7 Cancer Busting Foods Sitting in Your Fridge Right Now

By Stephanie Rogers, EcoSalon
Posted on May 12, 2010
http://www.ecosalon.com/healthy-food-news-cancer-busting-with-a-side-of-bioactive//

It seems like every day we’re bombarded with marketing for some exotic "superfood" with seemingly magical qualities that supposedly justify an outrageous price tag. But while the benefits of some hysterically hyped foods are still unconfirmed, other fruits, vegetables, grains, dairy products and beverages sitting in your fridge right now get little fanfare despite the fact that they’re truly super. Red wine, oats, broccoli, soybeans, carrots, yogurt and walnuts are just a few examples of ‘bioactive’ foods, which go beyond mere calories and nutrients, to actually interact with our bodies in beneficial ways.

These seven bioactive foods can help you lose weight, reduce blood pressure, eliminate potential carcinogens from the body and even actively fight cancer cells. Want to pack all of these nutritional powerhouses into one meal? Pour yourself a glass of red wine and whip up some vegetable tofu stir-fry, then indulge in some sweet yet ultra-healthy apple walnut muesli with yogurt.

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America's Gone Nuts on Prescription Drugs

By Denis Leary, AlterNet
Posted on May 11, 2010, Printed on May 12, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/146828/

I am of Irish descent.

We have two traditional drugs: alcohol and religion. Both of which produce the same eventual side effects: dropping to your knees and feeling guilty.

When it comes to prescription drugs, for me - it's all about the side effects.

Nausea, anal leakage, dysplasia, and temporary blindness are not just great name choices for late 80's heavy metal bands -- they are but a few of the little prices Americans are willing to pay each time they swallow a magic pill designed to help them lose weight, gain confidence, stop shaking or become the proud owners of medically-induced erections.

I was raised by illegal-alien Irish immigrants who taught me that anything worth having is worth suffering for so the desire to clear up a heavy bout of back pain by ingesting a handful of Vitamin A (known as Advil to the occasional user) is well-worth whatever possible future damage it may do to my liver, brain or eyeballs (I'm not exactly sure of what side effects Advil may produce because I've never bothered to read the warnings on the label -- the print is too small and I can never find my glasses).

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Genetically Modified Foods: More Reason to Avoid Them; Why They Threaten Organic Agriculture

http://www.anh-usa.org/genetically-modified-food-more-reason-to-avoid-them-and-why-they-threaten-organic-agriculture/

Last week the New York Times wrote about an upcoming report from The President’s Cancer Panel. The paper was “astonish[ed] to learn that [the panel] is poised to join ranks with the organic food movement and declare: [these] chemicals threaten our bodies.”

If you doubt that Genetically Modified (GM) foods threaten your body, here is a recent report from Russian biologists. They conducted what they thought would be a “routine” study of the long-term effects of the consumption of GM soy feed among a hamster population. For the first generation, the only untoward effects seemed to be constipation. The second generation didn’t seem too much the worse for wear either. But the third generation showed serious ill effects and turned out to be completely sterile.

Hampsters are not human beings and more research needs to be done, but other studies also point to reproductive ill effects. Eating frankinfoods would not seem to be the best form of birth control! In addition to the unknown but increasingly documented risks of ingesting organisms that are completely new to the human body, we also need to worry about contaminants found in GM foods such as Monsanto’s “Roundup Ready” herbicide.

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Mystery Disease Linked to Missing Israeli Scientist

By Jr. H. P. Albarelli

Global Research, May 10, 2010

Truthout - 2010-05-07

Media outlets across the Northwest United States began reporting on April 24 that a strange, previously unknown strain of virulent airborne fungi that has already killed at least six people in Oregon, Washington and Idaho is spreading throughout the region. The fungus, according to expert microbiologists, who have expressed alarm about the emergence of the strain, is a new genotype of Cryptococcus gatti fungi. Cryptococcus gatti is normally found in tropical and subtropical locations in India, South America, Africa and Australia. Microbiologists in the United States are reporting that the strain found here, for reasons not yet fully understood, is far deadlier than any found overseas.

Physicians in the Pacific Northwest are reporting that an undetermined number of people in the region are ill from the effects of the strange strain. Physicians also say that the virulent strain can infect domestic animals as well as humans, and symptoms do not appear until anywhere from two to four months after exposure. Symptoms in humans include a lingering cough, sharp chest pains, fever, night-sweats, weight-loss, headaches and shortness of breath. The strain can be treated successfully, if detected early enough, with oral doses of antifungal medication, but it cannot be prevented, and there is no preventative vaccine. Undiagnosed, the fungus works its way into the spinal fluid and central nervous system and causes fatal meningitis.

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Do You Have Excessive Sleepiness? Shift Work Sleep Disorder? Big Pharma Hopes So

Posted By Martha Rosenberg On May 7, 2010

http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/05/07/do-you-have-excessive-sleepiness-shift-work-sleep-disorder-pharma-hopes-so/print/

Do you work in customer service? Health care? The restaurant industry? You might be suffering from shift work sleep disorder (SWSD) says a new ad campaign from Frazer, PA-based Cephalon who makes the Schedule IV stimulants Provigil and Nuvigil.  One out of four people working nontraditional schedules suffers from this hitherto unrecognized epidemic say radio ads which broke this week in Chicago.

SWSD is characterized by trouble focusing, increased irritability and poor work performance — think ADHD — an accompanying web site, wakeupsquad.com, explains.  But don’t think the answer is renegotiating with your alarm clock. “Just improving your sleep may not improve your ability to cope with shift work,” says the site which offers a self-assessment quiz and chance to “take action” and “tell a friend” without saying what that action might be or what you are telling your friend. No drugs are mentioned.

Of course shift work sleep disorder is only one reason for the national epidemic of excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS). Other reasons are obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and narcolepsy –  Wink Wink — for which Cephalon’s drugs are also approved, non-restful sleep (NRS), restless legs syndrome (RLS) and middle-of-the-night insomnia (MOTN). You might also suffer from late night TV addiction syndrome (LNTVAS) or experience daytime sleepiness because –surprise — what you are doing and the people you are with are Boring. (The reason they say speed makes people more interesting.)

Then there’s all the people with sleepiness-from-treating-their-insomnia and insomnia-from-treating-their-sleepiness in a kind of pharmaceutical jet lag that began when insomnia meds like Ambien, Lunesta, Sonata and Rozerem first appeared on TV. Late night TV.

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Strengthening the Link Between Pollution, Cancer | Miller-McCune Online

http://www.miller-mccune.com/health/strengthening-the-link-between-pollution-cancer-15667/

May 6, 2010

Presidential advisory group moves to broaden focus of cancer research to precaution, prevention.

By Valerie Brown

A move is afoot in Washington to broaden the definition of cancer research to include precaution, prevention. (Firebrand Photography / istockphoto.com)

A new report from a presidential advisory group represents a major advance in the struggle to protect people from exposure to carcinogenic chemicals.

“Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now,” issued today by the President’s Cancer Panel, announces a shift in emphasis from merely treating cancer to preventing it, and from seeking the roots of cancer in individual DNA to recognizing environmental contaminants as important causes.

Two distinguished cancer doctors appointed by President George W. Bush, LaSalle D. Leffall, Jr., professor of surgery at Howard University College of Medicine in Washington, D.C., and Margaret Kripke, professor emerita at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, sit on the panel. A third seat, usually filled by a celebrity like Lance Armstrong, is vacant. The panel itself was established in 1971 under the National Cancer Act.

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How the Top 5 Supermarkets Waste Food

AlterNet / By Tina Mather

In a nation where millions go hungry, some of the food supermarkets throw out could feed people in need. But not every grocery chain cares.

Unemployment. Health care. The national debt. So many social issues take a lot to fix: experts, money, and lots of time. To add to a growing list of social issues, here’s another: 1 in 7 American households has trouble putting food on the table at some point during the year, according to a recent USDA report.

But in a nation where so many go hungry, a possible solution has emerged.

Grocery stores have lots of foods that need to be taken off shelves daily: stock that needs to rotate, surplus food like bananas that are starting to have brown spots, or refrigerated items that need to move for the new product coming in. Food products make up 63 percent of a supermarket’s disposed waste stream, according to a California Integrated Waste Management Board industry study. That’s approximately 3,000 lbs. thrown away per employee every year. The stores can’t sell the food, so they toss it in the compost or garbage.

Organizations and an army of volunteers -- called “food recovery” groups -- are stationed around the country, ready to transport that food from the stores to the people that need it most. Meats that are close to the sell-by date, for example, can be frozen and good for several more months.

If only it was that simple. 

While most food retailers participate in some kind of food donation program, many stick to things like breads, cakes, and dented cans, while throwing away fruits, vegetables, meats, and other perishable food most needed by the hungry. 

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Lingering legacies for Earth Day 2010: U.S. food still tainted with old chemicals

By Emily Elert, Environmental Health News
Posted on April 22, 2010
http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/pops-in-food

In a photograph from a 1947 newspaper advertisement, a smiling mother leans over her baby's crib. The wall behind her is decorated with rows of flowers and Disney characters. Above the photo, a headline reads "Protect Your Children From Disease Carrying Insects."

The ad, for wallpaper impregnated with DDT, captures a moment of historical ignorance, before the infamous insecticide nearly wiped out many birds and turned up inside the bodies of virtually everyone on Earth.

The story of DDT teaches a lesson about the past. But experts say it also provides a glimpse into the future.

Thirty-eight years after it was banned, Americans still consume traces of DDT and its metabolites every day, along with more than 20 other banned chemicals. Residues of these legacy contaminants are ubiquitous in U.S. food, particularly dairy products, meat and fish.

Their decades-long presence in the food supply underscores the dangers of a new and widely used generation of chemicals with similar properties and health risks. "They're manmade, and they're toxic, and they bio-accumulate," said Arnold Schecter, a professor at the University of Texas School of Public Health who has been studying human exposure to chemicals for more than 25 years. "So the fact that they're still around a long time after they've been banned isn't surprising."

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Intersex fish, found across the US, result from a mix of drugs that mimic natural hormones, say scientists

by Suzanne Goldenberg

More than 80% of the male bass fish in Washington's major river are now exhibiting female traits such as egg production because of a "toxic stew" of pollutants, scientists and campaigners reported yesterday.

US male bass fish are showing female traits such as egg production because of 'toxic stew' of chemicals in water. (Photograph: Rob Heimplaetzer/Potomac Conservancy)

Intersex fish probably result from drugs, such as the contraceptive pill, and other chemicals being flushed into the water and have been found right across the US.

The Potomac Conservancy, which focuses on Washington DC's river, called for new research to determine what was causing male smallmouth bass to carry immature eggs in their testes. "We have not been able to identify one particular chemical or one particular source," said Vicki Blazer, a fish biologist with the US geological survey. "We are still trying to get a handle on what chemicals are important."

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Widespread Psychiatric Drugging of Infants and Toddlers

By Evelyn Pringle, CounterPunch
Posted on April 20, 2010, Printed on April 21, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/146551/

The United States has become the psychiatric drugging capital of the world for kids with children being medicated at a younger and younger age. Medicaid records in some states show infants less than a year old on drugs for mental disorders.

The use of powerful antipsychotics with privately insured children, aged 2 through 5 in the US, doubled between 1999 and 2007, according to a study of data on more than one million children with private health insurance in the January, 2010, "Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry."

The number of children in this age group diagnosed with bipolar disorder also doubled over the last decade, Reuters reported.

Of antipsychotic-treated children in the 2007 study sample, the most common diagnoses were pervasive developmental disorder or mental retardation (28.2%), ADHD (23.7%), and disruptive behavior disorder (12.9%).

The study reported that fewer than half of drug treated children received a mental health assessment (40.8%), a psychotherapy visit (41.4%), or a visit with a psychiatrist (42.6%) during the year of antipsychotic use.

"Antipsychotics, which are being widely and irresponsibly prescribed for American children--mostly as chemical restraints--are shown to be causing irreparable harm," warned Vera Hassner Sharav, president of the Alliance for Human Research Protection, in a February 26, 2010 InfoMail.

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8 Invented Diseases Big Pharma is Banking On

AlterNet / By Martha Rosenberg

Sleep sweating? Here are some new ways the pharmaceutical plans to make money.

Since direct-to-consumer drug advertising debuted in 1997, pharma's credo has been When The Medication Is Ready, The Disease (and Patients) Will Appear. Who knew so many people suffered from restless legs?

But pharma's recent plan to move from mass-market molecules into more lucrative vaccines and biologics did not see the anti-vaxer movement coming: millions of Americans saying You Want to Vaccinate Me -- and My Child -- with WHAT?? and condemning vials of H1N1, rotavirus and MMR vaccines to sit, well, way past their expiration dates. Nor were fears of an international vaccine conspiracy helped by former CDC Director Julie Gerberding resurfacing as President of Merck Vaccines in December. (Nice revolving door if you can catch it.)

Now pharma is back to creating new diseases, patients, risks and "awareness campaigns" faster than you can say thimerosal (the vaccine preservative that started the backlash.)

1. SERM deficiency

A pill to prevent postmenopausal osteoporosis packs the "magic three" of drug sales-- fear, forever and faith--since you never know if it's working or you need it but fear stopping. But 15 years after women began swallowing bisphosphonates like Boniva and Fosamax because pharma-planted bone density machines in medical offices revealed they had "osteopenia,"* bisphosphonates are linked to jaw bone death, esophageal cancer and causing the fractures they were supposed to prevent. Sorry about that. Now pharma is hawking Selective Estrogen Receptor Modulators (SERMs) like Evista and Tamoxifen to prevent osteoporosis and even some cancers. Unfortunately they can cause others…

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WHO Says Cell Phone Use Linked to Brain Tumors

David Gutierrez

NaturalNews.com March 16, 2010

(NaturalNews) A large multinational research effort overseen by the World Health Organization has concluded that heavy mobile phone use significantly increases the risk of brain and salivary gland tumors.

The Interphone studies surveyed 12,800 people in 13 countries between 2000 and 2004. Although the final findings have not yet been released, they have been accepted for publication in a scientific journal and will see print before the end of 2009.

The conclusions are particularly surprising given that the industry-funded effort has been widely criticized for designing its studies to minimize the apparent risks of cell phone use.

The studies examined the relationship between cell phone use and the risk of three different types of brain tumor and one tumor of the salivary gland. They concluded that "use of mobile phones for a period of 10 years or more" was associated with a "significantly increased risk" of the tumors.

Six of eight studies found up to a 39 percent increase in the risk of glioma, the most common type of brain tumor. Gliomas can be either benign or malignant. The risk of acoustic neurinoma, a benign tumor of the nerve between the brain and the ear, was found to increase up to 3.9 times in two of seven studies, but problems with participants' memories interfered with these findings. Another study found a 50 percent increase in the risk of salivary gland tumors.

Some researchers have suggested that the Interphone study probably understates the risks of cell phone use, due to flaws in its methodology. The study has been criticized for including people who made as little as one call per week yet excluding children and young adults (considered the most at-risk population), non-cellular cordless phones (which also emit radiation), several kinds of tumors, and participants who either died before the study concluded or became too sick to answer questions.

Some of the Interphone studies found that short-term cell phone use decreased the risk of cancer, further suggesting research flaws.

http://www.naturalnews.com/028379_cell_phones_brain_tumors.html



WALMART FIRES CANCER PATIENT FOR LEGALLY USING MEDICAL MARIJUANA

Marijuana Policy Project / By Mike Meno

Joseph Casias, 29, has an inoperable brain tumor. Last November, Walmart fired him after 5 years on the job because he tested positive for (legal) marijuana.

Joseph Casias, has sinus cancer and an inoperable brain tumor.

Despite his condition, he has dutifully gone to work every day for the last five years at a Walmart in Battle Creek, Michigan, where in 2008 he was named Associate of the Year.

Casias is also a legal medical marijuana patient under Michigan state law. He uses marijuana with the recommendation of his doctor to relieve the effects of cancer.

But Walmart, the world’s largest public corporation, has no sympathy for his condition or regard for Michigan’s state law. Last November,Walmart fired Casias because he tested positive for marijuana during a routine drug screening.

Here’s what a Walmart spokesman had to say:

“In states, such as Michigan, where prescriptions for marijuana can be obtained, an employer can still enforce a policy that requires termination of employment following a positive drug screen. We believe our policy complies with the law and we support decisions based on the policy.”

To add insult to injury, Walmart is now challenging Casias’ eligibility for unemployment. Simply outrageous. This is the thanks he gets for showing up to work and doing his job for the last five years, despite being stricken with a life-threatening illness. “I gave them everything,” Casias told a local news outlet. “One-hundred-ten percent every day. Anything they asked me to do I did. More than they asked me to do. Twelve to 14 hours a day.”

Sadly, the dilemma facing medical marijuana patients who still have no legal protection from being fired is nothing new.

Readers who would like to register a complaint with Walmart can find corporate contact information here.



Learning From Europe

by Paul Krugman

As health care reform nears the finish line, there is much wailing and rending of garments among conservatives. And I'm not just talking about the tea partiers. Even calmer conservatives have been issuing dire warnings that Obamacare will turn America into a European-style social democracy. And everyone knows that Europe has lost all its economic dynamism.
Strange to say, however, what everyone knows isn't true. Europe has its economic troubles; who doesn't? But the story you hear all the time - of a stagnant economy in which high taxes and generous social benefits have undermined incentives, stalling growth and innovation - bears little resemblance to the surprisingly positive facts. The real lesson from Europe is actually the opposite of what conservatives claim: Europe is an economic success, and that success shows that social democracy works.
Actually, Europe's economic success should be obvious even without statistics. For those Americans who have visited Paris: did it look poor and backward? What about Frankfurt or London? You should always bear in mind that when the question is which to believe - official economic statistics or your own lying eyes - the eyes have it.

In any case, the statistics confirm what the eyes see.

It's true that the U.S. economy has grown faster than that of Europe for the past generation. Since 1980 - when our politics took a sharp turn to the right, while Europe's didn't - America's real G.D.P. has grown, on average, 3 percent per year. Meanwhile, the E.U. 15 - the bloc of 15 countries that were members of the European Union before it was enlarged to include a number of former Communist nations - has grown only 2.2 percent a year. America rules!

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To: David Axelrod, Senior Advisor to President Obama

Re: In response to an email soliciting our support for the "Healthcare Legislation", so to do "what's right", and my idea of 'right' is very different than theirs, so it 'got my goat' and this is my mild response...

Dear David,

Since when does doing "what's right" include abrogating an American's right to choose whether to have health insurance or not?  Here is a law requiring all Americans to have health insurance, even when many of us don't want to. Millions feel this way.  Yet this "great" bill forces us to.  Are you sure the insurance industry didn't write this bill?

This is opening a big, big subject, and due to the interconnectedness of all things, unpacking the 'healthcare' issue, also opens up the Big Pharma issue, the Agri-business issue, the chemical industry issue, the military-industrial complex issue, the media issue, the education issue, the tax issues, foreign policy and domestic policy issues, rights issues, and, what have I left out?  In short, jamming this abysmal, corrupted piece of legislation down our, until now, sovereign throats due to our Constitution, is opening up a series of water leaks that I don't think you really want opened, not now!  Or do you?  Because they will be opening in short order.

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Dennis Kucinich: Why I'm Voting Yes

Dennis Kucinich

Commondreams, March 17, 2010

The following are the prepared remarks offered by US Rep. Kucinich today regarding his plans for the upcoming health care vote:

Each generation has had to take up the question of how to provide for the health of the people of our nation. And each generation has grappled with difficult questions of how to meet the needs of our people. I believe health care is a civil right. Each time as a nation we have reached to expand our basic rights, we have witnessed a slow and painful unfolding of a democratic pageant of striving, of resistance, of breakthroughs, of opposition, of unrelenting efforts and of eventual triumph.

I have spent my life struggling for the rights of working class people and for health care. I grew up understanding first hand what it meant for families who did not get access to needed care. I lived in 21 different places by the time I was 17, including in a couple of cars. I understand the connection between poverty and poor health care, the deeper meaning of what Native Americans have called "hole in the body, hole in the spirit". I struggled with Crohn's disease much of my adult life, to discover sixteen years ago a near-cure in alternative medicine and following a plant-based diet. I have learned with difficulty the benefits of taking charge personally of my own health care. On those few occasions when I have needed it, I have had access to the best allopathic practitioners. As a result I have received the blessings of vitality and high energy. Health and health care is personal for each one of us. As a former surgical technician I know that there are many people who dedicate their lives to helping others improve theirs. I also know their struggles with an insufficient health care system.

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Showdown Looms for Financial Reform

By VICTORIA MCGRANE | Politico

If there were any question that the stakes are high for financial reform, consider this: Even the Defense Department is getting into the fight.

Pentagon brass want a new consumer watchdog agency to regulate auto dealers so they don’t rip off troops with predatory sales and shady financing deals. Democrats are hoping it’ll be hard for Republicans to oppose something Pentagon leaders want, at a time when troops are in harm’s way.

And there’s more: Payday lenders, check-cashing outfits and rent-to-own stores operate, for all practical purposes, free from federal regulation — and President Barack Obama wants to change that with a consumer agency that spans the world of finance from high to low.

The business community and some influential Republicans are fighting back. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has launched an ad campaign focused on limiting the reach of any new consumer regulatory agency, saying that a far-reaching entity would wreak havoc on a lot of mom and pop businesses that had nothing to do with the financial meltdown in the first place.

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Who's Getting Rich from the Naked Full-Body Scan?

By James Ridgeway, Mother Jones Online
Posted on January 6, 2010, Printed on January 6, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/144971/

Scan, baby, scan. That’s the mantra among politicians at all levels in the wake of the thwarted terrorist attack aboard a Detroit-bound passenger jet. According to conventional wisdom, the would-be “underwear bomber” could have been stopped by airport security if he’d been put through a full-body scanner, which would have revealed the cache of explosives attached to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s groin.

Within days or even hours of the bombing attempt, everyone was talking about so-called whole-body imaging as the magic bullet that could stop this type of attack. In announcing hearings by the Senate Homeland Security Commitee, Joe Lieberman approached the use of scanners as a foregone conclusion, saying one of the "big, urgent questions that we are holding this hearing to answer" was "Why isn’t whole-body-scanning technology that can detect explosives in wider use?" Former Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff told the Washington Post, "You’ve got to find some way of detecting things in parts of the body that aren’t easy to get at. It’s either pat downs or imaging, or otherwise hoping that bad guys haven’t figured it out, and I guess bad guys have figured it out."

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