More Concerns Raised About Wi-FI Safety and Health

EU watchdog calls for urgent action on Wi-Fi radiation
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
Published: 16 September 2007

Europe's top environmental watchdog is calling for immediate action to reduce exposure to radiation from Wi-Fi, mobile phones and their masts. It suggests that delay could lead to a health crisis similar to those caused by asbestos, smoking and lead in petrol.

The warning, from the EU's European Environment Agency (EEA) follows an international scientific review which concluded that safety limits set for the radiation are "thousands of times too lenient", and an official British report last week which concluded that it could not rule out the development of cancers from using mobile phones.

Professor Jacqueline McGlade, the EEA's executive director, said yesterday: "Recent research and reviews on the long-term effects of radiations from mobile telecommunications suggest that it would be prudent for health authorities to recommend actions to reduce exposures, especially to vulnerable groups, such as children."

The EEA's initiative will increase pressure on governments and public health bodies to take precautionary action over the electromagnetic radiation from rapidly expanding new technologies. The German government is already advising its citizens to use wired internet connections instead of Wi-Fi and landlines instead of mobile phones.

The scientific review, produced by the international BioInitiative Working Group of leading scientists and public health and policy experts, says the "explosion of new sources has created unprecedented levels of artificial electromagnetic fields that now cover all but remote areas of the habitable space on Earth", causing "long-term and cumulative exposure" to "massively increased" radiation that "has no precedent in human history".

It says "corrections are needed in the way we accept, test and deploy" the technologies "in order to avert public health problems of a global nature".

***

Germany warns citizens to avoid using Wi-Fi
Environment Ministry's verdict on the health risks from wireless technology puts the British government to shame.
By Geoffrey Lean
Published: 09 September 2007

People should avoid using Wi-Fi wherever possible because of the risks it may pose to health, the German government has said.

Its surprise ruling – the most damning made by any government on the fast-growing technology – will shake the industry and British ministers, and vindicates the questions that The Independent on Sunday has been raising over the past four months.

And Germany's official radiation protection body also advises its citizens to use landlines instead of mobile phones, and warns of "electrosmog" from a wide range of other everyday products, from baby monitors to electric blankets.

The German government's ruling – which contrasts sharply with the unquestioning promotion of the technology by British officials – was made in response to a series of questions by Green members of the Bundestag, Germany's parliament.

The Environment Ministry recommended that people should keep their exposure to radiation from Wi-Fi "as low as possible" by choosing "conventional wired connections". It added that it is "actively informing people about possibilities for reducing personal exposure".

Its actions will provide vital support for Sir William Stewart, Britain's official health protection watchdog, who has produced two reports calling for caution in using mobile phones and who has also called for a review of the use of Wi-Fi in schools. His warnings have so far been ignored by ministers and even played down by the Health Protection Agency, which he chairs.

By contrast the agency's German equivalent – the Federal Office for Radiation Protection – is leading the calls for caution.

Florian Emrich, for the office, says Wi-Fi should be avoided "because people receive exposures from many sources and because it is a new technology and all the research into its health effects has not yet been carried out".

Edwards Campaign Mandates Cancer Causing Mammogram

I have written the Edwards campaign asking if Mr. Edwards understands that mammogram is a leading cause of breast cancer. I am waiting for a response.

Additionally, the Edwards plan offers no dental care as well as no freedom of choice for natural care, supplements and non-drug or mainstream care.

Edwards backs mandatory preventive care

By AMY LORENTZEN, Associated Press Writer Sun Sep 2
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070902/ap_on_el_pr/edwards_2

TIPTON, Iowa - Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards said on Sunday that his universal health care proposal would require that Americans go to the doctor for preventive care.

"It requires that everybody be covered. It requires that everybody get preventive care," he told a crowd sitting in lawn chairs in front of the Cedar County Courthouse. "If you are going to be in the system, you can't choose not to go to the doctor for 20 years. You have to go in and be checked and make sure that you are OK."

He noted, for example, that women would be required to have regular mammograms in an effort to find and treat "the first trace of problem." Edwards and his wife, Elizabeth, announced earlier this year that her breast cancer had returned and spread.

Edwards said his mandatory health care plan would cover preventive, chronic and long-term health care. The plan would include mental health care as well as dental and vision coverage for all Americans.

"The whole idea is a continuum of care, basically from birth to death," he said.

The former North Carolina senator said all presidential candidates talking about health care "ought to be asked one question: Does your plan cover every single American?"

"Because if it doesn't they should be made to explain what child, what woman, what man in America is not worthy of health care," he said. "Because in my view, everybody is worth health care."

Edwards said his plan would cost up to $120 billion a year, a cost he proposes covering by ending President Bush's tax cuts to people who make more than $200,000 per year.

Edwards, who has been criticized by some for calling on Americans to be willing to give up their SUVs while driving one, acknowledged Sunday that he owns a Ford Escape hybrid SUV, purchased within the year, and a Chrysler Pacificia, which he said he has had for years.

"I think all of us have to move, have to make progress," he said. "I'm not holyier-than-thou about this. ... I'm like a lot of Americans, I see how serious this issue is and I want to address it myself and I want to help lead the nation in the right direction."

He said he would not buy another SUV in the future.

The Ford Escape, the first hybrid SUV on the market, gets an estimated
36 mpg in the city and 31 mpg on the highway.

Closed Head Injury and PTSD

Today Vanderbilt University got a big write-up in an AP article on traumatic brain injury in the soldiers fighting in Iraq and related current military conflagrations.

CHI began out Veteran's Resources effort with a contribution received from a Vietnam Vet we helped.

The major concerns behind this effort, even though the oldest vet we have helped is 85, are depleted uranium, PTSD and traumatic brain injury(TBI).

I watched how little is done for the returning vets in a news story about the VA. I can tell you that it takes much more to recover from TBI that being given a Palm Pilot.

While the Palm Pilot may help there is a faster easier way to reintegrate brain hemispheres. There is also a better way to help concomitant PTSD than anti-depressants.

If AP is interested in something not so status quo, I am open to their call. And if Sandy Schneider from Vanderbilt would like the information, that would be great.

However, if any veteran needs this help there is no charge to you.

Vitamin E, Women's Health and Myth Making by Experts

Last month I happened to post on a truly specious study reporting that vitamins were of no help to women's hearts. That story is re-posted at the end of this post for easy reference.

You'll see my positive report on vitamin C for cancer below as well. And you'll also see a story from today about how vitamin, slammed in the August report can be most helpful in the prevention of blood clots for women (this works well for men to!).

This is how you get confused, especially if you do to know the history of vitamin E and it's use to prevent are reverse heart disease (the medical studies on this date back to the 1940s and 50s).

Natural vitamin E (listed on a label as d-alpha tocopherol) is very effective in preventing and treating blood clots. It was so good that in the 1970s when I worked as the Critical Care Nursing Manager in a large metropolitan hospital vitamin was given pre-op to prevent blood clots and life-threatening pulmonary embolism (blood clot in the lungs).

Natural vitamin E is, in adequate dose (about 2000 IU daily), a preventive for peripheral neuropathy. This same dose taken the two days prior to chemotherapy treatments helps protect against hair loss, and seems to help you need less chemo drugs. Vitamin E helps carry oxygen across pulmonary membranes inside the lungs(great for pulmonary hypertension and cardiac disease), it is protective against colon cancer and helps reduce menopausal symptoms. This great vitamin in natural form - the old way was wheat germ oil - has so many other beneficial uses for your health.

Sticking to the issue of cardiovascular care for women - often ignored since most research is focused on men - I have to encourage you to quickly avoid the American Heart Association recommendations on this one.

Vitamin E is an essential nutrient for health. It needs to be in a natural form, not from soy as most of it is, and it does a body good!

Vitamin E may reduce blood clots in women: study

Regular doses of vitamin E may reduce the risk of life-threatening blood clots in women, researchers reported on Monday.

But they cautioned that more research is needed to confirm the link in the prevention of the clots, known as venous thromboembolism, and said patients should not stop taking prescribed blood thinners.

"The data indicated that, in general, women taking vitamin E were 21 percent less likely to suffer a blood clot," the American Heart Association, which published the finding in its journal Circulation, said in a statement.

"This is an exciting and interesting finding, but I don't think it's proven," Dr. Robert Glynn of Harvard Medical School said.

The American Heart Association generally does not recommend antioxidant vitamins such as vitamin E for the prevention of cardiovascular diseases or conditions, which include blood clots.

The study by Glynn and his colleagues reviewed data from 39,876 women aged 45 and older taking part in the Women's Health Study. They were given either 600 international units of natural source vitamin E or a placebo.

The women were asked to take them on alternate days over a 10-year period and did not know if they were taking vitamin E or a placebo.

"During the 10-year study, 482 women -- 213 in the vitamin E group and 269 in the placebo group -- reported having a venous thromboembolism that was subsequently confirmed through review of medical records," the heart association said.

"In this study, venous thromboembolism occurred more often than heart attacks and almost as often as stroke. People don't realize how common it is," Glynn said.

Such blood clots can become fatal if the clot blocks the flow of blood to the lungs, heart or brain.

The study results also seemed to indicate that vitamin E was most beneficial to women who were genetically predisposed to get the clots.

A recent update to the American Heart Association's guidelines on cardiovascular disease prevention in women stated that antioxidant vitamin supplements such as vitamin E, C and beta carotene should not be used for the prevention of cardiovascular disease in women.

"A large placebo-controlled, randomized study failed to show any benefit from vitamin E on heart disease," it said, underscoring the need for more research on the subject.

Copyright © 2007 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

Monday, August 13, 2007
Can You Really Believe This?

My regular readers know what I have to say about lying with statistics. I guess you can fool people with hilarious headlines too. And remember the the courts have said it is ok to lie in the media...

This study is off, by well more than a mile, and here's why.

First of all the report gives no information about who provided the funding or the supplements. Remember that Pfizer's junque vitamin Centrum gets to tout all the marvelous benefits of vitamins. Because its Pfizer, a big campaign donor to the current administration, whose lobbyists get to participate in writing new drug legislation a when no one else can, also gets its vitamins paid for in the Senior drug payola to the drug companies program. If it was anyone else or some small company any claim is off limits without raising the ire of the FDA, strongly protecting the drug companies from the other side of the door.

Another important issue not reported in this study is that the amounts provided participants is extremely low in comparison to therapeutic dosing, or in what we refer to as orthomolecular medicine.

What the study failed to do was to provide the basic requirement of vitamin c for an adult. This happens to be 3000 mg a day because humans do not make their own vitamin C as do primates and other animals. This basic amount was determined through primate studies.

Therapeutic doses are substantially higher in many cases. Right now I am taking 12500 mg daily in five divided doses because it is harvest where I live and the dust is causing me to have unhappy lungs. With the vitamin C at this level I have no respiratory issues and this reduces stress on my heart. I too am in the age range of this study's participants. In addition I take non-soy vitamin E, 800 IU daily and a combination vitamin A / Beta Carotene tablet of 25,000 IU a day. Many people, including researchers, may not know that beta-carotene cannot convert to vitamin A alone.

"The women consumed either 500 milligrams of ascorbic acid (vitamin C) every day, 600 international units of vitamin E every other day, or 50 milligrams of beta carotene every other day."

In itself, the above reference to the study informs me that the outcome was to show vitamins do no good for health.

Don't be fooled, see more here from the experts.

And as far as getting enough vitamins in the diet is groundless because of corporate agricultural methods and food processing, all permitted by your government.

CHICAGO (Reuters) 13 August 07
Common vitamins no help for women's hearts: study -
Middle-aged women at risk for heart disease received little benefit from taking vitamins C, E or beta carotene, researchers said on Monday.

Though vitamin supplements provided no heart benefit, eating a diet rich in those vitamins does make for healthier heart, their study noted.

Experts believe a nutritious diet rich in these vitamins protect the body's cardiovascular system by counteracting compounds known as "free radicals." These harmful compounds build up in the body and can damage artery linings, encourage blood clots and alter the function of blood vessels.

"Single antioxidants (vitamins) may not reflect the complex vitamins and nutrients found in foods, which may explain the discrepancies between most intervention trials and studies of fruits and vegetables," wrote study author Nancy Cook of Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston.

"While additional research into combinations of agents, particularly for stroke, may be of interest, widespread use of these individual agents for cardiovascular protection does not appear to be warranted," she concluded.

Among the more than 8,000 women, average age 61, involved in the study only a combination of vitamins C and E conferred a slightly lower risk of stroke compared to placebos.

The participants were tracked for roughly nine years for fatal heart disease, heart attacks, strokes and heart-related surgery, the study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine said. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the industrialized world.

"Do we expect these supplements to reverse 30 years of heart disease? Of course they won't," said Andrew Shao of the Council for Responsible Nutrition, a trade group for the industry that produces $20 billion in U.S. states annually.

"But studies show that supplementation with modest amounts of antioxidants over a long period of time, 10 years or more, (produces) modest benefits," he said. "They're subtle, as should be expected when you're talking about nutrients and not pharmaceuticals," or prescription drugs.

Importantly, the study showed taking the supplements did not harm the women, Shao said, as some recent research has suggested based on deaths from all causes.

The women consumed either 500 milligrams of ascorbic acid (vitamin C) every day, 600 international units of vitamin E every other day, or 50 milligrams of beta carotene every other day. Some consumed more than one.

Wait, wait. Don't tell me. The light bulb finally turned on.

Well, after all these years, all the cancer deaths, and all the debilitation from the standard approach to cancer some one has finally begun to see the light.

It isn't just Dr. Pauling's light that is shining now but the light of so many who has promulgated the natural approach to treating cancer with vitamins, especially vitamin C.

It always amazes me how those of us who work with and for natural health care have known these things for decades and how we have been attacked for our beliefs and practices.

Now of course that MSM (mainstream medicine) has their hands on this concept the spin will begin. And now those who ask their doctors for nutritional therapies should not be castigated for their requests.

One can only hope.

More about natural cancer therapies -

Study shows vitamin C's cancer-fighting properties

By Will Dunham 58 minutes ago

Vitamin C can impede the growth of some types of tumors although not in the way some scientists had suspected, researchers reported on Monday.

The new research, published in the journal Cancer Cell, supported the general notion that vitamin C and other so-called antioxidants can slow tumor growth, but pointed to a mechanism different from the one many experts had suspected.

The researchers generated encouraging results when giving vitamin C to mice that had been implanted with human cancer cells -- either the blood cancer lymphoma or prostate cancer. Another antioxidant, N-acetylcysteine, also limited tumor growth in the mice, the researchers said.

Antioxidants are nutrients that prevent some of the damage from unstable molecules known as free radicals, created when the body turns food into energy. Vitamin C, vitamin E and beta-carotene are among well-known antioxidants.

Previous research had suggested that vitamin C may stifle tumor growth by preventing DNA damage from free radicals.

But researchers led by Dr. Chi Dang, a professor of medicine and oncology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, found that antioxidants appear to be working in a different way -- undermining a tumor's ability to grow under certain conditions.

Figuring out how antioxidants impede tumors should help scientists figure out how they might be harnessed to fight cancer, Dang said. In addition to the cancer types involved in this study, others that might be vulnerable to vitamin C include colon cancer and cervical cancer, he said.

Dang said more research is needed and cautioned against taking high doses of vitamin C based on these findings.

"Certainly we would very much discourage people with untreated cancer to go out and take buckets full of vitamin C," Dang said in a telephone interview.

Linus Pauling argued in the 1970s that vitamin C, also called ascorbic acid, could ward off cancer, but the notion has proved contentious.

Pauling, who won the Nobel Prize in chemistry as well as the Nobel Peace Prize, died in 1994.

"Pauling actually had some good evidence that under certain situations vitamin C can prevent tumor formation. It's just the mechanism was really not that clear then," Dang said.

"Now that, I think, we provide relatively compelling evidence of how this works, maybe Pauling is partly right. We shouldn't dismiss him so quickly." Dang added.

Copyright © 2007 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

This is Aspartame Awareness Weekend.

Please see the one hour lecture by Dr. Russell Blaylock, neurosurgeon. His web site is www.russellblaylockmd.com. Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills is one of his three books and is on MSG and Aspartame.

He also has a DVD titled, Nutrition and Behavior, and a CD, The Truth About Aspartame. You can get these from www.atavistik.com With the new study sponsored by Food Standards in the UK showing additives cause behavioral problems, even temper tantrums, his DVD on Nutrition and Behavior is a must for all schools and pediatricians and OB-GYN.

The "Truth About Aspartame" has detailed information about the Ramazzini Study which shows aspartame to be a multipotential carcinogen confirming original FDA records, as well as information on how to detox from aspartame. Here is the lecture:

EXCITOTOXINS:
The Taste That Kills

We also ask that you forward the REPORT FOR SCHOOLS: http://www.mpwhi.com/report_on_aspartame_and_children.htm
You can read Dr. Blaylock's information in this document. This is the project this year for Aspartame Awareness Weekend, (9/7 to 9/9)to forward it all over the planet, especially to schools, board of educations, pediatricians, OB-GYN and the general public.

FDA to Review Ramazzini Study:
http://www.mpwhi.com/fda_to_review_ramazzini_aspartame_study.htm
(Includes some resources - books and aspartame documentary).

Thank you for your support and your interest in learning about the toxic impact of artificial sweeteners aspartame and sucralose.

Cost and Your Health: Women Listen Up!

On occasion I listen to progressive talk show host Randi Rhodes, heard on my local Clear Channel station that carries Air America.

This is an odd mix, Clear Channel carrying Air America. I'm just glad in this market they do.

One thing I like about Randi is her sometimes outrageous take on things and that great burlesque-like song she plays. It's the Bounce Your Boobies song, now available as a ringtone.

In the same vein I wish Randi would be more open to health concepts other than from mainstream medical myopia.

It's in this genre I'd like to put forth some facts about the real cost of breast health screening. I've been waving this flag for over a decade, as well as asking why the 'cure' didn't come about in 1972 as promised.

My hope too is that women wake-up and smell the burnt flesh before "Race for the Cure" gets you again this year. This ad campaign and mammogram deter the effort from the need for action on prevention and cure.

It is the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and several European national health plans that recommend screening mammography no more than every two years AND only after menopause.

MAMMOGRAM IS NOT SAFE AND IT IS A CAUSE OF BREAST CANCER

Here are some facts:

• Yearly screening mammograms aren't safe, they expose you to radiation and breast cancer.
• Yearly screening mammograms aren't cost effective to society. The mammography industry could gross $1 billion per year if every woman aged 40-49 was screened yearly.
• Yearly screening mammograms aren't safe environmentally.
• Less than 10 percent of all breast cancers occur in women age 40-49.
• A major medical journal reports that the cost effectiveness (defined as the number of dollars spent so one person can live one year longer) of mammograms for women under 55 is $82,000.19.
• The current cost to detect one breast cancer is $195,000, using screening mammograms.
• Dr. Charles Wright of Vancouver (Canada) General Hospital estimates that the cost of saving one life by mass screening is $1.25 million.
• Several studies show no advantage to yearly mammograms. Mass screening once every two or three years offers the same reduction in deaths ( the famous five-year mortality scale). There is also less radiation hazard to individuals and society, and at far less cost.
• Many of the cancers found by mammographic screening are in situ cancers. Women with in situ cancers rarely die from them.
  
• With or without early detection and treatment, 93 percent survive more than five years.
• When in situ breast cancers are found by mammogram, treated, and added to the statistical base, breast cancer cure rates and longevity statistics improve.

Consider why mammography is praised: It has done what research into cures for breast cancer have failed to do.

The mammography campaign leads you believe there is progress in battling this dis-ease. Finding and treating the increasing numbers of breast cancer cases is NOT progress!

My thanks to John Gofman, PhD, MD and Susun Weed for their efforts to improve breast health based on fact.