(http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org)Researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey and the Environmental Protection Agency recently analyzed treated and untreated water samples from 25 U.S. water utilities who participated voluntarily. They detected 21 contaminants, mostly in low concentrations at parts per trillion, in treated drinking water from at least nine of the tested facilities.
18 of the chemicals detected are not regulated by the federal Safe Drinking Water Act, so utilities are not required to monitor them or limit the amount in drinking water. The researchers found 11 perfluorinated compounds, an herbicide, two solvents, caffeine, an antibacterial compound, a metal and an antidepressant.
Little research has been done to examine the effects on human health many of these chemicals have at such low doses. One of the perfluorinated compounds, though, PFOA, has been linked to a variety of health issues including cancer, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease and pregnancy-induced hypertension. PFOA and PFOS were the most commonly detected perfluorinated compounds found in the utilities' drinking water, and they have been detected in the blood of most people in the United States. Perfluorinated compounds were detected at similar concentrations in both treated and untreated water, indicating that treatment techniques are largely unsuccessful at removing them. Only one plant was able to remove them using activated carbon treatment, which is often cost-prohibitive compared to conventional chlorine treatment.
"Chlorination and other treatments technologies will remove some contaminants, but will react with others," Laurel Schaider, a research associate at the Harvard School of Public Health, said. "Some compounds may appear to be removed but may be transformed to a chemical we know even less about."
Specific chemicals found in at least one-third of the 25 utilities' treated drinking water include barium, strontium (can affect bone growth), bromoform, lithium, benzotriazole methyl-1H, triclosan, atrazine, caffeine, isophorone, metolachlor (possible carcinogen) and 11 perfluorinated compounds including PFOS and PFOA. Additionally, the scientists also detected 113 chemicals in eight or fewer of the utilities' treated drinking water.
(http://nation.time.com)Last week, Jahi McMath, a 13-year-old Californian girl, went to Children's Hospital Oakland to have her tonsils removed.
Tonsillectomies are generally safe procedures, and after her operation, young Jahi, enjoying a Popsicle, seemed perfectly healthy. But then she began to bleed profusely from her nose and mouth and quickly went into cardiac arrest. Since then, doctors have declared her brain-dead, and she is now hooked up to a ventilator and unlikely to ever recover.
Jahi's family have pleaded for answers from hospital staff, who they say have been rude, have asked them to leave the facility and have refused their requests to meet with hospital administration.
"As compassionate as she is and as caring as she is, you would think the hospital could show her some compassion," Nailah Winkfield, Jahi's mother, said.
The family is holding out for a miracle and are hoping to keep their daughter alive for as long as possible, despite hospital staff urging them to go ahead and "pull the plug."
In an attempt to save face and appear sympathetic, Children's Hospital released this ostensible statement: "We are very sad about her condition and our hearts go out to her and her family. We are currently reviewing the case."
(http://politicker.com)Last week, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's Board of Health voted to require that all children between the ages of six months and five years who are enrolled in licensed day care and preschool programs receive annual flu shots. This decision, of course, infuriated parents who don't want their children to be forcibly injected with the vaccine industry's questionable chemical concoctions.
All vaccines can cause side effects, and the flu shot is no exception. Common side effects include soreness, cough, fever, headache, itching, fatigue, nasal congestion, abdominal pain, vomiting and diarrhea. Less common side effects acknowledged by the CDC include seizures, "severe allergic reactions" and Guillain-Barre Syndrome. The flu shot has also been implicated in the case of a teenager in Utah who fell into a coma and later died after receiving the flu shot for the first time in his life. Infants and children are already required to receive several vaccinations, so injecting them with another immunization cocktail and increasing their chances of having an adverse reaction is an unpopular idea for many concerned parents.
"We already do vaccinate kids. It's required for measles, whopping cough, chicken pox and mumps. Flu, unfortunately, kills more than all of those things put together in kids ... So we required it for children five and under at licensed pre-school and daycare centers to get flu shots," Bloomberg said.
"Somebody some place, I forget who it was, might have been an elected official, I forget, said, 'Oh, it causes autism.' ... It is just literally not true," Bloomberg said, ignoring scientific literature that provides evidence to the contrary. "I can tell you what does kill kids is no flu shot. And you know, it's one of these things that there's some crazies... and... you know, I don't know whether they think it's cute to go out and yell and scream, but you really hurt people."
Bloomberg says that we should trust scientists, because they are smarter than us and we shouldn't question what they want us to inject into our, or our children's, bodies. "[T]hat's why you have scientists. Are scientists always right? No, but they're right a lot more than you and I are as civilians, or whatever non-scientists." Scientists and doctors once considered cigarettes to actually be good for your health, so us "civilians, or whatever," have every reason to question medicine that they claim is for our own good. Science changes constantly, and the safety of something should be thoroughly and accurately verified before being considered as a mandate-enforced medication. However, Bloomberg dismisses any who question the status quo and exercise caution when it comes to the health of their loved ones as "crazies."
"The Bloomberg administration is wildly exaggerating the benefit of the flu shot and we think they are wildly underestimating the risks involved with it," said John Gilmore, the executive director of the Autism Action Network.
The Board of Health is made up entirely of mayoral appointees, so Gilmore doesn't expect to be able to change their minds on the proposed rule. Instead, he hopes that protests will influence mayor-elect de Blasio and that he will consider reversing the Board's decision.
The rule requires vaccinations for all children under five "unless the vaccine may be detrimental to the child's health, as certified by a physician licensed to practice medicine in this state, or the parent, parents, or guardian of a child hold genuine and sincere religious beliefs which are contrary to the practices herein required."
(http://rt.com)On Wednesday, Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy made history by signing into law a bill that requires all foods containing genetically modified organisms for human consumption to be properly labeled. It is the first bill of its kind to be signed in the United States and represents a huge step forward for advocates of organic food and honest labeling. However, the bill, which was passed by Connecticut voters back in June, will not go into effect until other states in the Northeastern region with a combined population of 20 million pass similar labeling laws.
"As the catalyst for GMO labeling in the United States, Connecticut residents should feel proud," Tara Cook-Littman, the director of GMO Free Connecticut, said. "We are hopeful that legislators throughout the Northeast will follow the lead of Governor Malloy and all our legislative champions by passing laws that give consumers transparency in labeling. It is a great honor for all of us to stand with Governor Malloy as he signs the first in the nation GMO labeling law."
Polls consistently show that the overwhelming majority of Americans are in favor of mandatory GMO labeling laws, which have been approved in more than 60 countries around the world. In fact, even China refuses to import certain GMO crops from the United States.
Hopefully, Connecticut's bill will encourage America's growing GMO labeling movement and help propel us to a healthier, smarter and more honest future, as similar laws are considered in states across the nation.
(http://www.abc.net.au)The City Council of Lismore, Australia, recently angered residents there after voting 6-5 to fluoridate the water supply.
Out of the 100 or so people who showed up at the meeting, one protestor ended up throwing his shoe in the middle of the chamber to show his disgust for the Council's decision.
The city previously voted 6-5 against fluoridating their water supply in August, but that was overturned when a September vote ended 6-5 in support of fluoridation.
Most of the Council members do not have a scientific background and likely don't understand all of the documentation on the subject that has been sent to them by both sides of the debate. Previous surveys by the Department of Health showing community support for fluoride are dubious and flawed. "They ended up phoning 27 people in this local government area and asking them if they supported putting fluoride in the water supply for improving people's dental health," Councillor Vanessa Ekins said. 27 people in an area is not representative of the entire community, and the survey did not give adequate information to those polled for them to be able to make an informed, unbiased decision.
Another motion that was passed 6-5, put forward by Councillor Neil Marks, passes the responsibility of making future decisions and directing fluoridation to the state government. Now, even if the majority of the community and the Council were in favor of removing fluoride from their own water, they would be unable to make that decision for themselves.
(http://althealthworks.com)Earthbound Farm, a massive, industrial-scale organic produce corporation, has been bought out by the WhiteWave Foods Company. WhiteWave produces Silk soy milk and until recently was owned by Dean Foods, Inc., which has fiercely opposed GMO-labeling campaigns and was involved in changing Silk from an organic product into a "natural" one that used genetically modified soy beans. Although WhiteWave has enrolled all of its Silk products in The Non-GMO Project's product verification program, its ties to Dean Foods raises concerns for many health food enthusiasts.
Mark Kastel, a senior farm policy analyst from the Cornucopia Institute, says that WhiteWave's Horizon brand dairy milk comes from factory operations with as many as 10,000 cows living in their own filth. Even though their Silk products now appear to be going non-GMO, the company is currently headed by the former CEO of Dean Foods, Gregg Engles, which makes it tough to trust their stance on organic, non-GMO food, and especially GMO labeling.
At this time, Earthbound Farm's products are all organic and non-GMO, but there is no telling if that could change in the future due to WhiteWave's, and Dean Foods', influence. All organic producers should be supported for contributing to better, healthier food choices, but it is almost always safer to go with small, local farms whenever possible.
Be sure to read Nick Meyer's article on the subject at AltHealthWorks.com.
(http://www.theguardian.com)Randy Schekman, a US biologist who won this year's Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for his work on cellular vesicle transportation, has declared a boycott on top "luxury" science journals. Specifically, he says that the prestigious journals Nature, Cell and Science have become complicit in a system that rewards authors of more popular papers with science-distorting incentives. Having a paper be published in one of these top journals has become a major goal among scientists, because doing so boosts their reputation, benefiting them professionally.
Due to their reputation, such journals are expected to publish high-quality research. And, in many cases, they do, but not all the time. High-end journal editors only accept a limited amount of papers in order to increase demand for having one's paper accepted; furthermore, they often decide to publish papers that are eye-catching or provocative, rather than of good quality, in order to increase subscriptions and the journal's impact factor and revenue. Schekman also criticizes impact factors, the flawed metric by which journals attempt to quantify the quality of their research, saying that they merely reflect how often a journal's papers are cited, which hardly translates to quality accurately. And, in fact, many journals simply pursue higher impact factors to increase their prestige and revenue, rather than focusing on publishing meaningful scientific research. Another problem is that these journals foster research in fields that are popular, rather than important, and discourage replication studies; after all, a one-time experiment linking a common substance to a lethal disease, for example, would make a much larger splash, and be more likely to be accepted, than a subsequent experiment to prove or disprove the first would. These luxury journals can also "encourage the cutting of corners," contributing to the number of flawed or fraudulent papers with sensational claims, which journals are often eager to accept after a minimal peer-review process that often leads to later retractions and scientific criticism.
"I have published in the big brands, including the papers that won me the Nobel prize... But no longer," Scheckman wrote in The Guardian.
"There is a better way, through the new breed of open-access journals that are free for anybody to read, and have no expensive subscriptions to promote," Scheckman wrote. "Born on the web, they can accept all papers that meet quality standards, with no artificial caps. Many are edited by working scientists, who can assess the worth of papers without regard for citations."
Open-access journals are the imminent way of the future. As information becomes more free and accessible, quality improves as well and everyone benefits. In the end, after science breaks the tyranny of profit-seeking luxury journals, "[t]he result will be better research that better serves science and society."
(http://www.gmwatch.org)Oxitec, a UK biotech company, has decided not to carry out its plans to release GM olive and fruit flies in Spain and Brazil after government regulators in the two countries raised concerns for human and environmental health.
The company's decision came after Spanish and Catalan regulators requested more information on the impact that the release of GM insects would have.
"Today's decision shows that regulators are starting to ask important questions about the impacts of releasing GM insects on humans and the environment", said Dr Helen Wallace, Director of GeneWatch UK, "Oxitec has pulled its application because it does not have the answers to these questions."
Naturally, Brazilian and Spanish citizens are concerned about an international company releasing untested GM insects, which can not be contained or controlled, into their environment. The GM flies would mate with wild flies in the area, and large numbers of GM maggots would end up dead in olives and fruit, increasing consumers' health risks and ruining growers' crops.
Oxitec is currently testing their GM mosquitoes in Brazil, but authorities say they need evidence that these GMOs reduce dengue fever risk and incidence before approving the biotech company's application for commercial use.
(http://www.cornucopia.org)(Photo from: http://wholegreenlove.com) You may be surprised to learn that carrageenan, a controversial food additive that has been linked in animal studies to gastrointestinal problems and colon cancer, is allowed as an ingredient in many "organic" food products. The Organic Foods Production Act of 1990 requires that non-agricultural ingredients be determined safe for human health and the environment before being added to organic foods, and federal organic standards require that nonorganic ingredients be essential to producing food in order for them to be used. Since many food manufacturers use alternatives to carrageenan in their products, it is not essential, and there is no reason why it should be allowed in organic foods.
When the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) first approved carrageenan in the mid-1990s, they based their decision on inaccurate information given to them by "independent" scientists with industry ties, including Stephen Harper, a food scientist at Small Planet Foods, which is now owned by General Mills.
The NOSB is required to review non-organic and artificial materials used in organic food and agriculture every five years as part of their Sunset regulatory process. The process is to determine if continued use of the materials threatens human health or the environment and if there is a feasible organic alternative. When carrageenan's five-year review came up in May 2012, Cornucopia Institute staff members who were at the meeting presented scientific studies detailing the additive's harmful effects, but NOSB members were misled by industry lobbyists who presented misinformation and questioned the validity of independent research commissioned by the National Institutes of Health.
Cornucopia reports:
One of the NOSB members took an active role in assisting the carrageenan manufacturers. At one point, she read lengthy excerpts from a document written by the carrageenan manufacturers' trade lobby group, Marinalg, defending the safety of carrageenan. But before reading these lengthy excerpts, the Board member misidentified the excerpts as "being from JECFA, a United Nations/FAO body" when in fact they were written by the industry's lobby group. Pretty infuriating, right? How can research from a biased lobby group be mistaken for a United Nations/FAO study?
The NOSB ended up re-approving carrageenan for another five years by a margin of one vote. Several of the Board members who voted to approve the additive did so in violation of NOSB's policies against voters having conflicts of interest.
The Cornucopia Institute's report on carrageenan in organic food can be found here. More information on carrageenan can be found here.
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com)Yesterday, December 5, 2013, Mayor Billy Kenoi signed Bill 113 into law, banning biotech companies and new genetically modified crops from the Big Island of Hawaii. The island's GMO papaya industry is exempt from the bill. The law reflects Hawaiian sentiments to encourage community-based farming, as opposed to letting global corporations take over their agriculture. Biotech companies have not yet begun operations on the Big Island, and the new bill will help keep it that way.
Much of Hawaii's agricultural sector opposed the bill, and, the mayor said, some farmers were "treated disrespectfully" while the new legislation was being debated. Kenoi urges community healing and an end to the angry rhetoric that lead to the passage of the bill. Just a few weeks ago, Kauai passed its own law to regulate GMO and pesticide usage.
"Our community has a deep connection and respect for our land, and we all understand we must protect our island and preserve our precious natural resources," Kenoi wrote to council members. "We are determined to do what is right for the land because this place is unlike any other in the world."
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-25202903)The Cochrane Collaboration recently conducted research into eight exercise trials involving over 300 dementia patients. Their assessment found that, although exercise did little to improve the mood of the participants, it did help them with performing daily tasks, such as walking or standing up, and improved cognitive function.
Everyone should regularly exercise, as it helps improve health overall, lowering obesity, diabetes and heart disease risks, among others. This research shows that it can also lower the risk of dementia and neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's; however, the researchers note that "further research is needed to be able to develop best practice guidelines to enable healthcare providers to advise people with dementia living at home or in institutions." More studies are also needed in order to determine the best level and intensity of exercise to benefit dementia patients.
Dr. Laura Phipps of Alzheimer's Research UK said: "We do know that exercise is an important part of keeping healthy, and though we can't say that exercise will prevent dementia, evidence does suggest it can help reduce the risk of the condition as part of a healthy lifestyle."
(http://rt.com)As reported by RT.com, polls consistently show that the majority of Americans support laws for requiring the labeling of foods that contain genetically modified organisms.
A New York Times poll conducted earlier this year revealed that 93 percent of respondents were in favor of GMO labeling, and a 2010 survey by the Washington Post resulted in 94 percent in favor.
In recent years, states such as California and Washington have tried to pass GMO labeling initiatives, which polls had shown were supported by most of the residents who responded. Despite this, biotech companies like Monsanto and DuPont and food corporations like PepsiCo, Coca-Cola and Kellogg have furiously poured money into pro-GMO propaganda in those states and kept such legislation from passing, against the best interests of their customers.
Regardless of advertising, GMO labeling laws have recently been passed in Maine and Connecticut, but they will not be in effect until four other northeastern states with a combined population of at least 20 million enact similar laws.
GMO labeling continues to gain steady support across the country as people realize the dangers of eating pesticides, chemicals and man-made creatures and blindly trusting corporations with the safety and quality of their food. Enacting sensible labeling laws is possible, and we must continue our efforts to do so if we are to achieve the health freedom that we, and future generations of Americans, deserve.
(http://www.motherjones.com)According to MotherJones.com, a report by Transparency Market Research shows that the chemical industry expects bispehnol A (BPA) sales to increase by 44 percent by 2019. BPA, which the FDA recently banned from baby bottles (after manufacturers already phased it out), is an endocrine-disrupting chemical that is used to help preserve canned foods and make plastics more flexible. BPA has been linked to changes in sex hormones, lower sperm counts, tooth decay, obesity in children and other health concerns. It also affects the brain and nervous system and can cause early onset of puberty. The dangerous chemical's effects have been observed at extremely low levels enocountered on a daily basis.
With all the horrible news coming out about BPA, it would make sense for it to be phased out and banned, but a report recieved by Tom Philpott of MotherJones.com shows that the chemical industry actually expects sales to increase, from $13.1 billion this year to $18.8 billion in 2019. The report detailed "steady growth" in BPA consumption, mainly due to "increasing demand in the Asia-Pacific region." Lately, China's BPA production and use has "grown rapidly," and "much more BPA contamination" is expected there in the near future. After Asia and Europe, North America is the "third largest regional market for BPA," but consumption is now growing "at a very slow rate," so the report's authors expect a "slight decline" in North American BPA consumption by 2019.
The three companies that are expected to profit the most from the health-destroying chemical are Bayer, Dow and Saudi Basic Industries Corp.
(http://rt.com)The Journal of Food and Chemical Toxicology has caved under pressure from the biotech industry and agreed to retract Gilles-Eric Seralini's "controversial" experiment which showed that rats fed Monsanto's genetically modified (GM) corn developed tumors.
The study was controversial because it was the first to attempt to examine the long-term effects of consuming Monsanto's NK603 Roundup-tolerant corn. Previous experiments only covered periods of 90 days or less, which means that they were severely limited when you consider that corporations expect their customers to unquestioningly eat GMOs over their entire lifespan. Since the industry has been unable to produce any data refuting Seralini's results, they have instead been furiously working to discredit them. Monsanto's study only examined rats on a GMO diet for 90 days and dismissed signs of toxicity as "not biologically meaningful."
When the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) recommended approval of NK603 in 2009, they did so without conducting any independent testing and relied solely on Monsanto's data, who would profit the most from it, of course. After Seralini's study was published, the EFSA attacked it, saying that "it does not meet acceptable scientific standards."
However, as William Engdahl of RT.com notes, "EFSA argued that Seralini had used the wrong kind of rats, not enough rats and that the statistical analysis was inadequate. By these standards, all toxicity studies on glyphosate and GMOs should be retracted because they used the same type and approximate number of rats as those in the Seralini study."
Even if the study was flawed, just the fact that it was the first long-term study performed and that it observed disconcerting tumor growth correlating to GMO consumption warrants exercise of the precautionary principle and further independent testing, especially before blindly accepting safety tests from the very people who seek to make money off of its approval.
Despite being discredited, the study was still circulating and being cited by others, so, in May 2013, Elsevier, the journal's publisher, appointed former Monsanto employee and pro-GMO lobbyist Richard E. Goodman to the newly created position of "Associate Editor for Biotechnology."
So now, after Seralini's experiment went through a four-month review period and has been published for over a year, the Journal of Food and Chemical Toxicology has decided to retract the paper. This violates Committee on Publication Ethics guidelines, which state that the only reasons for a journal to retract a paper are as follows:
• Clear evidence that the findings are unreliable due to misconduct (e.g. data fabrication) or honest error;
• Plagiarism or redundant publication;
• Unethical research.
Rather than meeting any of these criteria, Seralini's paper is being retracted due to its "inconclusiveness." This not only violates ethical guidelines but undermines the very foundation of science. Papers are not published to be conclusive but rather to provide new data and information for researchers to build upon in the future. This retraction slows the progress of science, ignores important safety information and puts all of our health at further risk.
News radio host Robert Scott Bell recently appeared in an interview with Gary Franchi of Next News Network. In the interview, the two discuss the current state of the American healthcare system, Obamacare, the free market and the impending, necessary rise of homeopathic medicine. Of Obamacare, Bell reveals that it is part of a 100-year-old scheme to monopolize healthcare.
Upon being introduced by Franchi, Bell says, "This goes so far back. Obamacare, as it's named, is preceded by a hundred now a hundred and two years of preparation time to lead to this disaster."
Franchi then asks Bell why he thinks "that the President would roll out such a massive program but have an inferior web infrastructure."
Bell: "Well if you give him any credit, you'd say that it was designed to fail from the beginning. That this was never intended to be a successful program, because what they'd really like to roll out is something that would follow it, and I've argued this, and I predicted this for many years."
He goes on to explain how, if you make real healing illegal, people will eventually become so disconnected from real healing that they will continue to demand government intervention, despite the fact that our disastrous state of healthcare is a result of that very government's intervention.
"So it's not something that happened overnight. It isn't even only Obama," Bell says. "Things that preceded Obama really set the stage for what we're seeing."
"[W]e have to go back a hundred-plus years to the Flexner Report of 1910," he continues. "Abraham Flexner was given a task and it ended up being a preordained report to assess the medical education training of his day in the early part of the 20th century." Basically, the purpose of the report was to say which medical schools would be legitimized and which would not. The legitimized schools received funding from federal and private groups including Carnegie and Rockefeller, as long as they "adopted a petrochemical patent medicine type paradigm." Meanwhile, schools that taught homeopathic medicine and other forms of natural healing had their financial support taken away. Smear campaigns were also employed to discredit alternative forms of medicine and convince the public that the only "real" doctors were those sanctioned by the government.
Bell then explains how the idea of licensure was strengthened throughout the 20th century so that doctors are now limited not only in what they are taught in medical school but also in what they are allowed to practice and how they treat their patients. Additionally, all the medical school closures and regulations severely limited the number of doctors and caused an increase in prices. Furthermore, this caused medical school expenses to increase to such exorbitant heights that, by the time a doctor graduates, they are basically a slave to their debt, which can be as much as half-a-million dollars, and sometimes more, so they then must comply with licensure boards and do whatever it takes to pay back that debt. This compromises doctors' integrity and prevents many from actually being good doctors, so as we are currently seeing, many of them leave the profession in frustration, which is further compounding the Obamacare situation.
Bell then gives detail of how the Obama administration is aware of this insidious scheme: "Obama actually wrote a letter to his constituents, to his supporters, about how great it was that, and this was in 2010, that Obamacare happened... and it took a hundred years. 'We've been working a hundred years.' That's a hundred years to the year. Why would that be in a letter from Obama? I don't know that Obama actually knew it, but somebody writing that for him did. So what I'm saying is not speculation, it's [actual] and it was done by design. We've got to collapse the medical system so that we can completely take it over and eliminate any private free market, which again in the 20th century was declining over the decades for a long time. So now we convince the majority of people in America that free market medicine doesn't work. And it does, it's just that we haven't had in a hundred years maybe."
Watch the video for yourself to learn about all the details revealed in this interview. Be sure to listen to the Robert Scott Bell show, which can be accessed here and here, for important natural health news. Next News Network's WHDT World News program airs daily at 6pm and 11pm Eastern on Comcast, DirecTV and Over-the-Air and Online at NNN.is.
(http://www.reuters.com)In response to concerns from Republican lawmakers about the secrecy with which it guards its scientific findings, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has appointed Francesca Grifo as its first "scientific integrity official." Grifo is the former director of the scientific integrity program at the Union of Concerned Scientists and a director of the Center for Environmental Research at Columbia University.
Grifo's role will be to coordinate the agency's policies on scientific integrity and chair a committee focused on that subject. This comes in response to criticism by legislators who claim that the agency overregulates industry and impedes economic growth and employment without allowing independent analysts to review the "secret science" they use as justification.
However, the new position is unlikely to satisfy lawmakers' concerns, considering that the scientific data still remains a mystery to those affected by the agency's regulations. "'Scientific integrity' is a moot point when the science remains secret, no matter who's in this role," Senator David Vitter (R-La.) said. "There's currently no method to independently analyze or verify their [EPA's] science, or its integrity."
(http://www.cbc.ca)AquaBounty Technologies, a biotech company, has recently announced that it has been granted permission by Environment Canada to commercially produce genetically modified (GM) salmon eggs at its Prince Edward's Island (PEI) facility.
Prior to recieving the Canadian government department's permission, the production at AquaBounty's PEI hatchery has been for research purposes only. Now, however, GM fish egg production will begin at a commercial scale at the company's facility in Bay Fortune, PEI.
AquaBounty's GM fish have had their genes manipulated to force them to grow at twice the rate as natural salmon.
(http://www.sltrib.com)19-year-old Chandler Webb of Utah passed away on November 19, 2013, after being hospitalized for nearly a month while in a coma. His mother, Lori Webb, claims that her son's death was caused by the influenza vaccine.
On October 15, Chandler received his first flu shot ever as part of a routine physical prior to going on a mission trip for his church. The next day, Chandler began suffering from headaches and severe vomiting. The teenager, who had only just recently graduated from Brighton High school, was then hospitalized in Salt Lake City, where he subsequently fell into a coma.
After being in a coma for about a month, Chandler was taken off of life support, and he died on November 19, 2013, after spending 28 days in the hospital. Though doctors have yet to discuss the case, his mother says that the direct cause of death was swelling of the brain. Public health officials continue to emphasize the safety of the vaccine, despite serious side effects having been reported.
Lori has declined an autopsy for her son, considering that a pending brain biopsy will likely be sufficient to determine the cause of death. She said that neurologists at Intermountain Medical Center in Murray performed numerous tests on her son, but they were unable to find any cause or cure for his condition.
"Like with other medical procedures, there can be side effects and adverse reactions," Tom Hudachko, a spokesman for the Utah Department of Health, said. "In the vast majority of those cases the side effects are not very severe - soreness at the injection site, low fever, achiness. Occasionally, yes, there are more severe side effects from receiving the vaccine."
Sankar Swaminathan, chief of the division of infectious diseases at the University of Utah School of Medicine, says that, out of approximately 130 million people who get the flu vaccine nationwide per year, about 1,000 people report an adverse reaction, and 140 people report serious side effects. However, those numbers are likely under-representative, as many reactions go unreported.
Prior to receiving the flu shot, Chandler Webb was a healthy, active teenager who visited the gym five days a week. His sudden, unprecedented death has yet to be explained by the medical industry, but his mother is certain that the flu shot is to blame. "We're angry because we believe it's the flu shot that [caused] it," Lori said to the Salt Lake Tribune.
When he was taken off of life support, Chandler's last moments involved his mother cutting his hair for the last time and telling him the story of "The Three Billy Goats Gruff," which she would read to him as a child. "I can't describe how hard it is to lose a child," Lori said.
(http://www.reuters.com)A recent shipment of corn from the United States to China has been rejected due to contamination by genetically modified strains that have not been approved by Beijing.
The offending crop that caused the shipment to be rejected was Syngenta AG's Agrisure Viptera corn. This incident highlights a growing problem of GMO contamination of crops, as seen in September this year when alfalfa grown in Washington was discovered to be contaminated with a GM strain.
The bad news impacted the Chicago Board of Trade corn futures, causing December corn to hit a three-year low. Thankfully for corn farmers, U.S. corn imports into China are soaring, as the Chinese government struggles with high domestic corn prices, compared to relatively cheap U.S. corn imports from a record harvest, and an increasing demand for food.
However, the contaminated shipment will have to transported elsewhere, like Japan or South Korea.
"We are worried. At this stage, we have to wait and see before making any judgment whether the government is sending a signal to the market that it does not want more imports or whether this is simply a quarantine issue," said one trading manager with a large animal feed mill in Guangdong.
Agrisure Viptera was engineered in an effort to increase resistance against crop-damaging insects and is widely grown in the U.S., so the genetic pollution likely came from the GM strain commingling with the approved corn.
As usual, the biotech industry denies responsibility. "Syngenta is not aware of any such incident," said Paul Minehart, head of Corporate Communications-North America for Syngenta Corporation.
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com)Maui Mayor Alan Arakawa has signed a "Memorandum of Understanding" agreement with Monsanto. Known as the "Maui County AG Oversight Agreement," the agreement requires Monsanto to disclose all "restricted-use pesticides" that are sprayed in Maui Country, how much is sprayed and the number of acres that they are used on. Under the deal, Monsanto must also report how it's dealing with dust and soil erosion. The company will meet with county officials each quarter to discuss pesticide usage and other community issues.
The announcement of this deal comes in the wake of the passage of two significant GMO bills in Hawaii. The island of Kauai passed legislation restricting where biotech companies can spray pesticides and requiring full disclosure of when and where they will be sprayed. Meanwhile, the Hawaii County Council banned biotech companies from operating on the Big Island and all GMO crops except for corn and papaya that are already being cultivated.
As reported by the Huffington Post, Rod Antone, who is Mayor Arakawa's communications director, said, "We thought that after the Big Island [passed its bill], this is about a good a time as ever. Maui would be next. It doesn't prevent anyone from approaching the council about a bill, but this is a good way to start the dialogue. The county wanted to be proactive rather than reactive."
