted to supporting mental health informational initiatives based on a flawed, unsafe diagnosing manual, things may progress as Dr. Allen Frances predicts: "soon most of us will have a fake mental disorder (or a few) and we will live in a Brave New World where nearly everyone uses medicine.”
Antibiotics, antivirals and antifungals are among the most abused and overused pharmaceutical agents that contribute to human disease. And now, scientists are running out of options. Many drug resistant micro-organisms are no longer responding to the older drugs, and there are less and less new ones being developed. The only solution is to stop the rampant use of these largely unnecessary drugs.
What to Do if Your Drug Has Too Many Dangerous Side Effects? Simple—you ship it to third world countries! The manufacturers of two human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines, Merck (Gardasil) and GlaxoSmithKline (Cervarix), have found a new market: they struck a deal to offer their HPV vaccines to developing countries at much reduced prices. They hope that by 2020, 30 to 40 million girls in developing countries will be getting vaccinated.
Did you know that as of May 18, 2013, there have been 202 cases of mumps in the US? Where is the media frenzy? The hysteria? The call from the Health Department and outrage over vaccination rates? There is none.
Autism spectrum disorders share three core symptoms: impaired sociability, repetitive behaviors and communication deficits. Incidence is rising, and current treatments are inadequate. Seizures are a common comorbidity, and since the 1920’s a high-fat, low-carbohydrate ketogenic diet has been used to treat epilepsy. Evidence suggests the ketogenic diet and analogous metabolic approaches may benefit diverse neurological disorders. This study's results suggest that a ketogenic diet improves multiple autistic behaviors in the BTBR mouse model. Therefore, ketogenic diets or analogous metabolic strategies may offer novel opportunities to improve core behavioral symptoms of autism spectrum disorders.
The ketogenic diet (KD) is a low carbohydrate, high fat diet which decreases blood glucose and elevates blood ketones and has been shown to slow cancer progression in animals and humans. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBO2T) saturates tumors with oxygen, reversing the cancer promoting effects of tumor hypoxia. Since these non-toxic therapies exploit overlapping metabolic deficiencies of cancer, this study tested their combined effects on cancer progression in a natural model of metastatic disease.
The ketogenic diet was developed at John Hopkins hospital in the 1920s as a natural cure for epilepsy, when drugs failed. It is a high fat diet restricting carbohydrates. The diet fell out of favor during the anti-saturated fat campaign started in the U.S. and codified into official government dietary advice in the 197os as a result of the McGovern Report. It is still official government dietary policy today, due to the influence of the vegetable oil industry which produces their products from the highly subsidized corn and soy crops. The Ketogenic Diet in some form or another has been labeled by many different names in recent times, and started gaining traction again with Dr. Atkins and the low-carb fad diets that became popular about 8 to 10 years ago. Today's latest fad diet, the "paleo diet" is another example of a diet based on the ketogenic principles. This diet is not new, however, as it was seen as a therapeutic diet that produced better results than drugs in treating epilepsy way back in the 1920s. Today, the diet is being studied in the medical community with applications to all kinds of diseases. Of course, most of the medical interest in the diet is to try and develop a line of "ketone" drugs to mimic the diet. Ketones, which our body can produce during fasting or "starvation," are an alternative energy source for those who are insulin resistant. Insulin resistance is increasingly being seen as a major cause of many diseases. As a result, the research that is starting to be published on the effectiveness of the ketogenic diet in curing disease is nothing less than amazing. This study is a survey of the diet's use in a variety of neurological diseases.
Portland, Oregon (the largest non-fluoridated city in the US) has successfully voted to keep fluoride out of its pristine water supply. Fluoride is a toxic substance that accumulates in your tissues over time, wreaks havoc with enzymes, and produces a number of serious adverse health effects, including neurological and endocrine dysfunction. As a result, individual communities around the US have taken up the fight to end water fluoridation in their own local areas.
African farmers’ movements and civil society groups have rejected the G8’s New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition as part of a “new wave of colonialism” targeting their food systems for corporate profit. The African statement accuses the G8 of supporting multinational corporations like Yara, Monsanto, Syngenta, Cargill in their quest to privatise African agriculture: “Private ownership of knowledge and material resources (for example, seed and genetic materials) means the flow of royalties out of Africa into the hands of multinational corporations.” The statement calls for alternative strategies to protect sustainable agricultural techniques already in development across Africa which put household food security before corporate profits.
Just as Hawaii was the focal point of the U.S. conflict during World War II, so today it appears that it is the focal point in the agricultural war of the 21st century. Hawaii today is the centerpiece for two vastly contrasting methods of producing food: the development of genetically engineered seeds and the development of Korean Natural Farming. Hawaii, with its isolated and pristine ecosystems, is a perfect testing ground for the biotech's testing and development of genetic engineering. The residents of Hawaii, though few in number, have observed and experienced the results of such testing. On the other side of the battle are farmers who have discovered a simple, traditional method of farming from Korea: Korean Natural Farming. Korean Natural Farming is about culturing a healthy climate for biology to thrive via indigenous micro-organisms.
Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and three of his colleagues have introduced S 1031, a bill that would allow Health Savings Account (HSA) funds to go toward dietary supplements without having to get a doctor’s prescription; the same would apply to Health Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs). The legislation, called the Family and Retirement Health Investment Act of 2013, does this by expanding the term “medical care” to include dietary supplements, and it would allow spending up to $1,000 each year. A companion bill, HR 2194, was introduced in the House by Rep. Erick Paulsen (R-MN).
Most commercial sunscreens contain a wide variety of toxic ingredients. Make your own sunscreen at home using safe oils, including coconut oil.
According to a report published by JAMA Internal Medicine, cholesterol-lowering drugs (statins) have been linked to musculoskeletal and joint injuries and adverse events especially in those pursuing physical activity. Statin-associated musculoskeletal adverse events (AEs) include a wide variety of clinical presentations, including muscle weakness, muscle cramps and tendinous (tendon) diseases. In addition, the known side effects of statin drugs include inflammation and pathological breakdown of muscle, acute kidney failure, diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease, interference with sex hormones and death.
Alzheimer’s disease is currently at epidemic proportions. It’s becoming increasingly clear that what you eat, or don’t eat, can influence your risk as well as the rate at which the disease progresses. B group vitamins, in particular, especially folic acid and vitamins B6 and B12, are again making headlines for their powerful role in preventing Alzheimer’s disease. B vitamins may reduce brain shrinkage by up to 90 percent!
Today’s GMO labeling agreement is historic and we are proud to have played a role in its development. YOU should all be proud. Connecticut will now set the standard for states around the country to follow. We are grateful to all who worked to make this possible. Thank you to all our champions in the House and the Senate.
This amendment to the Farm Bill allows farmers to voluntarily choose whether or not they pay into Federal “checkoff” programs. Anytime a farmer sells a steer, a gallon of milk, an egg, bushel of corn or soybeans, or any other covered commodity, the producer is required to pay a fee to industry-run organizations for marketing campaigns. This would allow organic farmers and processors to decide whether they pay into the conventional check-off programs and or use this money to benefit organic and local production.
Public health officials are routinely failing to inform the public of their right to refuse vaccines in both school and work settings. Greater powers are at work to make mandatory vaccination policies which will allow officials to conduct childhood vaccinations without any parental consent at all. The inventor of the rotavirus vaccine wants all exemptions based on religious or philosophical grounds to end along with informed consent and the freedom to choose.
In this video, Dr. Andrew Wakefield reveals that in the recent "measles outbreak" in Wales earlier this year, records now show there was only one single laboratory confirmed case of measles in March, down from three cases in February. He also shows proof that he was not the first scientist to show the link between autism and the MMR vaccine, as has been widely reported. In fact, there were so many reported cases of the MMR vaccine being linked to autism prior to 1998, that Dr. Wakefield's article published in the Lancet was "late" in reporting what was already widely known.
