Before You Eat That Next Soy Burger

Do you eat soy burgers, drink soy milk, use flavored coffee creamers and/or products that contain aspartame? If you do then please watch this video, "The World According to Monsanto" in its entirety. You may just change your mind,

Monsanto, manufacturer of the world's leading weedkiller Round-Up, is also the world leader in supplying soy bean seed for agribusiness. So if you're consuming a mass marketed soy bean product like soy milk or yogurt with aspartame there is a good chance that it was produced from Monsanto seed and treated with Round-up.

I am not against soy products. there is evidence that soy in its natural state is good for you. But there is also good reason to believe that soy that has been genetically modified to resist spraying with a powerful herbicide, may be killing us.

Please watch this video in its entirety, then buy the video and share it with those that you love.

Finally, join others in the move to Stop Monsanto.

A Good Reason for Growing Your Own Food

.. or at least supporting your local farmers' market.

In the following video Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Andrew von Eschenbach discusses how the FDA investigates cases of widespread food contamination, such as the Salmonella-tainted tomato scare. In essence, his comments indicate that expecting the severely understaffed FDA to determine the cause of the recent Salmonella outbreak is tantamount to asking them to find a needle in a thousand haystacks.

Parents Beware of The Drug Pusher!

No, I'm not talking about the guy selling crack on the street corner, even though you should definitely teach your children to avoid him too. I'm talking about the pharmaceutical industry and those in the medical community who want you to consider putting children as young as 8 years of age on statin drugs to treat high cholesterol, obesity and future heart problems.





Yes, Big Pharma wants to get your kids hooked on drugs as early as possible.

The Washington Post reported:

"In a further concession to the impact of the childhood obesity epidemic in the United States, a leading group of pediatricians is recommending that kids as young as 8 years old be given cholesterol-lowering drugs in hopes of preventing heart problems later in life.

The American Academy of Pediatrics also recommends that children as young as 2 years old start having their cholesterol levels screened if they have a family history of heart disease or high cholesterol. Screening should start no later than 10, the academy said.

Dr. Steven P. Shelov, chairman of pediatrics at Maimonides Medical Center and head of Maimonides Infants & Children's Hospital in New York City, said he agreed with the new guidelines. 'More aggressive screening is a good idea, and the use of [cholesterol-lowering] statins at relatively low doses will keep cholesterol at safer ranges.'

The academy is also recommending that children whose family history of cholesterol is not known, or who have risk factors for heart disease -- including obesity, high blood pressure or diabetes -- have their cholesterol tested.

The recommendations were published in the July issue of the journalPediatrics.

According to the recommendation, the best method for checking cholesterol is a fasting blood test. Children whose cholesterol is normal should have the test repeated every three to five years.

For those children older than 8 who have high levels of LDL (bad) cholesterol, doctors should consider giving them statins.

Shelov admitted that very little is known about the risks and benefits of using cholesterol-lowering drugs like statins in a large pediatric population.

Potentially, millions of children could be placed on cholesterol-lowering drugs, he said. 'At the same time, there needs to be a systematic look at the effects of these medications on children, because they do have side effects,' he added.

'If we are going to go ahead and do this, we're going to need guidelines on exactly who would warrant the therapy and careful measurement of any side effects,' Shelov said.

'It's possible that many children who start taking statins would not be on them for life. Changes in diet and exercise could have some children off the drugs in a relatively short time,' Shelov said."

But there is nothing to rule out the possibility that your children will be taking statin drugs for the rest of their lives. And if you watch the TV ads for statin drugs they caution that "these drugs are not recommended for women who are pregnant, nursing or who may become pregnant". So can you imagine the long term impact of these drugs will be on the reproductive system of little girls?

( Hmm, maybe they've thought of that. But I won't go there lest you label me a conspiracy theorist. )

Parents consider the fact that there are no long term studies on the impact of placing a pre-pubescent child on statin drugs.

Consider the fact that many people on statin drugs experience side effects and need to take other drugs to treat the resulting ailments.

Consider the fact that the studies that propose that there is a direct correlation between high cholesterol and heart disease have come into question.

And finally, parents please consider the fact that if your child receives a healthy diet full of fresh fruits of vegetables, without fast foods and processed foods full of salt and sugar, and with lots of fun exercise, obesity probably won't be an issue.

The following is a video clip of a February 2008 segment of the CBS evening news which discussed the fact that there is no concrete evidence that statin drugs will prevent heart disease

Does this sound a little crazy to you? It probably does if you've been following this blog and recall my January 15th post on the Vytorin scandal and later my January 30th post on how Big Pharma sold the idea of high cholesterol to the public.

Parents Beware of the Drug Pushers.

Can Diabetes Be Cured in 30 Days

The people in the following video believe that it can.

Would You Put Sewage Sludge on Your Lawn?

"Of Course Not", you say.

But don't be so sure. If your fertilizer lists "beneficial biosolids" as a key ingredient then your have just spread processed sewage on your lawn. I hope that you used gloves!

In fact, sewage sludge may have been used on your child's school yard, on the produce from the market and, it may be seeping into your well water.

According to the Center for Food Safety:

"Every time you flush your toilet or clean a paintbrush in your sink, you may be unwittingly contributing fertilizer used to grow the food in your pantry. Beginning in the early 1990s, millions of tons of potentially-toxic sewage sludge have been applied to millions of acres of America's farmland as food crop fertilizer. Selling sewage sludge to farmers for use on cropland has been a favored government program for disposing of the unwanted byproducts from municipal wastewater treatment plants. But sewage sludge is anything but the benign fertilizer the Environmental Protection Agency says it is.

Sewage sludge includes anything that is flushed, poured, or dumped into our nation's wastewater system--a vast, toxic mix of wastes collected from countless sources, from homes to chemical industries to hospitals. The sludge being spread on our crop fields is a dangerous stew of heavy metals, industrial compounds, viruses, bacteria, drug residues, and radioactive material. In fact, hundreds of people have fallen ill after being exposed to sewage sludge fertilizer--suffering such symptoms as respiratory distress, headaches, nausea, rashes, reproductive complications, cysts, and tumors.

Despite the apparent danger of using sludge in food production, federal regulations are woefully lax. The EPA monitors only nine of the thousands of pathogens commonly found in sludge; the agency rarely performs site inspections of sewage treatment plants; and it almost never inspects the farms that use sludge fertilizer."

This is just one more reason to buy organic, support your local farmer's market and become a better informed consumer.


excerpt from:
Will the Toxic Sludge Industry Be Held Accountable for Human Health Risks?
| Health and Wellness | AlterNet

By Joel Bleifuss for Alternet

Nancy Holt, a retired nurse from Mebane, N.C., is beset by mysterious neurological problems. She blames the cause of her illness on the multiple unknown toxicities of the sewage sludge that has been spread since 1991 on the fields across from her house as "fertilizer."

And Holt says she isn't alone. People in her neighborhood have a high incidence of cancer and thyroid problems. Local creeks are no longer safe for kids to play in -- the danger of staph infection is too great.

In 2001, Holt began chronicling the health problems in her area of rural Alamance County -- 12 miles north of Chapel Hill. Soon she was tracking reports of sludge-related illnesses and deaths across the country.

"I put together the symptoms, the illnesses, the high cancer rates, the thyroid disorders in this community," she says. "It is non-scientific, of course."

"And we have precocious puberty, little girls developing breasts at 5 or 6 years old, little boys developing armpit hair. And that is something that people don't want to talk about," Holt says. "They will talk about their thyroid glands, their cancers, but they will not talk about early puberty. We are on a true toxic tilt."

For the first time since she became involved in the sludge issue, Holt is guardedly hopeful that her concerns will finally be addressed, and that the sulphurous alliance between the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), municipal sewer authorities and Synagro Technologies (the nation's largest sludge disposal firm, which was recently bought by the Carlyle Group) -- will be exposed for the blight it is.

In April, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, announced that her committee will hold hearings on the issue this summer. The catalyst is a confluence of recent news reports about sludge-related scandals.

In the Potomac River, 60 miles upstream from Washington, D.C., scientists have discovered many small-mouth male bass with eggs inside their sex organs. The cause of these "intersexed" fish is almost certainly endocrine disruptors -- also known as estrogen mimickers -- in the water, chemical pollutants that disrupt an animal's natural hormonal system.

In February, the Washington Post reported that the concentration of intersexed fish is greatest near towns or near heavily farmed land. One major source of these endocrine disruptors is thought to be the post-treatment "cleaned" water from municipal sewage treatment centers that is discharged directly into the Potomac River system and runoff from fields "fertilized" with sludge.

This news of male fish bearing eggs was followed with an April report by the Associated Press that in 2000, nine Baltimore families -- all black residents of the city's east side -- received food coupons in exchange for permission to allow researchers to spread "Class A" Baltimore sewage sludge (brand name, Orgro High Organic Compost) on their yards, till it into the soil and then plant grass seed.

The rationale for this experiment was to find out whether municipal sewage sludge could lower the amount of lead that children who played in the nine experimental yards would absorb. Veolia Water, the corporation that markets Baltimore municipal sludge as Orgro, claims its "beneficial biosolids" are so safe they are even used on the White House lawn.

"Beneficial biosolids" is the term that Powell Tate, a D.C.-based public relations firm, invented in the early '90s, in an attempt to linguistically detoxify the 7 million tons of sludge -- industrial waste, hospital waste, pharmaceuticals in addition to feces -- that the nation's 16,000 municipal sewer systems produce each year.

In the following video clip is from an April DemocracyNow newscast which discussed how toxic sludge was spread on the lawns on residents of a low-income Baltimore neighborhood

Veterans with PTSD Denied Compensation Via MisDiagnosis

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and VoteVets.org have released an e-mail obtained from a Veterans Affairs (VA) employee directing VA staff in Temple, TX to refrain from diagnosing soldiers and veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and instead making a diagnosis of “Adjustment Disorder” -- a difference which denies veterans as much as $2,500/mo in disability compensation.

excerpt from:

Official Urged Fewer Diagnosis of PTSD

By Christopher Lee

Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 16, 2008; Page A02

A psychologist who helps lead the post-traumatic stress disorder program at a medical facility for veterans in Texas told staff members to refrain from diagnosing PTSD because so many veterans were seeking government disability payments for the condition.

"Given that we are having more and more compensation seeking veterans, I'd like to suggest that you refrain from giving a diagnosis of PTSD straight out," Norma Perez wrote in a March 20 e-mail to mental-health specialists and social workers at the Department of Veterans Affairs' Olin E. Teague Veterans' Center in Temple, Tex. Instead, she recommended that they "consider a diagnosis of Adjustment Disorder."

VA staff members "really don't . . . have time to do the extensive testing that should be done to determine PTSD," Perez wrote.

Adjustment disorder is a less severe reaction to stress than PTSD and has a shorter duration, usually no longer than six months, said Anthony T. Ng, a psychiatrist and member of Mental Health America, a nonprofit professional association.

Veterans diagnosed with PTSD can be eligible for disability compensation of up to $2,527 a month, depending on the severity of the condition, said Alison Aikele, a VA spokeswoman. Those found to have adjustment disorder generally are not offered such payments, though veterans can receive medical treatment for either condition

This is a disgrace and demands an immediate Congressional investigation. If you are outraged by this please contact:

Senator Daniel Akaka (D-HI), Chair of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee
Click here to go to Sen. Akaka's website, send a fax to (808) 545-4683 or use the contact information below:

United States Senate
141 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
Tel: (202) 224-6361
Fax: (202) 224-2126

and both Texas Senators:

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-TX) member of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee
Click here to go to Sen. Hutchinson's website or use the contact information below"

284 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510-4304
202-224-5922
202-224-0776 (FAX)
202-224-5903 (TDD)

Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) member of the Senate Budget Committee
Click here to go to Sen. Cornyn's website or use the contact information below:

517 Hart Senate Office Bldg.
Washington, DC 20510
Main: 202-224-2934
Fax: 202-228-2856

In Search of Answers to the Foreclosure Crisis That Won't Make Matters Worse

Most Americans are now aware of the rippling impact that the home mortgage foreclosure crisis has had on the real estate and banking market. But as summer approaches there's a new concern ... mosquitoes and the spread of West Nile Virus.

KCRA in Sacramento aired the following story in February

The one thing about the current foreclosure that everyone ( consumers, politicians, bankers and health officials) seems to agree upon is that something has to been done about it quick and in a hurry. However, very few parties agree on the correct course of action.

In April, Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) appealed for a long-term solution to this crisis which is impacting every area of the economy.

As Sen. Klobuchar stated, "Congress must work together to get this done". However one of the major points of contention is how to help those in true need without rewarding speculators and those who created this crisis in the first place. The following two stories which were recently featured on Alternet.com point out this troubling conundrum.

First Nicholas von Hoffman reports on Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke's demonstration of concern in his article, "Bernanke's Federal Reserve Freakout"

What's got Bernanke scared is that "about one quarter of subprime adjustable-rate mortgages are currently 90 days or more delinquent or in foreclosure. Delinquency rates also have increased in the prime and near-prime segments of the mortgage market.... foreclosure proceedings were initiated on some 1.5 million U.S. homes during 2007, up 53 percent from 2006, and the rate of foreclosure starts looks likely to be yet higher in 2008."

Spooking Bernanke is the Fed's discovery that many thousands of delinquencies are not caused by unemployment or even, perhaps, inability to keep up with payments but rather by the quick, steep drop in the price of real estate. "Sharp declines in house prices, and thus in homeowners' equity, reduce both the ability and incentive of homeowners, particularly those under financial stress for other reasons, to retain their homes," he said.

The denouement Bernanke and not a few others fear is that "high rates of delinquency and foreclosure can have substantial spillover effects on the housing market, the financial markets, and the broader economy. Therefore, doing what we can to avoid preventable foreclosures is not just in the interest of lenders and borrowers. It's in everybody's interest. "

The Fed's remedy is apparently, first, to stop the drop in prices, and next to push them back up to the point that real estate is at least worth the mortgage debt it carries. A bill presently in Congress aims to do that, although nobody can be certain about its succeeding, since such a thing has not been done before.

The cost would be immense in dollars and in civic morale, since any broad save-the-real-estate scheme would include saving speculators, wealthy people's vacation homes, those who lied to fraudulently obtain mortgages, and spendthrifts who put their homes under water so that they could buy large sailboats and/or Cadillac Escalades. The mere thought of such a bailout has the millions who saved for down payments, bought sensibly and have sacrificed to keep up with their mortgage installments somewhere between a slow boil and a tooth-grinding rage.

...the much respected Floyd Norris, a premier business writer of the New York Times, says, "The government may eventually decide that it is necessary to bail out the undeserving as well as the deserving, no matter how repugnant that seems at the moment, and no matter how bad the inflationary impact may be."

The following is an excellent article which I recommend that anyone with an interest in finding a solution to the US home foreclosure should read in it's entirety.


excerpt from:

Three Things That Won't Help The Foreclosure Crisis
By Dean Baker and Liz Chimienti, Center for Economic and Policy Research.

Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Liz Chimienti is a domestic policy analyst with CEPR.

Falling home prices, rising foreclosures rates, and a slowing economy have created a perfect storm for homeowners who bought in bubble-inflated markets, or used subprime, adjustable-rate mortgages to purchase their homes.

Members of Congress have responded to the crisis facing their constituents by proposing various measures, some strong, like amending the bankruptcy law to cover primary residences, and some misguided. The following are three major proposals that would actually do more harm than good. As Congress seeks to pass legislation to stem the foreclosure crisis, legislation containing elements of these proposals should not be on the table.

1. Subsidies for Home Buyers

Homeownership can be a useful way for families to accumulate wealth and to provide good secure housing. However, if families are buying homes with bubble-inflated prices, then they are not likely to accumulate any wealth in their home, since the price is likely to fall back to its trend level before they sell their home. (The median period of homeownership for moderate-income families is just four years.) Furthermore, they are likely to pay far more in housing costs each year, than they would to rent a comparable unit.

In the case of moderate-income families facing serious budget constraints, the additional housing costs associated with owning an over-priced home are likely to come at the expense of other necessary items, such as health care and child care. It is difficult to see how the government will have helped a family by encouraging them to buy into such a situation.

2. Artificial Price Floors

This has nothing to do with linoleum, and everything to do with how prices get set for homes that are refinanced and backed by FHA loans as proposed in legislation being considered by Congress.

If prices continue to fall, then many homeowners will again find themselves owing more than the value of their home. This situation leads to defaults for two reasons. First, if a homeowner owes more than the value of her home, then she does not have the option to borrow against equity in order to make her mortgage payments. This eliminates an important source of security if job loss or unusual expenses leaves the homeowner temporarily unable to pay his or her bills.

The other reason why this situation increases default rates is that homeowners who owe more than the value of their home can effectively save themselves money by simply surrendering their house to the bank. If a homeowner owes $200,000 on a home that is currently worth $180,000, the homeowner can effectively save $20,000 by just giving the house back to the bank. While this move will hurt the homeowner's credit rating, if they don't have any special attachment to the house, a homeowner may choose this option.

3. Incentives to Build More Homes

Not letting prices fall back to their equilibrium (see above), or giving generous tax credits to homebuilders will encourage them to build more homes. The more homes that get built, the greater the over supply. This will imply a longer adjustment process and a larger price decline. There is no public interest in taking any steps that can delay the process of price adjustment in the housing market. This process is very painful, but delaying it will only make it more painful.

Hopefully Congress, the Fed, and the banking industry will come up with a solution that helps those who are hurting the most. Until then some cities are taking matters into their own hands.

Related posts:

GOP Stalls Vote on Senate Housing Bill

Everybody Takes Advantage of An Opportunity

We're A Long Way From Bedford Falls

Drugs More Important Than Sex & Prostitution

Now that I have your attention.

Here's a story that is far more important than another political sex scandal but did you hear about it on the evening news..

excerpt from:
Water Probe Prompts Senate Hearings
By MARTHA MENDOZA, AP National Writer

Two veteran U.S. senators said Monday they plan to hold hearings in response to an Associated Press investigation into the presence of trace amounts of pharmaceuticals in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans.

Also, U.S. Rep. Allyson Schwartz, D-Pa., has asked the EPA to establish a national task force to investigate the issue and make recommendations to Congress on anylegislative actions needed. Sen. Barbara Boxer, who heads the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and Sen. Frank Lautenberg, chairman of the Transportation, Safety, Infrastructure Security and Water Quality Subcommittee, said the oversight hearings would likely be held in April.

Boxer, D-Calif., said she was "alarmed at the news" that pharmaceuticals are turning up in the nation's drinking water, while Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat who said he was "deeply concerned" by the AP findings, both represent states where pharmaceuticals had been detected in drinking water supplies, but not disclosed to the public.

"I call on the EPA to take whatever steps are necessary to keep our communities safe," said Boxer in a statement.

Added Lautenberg, whose subcommittee has jurisdiction over drinking water issues: "Our families deserve water that is clean and safe. Our hearing will examine these problems and help ensure the EPA and Congress take the steps necessary to protect our residents and clean up our water supply."

* * * * *

Pharmaceuticals in the water supply is not a new story. The CBC News broke this story two years ago.


Pill-Popping Society Fouling Our Water, Official Says
Published on Friday, March 24, 2006 by CBC News / Canada

Birth control pills, cancer drugs and a host of other pharmaceuticals that people flush down the drain every day are showing up in our drinking water, says Gord Miller, Ontario's environmental commissioner.

"We need to do a better job of keeping drugs out of lakes, rivers and drinking water," Miller told the Kitchener-Waterloo Record on Wednesday.

Although the drugs are not considered a threat to human health, there is evidence that they can harm wildlife.

"There is no health hazard in drinking water now that has been detected in Canada, but we have detected substances in drinking water," he said, adding that the problem is likely to get worse rather than better as the population grows.

"Our society loves to pop pills," Miller said. "If you were designing the perfect pollutant it would probably look like a pill."

Miller was sworn in as environmental commissioner six years ago to oversee the implementation of Ontario's Environmental Bill of Rights. He is an independent officer of Queen's Park, where he reports on government compliance with environmental rules.

In his last annual report, Miller said contraceptives, painkillers, antibiotics, anti-cancer drugs and blood-pressure drugs are showing up in lakes and rivers, while anti-inflammatory and anti-cholesterol drugs and antidepressants are ending up in drinking water.

Experiments in northern Ontario have shown that exposure to these waste drugs has led to the feminization of male fish, delayed reproduction in female fish and damage to kidneys and livers of both sexes, the report said.

Independent studies by the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States and by environmental bodies in England have turned up similar evidence.

Miller said pharmaceuticals are getting into drinking water in several ways. Unused drugs are thrown into domestic garbage, which end up in landfill sites and eventually into the groundwater.

Drugs are taken orally and flushed down toilets as human excrement. And unused drugs are washed down the sink or flushed down the toilet directly into domestic sewers.

Many drugs pass right through the sewage and water treatment plants, back into the drinking water. "Sewage treatment plants aren't designed to remove them," Miller said.

Copyright © CBC 2006
###

Related articles:

Children Sicker Now Than In Past, Harvard Report Says

US Troops Ill from Unsafe Water

excerpt from:
AP: Water makes US troops in Iraq sick

By LARRY MARGASAK, Associated Press Writer

Dozens of U.S. troops in Iraq fell sick at bases using "unmonitored and potentially unsafe" water supplied by the military and a contractor once owned by Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, the Pentagon's internal watchdog says.

A report obtained by The Associated Press said soldiers experienced skin abscesses, cellulitis, skin infections, diarrhea and other illnesses after using discolored, smelly water for personal hygiene and laundry at five U.S. military sites in Iraq.

The Pentagon's inspector general found water quality problems between March 2004 and February 2006 at three sites run by contractor KBR Inc., and between January 2004 and December 2006 at two military-operated locations.

It was impossible to link the dirty water definitively to all the illnesses, according to the report. But it said KBR's water quality "was not maintained in accordance with field water sanitary standards" and the military-run sites "were not performing all required quality control tests."

"Therefore, water suppliers exposed U.S. forces to unmonitored and potentially unsafe water," the report said.

Did Big Pharma Sell The Idea of High Cholesterol To The Medical Community?

"The truth is, we’ve always had reason to question the idea that cholesterol is an agent of disease. Indeed, what the Framingham researchers meant in 1977 when they described LDL cholesterol as a “marginal risk factor” is that a large proportion of people who suffer heart attacks have relatively low LDL cholesterol."
-- from the article "What's Cholesterol Got To Do With It"

When you read the recent news about the debates in the medical community on the subject of "cholesterol" and its correlation to heart disease, you have to wonder if the pharmaceutical industry first created a drug and developed a marketing plan and then, as an after thought, conducted studies to support their marketing plan.

The questions surrounding bad vs. good cholesterol and the use of "cholesterol management" drugs has left me more than comfortable with my decision to treat my doctor's diagnosis of "high cholesterol" with healthy eating and exercise.

In an op-ed article for the New York Times, noted author and science writer Gary Taubes points out the "circular logic" used to associate LDL cholesterol to heart disease. He states:

" So how did we come to believe strongly that LDL cholesterol is so bad for us? It was partly due to the observation that eating saturated fat raises LDL cholesterol, and we’ve assumed that saturated fat is bad for us. This logic is circular, though: saturated fat is bad because it raises LDL cholesterol, and LDL cholesterol is bad because it is the thing that saturated fat raises. In clinical trials, researchers have been unable to generate compelling evidence that saturated fat in the diet causes heart disease.

The other important piece of evidence for the cholesterol hypothesis is that statin drugs like Zocor and Lipitor lower LDL cholesterol and also prevent heart attacks. The higher the potency of statins, the greater the cholesterol lowering and the fewer the heart attacks. This is perceived as implying cause and effect: statins reduce LDL cholesterol and prevent heart disease, so reducing LDL cholesterol prevents heart disease. This belief is held with such conviction that the Food and Drug Administration now approves drugs to prevent heart disease, as it did with Zetia, solely on the evidence that they lower LDL cholesterol.

But the logic is specious because most drugs have multiple actions. It’s like insisting that aspirin prevents heart disease by getting rid of headaches.

One obvious way to test the LDL cholesterol hypothesis is to find therapies that lower it by different means and see if they, too, prevent heart attacks. This is essentially what the Vytorin trial did and why its results argue against the hypothesis.

Other such tests have likewise failed to confirm it. A recent trial of torcetrapib, a drug that both raises HDL and lowers LDL cholesterol, was halted midstream because the drug seemed to cause heart attacks and strokes rather than prevent them. Estrogen replacement therapy also lowers LDL cholesterol, but it too has failed to prevent heart disease in clinical trials. The same goes for eating less saturated fat.

So it is reasonable, after the Vytorin trial, to question the role of LDL cholesterol in heart disease. Not whether statins help prevent heart disease, but whether they work exclusively, or at all, by this mechanism. "

As I've stated in other posts, I am not advocating that anyone suddenly stop taking their prescribed medications without discussing it with their primary physician and/or getting another opinion from a licensed alternative medical practitioner. I submit these posts to encourage you to take an active role in managing your health by arming yourself with information. The practice of medicine is an "art" and a "science".


Related posts:

Vytorin: Questionable Truth In Advertising

Do You Really Need That Medicine?

FEMA Offers to Buy Back Its Toxic Trailers

Gee that's many nice of them!


excerpt from:

The Associated Press: FEMA Offering Refunds on Trailer Sales

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The Federal Emergency Management Agency, responding to concerns about formaldehyde in trailers issued to hurricane survivors, said Thursday that it would offer refunds to people who bought them after their initial use.

The federal government began selling trailers in 2006 through online auctions and to victims of the intense 2005 hurricane season. Sales were suspended in July last year because of the fears about formaldehyde, which can cause respiratory problems.

Hundreds of people in Louisiana and Mississippi are suing manufacturers, accusing them of providing FEMA with trailers that contained high levels of the toxin after hurricanes Katrina and Rita, which devastated much of the Gulf Coast

* * * * *

If you don't think that FEMA should be let off the hook this easy for trying to cover-up a threat to thousands of lives, join us in signing the petition to:

Hold FEMA Accountable

* * * * *

Update

The following press release found on Media-Newswire proves that as always nothing is simple with FEMA:

GSA auction sales, refunds for the purchase price of travel trailers and park models will be offered for units purchased through GSA auctions on or after July 24, 2006, until such sales were suspended in July 2007. Individuals who want to return their travel trailer or park model unit must contact FEMA within a 60-day period beginning January 17, 2008.

For units sold by FEMA directly to disaster assistance applicants occupying the unit, FEMA will offer to refund the purchase price of any travel trailer or park model sold on or after July 31, 2006, until such sales were suspended in July 2007. The refunds option applies to disasters declared on or after Aug. 29, 2005. Occupants will have 60 days from the date of notification to request a refund.

Buyers must have purchased the units directly from FEMA or GSA. The refunds will be provided upon repossession of the units.

Individuals and disaster applicants, who have questions regarding the purchase of their unit, may call FEMA at 1-866-562-2381 or, TTY 1-800-462-7585.

Purchases through GSA

FEMA will notify via e-mail each individual who purchased a recreational vehicle ( travel trailer or park model ) sold to the public as excess by FEMA through GSA on-line auction sales. The e-mail will include the refund period and procedures for requesting a refund. Buyers will need to send a written request for a refund to FEMA within 60 calendar days of the initial public notification date, January 17, 2008. The written request must include the GSA Sales Contract Number, the purchaser's name, the purchase price and the purchaser's receipt for payment.

Buyers must submit a Direct Deposit form with an original signature to allow for the electronic deposit of funds and an unsigned, voided check or deposit slip along with a signed and completed Trailer Refund Checklist form. Both forms will be provided via the e-mail notification.

Purchasers must return units to the designated FEMA facility and they will need to turn over the Certificate to Obtain Title, if the purchaser still has the document, and title to the unit itself. FEMA will not reimburse purchasers for upgrades or work done to the unit; individuals are responsible for arranging for transportation or travel and paying for the associated costs.

Refunds will be transmitted to the purchaser's bank account by direct deposit within 30 days of the unit's physical return to the designated FEMA facility.

Refund requests should be sent to FEMA at the following address:

Attn: Logistics Current Operations Branch
Federal Emergency Management Agency
500 C Street SW, Room 330
Washington, D.C. 20472

Purchases Directly From FEMA

FEMA will mail a letter to each disaster assistance applicant who purchased their recreational vehicle ( travel trailer or park model ) directly from FEMA between July 31, 2006, and July 31, 2007, for major disasters declared on or after Aug. 29, 2005, notifying them of the option and procedure for seeking a refund. Buyers who wish to seek a refund will need to contact FEMA within 60 calendar days of the date of the notification letter they receive.

Applicants who contact FEMA through the toll free number will be transferred to the appropriate Transitional Recovery Office ( TRO ) or field office in order to process the refund request. The TRO or field office will obtain the original Certificate to Obtain Title from the applicant, if the purchaser still has the document, and any other titles the applicants obtained for the unit.

FEMA will deactivate and haul away recreational vehicles for occupants who want to return the units to FEMA for a refund. Refunds will be transmitted to the purchaser's bank account by direct deposit within 30 days of the unit's physical return to FEMA.

For occupants still residing in the recreational vehicle and who are in need of, and remain eligible for, housing assistance from FEMA, a caseworker from the respective field or Transitional Recovery Office will work with the applicant to help them move them into other housing.

FEMA coordinates the federal government's role in preparing for, preventing, mitigating the effects of, responding to and recovering from all domestic disasters, whether natural or man-made, including acts of terror.

Will Your Milk Come From Betsy or Betsy's Clone?

How will you know and will you be given a choice?

excerpt from:
FDA Gives Blessing To Food From Cloned Animals
By Missy Ryan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government ruled on Tuesday that meat and milk from cloned animals and their offspring is as safe as other food, but pressed firms that produce clones to hold off on bringing them into the food supply.

"Extensive evaluation of the available data has not identified any subtle hazards that might indicate food consumption risks in healthy clones of cattle, swine or goats," the Food and Drug Administration said in a final risk assessment that confirmed preliminary findings from 2006.

The FDA said it did not have enough information to make an assertion about cloned sheep.

The ruling was the latest twist after years of debate over the reproductive technology, which advocates say will provide consumers with top-quality food by replicating prized animals that can breed highly productive offspring.

The cloning industry, made up so far of only a handful of firms, expects that it will be the offspring of cloned animals, not the costly clones themselves, that would eventually provide meat or milk to U.S. consumers.

There are currently about 570 cloned animals in the United States, but the livestock industry has so far followed a voluntary ban on marketing food from the animals.

Yet even as the FDA unveiled its final assessment, the Agriculture Department asked the cloning industry to extend that ban during a "transition" period.

Every day thousands of consumers purchase products in the supermarket without knowing the product's country of origin or how the food was produced or inspected. So why should the consumer expect that cloned meat and milk will be handled much differently.

How sure are you that you will be given any choice about deciding whether to consume products from cloned animals?

A few days ago CNN's Brian Todd reported on this story.

According to an article by Brandon Keim for the Wired Blog Network:

People tend to feel less repulsed at eating the offspring, so it's clone descendants that we'll eat -- though we probably won't know for sure. The FDA says clone-derived products don't need to be labeled.

"There's no way for the consumer to know whether they're getting cloned meat or their offspring," said Will Rostov, a senior attorney at the Center for Food Safety, a agricultural advocacy group.

According to Rostov, the FDA should have treated cloned animals as a new animal drug, thus requiring a higher level of scrutiny and testing. "Anything that's changed the structure of the cell is a new animal drug. Cloning changes that structure. We filed a petition, but the FDA said they were using their discretion, that all they needed to do was some sort of risk assessment." The risk assessment, said Rostov, is based largely on conflicted industry data.

We still know so very little about the health impact of the addition of growth hormones and antibiotics to the meat supply, do you want to add cloned meat and milk to the equation?


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FDA: Don't Ask, Don't Tell on Cloned Meat

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Sustainable Table: Artificial Hormones

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Just In Time For Holiday Shoppers: The Story of Stuff

The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard (www.storyofstuff.com) tells you exactly where all that "stuff" that you purchase comes from and where it goes when you throw it away. It is an entertaining but more importantly informative tour of our consumer-driven culture and exposes the real costs of our "use-it and lose-it approach to stuff ".

If you truly care about becoming a socially conscious consumer this video is a must see. I just wish that everyone could have seen it before "Black Friday."

The following three video clips give you an introduction to the story but please, please watch it in its entirety.

Watch it, learn and get more information at: www.StoryofStuff.com


Introduction

Extraction

Production

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Much Toxic Waste Lands In The Third World



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An Environmental Disaster That May Spark A Health Crisis

an excerpt from:

BBC NEWS | Africa | Disease alert in flood-hit Africa

Severe flooding across Africa has wrecked hundreds of thousands of homes and left many people vulnerable to water-borne diseases, officials say.

Scores of people have died and much of the continent's most fertile farmland has been washed away in what is being described as a humanitarian disaster.

The UN said more rain was expected and warned that the need for food, shelter and medicine was urgent.

Some 17 countries have been affected in West, Central and East Africa.

( These include: Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Liberia, Ghana, Togo, Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda )

UN spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs said: "The rains are set to continue and we are really concerned because a lot of people are homeless and infectious diseases could emerge.

See map of the worst-affected nations

"Some of the poorest countries, like Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger - the poorest nation in the world - are badly affected."

The UN said the floods could lead to locust infestations and outbreaks of diseases such as cholera and dysentery.

Villages submerged

Countries in East Africa regularly flood at this time of year, but West African nations are much less able to deal with the deluge, the World Food Programme says.

"In Kenya or Ethiopia, these countries are facing floods every year and year after year, they have set up some contingency plans," the WFP's Pierre Lucas told the BBC.

"In West Africa, the level of awareness is not the same, and the response capacity [is] really different."

Ghana has been hit badly by the flooding, with three northern regions being declared an official disaster zone after whole towns and villages were submerged.

Information Minister Oboshie-Sai Cofie said: "It is a humanitarian disaster. People have nowhere to go. Some of them are just hanging out there waiting for help to come."

She said the Ghanaian government had received considerable aid and hoped the situation would improve.

French military helicopters were helping relief efforts in nearby Ivory Coast, while officials in Togo were dealing with more than 60,000 displace people and a wrecked infrastructure.

* * * * *

A related story:

Cholera Strikes Again in Guinea

Endemic in West Africa, cholera has once again struck in Guinea. The arrival of the rains at the end of May, notably in the capital, Conakry, has created an ideal breeding ground for the disease to spread. Faced with an increasing number of cases, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has boosted its direct support of the local health services.

Guinea 2007 © MSF

Since January this year, nearly 2,500 cases of cholera have been recorded in and around Conakry. Ninety people have died from the disease. After only a few hours, infected people can become dehydrated and die. Simple medical care consisting of oral rehydration or a perfusion, depending on the state of the patient and in some cases antibiotics, are enough to help patients quickly recover.