'Virtually no progress' in alleviating world hunger

I grew up after WW II and the big theme then was feeding enough food for Cox's Army. You'll understand if you grew up in a Southern family. Then came the Korean War. We were told to clean the plate as it was somehow connected to starving children in Korea.

Then I found myself in Ballard, circa late 80s. That buffet, King's Table, if you know the neighborhood at all. I'd take 'Squeak' out for dinner there once in a while. He's the one that called them 'porksters'. Sad watching those fat liitle kids, rounder than an OOmpa-Loompa, load thier plates. Not with vegetables, mind you. And yes, even put the soft serve on top of their slab of roast beef! The fun really began watching them go for the second and later rounds.

My kids used to be served up Cox's Army style when they were little. It was so bad that they woud lean on the sink in the rest room in order to make Pop-Pop happy by eating more.

Today neither are porksters. One even works for a group that helps with Bono's effort to feed the starving.

Now on Halloween all the little porkster goblins will be out in droves, greedy for fattening goodies by the ton. Maybe we should call it off. Do something nice for a change. Stop Western gluttony in favour of feeding the starving. Have a world wide, non-political (meaning that the hungry really get the food) food drive. Yes, that's it! No candy. Only healthy food collecting and getting out to all who hunger on Wednesday.

Next Day: Wednesday. All Saint's Day for those who remember.

Quick call in Santa, the Elves and reindeer for logistics.

It just might lead the way to the end of all dis-ease.

(those nasty collected things known as 'stats' tell us that 99% of all dis-ease is caused by malnutrition, skinny and fat alike...)

The FAO lamented the "hunger-poverty trap," saying that hunger is not only a consequence of poverty but also one of its causes, because it "compromises the health and productivity of individuals and their efforts to escape poverty."

by Andrea BambinoMon Oct 30, 9:50 AM ET

The world has made "virtually no progress" in eradicating hunger over the past decade despite greater wealth, according to a report by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

The latest figures, from 2001-03, show that 854 million people were undernourished. Most, some 820 million, were in developing countries.

The World Food Summit, held in Rome in 1996, set the ambitious target of halving world hunger by 2015 relative to 1990-92.

"Ten years later, we are confronted with the sad reality that virtually no progress has been made towards that objective," said FAO chief Jacques Diouf in the report titled "The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2006."

The drop from 823 million to 820 million undernourished people in developing countries is so tiny that it is "within the bounds of statistical error," he said in the UN agency's report.

"The most recent trends are a cause for concern," the report said, noting that 26 million more people were malnourished between 1995-97 and 2001-03, whereas the 1980s had seen a decrease of 100 million.

"The world is richer today than it was 10 years ago. There is more food available. ... What is lacking is sufficient political will to mobilize ... resources to the benefit of the hungry," Diouf said.

The FAO's projections for the future are more optimistic at 582 million undernourished in 2015, but the global figure hides several dire realities.

The total figure and the proportion of underfed people declined in Asia and the Pacific between 1990-92 and 2001-03, but the drop was mainly in China and Vietnam, where agriculture grew.

Also, "most countries in South America have advanced towards the target, but a significant increase in hunger was recorded in ... Venezuela. Setbacks have also been recorded for most Central Amercian countries, especially Guatemala and Panama."

In sub-Saharan Africa, wars, HIV-AIDS and natural disasters hampered measures taken to fight hunger, notably in Burundi, Eritrea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The FAO is especially concerned for the DRC, which was at war between 1998 and 2002 involving seven countries and where the number of undernourished people tripled between 1990-92 and 2001-03, from 12 million to 36 million, or some 72 percent of the population.

The FAO called for massive investments in agriculture and areas where hunger is concentrated.

"The agriculture sector tends to be the engine of growth for entire rural economies, and productivity-driven increases in output can expand food supplies and reduce food prices in local markets, raise farm incomes and boost the overall local economy by generating demand for locally produced goods and services," the report says.

The FAO lamented the "hunger-poverty trap," saying that hunger is not only a consequence of poverty but also one of its causes, because it "compromises the health and productivity of individuals and their efforts to escape poverty."

Flu Shot Risk Too High, Here's What You Need To Do.

With two supportive articles we now can claim that even the medical profession is finally waking up to what we've said for years: DO NOT GET A FLU SHOT!

What we recommend is plain, simple and inexpensive: Good old Calcium Ascorbate (vitamin C for those not in the know). No, we are not suggesting ascorbic acid, so make sure you don't buy on the cheap and you read the label first. Make sure you take enough and take it often. Drink lots of fluids, wash your hands frequently, use tissues, and get rest.

If they push you toward the shot under the guise of preventing pneumonia, remember that high doses of vitamin A for a few days will keep you safe.

If you want more information: contact us and read more below -

Report casts doubt on flu vaccine effectiveness

Thu. Oct. 26 2006 CTV.ca News Staff

With flu season upon us, a controversial editorial in the British Medical Journal is warning that the flu shots many Canadians get every fall may not be as effective as we believe.

Across the world, health agencies recommend the use of inactivated flu vaccines, or vaccines containing dead flu viruses, to protect the population from seasonal outbreaks of influenza.

But because influenza viruses mutate from year to year, argues vaccine expert Dr. Tom Jefferson, it's difficult to study the precise effects of the widely-prescribed vaccines.

In fact, Jefferson says there's evidence proving these vaccines have little or no effect on things such as hospital stay, time off work, or even death resulting from influenza and its complications -- especially in elderly people.

Jefferson makes his arguments in a controversial report titled "Influenza vaccination: policy versus evidence," published in volume 333 of the British Medical Journal (BMJ).

The rationales behind the use of the vaccines in Canada and the U.S., he says, rests on the "heavy burden that influenza imposes on the population and the benefits of vaccination."

Canada backs present policy

Dr. Theresa Tam, an influenza expert with the Public Health Agency of Canada who has read Jefferson's report, said the agency stands behind its recommendation of flu vaccines.

"We base our policies or recommendations on scientific evidence, and we have reviewed all available evidence," Tam told CTV.ca on Thursday.

"Our summation is that the benefits of influenza vaccines outweigh any risk, and the vaccine is safe and effective. It can prevent hospitalization and save lives."

This is supported by the World Health Organization, which estimates that vaccinating elderly people reduces their risk of serious complications or of death by 70 to 85 per cent.

However, says Jefferson, WHO bases its recommendations on "single studies" that are random and are carried out from one or two seasons, making them "difficult to interpret."

"Single studies are also not reliable sources for generalizing and forecasting the effects of vaccines, especially when numbers are small," he said.

A better way, he said, would be to use systematic studies that average out over several years and test a large number of people in order to prove that these vaccines are having any effect.

The evidence

To highlight his claim that there's a lack of evidence backing the vaccine's effectiveness, Jefferson cites a study in the Cochrane review, "Vaccines for preventing influenza in healthy children," which found that in children under two years old, inactivated vaccines had the same effectiveness as placebo.

Further, a study in the same review for adults found that "in healthy people under 65 vaccination did not affect hospital stay, time off work, or death from influenza and its complication."

Jefferson says there is a "surprising" gap between what the policies of health agencies surrounding influenza tell us and the actual data.

"The reason for this situation are not clear and may be complex," says Jefferson.

He suggests there may be a confusion between influenza and influenza-like illness, where people are being diagnosed with the flu when they have something else.

"This confusion leads to a gross overestimation of the impact of influenza, unrealistic expectations of the performance of vaccines, and spurious certainty of our ability to predict viral circulation and impact."

He said this problem is compounded by the lack of accurate, fast surveillance systems that can tell exactly what viruses are going around in a community. Therefore, at the end of the flu season, there's no way for scientists to get an accurate picture of what went on to better prepare for future tends, said Jefferson.

In summary, Jefferson found in his research:

* Public policy worldwide recommends the use of inactivated flu vaccines to prevent seasonal outbreaks.
* Systematic reviews of large datasets from several decades provide the best information on how vaccines are performing since influenza viruses vary year to year -- but we're basing our policies today on poor, insufficient single studies.
* There's little comparative evidence out there proving these vaccines are safe.
* There's big gap between policy and evidence surrounding these vaccines. But there' are hug resources out there and health agencies urgently needed to re-evaluate their policies.

While Jefferson ignored several studies because of perceived weaknesses in their methodology, Dr. Tam said they nonetheless offer significant and useful data to health care specialists.

"When a program is in place, the other types of studies that are generated are ones that are more descriptive, where you don't have controls and cases. So methodologically, they may be considered weaker from that perspective," said Dr. Tam.

"However, they're nonetheless extremely useful and much more feasible to do. So we certainly believe there are a variety of studies out there. They may differ in the methodology, and some of them may have biases for which we will take into consideration when we're considering the strength of the study. But the bottom line is that the weight of evidence is such that we believe the influenza vaccine is effective."

Vitamin C intake has been found to speed resolution of upper respiratory tract infections in young people. Students who supplemented with hourly doses of 1000 mg of vitamin C for six hours and then three times daily thereafter exhibited an extraordinary 85% decrease in cold and flu symptoms compared to those who took pain relievers and decongestants for their infectious symptoms.

These benefits of improved healing are not limited to children and young adults. Elderly patients that were hospitalized with pneumonia or bronchitis showed substantial improvement following supplementation with vitamin C. In a study of women with nonspecific vaginal infection, locally administered vitamin C significantly improved symptoms and led to a reduction in bacterial count.

Vitamin C’s strength in countering bacterial infection was further demonstrated in a study of the dangerous breed of bacteria known as Helicobacter pylori, or H. pylori. Chronic infection of the stomach with H. pylori contributes to gastritis, stomach ulcers, and even deadly gastric cancer. In an epidemiological study, however, high intake of the powerful antioxidant vitamins C and E was associated with an astounding 90% reduction in the risk of developing stomach cancer. Lending additional support to these findings is another study showing that infection with H. pylori was a major risk factor for gastric cancer in patients with low vitamin C intake, but not in those with high vitamin C intake. By protecting against infection with H. pylori, vitamin C may thus help to prevent potentially fatal stomach cancer as well as other painful gastrointestinal complications.

...there's not a lot of evidence...

So it's been antibiotics added to cattle feed, treat everything with antibiotics, spray your food with bacteria, and let you eat cloned meat and milk without knowing it.

Gee, can anyone please tell me how it happens that C. difficile - that nasty bug a lot of people end up contracting in hospital - sounds an alarm when it's found in meat?

And, make a point of reading the quoted paragraph from the illustrious Center for Disease Control. It might give hint to being a real voice of reason in the midst of a large pool of government lackeys.

Quote: - "As far as we know, we're exposed to C. difficile all our life, from early on in life. And there's not a lot of evidence that being exposed over and over out in the community hurts you. It may even help you. The exception, of course, is when you're taking antibiotics and your defences are lowered." - Dr. Clifford McDonald, the CDC.

C. difficile found in variety of Canada, U.S. meat products
Provided by: Canadian Press
Written by: HELEN BRANSWELL
Oct. 15, 2006

TORONTO (CP) - C. difficile bacteria have been found in a variety of ground and processed meats bought from grocery stores in Canada and the United States, an unexpected discovery some experts say may be linked to recent baffling changes in the pattern of the disease.

Some of the U.S. meats contained the hypervirulent C. difficile strain responsible for severe outbreaks in hospitals in Quebec, Britain and parts of the U.S. over the past few years, The Canadian Press has learned. In Quebec alone, the so-called epidemic strain is blamed for roughly 2,000 deaths in 2003 and 2004.

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Though still largely a plague of the elderly in hospitals, C. difficile-associated disease has undergone unexplained shifts of late - some deaths in younger people, more infections outside the hospital. At the same time there has been a rapid spread of the epidemic strain across North America and to Europe.

Experts keen to figure out what's going on with this bug say the meat finding may provide a clue and must be explored.

"I don't think we know what it means, but it's a serious concern and it could potentially be contributing to cases, not only in the community but in hospitals as well," said Dr. Dale Gerding, of Hines Veterans Affairs Hospital in Chicago, who was not involved in the research.

But it is too early to conclude people can develop the severe, recurrent and sometimes fatal C. difficile diarrhea by eating meat containing the bacterium, Gerding and other experts insisted.

"The bottom line is that we don't have any evidence to say that C. difficile is a foodborne illness, that people get it from foods," said Dr. Clifford McDonald of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.

Two teams of researchers - under Dr. Glenn Songer at the University of Arizona and Dr. Scott Weese at the Ontario Veterinary College in Guelph - found C. difficile spores in some samples of ground beef, veal, turkey and pork, pork sausage, chorizo, summer sausage and liverwurst.

Nearly 30 per cent of the meats tested in Arizona (24 of 81 samples) and 18 per cent tested in Ontario (11 of 60) contained C. difficile. The Guelph team did not find the human epidemic strain but Songer found it in some samples of liverwurst, pork sausage, ground beef and summer sausage.

A preliminary report of the Guelph work was to be presented Monday to the World Buiatrics Congress in France. (Buiatrics is the science of treating cattle diseases.)

Each team bought meat over a period of several months from three different grocery stores in Tucson, Ariz., and in the Guelph, Ont., area respectively. The two projects were conducted independently.

The Ontario researchers, who only tested ground beef and ground veal, are currently working on a larger sampling study, including meat bought in Quebec.

Both research teams had already shown C. difficile infects food animals like dairy calves and pigs. And some of the strains found in those animals - and the sampled meat - were virtually identical to some that cause disease in humans.

CDC laboratories confirmed the University of Arizona testing.

The CDC's McDonald said it is a matter of "public health urgency" to find out if meat is playing a role in the worsening profile of disease outbreaks.

"That's one of our priorities, to start doing the types of studies to determine whether people who eat certain foods would be at increased risk over other persons who don't eat those foods," he said.

Songer, a veterinary microbiologist, hadn't expected to find the bacterium when he started the meat testing, so when it turned up in virtually each type of product he sampled, he was startled. He said when he found the epidemic strain. "I really about had a seizure."

Still, Songer doesn't think consumers should be alarmed at this point. "What we need is more information, not panic."

For one thing, no one knows if this is a new phenomenon, or if C. difficile spores - which are widely dispersed in soil and water - have always found their way into some meats. (Gerding noted though that a study of hospital food in the 1980s did not find C. difficile.)

Earlier this month, Songer and McDonald met with officials of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service to lay out the findings and discuss the need for further research.

Weese, whose lab did the Canadian sampling, said the fact that C. difficile is a spore-forming bacteria heightens the need for answers. Spores can potentially survive cooking, though exposure to temperatures of 80 C for 10 minutes will kill C. difficile, Gerding said.

"It's something we need to explore," said Weese.

"Currently, there is no objective evidence indicating that C. diff is a foodborne pathogen, but the recent changes in C. diff epidemiology and the emergence of C. diff as a community-associated pathogen necessitates looking at areas such as food to explain these changes."

It has been known for about 25 years that C. difficile is a cause of severe and sometimes life-threatening diarrhea in people, typically elderly hospitalized people taking antibiotics. Antibiotics destroy the normal balance of bacteria in the gut, allowing C. difficile to run rampant.

Within the last eight years, though, the pattern of disease has shown signs of shifting.

Hospitals in Pittsburgh, then Quebec, Maine, Florida and later Britain began to report persistent outbreaks with sharply elevated death rates. Some deaths were among younger, previously healthy patients.

More recently, researchers are finding the disease in people who hadn't been hospitalized, many of whom hadn't recently taken antibiotics. How they became infected and why they were susceptible is a puzzle to scientists, who believe that C. difficile cannot cause illness unless the bacterial balance of the gut has been seriously disrupted.

Meat may provide some answers, experts acknowledge.

"The question is: Is it contributing to the current epidemic situation? Obviously we don't know whether that's a contributing factor or not," Gerding said.

"But one of the things we've wondered about for years is: How does this epidemic strain get around so readily to such a wide variety of hospitals? And how does it spread from the U.S. to Europe, and country to country in Europe? So this is one possible vehicle for how that might occur."

But until the issue has been studied further, that's just a hypothesis.

"I think we're a long way from saying that meat is an important part of the epidemiology of this disease," said Dr. John Bartlett, of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore.

-

Some facts about C. difficile:

What is it? - Clostridium difficile is a spore-forming bacterium commonly found in nature.

What does it do in humans? - Nothing happens to most people who ingest C. diff spores. But in those whose gut flora (the normal bacteria that inhabit our gastrointestinal tracts) has been disrupted by antibiotics, C. difficile can take root and cause serious disease.

What kind of disease? - C. difficile triggers a severe, recurrent and hard to treat diarrhea. Relapses are common, sometimes over weeks and months. In severe cases it can destroy the colon. It can be fatal.

What's new? - Research teams in Ontario and Arizona have found C. diff spores in a range of ground and processed meats, raising suspicions some people may be becoming infected by eating meat. But that is only a theory at the moment.

Quote: - "As far as we know, we're exposed to C. difficile all our life, from early on in life. And there's not a lot of evidence that being exposed over and over out in the community hurts you. It may even help you. The exception, of course, is when you're taking antibiotics and your defences are lowered." - Dr. Clifford McDonald, the CDC.

More Vaccine Failure Reported

It's that time of year in the northern hemisphere when the flu shot hoopla starts in full force.

We want you to know that you can do a lot to prevent the flu and lung sequelae by first skipping the shot.

Secondly add vitamin C, garlic and vitamin A to your medicine chest.

Vitamin C in high enough doses will keep your immmune system working on high, along with garlic. Garlic also fights off the tough-to-treat TB.

If the flu or a cold does attack and affects your lungs start on your vitamin A. Vitamin A in proper quantity over a few days will help you to knock out pneumonia.

Other good whole herb products to keep on hand are echinacea and elderberry. We are also great fans of Cyclone Cider.

If an elderly person is not in good health, flu vaccination does little to help ward off lung infections, Dutch investigators report.

They found that annual flu shots appear to reduce the risk of developing lower respiratory tract infections among healthy individuals age 65 and older during years with mild to moderate influenza epidemics, but this benefit was not evident among subjects with other illnesses.

Despite this finding of modest risk reduction, reported in the Archives of Internal Medicine, Dr. Bettie C. G. Voordouw and colleagues still recommend flu vaccinations for all elderly subjects because the researchers had previously established that these treatments reduced mortality rates.

The team evaluated the extent to which annual influenza vaccination alters the overall risk of developing an infection among 26,071 community-dwelling individuals age 65 and older, who had medical records in the database at the researchers' institution, Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam during the period from 1996 to 2002. Approximately half of the subjects had other illnesses.

During the study, more than 59,000 flu vaccinations were administered to almost 21,000 patients. Out of the entire cohort, some 3400 developed a first episode of pneumonia, acute bronchitis or exacerbation of chronic bronchitis.

Overall, influenza vaccination did not alter the risk for developing one of these lung conditions.

However, the team noted a 33 percent reduction in risk of lung infections in moderate flu seasons following any flu vaccination or revaccination among the subjects who were otherwise healthy. On the other hand, subjects with pre-existing illness were not protected in the same way.

Nevertheless, Voordouw's group still recommends that, "although the protective effect is modest, influenza vaccination should be advised in view of the high background incidence of lower respiratory tract infection and because of the observed reduced mortality in elderly individuals."

SOURCE: Archives of Internal Medicine, October 9, 2006.

More to wonder about

It is interesting to note the continuing attack on parents who raise concerns about risks of harm to the health of their children when they oppose vaccination.

I am one of those people who grew up when children were exposed to the standard childhood diseases without vaccination. So did my children, on the advice of our prudent pediatrician.

As far back in medical history as 1926, physicians knew that the pertussis vaccine was responsible for neurological interference. Many of these wise people told us that actually the vaccine would be worse than the disease. Now perhaps we see the truth of those statements since clusters of the disease appear where most children have had parental pressure to vaccinate. These pysicians also found that when giving more than one vaccine at a time caused higher rates of illness and side effect.

Vitamin C once again is the hero for treating whooping cough.

It's an immunity thing you know.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) -
State laws that make it easy for parents to opt out of vaccinating their children may be contributing to outbreaks of whooping cough,researchers reported Tuesday.

In an analysis of U.S. vaccine-exemption laws, investigators found higher rates of whooping cough in states where parents can refuse to vaccinate their child due
to "personal beliefs."

The disease rate in these states was about 50 percent higher than it was in states that only allowed exemptions for medical reasons and religious beliefs, the researchers report in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The same was true of states with "easy" exemption procedures, according to the study authors, led by Saad B. Omer of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

This includes states such as California, where parents can take a personal-belief exemption by simply signing a school immunization form. Other states, such as Maryland, officially allow only religious exemptions; but again, parents have only to sign a form, making it likely that many take the exemption for personal reasons.

The elevated rates of whooping cough in these states point to the "very
real consequences" of relaxing vaccination requirements,Omer said in a statement.

Also known as pertussis, whooping cough is a highly contagious bacterial infection of the respiratory system that causes fits of severe coughing and breathing difficulties -- often with a distinctive "whoop" sound on inhalation. People of any age can become infected, but it's most dangerous, and potentially fatal, in babies and young children.

Childhood vaccination with the combined diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis vaccine
can prevent whooping cough, but the rate of infection in the U.S. has been climbing in recent years.

This trend is one reason the current study was undertaken, said Dr. Daniel A. Salmon, an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Florida College of
Medicine and the study's senior author.

All U.S. states require children entering school to have proof they've received standard vaccinations, though all also grant exemptions for medical reasons. In
addition, nearly all states also allow exemptions for religious beliefs, while 19 grant waivers for personal beliefs.

In these latter states, more and more parents have been opting out of vaccination in recent years, Salmon and his colleagues found. On average, the rate of non-medical exemptions grew by 6 percent per year between 1991 and 2004.

Concerns about vaccine safety seem to be the main reason parents claim such exemptions, Salmon told Reuters Health. In an earlier study, he and his colleagues found that 69 percent of parents who sought exemptions did so because they feared
vaccination did more harm than the diseases it prevents.

In part, such concerns stem from the proposed link between the measles/mumps/rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism -- a link that a number of international studies have since refuted.

Salmon and his colleagues argue that states should have "administrative controls" that make non-medical exemptions more difficult to obtain. This, Salmon said, could look something like the process of becoming a conscientious objector to the draft.

Parents would apply for an exemption and have to show a "strongly held belief" against vaccines, he explained. Then the government would either have to demonstrate an "overwhelming need" for universal vaccination or grant the exemption.

SOURCE: Journal of the American Medical Association, October 11, 2006.

"BREAST CANCER CASES RISE 80 PER CENT IN THIRTY YEARS"

The UK press reports that breast cancer rates have risen 80% since the 1970s, say figures from Office for National Statistics.
There are now 41,000 UK cases a year - almost twice as many as 30 years ago. In 2004, 120 in 100,000 of the populaton contracted breast cancer, which was 66.9 per 100,000 in 1971.
It increased 50% from 1971 to 2001 in those aged 20-34, though it is still rare for this age group.
It rose 41% in the 45-49 age group. The biggest increase has been in the 50-64 age group. The charity "Breast Cancer UK" yesterday demanded action to halt the disease by prevention. Exposure to pesticides & other carcinogens must be investigated the charity said.

Now consider some of these facts, often withheld from the public, for the most part:

Think Before You Pink –
by Dr. Gayle Eversole

"The benefit is marginal, the harm caused is substantial, and the costs incurred are enormous..."

“… Mammograms increase the risk for developing breast cancer and raise the risk of spreading or metastasizing an existing growth,' says Dr. Charles B. Simone, a former clinical associate in immunology and pharmacology at the National Cancer Institute...“…the annual mammography screening of 10,000 women aged 50-70 will extend the lives of, at best, 26 of them; and annual screening of 10,000 women in their 40s will extend the lives of only 12 women per year."

In a Swedish study of 60,000 women, 70 percent of tumors detected by mammography weren't tumors at all. These " false positives " aren't just financial and emotional strains, they may also lead to many unnecessary and invasive biopsies. In fact, 70 to 80 percent of all positive mammograms do not, upon biopsy , show any presence of cancer. Remember also that it takes 8 to 12 years for a 'tumor' to be detected by x-ray.

For some reason mammography-centric medicine has completely overlooked the much safer thermal and infrared imaging technologies... Further no comments are made regarding dangers of X-Ray exposure.

An allegation that breast screening is being over-promoted to women who are not being alerted to the harm that can result was published in the British Medical Journal several years ago.

Hazel Thornton, a former breast cancer patient and visiting fellow at the University of Leicester, and Michael Baum, emeritus professor of surgery at University College, London, and a long-time critic of screening, have teamed up with a colleague to demand information for women that sets out the risks and benefits. They cite evidence showing 1,200 women would have to be screened for 14 years to save one life from breast cancer while during that time scores would suffer anxiety, surgery and mastectomies for suspicious lumps that turned out to be benign.

In 1978, Irwin J. D. Bross, Director of Biostatistics at Roswell Park Memorial Institute for Cancer Research commented about the cancer screening program: "The women should have been given the information about the hazards of radiation at the same time they were given the sales talk for mammography... A jump to the exposure of a quarter of a million persons to something which could do more harm than good was criminal and it was supported by money from the federal government and the American Cancer Society."

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) was warned in 1974 by Professor Malcolm C. Pike at the University of Southern California, School of Medicine. A number of specialists concluded that "giving women under age 50 a mammogram on a routine basis is close to unethical." Repeat... The experts in the government were told not to do this to healthy women in the YEAR 1974! The warning was ignored.

"Over 280,000 women were recruited without being told that no benefit of mammography had been shown in a controlled trial for women below 50, and without being warned about the potential risk of induction of breast cancer by the test which was supposed to detect it ...in women below 50…mammography gives no benefit..." Mammography was known to cause cancer but the media and the "health officials" in the government stayed silent! The mammography policy pushed by the American Cancer Society to fill its bank account remained the U.S. government policy for ten more years until a massive Canadian study showed conclusively what was known 20 YEARS earlier (1972) but what was not in the interests of ACS and NCI to admit: X- raying the breasts of women younger than age 50 provided no benefit and probably endangered their lives.

1992. Dr. Samuel Epstein “…The high sensitivity of the breast, especially in young women, to radiation induced cancer was known by 1970. Nevertheless, the establishment then screened some 300,000 women with x-ray dosages so high as to increase breast cancer risk by up to 20 percent in women aged 40 to 50 who had mammogram annually. Women were given no warning whatever; how many subsequently developed breast cancer remains uninvestigated. “…Additionally, the establishment ignores safe and effective alternatives to mammography, particularly trans-illumination with infrared scanning. “…For most cancers, survival has not changed for decades. Contrary claims are based on rubber numbers."

Please refer to the work of Dr. John Gofman on mammographic radiation and the increase of breast cancer.

Find more information about the risks of breast screening at http://www.leaflady.org/women.htm

I guess you can decide...

Have you figured it out yet?

Well here it is another year and no cure for cancer. So the Race for the Cure has scammed women once again. Maybe these two articles, along with the many on the Leaflady's Women's page will help you learn that cells phones and yearly mammography do help raise your risk for breast cancer, in a system that really does not have an interest in a cure.

"BITTER MEDICINE" - Jean McFarlane of Northwood, Middlesex (UK) found the motor nerves involved in movement had been damaged by radiotherapy for breast cancer. Her left hand is now "like a claw" & it does not work properly. Prof. Jane Maher, a consultant oncologist, predicts more long-term side-effects from radiotherapy treatment. She says that radiotherapy dangers are not properly understood. Side-effects can include bone fractures, hair loss, broken blood vessels, infertility, thyroid problems, congestive heart failure, more cancer, etc.

Chemo has long-term impact on brain function
Chemotherapy causes changes in the brain's metabolism and blood flow that can last as long as 10 years, a discovery that may explain the mental fog and confusion that affect many cancer survivors, researchers said on Thursday.

The researchers, from the University of California, Los Angeles, found that women who had undergone chemotherapy five to 10 years earlier had lower metabolism in a key region of the frontal cortex.

Women treated with chemotherapy also showed a spike in blood flow to the frontal cortex and cerebellum while performing memory tests, indicating a rapid jump in activity level, the researchers said in a statement about their study.

"The same area of the frontal lobe that showed lower resting metabolism displayed a substantial leap in activity when the patients were performing the memory exercise," said Daniel Silverman, the UCLA associate professor who led the study.

"In effect, these women's brains were working harder than the control subjects' to recall the same information," he said in a statement.

Experts estimate at least 25 percent of chemotherapy patients are affected by symptoms of confusion, so-called chemo brain, and a recent study by the University of Minnesota reported an 82 percent rate, the statement said.

"People with 'chemo brain' often can't focus, remember things or multitask the way they did before chemotherapy," Silverman said. "Our study demonstrates for the first time that patients suffering from these cognitive symptoms have specific alterations in brain metabolism."

The study, published on Thursday in the online edition of Breast Cancer Research and Treatment, tested 21 women who had surgery to remove breast tumors, 16 of whom had received chemotherapy and five who had not.

The researchers used positron emission tomography scans to compare the brain function of the women. They also compared the scans with those of 13 women who had not had breast cancer or chemotherapy.

Positron emission tomography creates an image of sections of the body using a special camera that follows the progress of an injected radioactive tracer.

Researchers used the scans to examine the women's resting brain metabolism as well as the blood flow to their brains as they did a short-term memory exercise.

Silverman said the findings suggested PET scans could be used to monitor the effects of chemotherapy on brain metabolism. Since the scans already are used to monitor patients for tumor response to therapy, the additional tests would be easy to add, he said.

Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women, with some 211,000 new cases diagnosed each year, the statement said.

Go Get Your Garlic

Here it is, only decades after a Utah university microbiology department proved that garlic kills resistant strains of TB. It does much more than this too but the "scientific and medical" crowd is way behind on the facts.

Garlic Blasts Worst Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria
10-2-6

Crush garlic 20 minutes before eating it...
This creates more beneficial chemical compounds

CHICAGO (UPI) - Microbiology researchers said Wednesday the active ingredient in garlic combats two of the nastiest antibiotic resistant microbes faced by doctors and patients.

The ingredient, a substance know as allicin, has been found effective in killing off methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus -- a microbe that has been especially troubling in skin and soft tissue wounds -- and in inhibiting growth of vancomycin-resistant enterococci, an intestinal bacteria that causes considerable illness and deaths in hospital settings.

"Allicin simply blows enormous holes through MRSA,' said Ronald Cutler, senior lecturer in microbiology at the University of East London, England. He has formulated allicin into skin products such as creams and soaps and has achieved success in destroying the microbes in laboratory tests.

He said he also tested the cream on healthy volunteers -- including himself -- and "we have found absolutely no adverse reactions."

Cutler, and his commercial venture Allicin International Ltd., are beginning human testing with the allicin cream on patients with stubborn skin infections caused by MRSA.

"What happens in a test tube may not occur when it is used in humans," cautioned Dr. Jaya Prakash, chairperson of the department of pathology, microbiology and public health at National University of Health Sciences, Lombard, Ill.

Prakash is experimenting with allicin in thwarting VRE.

"We have shown that we can inhibit the growth of these bacteria with allicin. Some of the isolates are more stubborn than others," she said, but at 150 micrograms of allicin the bacteria cannot proliferate.

She said humans can ingest about 25 grams a day of garlic without ill effects, and that much garlic contains about 15 milligrams of allicin -- about 100 times more than what she used to control VRE.

Methicillin and vancomycin both are powerful antibiotics that for many years were considered among the last medical defenses against vicious microbes such as S. aureus. In recent years, however, both S. aureus and enterococci have developed mutations that allow the bugs to escape the killing power of these antibiotics. Both organisms are multi-drug resistant.

The studies were presented at the annual Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, a meeting sponsored by the American Society of Microbiology in Chicago.

In Prakash's study, allicin was tested against two normal strains of Enterococci fecalis and 24 vancomycin-resistant strains of E. fecalis. The allicin concentrations stopped growth of the microbes within four hours.

Cutler said concentrations of allicin at levels of 32 parts per million in a liquid or cream formulation were sufficient to inhibit MRSA. The cream he tested on himself contained 500 parts per million of allicin.

Prakash said that before calling the substance "Allicin Wonderdrug" a lot of clinical testing still must be accomplished.