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The debate over vaccine safety continues unabated and CBS Evening News ran a brief piece to say the American Academy of Pediatrics, Every Child By Two, and pediatrician Paul Offit - which the news program calls “some of the most trusted voices in the defense of vaccine safety” - have financial ties to the drugmakers whose vaccines “they promote and defend.”
For the first time, the Federal Trade Commission is being sued over the use of history.
A New Mexico herb company says the First Amendment gives it the right to tell customers the historical use of herbs in treating serious diseases. The FTC says this violates its guidelines.
Now the issue is headed to court. Native Essence Herb Company, and its owners Mark and Marianne Hershiser, has sued to strike down the FTC's guidelines.
The lawsuit was filed by Houston attorney Richard A. Jaffe, Esq., a leading health care attorney and the author of "Galileo's Lawyer," an insider's look into the battles between the government and the complementary medicine field.
"Herb sellers should be able to tell consumers that an herb has a long historical use to treat a disease," says Jaffe. "The FTC's prohibition of this kind of truthful information is unreasonable and unconstitutional."
The lawsuit asks the federal court to declare the FTC's guidelines on "historical use claims" for herbal remedies a violation of the First Amendment.
Company owner Hershiser wants to post this historical use information on his website, much of which is taken from federal government websites, and he wants the courts to allow him that right.
Drinking water disinfected by chlorine while pregnant may increase the risk of having children with heart problems, cleft palate or major brain defects, according to a study published today in BioMed Central's open access journal Environmental Health.
This finding, based on an analysis of nearly 400,000 infants in Taiwan, is the first that links by-products of water chlorination to three specific birth defects.
Water chlorination is a widely used and efficient method to disinfect drinking water and reduce the occurrence of waterborne diseases. However, numerous studies have revealed the presence of many chlorination by-products in the water. Recent research suggests that prenatal exposure to these by-products may increase the risk of birth defects.
A research team led by Jouni Jaakkola from the Institute of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, University of Birmingham, UK, gathered data on almost 400,000 infants born in Taiwan. The researchers used statistical analyses to see if drinking tap water containing high, medium or low levels of chlorination by-products increased the risk of 11 common birth defects.
Although the researchers found no direct link between the prevalence of any birth defect and the level of exposure, their calculations revealed that exposure to high levels of by-products substantially increased the risk of three common defects: ventricular septal defects (holes in the heart), cleft palate, and anencephalus (where neural development fails, resulting in the absence of a major portion of the brain, skull, and scalp).
Continue reading "Is Tap Water Safe for Expectant Mothers?" »
Fasting for one day each month may reduce the risk of clogged arteries by 40 percent, according to a new study conducted by researchers from Intermountain Medical Center and the University of Utah and presented at a conference of the American Heart Association.
Researchers first began to study fasting when an analysis of a health registry indicated that significantly fewer Mormons than non-Mormons in Utah suffered from the clogged arteries indicative of heart disease, even after different smoking rates were taken into account.
The researchers then conducted a survey of 515 people, 92 percent of whom were Mormon. Participants were asked about a number of habits associated with the practice of the Mormon religion, including fasting one day per month, avoidance of caffeine and alcohol, observance of a day of rest, church attendance and donation of either time or money to charity.
Of the five religious practices, only observance of the monthly fast showed any correlation with heart disease rates, with 59 percent of regular fasters developing heart disease, compared with 67 percent of those who did not fast. The difference between fasters and non-fasters remained even after the researchers adjusted for age, weight and health status, including high cholesterol, diabetes or high blood pressure.
Continue reading "Fasting One Day a Month Causes Significant Reduction in Clogged Arteries" »
Dr. Shiv Chopra, PhD, must be fire-proof. As a vaccine and drug regulator for Health Canada for nearly forty years, he evaluated every red-hot topic in public health and tried to protect us from unsafe drugs, vaccines, and agricultural practices. Over the years, he tried (sometimes successfully) to stop our government from allowing Canadians to be exposed to ineffective and harmful vaccines, genetically modified foods, pesticides, carcinogenic antibiotics and hormones used in food-producing animals, and agricultural practices that promote Mad Cow Disease. He even went public with his findings, supported by Canada’s public service union, which resulted in legal battles initiated against him by a government determined to shut him up. The courts, however, tended to find in favour of Dr. Chopra, and instead ordered the government to shape up.
This support by the courts, various tribunals, and Senate committee hearings of Dr. Chopra and his fellow scientists at Health Canada was highly unfavourable to corporate interests and, therefore, irksome to those prime ministers and ministers of health dependent upon corporate support. So Drs. Chopra, Margaret Haydon, and Gerard Lambert were fired from Health Canada in 2004 by then PM Paul Martin for “insubordination”. The reason provided was true, in a sense: they had steadfastly refused for more than three decades to subordinate themselves to corporate and government pressure to pass unsafe substances which were in direct contravention to Canada’s Foods and Drugs Act.
Dr. Chopra has now written a book on his decades of struggle to have the law recognized as being above political policy. His book, Corrupt to the Core, tells of what crimes our government knowingly committed against public health in order to serve corporate financial interests. The book has been three years in the making and is at the press now.
The head of a prominent cancer research institute issued an unprecedented warning to his faculty and staff Wednesday: Limit cell phone use because of the possible risk of cancer.
The warning from Dr. Ronald B. Herberman, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, is contrary to numerous studies that don't find a link between cancer and cell phone use, and a public lack of worry by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Herberman is basing his alarm on early unpublished data. He says it takes too long to get answers from science, and he believes people should take action now - especially when it comes to children.
"Really at the heart of my concern is that we shouldn't wait for a definitive study to come out, but err on the side of being safe rather than sorry later," Herberman said.
No other major academic cancer research institutions have sounded such an alarm about cell phone use. But Herberman's advice is sure to raise concern among many cell phone users and especially parents.
In the memo he sent to about 3,000 faculty and staff Wednesday, he said children should use cell phones only for emergencies because their brains are still developing.
