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Let children be children
2007-06-03, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2007/06/03/...

We've just finished test time again in the schools of California. The mad frenzy of testing infects everyone from second grade through high school. Because of the rigors and threats of No Child Left Behind, schools are desperate to increase their scores. As the requirements become more stringent, we have completely lost sight of the children taking these tests. For 30 years as a teacher of primary kids, I have operated on the Any Fool Can See principle. And any fool can see that the spread between what is developmentally appropriate for 7- and 8-year-old children and what is demanded of them on these tests is widening. A lot of what used to be in the first-grade curriculum is now taught in kindergarten. Is your 5-year-old stressed out? Perhaps this is why. Currently, 2 1/2 uninterrupted hours are supposed to be devoted to language arts and reading every morning. I ask you, what adult could sustain an interest in one subject for that long? The result of this has been a decline in math scores at our school. The teaching of art is all but a subversive activity. Teachers whisper, "I taught art today!" as if they would be reported to the Reading Police for stealing time from the reading curriculum. The present emphasis on testing and test scores is sucking the soul out of the primary school experience for both teachers and children. So much time is spent on testing and measuring reading speed that the children are losing the joy that comes but once in their lifetime. The teachers around them, under constant pressure to raise those test scores, radiate urgency and pressure. They are not enjoying their jobs. The great unspoken secret of primary school is that a lot of what is going on is arrant nonsense, and it's getting worse. Any fool can see.

Michael Moore blasts Bush over federal probe
2007-05-11, MSNBC/Associated Press
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18615496

Filmmaker Michael Moore has asked the Bush administration to call off an investigation of his trip to Cuba to get treatment for ailing Sept. 11 rescue workers for a segment in his upcoming health-care expose, “Sicko.” Moore, who made the hit documentary “Fahrenheit 9/11” ... said in a letter to U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on Friday that the White House may have opened the investigation for political reasons. “For five and a half years, the Bush administration has ignored and neglected the heroes of the 9/11 community,” Moore said in the letter. “I understand why the Bush administration is coming after me — I have tried to help the very people they refuse to help, but until George W. Bush outlaws helping your fellow man, I have broken no laws and I have nothing to hide.” Harvey Weinstein, whose Weinstein Co. is releasing “Sicko,” told The Associated Press the movie is a “healing film” that could bring opponents together over the ills of America’s health-care system. “This time, we didn’t want the fight, because the movie unites both sides,” Weinstein said. “We’ve shown the movie to Republicans. Both sides of the bench love the film." Moore won an Academy Award for best documentary with his 2002 gun-control film “Bowling for Columbine” and scolded Bush in his Oscar acceptance speech as the war in Iraq was just getting under way. The investigation has given master promoter Moore another jolt of publicity just before the release of one of his films.

Note: WantToKnow.info founder Fred Burks was hit with a $7,500 fine for a 10-day vacation to Cuba in 1999. For some strange reason, his was the first Cuba travel case prosecuted. He has taken it to court, where the case is still undecided. For more, including a link to a Los Angeles Times article on his case, click here.

UK radiation jump blamed on Iraq shells
2006-02-19, London Times
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2047373,00.html

Radiation detectors in Britain recorded a fourfold increase in uranium levels in the atmosphere after the “shock and awe” bombing campaign against Iraq. Environmental scientists who uncovered the figures through freedom of information laws say it is evidence that depleted uranium from the shells was carried by wind currents to Britain. Government officials, however, say the sharp rise in uranium detected by radiation monitors in Berkshire was a coincidence and probably came from local sources. Each detector recorded a significant rise in uranium levels during the Gulf war bombing campaign in March 2003. The reading from a park in Reading was high enough for the Environment Agency to be alerted. “This research shows that rather than remaining near the target as claimed by the military, depleted uranium weapons contaminate both locals and whole populations hundreds to thousands of miles away,” [Liverpool University's Chris Busby] said. Busby’s report shows that within nine days of the start of the Iraq war on March 19, 2003, higher levels of uranium were picked up on five sites in Berkshire. On two occasions, levels exceeded the threshold at which the Environment Agency must be informed, though within safety limits. The report says weather conditions over the war period showed a consistent flow of air from Iraq northwards.

Note: For more on the depleted uranium cover-up: http://www.WantToKnow.info/050405depleteduranium

Hunt for New Flu: Looking for Bugs in All the Wrong Places
2005-11-08, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/08/science/08flu.html?ex=1289106000&en=8c0ba3f...

Researchers...scratch their heads over the weird genetic sequence of the 1918 flu virus. Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger, a molecular pathologist at the Armed Forces Institute of Technology [said that] the 1918 virus appears to be a bird flu virus. But if it is from a bird, it is not a bird anyone has studied before. It is not like the A(H5N1) strain of bird flus in Asia, which has sickened at least 116 people, and killed 60. It is not like the influenza viruses that infect fowl in North America. Yet many researchers believe that the 1918 virus, which caused the worst infectious disease epidemic in human history, is a bird flu virus. And if so, it is the only one that has ever been known to cause a human pandemic. That, Dr. Taubenberger said, gives rise to a question. Are scientists looking for the next pandemic flu virus in all the wrong places? Birds, Dr. Slemons said, do not have much of an immune response to influenza, and so there is no particular pressure for the virus to mutate. He said birds are chronically infected with lots of flu viruses at once, and all the viruses coexist peacefully. Some experts like Dr. Peter Palese of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York say the A(H5N1) flu viruses are a false alarm. He notes that studies of serum collected in 1992 from people in rural China indicated that millions of people there had antibodies to the A(H5N1) strain. That means they had been infected with an H5N1 bird virus and recovered. Despite that, and the fact that those viruses have been circulating in China more than a dozen years, almost no human-to-human spread has occurred. "The virus has been around for more than a dozen years, but it hasn't jumped into the human population," Dr. Palese said. "I don't think it has the capability of doing it."

Selling Sickness to the Well
2005-08-02, MSNBC News
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8789159/site/newsweek/

A new book looks at how pharmaceutical companies are using aggressive marketing campaigns to turn more people into patients. In their new book, “Selling Sickness: How the World’s Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All Into Patients”, Ray Moynihan and Alan Cassels examine how the drug industry has transformed the way we think about physical and mental health and turned more and more of us each year into customers. Moynihan...a regular contributor to the British Medical Journal [discusses] how -- and why -- drug makers have begun targeting people who aren’t sick. The so-called preventives are where the big money are: like the bone-density drugs or the cholesterol [-lowering] drugs. Increasingly we’re seeing the marketing shift to those types of drugs. People talk about the "worried well." There are many ways in which the drug companies target those people. There’s an informal alliance between the drug companies and aspects of the medical profession and aspects of the patient advocacy world who all seem to have interests in defining more and more people as ill. Americans make up less than 5 percent of the world’s population but the U.S. makes up...half of total spending on drugs.

US regulator suppresses vital data on prescription drugs on sale in Britain
2005-06-12, The Independent (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health_medical/story.jsp?story=646243

Despite calls for more transparency after revelations about the side effects of ibuprofen, the FDA has withheld 28 pages of information on a new wave of painkillers. Vital data on prescription medicines found in millions of British homes has been suppressed by the powerful US drug regulators, even though the information could potentially save lives. An investigation by The Independent on Sunday shows that, under pressure from the pharmaceutical industry, the American Food and Drug Administration routinely conceals information it considers commercially sensitive, leaving medical specialists unable to assess the true risks. Dr Peter Juni, one of the team of Swiss investigators who helped to expose the risk of the new-generation drugs, claims his efforts were obstructed by the FDA. "Too often the FDA saw and continues to see the pharmaceutical industry as its customers, a vital source of funding for its activities, and not as a sector of society in need of strong regulation."

Fighting for the future of food
2004-11-07, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/11/07/LVG709K7MV1.DTL

"Just about everybody is pretty serious about their chow," says Deborah Koons Garcia, enjoying the understatement. No matter how serious they are, though, Garcia knows most people don't realize that genetically engineered foods have quietly slipped into much of the American food supply, mostly from corn and canola. They're in an estimated 60 percent of all processed foods. "We are at a crossroads," says Garcia. She's spent the last three years ... making "The Future of Food," a documentary about GMO (genetically modified organism) foods. "Someone needed to make this film, because if this technology isn't challenged and if this corporatization of our whole food system isn't stopped, at some point it will be too late," says Garcia. "It became clear that GMOs are really a much bigger issue ... And it was really clear that there hadn't been a really good film that told the whole story from the cellular, from the microscopic level, all the way up to the global," Garcia says. Her 90-minute documentary ... expresses a strong point of view against letting new life forms loose on the land without long-term testing of the health effects and real government controls, especially labeling of foods. Garcia threads a clear path through the history, science and politics of GMO foods to a clear call for action.

Note: To view this highly educational film, which may encourage you to change your eating habits, click here.

Ancient remedy 'shrinks cancer'
2004-08-11, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3555566.stm

An ancient native American treatment for cancer has been shown to have a beneficial effect despite scepticism from the medical establishment. Chaparral, an evergreen desert shrub, has long been used by native Americans to treat cancer, colds, wounds, bronchitis, warts, and ringworm. But experts dismissed its worth, and warned it could be dangerous. Now researchers at the Medical University of South Carolina have shown an extract may shrink some tumours. Chaparral tea was widely used in the US as an alternative anti-cancer agent from the late 1950s to the 1970s. However, the American Cancer Society said there was no proof that it was an effective treatment for cancer - or any other disease. And the US Food and Drug Administration warned against its use after research showed it could damage the liver and the kidneys. However, initial results from the latest study show that an extract of the shrub appears not only to be safe, but to have a positive effect. The researchers tested a refined extract taken from chaparral called M4N. They injected it into the tumours of eight patients with advanced head and neck cancer that had not responded to other forms of treatment. The results were encouraging - patients seemed to tolerate it well, and there was no evidence of the serious liver damage previously associated with chaparral use. The study also produced some evidence that the extract had begun to shrink the tumours.

Note: Some believe that because cancer treatment brings huge profits, viable treatments which are inexpensive are strongly suppressed. For reliable evidence on this, click here and here.

Mousepox 'Superbug' Test Riles
2003-11-01, CBS News/Associated Press
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/11/01/attack/main581311.shtml

A research team backed by a federal grant has created a genetically engineered mousepox virus designed to evade vaccines, underscoring biotechnology's deadly potential and stirring debate over whether such research plays into the hands of terrorists. The team at Saint Louis University, led by Mark Buller, created the superbug to figure out how to defeat it. Buller spliced a gene known to suppress the immune system into the mousepox virus, then injected the combined strand into vaccinated mice. All of them died. The research highlights a contentious discussion among scientists and security experts: Does publication of such work help or hinder the biodefense effort? Should such studies be conducted at all? When Buller presented his results last week at an international biodefense conference, it prompted debate. Some feared that publication of such information, regardless of whether scientists' intentions are altruistic, could help terrorists create biological weapons laced with genetically modified superbugs. Such germs are created by splicing drug-resistant genes in viruses normally defeated by vaccines. Alibek, a director of George Mason University's National Center for Biodefense, believes Buller's work and similar research should be confidential to impede terrorists and rogue nations from acquiring knowledge about genetically engineered bioweapons. Buller counters that publicizing such work will deter terrorists by showing that scientists can build defenses against souped-up bioweapons. Buller also believes scientists must genetically engineer pathogens to understand how to defeat them.

Mistakes in Scientific Studies Surge
2011-08-10, Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB100014240527023036271045764118506665820...

It was the kind of study that made doctors around the world sit up and take notice: Two popular high-blood-pressure drugs were found to be much better in combination than either alone. Unfortunately, it wasn't true. Six and a half years later, the prestigious medical journal the Lancet retracted the paper, citing "serious concerns" about the findings. The damage was done. Doctors by then had given the drug combination to well over 100,000 patients. Instead of protecting them from kidney problems, as the study said the drug combo could do, it left them more vulnerable to potentially life-threatening side effects, later studies showed. Today, "tens of thousands" of patients are still on the dual therapy, according to research firm SDI. When a study is retracted, "it can be hard to make its effects go away," says Sheldon Tobe, a kidney-disease specialist at the University of Toronto. And that's more important today than ever because retractions of scientific studies are surging. Since 2001, while the number of papers published in research journals has risen 44%, the number retracted has leapt more than 15-fold, data compiled for The Wall Street Journal by Thomson Reuters reveal. Just 22 retraction notices appeared in 2001, but 139 in 2006 and 339 last year

Note: To learn lots more of how the medical industry puts profit above public health, click here.

FDA panel on genetically modified salmon leaves questions unanswered
2010-09-21, USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/yourlife/food/safety/2010-09-22-SalmonQA22_ST_N.htm

The Food and Drug Administration has wrapped up three days of hearings and public comment on the effort by AquaBounty Technologies, a Massachusetts company, to sell salmon genetically engineered to grow twice as fast as normal salmon. But the meetings ended without an FDA decision on whether the company can move ahead with sales. USA TODAY's Elizabeth Weise [answers questions about the issue]: Q: What are the issues? A: There are really two: Are these fish safe to eat, and are they safe for the environment? FDA staff, in a report released earlier this month, found the genetically engineered (or GE) salmon to be as safe to eat as normal salmon. But several members of the agency's Veterinary Medicine Advisory Committee felt that the tests for food safety could have included more data and encouraged the agency to request more from the company. Q: What's the environmental issue? A: Some scientists and environmental groups worry that if these fast-growing salmon escaped into the ocean, they might out-compete native salmon populations for both food and mates. As almost all wild Atlantic salmon are endangered, anything that could harm them is of concern.

Note: For lots more from reliable sources on corporate and government corruption, click here and here. For a highly-informative overview of the threats posesd to health and the environment by genetically modified foods, click here.

UK firm Octel bribed Iraqis to keep buying toxic fuel additive
2010-06-30, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jun/30/octel-petrol-iraq-lead

The former chief executive of a British chemical company faces the prospect of extradition to the US after the firm admitted million-dollar bribes to officials to sell toxic fuel additives to Iraq. Paul Jennings, until last year chief executive of the Octel chemical works ... and his predecessor, Dennis Kerrison, exported tonnes of tetra ethyl lead (TEL), to Iraq. TEL is banned from cars in western countries because of links with brain damage to children. Iraq is believed to be the only country that still adds lead to petrol. The company recently admitted that, in a deliberate policy to maximise profits, executives from Octel – which since changed its name to Innospec – bribed officials in Iraq and Indonesia with millions of dollars to carry on using TEL, despite its health hazards. Senior Iraqi oil ministry officials are accused of taking British bribes throughout the UK-US occupation, up until 2008. US prosecutors say multi-million dollar bribes to Iraq were agreed in 2001-3, when Kerrison was chief executive. A decade ago, Octel decided to remain the world's only manufacturer of TEL for cars, after it was banned in the US and Europe. They used high profits from non-western countries to diversify into other products and to pay back investors, mainly US hedge funds run by Connecticut billionaire Jeffrey Gendell. According to prosecutors, the strategy included the corrupt blocking of health campaigns.

Note: For lots more from major media sources on corporate corruption, click here.

Fury as EU approves GM potato
2010-03-04, The Independent (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/fury-as-eu-approves-gm-...

The introduction of a genetically modified potato in Europe risks the development of human diseases that fail to respond to antibiotics, it [has been claimed]. German chemical giant BASF this week won approval from the European Commission for commercial growing of a starchy potato with a gene that could resist antibiotics – useful in the fight against illnesses such as tuberculosis. Farms in Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic may plant the potato for industrial use, with part of the tuber fed to cattle, according to BASF, which fought a 13-year battle to win approval for Amflora. But other EU member states, including Italy and Austria and anti-GM campaigners angrily attacked the move, claiming it could result in a health disaster. During the regulatory tussle over the potato, the EU's pharmaceutical regulator had expressed concern about its potential to interfere with the efficacy of antibiotics on infections that develop multiple resistance to other antibiotics, a growing problem in human and veterinary medicine. Drug resistance is part of the explanation for the resurgence of TB, which infects eight million people worldwide every year.

Note: For an excellent summary of the threats to health from genetically-modified foods, click here.

No ducking land mine treaty, Mr. President
2009-12-06, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/12/05/ED451AT7MU.DTL

This country hasn't used land mines in nearly 20 years. It no longer makes the indiscriminate killers nor provides them to allies. Why then is President Obama - off to Oslo this week to collect a Nobel Peace Prize - refusing to sign an international treaty to ban the shrapnel-spewing buried bombs? His refusal is ... shameful. The devices, which maim and kill for years after a conflict ends, caused more than 5,000 casualties last year in the world's poorest places such as Cambodia, Angola and Central America. Obama's stance puts him in line with Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, who both ducked a chance to put this country in line with more than 150 nations that have signed the treaty. Other notable non-signers: China, Russia, India, Pakistan and Cuba. Is this the company we want to keep? Sticking with land mines is a puzzler. The United States has a reported stockpile of 10 million devices, though it hasn't deployed any since the 1991 Gulf War. By signing the agreement, the Pentagon would hardly be giving up a mainstay weapon. It's time for Obama to go in a new direction. He should sign, not equivocate, on a treaty that Washington has avoided for over a decade. Here's a thought while typing up your Peace Prize acceptance speech, Mr. President: It's time to ban land mines.

Note: The refusal to sign the worldwide landmine ban treaty seems to be a puzzler, until you realize the US government is protecting the rights to profit of US arms corporations. For a retired Marine general's analysis of the profiteering that is the principal purpose for war, "War is a Racket,"click here.

Drugmakers' Payments Draw Heat
2009-11-04, BusinessWeek magazine
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/nov2009/db2009114_700374.htm

A $112 million settlement involving alleged drug kickbacks that the Justice Dept. announced with the nation's largest nursing home pharmacy and a generic drug manufacturer on Nov. 3 is part of a wide-ranging investigation of suspected Medicaid fraud by the pharmaceutical industry. Critics say the continuing probe, which involves ... major drugmakers, highlights what they describe as an industry practice of paying money to outfits that provide drugs to consumers, in return for preferential treatment. Because those alleged payoffs have the effect of compromising patient care and driving up costs for government and private health insurers, cases like the settlement unsealed with Omnicare (OCR) in Covington, Ky., and IVAX Pharmaceuticals in Weston, Fla., could bolster opposition to the controversial deal the Obama Administration reached with the pharmaceutical industry to win its support for health-reform legislation. Many Democrats say the Administration should have asked for much bigger cost savings from drugmakers. Patrick Burns, a spokesman for Taxpayers Against Fraud, a nonprofit Washington group that promotes whistleblower suits, says the Justice Dept. is backed up with pharmaceutical fraud cases. Since drugmakers offer so many similar products, he contends, they rely on kickbacks to give their products a market edge. "In the pharmaceutical industry, the business isn't selling the best drug, it's the best scheme of kickbacks to the prescriber."

Note: For lots more from reliable sources on corporate corruption, click here.

Key drug facts left off labels, experts say
2009-10-21, MSNBC/Associated Press
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33419377/ns/health-more_health_news

Did you know that Lunesta will help you fall asleep just 15 minutes faster? Or that a higher dose of the osteoporosis drug Zometa could damage a cancer patient’s kidneys and raise their risk of death? Chances are you didn’t, and neither did your doctor. Much of what the Food and Drug Administration knows about a drug’s safety and effectiveness is not included on the label, say two drug safety experts who are calling on the agency to make that information more accessible. In ... the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers ... argue that drug labels don’t reflect the nuanced decisions the FDA makes when deciding to approve a drug. The editorial from Drs. Lisa Schwartz and Steven Woloshin recommends easy-to-read fact boxes to help patients weigh the benefits and risks of medications. If drug labels sometimes exaggerate benefits and play down drug risks, the authors say there’s a very good reason: they are written by drugmakers. While FDA must approve the final labeling, the actual language is drafted by the manufacturer, with input from FDA scientists. The labeling is based on results from company studies, which generally compare results for patients taking the drug versus those taking placebo. If FDA decides the drug’s ability to treat or prevent a disease outweighs its side effects, the agency is obligated to approve it. But Schwartz and Woloshin point out that benefits may be slim and potential harms may not be fully understood. “The take home point is that just because a drug is approved doesn’t mean it works very well,” said Schwartz, in an interview with the Associated Press. “You really need to know more to see whether it’s worth the cost.” Schwartz and Woloshin say FDA labeling frequently fails to provide a full picture of a drug’s effects.

Note: For a powerful summary of corruption in the pharmaceutical industry, click here.

Glaxo profits soar as drug firm charges NHS £6 for swine flu vaccine that costs £1 to make
2009-07-23, Daily Mail (One of the UK's largest-circulation newspapers)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1201450/GlaxoSmithKline-accused-profi...

Drugs giant GlaxoSmithKline was accused of cashing in on swine flu after it revealed its profits have risen 10 per cent since the virus was identified. It announced profits yesterday of £2.1billion in the past three months. Sales of vaccines and antiviral drugs could push the figure up even higher. GSK chief executive Andrew Witty admitted the swine flu crisis would be a 'significant financial event for the company'. Sales of the company's Relenza inhaler, an alternative to Tamiflu used by pregnant women among others, are expected to top £600million. And this figure could be boosted by up to £2billion once deliveries of the swine flu vaccine begin in September. But Mr Witty denied Europe's biggest drugs company was gearing up to cash in. He admitted it was planning to charge the UK £6 a jab, but vociferously denied reports it cost a pound to manufacture. Liberal Democrat health spokesman Norman Lamb said: 'This is clearly a bonanza for the company. This is a staggeringly substantial return. I will write to the National Audit Office to determine whether we got the best deal for the taxpayer.' Susi Squire of the TaxPayers' Alliance said: 'We need an assurance from the Government that they have got the most competitive rate out of GlaxoSmith-Kline.' Geoff Martin of London Health Emergency said: 'It's a scandal that any company could use the swine flu pandemic as an opportunity to jack up profits. 'The Government should step in and impose a windfall tax on private companies that have hit the jackpot as a result of the flu crisis.'

Note: For more on profiteering in the vaccination industry, click here.

Inventory Uncovers 9,200 More Pathogens
2009-06-18, Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/17/AR20090617032...

An inventory of potentially deadly pathogens at Fort Detrick's infectious disease laboratory found more than 9,000 vials that had not been accounted for, Army officials said yesterday, raising concerns that officials wouldn't know whether dangerous toxins were missing. After four months of searching about 335 freezers and refrigerators at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Frederick, investigators found 9,220 samples that hadn't been included in a database of about 66,000 items listed as of February, said Col. Mark Kortepeter, the institute's deputy commander. The vials contained some dangerous pathogens, among them the Ebola virus, anthrax bacteria and botulinum toxin, and less lethal agents such as Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus and the bacterium that causes tularemia. Most of them, forgotten inside freezer drawers, hadn't been used in years or even decades. Officials said some serum samples from hemorrhagic fever patients dated to the Korean War. The overstock and the previous inaccuracy of the database raised the possibility that someone could have taken a sample outside the lab with no way for officials to know something was missing. The institute has been under pressure to tighten security in the wake of the 2001 anthrax attacks, which killed five people and sickened 17. FBI investigators say they think the anthrax strain used in the attacks originated at the Army lab, and its prime suspect, Bruce E. Ivins, researched anthrax there. Ivins committed suicide last year during an investigation into his activities.

Note: Fort Detrick is the home of the government lab which is suspected to be involved with the creation of many previously unknown lethal viruses and germs. For lots more, see the excellent work of Dr. Leonard Horowitz at this link and this one.

Meet Your New Farmer: Hungry Corporate Giant
2009-06-12, New York Times
http://movies.nytimes.com/2009/06/12/movies/12food.html

Forget buckets of blood. Nothing says horror like one of those tubs of artificially buttered, nonorganic popcorn at the concession stand. That, at least, is one of the unappetizing lessons to draw from one of the scariest movies of the year, “Food, Inc.,” an informative ... documentary about the big business of feeding or, more to the political point, force-feeding, Americans all the junk that multinational corporate money can buy. You’ll shudder, shake and just possibly lose your genetically modified lunch. The director Robert Kenner jumps all over the food map, from industrial feedlots where millions of cruelly crammed cattle mill about in their own waste until slaughter, to the chains where millions of consumers gobble down industrially produced meat and an occasional serving of E. coli bacteria. The voice in the opening belongs to the ethical epicurean and locavore champion Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food and The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Mr. Pollan ... is a great strength of “Food, Inc.,” as is one of its co-producers, Eric Schlosser, the author of Fast Food Nation. [They], together with Mr. Kenner, chart how and why the villains not only outnumber the heroes in contemporary food production, but also how and why they outbluff, outmuscle and outspend their opponents by billions of often government-subsidized dollars. The movie takes a look at the animal abuse in industrial food production — including clandestine images of sick and crippled cows being prodded to join the rest of the ill-fated herd — but its main focus is on the human cost. It’s a cost visible in the rounded bodies of a poor family that eats cheap if filling fast-food burgers for breakfast and in the obscured faces of farmers too frightened to go on record about Monsanto, the agricultural biotech giant.

Note: For another excellent review of this important film, click here.

Can Positive Thoughts Help Heal Another Person?
2009-05-21, NPR
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104351710

Ninety percent of Americans say they pray — for their health, or their love life or their final exams. But does prayer do any good? For decades, scientists have tried to test the power of prayer and positive thinking, with mixed results. Now some scientists are fording new — and controversial — territory. When I first meet Sheri Kaplan, she is perched on a plastic chair at a Miami clinic, holding out her arm as a researcher draws several vials of blood. "I'm quite excited about my blood work this time," she says. "I've got no stress and I'm proud of it." Kaplan is tanned and freckled, with wavy red hair and a cocky laugh. She is defiantly healthy for a person who has lived with HIV for the past 15 years. "God didn't want me to die or even get sick," she asserts. "I've never had any opportunistic infections, because I had no time to be down." Kaplan's faith is unorthodox, but it's central to her life. She was raised Jewish, and although she claims no formal religion now, she prays and meditates every day. She believes God is keeping the virus at bay and that her faith is the reason she's alive today. "Everything starts from a thought, and then the thought creates a reaction," she says. "And I have the power to control my mind, before it gets to a physical level or an emotional level." Kaplan has never taken medicine, yet the disease has not progressed to AIDS (and she is not part of the population that has a mutation in the CCR5 gene that prevents progression of HIV to AIDS).

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