Killer Pollen
Antioxidants
The Danger of Genetically Engineered Food
Gulf War Disease
Dioxin in Meat
Preservatives are Poison
Tobacco vs Alcohol vs Marijuana
Cancer - The Manufactured Disease
140,000 people die in America each year from being prescribed the wrong medication.
To minimize microwave radiation into your brain, if you must use a cellular (wireless) telephone, get the Motorola
StarTAC. Or better yet, use the earpiece jack with whatever model you use.
Societies which people very frequently live to the age of 120-140 years of
age: Armenian, Azerbijian, Georgian, Hunza, Tibetan, and Titicaca. People who appear to die from natural causes
die from nutritional defeciency.
How to Fight Cancer
Eat a lot of fresh fruit and fresh vegetables. Avoid eating processed foods
- they're full of preservatives that are unhealthy and make you fat. Our ancestors did not have cancer. Cancer
is MANufactured. We're poisoning our environment and therefore we're poisoning ourselves.
Alcoholism
People who start drinking alcohol by age 15 are four times more likely to become
alcoholics than those who wait until age 21 to start drinking alcohol.
Food in Argentina by Andrew Homer
I lived in Villa Carlos Paz, Provincia de Cordoba, in Argentina for 22 months.
VEGETABLES - Their vegetables in Argentina look like they were retrieved from a dumpster,
but they're scrumptuous. You believe that squash is the standard for blandness, right? Squash in Argentina is so
tasty that I got excited knowing that it was being served. You know that you're eating healthy vegetables when
they DON'T last long.
BEEF - Unlike the practice of American cattle
ranchers, cattle in Australia and Argentina are NOT shot-up with hormones. In Argentina, my steaks were so tender
that I could cut my steak with only the side of a fork. And that uncorrupted beef tastes so much better than an
American steak.
PRESERVATIVES - Most Argentines have lithe figures. My theory is because they eat little food that has been processed.
Us Americans eat a lot of food that's processed and the average American is overweight.
CHICAGO - Adults whose childhood's were marked
by problems such as abuse are more likely to smoke, perhaps because nicotine helps them feel better, according
to a study published Tuesday.
That crutch, the report added, may make it all the harder for those smokers to kick the habit.
Researchers at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention said they quizzed more than 9,000 adults about conditions
in their homes when they were growing up.
They found that ``smoking was strongly associated with adverse childhood experiences.''
Topics that participants were asked about included emotional, physical and sexual abuse; having had a battered
mother; divorce or separation of parents, and growing up with a substance-abusing, mentally ill or jailed household
member.
The study was published in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association.
``Nicotine has demonstrable psychoactive benefits in the regulation of affect; therefore persons exposed to adverse
childhood experiences may benefit from using nicotine to regulate their mood,'' the study said.
``For such persons attempts to quit may remove nicotine as their pharmacological coping device for the negative
emotional, neurobiological and social effects of adverse childhood experiences,'' it added.
Smokers who consciously or unconsciously use nicotine to help them cope ``may need special assistant to help them
quit,'' the study said.
It also said early intervention to help children caught in abusive situations
is one way to prevent people from taking up the habit.
It noted that the decline in smoking in the United States that had been occurring for 30 years has slowed and nearly
halted.
A chocolate a day might keep the doctor away NEW YORK, Aug 06 (Reuters Health) -- Chocolate -- particularly dark chocolate - contains
high levels of antioxidants, suggesting that the much-maligned sweet might actually be good for you.
In a new study, chocolate was found to have four times the level of catechins, a type of antioxidant,
compared with black tea. Some studies have suggested that tea-drinkers have a lower risk of cardiovascular disease
and possibly cancer -- though the link is not conclusive. However, if the protective health effect is due to the
catechins in tea, the health benefit may extend to chocolate as well, according to Dr. Ilja C.W. Arts, of the National
Institute of Public Health and Environment, Bilthoven, the Netherlands, and colleagues.
In the study, the Dutch researchers analyzed the amount of six different catechins and found
that dark chocolate contained the highest level, at 53.5 milligrams of catechins per 100 grams. Milk chocolate
contained 15.9 milligrams per 100 grams, and black tea contained 13.9 milligrams per 100 milliliters, according
to a report in the August 7th issue of The Lancet.
"Since it is probably more enjoyable to drink 1 liter of tea than to eat 1 kilogram of chocolate,
we aimed to find out the importance of chocolate as a source of catechins in the habitual diet," the authors
write.
They found that tea was the most important source of the antioxidants, making up 55% of total intake of the antioxidants
by Dutch citizens. However, chocolate was an important source too, making up 20% of the total intake in this population.
The findings have important implications for studies of the health effects of tea, the investigators
note, which should take into account other sources of catechins, such as chocolate.
"In the end," the researchers conclude, "the old Dutch habit of drinking a cup of tea and eating
a chocolate cookie might be not only enjoyable but healthy as well."
SOURCE: The Lancet 1999;354:488.
August 6, 1999
Just Say NO
to Genetically Engineered Food
Genetic engineering differs fundamentally from traditional breeding. The insertion of
a gene may cause the generation of substances detrimental to health.
There are no foolproof methods for detecting such harmful substances. The effects on the environment are incompletely
known. They may be potentially serious and irreversible. New and dangerous viruses may be created in genetically
engineered crops. There are no genetically engineered products today that may contribute to the solution of the
world food supply problem and it may take long time before really valuable and safe products can be developed.
The logical conclusion is that there is no sound scientific justification
for the rapid exploitation today of genetically engineered organisms for food production as the present products
are of very limited value and constitute both a potentially serious health risk and a potential risk of upsetting
the ecological balance of the environment. Much research remains to
be done before it can be judged whether production and consumption of genetically engineered foods can be justified
at all. Until this has been done, we require a moratorium on the commercial release of genetically engineered products. - from the Physicians against Genetically Engineered Food
The Cover-up about Genetically
Engineered Food by Jaan Suurkula, MD The situation is potentially more serious than for Nuclear Energy as the
pollution of Genetically Engineered genes will, contrary to radioactivity, not decay and remain localized. It may
in stead increase with time and spread globally. And while radioactivity can easily be detected, harmful genes
released into nature are difficult or impossible to detect. And
harmful effects like unexpected toxins likewise.
The toxin hazard is unnecessarily accentuated because no rigorous testing
is required in the case of substantial equivalence. Because of the rubbery nature of this principle, recommended
by international scientific authorities , virtually anything will pass as "substantially equivalent".
Therefore, in the worst case, millions may suffer before the cause is detected. And because of absence of labeling
or highly deficient
labeling rules (as is the case in the European Union), the discovery of the real cause of such a catastrophe would
be greatly delayed.
The Nuclear Energy history thus shows that the
majority of scientists and leading authorities may be wrong in their judgement about safety issues of a new technologies.
The striking parallels with the situation of Genetically Engineered gives reasons to suspect that the
same may be true in this case. This leads is to the question - are there common mechanisms in these two cases that
may contribute to the serious judgement errors by leading scientists? for more information see The Fallibility
of Scientific Authority
Tea
May Help Guard Against Heart Disease
October 10, 1999
CHICAGO (Reuters) - More evidence published Sunday indicates that tea may ward off heart disease
-- in this case coronary artery disease, especially in women.
A Dutch study found that those who drank one to two cups of tea daily lowered their risk of severe aortic atherosclerosis,
a narrowing of the arteries caused by a build-up of fat and other substances on the inner walls, by 46 percent.
At four cups a day the risk dropped by 69 percent.
The finding, based on a study of 3,454 people in the Netherlands who were free of cardiovascular disease, was published
in this week's issue of the Chicago-based Archives of Internal Medicine.
Tea's protective effect may come from flavonoids, which act as antioxidants, the researchers from Erasmus University
Medical School in Rotterdam said.
Flavonoids, found in plant products such as tea, wine and onions, neutralize harmful chemicals that damage cells
and can lead to illnesses such as heart attacks, strokes and cancer.
The report said tea's protective effect was more evident in women than in men for reasons that were not clear.
It also said more study was needed on the whole subject of tea's impact on the cardiovascular system.
The authors cautioned that tea's apparent protective effect may not be absolute since tea drinking in Western populations
is generally associated with a healthy lifestyle and diet.
"Also in our study, the intake of tea was somewhat higher in lean, educated people who smoked less and had
a relatively low intake of alcohol, coffee, and fat," it added.
The study adds to a number of recent reports showing that tea can protect against heart disease.
Earlier this year a team at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston showed that people
who had a cup or more of tea a day had a 44 percent reduction in heart attack risk compared to non-tea drinkers.
~ ~ ~
Editor - Green tea retains
more of the nutritional ingredients then the more oxidized tea which turns black. Don't brew green tea with boiling
water. Try to get the water at 175 degrees.
Pesticides in the pollen
Genetically altered crops make a dangerous harvest
WASHINGTON, Aug. 5 -The Corn Belt’s annual dance of windborne
sexuality is well underway.
From Ohio to Nebraska, tassels - the male sex organs that sit atop corn
stalks and bear pollen - have emerged, waiting for the winds that will unite the pollen with the corresponding
female organs. This is typically an anxious time for corn farmers, because good ear production depends on good
pollination, which can suffer from too much heat, too little rain, and all manner of unpredictables. But this year,
it’s also an anxious time for anyone worried about the unintended and unforeseen hazards of transgenic crops -
plants manipulated with genes from other species.
In laboratory tests reported this May, Cornell University scientists found
that the pollen from Bt corn, a widely-planted transgenic variety endowed with the ability to churn out the Bt
insecticide, kills the larvae of monarch butterflies.
Killing the Butterflies
No one knows how the monarchs will be affected this year on their annual
migration through the Corn Belt. But since roughly one-third of U.S. corn area — more than 20 million acres — is
planted in Bt corn, the losses could be heavy.
The monarch finding highlights our glaring ignorance of the risks of genetically
altered crops, even as the area planted to such crops soars. In the United States — home to three-quarters of the
world’s transgenic acreage -- the area planted to engineered plants has expanded 20-fold just since 1996. In addition
to corn, about half of this year’s cotton and soybean crops are genetically altered.
Government Seal of Approval
Would you know if you were eating a genetically engineered food?
* 2586 responses
Yes 7%
No 78%
Don't Know 15% Do you think the government should require genetically engineered food
products to be labelled?
* 2600 responses
Yes 79%
No 18%
Don't know 3%
Do you think there should be pre-market testing of genetically engineered
foods before they are marketed, as with any food additive?
* 2607 responses
Yes 88%
No 9%
Don't know 2% Are you concerned about the potential unforeseen consequences of genetically
engineered plants and animals to our health or the environment?
* 2651 responses
Yes 75%
No 21%
Don't know 4%
Live Votes reflect respondents' views and are not scientifically valid surveys.
The government agencies charged with ensuring the environmental safety
of transgenics — the Environmental Protection Agency and the US Department of Agriculture — failed to consider
the threat of toxic pollen to monarchs in their review of Bt corn. This oversight illustrates the primary weakness
of the US regulatory scheme — the rapid approval of engineered crops without a thorough assessment of their environmental
risks.
The government’s seal of approval creates the illusion that transgenic crops
have been put through some sort of pre-release testing. In fact, the small-scale, short-term field trials that
constitute the principal requirement for crop approval are grossly inadequate to measure real-world pitfalls. The
USDA is now in its seventh year of spending just one percent of its biotechnology research funds on risk assessment,
while EPA has disbanded its risk program.
Widespread Ignorance
No one, including the producers of such crops, knows the long-term risks
of seeding tens of millions of acres with these organisms. Field studies on the effects of Bt corn on monarchs
and other insects are just getting underway - millions of acres too late.
U.S. regulation — or lack thereof — seems all the more reckless given the
response in Europe.
Spurred by the monarch studies, the European Union has indefinitely suspended
approvals for commercial planting of transgenics pending additional research. EU ministers stress that the decision
does not reflect certainty that such crops are dangerous for the environment, but simply the great uncertainty
over whether such crops are safe.
Mandatory Labeling
— But Not Here
This transatlantic divide on precaution also extends to food safety. EU
officials — as well as officials in Brazil, Australia, Japan, South Korea, and other nations — have begun drafting
mandatory labeling schemes for transgenics, so that consumers can avoid such foods until proven safe, and so that
any adverse effects can be tracked.
American regulators, in contrast, refuse to label, arguing that transgenic
foods are “substantially equivalent” to their non-engineered counterparts. Given that the Food and Drug Administration
has not established criteria for equivalence, nor done long-term feeding studies, Americans may be surprised to
know that most processed food items on supermarket shelves already contain engineered ingredients.
Consumer Rights
As Europeans revolt against genetically altered foods, American consumers
may ask why these foods aren’t labeled in a nation high on consumer rights and freedom of information. They may
also wonder why we are rushing these seeds to market before taking basic measures to evaluate environmental risk.
Industry officials claim that European foot-dragging will stifle movements
towards a more sustainable agriculture and a well-fed world-though engineered crops are not noticeably improving
the way we farm or nourishing the world’s hungry. US trade officials call European regulations “unscientific” or
“protectionist.” (Transgenics will no doubt figure prominently in upcoming World Trade Organization meetings.)
But Europe’s actions deserve consideration in the highly politicized global
debate on biotech crops. When dealing with a poorly understood technology that carries potential harm, there’s
good reason to exercise precaution.
Brian Halweil is a staff researcher at the Worldwatch Institute. Jane Rissler
is a senior staff scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists. - MSNBC
