Woman has stroke after Gardasil shot No link has been established but worries increase as reports surface Originally published July 21, 2008
By Ashley Andyshak News-Post Staff
The only vaccine approved to target human papillomavirus is under fire as reports surface of serious side effects and even death among young women who received it.
The Food and Drug Administration approved Gardasil in 2006 for girls and women age 9 to 26. The vaccine is administered in three doses, and targets several strains of HPV that can cause cervical cancer.
Manufacturer Merck & Co. last month added fatigue, weakness and muscle pain to the list of possible adverse reactions to Gardasil, but families like the Davisons, who live in Frederick, don't believe the warnings are enough.
Mary Davison said her mother had cervical cancer, and she wanted to protect her three daughters from the same fate. Katherine Davison, 20, and her two younger sisters received their first Gardasil shots in November 2007, and their second in January.
None of the girls experienced any immediate side effects, but on Feb. 1, her 20th birthday, Katherine began feeling dizzy and developed flu-like symptoms. The next day, her family doctor assumed she had the flu and gave her a phenergan shot to stop her vomiting.
The following day, Katherine lost feeling in the left side of her body. Her left eye was drooping and her pupils were unevenly dilated, and the dizziness persisted. Her parents took her to Frederick Memorial Hospital for a series of CT scans, which helped determine the problem: Katherine had had a stroke.
Neither doctors at FMH or Johns Hopkins could determine what had caused the stroke. They suspected Katherine's other medicines: she was on thyroid medication, as well as a birth control pill.
While the latter increases the risk of developing blood clots in women older than 35 and those who smoke, neither describes Katherine, and she had no previous problems with either medication. Merck doesn't list blood clots as a risk with Gardasil, and doesn't warn of adverse reactions with other drugs.
Eighteen deaths of women who received the vaccine have been reported since Gardasil's approval, and blood clots were responsible for four of these, according to a report released last month by Judicial Watch, a nonprofit conservative government watchdog group. The report also found 140 reported serious adverse reactions, including seizures and trouble breathing. None have been determined to be a direct result of the vaccine, but the Davisons said they're distressed that the possibility of a connection has been so easily dismissed.
Merck officials maintain that the vaccine is safe. "Before the shot I was fine, and there is no reason I should have had a stroke," Katherine said.
The family said doctors should be more informed about Gardasil and its side effects. Katherine said that of the 10 doctors she saw in the months following her stroke, only one knew anything about Gardasil. "They should at least admit the possibility of these problems, and let doctors know they have these reports so they can track the side effects," said Doug Davison. "You can dismiss some of the reports, and say, 'It was this, and it was that,' but can you dismiss them all?"
While the lingering effects of her stroke aren't visible, Katherine said she still can't sense pain or temperature on her left side. She sometimes feels dizzy and tires easily, and she takes seven medications every day.
Doctors want to add Lipitor to that list since they can't determine the cause of her stroke and they want to see her cholesterol level drop from 101 to 80, just to be safe.
Mary Davison said her family doctor told her not to bring her younger two daughters in for their third shot. While the Davisons haven't hired a lawyer and aren't interested in a lawsuit, they do want the FDA to further examine Gardasil's effects.
"Who's checking? It seems like no one's checking," Doug Davison said.
Doc Crow's COMMENTS: Did you read this 20-year old girl was on SEVEN DIFFERENT DRUGS? Here's a good example that responsibility for crisis dis-health (her stroke) belongs to BOTH the medics for prescribing so many different drugs and the patient for taking so many. It is not healthy to be taking SEVEN DIFFERENT DRUGS when you are 20-years old.
Advice: I teach young people in my office to be careful dating anyone who is taking so many drugs. Likely, these people are also taking anti-depressants, and they go POSTAL if their brain chemistry goes out of balance. Wacko people hurt other people. Folks on multiple drugs are dangerous to themselves and anyone around them. Ask your significant others what drugs they are taking and why. Choose to get away from over-medicated people. Also, sick people who take lots of drugs are a HUGE medical liability. If you end up marrying them, you tie yourself into their expensive health problems. Save yourself headaches, date healthy people who are not on drugs!
Adverse Reactions Reported After Gardasil Shots DALLAS (CBS 11 News)
The cervical cancer vaccine called Gardasil has been on the market for about two years. Thousands of girls and women across the country, who've received the series of shots, have reported painful and scary side effects and one Dallas family is going through a similar ordeal. Seizures, temporary paralysis and excruciating pain – those are a few of the symptoms some have reported after taking Gardasil. It took months for a North Texas teen to recover and her family says the Gardasil shots are the only explanation that makes sense.
Dallas mother Michelle Kimzey saw the ads and heard all of the positive news about Gardasil and how it could help prevent cervical cancer. So when she took her 13-year-old daughter, Katherine, to the doctor, getting the vaccine was a 'no-brainer'.
"I thought, wow! When we left the office, I said, I just protected her from one more disease!" Katherine got her first injection of Gardasil along with a Hepatitis-A vaccine and a chicken pox booster. She got the second injection two months later, along with the D-TaP vaccination.
Six weeks after the second injection of Gardasil, Katherine passed out. "I tried to get up and my neck was stiff, and I couldn't move it," the teenager explained. "I couldn't move at all."
Katherine spent five days in the hospital.
Before the Gardasil vaccine, Katherine was a healthy teen. Her mother suspected Gardasil had something to do with the sudden illness, but doctors ran every test they could think of and couldn't make the connection. "The most definitive answer was, that's not it," Michelle Kimzey said. "We can't tell you what's wrong, but that's not it." (Crow-medics routinely deny vaccination as causation for sickness, even though the health problems happened at the time of shots.)
Barbara Loe Fisher is president of the National Vaccine Information Center, an independent, non-profit clearinghouse for information on vaccines and disease. She says nearly 100 parents, including Katherine's, have contacted the organization believing their daughters have suffered an adverse reaction following a Gardasil shot - at times- given in combination with other vaccines.
Fisher says the reports of complication have caused a real 'crisis of trust' in the hearts and minds of parents.
Since Gardasil won FDA approval, eight million shots have been given. Officials with the Centers for Disease Control say more than 9,000 adverse reactions have been reported. But only six-percent of those are considered serious and that's less than half of what is reported for most vaccines.
Dallas OBGYN Dr. Sheila Chhutani says half of all women will be infected with HPV at some point during their lives. She believes the small number of adverse reactions is far outweighed by the vaccine's benefits. "So when you look at those numbers and compare them to the numbers of adverse affects with the Gardasil... to me, right now, there is still no comparison."
Dr. Chhutani offers Gardasil to patients between the ages of nine and 26. She will not however give the injection at the same time as other vaccines. Dr. Chhutani says there should be more investigation into whether Gardasil -- given in combination with other vaccines -- could cause an adverse reaction.
Shannon Nelson, 18, from the Chicago area, got the Gardasil shot and two other vaccines-- at the same time. Within a week the soccer star could barely move. "When I went into the hospital I couldn't walk at all. I had to have a wheelchair. It just got worse each day," she explained.
Nelson spent 23 days in the hospital and while she's better now the teenager believes one of the vaccines she received is responsible for her illness and her neurologist says it's certainly possible.
Katherine Kimzey is back on the soccer field in North Texas. But she still has occasional pain and doesn't know what the future will hold. Thinking about her past experience she says she still worries and so does her mom.
Michelle Kimzey says next time; she won't be so quick to jump on the new vaccine bandwagon. "I think the connection is huge," she said.
The CDC is also looking into 17 reported deaths but denies Gardasil is to blame.
In a statement to CBS 11 News, Merck -- the maker of Gardasil -- said it has analyzed the reports of paralysis and death, and believes: no safety issue related to the vaccine has been identified. (Crow-I don't believe Merck. Of course they are going to deny causation of sickness & death with their vaccination.)
MERCK RESPONDS TO REPORTS OF ADVERSE EFFECTS FOLLOWING GARDASIL IMMUNIZATIONS-
Merck issued the following statement to address questions about adverse events reported in people who had received GARDASIL [Human Papillomavirus Quadrivalent (Types 6, 11, 16, 18) Vaccine, Recombinant].
Merck has analyzed the adverse events reported for GARDASIL relating to the recent reports of death and paralysis, and based on the data available to Merck, believes that no safety issue related to the vaccine has been identified.
Gardasil Label Will Warn of Minor Side Effects, But Not Death or Paralysis
The labeling for Gardasil will be changed to warn of the drug’s minor side effects, but will not make mention of more serious adverse reactions - including death and paralysis - reported to health officials. The Food & Drug Administration (FDA) contends that there is not enough conclusive evidence linking Gardasil to the more serious side effects to warrant their inclusion on the labeling.
According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), there were 7802 reports of Gardasil side effects between June 2006 and April 2008 to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). VAERS is a national program of the CDC and the FDA that monitors the safety of vaccines after they are licensed. About 7 percent of the reported side effects were serious, including 15 deaths and 31 instances of Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS), a neurological condition that causes temporary paralysis.
According to The Washington Times, in June, the FDA decided to expand the possible adverse reactions to the drug to include joint and muscle pain, fatigue, physical weakness and general malaise. The new warning will be added to the package insert and to an information sheet given to patients.
But FDA spokeswoman Karen Riley told The Washington Times that the label updates have “nothing to do with” the serious cases that have been reported. She said the updates were made at Merck’s request and touch on possible “mild” symptoms.
“The bottom line is that we have not seen any safety signals in the adverse events other than [fainting],” she said. “We continue to look at these reports.” However, many are not convinced and are calling on the FDA to take another look at Gardasil. Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, a conservative organization that has monitored Gardasil adverse event reports, says he does not believe Merck or federal regulators are taking the side effect reports seriously. “I think we’ve uncovered a lot of disturbing things about Gardasil,” Fitton told the Times. “All we’re asking for is further investigation of its safety.”
Gardasil - 18 Dead, Thousands Suffer Complications Growing opposition and flat sales trigger Gardasil manufacturer Merck stock sell-off
By Thaddeus M. Baklinski
July 8, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The public interest group Judicial Watch recently obtained more than 8,000 reports, under the US Freedom of Information law, of adverse events in girls and young women after they were injected with the HPV vaccine Gardasil.
The reports reveal everything from massive wart outbreaks to seizures, paralysis and death.
Ten deaths have been reported since September 2007, bringing the total to 18 since the vaccine was approved for use in 2006.
In this year there have been 140 reported "serious" complications, 27 of which were categorized as "life-threatening," as well as ten spontaneous abortions and six cases of Guillain-Barré Syndrome, a very rare (1 in 100,000 in a healthy population) immune response to foreign antigens such as infectious agents or vaccines, that paralyzes the afflicted person.
"Given all the questions about Gardasil, the best public health policy would be to reevaluate its safety and to prohibit its distribution to minors. In the least, governments should rethink any efforts to mandate or promote this vaccine for children," stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.
Gwen Landolt, national vice-president of REAL Women of Canada commented on the lack of proper testing before Gardasil was pushed through the approval process and the consequences of its widespread use.
"The long-term consequences of Gardasil are not known. The manufacturer admits this and agrees it does not know its effect on young girls' cancer risk, on their immunity system, on their reproductive system, or its genetic effects. In due course, we will know this, possibly in twenty or thirty years from now when these young girls, the innocent subjects of the Gardasil experiment have become grown women and then report the consequences of their having taken the medication in their childhood on medical advice."
Cynthia Janak, a freelance journalist and researcher, reported to the American Life League that she found evidence in the FDA's documentation that they knew that HPV is not the actual cause of cervical cancer but that the actual cause is a "persistent HPV infection that may act as a tumor promoter in cancer induction."
Janal explains: "What we have here is proof that there is scientific evidence that has been published in the past 15 years that states that HPV infection does not bear a direct relationship to the forming of cervical cancer. It also tells us that HPV, if allowed to will be taken care of by our own body's natural processes. . ."most infections are short-lived and not associated with cervical cancer." With this being said, why do we need Gardasil when our own body is more than capable of eradicating HPV? What we need is a government policy to assist women with the cost of getting follow-up tests when persistent HPV infection is present. This would make more sense and our government would save so much money on these types of programs instead of $360 each for the Gardasil vaccination."
The Judicial Watch press release concluded that "It could well be that the vaccine may not do a thing to protect anyone from cervical cancer, regardless of the claims being made by Merck Pharmaceutical. What the vaccine is causing is death and immense suffering among those who have been vaccinated."
After CBS News ran a story about the reported side effects of Gardasil, citing the 8,000 adverse event reports and giving details of a few serious complications - seizures, chronic pain, paralysis, and death from blood clots, the Wall Street Journal reported that Merck & Co.'s shares dropped 4.8% triggering a sell-off of the company's stock and a downgrade of their rating on the New York Stock Exchange.
Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage and articles:
Why Medical Authorities Cannot be Trusted on Gardasil HPV Vaccine By Gwen Landolt http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/dec/07121905.html
Ontario Catholic School Board Rejects HPV Vaccine on School Premises http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/oct/07101806.html
Controversial HPV Vaccine Causing One Death Per Month: FDA Report http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/jul/08070316.html
Gardasil tragedies -- Where are the reports?
Janak Cynthia July 3, 2008
Back in June of 2006, the FDA released this statement:
"Today is an important day for public health and for women's health, and for our continued fight against serious life-threatening diseases like cervical cancer," said Alex Azar, Deputy Secretary, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). "HHS is committed to advancing critical health measures such as the development of new and promising vaccines to protect and advance the health of all Americans.""This is the first vaccine licensed specifically to prevent cervical cancer. Its rapid approval underscores FDA's commitment to help make safe and effective vaccines available as quickly as possible. Not only have vaccines dramatically reduced the toll of diseases in infants and children, like polio and measles, but they are playing an increasing role protecting and improving the lives of adolescents and adults," said Jesse Goodman, MD, MPH, Director of FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research.Four studies, one in the United States and three multinational, were conducted in 21,000 women to show how well Gardasil worked in women between the ages of 16 and 26 by giving them either the vaccine or placebo. The results showed that in women who had not already been infected, Gardasil was nearly 4% percent effective in preventing precancerous cervical lesions, precancerous vaginal and vulvar lesions, and genital warts caused by infection with the HPV types against which the vaccine is directed. (Crow-The shot affects only a few strains of HPV, many strains are not affected by the shot.) While the study period was not long enough for cervical cancer to develop, the prevention of these cervical precancerous lesions is believed highly likely to result in the prevention of those cancers.Since the approval of Gardasil thousands of young women and girls have been adversely affected by this vaccine.
Here are the newest stats.6697 reported incidents + 2141 = 8838 (multiple incidents)
103 were considered life threatening 255 were hospitalized3544 were taken to the ER 1236 had not recovered at the time of the report 159 are disabled at the time of the report 15 have died + 1 = 16 (multiple incident)
I am going to add to this report that there were 12 incidents of blood clots and 3 additional incidents with embolism. As I have done in past articles I am going to use the 10% rule. That means that approximately only 10% of cases are actually reported.
88380 incidents 1030 considered life threatening 2550 were hospitalized 35440 were taken to the ER 12360 had not recovered 1590 are disabled 160 have died.
Doc Crow’s comments: These reports are stunning. And yet, mothers line up and offer up their daughters for this shot. The risk of stroke & sudden death are as dangerous as the concept of cervical uterine cancer. What to do? Up-educate. Keep learning.
Posted on Tuesday, July 22, 2008 at 07:09
Doc Crow's WEB BLOG
FEAR OF AUTISM MAKES PARENTS WARY OF VACCINATION
Rise in number of children diagnosed with autism makes parents wary
by Kathleen O'Brien/The Star-Ledger Sunday July 20, 2008, 10:54 AM Chris Faytok/The Star-LedgerSandra
Devlin of Denville said she frequently checks for eye contact from her 4-month-old daughter, Delilah. Devlin, above, at home with Delilah and daughter Autumn, 9. Sandra Devlin cradles her newborn daughter, Delilah, with the same devotion she lavished on her four older children.
"De-li-lah," she coos in a singsong voice, holding the 4-month-old baby close to her face. As she did with her other kids, she hopes to elicit a smile, a laugh or a gurgle of recognition.
It's a time-honored mother's gesture -- but one that now comes with a twist: This time, Devlin is also checking for autism.
Every generation of parents has a worry unique to its era. In the '40s, the specter of polio made mothers frantic about any trip to the neighborhood swimming pool. The '80s brought the sense that every child risked abduction, his photo ending up on the side of a milk carton.
For today's parents, that fear is autism.
"In my office, that's the big elephant in the room. They'll ask about something else, but what they're really asking is, 'He doesn't have autism, does he?' It is the question for this generation," said Ari Brown, a Texas pediatrician and spokeswoman for the American Academy of Pediatrics.
With autism spectrum disorders now diagnosed in 1 out of 150 children nationally and 1 in 94 in New Jersey, rare is the parent who isn't aware of autism. And with that awareness can come a new wariness of vaccines, which a vocal minority of autism activists blame for the jump in cases. Pediatricians report seeing more parents question, delay or even shun altogether the traditional round of childhood immunizations.
Such worries never crossed the mind of Devlin, of Denville, with her first two children, now 19 and 13. Autism arrived on her radar screen for the next two kids, now 9 and 3. With Delilah, born 11 weeks prematurely, that concern is front and center.
"I never did that with my older kids," she says of her new habit of checking for eye contact from Delilah. "But now I'm looking specifically for autism."
Pediatricians say this worry has its benefits: Parents are more aware of crucial child-development milestones and as a result, they are quicker to pick up on lags. That may mean some cases of autism -- maddeningly difficult to catch in the youngest toddlers -- are diagnosed earlier.
"If you have a child who doesn't talk, I think in other generations they would've said, 'Oh, he's a late bloomer.' It wasn't a big deal," said Mary Jean Wick, another Denville mother of five. "Now it's definitely a fear for this age of parent."
However, it can make some parents see autism behind every bush.
"Thirteen years ago, parents wouldn't be able to answer the question, 'How does your child play?'" Brown said of her early years in practice. "Now you hear, 'Oh my God, my child lines up his trains. Does he have autism?' There are these extreme parents who think every little thing is autism. I have to say to them, 'Sometimes kids can be quirky.'"
SINGLING OUT A 'SYMPTOM'
Autism spectrum disorders are developmental disabilities marked by an impairment of social interaction combined with communication problems and restricted or repetitive behaviors and interests. The spectrum encompasses a wide variety of thinking and learning abilities, from gifted to severely challenged.
While its prevalence has soared in recent years, experts are unsure whether more cases are occurring or simply more cases are being diagnosed. (Crow-More cases are being diagnosed because parents are more aware of autism. Second reason is doctors are more aware of autism today and are not afraid to cover up that diagnosis.)
Some parents will single out one small trait or habit of their children as a "symptom" of an autism spectrum disorder, said Michael Segarra, president of the New Jersey chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, who practices in North Brunswick.
When a parent voices concern that a child plays with only one toy, for instance, Segarra will ask a checklist of questions about the child's social interaction. This helps the parent see the big picture. Some parents accept their pediatrician's reassurances. Others don't -- leading to more referrals to specialists.
"New Jersey has the most pediatric neurologists per capita, and even then, we're booking a year in advance," said Janice Prontnicki, a neurodevelopmental pediatrician at Children's Specialized Hospital, Mountainside.
She sees that looming dread of autism when she diagnoses a significant developmental delay that stems from some other cause. "When I say, 'It's definitely not autism,' you can see how relieved they are," she said.
"A lot of referrals we make are so parents can hear another person, a neurologist, say the kid's okay," said Carol Calabrese, with Skylands Pediatrics in Sparta. She finds that parents who needn't worry about autism are still concerned about it, while the parents who really should be concerned aren't.
In fact, parents are downright eager to have their children evaluated for autism if there is the slightest delay in developmental milestones, said Aradhana Rajkumar, of Morris Pediatric Care in Parsippany.
SUSPECTING VACCINES
Apprehension about autism shows up most dramatically with the issue of child immunizations, which some parents view as a culprit in the recent rise in autism. A major study released last year in the New England Journal of Medicine shows no association between long-term neurological and psychological problems and early exposure to thimerasol -- which contains mercury -- in shots. (Use of thimerasol in routine vaccines was stopped in 2001.) (Crow-This research study was deemed non-accurate and biased. Note the source. This research study was designed to protect medical doctors, not patients. There is little true objectivity in modern medical research.)
However, that has not reassured everyone.
A poll of parents of autistic children showed 54 percent believe autism is caused by vaccination shots, according to Harvey Bennett, director of Child Neurology and Development Medicine at Goryeb Children's Hospital in Morristown. At a recent talk before a group of family physicians, he called that finding worrisome and "astounding." (Crow-Parents who up-educate and study child health are no longer fooled by medical doctors and nurses simply reassuring the parent. The parents no longer believe or trust the medics.)
Pediatricians report more parents are either delaying shots, asking they be spaced out or refusing them altogether.
"They don't listen to me. They don't believe a word I say," said Naomi Grobstein, a pediatrician with the Family Health Center of Montclair. "They say, 'He's not ready!' or 'He's too young!'"
She reminds parents of the lethal risk posed by diseases like measles, diphtheria and tetanus. "It's easy to believe these shots aren't necessary, because we don't see these diseases anymore," she said. "I ask them, 'What if your child is the one who spreads measles around?'" (Crow-The non-vaccinated child will not be a carrier to disease IF the child is well-nourished, healthy and living in a clean environment. Non-vaccinated children do not have diseases pumped into their bloodstream. The non-vaccinated kids are not the carriers of disease. Rather, it's the vaccinated kids who have killer diseases injected into them in the form of immunizations. They are the true "carriers of disease".
She reports more parents indicate they plan to seek a religious exemption from the state law requiring immunizations to enroll in public school. Medical exemptions require a doctor's note; religious exemptions simply require a parent to state the shots conflict with the student's "bona fide religious tenets or practices." (Crow-The reason parents use the religious exemption is because they have no other choice. The "conscious parent" exemption has been removed. That was the exemption where parents could choose not to have their child immunized because the parent made that choice themselves. That was taken away. The other exemption is medical, by a medical doctor only, and hardly NO medical doctor will sign that document. Parents cannot get medics to sign an exemption form for them for schools. So the parents are left with a "religious exemption", and politicians will not touch anything to do with religion. So parents say they use the religious exemption because they have no other choice to opt out on shots.)
Statewide, more parents sought a medical exemption than a religious one until the 2006-07 school year, when the numbers suddenly switched. By the next school year, religious exemptions outnumbered medical ones, 2,105 to 645, according to figures provided by the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services. (All told, however, both categories account for less than 1 percent of students.)
Complicating the picture are celebrities who either blame or suspect vaccines, such as actress Jenny McCarthy and radio talk show host Don Imus. Doctors complain they get an unquestioning ride in the media. "It infuriates me to no end," said pediatrician Calabrese. Her practice has a satellite office in Pennsylvania, where she sees more parents who home-school their children. More of them feel free to refuse or postpone shots because their children don't attend public school. (Crow-Jenny McCarthy is a celebrity whose own son was damaged by shots. She has the media's attention and can get it to share her experience. She communicates what happened to her child by shots. She recommends vaccine-safety, non-vaccination and nutritional therapies to reverse vaccine damage done by shots.)
Some of these fears come with the territory for parents. Others may be generated by the information age, said Mary Campagnolo, past president of the New Jersey Association of Family Physicians.
"I feel parents today are generally more worried about things than they ever were," she said.
It's important to address that anxiety, said Brown, the Texas pediatrician who is also author of "Baby 411," an advice book. "If there is something that is keeping you up at night with worry, then you need to go to the pediatrician to check it out," she said. "That peace of mind is worth the co-pay."
(Crow-The shots are unsafe. We've learned this. The medics and the media constantly try to convince us the the other way. They cover up the damage done by shots to kids. I've seen the outcomes of the forced vaccination programs on children. Kids have come into my office vaccine-damaged and the parents either DO or do not know the immunizations caused the problem. Their medics deny causing the problem. We advocate vaccine-saftey, if there is such a thing.)
BTW-Your kids CAN INDEED attend public school without vaccinations, but the media and your school nurse will not tell you this. The LAW says a child can attend public school without shots. You just have to fill out the correct forms.
Posted on Monday, July 21, 2008 at 10:25
Doc Crow's WEB BLOG
Mom fights music giant S.J. COURT CONSIDERS KEY COPYRIGHT CASE By Howard Mintz Mercury News
Article Launched: 07/19/2008 01:33:24 AM PDT For Pennsylvania mom Stephanie Lenz, a closely watched copyright showdown in San Jose federal court is a simple matter of standing up to powerful music moguls and petulant pop stars.
"I figure I have nothing to lose," Lenz said Friday in a telephone interview with the Mercury News. "The music companies are just going to keep doing this to people. I think it's my responsibility to stand up to them and say, 'That's enough.' "
Lenz, whose case reached a critical stage Friday, finds herself at the heart of an epic copyright fight over Universal Music's attempt to force her to take down a YouTube video of her toddler learning to walk with the Prince song "Let's Go Crazy" blaring in the background. Calling it a "case of first impression," U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel on Friday considered Universal's attempt to dismiss Lenz's lawsuit, which maintains the media giant and Prince are abusing a 10-year-old copyright law intended to curtail movie and music thievery on the Web. Lenz is seeking unspecified damages and a court finding that she did not violate Universal's copyrights with the YouTube video.
'Takedown' letters
The case centers on a so-called "takedown" letter Universal sent to Lenz after she posted the video in February 2007. Music and movie companies send tens of thousands of such letters under the copyright law each year, essentially forcing the material to be at least temporarily removed unless the target fights the request.
Lenz fought back hard, backed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based civil liberties organization. She maintains that the video was a harmless, legal use of a popular song, and that her case exemplifies how a powerful industry can abuse the copyright law, known as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Fogel dismissed a previous version of Lenz's lawsuit, but her lawyers filed a revised complaint that recasts the case as a test of what copyright holders must consider before sending out takedown letters. Electronic Frontier Foundation lawyers urged the judge to keep the case alive, arguing that companies such as Universal have an obligation to investigate and evaluate a video such as Lenz's before firing off the threatening letters.
Claim of 'fair use' "It's a tiny, blurry little home movie," said Corynne McSherry, the foundation's attorney on the case. Lenz and her legal team depict the video as a "fair use" of the Prince song. But Universal attorneys insist the company had the legal right to send the letter in Lenz's case, and that it would be unfair to artists and media companies to force them to undertake lengthy inquiries before asserting copyright violations. Fogel took the company's request to dismiss the case under consideration and will rule later. "The copyright owner is arguing that this is infringing; Lenz says it is fair use," said Mark Lemley, director of Stanford University's Law, Science and Technology clinic. "There are no cases directly on this question of user-generated content that incorporates songs as background. Lenz will be the first."
In the meantime, Lenz is prepared to take her case as far as it goes in the courts. The video is back up on YouTube, but that's not enough to appease Lenz. "Somebody needs to tell these music companies they can't just throw out these (takedown letters) and accuse people of violating federal crimes," she said. "I didn't like feeling like I'd done something wrong, even though I knew I hadn't. It made me panic."
Doc Crow’s comments:
“Fair Use” of an artist’s music is on the line here today. If a person buys a music CD or downloads a single song off of iTunes, how much can a person “use” that music? Can they record another copy and give it to friends? Can they use the music in the background of their own home video? Can they play the music over a stereo at a party? What about at a party where they make money? Can you use the music in the background of your own video?
The music industry says “No”. The industry is pushing that you can only listen to the music on your own device. So why does the electronics industry make recording devices that are available to the public? Tape players, VCRs, CD-RW (read\write), rip (record) feature on Windows Media Player… These huge corporations make equipment that you can buy and use to copy music, then threaten to bust you legally if you copy and use music in any other way besides personal listening.
OTOH-there are music artists that spend their money and time creating music. They are counting on sales of their music to make money. If you copy and share that music with your friends, the artist earns no income. This is happening on a grand-scale. So the artists, backed by the financial might of the music industry’s lawyers, are going after end-consumers. Why not shut down the big corps that make recording equipment for consumer sales?
What is reasonable? Should not a parent be able to use background music from an artist when they make a video of their kid? I think so. But the music industry lawyers do not. Should a person be able to copy music on their computer and make another CD to give to a friend? No, that is not fair to the artist, but this scenario is happening on a grand scale. Some music artists are “taper-friendly”. They allow fans to record their live shows. But the honor system says they should not copy this recorded music to sell to others.
Here’s the scenario that is real today: Many people have recordings of music artists that they made themselves at a concert. These folks upload the music on YouTube to share with others. The music artist does not have access to these personal recordings. However, the music, the sounds, are now shared with the world. Here’s where it gets cloudy-some artists are not offended by the publicity and exposure. Some artists strongly prohibit this activity. Who is right? What is at stake is the ability to use music you either own or do not legally own. What do you think?
page crow July 20, 2008
Posted on Sunday, July 20, 2008 at 08:44
Doc Crow's WEB BLOG
U.S. cancels test of experimental AIDS vaccine
Sabin Russell, Chronicle Medical Writer
Friday, July 18, 2008
Federal researchers on Thursday dropped plans for a large-scale test of an experimental AIDS vaccine developed by the National Institutes of Health - the latest fallout from the failure last September of a similar candidate from drugmaker Merck & Co. that may have left some volunteers more vulnerable to HIV infection.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the decision to call off the proposed study was his alone, but followed months of meetings to debate the merits of proceeding with the experiment.
After the Merck vaccine failed, Fauci first delayed and then scaled back the proposed $160 million test of the NIH vaccine. The trial was to be known as PAVE 100. Backers of the scaled-back study still hoped for the go-ahead, but Fauci rejected the plan and asked study designers to propose a still "smaller, leaner, meaner" version of PAVE 100 that would cost less than $45 million.
His decision took vaccine advocates by surprise. "We supported the scientific premise of the trial and believed that it was being designed in such a way that participants' safety would be protected to the fullest extent possible," said Mitchell Warren, executive director of the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition in New York.
Until the failure of the Merck candidate last fall, the NIH was just months away from launching its own study with 8,500 volunteers. Both vaccines were designed not so much to prevent HIV infection as to stir up an immune response that would keep any infection in check -mimicking natural control of the virus that small numbers of people appear to have.
An early look at the results of the Merck trial in September showed its vaccine failed on all fronts. It didn't protect against infection, and those who were vaccinated and infected anyway had no better immune control over HIV than those who had been given a placebo.
Hope remained that the newer vaccine would be different. It had succeeded in studies with laboratory monkeys, whereas the Merck vaccine failed in similar animal trials. Also, the NIH vaccine was made of bits of viral DNA designed to stir up an immune response, while the Merck vaccine relied on an older technology that injected bits of protein. DNA vaccines are thought to be potentially more powerful.
But both vaccines rely on a hobbled version of a common cold virus to stir up the immune system, and the surprise result of the Merck study was that some volunteers who had previously been exposed naturally to such cold viruses appeared to become infected with HIV at a higher rate. Most puzzling was that the infection rate was highest for men exposed to the cold virus and who were also uncircumcised.
After Fauci postponed the launch of PAVE 100, a new trial version was cobbled together that would be conducted only in the United States among volunteers who had not been exposed to the cold virus and were circumcised. Only 2,400 volunteers would enroll, and costs would be trimmed to $63 million.
Martin Delaney, founder of Project Inform in San Francisco, said the flaws of the Merck study were not addressed in the revised proposal. "There were a lot of people counting on this study. It was big-time funding for the next five years," he said. "But in the end, it was some of the weakest science I had ever seen." The NIH vaccine, he said, was not that different from the one that had failed.
Dr. James Kublin, director of the HIV Vaccine Trials Network, the Seattle organization that was to have run the PAVE 100 trial, acknowledged that he had strongly supported going through with it. "We're willing to accept the decision and move forward," he said. "We can design a study that will provide critical information and ideas for the next round of research."
Fauci ultimately turned down a plan that would have generated mountains of data from each volunteer's response to the vaccine, as measured by a variety of biological markers.
Instead, he wants to carry out a study that would answer just one fundamental question: whether the vaccine works. Specifically, the study needs to find out as quickly as possible whether those who are vaccinated and subsequently become infected can control the level of virus in their bloodstream better than those who become infected but had been given a placebo. His scaled-down test proposal will still do that. In order for that to work, Kublin said, at least 30 volunteers will have to become infected over five years. Just how many volunteers will need to be enrolled to come up with 30 infections has yet to be determined.
Dr. Susan Buchbinder, director of HIV research for the San Francisco Department of Public Health and a leader of vaccine trials in the city, said Fauci's decision was a "balanced approach" that takes into consideration some of the lessons learned from the Merck trial.
"This isn't a barrier to research," she said. "It's a fork in the road, and the decision is just to take one fork and not the other."
AIDS vaccine failures
Dozens of potential AIDS vaccines have been studied, but only two have made it to large-scale trials, and both have failed.
February 2003: A study of 4,500 North American and European volunteers found that a vaccine produced by Vaxgen, a Brisbane company, did not protect against infection by HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
November 2003: The Vaxgen vaccine also fails in a study of 2,500 injection drug users in Thailand.
September 2007: A nine-country study of 3,000 volunteers found that a vaccine by Merck & Co. failed to protect against HIV infection or control the virus as hoped in those infected.
Doc Crow's comments- $160 million dollars to run this test on an AIDS vaccine ine the U.S.? What do you think that much money could do for U.S. schools in peril? Medical researchers make big bucks and cost us a fortune.
Once again, vaccination for AIDS is a failure, just like immunization fails to protect humans from other diseases, while at the same time these shots subject our children to medical hazards that big pharma and your doctors will not accept responsibility for if they harm your children. I call for no experimentation on our children. Shots are not safe. Shots do not protect our kids. Nutrition & education are safer methods to protect our children against disease.
We need to improve our education for children regarding health, sanitation, nutrition, disease prevention and sexual health education.
Regarding the human pappiloma virus vaccination & the AIDS vaccination: Instead of compulsory vaccination of kids, our children need more sex education with emphasis on prevention of pregnancy and disease transmission. Also moral majority\religious parents should not OPT-OUT their children from this needed education. The idea that you can teach your child abstinance from sex when they are curious does not work. Let the parent teach abstinance, but let the schools teach sex-ed health. Then, testing should be applied to this education to make sure kids understand the importance of sex-ed health.
There are too many un-wanted pregnancies and too much sex-transmitted diseases.
Education, not vaccination.
page crow DC July 18, 2008
Posted on Friday, July 18, 2008 at 05:30
Doc Crow's WEB BLOG
CHILDREN & TYPE 2 DIABETES
Dr. Claudia Anrig practices in Fresno, Calif. She is on the board of directors of the International Chiropractic Pediatric Association. For more information, including a brief biography, a printable version of this article and a link to previous articles, please visit her columnist page online: www.chiroweb.com/columnist/anrig.
There was a time when diabetes was an adult problem rarely, if ever, seen in children. That has changed. In 2001, the increasing number of obese children throughout the United States led policy-makers to rank it as a critical public health threat. Since the 1970s, the obesity rate has more than doubled for preschool children (2-5 years old) and adolescents (12-19 years old). It has more than tripled for children ages 6-11 years. Currently, more than 9 million children age 6 or older are obese.
This increase in the rate of childhood obesity is directly linked to the increase in diagnoses of type 2 diabetes, which includes the following risk factors: obesity, little or no physical activity and family history (at least 75 percent of children with type 2 diabetes have a parent, sister or brother with the disease).
How to Explain Type 2 Diabetes to Parents
Lynn Hardy, ND, director of the Global Institute for Alternative Medicine, defines diabetes as a degenerative metabolic disorder that affects the way our body utilizes the food we eat. Our digestive system breaks down everything we eat into a simple sugar (glucose), which is the main source of fuel for our body. After digestion, glucose moves into our bloodstream where it can be used by the body’s cells for energy. This requires the presence of insulin.
Insulin is a hormone produced by the pancreas. When we eat, the pancreas is supposed to automatically produce the right amount of insulin to move the glucose from our blood into our cells. For those suffering from diabetes, however, the pancreas either produces little or no insulin, or it ignores the presence of insulin altogether. This results in glucose building up in the blood, overflowing in the urine and passing out of the body. In so doing, the body loses its main source of fuel, despite the fact that the blood contains large amounts of glucose.
Type 2 diabetes occurs when the pancreas doesn’t produce enough insulin or when the body doesn’t use the insulin that was produced effectively. More than 90 percent of cases of diabetes are type 2, and children represent an increasing percentage of the diagnoses.
What Are the Risks?
As with any disease, there are risks involved in ignoring the problem. Type 2 diabetes is notoriously easy to ignore. Most children don’t have symptoms when the disease is first diagnosed, but if there are symptoms, they’re usually mild, including having to urinate more often, feeling a little more thirsty than normal and losing a little weight for no clear reason.
The risk of ignoring this dangerous disease is that years of poor glucose control can lead to major health complications including kidney disease, visual impairment (even blindness) and nerve damage. For children and teens with this disease, the risks are even greater. There is rising evidence that when type 2 diabetes is acquired at an early age, it progresses aggressively, leading to early complications. Public health experts warn that children diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in their early teens may suffer from severe diabetes-related health problems such as renal failure and cardiovascular disease by the time they reach the age of 30.
What Causes Type 2 Diabetes?
The most common cause of type 2 diabetes is obesity, which has been directly linked to a sedentary lifestyle. According to Dr. Andrew Weil, “An estimated one-quarter of all cases of type 2 diabetes could be prevented with 30 minutes a day of moderate physical activity alone.” Regular exercise helps control weight, stabilizes blood-sugar levels and decreases insulin resistance.
However, lack of exercise is not the only contributing factor to obesity. Diet plays a major role as well. Michael Murray, ND, and Joseph Pizerno, ND, noted in the Encyclopedia of Natural Medicine that even in healthy individuals, sudden significant weight gain will result in “carbohydrate intolerance, higher insulin levels and insulin insensitivity in fat and muscle tissue.” They further note that progressive development of insulin resistance is believed to be the underlying factor in the development of type 2 diabetes. “Weight loss alone can correct all of these abnormalities and either significantly improves diabetes or totally resolves it.”
What Are the Common Treatments?
A pediatrician will typically want to treat type 2 diabetes with a pharmaceutical. There are currently five types of drugs being used to control glucose levels, including biguanides, sulfonylureas, meglitinide, glucosidase inhibitors and thiazolidenediones.
The important thing to note here is that efficacy and safety data for these chemicals are not available for children, and none of these drugs is FDA-approved for use in children. Additionally, it’s been determined that these substances are only effective in 40 percent of cases, and then for only about three months. Clearly, pharmaceuticals may not be the answer.
Dr. Michael Berger, MS, professor of medicine at Dusseldorf University in Germany, says the use of drugs has become the treatment of laziness, “both on the part of the physician and the patient.” It’s easier to just write a prescription and give the child a pill than to educate parents on the importance of a healthy diet and the wellness lifestyle.
What’s Best?
Type 2 diabetes is a lifelong disease, but it can be controlled and, in some cases, completely reversed. The most important things to consider are the contributing factors. Obesity is the major contributor to childhood type 2 diabetes, and the cure for obesity is diet and exercise. Here are some ideas to share with parents on how to adopt a wellness lifestyle for their child.
The lifestyle of the entire family should change. Even if there’s only one child suffering from this disease, the entire family will benefit. Use smaller plates for meals. Smaller plates mean smaller portions, which means less caloric intake. Better foods. Two-thirds of the child’s plate should be vegetables, while the remaining third should be a mix of fruits, proteins and whole grains. When in doubt, don’t eat white (e.g., white potatoes, white rice, white bread). Avoid processed items. If it’s wrapped in plastic or comes in a box, it’s processed. Find ways to keep the child active. Just 30 minutes a day of moderate physical activity can reverse type 2 diabetes. Note: In warmer climates, consider walking or biking around your neighborhood, going to the park, playing catch, etc. In colder climates, find a family-friendly gym, utilize an indoor swimming facility or consider going to the mall and walking nonstop.
Suggesting Supplements
Vitamin and mineral deficiencies also have proven to be contributing factors to type 2 diabetes. The most well-known, popular and effective mineral in controlling diabetes is chromium. Clinical case studies have shown that supplementing the diet with GTF (glucose tolerant factor) chromium decreases total cholesterol and triglyceride levels while increasing HDL-cholesterol levels and lean body mass, and lowering body weight.
Magnesium is an important mineral for enzyme systems and pH balance; magnesium deficiency is very common in diabetics. As a dietary supplement, magnesium may prevent some of the common complications of diabetes. Of course, this mineral should be taken with vitamin B6. Levels of vitamin B6 inside the cells of the body appear to be directly linked to the magnesium content of the cell. Basically, without vitamin B6, magnesium will not get inside the cell.
It’s important to know that a diagnosis of type 2 diabetes does not guarantee a future of complications and health risks. The reality is that with moderate changes to a family’s diet and exercise routine, their child can overcome this disease and live a long and healthy life.
Resources:
Hardy L. Homeopathy Effective in Diabetes Treatment. www.byregion.net/articles-healers/Diabetes_Alternatives.html. American Diabetes Association. Type 2 diabetes in children and adolescents. March 2000;23(3):387. Iannelli V. “Kids’ Diabetes Alert.” June 14, 2006. Powell A. “Can Kids Get Type II?” Aug. 1, 2000
Posted on Tuesday, July 15, 2008 at 15:03
Doc Crow's WEB BLOG
CASE STUDIES-
I want to share some experiences I had today in the office. One was a 14 year old boy who presents to the office with pain in his hand. The pain is specifically in his muscle that works the palm-side of the thumb. We call this muscle the “thenar muscle”. The young man noted sharp pain here when he was batting in baseball. So he thought the problem started at the moment he felt pain in his thumb muscle.
My first thought was that he may have stretched\stained or sprained some of the ligaments that surround the wrist. When I examined and orthopedic-tested the wrist and hand, nothing was there. There was no ligamentous strain. Then I checked the forearm muscles up to the elbow. Oh yeah, all that’s sore. Then I traced the problem up to his shoulder muscles and neck. Yes. That hurt too and he didn’t know it until I showed it to him that these structures were also sore upon deep palpation.
Working diagnosis: Cervical spine vertebrae stuck in function. His neck vertebrae and upper thoracic vertebrae (between shoulder blades) were quite stuck. No function, no move-ability. We chiros know this adversely affects the nervous system that emits from this level of the spine. This stuck function problem at this level, the brachial (arm) plexus will hurt the nerves that run out from the neck & upper back region and causes nerve soreness across the shoulder muscles (supraspinatous) and down the arm to the hand. This nerve inflammation problem goes all the way to the hand. It can cause the hand soreness, tingling and numbness. It’s different in different people. Some folks hurt. Some folks feel numb in the hand. His hurt. For years, the medics called this problem “carpal tunnel syndrome” and tried to do surgery on it. The surgeries were a failure, because they did not fix the CAUSE of the problem. Insurance companies hardly never pay for this surgery anymore. That’s a bygone fad.
Here’s the weird part: When I tried to adjust the spine (chiropractic treatment of moving the vertebral bones), his upper back wouldn’t budge. It was hyper-tight and hyper-stuck. Wow! You hardly never see a 14 year old kid with such a locked-up back! Just about never see this. Teenage kids bones in there back usually move pretty good. This kid’s spine was rock-hard stuck. Why would that be? Answer: chronic The kid has really truly had this stuck back problem for months and probably years. His back is already growing into a old-man style stuck back. How bad is that? Very. I couldn’t move the bones in his upper spine one little bit. Too tight and too stuck. Uncommon for a kid, it will take several treatments to pry his musculature loose and get his spine working again. When the deep tight stuck problem goes away in his neck\back, his palm hand pain problem will go away, for sure. We chiros know this for real because we do it all the time, every day. We are very used to seeing this “radicular pain syndrome” problem get better quick.
In contrast-I had a really old guy (65?) come in today that’s been a routine patient one per week now for about 12 weeks. Yes-I have adjusted him one time each week for the last 3 months. Now get this: His back moves beautifully! Even though he’s an old man and he’s got a lot of wear & tear arthritis and muscle spasms in and around his back, his spine is now moving fantastically. It did not when we started. He was common with the same deep stuck and hyper-tight spine and muscles when we met. He listened to my advice. He kept getting his back worked on once\week and now his body moves really good. He feels great these days. He feels “like a million dollars…” (Folks say this all the time.)
I’m simply focused on getting the “fixation subluxations” (stuck back, abnormal joint) problems worked out in patients. The challenge is the patients themselves. If they “get it”, they follow through and get several adjustments in a row, done over time. If they just don’t “get it”, then the patient thinks that whatever chiropractic is…it either works in just one adjustment or it doesn’t. It’s tough to teach this one point over and over to folks. They either get it or they don’t.
I’m not trying to sell a patient a bunch of treatments in a row done over and over. I am simply advising what works best to get results on these folks who come in hyper-tight and hyper-stuck in their backbone and surrounding muscles. It just works this way. Some folks get a whole lot better with just one adjustment. Fine-see you later. But most folks who come in with weeks, months and years of tight and stuck spine often take many adjustments in a row, done over time to limber up the spine and surrounding musculature. It just works this way. It just does.
So the old man moves good in the spine and the young boy’s back is totally stuck. It will take some time and work to get the kid better. It just will. I’ve seen this happen a million times. It’s weird though for the kid to be tough and non-movable and right after him treat the old guy whose back moves wonderfully. Isn’t that strange?
OK, next case- I love this next one. We get this often.
The baby is 3 months old (out of the womb). The baby has been inconsolable (insufferable and really grumpy) since birth. She cries all the time and just seems to be in a state of discomfort. She only poops about once every 5-6 days. That is not good. The baby is straining a lot when she tries to poop. No difficulty with delivery. No other obvious signs of problems. The mother both breastfeeds (yeah!) and formula feeds (boo!). I don’t remember what the medics told this mother, but usually they tell the parents the child will outgrow it. Or they run mucho diagnostic tests (at great expense) and find nothing wrong. Or they find something to name wrong and put the baby on drugs.
This time, I was treating the mom and explained to her how even a newborn baby can have a tight, stuck, hyper-tight, hyper-stuck little spine with all the muscles around the spine in spasm. When this happens, all kinds of problems can show up in the baby: stomach reflux (baby spit up), constipation, breathing problems, inconsolable, earaches, baby gets sick a lot and other little things where the baby is just not right. You might not even be able to know what to call it, but a mom can know when her baby isn’t perfect. That’s this kid.
She doesn’t poo and she’s really pissed-off. OK. Check the spine. Sure enough, the baby’s little lower back and mid-back is very stuck tight and non-functional. A decent chiro who feels backs and little baby backs all the time can feel this. I can. And I show this to the mom so she’s knows what to feel for. I teach it the parents to look for this.
We treated the baby while laying her on the mama’s tummy. The baby lays their head down on the mother’s chest. The mom can feel everything I’m doing. It’s great. Oh yeah, you can feels little bumps and little clicks and movement when you are working on a newborn. It’s easy. The babies aren’t tough to fix like old hyper-tight oldies people. They usually adjust really gently and really easily. It’s fun. It’s like no big deal and before you know it, it’s done. The mom’s are always under-whelmed, because they didn’t hear or feel much at all of what I’m doing. But it works.
The results may be dramatic and right at that moment you can tell the baby is doing better. Or the results of the treatment might take a few days to take. And this is normal.
Guess what happened? The baby started pooping a whole lot more. It took a couple more days to catch up, but now each and every day the baby is pooping like up to 8-times a day! The mom was freaking out, now wondering if this was too often and too much poop. No way. Anytime you can get poop out, get it out and that’s good. Poop is waste and you don’t want it hanging around in the body any longer than you have to. Now don’t worry, she’s not having an irritable bowel syndrome or something like that. It’s just she’s getting a lot of backed up poop out and doing a good job of eliminating waste. She’s gonna be fine now. We’ll watch this one and make sure she’s continuing to do fine. Oh yeah, she’s in a really good mood now as you can imagine. Normal happy looking baby now. She was flirting with me. Smiling. Looking like a baby should. The mom is surprised and happy about the outcome, so to speak. She’s surprised by so much poop. Oh well. Always get your poop out. Diagnosis: constipated baby
What causes this? Lots of things. Usually several things together. Sometimes the baby just gets tight and stuck from being in utero. Sometimes the medics are too rough at childbirth. Sometimes the cause is hyper-spasm and convulsion reactions to vaccination. The baby keys up and goes into spasms after shots. This can pull and sublux the spine.
The important thing is babies get their little backs and necks stuck sometimes, really often. Most parents don’t know or understand this. It’s not just back pain for people. Babies don’t have “back pain”. But they do have other symptoms that come from a stuck spine and hyper-tight muscles.
Have a baby checked once a season for vertebral stuck back, hyper-tight muscles spasms. It’s safe. It’s very affordable. It makes kids feel better, get well, get over sickness, overcome what other doctors call “diseases”. Kids get their back “out” like adults to. They are just easier and more fun to fix.
page crow DC
Posted on Wednesday, July 09, 2008 at 20:06
Doc Crow's WEB BLOG
I went to my son’s Boy Scout camp yesterday. I was shocked. I first thought it was a fat camp for little boys to sweat it off and lose weight. I was shocked at the number, most of them, of boys who were REALLY overweight. Downright obese. At the swimming pool, I saw boys who needed full-size bras to hold up their breast tissue. I’m not kidding. The majority of the boys in camp were OBESE.
This is an American social problem for our youth. The boys sit on their butts and play Xbox & Playstation all day and all night, eat junk food and gain weight. In my generation, we didn’t have the computers & video games. We played outside, rode our bikes, built treehouses, and were able to run around town.
The typical response from moms is, “The kids cannot go out and ride their bikes around the neighborhood, it’s too dangerous…” That fear, manufactured by our media, keeps kids locked-up inside their homes. Mom’s are afraid some bogeyman is gonna get their teenage boy or girl, so nobody goes outside, except maybe in the yard and on the sidewalk. And the kids grow fat from lack of exercise and physical play. (The media creates this fear based on rare events where some kids get harmed by adults. Then the media makes it sound like bad adults are everywhere, just around the corner, and ready to pounce on your children. If this is so, should not our police be going after these people instead of sitting on the side of the highway running radar?)
Now I see the drug companies are going to push cholesterol drugs (statin drugs) onto kids. Lipitor is the #1 selling drug in the world. That drug company makes BILLIONS of dollars of profit off of ignorant people who do not know anything about cholesterol, what it does, how it works, how important cholesterol really is for the human body. Ignorance makes people do things out of fear. They buy drugs because their doctor or nurse scares them into it. The real problem is that statin drugs are very dangerous, harmful to the body, unnecessary for human health, and don’t work like they say they do. We need cholesterol.
Bad cholesterol comes from animal fat. The body makes good cholesterol. Your brain and nervous system is a 100% chunk of cholesterol. You need good cholesterol to make hormones that control your body. If you start putting kids on cholesterol-lowering drugs, you are going to get kids with hormonal diseases, mental decline, and more problems than you can count. The cholesterol drugs are the most toxic, most dangerous, most misunderstood drugs on the market. The medics & nurses themselves know very little about these drugs. They just recite what their drug sales reps tell them. They make money off of kick-backs for prescribing these drugs.
Go ahead, get your kid tested for cholesterol levels. Then also get your kid tested for sugar levels. To lower a kids bad cholesterol, they need to eat less animal fat. That means meat, fat, ice cream, milk. To lower a kids sugar level it is obvious what you must do. The worst offenders in the sugar department are PUBLIC SCHOOLS. The school classrooms offer kids all kinds of candy and worse than anything: sugar-sweet fruit drinks and fake “energy” drinks with sugar and caffeine. It should be a crime that kids get sugar in schools from any source. Your public school is causing your kids to get diabetes.
Putting kids on yet another drug is a huge mistake. I saw some really sick, fat, diabetic, mentally-impaired kids at Boy Scout camp. Wow. Depressing.
Our next generation of children are truly sick. Physically and mentally. The media creates fear, that makes people act defensively. The video games create boys who are “weapons-based”, think only of guns & bombs, and are indifferent to killing or blowing things up. This is not healthy.
What to do? Minimize the video games. Cut out the bad news on TV. Don’t watch or let your kids watch the concentration of evil, fear, killing, loss, torture, raping, murdering, war, uncertainty, etc that makes up the bulk of commercial TV. If you the parent insist on keeping on this track, at least try to keep your kids off of the bad news. Let your kids play physically and outside. If you must, keep an eye on them yourself. Let the children play. Feed the children well. I saw so much candy, sugar, soda pop, carbohydrates etc. These things have no nutritional value. The kids are starving, that is why they are sick. They are not starving for another drug. They are fat kids, but they are starving for real food, with real body-building nutrition in the food. Cook for your kids. Eat real food yourself. Don’t just run up to KFC or Sonic for dinner every night. Teach your children how to cook. They need to know how to do this. Teach them to wash the dishes. Teach them the world is not necessarily like what the TV says it is. There has always been bad people in the world, but there are also many more good people out there willing to help and be good to people.
It is a scientific proven fact that in addition to lowering sugar levels to balance the sugar in the body, you also must burn the sugar that gets in the body. The only way to do this is physical exercise. But don’t call it work. Call it play. Get your kids physical exercise and yours with activities that you enjoy. Do not attach negative emotions to working out, lest you hate it and stay away from the routine. Have fun swimming, playing, biking, hiking, climbing, doing anything you can that works your body and your kids body. Our kids need it, or they are going to not live. They will die early if you keep pumping them full of drugs, sugar and fear.
Parents, lose your fear. Go out yourself and get some exercise. Enjoy the change, don’t attach negative emotions to physical play.
Don’t just put your kids on more drugs.
page crow DC July 9, 2008
Posted on Wednesday, July 09, 2008 at 06:19
Doc Crow's WEB BLOG
EAR & SINUS COMPLEX DISORDERS
Doccrow’s comments: The following abstract study was taken from the internet recently. I am very interested in ear & sinus disorders as they relate to scuba diving. Reason: I have had this problem myself, unable to scuba dive because of sinus & eustachain tube blockage. This problem prevents the inner-ear complex from equalizing pressure during descent. Pain prevents the diver from continuing the dive. I have noticed empirically in myself and some patients that cervical spine vertebral manipulation (chiropractic adjusting) improves the ability to balance pressure during dive descent. This idea that providing chiropractic adjustments for divers could help them go through with their dive and could be an important contribution to the diving community. Folks that give up diving because they cannot ear equalize lose out on the rich experience of scuba diving. The dive industry loses these people and their families involved in diving. This idea needs further study and proper research.
Christoph Klingmann1 , Mark Praetorius1, Ingo Baumann1 and Peter K. Plinkert1 (1) Department of Otolaryngology, Head & Neck Surgery (HNO), University of Heidelberg, Im Neuenheimer Feld 400, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany Received: 13 September 2006 Accepted: 14 May 2007 Published online: 17 July 2007
Abstract: Diving is a very popular leisure activity with an increasing number of participants. As more than 80% of the diving related problems involve the head and neck region, every otorhinolaryngologist should be familiar with diving medical standards. We here present an analysis of more than 300 patients we have treated in the past four years. Between January 2002 and October 2005, 306 patients presented in our department with otorhinological disorders after diving, or after diving accidents. We collected the following data: name, sex, age, date of treatment, date of accident, diagnosis, special aspects of the diagnosis, number of dives, diving certification, whether and which surgery had been performed, history of acute diving accidents or follow up treatment, assessment of fitness to dive and special remarks. The study setting was a retrospective cohort study. The distribution of the disorders was as follows: 24 divers (8%) with external ear disorders, 140 divers (46%) with middle ear disorders, 56 divers (18%) with inner ear disorders, 53 divers (17%) with disorders of the nose and sinuses, 24 divers (8%) with decompression illness (DCI) and 9 divers (3%) who complained of various symptoms. Only 18% of the divers presented with acute disorders. The most common disorder (24%) was Eustachian tube dysfunction. Female divers were significantly more often affected. Chronic sinusitis was found to be associated with a significantly higher number of performed dives. Conservative treatment failed in 30% of the patients but sinus surgery relieved symptoms in all patients of this group. The middle ear is the main problem area for divers. Middle ear ventilation problems due to Eustachian tube dysfunction can be treated conservatively with excellent results whereas pathology of the tympanic membrane and ossicular chain often require surgery. More than four out of five patients visited our department to re-establish their fitness to dive. Although the treatment of acute diving-related disorders is an important field for the treatment of divers, the main need of divers seems to be assessment and recovery of their fitness to dive.
Doccrow’s comments: This German study breaks down the different types of ear disorders noted in a large number of divers who suffered from some dysfunction of the ear complex. The authors of this German study report, “conservative treatment failed in 30% of the patients but sinus surgery relieved symptoms in all patients of this group”. The conservative treatment was not described in this abstract, but probably consisted of drugs, like sinus decongestants.
Thinking like a chiropractor, I come to the table suggesting a different conservative treatment option for scuba divers suffering from ear complex disorder: vertebral manipulation of the cervical and upper thoracic spine.
The spinal nerves that emit from the cervical spine vertebrae and the upper thoracic vertebrae have an influence on head, neck and face anatomy and physiology. The spinal nerves that emit between the vertebrae are an integral component of the brain and nervous system. The dysfunction known as vertebral subluxation is a known and well-established disorder identified by chiropractors. We chiros have long asserted spinal adjusting affects the ear complex. We know this from feeling this in our own ears, the ears clear out when you get your neck adjusted. And we know this from experiencing the feedback from countless patients who have reported these same results, their ears and sinus opening up, pain and stuffiness subsiding, swelling and fluid blockage drain away. We chiros have done this so much, so many times for patients, we expect these results when we adjust the neck and upper thoracic area of a patient with any form of ear complex disorders.
The beauty of chiropractic treatments for all manner of head, sinus and ear disorders is that it doesn’t matter what distinct symptoms you may be suffering with. Chiropractic adjusting has a positive influence on any of these disorders, because the nervous system affects all structures, all functions, all muscles and every cell in the body.
Contraindications for chiropractic adjusting in the cervical spine region includes osseous fracture, some inter-vertebral disc degenerations (protrusions), advanced degenerative arthritis, osseous bone pathologies, acute soft-tissue injuries, vascular degenerative disorders and other conditions. The attending chiropractor is responsible and capable of ruling out pathologies that would prevent conservative chiropractic treatment.
Regarding safety with chiropractic adjusting in the neck & upper back region: We find the practice very safe. This doctor has been performing neck vertebrae adjusting for over twenty years, on many thousands of patients, possibly hundreds of thousands of net treatments, with no incident of injury to date. Chiropractic treatment has been utilized on all ages, from newborn baby, to 90-year olds. Patients with advanced degenerative arthritis, intervertebral disc injury, osteoporosis and other disorders have been safely and successfully treated with chiropractic.
More properly conducted research is needed to validate the safety & effectiveness of chiropractic treatments for ear complex disorder, ear equalization disorder, barotraumas, and many other ear, sinus and throat imbalances. The nervous system affects and controls all structures and functions in the body. Chiropractic treatments represent a conservative, safe and inexpensive option for treating scuba divers with ear and sinus problems.
Chiropractic treatment involves no drugs or surgery. These are the treatments of the medical approach. The drugs wear off and do not treat the cause of the ear complex problems. The drugs are toxic and have side-effects. While surgery after barotraumas may be necessary, this author suggests other surgeries to alter anatomy are contra-indicated until neural and functional physiology is restored first by chiropractic and soft-tissue healing techniques.
Chiropractic restores neural and functional physiology to the ear complex tissue. This practice should be utilized first before surgical intervention is resorted to in non-barotrauma divers.
page crow DC page.crow@kcweb.net www.doccrow.com
Posted on Tuesday, July 01, 2008 at 05:44
Doc Crow's WEB BLOG
NINE BACK SURGERIES
Nine back surgeries. That’s what a patient told me the other day. Does back surgery work? Several different types of back surgery: discectomy, arthritic bony growth scraping, decompression, laminectomy, fusion, steroid injections, morphine pump implanted inside his body, into the spine and more. Outcome: No better, worse. Loss of bladder control, constipation, erectile dysfunction, more pain, but different, numbness & pain in the leg and foot. The costs: You wouldn’t believe it-hundreds of thousands of dollars (insurance or not, still outrageously expensive). Loss of function, loss of ability to work or play, loss of many things. Not better, worse.
The cause for all this: He didn’t take care of his back when he was young. He got hurt in high school and his parents never took him to a chiropractor. Instead, his medic told him to take drugs, go to a physical therapist and told him he would grow out of it. He didn’t. He made bad choices regarding his back in college. He ignored the pain, covered it up with drugs and steroid shots into the spinal column. He freaked about his back only when it hurt so bad he couldn’t stand it, then ignored it again when the freaky pain was in remission. He tolerated and ignored chronic pain, a sign he had a problem and it wasn’t going away on it’s own. He got repeated surgeries because he was told to by his doctors. The surgeries didn’t take, over & over. One surgery caused problems giving rise to the next surgery. He’s constipated, overweight, stressed, depressed…
Don’t live this. Don’t let this happen to yourself or your husband.
People need to get their back checked and adjusted routinely, to maintain good FUNCTION between every single individual vertebrae. Keep the bones moving and not stuck. You the patient cannot even tell usually when bones are stuck, with loss of range of motion function. Bones in the back get stuck in function now and then for several reasons: postural stress, bad working habits, trauma, carrying a baby around, weather stress, emotional & mental stress. Muscles get tight, bones get stuck. The pain in the back condition is a dramatic sign of subluxation (stuck bones).
I recommend folks do the following things to keep their backs functional: hot tubs, massage, good posture, stretching and chiropractic adjustments. The more of these good things you do for the outer body, the better you feel and the less arthritis and pain you create. Remember, pain or numbness running down the arms into the hands or down the leg into the foot is caused by vertebrae in the back affecting the spinal nerves. It’s simple anatomy. Look at a picture on Google of spinal nerves.
Don’t think that you wait till you have back pain to go to a chiropractor. Why would you wait till you have tooth pain to go to a dentist? Dental maintenance is a lot like chiropractic maintenance. We need them both. You go to a chiropractor now & then to keep your back working well, your nervous system calm and your muscles relaxed.
At the least, I tell patients to get into the office to be checked every couple months. That’s at the least, once every other month. Some folks come in every few months. Some folks are in my office once a month or a couple times a month. I have many patients I see once a week. Folks choose their maintenance patterns. I encourage them all. Whatever a patient wants to put into it to take care of themselves, I am all for it. My routine patients don’t have bad backs. On the contrary, they work well and feel great. They generally do not come into the office with back pain. If their back is working fairly well, you don’t develop back pain.
The patient that doesn’t get it is the one that shows up in the office every 6 months or so, or once a year. These folks come in all freaked out, bent over, in terrible pain. They think chiropractic hurts. But it does not hurt. It’s the patient that is hurting. They just show up in my office in pain. So to touch them, they feel pain. These folks are bent over, crying, cannot move without pain and very dramatic. These are the Jerry Springer patients. They wait until there is a crisis in their body before they show up in the office. Often, they’ve taken a bunch of different drugs, shots in the back, and physical therapy. Maybe they’ve been to one other chiro and had one adjustment from him. Since they are not miraculously better, they show up in my office expecting the same thing: one miracle chiropractic adjustment that is supposed to make everything immediately better.
It doesn’t work that way. Folks like this often require several chiropractic treatments in a row done over several days or weeks to get them out of their crisis. Some folks fix quicker, and I’m all for that. But the common crisis patient often takes many treatments combined with the other therapies I mentioned to slowly get out of their back pain problem. Don’t live this way. Get into the office monthly for a simple routine chiropractic adjustment and you’ll do so much better and feel great. I love the work this way. Folks do better this way.
The parts of your body you pay the least attention to is what will take you.
Folks that don’t take care of their back end up on drugs, get shots in their back, get their back cut open, and usually go downhill from there. This process goes on over years. What you have going on now in your body will affect you later in life.
Women need to have their back worked on and adjusted by a chiropractor just as much as men need to. Women get stressed-out and stuck in their upper neck\shoulder region (from carrying everything) and down in their low back & pelvis (from carrying kids on the hip). Kids should be checked routinely. They do great with adjustments. I have several families that I check their kids now & then and the kids love it. My kids love having chiropractic adjustments. They can just tell how much better they do. Colicky babies, babies that up-chuck their food, constipation, earaches, breathing problems (asthma), irritable babies. These problems go away when a chiro gently works on their back. With kids, it’s not really back pain, it’s sickness that shows up. Kids who are sick in any way should be checked and adjusted often and watch them get over what they are sick from. It’s really cool. I wouldn’t say this if I hadn’t seen this happen a million times.
Don’t let yourself or your spouse get all messed-up on drugs, shots & surgeries for the back. These medical methods are lame. Get routine prevention chiropractic adjustments and you’ll do better.
page crow DC June 24, 2008
Posted on Tuesday, June 24, 2008 at 06:16
Doc Crow's WEB BLOG
Friendship
Friendship is the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words but pouring all right out just as they are, chaff & grain together, certain that a faithful friendly hand will take & sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of comfort, blow the rest away.
-George Eliot
Posted on Monday, June 23, 2008 at 06:03
Doc Crow's WEB BLOG
ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION-
Subject: What do cell phones do to your braincells? Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2008 08:30:41 -0500
> Here's what they do to popcorn... > > http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=kAd0aWxs7kQ > http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=ju5yIFu4yY8 Ø http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=V94shlqPlSI
Yep. I've been telling my patients about the dangers of electromagnetic radiation for years from cell phones. No one is listening. The cell phone is too convenient. Cell phone manufacturers resist making a safer cell phone, because: 1. They do not want to acknowledge the damage done, thus opening them up for liability lawsuits. 2. money
The AMA does not warn against cell phone use, despite the scientific proof that electromagnetic radiation harms living tissue, giving rise to "acuoustic neuroma" (cranial nerve degeneration & cancer). The conspiracy theorists report medicine does nothing about this issue because ear surgeries make a lot of money for their doctors & hospitals. (There are doctors & nurses that love their patients, but they don't run the show. The people that control the medics & nurses work for profit, not patient lives or safety, like most corporations.)
WHAT WE CAN DO ABOUT ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION NOW: Keep the cell phone off your head. The phone emits EM radiation that is harming your inner-ear. Minimize cell phone use and choose the traditional phone, with cord, if possible. Remember, cordless home phones have this same problem.
Use the ear bud device (speaker-mike) that plugs into a phone. The bluetooth devices and all phones that stick to your ear are even more dangerous than standard cell phones.
Stay out of the EM field of radiation for all devices that emit EM radiation. TVs, computers & screens, overhead power lines, gas tube window signs, electric motors, window A\C units, overhead fluorescent lighting and all devices that use electricity have an EM signature, big or small.
Purchase an inexpensive EM radiation detector. These devices are about $30. You can get one from a scientific supply catalog. Just Google and you'll find suppliers. The EM detector can help you audit your home & office for fields of EM radiation that you may be living within. These fields of adverse energy can kill you over time. They are one external cause for tissue degeneration and cancer.
UP-EDUCATE yourself about the issue of EM radiation. One of my favorite books on this subject is called "The Ion Effect". This book discusses negative & positive ion energy, EM radiation and other forms of adverse energy fields common folks are unaware of. The term "subtle energy" is used sometimes with EM radiation.
Learn about H.A.A.R.P., the U.S. government's EM radiation weapon lab outside Fairbanks, Alaska. The U.S. government uses sun-powered radiation from the ionoshere to scatter communications, enfeeble human minds, and damage the ozone layer for the purpose of weapons superiority. Google HAARP.
EM radiation sounds too far-fetched for some folks. This is really happening. EM radiation coming out of cell phones is harming millions of people all over the world, slowly. Nerve degeneration of the inner-ear is predicted to be the number one brain cancer of the next several decades.
The cell phone companies are immune to your lawsuits if you get harmed by their products. Their lawyers have written-in liability release as part of using their products. You signed the contract. You cannot sue them.
page crow DC June 11, 2008
ps: Dig this: Dr. Mercola coincidently posted an article on cell phone use the next day I wrote up this article. Here's his post:
(Dr. Mercola) I cannot think of a more dangerous situation than this. This is the reason we are facing a brain cancer epidemic, which some scientists expect to grow to 500,000 cases by 2010, and over a million cases in the U.S. alone by 2015. Every time you use a cell phone, you are exposing your brain to dangerous and potentially cancer-causing radiation.
Study after study has shown the connection between cancer and cell phone use, and the information has been out there for a decade now. But cell phone companies have done their best to deny, obfuscate, or downplay the danger. I guess they would rather put half the world at risk than put even a dime of their own profits at risk.
Ten Years of Known Danger
The dangers have been well known since at least 1998. In that year, Dr. George Carlo released the results of a massive research project that had been funded by the cell phone industry itself in an attempt to downplay cancer fears. To the industry’s dismay -- and also to their surprise, since they selected him assuming he was an industry shill, rather than the honest scientist he proved to be -- he came to the exact opposite conclusion from the one they were hoping for. His results included findings of:
A nearly 300 percent increase in the incidence of genetic damage when human blood cells were exposed to radiation in the cellular frequency band A significant increase in cell phone users’ risk of brain tumors at the brain’s outer edge, on whichever side the cell phone was held most often A 60 percent greater chance of acoustic neuromas, a tumor affecting the nerve that controls hearing, among people who had used cell phones for six years or more A higher rate of brain cancer deaths among handheld mobile phone users than among car phone users (car phones are mounted on the dashboard rather than held next to your head) These findings, which came well over a decade after cell phones were first introduced (before that there was no safety research at all), caused a shake-up in the scientific world. Soon, many more scientists confirmed Dr. Carlo’s findings.
In 2000, Swedish researchers found that cell phone users were almost two and a half times more likely to develop tumors near where they held their cell phone antenna than in any other portion of their brain. Similar studies were conducted in subsequent years on ever-larger groups of people, always with the same result.
An Italian study in 2002 found that radio waves caused leukemia cells to replicate ferociously after long exposure. In 2004, the massive REFLEX report on DNA damage from radio waves found that cells exposed to electromagnetic fields similar to those of cell phones showed a significant increase in single and double-strand DNA breaks. If I wanted to, I could list a mountain of research studies all pointing to the same conclusion -- exposure to cell phone radiation can cause brain cancer.
The Industry Strikes Back
The cell phone industry, of course, has long since corrected the “mistake” it made with Dr. Carlo, and funded a number of studies purporting to prove that cell phones are safe. For example, in 2006, they made sure headlines blared reports that an epidemiological study had “proven” cell phones can’t cause cancer.
However, a cursory reading of the study shows that it excluded heavy cell phone users from consideration, failed to differentiate between frequent use of cell phones and almost no use, and declared an improbably low rate of overall cancer that contradicts known statistics. After all that, it proudly concluded that it had found no increased risk for cell phone use. Well, no wonder.
Don’t be fooled by their lies. Holding a cell phone next to your head is as foolish as drinking a bottle of pesticide.
Protect Yourself and Your Children
Dr. George Carlo and I have recently finished writing Wireless Deception, which is the most up to date book in the world on this issue. It is currently in final editing and typesetting stages and we hope to have it out by the fall.
Even if you manage to avoid brain cancer, you may find yourself faced with other health problems both major and minor, such as headaches and dizziness, Alzheimer’s disease, autism and even impotence.
At this point, you cannot completely avoid wireless radiation from all sources; they pervade the environment. However, getting rid of your cell phone altogether can help protect you. But even if you don’t want to take that step, you can still minimize your exposure and reduce your risks by doing the following:
Children Should Never Use Cell Phones: Barring a life-threatening emergency, children should not use a cell phone, or a wireless device of any type. Children are far more vulnerable to cell phone radiation than adults, because of their thinner skull bones.
Reduce Your Cell Phone Use: Turn your cell phone off more often. Reserve it for emergencies or important matters.
Use A Land Line At Home And At Work: Although more and more people are switching to using cell phones as their exclusive phone contact, it is a dangerous trend and you can choose to opt out of the madness.
Reduce or Eliminate Your Use of Other Wireless Devices: You would be wise to cut down your use of these devices. Just as with cell phones, it is important to ask yourself whether or not you really need to use them every single time. If you must use a portable home phone, use the older kind that operates at 900 MHz. They are no safer during calls, but at least they do not broadcast constantly even when no call is being made.
Use Your Cell Phone Only Where Reception Is Good: The weaker the reception, the more power your phone must use to transmit, and the more power it uses, the more radiation it emits, and the deeper the dangerous radio waves penetrate into your body. Ideally, you should only use your phone with full bars and good reception.
Turn Your Cell Phone Off When Not In Use: As long as your cell phone is on, it emits radiation intermittently, even when you are not actually making a call.
Keep Your Cell Phone Away From Your Body When It Is On: The most dangerous place to be, in terms of radiation exposure, is within about six inches of the emitting antenna. You do not want any part of your body within that area.
Use Safer Headset Technology: Wired headsets will certainly allow you to keep the cell phone farther away from your body. However, if a wired headset is not well-shielded -- and most of them are not -- the wire itself acts as an antenna attracting ambient information carrying radio waves and transmitting radiation directly to your brain. Make sure that the wire used to transmit the signal to your ear is shielded.
The best kind of headset to use is a combination shielded wire and air-tube headset. These operate like a stethoscope, transmitting the information to your head as an actual sound wave; although there are wires that still must be shielded, there is no wire that goes all the way up to your head.
another study- CANCER CELL STUDY REVIVES CELL PHONE SAFETY FEARS
The safety of cell phones has been brought into question once again by research that suggests radio waves from the devices could promote the growth of tumors. Paradoxically, the study suggests that the radiation makes tumors grow more aggressively by initially killing off cancer cells.
Cell Biologist Fiorenzo Marinelli and his team at the National Research Council in Bologna, Italy, decided to investigate whether radio waves had any effect on leukemia cells after previous studies indicated that the disease might be more common among mobile phone users. The life cycle of leukemia cells is well understood, making it relatively easy to spot changes in behavior.
The team exposed leukemia cells in the lab to 900-megahertz radio waves at a power level of 1 milliwatt and then looked at the activity of a gene that triggers cell suicide. Many European mobile networks operate at 900 megahertz, and maximum power outputs are typically 2 watts, although they regularly use only one-tenth of this power.
After 24 hours of continuous exposure to the radio waves, the suicide genes were turned on in far more leukemia cells than in a control population that had not been exposed. What is more, 20 percent more exposed cells had died than in the controls.
But after 48 hours exposure, the apparently lethal effect of the radiation went into reverse. Rather than more cells dying, Marinelli found that a survival mechanism kicked in. Three genes that trigger cells to multiply were turned on in a high proportion of the surviving cells, making them replicate ferociously. The cancer, although briefly beaten back, had become more aggressive.
DNA damage?
Marinelli presented his results this month at the International Workshop on Biological Effects of Electromagnetic Fields on the Greek island of Rhodes. While the results do not show a direct health threat from mobile phones, they provide fresh evidence that radiation from such devices could play an important role in activating genes that might help cancer cells thrive.
"We don't know what the effects would be on healthy human cells," says Marinelli, "but in leukemia cells the response is always the same." Marinelli suspects the radiation may initially damage DNA, and that this interferes with the cells' biochemical signals in a way that ultimately triggers a defensive mechanism.
Many scientists believe that because radiation from cell phones does not have enough energy to break chemical bonds, it cannot damage cells. The only way damage could occur, they say, is if the radio waves heated tissues up.
But British research earlier in 2002, by Molecular Toxicologist David de Pomerai at the University of Nottingham, showed that radio waves can cause biological effects that are not due to heating. He found that nematode worms exposed to radio waves showed an increase in fertility-the opposite effect from what would be expected from heating.
"Confused field"
Marinelli's study is intriguing, says de Pomerai. "But I'm far from convinced that these authors are looking at any reproducible and real phenomena," he says. Other studies have shown mobile phone radiation to have no effect on cell death, de Pomerai adds.
An inquiry in April 2000 by the British government found no evidence of any health risks from mobile phones. But it still recommended that people take a precautionary approach until further evidence emerged. In particular, it suggested children, whose brains are still developing, should not use mobile phones excessively.
"It's a very confused field," admits Colin Blakemore, a physiologist at the University of Oxford and a member of the British National Radiological Protection Board's advisory group on non-ionizing radiation. People should place more reliance on animal studies than lab-based experiments on cells, he says.
But de Pomerai insists that a consensus is emerging that non-ionizing radiation can indirectly damage DNA by affecting its repair system. If the DNA repair mechanism does not work as well as it should, mutations in cells could accumulate with disastrous consequences. "Cells with unrepaired DNA damage are likely to be far more aggressively cancerous," he says.
Posted on Thursday, June 12, 2008 at 08:28
Doc Crow's WEB BLOG
SOLDIERS ON DOPE-
The United States Armed Services are now putting our soldiers on anti-depressant drugs (Time magazine, June 15, 2008). These are the same drugs making kids go postal over here in the U.S. The drugs are called “serotonin uptake inhibitors”. The drug names are Zoloft, Paxil, Prozac etc. These drugs cure nothing, are extremely addictive, and highly dangerous to human brain health. People taking these drugs go wacko at times, freak-out, and kill everyone around them. Not a pretty picture.
The medics use the drugs because they don’t know what else to do for men & women in depression, anxiety and fear. Our soldiers in Iraq have enough of that, for sure. The Iraq war is a fiction. The U.S. government has blown $3 trillion dollars on that debacle. Imagine what we could have done for roads, schools, parks, farms with all that money. Over 4,400 American boys & girls are dead. Now imagine what could have been for the lives of those kids killed in the line of duty. Our government sent our kids to war behind a lie about WMD, when the reality was oil & greed. We need to really stop this crazy war. Email your state reps, senators and congressmen. They need to know we want this to stop. Don’t send your sons & daughters into that war. The “war on terror” is making young men & women in Iraq hate Americans for coming into their homes and killing their fathers & sons. Not all people killed by the Americans are terrorists. Our soldiers have become the terrorists.
So Army medics put our soldiers on drugs. The nazis were doped-up on methamphetamines. Now the U.S. is doing the same thing to its soldiers. This is insane. Soldiers on dope do not make good tactical decisions.
The U.S. civilian population is flooded by direct media with drug ads from all sources. The ads are funny, sexy, directive. “Ask your doctor… if (insert drug name) is right for you…” This term is a subliminal message telling you that the drug is right for you. Drug ads contains all kinds of programming into your brain. Disconnect from these drugs ads from TV, radio, magazines etc.
If you have kids in the military, warn them about the dangers of drugs from the medics. Teach your kids to deal with their emotional health issues by talking them out, using good nutrition and supplements, and removing them from the location and sources of their grief & pain. Get them out of the military.
Our government lied to us about the war in Iraq. The army medics are now doping-up our soldiers on mind-altering drugs. You can help stop this madness by writing your congressmen, telling others what is going on, and supporting your kids who are in the military.
