Month: July 2009

(NaturalNews) Children who have their tonsil surgically removed early in life are significantly more likely to become overweight or obese by age eight, according to a study conducted by researchers from the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in the Netherlands, and published in the journal Pediatrics.

Analysis of the data showed that children whose tonsils had been removed (tonsillectomy) were 61 percent more likely to be overweight at age eight than children whose tonsils had not been removed, and 131 percent more likely to be obese. This statistic remained the same whether or not the adenoid glands were also removed (adenoidectomy), and after adjusting for possible complicating factors such as sex, birth weight, breast-feeding, smoking in the home, and maternal education, weight or smoking during pregnancy.

Adenoidectomy without tonsillectomy did not increase the risk of being overweight, but did increase the risk of obesity by 94 percent.

Rates of tonsillectomy have decreased significantly since the 1950s, but the procedure remains one of the most common surgeries in children in the United States. Tonsillectomy is usually prescribed to alleviate snoring, sleep apnea and other conditions related to upper respiratory blockage. Adenoidectomy is also common, normally prescribed to alleviate restricted nose breathing or chronic ear infections.

In order to be certain that tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy were causing obesity and not the other way around, the researchers looked at obesity rates at age two, finding no correlation with later removal of tonsils or adenoids.

The researchers suspect that removal of the tonsils or adenoids may cause a reversal of previously slowed growth, leading to excessive weight gain.

(NaturalNews) If you read research in a scientific or medical journal, especially one that is peer-reviewed, you know it is presented as accurately as possible, right? Researcher Daniele Fanelli of the University of Edinburgh decided to study the scientists doing the studies to see if she could find the answer.

The media and many in the scientific community have mostly explained these cases as rare instances of non-ethical researchers. However, Fanelli's study, just published in the journal PLoS ONE, suggests scientific misconduct and outright fraud might be relatively frequent.

Previous estimates on bogus research have been based on not-very-accurate indirect data such as counting official retractions of scientific papers or random audits that show data were incorrect. Other researchers have tried simply using surveys to ask scientists all over the world about fraudulent research practices. But because of many different methods and questions used in the surveys, those results have been labeled inconclusive.

To try and sort all this out, Fanelli conducted a meta-analysis to specifically focus on behaviors that actually distort scientific knowledge. She excluding data about plagiarism and other kinds of professional malpractice and concentrated on documenting the frequency of scientists who recalled having committed a particular fraudulent activity at least once, or who knew a fellow scientist who did.

The results from all the surveys showed that only about two percent of scientists admitted to either making up or altering data to improve the outcome of a study at least once. Because the surveys asked very sensitive questions, Fanelli pointed out that it likely that some respondents did not reply honestly, especially when asked about their own activities. So the two percent figure is probably a very conservative estimate.

A much larger number, around 34 percent, admitted to other questionable research practices that can totally skew the results of a study — including "failing to present data that contradict one's own previous research" and "dropping observations or data points from analyses based on a gut feeling that they were inaccurate." What's more, 14 percent of the scientists said they knew someone who had fabricated, falsified or altered data, and the vast majority, around 72 percent, said they knew someone who had taken part in other questionable research practices.

In all the surveys examined by Fanelli's meta-analysis, misconduct was reported most frequently by drug and medical researchers. So what's the bottom line? Either scientists studying drugs or working on health issues are more open and honest than other researchers when they answer questions about bogus research, or frauds, trickery and bias are disturbingly more frequent in pharmacology and medicine. In a statement to the media, Fanelli concludes the last interpretation supports growing suspicions that industrial sponsorship, including the mega-bucks provided by Big Pharma, could be severely distorting scientific evidence to promote commercial treatments and drugs.

Reference:
Fanelli D (2009), How Many Scientists Fabricate and Falsify Research? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Survey Data. PLoS ONE 4(5): e5738. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0005738

(NaturalNews) It's scary enough to have a newborn baby in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) because he or she is premature or has health problems. But now there's reason to worry that many NICUs, places that are supposed to be dedicated to healing and protecting the youngest and most fragile of babies, are actually dangerous environments for neonates. According to a new study just published in The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal, superbug infections — specifically antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections — in US NICUs increased over 300 percent in less than ten years.

In newborns, infections that occur during the first three days of life are most often acquired during labor and delivery. On the other hand, late-onset infections, defined as infections that developed more than three days after a child was born, are known to be primarily transmitted by parents, doctors, nurses and other health care personnel. The investigators focused on late-onset infections and found that out of about 4,400 Staph infections with antibiotic resistance, 23 percent were found to be the result of a MRSA superbug.

From 1995 to 2004, the rate of late-onset MRSA infections soared from less than one for every 10,000 hospital days to three infections per 10,000 hospital days — an enormous increase of 308 percent. The types of MRSA infections were not found to change during the years studied. About 30 percent involved bloodstream infections. Other frequent kinds of MRSA infections that were identified included pneumonia and eye infections (conjunctivitis).

For some reason, the steepest rise in MRSA infections occurred after 2002. While the tiniest babies with extremely low birth weights of 1,000 grams (about 35 ounces) had the sharpest increase in MRSA infections, the superbug infection rate actually rose in all birth weight groups.

The ever increasing rate of superbugs has become a worldwide public health problem, with Staph bacteria developing resistance to commonly used antibiotics. MRSA infections have increasingly been found within communities and not just in hospitals. However, in the new study the Staph strains found in NICUs were clearly in the class of superbugs responsible for hospital-acquired infections, not those which have been reported in the non-medical community setting.

So what's the bottom line result of the study? According to researchers Dr. Fernanda C. Lessa and colleagues at the CDC there is clearly a need for healthcare workers to follow routine infection control steps that are already well-known to be effective in preventing the spreading of MRSA infections. They aren't high tech chemicals or vaccines, either. Instead, the most important is simple hand washing.

As reported earlier in Natural News,  one approach to fighting superbugs in hospitals has already backfired. A study showed that instead of killing potentially dangerous infections, disinfectant wipes may actually spread drug-resistant and sometimes deadly bacteria.

Silver receptors have been discovered on human nervous tissues – indicating that, far from being a health threat, silver is actually an essential item. If nano-sized particles of silver is quackery, one wonders why NASA and the Russian space agencies use it to purify the astronauts water in the space station? Or why Potters for Peace uses it in their filters to purify water in underdeveloped countries? Why one supposes do most major hospital burn units use silver bandages and often have no scarring even with third degree burns? Or why does the Hong Kong subway system use colloidal silver to prevent the spread of infections in their subways?

Silver ineffective? That rather flies in the face of the Merck Index, which demonstrated silver was effective at killing over 650 single celled pathogens. Prior to the advent of patentable and more profitable sulfa-drugs and antibiotics, silver was an essential ingredient in no less than 34 FDA approved prescribed and over the counter medications. Silver did not become less effective (in fact, with improved technology to make sub nanometer sized particles, it has become much more effective), it simply became less profitable and a threat to the patented products of the drug companies.

Silver makes you blue? Rubbish! Millions of people use it, so where are all the tribes of Smurffs? All you find are very rare instances like the famous blue man Paul Karason, who we have seen paraded around to endless media shows and publications. He made his own home-made ionic silver, contaminated it with salt and drank over a quart a day for months on end. Seldom mentioned is the fact that Karason, who claims silver saved his life from at least three serious conditions, took a complete physical at Mount Sinai Hospital at the request of one of the talk shows and, despite the blueness he seems to revel in, was given a clean bill of health.

One has to cast a jaundiced eyes at the motivation of those who always spring forward to condemn silver. And I note that, after years of denying silver's benefits, a group of so-called activist and environmental organizations got together to petition the EPA to regulate silver as a pesticide. Their reasoning – silver kills bacteria and viruses, which they chose to define as "pests". Isn't it interesting that virtually every group that signed up to initiate the petition was discovered to have funding and/or other links to the pharmaceutical companies.

You can pretty well count on industry-backed "studies" and articles condemning just about anything that represents a threat to patented drugs. After all, there is a trillion dollars a year at stake. And that includes natural vitamins, minerals and plants (remember the FDA going after Washington cherry growers because the dared suggest they had health benefits?). I have to wonder when did God and Nature become quacks, and man become God?

Pravda recently announced that colloidal silver beats the Swine Flu. It is a shame that we find more truth about some things like colloidal silver in a publication like Pravda than in our own mainstream media – which not coincidentally receives hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising from the drug companies annually. As Robert F. Kennedy, Jr recently noted though – due to the control of our media by special interests we are the least informed of all the developed countries.

For more real information about colloidal silver, see:

Colloidal Silver Has Mainstream Medicine "Singing the Blues"

Merck, other Pharma Companies Funding Activist Groups behind the EPA Petition to Regulate Silver

Colloidal Silver Beats the Swine Flu

The Merck Index (listing pathogens killed by colloidal silver)

*
Con:

Colloidal Silver had been tested by medical science and the outcome is always negative. This treatment is ineffective and actually quite dangerous.

"the Food and Drug Administration's 1999 ruling that colloidal silver is not recognized as a safe or effective treatment in over-the-counter products for any condition, and its manufacturers therefore cannot make drug-like claims about the product. "
http://quackfiles.blogspot.com/2004/10/theres-unvaccinated-sucker-born-every.html

"Considered potentially toxic by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration"

"there's no evidence that taking colloidal silver can do anything to fight disease or improve health, says Dr. Edmund Pribitkin, a professor of otolaryngology at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia"

"the National Institutes of Health warns that large doses of colloidal silver could cause seizures, kidney damage, stomach trouble, headaches and fatigue"

"People are spending a lot of money on something that has never been proven to work"
http://www.latimes.com/la-he-skeptic9-2009feb09,1,5020689.story

Argyria (Skin turning blue) can occur after many months of exposure.

"Argyria occurs in people who eat or breathe in silver over a long period (several months to many years)"
http://www.kval.com/news/local/12648491.html

"Colloidal silver can cause serious side effects. One is argyria, a bluish-gray discoloration of the body. Argyria is not treatable or reversible."
http://nccam.nih.gov/health/silver/

Please don't put your hope in these scams, you'll end up with is less money and could get terrible side effects from unproven and untested medicines.

EDIT:
Tony I- The 'Big Pharma' conspiracy theory is nonsense. 'Big Alt Med' makes a LOT of money from selling alternative medicines. Both fields are out to make money, but mainstream medicine is the only one that can prove efficacy of most products.
If your best evidence is what you've seen and testimonials, that just doesn't hold up. If silver works, you can easily prove it with a proper double blinded test, using the agreed on standards of scientific testing. If you don't trust 'big pharma' to do the tests, do them yourself. Write your results in a peer reviewed journal. If you can prove it works, we'll be happy to apologise.

When you've finished doing that test, you'll also need to do a full scale test on human subjects to prove that it is safe. It is disgusting that you tell people it is safe without the evidence to prove it… and the fact that you've seen people take it without problems is NOT evidence. Are you really that stubborn in your beliefs that you don't care if people are injured?

Unfortunately most proponents of silver don't do proper tests. They just believe what they want without evidence. That's is fine if you want to keep your beliefs private – but the moment you come on here and give unproven medical advice to people, you're putting lives in danger.

(NaturalNews) If you are living in the U.S. or many other parts of the world, you may soon be forced to accept a vaccination that is actually a biological weapon created with the intent of causing your death or injury, according to evidence compiled by journalist Jane Burgermeister. To defend yourself and your countrymen you can now take legal steps using documents she has created specifically for this purpose. After many days of intense effort and two failed attempts due to hackers, Jane has these documents ready to be downloaded. She gives them freely with the hope that others will follow her lead in standing up for their rights while there is still time.

The Criminal Charges allege a crime has been committed

As reported on June 25th by Natural News http://www.naturalnews.com/026503_p… Jane alleges the crime involves acts of bioterrorism that are in direct violation of U.S. law. These acts have been and are being committed by a group operating within the U.S. under the direction of international bankers controlling the Federal Reserve, against the U.S. population by use of a genetically engineered flu pandemic virus with the intent of causing death. Her Criminal Charges file contains a mountain of verifiable, unambiguous and consistent evidence to back up these allegations.

According to her, there is no need for you to hire a lawyer to file these forms. As this is a criminal complaint, not a civil complaint, there is no fee required for filing it. If you are wanting to bury your court in evidence, you can include the extra back-up evidence file which presents over 100 pages of additional information and documentation.

Every citizen is entitled and even required by the moral imperative to report a crime if there is evidence. In this case, the evidence is overwhelming. No person reporting a crime can be accused of defamation because he or she is supplying proof. The person reporting a crime will not be labeled a political extremist because he is not making a political statement but simply reporting a crime.

The evidence supporting the charges is available to anyone who sifts through the huge amount of information available in scientific journals and other publications, keys in on the significant facts, and presents these facts in a legal context.

Because the alleged crimes directly affect you and your countrymen, you have the special right to file these charges. It is the responsibility and mandate of law enforcement agency to initiate an investigation if anyone presents credible evidence of a crime. That is what they are there for. They cannot refuse to accept your charges.

You are not guaranteed a conviction simply because you have filed charges. State-sponsored crimes are more difficult to prosecute for obvious reasons. The criminals you are charging have infiltrated high government offices and now use the apparatus of the state to carry out and cover up their crimes, and they will try to stop investigative and enforcement actions from taking place.

However, by filing these charges you are guaranteed that your local law enforcement officials will be required to read them and assess the evidence you have presented. Their mandate as law enforcement officials dictates that they must. At the very least, they will become aware that there are bioterrorists in the U.S., and that they are sitting in high government and corporate places. If enough people file charges in the U.S., a District Attorney somewhere may actually take action and prosecute.

The Evidence Document contains additional facts and arguments to support the notion that an international financial crime group that has annexed high government office is using the artificial pandemic virus for the purpose of genocide prior to allowing World Health Organization and United Nations troops to occupy the U.S.

Put down your blind faith and insist on accountability from your government

Not even the President of the United States is above the law. There is no office of power great enough to abolish the Constitution. It is the Constitution that grants all government officials their power. Therefore, no government official including the President of the United States can abolish the Constitution by any executive order without abolishing his own power as well.

In addition to filing charges or instead of filing charges, you can write letters to your state congress and senate representatives and add links to these documents and the evidence they contain.

You can also learn about the Vaccine Resistance Movement Petition and how to sign it at http://www.naturalnews.com/026496_N…

If you witness a crime being committed by the government, Jane is urging you to file new charges. You always have that right. Insist on accountability from law enforcement agencies. The U.S. Constitution was created to protect you.

Whether you file charges or not, these documents must be read

Links to these forms and files can be found at http://birdflu666.wordpress.com/ , under the date of June 24th. Whether you have an interest in filing charges or not, the Criminal Charges is a document that must be read. It will undoubtedly move you to some sort of action.

Steps to safeguard liberty must be taken now

At a time when we have just completed the annual celebration of our Constitution with its Bill of Rights, we must recall that the Constitution says, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

And from the Bill of Rights, "That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

Today we find that our government and other governments around the world have become corroded and corrupted by greed and hunger for power. We are facing a resurrection of Nazi style totalitarianism, under which people are being reduced to the status of slaves who are expendable when they get in the way of wealth and power accumulation.

The deliberate release of an artificially created virus by men with the purpose of triggering forced vaccination with a toxic substance indicates that governments around the world have joined forces with the criminal corporate elite against the rest of humanity.

Yet, we have been slow to wake up to this fact because we have come to believe that if we don't hear about something on television or read about it in the mainstream media, it can't be true. We have failed to realize that these traditional information outlets are owned and controlled by the very people who are plotting against us. Any mention of their true agenda is prohibited in traditional information outlets.

The powers that scheme against us have tried to make us distrustful of the information found on the internet, the one remaining source for freedom of speech. Their representatives deride reports of what we witness everywhere around us as being conspiracy theory. But once we have read the Criminal Charges, we can no longer fail to recognize the tightening grip of totalitarianism.

We have failed to safeguard our most precious possession, our liberty. We have devoted ourselves to the mindless accumulation of goods and services and we have used our possessions as weapons against each other. We have allowed our possessions to divide us, and we have become complacent and compliant in the face of what really counts. It is time to wake up from our national stupor and realize we are about to lose the only possession that really counts.

The charges filed by Jane Burgermeister with the FBI on June 10th may be the force that galvanizes us into action. By filing her charges she has rubbed our faces in the fact we are rapidly losing out liberty. This fact can no longer be denied. Many Americans are embarrassed that while our heads were buried in the sand, these charges were filed by a person living in Austria. And now we know that she has paid a high price for trying to save us.

On June 30th, Jane was unexpectedly fired from her job as European correspondent for the publication Renewable Energy, just days after receiving a promotion from them, and immediately after the Natural News exclusive article appeared. Renewable Energy is a publication of PenWell, a company geared toward coverage of the power generation industry. Jane was already an employee of Renewable Energy when it was acquired by PenWell in 2007. She believes the decision to fire her was the result of the information presented in the article. If she is correct, her firing follows the pattern of other journalists who have recently been fired as the result of standing up for what they believe is true. This muzzling of journalists is one more symptom of descending totalitarianism.

(NaturalNews) Bevacizumab is the generic name for the widely used Genetech cancer drug marketed as Avastin. It inhibits tumor growth by blocking angiogenesis, the formation of new blood vessels. But according to an article just published in the June edition of The Lancet Oncology, cancer patients treated with Avastin in combination with chemotherapy are at a heightened risk of experiencing a potentially catastrophic side effect. In fact, it's a side effect that could kill them before their malignancy does — a gastrointestinal (GI) perforation (a hole in the wall of the stomach, small intestine or large bowel).

There have been concerns about the use of bevacizumab and GI perforation in the past, spurring the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to issue a black-box warning stating the drug should be discontinued in patients who already had a GI perforation. However, a direct link between the drug and perforation hasn't been firmly established — until now.

A huge hole in your stomach
As reported in The Lancet Oncology, scientist Shenhong Wu and colleagues from Stony Brook University Cancer Center in New York conducted a meta-analysis of 17 randomized trials involving 12,294 patients with a variety of solid tumors to find out whether bevacizumab causes GI perforations. The researchers also investigated whether the dose of bevacizumab is related to an increased risk of developing GI perforations and whether having a specific type of cancer ups the risk, too.

The results of the study showed that the incidence of GI perforation was almost one percent, with two times the increased risk of GI perforation in patients receiving bevacizumab compared with controls. What's more, the researchers found a mortality rate of 21.7 percent in cancer patients who developed GI perforation.

The chance of developing a GI perforation was found to be dose-dependent. Lower doses of bevacizumab (2.5 mg/kg per week) increased the chance of GI perforation by 61 percent; while at a higher dose (5 mg/kg per week), the risk of a GI perforation increased by 167 percent. The incidence of GI perforation with bevacizumab also varied depending on what type of cancer the patient had. The highest incidence was found among patients with advanced colorectal cancer and renal cell cancer, and the lowest was in patients with pancreatic cancer.

"As bevacizumab is extensively used in routine cancer treatment…it will be increasingly important to recognize symptoms indicating perforation and intervene promptly to reduce morbidity and fatality…our study might help to identify a subset of patients receiving bevacizumab at high risk of bevacizumab-associated perforation," the study authors concluded in their article.

This is not the first time bevacizumab, a.k.a. Avastin, has had some bad publicity. First approved by the FDA in 2004 for metastatic colon and non-small cell lung cancer, the drug was also approved to treat metastatic breast cancer in 2008. That decision generated controversy because it went against the recommendation of the FDA's own advisory panel. The reason? FDA approval for late-stage cancer treatments is supposed to be contingent upon data showing a drug extends or improves the quality of patients' lives. According to Genentech's own application for the approval of Avastin, this drug does neither.