Archive for the ‘Alternative Science’ Category

Nearly 12,000 people will die of head and neck cancer in the United States this year and worldwide cases will exceed half a million.

A study published this week in the journal Carcinogenesis shows that in both cell lines and mouse models, grape seed extract (GSE) kills head and neck squamous cell carcinoma cells, while leaving healthy cells unharmed.

“It’s a rather dramatic effect,” says Rajesh Agarwal, PhD, investigator at the University of Colorado Cancer Center and professor at the Skaggs School of Pharmaceutical Sciences.

It depends in large part, says Agarwal, on a healthy cell’s ability to wait out damage.

“Cancer cells are fast-growing cells,” Agarwal says. “Not only that, but they are necessarily fast growing. When conditions exist in which they can’t grow, they die.”

Grape seed extract creates these conditions that are unfavorable to growth. Specifically, the paper shows that grape seed extract both damages cancer cells DNA (via increased reactive oxygen species) and stops the pathways that allow repair (as seen by decreased levels of the DNA repair molecules Brca1 and Rad51 and DNA repair foci).

“Yet we saw absolutely no toxicity to the mice, themselves,” Agarwal says.

Again, the grape seed extract killed the cancer cells but not the healthy cells.

by Jonathan Benson, NaturalNews

The more that researchers truly study the effects of antidepressant drugs on depression patients, the more it becomes painfully obvious that these mind-altering medications are utterly useless. A new study conducted by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has revealed that antidepressant drugs work no better than talk therapy, placebo pills, or basically anything else, at relieving depression.

Funded in part by the drug industry, the new study follows the same pattern as several other recent studies that, even though they were not intended to do so, actually expose antidepressant drugs as a scam. Though the study’s authors and various commentators were quick to dismiss the findings as not necessarily indicative of the fact that antidepressants provide no medical benefits, any reasonable person looking at the study with an open mind can clearly see that this is, in fact, the case.

For the study, which was published in theJournal of Clinical Psychiatry, researchers randomly assigned 156 depression patients to either take the antidepressant drug Sertraline (Zoloft) daily for 16 weeks; a form of psychotherapy called supportive-expressive therapy twice a week for four weeks, then weekly for 12 weeks; or take inactive placebo pills for 16 weeks.

At the conclusion of the study period, researchers reported virtually no difference at all among the groups in how depression patients responded to their treatments — roughly 25 percent from each group saw an improvement in their depression symptoms, while the rest continued to struggle with their symptoms.

“I was surprised by the results,” said lead researcher Jacques P. Barber, dean of the Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies at Adelphi University in Garden City, New York. “They weren’t what I’d expected.”

And to those who put their faith in Western medicine’s drug-based solutions for depression, how could the results not be surprising? After all, a study such as this one is an embarrassment to both the drug and mental health industries, as it shows that their so-called solutions are no better at treating depression symptoms than taking a sugar pill.

It’s not that the drug doesn’t work, it’s that everything works, including the drug!

And in trying to gloss over the results, some outside commentators inadvertently admitted that virtuallyanythingcan work to treat depression — yes, anything. Dr. David Mischoulon, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, for instance, actually told Reuters Health that, rather than disprove the effectiveness of antidepressants, the study actually shows that “everything seems to work to some degree.”

So when a scientific study proves that a certain pharmaceutical drug fails to live up to its hype, experts trying to defend that particular drug just have to claim thateverything, including that drug, can be helpful in treating a condition, and voila, it is still effective. This is, of course, an amazingly unscientific and absurd way of looking at the findings, but it is the only way apart from scrapping the useless drug that its defenders can (very poorly) try to justify its existence.

Sources for this article include:

http://old.news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111221/hl_nm/us_antidepressant

Learn more:http://www.naturalnews.com/034625_placebo_depression_antidepressants.html#ixzz1jfzITsLo

Research published in the October 26, 2011 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) conclusively proved that “annual screening with chest radiographs over a 4-year period did not significantly reduce lung cancer mortality.” The trial included more than 150,000 participants who underwent an annual chest radiograph for 4 years. These findings are changing the way medical professionals approach the diagnosis of lung cancer.

EarlyCDT-Lung is a commercially available blood test used to measure specific autoantibodes, or immunobiomarkers, which are elevated in patients with lung cancer. Because these autoantibodies are present at the earliest stages of the disease, EarlyCDT-Lung can be used to determine a patient’s lung cancer risk before a tumor is detected. This critical information can then aid in the early diagnosis of the disease, potentially before a patient exhibits specific symptoms of lung cancer.

CT scans are another screening method for those at risk for lung cancer. As reported in the landmark National Lung Cancer Screening Trials study (NLST) published in the NEJM in July 2011, early detection enabled by low-dose CT scans resulted in a 20% reduction in lung cancer mortality in a high risk patient population. Though this news is very positive in regard to early lung cancer detection, there are several issues associated with utilizing CT scans for lung cancer screening. These issues include: a high false-positive rate, a significant out-of-pocket cost for patients and radiation exposure.

by Todd Bishop, Geekwire

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen makes the case for broader sharing of scientific data — an “open science” model – in a newly published opinion piece (subscription required) in the Wall Street Journal, drawing from the experiences of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle.

Allen explains that the institute initially considered charging for access to its online database, before deciding to make the research freely available, with no registration required and a terms-of-use agreement “about 10% as long as the one governing iTunes,” as Allen puts it.

The piece is also interesting from a historical perspective, given Microsoft’s intense focus on protecting its intellectual property, and its longtime aversion to open-source software, even though that stance has since softened in many respects.

Allen writes of the Brain Institute, “Most important, we generate data for the purpose of sharing it. Since opening shop in 2003, we’ve had 23 public releases, or about three per year. We don’t wait to analyze our raw data and publish in the literature. We pour it onto the public website as soon as it passes our quality control checks. Our goal is to speed others’ discoveries as much as to springboard our own future research.”

He concludes with a call for foundations and funders of scientific research to help promote open science by asking about the researchers’ policies and practices on sharing data before writing a check.

Update: Try searching for “Paul Allen Open Science” in Google News for a free pass to read the full piece behind the Wall Street Journal firewall.

An epidemiologic study conducted amongst middle and high school students in Michigan showed that an alarming 1 in 5 of them have abused prescription drugs in the past year.  The study shows that abuse rates amongst adolescents are as high as they are for young adult and adult populations, highlighting concerns that Rx medications are now the drug of choice.

This adolescent age group is a particularly vulnerable one, said Sean Esteban McCabe, PhD, research associate professor at the University of Michigan Substance Abuse Research Center and Institute for Research on Women and Gender in Ann Arbor, and the study’s lead author. “Adolescence represents an important period to monitor controlled medications because individuals often become responsible for their own medication management during older adolescence,” Dr. McCabe said in an email to Pain Medicine News. “In addition, adolescents serve as the leading diversion source for their adolescent peers and many adolescents report using their own leftover medication nonmedically.”

The study was published in the August issue of the journal Archives of Pediatric Medicine (2011; 165:729-735) and it covered four classes of prescription drugs: pain, stimulant, sleeping and anti-anxiety.  It asked specific questions regarding the medicines’ use, including misuse and diversion.  It also included the DAST-10 and CRAFFT mnemonic, both measures of drug or alcohol dependence.

18% of those responding were prescribed the medication in question and 22% of those misused the prescription within the past year.  Close to 10% said they used their prescription meds to intentionally get high or increase the effect of other drugs or alcohol.

Overall, students abused pain drugs more than any other, but these were the least popular (9.8%) for intentionally getting high – that class of drug was actually least used for this purpose.  That dubious honor goes to sleeping pills (17.1%) and anti-anxiety drugs (15.8%).  Not surprisingly, those who abuse prescription drugs are also more likely to abuse other substances like alcohol.

Since the mid-1990s, all four of the drug types in question have been prescribed to younger and younger people.  Given the penchant for older populations to abuse these drugs the more they’re prescribed, seeing children doing it is not surprising. They have both role models (young adults, adults) doing so and easier access.

The use of complementary and alternative medicines (CAM) has been extensively studied globally among adult and paediatric populations. Parents, as a group, had not been studied to assess their knowledge and attitude to CAM and general medicine use.

This study is necessary since parents’attitude to medicine use is known to influence their child’s attitude to medicine use later in life. We therefore aim to assess the extent and types of CAM use among Finnish parents, and to determine the factors that promote the CAM use.

Also, we aim to determine parents’attitude to general medicine use.

Methods: Children less than 12 years old, as of spring 2007, were identified from the database of the Finnish Population Register Centre and were selected by random sampling. The parents of these children were identified and a questionnaire was sent to them.

Only the parent who regularly takes care of the child’s medicine was requested to fill the questionnaire. Cross-tabulations and Chi-square test were used to determine the associations between categorical variables.

CAMs were defined as natural products that are not registered as medicines, such as homeopathic preparations, dietary food supplements, and traditional medicinal products.

Results: The response rate of the survey was 67% (n=4032). The use of CAM was 31% in the preceding two days.

The most commonly used CAM products were vitamins and minerals, followed by fish oils and fatty acids. Prescription and OTC medicines were used concomitantly with CAM by one-third of the parents.

CAM was frequently used by parents over 30 years (33%), female parents (32%), highly educated parents (35%), and parents with high monthly net income (3000-3999 euros, 34%). The users of CAM had more negative attitudes towards medicines than non-users of CAM.

Conclusions: Our findings are in accordance with those of previous studies that women over 30 years of age with a high education and income typically use CAMs.

Finnish parents seem to use CAMs as complementary rather than alternative to medicines. Health care professionals should take into consideration both the concomitant use as well as the negative attitudes among CAM users in encounters with the parents.

Author: Katri Hameen-AnttilaUlla NiskalaSanna SiponenRiitta Ahonen
Credits/Source: BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine 2011, 11:107

Coming soon… a vaccine documentary that will leave no doubt in your mind that the “science” of vaccination is a fraud, that the moral decision to vaccinate is not what you thought, and that vaccines are one of the worse causes of illness, suffering, and death in the history of mankind.

Written and produced by: Clint Richardson

This movie is free, and will be posted soon at…

TheCorporationNation.com

by S.L. Baker, NaturalNews

Back in 2008, Mike Adams sounded an alarm about something the mainstream media seemed to know little about — Big Pharma companies had long been paying in-house writers to ghostwrite scientific research articles then paying (Adams called it “bribing”) doctors and high-level academics to pretend they were the authors (http://www.naturalnews.com/023074_g…).

Unfortunately, the use of ghostwriters and guest authored journal papers hasn’t gone away. But here’s good news:two prominent attorneys are speaking out that the practice is not just a sham but constitutes legalfraud.

So why be concerned aboutghostwritingin the medical profession? It turns out thatBig Pharmaand other medical industry sponsoredresearchhas been published with the names of academic “guest authors” tacked on — although these highly degreed “authors” may have made slim to no contributions to the so-called research.

Yet these very articles have been published in leadingmedical journalsand through the years have helped hype hormone replacement therapy, numerous anti-depressants and other potentially dangerous drugs including Vioxx, Neurontin and Fen-Phen. In turn, these articles are often cited by theirdrugcompany sponsors to promote off-label use of their products and bring in more millions to the prescription pharmaceuticalindustry.

The ghostwriting and guest authoring of industry-controlled studies clearly raise what the lawexpertscall “serious ethical and legal concerns, bearing on integrity ofmedical researchand scientific evidence used in legal disputes.”

It is such a breach of ethics that Professors Simon Stern and Trudo Lemmens of the University of Toronto law faculty have flat out called for “guest” authors of medical and scientific articles to be charged with professional and academic misconduct and fraud, even if the articles attributed to the “ghost” or “guest” writers contain factually correct information. The law experts compare the academic “ghostwriting” and tacked on bogus academic authorships to racketeering and even the world’s oldest profession.

In a media release about theirarticle(which was just published in the journalPLoS Medicine), the law professors stated: “Guest authorship is a disturbing violation of academic integrity standards, which form the basis of scientific reliability. The false respectability afforded toclaimsof safety and effectiveness through the use of academic investigators risks undermining the integrity of biomedical research and patient care.”

Lemmens, who is also a member of the University of Toronto’s school ofmedicinefaculty, had particularly hard hitting words for academics who participate in guest authorship which involves “lending” their names and receiving substantial credit where little or none is due. “It’s a prostitution of their academic standing,” said Lemmens. “And it undermines the integrity of the entire academic publication system.”

In their article, entitled “Legal Remedies for Medical Ghostwriting: Imposing Fraud Liability on Guest Authors of Ghostwritten Articles,” Stern and Lemmens argue that because medical journals, academic institutions, and professional disciplinary bodies have done little if anything to enforce effective sanctions against this practice of bogus authorship of research papers, a more successful effective approach would be to take legal action. Imposing liability on the guest authors “..may give rise to claims that could be pursued in a class action based on the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO).”

“The same fraud could support claims of fraud on the court against a pharmaceutical company that has used ghostwritten articles in litigation,” the law professors added. Moreover, that kind of claim could prevent the Big Pharma sponsor of “ghosted” and “guest authored” articles from presenting them asevidencein court, and could result in sanctions against attorneys who try to use any of these articles as legally valid evidence in a malpractice, drug injury or other case.

For more information:
http://media.utoronto.ca/media-rele…

Learn more:http://www.naturalnews.com/033218_ghost_writers_medical_journals.html#ixzz1U5VDAMHj

Related articles

• Guest authorship, a form of ghost writing, constitutes legal fraud (esciencenews.com)
• Medical ghostwriters should be sued, lawyers argue (ctv.ca)
• Scientists credited on ghostwritten articles ‘should be charged with fraud’ (guardian.co.uk)

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“The prolonged ingestion of fluoride may cause significant damage to health and particularly to the nervous system,” concludes a review of studies by researchers Valdez-Jimenez, et al. published in Neurologia (June 2011), reports New York State Coalition Opposed to Fluoridation, Inc. (NYSCOF).

The research team reports, “It is important to be aware of this serious problem and avoid the use of toothpaste and items that contain fluoride, particularly in children as they are more susceptible to the toxic effects of fluoride.” (1)

“Fluoride can be toxic by ingesting one part per million (ppm), and the effects are not immediate, as they can take 20 years or more to become evident,” they write.

Most fluoridating U.S. public drinking water suppliers add fluoride chemicals to deliver 1 ppm fluoride (equal to about 1 milligram per quart) intending to benefit teeth and not to purify the water.

“Fluoridation clearly jeopardizes our children and must be stopped,” says attorney Paul Beeber, President, NYSCOF.  ”We can actually see how fluoride has damaged children’s teeth with dental fluorosis; but we can’t see the harm it’s doing to their brains and other organs. No U.S. researcher is even looking,” says Beeber.

Valdez-Jimenez, et al. describe studies that show fluoride induces changes in the brain’s physical structure and biochemistry which affects the neurological  and mental development of individuals including cognitive processes, such as learning and memory.

“Fluoride is capable of crossing the blood-brain barrier, which may cause biochemical and functional changes in the nervous system during pregnancy, since the fluoride accumulates in brain tissue before birth,” they write.*

Animal studies show fluoride’s toxic brain effects include classic brain abnormalities found in patients with Alzheimer’s disease, Valdez-Jimenez’s team reports.

A different research team (Tang et al.) reported in 2008 that “A qualitative review of the studies found a consistent and strong association between the exposure to fluoride and low IQ.” (Biological Trace Element Research)  (2)

In 2006, the U.S. National Research Council’s (NRC) expert fluoride panel reviewed fluoride toxicology and concluded, “It’s apparent that fluorides have the ability to interfere with the functions of the brain.” And, “Fluorides also increase the production of free radicals in the brain through several different biological pathways. These changes have a bearing on the possibility that fluorides act to increase the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.” (3)

On April 12, 2010, Time magazine listed fluoride as one of the “Top Ten Common Household Toxins” and described fluoride as both “neurotoxic and potentially tumorigenic if swallowed.” (4)

Phyllis Mullenix, Ph.D., was the first U.S. scientist to find evidence that fluoride damages the brain. She published her animal study in a respected peer-reviewed scientific journal in 1995 (5) and then was fired for doing so.(6)

Vyvyan Howard, M.D., Ph.D., a prominent fetal toxicologist and past-President of the International Society of Doctors for the Environment, said that current brain/fluoride research convinces him that we should stop water fluoridation.

Many communities have stopped or rejected fluoridation in the past several years  – the most recent is Fairbanks, Alaska.  This year, seven New York City Council Members co-sponsored legislation to stop fluoridation in NYC.

*Translated from Spanish using Google Translation

References:  https://groups.google.com/d/topic/fluoridation-news-releases/rD7pCONMcLw/discussion

The following is a press release from the National Academy of Sciences.  I got this last week and neglected to post it.  There are some great resources and materials there for all kinds of scientific subjects.  Worth perusing!

The press release …

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The National Academies Press Makes All PDF Books Free to Download; More Than 4,000 Titles Now Available Free to All Readers

WASHINGTON — As of today all PDF versions of books published by the National Academies Press will be downloadable to anyone free of charge. This includes a current catalog of more than 4,000 books plus future reports produced by the Press. The mission of the National Academies Press (NAP) — publisher for the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council — is to disseminate the institutions’ content as widely as possible while maintaining financial sustainability. To that end, NAP began offering free content online in 1994. Before today’s announcement, all PDFs were free to download in developing countries, and 65 percent of them were available for free to any user.

“Our business model has evolved so that it is now financially viable to put this content out to the entire world for free,” said Barbara Kline Pope, executive director for the National Academies Press. “This is a wonderful opportunity to make a positive impact by more effectively sharing our knowledge and analyses.”

Based on the performance of NAP’s current free PDFs, projections suggest that this change will enhance dissemination of PDF reports from about 700,000 downloads per year to more than 3 million by 2013.

Printed books will continue to be available for purchase through the NAP website and traditional channels. The free PDFs are available exclusively from the NAP’s website, http://www.nap.edu/, and remain subject to copyright laws. PDF versions exist for the vast majority of NAP books. Exceptions include some books that were published before the advent of PDFs; books from the Joseph Henry Press imprint; and in cases where contractually prohibited, such as reference books in the Nutrient Requirements of Domestic Animals series.

The listed topics include …

Agriculture
Behavioral and Social Sciences
Biography and Autobiography
Biology and Life Sciences
Computers and Information Technology
Conflict and Security Issues
Earth Sciences
Education
Energy and Energy Conservation
Engineering and Technology
Environment and Environmental Studies
Food & Nutrition
Health and Medicine
Industry and Labor
Math, Chemistry and Physics
Policy for Science and Technology
Space and Aeronautics
Transportation and Infrastructure
Gifts and Apparel

Bookmark this. The NAP website with available books …http://www.nap.edu/