Month: May 2009

High maternal exposure to PAHs was significantly associated with chemical changes in the fetus related to the expression of ASCL3. At the age of five, children who had exhibited these changes in the womb were significantly more likely to have asthma than children who had not. The researchers believe that air pollution induces changes in gene expression without actually changing the structure of the gene itself, as in a mutation.

"We know that children living in polluted areas have a higher incidence of asthma but what we didn't know was it was affecting a gene," said Keith Prowse, vice-president of the British Lung Foundation. "If you look at cord blood and you find the gene has been modified you know the child is more likely to get asthma so you can treat them early."

Scientists know that ASCL3 is expressed in the lung, and believe that it plays a role in setting or maintaining the structure of cell membranes. They do not yet know exactly how expression of the gene contributes to the development of asthma.

Respiratory Enhancement Kit & Nebulizer
Lobelia

(NaturalNews) The Mothers Act is due to be voted on soon by the U.S. Senate. This is the Big Pharma-advocated law that would require the mandatory screening of all expectant mothers for depression — with the intent of drugging them if symptoms are present.

Those wanting to stay up to date on the battle against psych drugs may also be interested in following CCHR on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/CCHRINT

What follows here is authored by Kelly Patricia O'Meara:

Stress Testing the MOTHERS Act

It seems these days that everything is a test. Yes, the powers that be have decided that taxpayer benevolence now is contingent upon passing a stress test. But much to the dismay of those being tested, the results may reveal, for example, that the nation's financial wizards and auto giants are actually bankrupt midgets and unworthy of America's support.

Given that officialdom has embraced the stress test as a barometer of future viability and success and a determinant for public financing, it seems reasonable to request that other important issues that very personally impact the health and welfare of the American people be subjected to similar stress tests. There is none more deserving of stress testing than the proposed MOTHERS Act.

On the surface, the MOTHERS Act reflects its sponsors overwhelming compassion and empathy for women suffering from alleged mental health disorders resulting from childbirth – often referred to as Postpartum Depression. But when one conducts a brief stress test on important sections of the legislation, taxpayers may find that this costly and sweeping mental health legislation actually fails women of America, but goes a long way in inflating the balance sheets of one of the most lucrative industries in the nation – big Pharma.

For instance, the MOTHERS Act legislation that currently is pending in the U.S. Senate states that the Secretary of Health and Human Services may "make grants to eligible entities…" to deliver essential services to individuals with a postpartum condition. What the legislation doesn't delineate is who and what entities may receive these grants. Are these "entities" funded by pharmaceutical companies? Lawmakers have not specified what constitutes an "entity" so it will be impossible to know if there are conflicts of interest between those who develop the screening tools and conduct research and the pharmaceutical companies who most certainly will benefit financially from the increased diagnosing.

Furthermore, no research guidelines have been provided for public disclosure. This is no small issue, given that the Senate Finance Committee recently exposed the conflicts of interest of the top ten psychiatric researchers in the U.S. who had received millions of dollars in pharmaceutical funding. Where is the guarantee that the "entities" are not pharmaceutical front-men?

The legislation also allows for the "expansion and intensification of activities" into the research of Postpartum conditions and "evaluation of new treatments." This is a humdinger. Despite ever-increasing published data and clinical studies challenging the safety of antidepressants and other antipsychotic drugs, there is no guidance provided by lawmakers to mandate that the public be made aware of the avalanche of scientific data that not only questions the efficacy of the drugs available to mothers suffering from these conditions, but also warning of the dangers associated with currently available "treatments."

The section of the legislation dealing with expanding the research into the causes of Postpartum conditions is wholly void of any guidelines that insure the validity of the research conducted, and provides nothing in the way of public disclosure or peer-review of research before it is launched in education campaigns. In the real world, research is conducted and submitted for peer review. In this instance, it appears that Congress has learned nothing from the ongoing banking debacle and naively believes that the researchers will be on their best behavior – self-policing themselves. This is a dangerous omission in the legislation, especially since the Senate Finance Committee has exposed the serious conflicts of interest that exist between researchers and pharmaceutical companies.

Making matters worse, much of the legislation revolves around funding national education campaigns about Postpartum Depression, including Public Service Announcements and television and radio advertisements. Based on the current language of the legislation, research will be conducted without peer review – no checks and balances; no one to validate the integrity of the research which then will be used to determine a woman's mental health status. Given that this research will be used to develop questions or tests for screening new mothers for possible mental disorders, one might find it important to know that the research has integrity and has been validated by the scientific community, free of pharmaceutical largesse. Congress apparently didn't think integrity of the research is important and there are no provisions to protect women from pharmaceutical driven research.

Taxpayers may also expect that such important legislation would make provisions for some kind of oversight; some government entity that could provide feedback on the success or failure of this mental health campaign. One avenue that may help lawmakers' determine if these new programs are working is the Food and Drug Administration's MedWatch Adverse Event Reports. MedWatch collects information about people who have experienced adverse reactions to drugs overseen by the FDA. With the increased drugging that most certainly will occur with the increase in diagnosing, it seems logical that lawmakers would insert provisions in the legislation to annually review Adverse Event Reports collected by MedWatch, especially those relating to drugs prescribed in the treatment of Postpartum Depression. Unfortunately, because the nation's lawmakers have provided no provisions for oversight, countless numbers of women may be harmed by the "treatments" but will be none the wiser because no protections were provided in the legislation.

There also is the very basic question of why the government is endorsing this sweeping mental health legislation and sanctioning a national advertising campaign about Postpartum Depression when there is no definitive data about the cause of the condition or that it is an objective confirmable abnormality – the scientific standard for disease. Given that there are so many unknowns in this legislation, it seems irresponsible to go forward without reasonable protections in place.

Congress must insure that all research and screening tests proposed and endorsed by this legislation be disclosed for peer-review and consumer input before implementing any screening tests and approving any research to be used in the national education campaign, including Public Service Announcements and radio and television advertising.

Given the documented risks related to the current modes of treatments, including antidepressant and antipsychotics, which are commonly prescribed for Postpartum Depression and documented to cause birth defects and host of other issues in pregnant and nursing mothers, Congress must include mandatory reviews of published research and clinical data on the drugs prescribed for the treatment of Postpartum Depression.

Finally, Congress must protect the integrity of the research by providing strict guidelines to insure that there are no conflicts of interest between the researcher and the pharmaceutical industry.

Without these safeguards, the MOTHERS Act cannot today, or ever, pass a stress test of viability and mothers and their children certainly will be on the losing end of this mental health campaign. Sometimes it's in the best interest of the people for Congress NOT to act, and until our lawmakers are confident that all legislative precautions have been taken to insure optimum results, this is one of those times.

About the author:

Kelly Patricia O'Meara is an award-winning investigative journalist who authored more than two dozen articles examining the psychiatric pharmaceutical industry during her tenure at the Washington Times' Insight Magazine. Her articles resulted in record sales of the issues in which they appeared and among the national and international press that have featured her articles are Fox News, the O'Reilly Factor, CBS News, BBC, ABC's 20/20 and Hannity and Colmes. She is also the author of Psyched Out: How Psychiatry Sells Sickness and Pushes Pills that Kill. Prior to working as an investigative journalist, O'Meara spent sixteen years on Capitol Hill and was the lead investigator in several Congressional investigations. She holds a B.S. in Political Science from the University of Maryland.

When pigs flus arise

WHAT — The world was stirred the morning of 4/24/09 by pandemic fears of a swine flu reported in the mainstream media.

National and international citations of grave concern were reported coming from experts (so-called) as that first “news” story unfolded before finally noting more than a dozen paragraphs later that “the new swine flu strain had been confirmed in 20 of those deaths”.

This caught my eye as 20 is only one-and-two-thirds dozen which is not “dozens of people” as the “news” lead reported – unless one rounds that up to the number two which is more than one to make this technically a plural “dozens”.

A quick check confirmed this was an Associated Press (Propaganda) story.

We were in for a wild ride was the keen observation of this journalist, researcher and historian.

The death total fell within two days to just 12.  The stretched-to-the-edge-of-credulity “dozens” of the 20 numbered deaths was just a single dozen – and not even a baker’s dozen.

Another two days later the number of deaths fell to just seven falling well under even a single dozen.

The hype increased dramatically even as the numbers of deaths decreased dramatically.

The initial AP story noted the swine flu “also sickened at least eight people in Texas and California” in its second paragraph.  AP failed to note until almost the very end of this longer-than-usual “news” story that these “have all recovered” before the first story on this was even published.

“A ‘seed stock’ genetically matched to the new swine flu virus has been created by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control [and Prevention], said Dr. Richard Besser, the agency’s acting director,” noted the initial AP story.

Colloidal Silver

The very first day this issue is in the news and CDC already has a copy of this virus that they have created.

Perhaps this will help you to understand why this writer refers to the CDC as the Centers for Disease Creation and Promotion.

WHERE — The experts (so-called) chimed in chorus for two days that U.S. deaths (plural) were inevitable.

Very early the morning of 4/29/09 the headlines declared the first U.S. swine flu death on Day Six of this crisis-in-the-making.

The story detailed a 23-month old baby boy dying in southern Texas from swine flu.  I rolled my eyes, looked up at my teenaged son as I read this detail to him and said, “This was a Mexican baby.”

Some hours later it was finally reported that this was indeed a baby that had taken ill in Mexico before coming up to the U.S.

The only thing about this death that was “U.S.” was where the baby died and not where the baby became ill – and severely so before arriving in the U.S.

On Day Eleven as this is written there is still not an actual, single U.S. swine flu death let alone deaths (plural).

It took until Day Ten before the total of deaths even reached the 20 deaths number initially reported on Day One.

HOW – Mexico City has been the epicenter of this epic flu demi-panic.

This is the second largest city in the world with more than 20 million people huddled together in a very polluted and slum-ridden city – a classic breeding ground for an infectious outbreak to occur if it were possible.  Warnings against even drinking the water in Mexico and against ‘Montezuma’s Revenge’ are common knowledge worldwide.

It should not be surprising that deaths in an infectious outbreak in this environment would be greater than elsewhere.  That should be expected.  That Mexico is the only source of deaths should be the surprising aspect of this IF – and it is a very big IF – this is a global terror.

Yet the initial global panic came with reports of 1,000 sickened in Mexico City.  That is a rate of one out of 20,000 in a very susceptible environment.  As a matter of perspective the annual flu rate in the U.S. is at a much higher rate of 1 out of 1,000 and that never generates fears of a global terror.

Something is rotten in the states of America – and throughout the world.

WHY – Reasons are abundant for the amount of attention paid to this swine flu matter that is so much out of proportion to the actual facts of the matter.

There was difficulty getting Kansas Governor Kathleen Sibelius confirmed as Secretary of Health & Human Services.  This swine flu (not really) pandemic was used to push the new Health Secretary to head up the (pseudo) crisis.

Even with such heightened hype the confirmation was finally rushed through by a slim margin.  It is unlikely confirmation would have gone through by now without the swine flu panic.

One might call this panic-generating-Democratic-confirmation-flu a panDemocratic flu.

Another reason for hyping this flu is the drug Tamiflu.

The global stockpiles stored up of Tamiflu are about to reach their expiration date.  That would be a loss of billions of taxpayer dollars.  This gives opportunity to bring out the about to become worthless Tamiflu.

Actually, worthless Tamiflu could be considered an oxymoron.

International and U.S. experts noted just two months ago that worldwide resistance to Tamiflu is “as high as 98 per cent worldwide”.

That hasn’t stopped media reports this past week crediting previously discredited (by their own reports) Tamiflu as the reason for the lack of non-Mexican swine flu deaths – even though the death rate even in Mexico is not very high especially when considering the poor conditions there.

Yet another reason could be conditioning people to do as they are told by government officials for their own good – or else.

WHO – World Health Organization (WHO) officials have announced that they are going to take the risk of producing a swine flu vaccine.  What is the “risk” to WHO?  Can one sue WHO if they are given a vaccine that causes them damage?

U.S. officials have declared that they are going to produce 600 million doses of swine flu.  That is about five times as much flu vaccine as has ever been produced before.

“Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it,” is an old saying.

A little history lesson is in order.

WHEN – It will take until at least the middle of summer and perhaps the fall before a swine flu vaccine could be produced.

The last swine flu was in 1976.  That swine flu vaccine resulted in more hospitalizations, permanent injuries and innumerable deaths than the swine flu itself produced.

That last swine flu was a major crossroads in my life’s path for my crossing into health research in general and vaccination research specifically.

Later I learned about the real truth of the legendary flu of 1918 from many sources.  One of these was with regard to Ruth Adams, a woman who would have been one of the earliest female doctors.

Adams was a in her early postgraduate training in residency at a Chicago area hospital in the fall of 1918 and giving vaccinations as instructed.  There had been a spring outbreak of flu that had subsided and concern was noised abroad to be sure people were protected by vaccine so that they would be healthy and better able to withstand disease.

Adams became disturbed as she noted that those being vaccinated were the same ones subsequently succumbing to the growing flu scourge.  She brought this to the attention of her superiors who assured her there was no connection and to continue vaccinating per her instructions.

Adams continued but noted the connection of those being vaccinated as those succumbing to the new killer flu increased and approached her superiors again.  She was told to do as she was told and therefore quit to become somewhat of an anti-medical campaigner thereafter.

The current spring swine flu outbreak being now quickly quelled and plans for a swine flu vaccine being noised for a fall campaign have revived this memory among others.

In the earliest history of this column a three part series on the history of smallpox vaccination was presented as a warning against a new smallpox campaign that this column predicted would be instituted.

That prediction was fulfilled and through the following six months this column chronicled events as all the negatives warned about were fulfilled – and then some – before the program was brought to an ignominious end.

History records in the 19th century that dreaded fears of smallpox brought mandatory vaccination laws.  It is also a matter of record that those areas with the highest levels of smallpox vaccination had both the highest rates of smallpox and the highest death rates amongst those coming down with the disease.

Authorities in the industrial city of Leicester reacted by defying the compulsory smallpox vaccination order. Their efforts were concentrated toward improved sanitation and quarantine as preventatives. Over a nineteen year span they had an astonishing decrease in smallpox deaths listed as 0.01 per thousand population (equal to 10 per million). During the twelve years of 1878-1889 there was less than one smallpox death averaged annually.

Comparatively, the Army and Navy during this same period in England had nearly 40 smallpox deaths per million in their thoroughly smallpox vaccinated ranks!

At the beginning of this current crisis (so-called) in our modern day as fears of a pandemic possibility were noised abroad an old friend sent me a very short e-mail:

“There is no pandemic without mass vaccinations.”

An old proverb notes, “A word to the wise is sufficient.”

“Step back and think for a minute before rushing and panicking” is the message coming from Texas Congressman Ron Paul who has warned that the swine flu scare will once again be used as a precedent for big government intrusion.

“It turned out that our instincts were correct.” the Congressman, also a medical physician, commented. “Not only did we think that the government should be involved in making medical decisions… but the flu came, the flu went and one person died, except for those individuals that died from getting the flu vaccine.”

Earlier this week we reported on the events of 1976, highlighting the fact that this last significant outbreak of swine flu in the U.S. originated at the army base at Fort Dix, New Jersey.

President Gerald Ford and then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (a man who has long standing intimate ties with the big pharma companies that have and will reap millions in profits from these scares) instituted a mass nationwide vaccination program. More than 40 million people were vaccinated. However, the program was stopped short after over 500 cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome, a severe paralyzing nerve disease, were reported. Officially 30 people died as a direct result of the vaccinations, though the real figure is generally thought to have been much higher.

At the time Congressman Ron Paul was one of only two representatives to vote down the vaccination program. His comments were recorded in the book Swine Flu Expose, by Eleanora I. McBean, Ph.D., N.D.

Paul described the move as “a shocking misuse of funds …and an evil political maneuver”, “blatant advertising efforts to panic the people into taking Swine Flu shots will fail.” Paul said.

Some of the fearmongering advertisement campaigns from 1976 are featured in the following video here:

“Here we are once again, swine flu coming up and everybody is panicking.” Ron Paul says in his latest update.

“This is not to downplay the seriousness of it. Some people have died, some people might die, yet we’ve had no deaths in this country, there’s seven or eight cases up in New York, but none have even been hospitalised and yet it’s practically like we’ve been attacked by nuclear weapons.”

The Congressman put the current panic in perspective by pointing out that last year alone there were 13,000 cases of tuberculosis with the number of annual deaths last recorded in the hundreds.

Paul then opined on how the scare will once again be pounced upon to bolster and further empower big government. He referred to Janet Napolitano’s announcement Sunday that the Department of Homeland Security had started “passive surveillance protocols to screen people coming into the country.”

“How did the Department of Homeland Security get into the medical business? It’s just totally out of control,” Paul said, describing the situation as an open door invitation to allow the federal government to deal with medical problems.

The big question is ‘Does a bigger government always solve these problems?’ No, they usually make things much worse.

(NaturalNews) Read just about any news report on swine flu deaths, and you'll come across a line that claims "36,000 people die each year from flu-related causes." It sounds authoritative. It's even a nice, round number. But where is this number coming from? And is it based on any actual science?

As it turns out, virtually none of the 36,000 people said to die from regular flu each year have been confirmed in any lab whatsoever.

Thus, according to the guidelines of the CDC and WHO, they don't count. Based on their own rules, it is technically accurate to say that regular flu kills virtually no one. It's not true, of course, because people do die from the "regular flu" each year, but it is technically accurate according to the CDC and WHO rules for scientific evidence.

Again, that's because nearly all of these "regular flu" deaths aren't confirmed by a CDC or WHO-recognized lab. Thus, they have no scientific standing.

Infectious disease double standard

The 36,000 number, it turns out, was pulled out of thin air. It has no scientific validity whatsoever, even according to the CDC's own standards.

I tracked down the origins of this number on CDC.gov, by the way. Turns out it was an estimate derived by the CDC in 2003 (http://www.cdc.gov/od/oc/media/pres…).

It's an estimate, mind you, not a "confirmed" number of deaths. And that estimate has stayed exactly the same through 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009. Not a budge. Before the number was 36,000, it was 20,000 for many years. That tells you right off the bat this isn't some confirmed laboratory number — it's a guesstimate!

I'm not disagreeing with the number. It's probably a fairly accurate guess (the CDC folks are a smart bunch). But it doesn't meet the criteria by which these infectious disease organizations report influenza deaths.

As the CDC even says on their own website, "This estimate came from a 2003 study published in the Journal of the American Medication Association (JAMA), which looked at the 1990-91 through the 1998-99 flu seasons [10]. Statistical modeling was used to estimate how many flu-related deaths occurred among people whose underlying cause of death on their death certificate was listed as a respiratory or circulatory disease. During these years, the number of estimated deaths ranged from 17,000 to 52,000."

In other words, they took a look at how many people died from respiratory or circulatory disease, and from that they extrapolated "flu-related deaths."

This is all accomplished through "statistical modeling," which is the equivalent of statisticians waving magic wands to create new numbers where none exist. Based on the sample size, it can be quite accurate (plus or minus a few percentage points), or it can be way off base depending on the accuracy of the statistical sample.

Notably, if the same methodology were used to calculate swine flu deaths, it might currently show 300 or more deaths (and such methodologies would be widely criticized, of course, for being "just wild guesses," which they are).

As the CDC admits itself, "CDC does not know exactly how many people die from flu each year."

And… "It has been recognized for many years that influenza is infrequently listed on death certificates [12] and testing for influenza infections usually not done, particularly among the elderly who are at greatest risk of influenza complications and death. Some deaths – particularly in the elderly – are associated with secondary complications of influenza (including bacterial pneumonias)." (http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/diseas…)

In other words: Influenza isn't listed on death certificates and influenza testing isn't even done on most patients! Thus, it is not possible for these 36,000 influenza deaths to be confirmed at all.

Swine Flu may escape detection, too

"Influenza virus infection may not be identified in many instances because influenza virus is only detectable for a short period of time and many people don't seek medical care until after the first few days of acute illness." – The CDC

If this is true, then isn't it also true that most swine flu patients can NEVER be confirmed in a lab?

I find this quite curious, because according to what the CDC is saying here, it is impossible to ever get an accurate "confirmed" count of swine flu patients because the influenza virus isn't detectable after a "short period of time." Thus, by limiting swine flu death reports to only those patients who have been confirmed in a laboratory, the CDC is essentially eliminating the very possibility that many swine flu patients will ever be tested and identified as carrying the strain.

Put another way, the criteria for identifying and reporting swine flu deaths is, itself, limiting the number of swine flu deaths that will ever be counted. Essentially, the system is rigged to under-report swine flu deaths by eliminating anyone who wasn't tested in time to identify the strain.

This, I believe, is why the swine flu death count remains magically low even as doctors on the ground in Mexico City are reporting much larger numbers of real-world swine flu deaths.

Different Strains

The other important thing to realize here is that the 36,000 figure is not talking about just one strain of influenza: It's a cumulative figure from ALL the other strains of influenza combined!

"Regular flu," you see, isn't just one flu. It's a collection of potentially hundreds of different flu strains. So assigning the 36,000 deaths a year figure to "regular flu" is misleading because it makes it sound like a single strain of influenza.

The truth is that nobody really knows how many deaths each year occur from the different strains of flu circulating in the wild. Some top-notch CDC officials can probably take a pretty good guess at it, but it's still just that: A guess. The real numbers are, frankly, unknown.

It's also unknown how many people die from the viral load vs. how many die from secondary infections (such as bacterial pneumonia) that often follow viral infections. Technically, a lot of those 36,000 people (or so) might have been killed by various strains of common bacteria, not by the viruses.

Yesterday morning, Mexico was reporting 159 deaths from swine flu. According to the WHO, that number is not only 7. How does 159 magically become 7? By including the word "confirmed" in front of it.

Fine. Let's all go with the "confirmed" modifier. All infectious disease deaths must now be confirmed in a CDC or WHO laboratory in order to count. So that means the 36,000 number needs to be revised down to however many have been "confirmed" in that group.

And how many is that? Only the CDC knows. I'm guessing it's a two-digit number.

So much for the myth of "36,000 flu-related deaths a year." If you believe that number, I'm sure there's a job waiting for you at the U.S. Treasury Dept., too, where numbers are materialized out of thin air on a daily basis in order to finance the national debt.