Hidden Health Science

Archive for the ‘Alternative Science’ Category

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/

by Sebastian Sheppis and Justin Silver
from Issue #376 of the Health Freedom Network Newsletter

The cannabis plant is both a subject of wonder and of derision. The plant is so ingrained into western culture as “evil” that its ban was included in the charter for the League of Nations and later the United Nations.

The cannabis plant family includes several plants, some of which produce tetrahydrocannabinols (THC) in quantities large enough to be absorbed by humans. Most cannabis plants are actually benign – these are commonly known as “hemp” and have been grown for most of known human civilization. THC-producing plants are commonly called “marijuana” in the U.S. and have varying levels of THC in them according to their strain (hybrid type).

The Politics of Pot

For centuries, cannabis has had known medicinal uses, but the scientific exploration of those uses has been stilted by political opposition and societal pressures against marijuana as a street drug. Although little evidence exists to show cannabis as a negative recreational substance – especially as compared to the effects of alcohol, tobacco, pharmaceuticals, and other drugs both legal and not – the push to keep it as an illicit substance remains.

Despite this, while illegal in all parts of the world, cannabis has been decriminalized in many areas and legalized as medication in others. Currently, cannabis as a medicine (or for personal use) is legal in Austria, Canada, Finland, Germany, Israel, Italy, The Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and 15 states plus the District of Columbia in the United States.

Cannabis In Science

The discovery of cannabinoids, receptors in most animals, including humans, that react specifically with the compounds present in cananbis, changed the way medical science looked at marijuana as medicine. This discovery in the 1990s lead to a wide scale research push into the beneficial uses (and possible synthesis) of cannabis and its active compounds. In 2010, more than 2,500 reputable scientific studies about cannabis were published world wide.

Cannabis has been found to be beneficial for the amelioration of nausea and vomiting, stimulation of hunger, lowering of intraocular eye pressure, for relief of muscle over-stimulation (spasms), and more. In fact, the studies showing the efficacy of cannabis and cannabinoids continue to grow daily.

The compounds in cannabis or the plant or resins it produces are used to treat side effects and symptoms in AIDS, cancer, glaucoma, multiple sclerosis and others.

Using Cannabis for Medication

Public perception commonly treats marijuana use as a “hippie” or “pot head” thing with visions of young people coughing thick smoke in rooms covered in psychedelic posters and drawings. The reality is that most medicinal cannabis users do smoke, but often they use vaporizers, water filtration systems (bongs or hookas), etc.

While the press seems enamored with the more creative (but generally less effective) cannabis intake methods such as “pot brownies” or THC-imbued candy and soda pop, many serious medical users are finding more potent and less debilitating ways to ingest their medication.

A growing number of medicinal users, however, are getting right to the compounds that do the most good by distilling or otherwise processing cannabis buds and resins to create pastes, cremes, tinctures, and other ways of using the medicine without smoking or even getting the associated high (psychoactive effects).

Pharmaceutical companies, by the same token, are working on both synthetic and naturally-derived options for isolating and distributing cannabinoids as pills. While the practice is controversial, it is lending some legitimacy to the idea of medical cannabis in the wider medical community.

The Future of Medical Marijuana

Although the current market and science behind cannabis as a medicinal plant is still young, the fundamentals behind how it works and why it works have been ironed out enough that refuting it as a medication is to ignore science. Yet those who continue to refute its medicinal properties are either in the scientific establishment themselves (often as medical practitioners) or attempt to cite scientific backing for their claims.

Although some side effects and psychological possibilities may exist for cannabinoids, these are far fewer and less severe than the same side effects for most pharmaceuticals that are legally on the market. Many of the so-called studies that claim marijuana has extreme adverse effects, such as schizophrenia in teenagers, are fraught with bad methodology or questionable conclusions and are what the medical industry calls “proof of preconception” – they are created merely to “prove” a preconceived notion.

Sadly, that latter event is something that happens all too often in today’s politically-charged science, especially in medicine.

Sebastian Scheppis and Justin Silver are the owners of CannaCentral.com, a medical marijuana directory and community website. The site features location-based search tools for strains and dispensaries, useful medical and clinic information and more.

It seems that once we humans began to hide from the sun instead of worshiping it, our health woes began in earnest.  More and more things are being attributed to a lack of Vitamin D, the “sunlight vitamin.”  A new study is linking Vitamin D deficiency with multiple sclerosis (MS).

The research was done at the University of Oxford and shows that while MS is caused by a combination of factors, the correlative one seems to be Vitamin D deficiency.  This study follows on an earlier study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2006.

The study didn’t measure Vitamin D levels themselves, but instead looked at MS and glandular fever patients throughout the UK between 1998-2005 and used NASA sunlight intensity data to correlate.  They found that 61% of the variation in number of MS cases across England could be explained by available sunlight.  Further, 72% of glandular fever patients could be explained this way.

While some studies have refuted a link between Vitamin D and MS (or other neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s), many more are now finding a relationship.

Unrelated studies into MS populations around the world has found that those areas tend to have a high concentration of Scottish immigrants or ancestry and are often low-sunlight areas (or areas with long winters).

See:
Virus and low sunlight ‘raises mutliple sclerosis risk’ (BBC)
Lack of Vitamin D Tied to Multiple Sclerosis (US News)

from HealthFreedomNetwork

The United States Department of Agriculture has changed the rules for the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) with a new program called the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) Pilot Project.  This new program is for companies working with genetically modified organisms (GMO), genetically engineered (GE), or genetic modification (GM) who must complete an Environmental Assessment or an Environmental Impact Statement on their GMO/GE/GM food when requesting deregulated status.

The trouble is, this new program is set up so that all of the documentation and analysis is done by the organization attempting to get their GMO deregulated.  In other words, if a GM giant like Monsanto wants a new strain of GE what to be approved as a deregulated seed so that they can sell it to farmers, all they have to do is prepare their own assessment and analysis of the product’s likely impact, give it to the USDA, and receive approval through APHIS.

Obviously, these companies will be completely honest and forthcoming about the negative effects of their seeds and plants.  Right?  Ya, sure.

This entire process removes all semblance of objectivity from the support documents and scientific inquiry required for approval.  It basically tells the Monsantos of the world: “If you can spin it well enough so it looks legitimate, you’ll get approval.”

Want to try to stop this?  The Alliance for Natural Health is asking people to join an email flood to APHIS to force a change to this policy via public opinion.  You can send your own email through their system at this link.

by Neil Z. Miller, NaturalNews

A new study, published in Human and Experimental Toxicology (http://het.sagepub.com/content/earl…), a peer-reviewed journal indexed by the National Library of Medicine, found that nations with higher (worse) infant mortality rates tend to give their infants more vaccine doses. For example, the United States requires infants to receive 26 vaccines — the most in the world — yet more than six U.S. infants die per every 1000 live births. In contrast, Sweden and Japan administer 12 vaccines to infants, the least amount, and report less than three deaths per 1000 live births.

The authors of the study, Neil Z. Miller and Dr. Gary Goldman, conducted a literature review to determine the immunization schedules for the United States and all 33 nations with better infant mortality rates than the United States. The total number of vaccine doses specified for infants aged less than one year was then determined for each country. The 34 nations were then organized into data pairs consisting of total number of vaccine doses specified for their infants and infant mortality rates. A scatter plot of the data pairs provided evidence of a positive correlation:infant mortality rates and vaccine doses tend to increase together.

Nations were also grouped into five different vaccine dose ranges. The mean infant mortality rates of all nations within each group were then calculated. Analysis showed“a high statistically significant correlation between increasing number of vaccine doses and increasing infant mortality rates.”

It is instructive to note that many developing nations require their infants to receive multiple vaccine doses and have national vaccine coverage rates (a percentage of the target population that has been vaccinated) of 90% or better, yet their infant mortality rates are poor. Infant mortality rates will remain high in nations that cannot provide clean water, proper nutrition, improved sanitation, and better access to health care.

Nations with higher (worse) infant mortality rates give their infants, on average, more vaccine doses. This positive correlation, derived from the data, elicits an important inquiry: Are some infant deaths associated with over-vaccination? Is it possible that some nations are requiring too many vaccines for their infants and the additional vaccines are a toxic burden on their health?

Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS):

There is some evidence that a subset of infants may be more susceptible to SIDS shortly after being vaccinated. For example, Torch found that unvaccinated babies who died of SIDS did so most often in the fall or winter while vaccinated babies died most often at 2 and 4 months — the same ages when initial doses of DPT were given to infants. He concluded that DPT “may be a generally unrecognized major cause of sudden infant and early childhood death, and that the risks of immunization may outweigh its potential benefits.” It appears as though some infant deaths attributed to SIDS may be vaccine related, perhaps associated with biochemical or synergistic toxicity due to over-vaccination.

All nations have an obligation to determine whether their immunization schedules are achieving their desired goals.

You may download the complete study at:http://het.sagepub.com/content/earl…

Funding Acknowledgment:This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.Open Access:The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) donated $2500 and Michael Belkin donated $500 (in memory of his daughter, Lyla) for open access to the journal article (making it freely available to all researchers). NVIC is dedicated to preventing vaccine injuries and deaths through public education.

Learn more:http://www.naturalnews.com/032306_vaccines_infant_mortality.html#ixzz1Lgnn6Buf

From Wikimedia

For centuries (or more), using peppermint tinctures or teas has been a common remedy for soothing gastric pain.  In more recent years, with the advent of the supplement market, peppermint in many new forms has also been introduced.  Until now, however, it’s remained a “folk remedy” with little understanding of how it might work.

Researchers at the University of Adelaide in Australia have changed that.  A study by Andrea M. Harrington, Stuart Brierley and others will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Pain (see abstract here).  In that study, the researchers believe they have found the way that peppermint works to relieve gastrointestinal pain.

An anti-pain channel in the gut called the transient receptor potential ion channel melastatin subtype 8 (TRPM8) is acted upon specifically by compounds in peppermint to reduce pain-sensing fibers.  Especially those activated by things like mustard or chili.

“This is potentially the first step in determining a new type of mainstream clinical treatment for irritable bowel syndrom.  This is a debilitating condition and affects many people on a daily basis,” Dr. Brierley says, “particularly women who are twice as likely to experience [IBS].”

Those familiar with alternative medicine or folk remedies will be well-acquainted with peppermint as a solution to gastric problems, particularly IBS.  In this chronic condition in particular, the problem seems to be a heightened state of nerve pain fibers in the gut after a bout of gastroenteritis.  These are tamed with the ingestion of peppermint.

How the peppermint is ingested is also apparently critical to how it affects the pain.  Peppermint teas generally only affect the stomach and upper intestines, for instance, while peppermint oil capsules are most often prescribed for lower intestinal problems such as IBS.

This study from Australia confirms similar findings of peppermint’s efficacy in studies done previously in Italy (2007, Cappello, Spezzaferro, et al) and Iran (2010, Merat, Khalili, et al).  What this latest study gives is the scientific explanation as to how peppermint is working to alleviate IBS symptoms.