The Dutch National Institute of Public Health plans to change its advertising strategy to promote a new vaccination campaign against cervical cancer.
A marketing agency has been asked to create an advertising campaign which plays more on people’s emotions rather than just keep to the medical facts.
The institute will also join in discussions on the internet. Less than half 13-16 year-old girls turned up for the vaccination programme last March largely as a result of scare stories on the internet.
Among genuine concerns about the speed at which the vaccination campaign had been introduced, were outrageous claims that the jab made girls bald.
A second round of jabs was planned in the autumn, but it was postponed as a result of the H1N1 pandemic. The vaccination programme will continue in the spring. All 12-year olds will be called up to have the jab. Any 13-16 year-olds who want the vaccination will also be given it.
Daily newspaper AD reports that every year 90 cervical cancer cases are missed in screening.
135,000 Uninsured Americans Will Die Before Health Reform Takes Effect, Analysis Finds Brad Jacobson Raw Story Tue, 15 Dec 2009 10:49 EST
Over 6,600 uninsured veterans will die by 2013: estimate
If Democrats manage to pull off efforts to reform the US healthcare system and ensure coverage for millions who are currently without insurance, the new system -- by design -- will likely still leave tens of thousands to die without insurance before reforms kick in.
A Raw Story analysis, based on a recent Harvard Medical School study, estimates that 135,000 American citizens and over 6,600 US veterans will die due to a lack of health insurance before current proposed healthcare reform measures would take effect.
One hundred and thirty-five thousand US lives far exceeds the total number of Americans who died in the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the attacks of 9/11 combined. The lives of over 6,600 US veterans is more -- by over 1,300 -- than the total number of US soldiers who have thus far died in both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a professor of medicine at Harvard University and co-author of the Harvard Medical School study, called Raw Story's estimates "quite reasonable."
Even more shocking is that these are conservative estimates.
Health reform policy experts who spoke with Raw Story confirmed that the House and Senate bills would do virtually nothing for currently uninsured Americans until 2013 and 2014, respectively. Raw Story's calculations are based on the House health reform bill's projections. The Senate bill, however, would add another year of lethal lag time, driving up the estimated death rate by tens of thousands more US citizens and veterans.
In part, the proposed Senate and House healthcare reform bills don't begin providing comprehensive coverage for several years because they are designed to meet President Obama's promised goal of creating a "deficit-neutral" healthcare package.
Raw Story's analysis is based on a recent Harvard Medical School study published in the American Journal of Public Health and a subsequent report by a team of Harvard Medical School researchers who took part in the initial study.
The first study revealed that approximately 45,000 Americans die each year from lack of health insurance. The second study, released on the eve of this past Veterans Day, estimated that more than 2,200 US veterans died in 2008 due to a lack of health insurance.
In an interview with Raw Story, Dr. David Himmelstein, associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and co-author of the two studies, also pointed out a rarely discussed fact: The proposed reforms in both the House and Senate bills, even in the long run, would still leave "vast numbers" of Americans uninsured and those who are partially insured with inadequate coverage.
In the House bill, for instance, even after uninsured Americans would begin receiving health insurance, a projected 18 million would still not be covered; roughly 23 million would remain uninsured in the Senate bill.
"So basically they've taken the bad approach and the slow approach both," said Himmelstein, a proponent of a national single-payer healthcare system. "And there's no particular reason other than political expediency why either of those things should exist."
Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, called Raw Story's analysis "very disturbing" and said the "tragic" numbers demand "immediate action by the President of the United States."
"Veterans for Common Sense is outraged that, in 2009, veterans are dying because of a lack of healthcare," Sullivan said. "We believe healthcare is a human right."
He did, however, credit President Obama for taking steps to reverse what he described as former President Bush's "deplorable" legacy of neglecting veterans' health.
Sullivan also believes this is a national security issue and cited, for example, the correlation between the shortage of physicians in the military and the suicide epidemic.
Just last month, the Christian Science Monitor reported that the US Army is understaffed by as many as 800 mental health professionals and 300 substance abuse counselors. On Monday, Time magazine reported that the Army has so far lost 147 soldiers this year to suicide, which is the highest number of suicides since the Army began keeping track of them in 1980.
"You can't deploy someone to war two or three times and never give them a mental health exam," Sullivan said.
"And when a veteran says he's having nightmares, he can't sleep and has to see a doctor," he continued, "but he has to wait several months before someone tells him he's not going to see a doctor at all and then goes and blows his brains out. That's essentially what's happening right here. And that's a legacy of President Bush's failure."
Woolhandler, who testified before Congress in 2007 about uninsured veterans, also sees these numbers, both for US veterans and everyday citizens as a national security issue.
"Other developed countries have dealt with it that way," said Woolhandler, who supports a single-payer healthcare system. "They've said as a matter of national policy, we need to make our people healthy and secure financial health with health insurance and have felt that was a national obligation. I think that the other nations are correct in that regard."
Himmelstein said that the health of our citizens and veterans is not considered a national security issue "because the powerful forces in our country don't care about the people who die."
"The insurance companies and the corporate interests who largely fund our government don't actually care if 45,000 people or 2,200 veterans die," he said. "They do care to maintain the US control of, or at least contention for, oil-rich parts of the world and strategic assets and those sorts of things. So I think it's a matter of what's in the interest of the corporations that by and large make policy in this country."
While a new health insurance system certainly can't be implemented overnight, health and policy experts believe the delay in providing uninsured Americans with health insurance is chiefly due to political considerations.
Dr. Himmelstein asked, "Why do we need to wait three or four years for a program to kick in?" and noted the speed with which Medicare went into effect.
President Lyndon Johnson signed Medicare into law on July 30, 1965 and millions of seniors began receiving coverage within 11 months.
Himmelstein said the reason for the delay in either of the health reform bills is "very simple" and called it an "accounting trick."
"It's because it's so expensive that in order to get a ten-year budget estimate that's under the $900 billion figure, you have to delay it for three or four years," he explained. "It's really a budget estimate that's only six years worth of reform. That's the only way they can keep the cost estimate down to something that's conceivable."
Agreeing with Himmelstein's assessment, Dr. Woolhandler said, "Logistics are doable in a very short timeframe. The politics are the difficult part."
She added, "Ten years of taxes and six or seven years of benefits, so of course you can make something break even."
Steve Findlay, senior health policy analyst at Consumers Union, the independent non-profit publisher of Consumer Reports, thinks that's "absolutely" the case and described it as "a tried and true" method of funding big government programs.
"Part of the drill here is to start collecting money and then the benefit doesn't actually kick in until later," Findlay said. "Once you begin to parse things out, you realize that one of your most substantial ways of saving money or of making the budget work is to, well, let's just put that off for a year."
Congressional Budget Office spokeswoman Melissa Merson declined to comment for this article.
Findlay, though, did point out that it's going to take time to set up the new marketplace.
But he added, "Could they do it faster than 2014 or 2013? You know, you go to war sometimes in two weeks. So I mean when you want to do things, you can do them. But in this case, arguably it's not war. We would love to see it implemented sooner."
Additionally, Findlay sees "industry influence" as a deciding factor in the lag time.
He explained that whenever large-scale changes and "mega programs" like this are launched they usually have an implementation process that takes two to three years.
"But the reason for that, speaking very frankly," Findlay said, "is industry influence on the process. Industry will always be arguing in the hallways of Congress, 'If you're going to do it, you know, at least give us a few years.' And their argument is always the same really: 'It's going to cost us a lot of money to do this. We have to change our systems. We have to readjust our products and our services.' And blah, blah, blah."
"That's an argument that almost always prevails with respect to whether it's environmental regulations, welfare policy, you name it," he continued.
But Findlay noted the stimulus package, in which some of our largest financial institutions received a government bailout in a much shorter timeframe, was an exception.
Margaret F. Riley, a health law professor at the University of Virginia, thinks the budget is a "huge" reason for the delay. Yet she also believes there are other reasonable political considerations at play, such as the desire to avoid negatively affecting the health insurance of Americans who are already receiving benefits in the process of rolling out a new system.
Still, she said, "I'm not a fan of the delay. I think there are many reasons the delay runs risks."
Her primary concern is what might transpire in the interim.
"In the political world," Riley noted, "four years is an eternity and anything could happen to any bill passed."
The White House, Senate Leader Harry Reid's office, and House Leader Nancy Pelosi's office did not return Raw Story's calls for comment.
Fastest Food Inflation Since Riots Means Milk Up 39% Alan Bjerga, Madelene Pearson and Yi Tian Bloomberg Mon, 14 Dec 2009 18:21 EST
Falling production in commodities from rice to milk is bad news for just about everyone except investors.
Rice may surge 63 percent to $1,038 a metric ton from $638 on Philippine imports and a shortage in India, a Bloomberg survey of importers, exporters and analysts showed. The U.S. government says nonfat dry milk may jump 39 percent next year, and JPMorgan Chase & Co. forecasts a 25 percent gain for sugar. Global food costs jumped 7 percent in November, the most since February 2008, four months before reaching a record, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
Farm prices this year lagged behind copper futures that doubled and oil's 57 percent increase. A recovery from the worst recession since World War II would spur food demand and boost costs for buyers of commodities including milk processor Dean Foods Co. while increasing the number of hungry people that the UN says now exceeds 1 billion.
"Agricultural commodities will be a great investment in the next three to five years," said Oliver Kratz, who manages $10 billion as head of Global Thematic Strategy investments at Deutsche Bank AG's DB Advisors in New York, including $3 billion in agriculture. For those who can't afford to pay more for food, there's the "painful" risk of hunger, he said.
Expanding populations and higher incomes are boosting consumption in China and India. China's milk demand is recovering after domestic supplies were tainted with melamine, a chemical used in making plastics that killed at least six babies and sickened almost 300,000 children. Droughts in India and Argentina and typhoons in the Philippines have reduced output.
Food-Price Risk
"Inventories are extremely low in a number of grains markets," Barclays Capital said Dec. 10. "The prospect of a further bout of food-price inflation in 2010 cannot be ruled out since many of the factors that contributed to higher prices in 2007 and 2008 are still a feature."
Stockpiles of corn and rice will drop before the 2010 harvest for the first time in three years, U.S. Department of Agriculture data show. The International Sugar Organization forecasts a second straight global supply deficit in the year through September 2010, and the USDA predicts stores of the sweetener will drop to the lowest level since 1995.
Pork, Poultry
Wholesale-pork prices in the U.S. are up 27 percent this year, heading for the first annual gain since 2004, as farmers hurt by two years of losses cut the domestic breeding herd to the smallest level since the USDA started collecting the data in 1964. Chicken output is sliding in the U.S., where the number of eggs placed into incubators each week is headed to the lowest quarterly average since 2002.
"The tendency for food prices is up, it's not down," Unilever Chief Executive Officer Paul Polman said Dec. 11 in a Bloomberg Television interview in Copenhagen. Rotterdam- and London-based Unilever, the largest consumer-product company after Procter & Gamble Co. in Cincinnati, makes Lipton tea, Hellmann's mayonnaise and Bertolli sauces. "We need to be sure that we have the food supply, that we don't waste, and that we continue to get increasingly efficient means to get that food to the consumers," Polman said.
The risk of accelerating prices may be muted by "healthy" gains in inventories, including wheat, according to the FAO. Supplies in warehouses are enough to meet about 23 percent of global demand, compared with 19 percent two years ago, the FAO said last week. Inventories are "far more comfortable" than during last year's crisis, the UN agency said.
More Wheat Supply
Global wheat stockpiles on May 31 are expected to jump 17 percent to an eight-year high of 190.9 million metric tons, after production last year reached a record 682 million tons, the USDA said Dec. 10.
Food costs jumped to a record in June 2008 as wheat, corn, rice, oats, soybeans, animal feed and cooking oil reached the highest prices ever. Indonesia, Argentina and India restricted trade to protect supplies, according to the UN. Shortages sparked about 60 riots from Haiti to the Philippines before the global credit crisis and recession sent prices plunging.
Global economic recovery means there is "increasing pressure on food prices to rise," Nomura International Plc said in a report. "Volatility in price and supply are with us for the predictable future," according to Josette Sheeran, the executive director of the UN's World Food Program. "Risk is the new normal when it comes to food."
Economic Growth Seen
The global economy will expand 3.1 percent in 2010 as more than $2 trillion in stimulus combined with demand in Asia pulls the world out the recession, the Washington-based International Monetary Fund said on Oct. 1.
The U.S. will expand 2.6 percent next year, compared with a contraction of 2.5 percent in 2009, according to the median of estimates from 83 economists in a Bloomberg survey. China's growth will accelerate to 9.4 percent next year from 8.5 percent in 2009, a Bloomberg survey of 31 economists showed.
Some food supplies already are falling. Global production of rice, the staple for more than half the world, has lagged behind demand in four of the past eight years, USDA data show. Rising consumption is expected to erode stockpiles by 41 percent to 85.9 million tons in the 2009-2010 marketing year, down from a record 146.7 million in 2001-2002, the USDA forecasts.
Rice may exceed $1,000 a ton as dry El Nino weather, caused by a warming of sea waters in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, shrinks output and the Philippines and India boost imports, according to Sarunyu Jeamsinkul, the deputy managing director at Asia Golden Rice Ltd. in Thailand, the largest exporting nation.
Rice, Corn, Soybeans
The Thai rice price may soar to last year's record of $1,038 a ton, according to the highest estimate in a Bloomberg survey last month of 10 importers, exporters and analysts in Vietnam, Thailand, India, Singapore and Pakistan.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said Dec. 3 that corn and soybeans will rally through 2011. Corn will reach $4.75 a bushel next year and $5 in 2011 on higher demand for fuels made from the grain, the bank said. Soybeans may reach $11 a bushel in the next 12 months and average $12 a bushel in 2011, Goldman said.
Decatur, Illinois-based Archer Daniels Midland Co., the second-largest U.S. producer of corn-based ethanol behind Poet LLC, reported a 53 percent drop in quarterly profit last month on tighter supplies of soybeans it processes into animal feed and cooking oil.
In the sweeteners and starches business, Archer Daniels Midland's profit more than tripled to $194 million, partly because of higher selling prices and reduced costs for corn, which fell from last year's record. Archer Daniels gained 14 percent since the end of June to $30.49 in New York trading.
Milk Supplies
U.S. manufacturers' stockpiles of nonfat dry milk fell to 90.1 million pounds on Oct. 31, 47 percent lower than a year earlier and less than half of what they were in June, the USDA said Dec. 4. Domestic production this year is down 8.2 percent, including a 27 percent drop in October, as farmers culled dairy herds to end a surplus, government data show.
The price of nonfat dry milk, used in baking products and baby formula, will rise to an average of $1.275 a pound next year from 92 cents, and cheese will increase 28 percent, the USDA said on Dec. 10. Processed and fluid milk will jump 31 percent to $16.75 per 100 pounds, the USDA said.
"We've been through the boom and then the bust, and it looks like we're going to have another boom," said Michael Harvey, an international analyst at Melbourne-based Dairy Australia, a trade group.
Milk output will fall 4 percent in Australia in 2009-2010. New Zealand's production slipped 2 percent in the first three months of its season, and Brazil's supply dropped 4 percent to 5 percent through July, Dairy Australia said in a report.
Westpac Forecast
Milk-powder prices may gain more than 20 percent to exceed $4,000 a ton early next year, said Westpac Banking Corp., Australia's second-largest bank. Whole milk powder for February delivery rose to a 16-month high of $3,523 a ton at auction, Fonterra, the world's largest dairy exporter, said on Dec. 2.
Dean Foods, the largest U.S. milk processor, said Nov. 2 that fourth-quarter profit may fall more than analysts expected, to at least 36 cents a share, because of rising raw-milk costs. Chief Executive Officer Gregg Engles told investors that prices, which will climb through next year, probably won't surpass the records set in 2007 and 2008. Since Oct. 30, shares of Dallas- based Dean are down 5.4 percent at $17.25 in New York.
Global sugar supplies will remain "tight" for the first half of 2010, JPMorgan Chase said. There's a "material risk" that prices for March and May will jump 28 percent to 30 cents a pound, Tobin Gorey, the bank's global commodity strategist, wrote in a report dated Dec. 10. Sugar for March delivery in New York increased 6.6 percent last week to close at 24 cents a pound on Dec. 11.
Palm Oil, Food Output
Palm oil, the world's most-used cooking oil, may soar to 3,000 ringgit ($882) a ton by March as El Nino parches crops in Asia, said Dorab Mistry, director of Godrej International Ltd., one of India's biggest edible-oil buyers, on Dec. 4. Palm-oil futures for February delivery closed at 2,530 ringgit on Dec. 11 in Kuala Lumpur. Production may drop next year, he said.
Food output will need to rise 70 percent in the next four decades as the global population expands to 9.1 billion in 2050 from 6.8 billion, the FAO estimates. Seven nations in sub- Saharan Africa, the world's most famine-prone region, will see per-capita income fall next year, according to the UN, fueling an increase in hunger, which the organization now estimates affects 1.02 billion people.
"The politicians had best be able to at least feed their populations or they're going to have uprisings," said Jeffrey Saut, chief investment strategist at Raymond James & Associates in St. Petersburg, Florida, which manages $220 billion. "One of the first things, other than clean water and a toilet, that people want when their per capita income rises is food."
This is just another way to vaccinate children so they'll get autism, conveniently die a premature death and/or be sterilized for the convenience of the evil elite! There's a lot of deadly things in vaccines and if children are born in hospitals, they can administer those vaccines under the power of the state!
Homebirth Illegal? Nicola Roxon's amendment Nov 5th Written by Jo Hunter & Justine Caines Wednesday, 02 December 2009 15:35
On November 5, 2009 Nicola Roxon circulated an amendment the Government intended to introduce into the Health Legislation (Midwives and Nurse Practitioners) Bill and the Midwife Professional Indemnity (Commonwealth Contribution) Scheme Bill. This would effectively make homebirthing illegal
The point that will redefine the fundamental nature of midwifery and certainly homebirth midwifery in Australia is that "collaborative arrangements with medical practitioners will be required to access the new arrangements". In short this amendment will require midwives to work with GP obstetricians and private obstetricians and have a "collaborative arrangement" in place at all times. Thus giving Drs the ability to control women's choice and midwifery practice.
There was an amazing response to the last minute Home Birth Australia rallies around the country with 400 outside Prime Minister Rudds office in Brisbane, 300 outside Julia Gillards office in Victoria and 150 outside Tanya Pliberseks office in Sydney.
Motion from Senator Siewert On November 23, 2009 Greens Senator Rachel Siewert referred the Medicare related legislation with the above mentioned amendment to a Senate inquiry into collaborative arrangements. This was voted on favourably and the committee will report by February 1 2010. This gives us all an important opportunity to show the women of the Australia Labour Party that the proposed amendment will completely erode women's choice and rights and that WE ARE NOT GOING AWAY OR GIVING UP!
Submissions Needed Have your say by sending your petition to the Senate enquiry. We don't have much time as submissions close on Dec 11th.
The Committee prefers to receive submissions electronically as an attached document - email: community.affairs.sen@aph.gov.au - otherwise by fax (02) 6277 5829.
It is essential that we get as many submissions as possible to this inquiry. We don't need reams in your submission, just simple information, especially personal stories. Or you can sign and send your petition from here; http://www.healthpetitions.com.au/please-do-not-make-homebirth-illegal
Important Facts You Can include In Your Submission How you as a woman and consumer or as a homebirth/continuity midwife was treated when interacting with obstetrics or the 'system'.
Your stories as a consumer or midwife when interacting with the system. This may have nothing to do with homebirth. It may be a hospital planned birth (and the reason you then chose homebirth!!). What we are wanting to demonstrate is that obstetrics and midwifery are so vastly different and there is no way obstetrics can 'oversee' midwifery.
It is important to remind the Senators of the time taken by obstetricians (particularly in labour) as opposed to the care received by a continuity midwife. The skill accrued by watching and waiting for women in labour. The clinical and psychosocial safety of the relationship formed. The fact that obstetricians see 200-300 women per year and a full time midwife supports 40 women a year. The vast difference in the models of care.
Women's rights of informed consent and right of refusal.
Where have the reproductive rights of women gone? What about the established legal concepts of right of refusal/informed consent???
Sure I have the right, but if I exercise it I will be denied a Registered Midwife. In the U.K, Canada and New Zealand women have the right to make decisions (as long as they are informed and of sound mind) and a midwife is still able to attend a woman on the basis of duty of care.
Health Legislation Amendment (Midwives and Nurse Practitioners) Bill 2009 and two related Bills
On 23 November 2009, the Senate again referred the Health Legislation Amendment (Midwives and Nurse Practitioners) Bill 2009 and two related Bills, together with the Government's proposed collaborative arrangements amendments, to the Community Affairs Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 1 February 2010. The Committee has been asked to consider the impact of the proposed amendments in a number of areas.
The Bills and amendments circulated may be accessed at the following links
Health Legislation Amendment (Midwives and Nurse Practitioners) Bill 2009
Midwife Professional Indemnity (Commonwealth Contribution) Scheme Bill 2009
Midwife Professional Indemnity (Run-off Cover Support Payment) Bill 2009
CDC: About 1 in 6 Americans have had swine flu By MIKE STOBBE, AP Medical Writer Dec 10 2009
ATLANTA – Swine flu has sickened about 50 million Americans, and killed about 10,000, according to new estimates released by federal health officials on Thursday.
That means about 1 in 6 Americans have had the illness, said Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The estimates are for the first seven months of the pandemic, from April through mid-November. The new numbers are a big jump from previous estimates, which said swine flu had sickened 22 million Americans and killed about 4,000 through mid-October.
Most of the increase is due to cases that occurred after early October, when the nation saw the peak of a second wave of illness, CDC officials said.
The CDC also estimates that nearly 200,000 people were hospitalized through mid-November — about the same amount that occurs normally in an entire winter flu season.
While the elderly account for most of the hospitalizations and deaths from seasonal flu, the largest proportion of reported swine flu hospitalizations and deaths are in non-elderly adults, CDC officials said.
More than three-quarters of the deaths were people ages 18 to 64, according to the CDC.
The new estimates seem to echo an unpublished, in-depth CDC analysis of 100 U.S. swine flu deaths. About 80 percent of those deaths were in people ages 20 through 59, and 45 percent were obese, that research found.
Flu estimates are tricky and inexact because many illnesses are relatively mild and go unreported, and hospitalizations and deaths often involve maladies beyond the flu. The CDC actually thinks that between 34 million and 67 million Americans have gotten sick from swine flu, but Frieden gave 50 million as a midpoint estimate.
Flu estimates are also difficult to compare. Seasonal flu kills about 36,000 Americans each year, according to a long-standing estimate. But that number includes many elderly people who had not only seasonal flu and related pneumonia but also heart attacks and strokes. The new CDC swine flu estimates do not include heart attacks and strokes, mainly because there hasn't been time to collect that kind of data.
So it's likely the new estimate is conservative, and undercounts elderly deaths, CDC officials acknowledged.
Even so, the number of hospitalizations and deaths of younger people from swine flu far exceed what normally occurs in the same ages from the winter flu.
"This flu is much harder on younger people," Frieden said at a press conference in Atlanta.
The swine flu pandemic has so far hit in two waves in the United States: First in the spring when it was first identified, then a larger wave that started in the late summer.
In late October, 48 states reported widespread flu activity. Increasingly, that appears to have been the peak of the second wave. Since then, fewer states have been reporting widespread cases, and the number of school closings due to swine flu has at times dropped to zero.
But there are still plenty of ill people — as many as during the worst days of many regular flu seasons. And CDC officials have said the signs of declining cases do not necessarily mean the worst is over.
About 15 percent of Americans have had swine swine flu, Frieden said. Between 5 percent and 20 percent of Americans get seasonal flu each year, experts believe.
Even though tens of million of Americans have had swine flu, the majority haven't, so it's still important to get a vaccination, Frieden added. Swine flu vaccine first came out in early October in very limited supplies. But deliveries are increasing dramatically, and now about 85 million doses are available.
Also on Thursday, the CDC released a study that found American Indians and Alaska Natives have died from swine flu at a rate four times greater than other Americans.
The study looked at swine flu deaths in 12 states that are home to about half of the nation's American Indians and Alaska Natives, and counted 42 people in those groups who died of swine flu or its complications by mid-November.
That was a rate of nearly 4 out of every 100,000 people for that group, compared to a rate of about 1 per 100,000 for everyone else.
The finding was not surprising. American Indians and Alaska Natives have higher rates of diabetes, asthma and other conditions that make them more vulnerable. The two groups also have higher poverty rates, and were hit harder than other people during past flu pandemics.
The study is being published in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
AIDS in Africa: Disturbing Evidence In the U.S. and Europe, AIDS transmission via vaginal intercourse seems to be very low, with sexual transmission occurring mainly via anal intercourse—one reason why the infection rate is much higher among male homosexuals than in the general population. It is widely believed that this is not true in Africa, that, due perhaps to the prevalence of genital sores, vaginal transmission rates are high enough to provide much of the explanation of the very high rates of AIDS infection.
AIDS in Africa: Disturbing Evidence DECEMBER 06, 2009
As a result of references in an online discussion, I recently came across two published articles which offer evidence that this explanation is wrong, that vaginal transmission rates in Africa are not substantially higher than elsewhere. They go on to suggest that what is really going on may be iatrogenic, doctor caused, disease, that much of the transmission may be due to sloppy medical procedures, in particular the reuse of needles for injections. The evidence is in part from the pattern of infection—rates are apparently much too high among young people who have not had sex and whose mothers are not HIV positive, suggesting a non-sexual transmission mechanism. In part it is from studies that try to measure the transmission rate via vaginal intercourse. In part it is from regional patterns that don't fit the patterns of the supposed causes.
My non-expert impression is that they represent serious scientific work, and that the evidence presented is pretty convincing. The implication is that this is a case of people trying to do good and doing harm instead, always disturbing. Does any reader know of later work either confirming or rebutting the argument?
December 05, 2009 Mysterious disease strikes children in coastal areas of city By Amar Guriro
KARACHI: A strange disease has spread in the coastal belt of Karachi paralysing the lower limbs and some times the arms and other body parts of the victims, the majority of whom are children.
Earlier, there was an outbreak of a similar disease in Achhro Thar (White Desert) of district Sanghar and other areas of the Tharparkar desert. Now this disease has taken its toll in the Rehri Myan Goth in Bin Qasim Town, where office-bearers of the Pakistan Fisher Folk Forum (PFF) claim that there are about 200 victims, most of them children.
The residents of the area told this scribe that the victims of the disease are first afflicted with fever for a few days and then their lower limbs and sometimes the arms and other body parts are completely paralysed. Though this disease remains unidentified, geologists contend that it is caused due to the consumption of fluoride-contaminated underground water.
Experts have also expressed fear that the disease could engulf the entire coast of Sindh. The victims mostly blood-related, and in some cases, there are around six patients in the same family.
Muhammad Hussain, a resident of Rehri village, is a fisherman who has braved many cyclones in the Arabian Sea during his fishing voyages, but is completely helpless to do anything for his four children, who have been paralysed. His three sons, Nazir, Dilbar and Mubarak, and a daughter Hajira, were normal, but they suddenly feel victim to the disease.
“My first child developed a fever one day and within a week, he was paralysed,” he said narrating his woes. “First we thought it’s weakness due to the fever, but later we realised his lower limbs were paralysed.” He took his children to several doctors and also sought the help of faith healers, but all went in vein. Sami Memon of the PFF said his organisation has compiled a list of the victims’ names and most of them are children. “We have a list of about 173 children affected by this disease, but there are several other victims whose names we could not collect,” he said.
According to the PFF list, some of the victims include fisherman Esa, who is suffering the same ailments following the paralysis of his four daughters Fatima, Sheraan, Bhaan and Ameer Bano; Aamnat, daughter of Ismail; Hyder Ali, son of Allah Dino; Ibrahim, son of Mehmood; Hussain, son of Hassan Ali; Nazia, daughter of Ali Hussain, Mohammad Noor’s son Moosa and daughters Hawa and Nadia; Hakeem, son of Abdullah; Azam, son of Umar; Usman, son of Ismail, and Abdul Hussain, son of Ahmed Ali.
When this scribe contacted Sindh Health Minister Dr Sagheer Ahmed for his comments on this issue, he was not available, however his PRO said the issue does not come under the jurisdiction of the provincial health department, and the CDGK EDO (health) might be the right man to contact. When this scribe asked him how this matter that concerns the lives of so many children does not come under the jurisdiction of the Sindh government, he suggested contacting the provincial health secretary.
But that proved to be anything but useful as Sindh Health Secretary Hashim Raza Zaidi simply refused to comment on the issue. This wasn’t surprising since the health department avoiding talking to media personnel over such issues has become a routine practice. CDGK Health Group of Offices Executive District Officer Attur Das Sanjnani claimed that the issue was nothing more than media-created hype. “There are just four children of a family residing in Ibrahim Hyderi whose lower limbs have been paralysed,” he said.
“We have conducted a complete survey of these areas and found that the disease is hereditary and for such diseases, there is no treatment even in advanced countries.” The residents of the area told this scribe that since the creation of Pakistan, the people living in the coastal belt of the city are yet to receive basic facilities such as healthcare, educational institutes and above all drinking water supply schemes.
“Most of the residents of Ibrahim Hyderi, Rehri Goth and others areas of the coastal belt of the city are consuming the underground water, but no one knows about the quality of this water,” said PFF’s Sami Memon.
“It could possibly be the increasing level of fluoride in the underground water that has caused this mysterious disease,” said renowned geologist and faculty member of the Department of Geology, University of Karachi, Prof Dr Shahid Naseem. Dr Naseem has visited about 400 small villages of district Umerkot and other parts of Tharparkar to acquire water samples for laboratory testing.
According to his findings, the underground water had high levels of fluoride. Earlier, this scribe reported the outbreak of a similar disease in Achhro Thar in district Sanghar where around 17 people had dead in only one village and several others were paralysed.
“The disease has not only spread in Karachi, but perhaps spread along the entire coast of the province and also in Balochistan up to Iran, as we have received reports of the same disease affecting people in Quetta and a small village on the Iranian border,” Dr Naseem said.
“We have to conduct a detailed survey of the coastline to learn more about this disease.” Dr Naseem said arsenic contamination was first reported in Punjab, but now the problem has moved on to Sindh. “The contamination of underground water with both arsenic and fluoride could possibly be the cause of this disease, but only a detailed survey can confirm this,” he said.
US: Mounting Debilities and Deaths from H1N1 Vaccine Dr. Mercola Sat, 05 Dec 2009 10:50 EST
Jordan McFarland, a 14-year-old boy from Virginia, is weak and struggling to walk after coming down with a reported case of Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS) within hours after receiving the H1N1 vaccine for swine flu.
McFarland left Inova Fairfax Hospital for Children in a wheelchair nearly a week after developing severe headaches, muscle spasms and weakness in his legs following a swine flu shot.
Jordan is among the first people in the U.S. to report developing the potentially life-threatening muscle disorder after receiving the H1N1 vaccine this fall. Increased cases of GBS were found in patients who received a 1976 swine flu vaccine.
Likewise, a young woman in France has also been diagnosed with GBS after a swine flu shot. The woman, identified only as a health worker, was diagnosed with GBS six days after she received the swine flu shot, according to the French health ministry
Swedish, Japanese, and Chinese health officials have also reported a number of serious side effects, including deaths of people who received the H1N1 vaccine.
In China, the Ministry of Health announced that the two people, including one teacher from Hunan province, died hours after receiving their inoculations.
Chinese health officials have pulled all vaccines manufactured in the same batch used to inoculate the teacher.
Fifty-four percent of Chinese residents reported in a China Daily survey that they would not get the H1N1 vaccine because of concerns about the shot's safety. Among those inoculated so far in China, more than 1,200 have complained of side effects ranging from sore arms, rashes, and headaches, to anaphylactic shock and sudden drops in blood pressure.
Dr. Mercola's Comments
Oh, how short our memories are.
It was only four short years ago when President Bush projected that TWO MILLION Americans would die from the bird flu . Guess how many in the US died from bird flu?
Zero, not one person...
I actually wrote a NY Times best seller on this called The Great Bird Flu Hoax.
With the H1N1 flu we have yet another example of how the CDC and the World Health Organization brazenly distort reality.
In addition, they ignore and deny the dangerous and life-threatening side effects of their expensive solution, encouraging innocent people to suffer for the cause of "herd immunity" - the idea that the benefits of vaccinating everyone outweigh the rights of those who are harmed by the vaccine.
And even though reports of severe adverse reactions to the H1N1 vaccine, including deaths, are streaming in from countries around the world, these two governing bodies are continuing their campaign in the U.S. and around the world to promote a vaccine that has not been proven safe - or even necessary.
H1N1 is the Pandemic that Never Materialized Just Like Bird Flu
I've already addressed the non-necessity of this vaccine in previous articles revealing that H1N1 is nothing but a hyped-up blip on the radar. In fact, a former Ontario, Canada, chief medical officer of health went on CBC/TV and called H1N1 a "dud" as far as a pandemic goes.
Sadly, you're not hearing this in the mainstream media, although stunning coverage by CBS Chicago has finally blown the lid off the hype. In an investigation by reporter Sharyl Attkisson, this station recently revealed that only a fraction of reported H1N1 cases actually are H1N1!
Sharyl found this out by doggedly pursuing the numbers, first through a Freedom of Information Act request from the CDC, and then by contacting each state individually when the CDC refused to respond.
The states' responses were shocking: The vast majority of cases being reported as H1N1 actually are not flu at all - instead, they are some other kind of respiratory infection!
To read about this report and listen to an interview I did with Attkisson on this topic, please see this previous article.
No Vaccine is Completely Safe
This is an important message that needs to get out. But just as important is the safety issue. Because no matter what vaccine officials say in public, they know that no vaccine is completely safe.
They admit this among themselves. For example, a 2001 article in the American Journal of Epidemiology , on how much risk U.S. parents were willing to accept in exchange for a vaccine's benefits, was prefaced with the statement, "Despite the obvious benefits of vaccination, no vaccine is completely safe."
What the authors of the article found - the extent of risk that parents are willing to assume to obtain a vaccine's benefits - is another story for a different day. But the point is, vaccine officials would like you to think that the worst a person could suffer from a vaccine is a sore arm and maybe a headache or a general feeling of tiredness.
The truth is far more sinister: NO VACCINE IS COMPLETELY SAFE. Yet, in public, health officials continue to play H1N1 Russian roulette with people's lives. For example:
Quebec Woman Dies
At the beginning of November, a 42-year-old Quebec woman died two days after receiving the H1N1 vaccine. But did authorities report it as an adverse reaction to the vaccine?
No! Instead, they attributed her death to complications resulting from the H1N1 virus!
I suppose they did this because she developed flu-like symptoms. What they didn't say was that flu-like symptoms are also some of the adverse reactions you get from receiving a flu shot.
They also didn't say that other reactions can include Guillian-Barre Syndrome (GBS) convulsions, syncope (fainting), blood and lymphatic system disorders, and immune disorders such as anaphylaxis, just to name a few - all events that can be life-threatening enough to end in death.
It's no surprise, then, that when an 80-year-old man died in Quebec after getting his H1N1 vaccine, health officials dismissed that too, saying it was too soon to link his death to the shot.
Instead, they stressed that adverse reactions to this vaccine are "rare" and that "there is no evidence that the vaccine is dangerous".
But is that true?
When pressed for proof that the vaccine is safe, Canada officials point to GSK's pre-marketing clinical tests, which show minor reactions in all but four cases. Of those four, only one was believed to be vaccine-related.
What they don't explain is that the total number of people studied was just 253.
And that puts safety in a whole different perspective, because 1 out of 253 translates into a rate of 395 severe adverse reactions in every 100,000 people!
Safety Data Just Not There
Again, the mainstream press has not picked up on this. However, Straight.com , an online news source in Vancouver, not only is trying to get the word out, but also interviewed several health scientists who are alarmed by the terrifying truth about this vaccine.
"Where is the safety data that the government used to license this vaccine?" asked Chris Shaw, a neuroscientist at the University of British Columbia. Shaw is not allowing his 6-year-old daughter to get the shot.
Calling GSK's package insert "a shocking document," Shaw pointed out that there is "no safety data at all for several groups of people," including pregnant women and certain age groups of children - all of whom are on the front lines for getting this vaccine.
Another scientist, Sucharit Bhakdi, a professor of medical microbiology at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz in Germany, also spoke with Straight. He cited a paper he coauthored in October in the journal Medical Microbiology, where he warned of a possible uptick in heart problems due to mass H1N1 vaccination.
Bhadki also called Canada's monitoring of the vaccine "flimsy" and pointed out that most vaccine safety studies only follow patients for a few days or months, when most serious vaccine reactions can take years to develop.
But again, you're not hearing that in the mainstream media.
Vaccine Pulled in Manitoba
In the meantime, GSK's H1N1 vaccine (which was granted FDA approval for use in the US as recently as November 10) was pulled in Manitoba, Canada after too many life-threatening reactions occurred there.
As reported on CTV/Canada on November 20, the vaccine was triggering so many anaphylactic reactions that health officials and GSK pulled more than 170,000 doses of one batch. They tried to downplay their actions by saying this was merely a "precaution," perhaps because much of this batch had already been disbursed.They admitted that 36 severe adverse events had been reported, most of which were allergic reactions that occurred within minutes of the shot, and all of which were treated "promptly."
But they glossed over the fact that one person died from an anaphylactic reaction, saying "the death hasn't been conclusively linked to the flu shot."
Now, 36 severe allergic reactions may not sound like a lot to some people, but consider this: Manitoba health officials stated that severe allergic reactions from the batch in question was observed at a ratio of 1 in 20,000, which is FIVE TIMES higher than the typical rate of 1 in 100,000.
Turkish Republic Issues Warning
Five days earlier, on November 15, the Turkish Republic had already released an anaphylactic reaction memorandum to its vaccine centers, warning them to watch out for "frightening side effects" to this vaccine. It seems that a doctor there went into a coma after his H1N1 vaccination, the Turkish press said.
The doctor was saved in the hospital where he works, and afterward he advised that these shots be given only in hospitals from now on.
Similar events are happening all over the world, but for the most part are not being reported in the mainstream press. For example, did you hear that in Japan, at the end of October, seven of 22,000 medical workers vaccinated with H1N1 had developed side effects, four of them considered serious? Or that 25 patients there had also reported side effects that included vomiting, allergic reactions and diminished consciousness?
No? Well, it's true.
Ask for the Truth
The mainstream press just keeps plugging the same old propaganda, disregarding what is actually happening.
The truth is, while the mortality rate of swine flu is extremely low, what is happening is that people are dying or suffering life-altering disabilities shortly after receiving the flu vaccine, whether it's seasonal or H1N1 - and officials accept this as the cost of doing business.
But do you?
I suggest that before you take this shot, ask your doctor to supply you with a package insert from the vaccine, and to discuss all the possible adverse reactions with you. Any health professional should be able to do this - in fact, it is part of something called "informed consent," which is required for any medical procedure, including each and every vaccination.
But just in case your doctor doesn't have the insert handy, or has forgotten about informed consent, you can find four of the five inserts here. I predict that what you learn there will not be something you read in your local newspaper.
Adverse Reactions Listed in Package Inserts
Here are just a few adverse reactions listed in the package insert from MedImmune's Intranasal "live" vaccine (the one you see being administered up children's noses on TV): Guillian-Barre syndrome
Exacerbation of symptoms of mitochondrial encephalomyopathy
Gastrointestinal disorders
Immune system disorders, including anaphylactic reaction The insert includes a disclaimer that it's not possible to "reliably estimate" the frequency of these reactions or to establish a "causal relationship" to the vaccine, but the point is, they were reported reactions that the manufacture was required to list.
Sanofi Pasteur's package insert is very interesting too, first, because it uses trials from its seasonal vaccine, Fluzone, as the comparison to its H1N1 vaccine. The reasoning for this is that they are manufactured by the same process, the insert says.
So, with that in mind, know that this insert also says that the total number of children studied for the 2003-2004 formulation of Fluzone was just 19 in the age group 6 to 23 months and only 12 for ages 24 to 36 months old!
Using that data, Sanofi reported only "mild" reactions to its vaccine. In the post-marketing of it, however, the company reported: Guillian-Barre Syndrome
Anaphylaxis
Convulsions
Vasculitis
And more... But again, since these reactions were not recorded under a carefully-controlled study with representative numbers - groups of 19 and 12 are hardly reflective of an entire population - the company doesn't have to consider these reactions as significant or even connected with the vaccine.
This is just plain criminal, especially when you consider that the package inserts also tell you that these vaccines have not been tested for safety in pregnant or nursing women!
What this amounts to is that everyone receiving these vaccines is part of a big public health experiment - one that allows officials to play up the numbers of people who don't report bad reactions, and to dismiss anything else, including deaths.
The good thing is, the H1N1 vaccine has not been mandated for the general public in the U.S. - yet. So, even if the mainstream press continues to ignore the adverse reactions, you can still be an informed consumer by doing your homework and deciding for yourself whether the risks are worth it to you.
And remember while you're doing this homework, as I've said before, it is the state of your immune system that determines whether or not you will get sick if you come in contact with this virus. The virus itself has no special powers to kill or maim.
More Vaccines - and Their Adverse Effects - Coming
Learning everything you can about vaccines will become increasingly essential in the coming months and years, as vaccines are becoming all the rave, and more lucrative than drugs.
The pharmaceutical industry, with government officials' blessings, are planning to roll out vaccines for diseases such as Alzheimer's and AIDS. They're even working on vaccines for addictions to cocaine and nicotine, as if they were infectious diseases!
Then again, we're talking about neither logic nor true medicine here. We're talking about dollars and cents and satisfying shareholders.
In fact, as reported by MSNBC, vaccines now are viewed as "a crucial path to growth," due to lagging prescription drug sales. The article goes on to say: "Investment in partnerships and other deals to develop and manufacture vaccines has been on a tear - and accelerating since the swine flu pandemic began. Billions in government grants are bringing better, faster ways to develop and manufacture vaccines. Rising worldwide emphasis on preventive health care, plus the advent of the first multibillion-dollar vaccines, have further boosted their appeal.
While prescription drug sales are forecast to rise by a third in five years, vaccine sales should double, from $19 billion last year to $39 billion in 2013, according to market research firm Kalorama Information. That's five times the $8 billion in vaccine sales in 2004.
Success on some vaccines in development, particularly for Alzheimer's and AIDS, likely would bring billions a year in sales." Emphasis on preventive health care... my foot.
This is one of the most crucial problems with our health care system. Many conventionally trained physicians, not to mention politicians and elected health officials, have NO IDEA what preventive health care is all about.
Vaccines certainly do not qualify.
Just five years ago, pharmaceutical companies abandoned the vaccine business in droves. Now, with the fresh lure of massive profits, companies are flocking back. Multi-million dollar government grants are already being used to test out new technology for the next pandemic, including the "holy grail of flu vaccines" - a universal flu vaccine that targets some part of the flu virus that doesn't change year to year.
Are Ukraine's 'Black Death' cases the result of IMF Loans? F. William Engdahl Global Research Thu, 26 Nov 2009 07:11 EST
The Ukraine Government has declared a state of emergency and medical examiners describe results of autopsies on dead patients in chilling terms that recall the Black Death descriptions from the Fourteenth Century in Venice. While everyone is calling it "Swine Flu" and the WHO using it to spread their panic and untested vaccines, there is strong evidence that the deaths - almost all from pulmonary conditions - are from a rising incidence of Tuberculosis (TB). Now a Cambridge University study shows that there is a close correlation between rise in TB and the severe austerity measures that go with IMF loans. Are the Ukraine 'Black Death' cases the result of Ukraine's IMF loans?
While attention is turned to the non-proven H1N1 as cause of a recent wave of illnesses and even some deaths across Ukraine, few if any have bothered to look at the public health consequences of Ukraine's program with the International Monetary Fund. When the global financial crisis erupted into a systemic crisis in September 2008, one of the countries most devastated was Ukraine, where foreign lending had created an untenable speculative bubble that burst with a vengeance leaving the Ukraine currency falling like a stone and bankruptcies everywhere in one of Europe's poorest countries.
In November 2008 Ukraine applied to the IMF in Washington for an emergency $16.4 billion loan. The loan is being spoon-fed to the government in chunks of several billion to insure the Government follows the strict IMF "conditionalities" demanded by Washington. The purpose of the IMF loan is explicitly to stabilize the Ukraine currency and support the Central Bank, and not to help the economy or the population come through the crisis. The IMF argues that if the currency restabilizes, then foreign investors will return. That is a fairy tale at best. But in the process, the IMF is demanding savage cuts in pension benefits, public services including health services.
There is where the link between IMF loans and an explosion of TB cases converge.
Cambridge study shows link
A major study undertaken by Britain's respected Cambridge University establishes a clear link between IMF conditions and sharp rises in incidence of TB, a disease related to severe poverty conditions and lack of public health infrastructure and hence most common in Africa or poorer Asian regions.
In every case when the IMF makes emergency loans, it demands a "structural adjustment program." In every case the medicine is the same: The target government must impose severe cuts in spending, including spending for public health and pensions to "control inflation." Some critics have suggested the IMF be renamed the "Infant Mortality Fund" as the practice has been repeated with predictable results so often in African and other countries.
A study by David Stuckler at the University of Cambridge has now analyzed TB data in 21 countries in central and eastern Europe that were involved with the IMF for different amounts of time after 1989 and borrowed different amounts of money. The study was published in the journal PLoS Medicine. [1] It statistically controlled for numerous other factors that affect tuberculosis rates, including the prevalence of AIDS, inflation rates, urbanization, unemployment rates, the age of the population and improved surveillance.
They found these IMF countries had significantly more TB cases, and more deaths from TB than countries without IMF loans. The countries started with TB death rates averaging six per 100,000 of the population. This rose to 12 per 100,000 by 2003 in countries with IMF loans, fully double the rate, but sank in countries without them.
"We found TB rates were falling or steady before the IMF programmes began, and rose during the IMF programs," then fell again afterwards to almost the rate they had been before the IMF, says Stuckler.
The team found that death rates rose almost 1% for each percent increase in the size of the IMF loan, and by another 4% for each year of IMF involvement.
The TB effect was not associated with other lenders, such as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which invests in Eastern Europe.
The reason the Cambridge scientists found was that IMF loans uniquely demand less government spending, fewer doctors per person, and a cut of nearly half in the number of people with TB that received Directly Observed Therapy, or DOTS.
DOTS is the World Health Organisation's recommended method of managing TB, in which health personnel directly ensure that TB outpatients always take their medicine. The technique requires investment in public health staff.
TB actually kills quickly when patients do not get proper medical supervision, so death rates are likely an indicator of rapidly declining care, not of events years previously.
The IMF claims the increase in TB was related to the fall of the Soviet Union. But, if that was so, says Stuckler, the effect should have been similar across the old Soviet block, instead of being linked closely to IMF involvement. In Slovenia, which got no IMF loan, he points out, TB didn't worsen at all.
Ukraine conditions
The conditions demanded by the IMF in Ukraine since November 2008 are precisely the same as those in earlier Eastern European and former Soviet Union countries in the early 1990s measured by Cambridge researchers.
On November 17 this year, the IMF in Washington decided to withhold the next $3.4 billion tranche of its Ukraine loan claiming that the Government and Parliament failed to sufficiently cut social spending!
The governments of France and the UK told a meeting earlier this month of EU foreign ministers in Brussels that they demanded "strict conditionality" before approving the release of the next portion of IMF money to Ukraine. Cynically, French Secretary of State for European Affairs, Pierre Lellouche stated, "There's real disappointment among many of Ukraine's friends over the inability to enact reforms." Lellouche made clear what he meant: Ukraine will have to slash public spending and "undertake serious steps to pay back its debt and demonstrate that it is a reliable partner for investors." The problem is many of those "investors" come to plunder and leave.
IMF demands have become politicized in the heated Ukranian election battle for early 2010. Prime Minister Julia Tymoshenko has agreed to IMF demands for cuts in public wages and pensions. Her rival President Viktor Yushchenko has rescinded the cuts, putting the IMF loan on hold.
Ukraine's biggest strategic companies are saddled with crippling debts, including the state gas company which has struggled to meet Russian gas payments, only just managing a $500million payment this month. The global economic crisis has caused the country's budget deficit to balloon, its inefficient Soviet-era factories to stagger, and international rating agencies have rushed to downgrade their view of economic prospects. The national currency, the hryvnia, has plunged by 60 per cent in a year, foreign direct investment has slowed to a trickle, and bad bank loans have multiplied.
Under the latest IMF loan Ukraine has been forced to slash spending on public health, close hospitals and fire doctors and health professionals. At the same time pensions have been cut or even suspended for lack of funds.
At the same time the IMF has demanded hefty tax hikes to balance the budget, something not even OECD economies are doing and something which only insures more impoverishment and unemployment. The tax hikes "will help to address the fiscal situation. It is now important that measures are taken to prevent the projected deficit of the pension fund," Ceyla Pazarbasioglu, the IMF mission chief to Ukraine has said in a statement reported by the Wall Street Journal. GDP has fallen in Ukraine by 25-30% in the first two months of 2009 year on year.
The IMF has demanded Ukraine "balance" its pension funds, i.e. slash benefits to retired citizens, something few Western countries dare to do. Unemployment has doubled since September 2008 to 1 million people jobless. There are protests at the situation. Foreign banks control some 20% of Ukraine's banking. If people wish to find the true "swine" source of rising TB deaths in Ukraine, they perhaps should look to the effects of the IMF loans on the health standards of the population and not to an unproven hypothetical so-called Swine Flu H1N1 virus.
Polio Vaccine Blamed for Outbreaks in Nigeria Posted by: Dr. Mercola December 01 2009
Polio is spreading in Nigeria -- and health officials say in some cases it's caused by the very vaccine used to fight the paralyzing disease.
The World Health Organization has issued a warning that this particular virus might extend beyond Africa. More than 120 Nigerian children have been paralyzed this year -- twice the number afflicted in 2008.
Nigeria and many other nations use an oral polio vaccine because it's cheaper, easier, and protects entire communities. But it's made from a live polio virus which carries a risk of causing polio. In even rarer instances, the virus in the vaccine can mutate into a deadlier version that ignites new outbreaks. Genetic analysis has proven that such mutated viruses have caused at least seven separate outbreaks in Nigeria.
Reality
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February 22, 2010
Reality
By Mother Martha Rose Crow
For a long time, I have been aware that we are living in an illusion.
Aldous Huxley said it best in ...
