Health News Articles
Excerpts of Key Health News Articles in Major Media
Below are many highly revealing excerpts of important health news articles from the mainstream media suggesting a cover-up. Links are provided to the full articles on major media websites. If any link fails to function,
click here. These health news articles are listed by order of importance. For the same articles by date posted,
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Note: For an index to revealing excerpts of news articles on several dozen engaging topics,
click here.
Reborn
2006-09-12, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2006/sep/12/health.healthandwellbeing
We have always been told there is no recovery from persistent vegetative state - doctors can only make a sufferer's last days as painless as possible. But is that really the truth? Across three continents, severely brain-damaged patients are awake and talking after taking ... a sleeping pill. Brain-damaged patients are reporting remarkable improvements after taking a pill that should make them fall asleep but that, instead, appears to be waking up cells in their brains that were thought to have been dead. No one yet knows exactly how a sleeping pill could wake up the seemingly dead brain cells, but [researchers] have a hypothesis. After the brain has suffered severe trauma, a chemical known as Gaba (gamma amino butyric acid) closes down brain functions in order to conserve energy and help cells survive. However, in such a long-term dormant state, the receptors in the brain cells that respond to Gaba become hypersensitive, and as Gaba is a depressant, it causes a persistent vegetative state. It is thought that during this process the receptors are in some way changed or deformed so that they respond to zolpidem differently from normal receptors, thus breaking the hold of Gaba. This could mean that instead of sending patients to sleep as usual, it makes dormant areas of the brain function again and some comatose patients wake up.
Note: For lots more on key health issues from reliable sources, click here.
Big Tobacco Lied to Public, Judge Says
2006-08-18, Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/17/AR20060817007...
A federal judge ruled yesterday that tobacco companies have violated civil racketeering laws, concluding that cigarette makers conspired for decades to deceive the public about the dangers of their product. But U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler said that under a 2005 appellate court ruling, she could not impose billions of dollars in penalties that had been sought by the Justice Department in its civil racketeering suit. In the opinion...Kessler wrote that there is "overwhelming evidence" [that the industry] conspired to violate, and indeed violated, federal racketeering laws. "In short," she wrote, "defendants have marketed and sold their lethal product with zeal, with deception, with a single-minded focus on their financial success, and without regard for the human tragedy or social costs that success exacted. Over the course of more than 50 years, defendants lied, misrepresented and deceived the American public, including smokers and the young people...about the devastating health effects of smoking and environmental tobacco smoke." Kessler added that the companies "suppressed research, they destroyed documents, they manipulated the use of nicotine so as to increase and perpetuate addiction...and they abused the legal system in order to achieve their goal -- to make money." The Justice Department lawsuit originally sought $280 billion. But the U.S. Court of Appeals [ruled] a company could not be forced to turn over past profits as a way of preventing future misconduct. The Justice Department subsequently proposed a $130 billion penalty to pay for anti-smoking programs, but...it scaled that back to a total of $14 billion.
Sickened Iraq Vets Cite Depleted Uranium
2006-08-13, ABC News/Associated Press
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=2307268
A shell coated with depleted uranium pierces a tank like a hot knife through butter. It also leaves behind a fine radioactive dust with a half-life of 4.5 billion years. Depleted uranium is the garbage left from producing enriched uranium for nuclear weapons and energy plants. At Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., [Herbert Reed] ran into a buddy from his unit. And another, and another. They began to talk. [They] all have depleted uranium in their urine. The veterans, using their positive results as evidence, have sued the U.S. Army, claiming officials knew the hazards of depleted uranium, but concealed the risks. The Department of Defense says depleted uranium is powerful and safe. Military research on mice shows that depleted uranium can enter the bloodstream and come to rest in bones, the brain, kidneys and lymph nodes. Other research in rats shows that DU can result in cancerous tumors and genetic mutations. Fifteen years after it was first used in battle, there is only one U.S. government study monitoring veterans exposed to depleted uranium. Number of soldiers in the survey: 32. Depleted uranium falls into the quagmire of Gulf War Syndrome, from which no treatment has emerged. About 30 percent of the 700,000 men and women who served in the first Gulf War still suffer [this] baffling array of symptoms. Depleted uranium has long been suspected as a possible contributor. It took more than 25 years for the Pentagon to acknowledge that Agent Orange...was linked to [major disease and] sufferings. It took 40 years for the military to compensate sick World War II vets exposed to massive blasts of radiation during tests of the atomic bomb.
Note: Why isn't the media reporting more on this health disaster? For lots more on how veterans suffer from corporate and governmental denial and manipulations, see what a highly decorated U.S. General has to say on the suffering of soldiers at http://www.WantToKnow.info/warcoverup. For an amazingly revealing documentary with interviews from top sources on the depleted uranium cover-up, click here.
AIDS Drug Maker to Pay $704M in Settlement
2005-10-17, ABC/Associated Press
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=1223871
Serono Laboratories agreed Monday to pay $704 million and plead guilty to federal conspiracy charges that it increased the market for the AIDS drug Serostim by offering kickbacks to doctors and manipulating a test for AIDS patients. Eighty-five percent of prescriptions written for Serostim, accounting for roughly $615 million in sales, were unnecessary. The cost of many of those prescriptions, $21,000 for 12 weeks of treatment, was paid by Medicaid, the joint federal-state health program for the poor, and other government insurance plans. Serono offered doctors free trips to the south of France in return for agreeing to write up to 30 new prescriptions for Serostim. The company also conspired to introduce a test for AIDS wasting, despite not having FDA approval. The test diagnosed AIDS wasting even without weight loss. Monday's settlement is the latest in a series of whistleblower claims that have resulted in more than $3 billion in payments from drug companies in recent years.
Note: For lots more on this vital topic: http://www.WantToKnow.info/healthcoverup
'The Future of Food'
2005-09-30, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/09/30/DDGHOEVICB1.DTL#f...
Food insiders may already know the disturbing facts highlighted by this film, but the general public is in for a shock at how corporations are using misleading campaigns -- and scare tactics -- to ensure that people around the world become dependent on genetically modified food. Monsanto and other corporate behemoths are motivated (not surprisingly) by profits, according to farmers, academics and others who talk to documentarian Deborah Koons Garcia. Canadian farmer Percy Schmeiser was targeted by Monsanto's lawyers because some of the corporation's patented seedlings were found on his property. Schmeiser didn't plant them there; wind blew the insecticide-resistant seeds onto his farm from another farm, or the seeds fell off a passing truck. Monsanto didn't care, ordering Schmeiser to kill all his family's seed because they'd potentially been contaminated by its patented product. Schmeiser ... fought Monsanto, spending his retirement money against the sort of legal attack that has already scared farmers throughout North America. Incredibly, a judge ruled in favor of Monsanto. Garcia's documentary shows how much the U.S. federal government favors these corporations, especially through lax oversight (the [FDA] and the Department of Agriculture seem to rubber-stamp every corporate project having to do with genetically modified food). In the past 20 years, Monsanto's alumni have occupied the high reaches of American power. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, for example, did legal work for the corporation, while Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was president of a Monsanto subsidiary.
Note: To view this highly educational film, click here. To read another excellent review of this important documentary, click here.
A child's return from autism
2005-05-25, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/05/25/BAGU0CU2K71.DTL
A Lafayette couple, certain that chelation therapy has helped their autistic son, stepped squarely into the controversy surrounding the causes of autism and its treatment Tuesday as they joined 150 other parents in launching an international support group that will aggressively promote the treatment. The Handleys are now among a small minority of parents -- who, believing that the autism was caused by the mercury in thimerosal, a preservative that was routinely used in vaccines until recently -- are treating their children with chelation therapy, a lotion or pill that strips the body of heavy metals. It has been used for decades to detoxify people contaminated in industrial accidents, but no studies have proved whether it is an effective treatment for autism. For Jamie's parents, the proof they need is in front of them: Jamie, now 3 years old and several months into treatment, is plump and playing baseball. His smile has returned. The Handleys said the new support group, Generation Rescue, www.generationrescue.com, will offer information on chelation therapy and connect parents with those who can help.
Note: For why the some powerful people may be covering up this important information, click here.
America's Deep, Dark Secret
2004-05-02, CBS 60 Minutes
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/04/29/60minutes/main614728.shtml
Starting in the early 1900s, hundreds of thousands of American children were warehoused in institutions by state governments. And the federal government did nothing to stop it. The justification? The kids had been labeled feeble-minded, and were put away in conditions that can only be described as unspeakable. A large proportion of the kids who were locked up were not retarded at all. They were simply poor, uneducated kids with no place to go, who ended up in institutions like the Fernald School in Waltham, Mass. The Fernald School, and others like it, was part of a popular American movement in the early 20th century called the Eugenics movement. The idea was to separate people considered to be genetically inferior from the rest of society, to prevent them from reproducing. Eugenics is usually associated with Nazi Germany, but in fact, it started in America. Not only that, it continued here long after Hitler's Germany was in ruins. Few of the attendants [at Fernald] showed any kindness. And ... there was sexual abuse. The place was tailor made for it. The school [also] allowed them to be used as human guinea pigs. In 1994 Senate hearings, it came out that scientists from MIT had been giving radioactive oatmeal to the boys ... in a nutrition study for Quaker Oats. All they knew is that they'd been asked to join a science club. The boys were recruited with special treats [like] extra milk. “But they forgot to mention the milk was radioactive,” says David White-Lief, an attorney who worked on the state task force investigating the science club. “These experiments, because of the lack of informed consent, violated the Nuremburg Code established just 10 years earlier,” says White-Lief.
Note: The extreme racism of the Nazis was quite popular among certain groups in the U.S. For lots more on how these ideas came to pervade some groups in U.S. intelligence services, click here. For a powerful list of military and government sponsored experiments on human guinea pigs with links for verification, click here.
Plum I. Was Ready For Its Close-Up
2004-02-22, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/22/nyregion/plum-i-was-ready-for-its-close-up....
Eight months have passed since the Department of Homeland Security took over the management of Plum Island from the Agriculture Department. Last week, Homeland Security officials offered a rare glimpse into this veiled and mysterious island. The timing of the tour for a dozen journalists coincided with the publication of a new book, ''Lab 257,'' by Michael Christopher Carroll, who argues that the Plum Island laboratories have an appalling safety record and can be linked to outbreaks of Lyme disease and West Nile virus. There have long been questions about the safety of Plum Island's operations, but they became more prevalent after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Mr. Carroll, a lawyer from Bellmore, writes that in 2002 American forces in Afghanistan found a file on the Plum Island laboratory in the home of a nuclear physicist identified by American officials as an associate of Osama bin Laden. Mr. Carroll, who calls the lab a ticking biological time bomb, describes low employee morale and a decline in security after a private company took over support functions in 1991. A report from the General Accounting Office released in October also criticized security at the center, saying that officials did not control access to dangerous pathogens that could be adapted for germ warfare. The report also cited door alarms and sensors that did not work ... and insufficient background checks. Plum Island and Homeland Security officials said there have been no direct terrorist threats against the lab, which studies foot-and-mouth disease and swine fever, among other diseases.
Note: At the northernmost tip of Long Island, Plum island sits directly across from the town of Lyme, Conn., famous as the epicenter of the Lyme disease outbreak. For a powerful, multiple award-winning film showing shocking ignorance and even political corruption on the part of the medical community about the Lyme disease epidemic spreading across the US and even around the world, click here. It shows evidence that Lyme may be even the cause of many cases of ALS, Parkinson's, and Alzheimer's disease.
Biotech critics at risk : Economics calls the shots in the debate
2004-01-11, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/01/11/INGH...
Between 1999 and 2001, unbeknownst to the others, each [of four scientists] made a simple but dramatic discovery that challenged the catechism of the same powerful industry -- biotechnology -- that by then had become the handmaiden of industrial agriculture and the darling of venture capitalists. When he was the principal scientific officer of the Rowett Institute in Aberdeen, Scotland, Hungarian citizen Arpad Pusztai fed transgenically modified [GMO] potatoes to rodents in one of the few experiments that have ever tested the safety of genetically modified food. Almost immediately, the rats displayed tissue and immunological damage. After he reported his findings, which eventually underwent peer review and were published in the United Kingdom's leading medical journal, Lancet, Pusztai's home was burglarized and his research files taken. Soon thereafter, he was fired from his job at Rowett, and he has since suffered an orchestrated international campaign of discreditation. [Read full article for the other three distrubing stories of scientific suppression] These four men were not attacked because of flawed or imperfect experiments but because the findings of their work have a potential economic effect. The sad part is that the academies and other allegedly independent institutions that once defended scientific freedom and protected employees like Hayes, Chapela, Losey and Pusztai are abandoning them to the wolves of commerce, the brands of which are being engraved over the entrances to a disturbing number of university labs.
Note: Big money is clearly stifling good science and keeping the public in the dark about genetic modifications in the food we eat. To educate yourself on this most important topic, click here.
NIH Scientist Says He's Paid To Do Nothing
2003-07-04, Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6791-2003Jul3
Edward McSweegan ... has an office in Bethesda, a job title -- health scientist administrator -- and an annual salary of about $100,000. What McSweegan says he does not have -- and has not had for the last seven years -- is any real work. He was hired by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in 1988, but says his bosses transferred the research grants he administered to other workers eight years later, leaving him with occasional tasks more suitable for a typist or "gofer." McSweegan used to be NIH's program officer for Lyme disease but was removed from the post in June 1995 after a dispute over his repeated criticism of a politically influential support group for sufferers and his allegations that NIH had been too accommodating of the group. He had publicly described the Lyme Disease Foundation as "wacko" because he disagreed with its theories about the disease. The dispute led to his suspension without pay for two weeks for insubordination. According to NIH, McSweegan is director of the U.S.-Indo Vaccine Action Program, and has traveled to countries such as Russia representing the agency. He has also "produced reports and other work products." But McSweegan said he has never been told he was director of the program. McSweegan said he struggles to fill his eight-hour workdays by reading, exercising and writing fiction. He has self-published a bioterrorism thriller and a science fiction novel. But he says his six-page job description is the ultimate work of creative writing and describes his position as "a bizarre, surreal situation -- part Orwell, part Kafka and part Dilbert."
2 Paths of Bayer Drug in 80's: Riskier One Steered Overseas
2003-06-22, New York Times
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9A00E4DA1F3EF931A15...
A division of the pharmaceutical company Bayer sold millions of dollars of blood-clotting medicine for hemophiliacs -- medicine that carried a high risk of transmitting AIDS -- to Asia and Latin America in the mid-1980's while selling a new, safer product in the West. The Bayer unit, Cutter Biological, introduced its safer medicine in late February 1984 as evidence mounted that the earlier version was infecting hemophiliacs with H.I.V. Yet for over a year, the company continued to sell the old medicine overseas. Cutter officials were trying to avoid being stuck with large stores of a product. Yet even after it began selling the new product, the company kept making the old medicine for several months more. In Hong Kong and Taiwan alone, more than 100 hemophiliacs got H.I.V. after using Cutter's old medicine. Many have since died. Cutter also continued to sell the older product after February 1984 in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Japan and Argentina. While admitting no wrongdoing, Bayer and three other companies that made the concentrate have paid hemophiliacs about $600 million to settle more than 15 years of lawsuits accusing them of making a dangerous product. Federal regulators helped keep the overseas sales out of the public eye. The Food and Drug Administration's regulator of blood products, Dr. Harry M. Meyer Jr....asked that the issue be "quietly solved without alerting the Congress, the medical community and the public."
Calif. 'downer' pig ban blocked by Supreme Court
2012-01-24, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/23/MNUN1MTDBQ.DTL
California's ban on the sale of pork from "downer" pigs, those that were too feeble to walk before being slaughtered, can't be enforced because a less stringent federal law regulates slaughterhouse inspections, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously [on January 23]. State lawmakers enacted the ban in 2008 after a Humane Society video showed immobile cows being kicked, dragged, shocked and rammed with forklifts at a warehouse in San Bernardino County. Advocates said meat from those animals was more likely to be diseased. Federal law forbids the sale of meat from animals suffering from serious diseases, a ban that recent regulations extended to cattle that were unable to walk. But federal law allows meat sales from downer pigs and other nonambulatory animals, like sheep and goats, that pass federal inspection. Court challenges from meat processors and packers prevented the California law from taking effect. A federal appeals court upheld the California statute in 2010, but the Obama administration joined the National Meat Association in a successful Supreme Court appeal. The ruling dismayed the Humane Society of the United States, which has unsuccessfully lobbied Congress and the U.S. Department of Agriculture for nationwide rules like California's. "The meat industry has the USDA and Congress in its tight grips," said the society's president, Wayne Pacelle.
Note: For lots more from major media sources on corporate and government corruption, click here and here.
Parents delaying, skipping recommended vaccines
2011-10-03, MSNBC/Reuters
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37310006/ns/health
More than one in 10 parents use an "alternative" vaccination schedule for their young children, including refusing vaccines altogether, according to a U.S. survey ... from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The Internet survey included 748 parents of kids between the ages of six months and six years. Of those, 13 percent said they used some type of vaccination schedule that differed from the CDC recommendations. That included refusing some vaccines or delaying vaccines until kids were older -- mostly because parents thought that "seemed safer." In addition, two percent of parents refused any vaccination altogether, according to findings published in Pediatrics. Even among parents who did follow the recommended schedule, about one-quarter said in the survey they thought delaying vaccines would be safer or that the expert-backed schedule wasn't the best one to follow. Parents who skip or delay vaccines typically cite safety concerns, researchers said.
Note: For many major media articles posing serious questions on the safety of many vaccines, click here. For a powerfully revealing article showing just how dangerous vaccines can be to children's health, see the excellent article by the respected Dr. Mercola available here.
'Wi-fi refugees' shelter in West Virginia mountains
2011-09-12, BBC News
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-14887428
[Diane] Schou is one of an estimated 5% of Americans who believe they suffer from Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (EHS), which they say is caused by exposure to electromagnetic fields typically created by mobile phones, wi-fi and other electronic equipment. Symptoms range from acute headaches, skin burning, muscle twitching and chronic pain. Diane believes her illness was triggered by emissions from a mobile phone mast. New research by scientists at Louisiana State University and published by the International Journal of Neuroscience, claims to show that EHS can be caused by low frequency electromagnetic fields found in the environment. "The study provides direct evidence that linking human symptoms with environmental factors, in this case EMF," says Dr Andrew Marino, a neurology professor who led the study. "It's a watershed in that regard. There have been no previous studies that scientifically assess whether electromagnetic fields in the environment could produce human symptoms. And the symptoms matter because they are the first steps that show how EMFs produce human disease."
Note: For key reports from reliable sources on important health issues, click here.
A matter of risk: Radiation, drinking water and deception
2011-09-03, KHOU-TV (Houston, TX)
http://www.khou.com/community/A-Matter-of-Risk--Radiation-Drinking-Water-and-...
For the past year the KHOU 11 News I-Team has been investigating the quality of the tap water in Texas. What they found was surprising: That many of the state's communities have a real problem with radioactive contamination in their local drinking water. However, the team also discovered that many of those consuming it didn't know they were also being exposed to a health risk. State scientists found some of Texas’ water could pose a 1 in 400 cancer risk. Neighborhoods across the state have been getting illegal amounts of a particularly damaging form of radiation, an exposure that some say was “covered-up” by Texas officials. Water with under-the-legal-limit amounts of radiation still might not be “safe”. Concentrated "bursts" of radiation could be released into your home ... from water pipes that become "a hidden risk" themselves.
Note: For key reports from reliable sources on government corruption, click here.
Drug deaths now outnumber traffic fatalities in U.S., data show
2011-09-01, Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-drugs-epidemic-20110918,0,5517691.story
Propelled by an increase in prescription narcotic overdoses, drug deaths now outnumber traffic fatalities in the United States, a Times analysis of government data has found. Drugs exceeded motor vehicle accidents as a cause of death in 2009, killing at least 37,485 people nationwide, according to preliminary data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While most major causes of preventable death are declining, drugs are an exception. The death toll has doubled in the last decade, now claiming a life every 14 minutes. By contrast, traffic accidents have been dropping for decades because of huge investments in auto safety. Public health experts have used the comparison to draw attention to the nation's growing prescription drug problem, which they characterize as an epidemic. This is the first time that drugs have accounted for more fatalities than traffic accidents since the government started tracking drug-induced deaths in 1979. Fueling the surge in deaths are prescription pain and anxiety drugs that are potent, highly addictive and especially dangerous when combined with one another or with other drugs or alcohol. Such drugs now cause more deaths than heroin and cocaine combined.
Note: For key reports from reliable sources on important health issues, click here.
Antibiotics: Feinstein bill seeks to protect humans
2011-06-18, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/06/17/MNT91JVE15.DTL
California Sen. Dianne Feinstein renewed a decadelong push [on June 17] to phase out the routine use of antibiotics in livestock, hogs and poultry. Government officials have warned that increasing antibiotic resistance in humans poses a serious public health threat. In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration has confirmed that 80 percent of all antibiotics are given to farm animals in low doses intended to stave off disease in large livestock operations. Many of the antibiotics are the same ones used to treat human diseases. Scientists have linked the practice to rising antibiotic resistance in humans, along with the overprescription of antibiotics by doctors. Feinstein's legislation, opposed by the National Pork Producers Council, would phase out the use of antibiotics considered "medically important" to humans and require new applications for animal antibiotics to prove that they do not endanger human health. The bill would permit antibiotics to treat sick animals. The California Democrat's bill is an identical version of a House bill, HR965, the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act, by Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., a microbiologist on a crusade to eliminate low-dose antibiotic use in livestock.
Note: For key reports on health issues from reliable sources, click here.
Raw milk raids leave sour taste
2011-05-30, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/05/29/EDB11JMIAV.DTL
The government is conducting armed raids on dairies that sell raw milk, [yet it allows us] to buy food that is so toxic ... it has to carry "safe handling instructions." Factory farms that knowingly produce chicken and eggs teeming with salmonella are not considered a threat to public health, but an impeccably clean organic raw milk dairy is treated like a meth lab. I used to think the "food freedom" activists were being paranoid about this stuff. Not anymore. The federal government is broke, but we're hiring 18,000 food police, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. How does this happen? The former CEO of genetically modified organism powerhouse Monsanto is now our secretary of agriculture and head of food safety. Talk about the fox guarding the henhouse. Tell your representatives to defund the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2010, and buy organic and local. While you still can.
Note: For more on this bizarre development, click here and here.
Can you imagine cancer away?
2011-03-03, CNN News
http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/03/03/ep.seidler.cancer.mind.body
By now, you likely know David Seidler, who won an Oscar on Sunday for best original screenplay for "The King's Speech," was a stutterer just like King George VI, whose battle with the speech disorder is portrayed in the film. What you might not know is that Seidler, 73, suffered from cancer, just like the king did. But unlike his majesty, Seidler survived the cancer, and he says he did so because he used the same vivid imagination he employed to write his award-winning script. Seidler says he visualized his cancer away. "I know it sounds awfully Southern California and woo-woo," he admits when he describes the visualization techniques he used when his bladder cancer was diagnosed nearly six years ago. "But that's what happened." Seidler says when he found out his cancer had returned, he visualized a "lovely, clean healthy bladder" for two weeks, and the cancer disappeared. He's been cancer-free for more than five years. Whether you can imagine away cancer, or any other disease, has been hotly debated for years. One camp of doctors will tell you that they've seen patients do it, and that a whole host of studies supports the mind-body connection. Other doctors, just as well-respected, will tell you the notion is preposterous, and there's not a single study to prove it really works. Seidler isn't concerned about studies. He says all he knows is that for him, visualization worked.
Note: The article goes on to quote a couple doctors who explain how chemically hope and visualization can cause the changes in the body's chemistry which could lead to spontaneous remission in cancer. For other fascinating major media articles listing potential cancer cures, click here.
Stanford faculty still taking drug firms' money
2010-12-20, San Francisco Chronicle/ProPublica
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/12/20/MNB51GSBQO.DTL
Last year, Stanford banned its physicians from giving paid promotional talks for pharmaceutical companies. One thing it didn't do was make sure its faculty followed that rule. A ProPublica investigation ["Dollars for Docs"] found that more than a dozen of the school's doctors were paid speakers in apparent violation of Stanford policy - two of them were paid six figures since last year. Conflict-of-interest policies have become increasingly important as academic medical centers worry that promotional talks undermine the credibility not only of the physicians giving them, but also of the institutions they represent. Yet when it comes to enforcing the policies, universities have allowed permissive interpretations and relied on the honor system. That approach isn't working. Many physicians are in apparent violation, and ignorance or confusion about the rules is widespread. As a result, some faculty physicians stay on the industry lecture circuit, where they can net tens of thousands of dollars in additional income. Critics of the practice say delivering talks for drug companies is incompatible with teaching future generations of physicians. That's because drug firms typically pick the topic of the lecture, train the speakers and require them to use company-provided presentation slides.
Note: "Dollars for Docs" is an ongoing investigation into the influence of drug company marketing payments on medical providers. To search for a doctor in the database, click here.
Key Health News Articles in Major Media