Posted: February 1, 2013
Since 2008, Chinese government hackers have been targeting Western news organizations to identify and intimidate their Chinese sources and contacts, as well as to anticipate stories that could hurt the reputation of Chinese leaders. Chinese hackers have repeatedly infiltrated the computer systems of the New York Times over the last four months, following an investigation by the paper that revealed that the relatives of Wen Jiabao, China's prime minister, had accumulated a fortune worth several billion dollars through business dealings. Security experts hired by the Times have determined that the attacks started from the same university computers used by the Chinese military to attack U.S. military contractors in the past.
Chinese hackers have repeatedly infiltrated the computer systems of the New York Times over the last four months, gaining access to passwords of reporters and other employees.
The Times reported late Wednesday that the paper has been tracking the intruders in order to study their movements and use better defenses against them. The Times, along with computer security experts have thwarted the attackers and have prevented them from breaking back in.
Read more here: http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com
Posted: February 1, 2013
A new report in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology1 claims that 90 percent of melanoma patients may not only have had their skin lesions removed unnecessarily, but may also have actually increased their morbidity risk by doing so.
The study looked at 300,215 melanoma excision cases that occurred over 10 years at participating clinics and dermatopathology units in 13 countries.
As reported by The Tanning Blog:2
The purpose of the survey was to investigate the relationship between necessary excision of malignant melanoma and unnecessary removals of benign lesions. In non-specialized clinics the number of unnecessary removals was as much as 30 times higher than the necessary excisions. In specialized clinics, the ratio sank to less than 10 times.
This means that in some dermatologists' clinics, 90 out of 100 'melanoma-victims' were misled to have a piece of their skin sliced away. When extrapolating the average figures in the survey to one million American victims, as many as 900,000 may have suffered needlessly.
Read more here: http://gaia-health.com
Posted: February 1, 2013
Feb. 1, 2013 - We've all heard examples of animal altruism: Dogs caring for orphaned kittens, chimps sharing food or dolphins nudging injured mates to the surface. Now, a study led by the University of Colorado Boulder suggests some plants are altruistic too.
The researchers looked at corn, in which each fertilized seed contained two "siblings" -- an embryo and a corresponding bit of tissue known as endosperm that feeds the embryo as the seed grows, said CU-Boulder Professor Pamela Diggle. They compared the growth and behavior of the embryos and endosperm in seeds sharing the same mother and father with the growth and behavior of embryos and endosperm that had genetically different parents.
"The results indicated embryos with the same mother and father as the endosperm in their seed weighed significantly more than embryos with the same mother but a different father," said Diggle, a faculty member in CU-Boulder's ecology and evolutionary biology department. "We found that endosperm that does not share the same father as the embryo does not hand over as much food -- it appears to be acting less cooperatively."
Read more here: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130201132334.htm
Posted: February 1, 2013
"I've never seen scientific evidence discounted and refused to be looked at the way they're doing with fluoride." We're facing a bottom-line reality. There can be no question that the US government's policy is that water will be fluoridated no matter how much harm is done to the people.
In this age of repression on genuine scientific research, we need to take note that scientists free to do open and honest research, and report on it, have often taken stands that dispute their agencies' officials stances. Nowhere has that been more true than in the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on the issue of fluoride. Rank and file EPA scientists have strongly opposed water fluoridation.
EPA scientists protected by the National Treasury Employees Union were approached by an employee in 1985. His concern was that he was:
... being forced to write into the regulation a statement to the effect that EPA thought it was alright for children to have "funky" teeth. It was OK, EPA said, because it considered that condition to be only a cosmetic effect, not an adverse health effect. The reason for this EPA position was that it was under political pressure to set its health-based standard for fluoride at 4 mg/liter. At that level, EPA knew that a significant number of children develop moderate to severe dental fluorosis, but since it had deemed the effect as only cosmetic, EPA didn't have to set its health-based standard at a lower level to prevent it.[1]
Read more here: http://healthimpactnews.com
Posted: February 1, 2013
Farmers questioning the value of GMO traits in corn.
Interest and demand for non-GMO corn seed among US farmers is growing, according to seed suppliers who say that higher yields and returns, less cost, dissatisfaction with genetically modified traits, and better animal health are driving the demand.
Tim Schneider, a sales representative for Tom Eischen Sales in Algona, Iowa, said he is selling 20 times as much conventional, non-GMO corn seed as GM this year. "Demand has been steadily going up," he says.
"Demand has never been higher. We are growing faster than what we can handle," says Will Trudell, vice president of De Dell Seeds.
Read more here: http://healthimpactnews.com
Posted: February 1, 2013
Despite evidence to the contrary, the conventional view is that getting inoculated is the best way to protect yourself against the flu, and to make more flu vaccines available faster, the FDA recently approved a number of novel flu vaccines.
The first, Flublok, is produced by programming insect cells to produce hemagglutinin, a flu virus protein essential for entry of the virus into your body's cells. Flublok is "the first the first trivalent influenza vaccine made using an insect virus (baculovirus) expression system and recombinant DNA technology," and is approved for use in adults only, ages 18-49. This kind of genetically engineered vaccine technology, while you may never have heard of it before, has already been used in the production of vaccines against other infectious diseases. According to CNN:
"This method allows for more rapid production, making more of the vaccine available more quickly in the event of a pandemic... Flublok will be available in limited supply this winter and widely available during the next flu season, said Protein Sciences, which is based in Meriden, Connecticut.
Flublok contains the elements necessary to help fend off three different flu strains, including H1N1 and H3N2, the regulator said. And it proved 44.6% effective against all influenza strains in circulation, not just those that matched the strains included in the vaccine, according to the FDA."
Read more here: http://healthimpactnews.com
Posted: February 1, 2013
New Jersey employers want to take every precaution to keep their staff healthy and on the job. However, as a Rhode Island lawsuit highlights, requiring employees to get a flu shot can lead also lead to legal headaches.
Rhode Island is one of several states that require vaccinations for all health care workers. Under the state's regulations, health care workers are required to get a flu shot during "any declared period in which the flu is widespread." Unless workers are medically exempted, those who refuse are required to wear a mask when directly treating patients. Health care workers who violate the regulations can also be fined $100 per violation and each such violation constitutes "unprofessional conduct" with regard to their professional licenses.
Shortly after the regulations took effect, SEIU Healthcare Employees Union District 1199, a labor organization representing health care employees throughout Rhode Island, filed a lawsuit. The union points to the lack of scientific evidence that higher rates of vaccination of healthcare workers result in fewer cases of influenza among patients. It also argues that mask wearing compromises patient care by reducing the ability to communicate effectively.
Read more here: http://healthimpactnews.com
Posted: January 31, 2013
Washington state recently made national news after the "Label It Wa" grass-roots campaign successfully collected and submitted over 350,000 signatures in order to get "I-522 The People's Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act" on the 2013 ballot. This bill would require genetically engineered food in the state to be labeled.
Also in Washington, San Juan County residents and farmers passed Initiative Measure No. 2012-4 to ban the growth of genetically modified organisms. Now, Republican Representative Cary Condotta has stepped up and introduced House Bill 1407, which aims to remove the bureaucratic red tape, allowing local legislative authorities to regulate genetically modified organisms from foods to seeds as they see fit, instead of relying on the state to take action.
Read more here: http://www.examiner.com
Posted: January 31, 2013
A bill that would require labeling of genetically modified organisms is dead for the year after the Senate failed to adopt the committee report of its passage from that committee.
The Senate voted to move the bill to another committee but it was a moot point. A majority of the Senate voted to not adopt the committee report and afterwards to move the bill to Senate Corporations and Transportation instead of the Senate Judiciary Committee as it was originally scheduled.
But the initial vote to not adopt the committee report resulted in the bill being "deemed lost," which means it is for the year.
The bill's sponsor Sen. Peter Wirth, D-Santa Fe, announced the news on Twitter Thursday morning.
Read more here: http://www.nmtelegram.com
Posted: January 31, 2013
How should a regulatory agency announce they have discovered something potentially very important about the safety of products they have been approving for over twenty years?
In the course of analysis to identify potential allergens in GMO crops, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has belatedly discovered that the most common genetic regulatory sequence in commercial GMOs also encodes a significant fragment of a viral gene (Podevin and du Jardin 2012). This finding has serious ramifications for crop biotechnology and its regulation, but possibly even greater ones for consumers and farmers. This is because there are clear indications that this viral gene (called Gene VI) might not be safe for human consumption. It also may disturb the normal functioning of crops, including their natural pest resistance.
What Podevin and du Jardin discovered is that of the 86 different transgenic events (unique insertions of foreign DNA) commercialized to-date in the United States 54 contain portions of Gene VI within them. They include any with a widely used gene regulatory sequence called the CaMV 35S promoter (from the cauliflower mosaic virus; CaMV). Among the affected transgenic events are some of the most widely grown GMOs, including Roundup Ready soybeans (40-3-2) and MON810 maize. They include the controversial NK603 maize recently reported as causing tumors in rats (Seralini et al. 2012).
Read more here: http://independentsciencenews.org
Posted: January 29, 2013
Leading medical bodies are calling for a 20p-per-litre levy on soft drinks to be included in this year's Budget.
More than 60 organisations, including the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, are backing the recommendation by food and farming charity Sustain.
They say it would raise ?1bn a year in duty to fund free fruit and meals in schools to improve children's health.
The soft drinks industry says raising taxation is unnecessary.
Read more here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-21228122
Posted: January 29, 2013
BASF said it will "discontinue the pursuit of regulatory approvals for the Fortuna, Amadea, and Modena potato projects in Europe because continued investment cannot be justified due to uncertainty in the regulatory environment and threats [over the destruction of crops]."
Environmental activists have destroyed genetically modified crops on fields in Europe for fears they might harm health and erode biological diversity.
BASF also said it will continue its crop biotechnology business in the U.S. and has added corn as a target crop under its fungal resistance research.
Read more: http://www.foxbusiness.com
Posted: January 28, 2013
Why would a city pay to force its residents to ingest nocuous industrial waste for no reason?
That's what the reams of documents on fluoridating water, the conflicting claims and counter-claims threatening to bury city council, boil down to.
I was horrified to find out where the fluoride added to our drinking water comes from: it's an industrial derivative called hydrofluorosilicic acid, and it comes from the scrubbers of smokestacks at fertilizer factories. As Dr. Hardy Limeback writes in a letter to council, "I find it absurd that industrial toxic waste is shipped to the water treatment plants in large tanker trucks and trickled into the drinking water of major cities in North America."
Read more here: http://www.windsorstar.com/yucky+origin+fluoride/7870466/story.html
Posted: January 28, 2013
Sales of natural products featuring third party certifications surged in 2012, according to new data from SPINS, with non-GMO project verified products leading the charge (+18%), followed by Fair Trade USA (+17%), Certified Gluten Free (+17%), and Certified B Corporation (+15%).
Read more here: http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com
Posted: January 28, 2013
Critics call it "Frankenfish," but the trade name is AquAdvantage - an Atlantic salmon endowed with DNA and growth hormones from both the Chinook salmon and an eel-like ocean pout.
The result is a fish that reaches market weight in one-half the normal time.
Once approval is granted - and it is expected to come soon - the transgenic salmon will be the world's first genetically engineered animal available for human consumption. It's a worrisome prospect for some, but to the biotech industry, the road to approval has been one frustrating delay after another.
The fast-growing AquAdvantage salmon has a competitive edge over conventional fish farming, but getting the new fish to market has taken much longer than expected. Massachusetts-based AquaBounty Technologies first sought U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval in 1989, and their creation has remained under scrutiny ever since.
Read more here: http://www.theepochtimes.com
Posted: January 28, 2013
The European Commission (EU) has announced its plans to reopen the debate on a draft legislation that would allow each Member State to choose whether to grant or refuse permission to cultivate genetically modified organisms (GMOs) on their own territory. The draft law, which must be approved by a majority of governments and the European Parliament before becoming law, was submitted by the Commission in 2010 but blocked by France, Germany and Britain.
In the statement issued last week, the EC said that was not planning to proceed with the pending approval of several new GM crops in the immediate future, but first wants an agreement on the draft legislation. "We are going to discuss the issue with the three governments to see if we can reopen negotiations on the proposals," said Frederic Vincent, spokesman for EU Health Commissioner Tonio Borg last week. Currently, EU rules state that any GM crop approved for cultivation can be grown anywhere inside the bloc, unless countries have specific scientific reasons for banning their cultivation.
Only two GM crops have been approved for cultivation in Europe to date, and many consumer and environmental groups are vocal in their opposition. Seven crops are currently waiting approval for cultivation on the continent, developed by agri-giants Monsanto, Dow AgroSciences, and Syngenta.
Read more here: http://www.slowfood.com
Posted: January 28, 2013
MONTPELIER - Vermont-based ice cream maker Ben & Jerry's has come out in support of state legislation requiring labeling of products containing genetically modified organisms, and says it will stop using such products by the end of this year.
The company, a subsidiary of international food conglomerate Unilever, said 26 of its ice cream flavors - ranging from Cherry Garcia to Mint Chocolate Cookie - already come without GMOs.
The company's stance is winning praise from groups supporting GMO labeling, including Rural Vermont and the Vermont Public Interest Research Group.
Read more here: http://www.timesargus.com/article/20130128/NEWS03/701289960
Posted: January 16, 2013
Officially California has voted "No" on Proposition 37, which required labeling of genetically modified foods (GMOs), even though 96 percent were in favor of labeling before elections according to MSNBC poll.
A $46 million ad campaign by Monsanto, DuPont, and the food industry succeeded, claiming that labeling would be a major inconvenience that would raise costs and food prices.
Organic farmers, retailers, environmentalists, consumers, and other groups comprising over 10 million individuals raised $8 million. In the end, the vote was 4.8 million against Proposition 37 to 4.3 million in favor, according to Acres USA, Jan. 2013.
Read more here: http://www.theepochtimes.com
Posted: January 16, 2013
It's no secret that Americans throw away an enormous amount of food, sending day-old leftovers and slightly wilted spinach straight to the garbage. But what about the food that never even makes it to the kitchen table? A new report released by a British engineering society reveals that worldwide, billions of tons of food are squandered each year because of poor agriculture practices, which include inefficient harvesting and inadequate infrastructure and storage - and it's depleting Earth's water supply.
"This level of wastage is a tragedy that cannot continue if we are to succeed in the challenge of sustainably meeting our future food demands," writes the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. "The potential to provide 60-100% more food by simply eliminating losses, while simultaneously freeing up land, energy and water resources for other uses, is an opportunity that should not be ignored."
Read more here: http://www.motherjones.com
Posted: January 16, 2013
Earlier this month, Mark Lynas, a prominent UK environmentalist and author, delivered a blunt attack (text here; video below the fold) on critics of agricultural biotechnology at a farming conference at Oxford University.
Reviewing the development of his opinions on GMOs, Lynas reports that back in the '90s, he had an instant emotional reaction against them. He saw the situation like this: "Here was a big American corporation with a nasty track record, putting something new and experimental into our food without telling us." And so he "helped to start the anti-GM movement," and "spent several years ripping up GM crops." Then, in the process of researching climate change, he "discovered science"; and soon after, he reports, he "discovered that one by one my cherished beliefs about GM turned out to be little more than green urban myths," which he goes on to list.
Lynas is quite correct that the backlash against GMOs is often clouded by emotion.
Read more here: http://www.motherjones.com
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