Today, 14 August, 2008, Prince Charles is attacked for his views regarding GMO foods.
Companies developing genetically modified crops risk creating the biggest environmental disaster "of all time", Prince Charles has warned.
GM crops were damaging Earth's soil and were an experiment "gone seriously wrong", he told the Daily Telegraph.
A future reliance on corporations to mass-produce food would drive millions of farmers off their land, he said.
The government said it welcomed all voices in the "important" debate over the future potential role of GM crops.
However, BBC royal correspondent Nicholas Witchell said the prince's "robust" comments were "likely to rankle with the government", which has given the go-ahead to a number of GM crop trials in the UK since 2000.
"Even for a prince who's a long-established champion of organic farming and critic of GM crops, these are comments which verge on the extreme," our correspondent said.
If they think this is the way to go we will end up with millions of small farmers all over the world being driven off their land
Prince Charles
Prince Charles told the paper huge multi-national corporations involved in developing genetically modified foods were conducting a "gigantic experiment with nature and the whole of humanity which has gone seriously wrong".
Relying on "gigantic corporations" for food would end in "absolute disaster", he warned.
"That would be the absolute destruction of everything... and the classic way of ensuring there is no food in the future."
What should be being debated was "food security not food production", he said.
He said GM developers might think they would be successful by having "one form of clever genetic engineering after another", but he believed "that will be guaranteed to cause the biggest disaster environmentally of all time".
'Unsustainable'
Prince Charles, who has an organic farm on his Highgrove estate in Gloucestershire, said relying on big corporations for the mass production of food would not only threaten future food supplies but also force smaller producers out of business.
"If they think this is the way to go, we will end up with millions of small farmers all over the world being driven off their land into unsustainable, unmanageable, degraded and dysfunctional conurbations of unmentionable awfulness," he said.
The prince also told the Telegraph he hoped to see more family run co-operative farms, with producers working with nature and not against it.
The prince's comments come at a time of rising world food prices and food shortages.
The biotech industry says that GM technology can help combat world hunger and poverty by delivering higher yields from crops and also reduce the use of pesticides.
Ministers also argue there is a growing body of evidence that GM crops are safe. In June, Environment Minister Phil Woolas said the government was ready to argue for a greater role for the technology.
But green groups and aid agencies have expressed doubts about just how effective GM technology can be in tackling world hunger and many have concerns about the potential long-term impact on the environment.
Responding to the prince's comments, a spokeswoman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: "As we have said many times, there is an important debate to be had on the potential role of GM crops in the future, and we welcome all voices in that debate.
"Safety will always be our top priority on this issue."
It is not the first time Prince Charles has joined the debate about GM crops.
In 1998 he warned genetic engineering was taking man into the realms that belonged to "God and God alone" and in 2004 he said people were beginning to realise "some of the chickens" were "coming home to roost and settle heavily in the genetically modified trees".
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/7557644.stm
Published: 2008/08/13 01:20:06 GMT
© BBC MMVIII
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Cellular/EMF Report Posted
We would like to refer you to the first, of we hope to be many, special report on health concerns now included on simply4health.
New Focus: Responding to Specific Queries
I find it very interesting what topics people seek information about when searching on the web. I use the information to try to add information and articles that focus on queries.
Natural Treatment for Whooping Cough was important to one seeker, so I'm adding some information that may be helpful to people concerned about this health condition.
According to the Merck Manual, antibiotics, cough medicines and medical therapy in general are nearly insignificant in pertussis. There is no treatment in mainstream medicine except vaccination. The Pertussis vaccine is considered to be a very high risk shot with more associated dangerous side effects.
Many physicians have been quoted as saying that "the shot is worse than the disease."
Generally, it is vitamin C that is an effective therapy for Whooping cough, and there is a great amount of science behind its effectiveness. Bordetella pertussis, the Whooping cough bacteria, is killed by thorough saturation doses of vitamin C (ascorbic acid).
It is said in Orthomolecular (nutritional) medicine that "Whooping cough responds quickly (12-48 hours) to absolute saturation therapy with ascorbic acid vitamin C. Vitamin C must be given every 10 to 15 minutes that the patient is awake in sufficient quantity to produce "bowel tolerance" (near-diarrhea). The quantity given orally may exceed 1000 mg vitamin C per kilogram body weight per day. Small amounts will not produce results."
More information about vitamin C therapy can be found on the web site of Robert Cathcart, MD.
Another reader was seeking information about magnesium and hyperthyroidism.
It is my opinion that the proper form of magnesium is one of the most important minerals for health.
As an example, and I may have written on this in older posts, magnesium is nature's ACE inhibitor. Something to consider if you are taking drugs for hypertension.
In hyperthyroidism, calcium is much more necessary because the increased metabolism associated with this condition uses up massive amounts of calcium, and if you do not have enough, your body will draw it from bone. This is a reason why tremor and osteoporosis is often found in people with hyperthyroidism.
This condition tends to be somewhat complicated, however nutritional therapy is available and it is very effective. It does take longer to re-balance the body using nutritional therapy but it is important to understand that it works! This approach is, in fact, a viable option to radiation and life-long use of synthetic thyroid supplementation that also leads to osteoporosis.
The type of calcium used is important, generally carbonate and citrate forms are not the best choices. Other supplements may be required, especially nutritional support for parathyroid and adrenal glands (btw, adrenals love vitamin C).
Some weeks back a reader was lookig for information about Rife technology. That can be found here.
Please be advised that information posted here is offered for informational purposes and one should seek counsel with their own health care provider.
Natural Treatment for Whooping Cough was important to one seeker, so I'm adding some information that may be helpful to people concerned about this health condition.
According to the Merck Manual, antibiotics, cough medicines and medical therapy in general are nearly insignificant in pertussis. There is no treatment in mainstream medicine except vaccination. The Pertussis vaccine is considered to be a very high risk shot with more associated dangerous side effects.
Many physicians have been quoted as saying that "the shot is worse than the disease."
Generally, it is vitamin C that is an effective therapy for Whooping cough, and there is a great amount of science behind its effectiveness. Bordetella pertussis, the Whooping cough bacteria, is killed by thorough saturation doses of vitamin C (ascorbic acid).
It is said in Orthomolecular (nutritional) medicine that "Whooping cough responds quickly (12-48 hours) to absolute saturation therapy with ascorbic acid vitamin C. Vitamin C must be given every 10 to 15 minutes that the patient is awake in sufficient quantity to produce "bowel tolerance" (near-diarrhea). The quantity given orally may exceed 1000 mg vitamin C per kilogram body weight per day. Small amounts will not produce results."
More information about vitamin C therapy can be found on the web site of Robert Cathcart, MD.
Another reader was seeking information about magnesium and hyperthyroidism.
It is my opinion that the proper form of magnesium is one of the most important minerals for health.
As an example, and I may have written on this in older posts, magnesium is nature's ACE inhibitor. Something to consider if you are taking drugs for hypertension.
In hyperthyroidism, calcium is much more necessary because the increased metabolism associated with this condition uses up massive amounts of calcium, and if you do not have enough, your body will draw it from bone. This is a reason why tremor and osteoporosis is often found in people with hyperthyroidism.
This condition tends to be somewhat complicated, however nutritional therapy is available and it is very effective. It does take longer to re-balance the body using nutritional therapy but it is important to understand that it works! This approach is, in fact, a viable option to radiation and life-long use of synthetic thyroid supplementation that also leads to osteoporosis.
The type of calcium used is important, generally carbonate and citrate forms are not the best choices. Other supplements may be required, especially nutritional support for parathyroid and adrenal glands (btw, adrenals love vitamin C).
Some weeks back a reader was lookig for information about Rife technology. That can be found here.
Please be advised that information posted here is offered for informational purposes and one should seek counsel with their own health care provider.
Prices for some drugs skyrocket
By Julie Appleby
USA Today - August 8, 2008
---------
CNA/NNOC Commentary: Drug companies are pushing price hikes of as much as 1,000% -- even though the top 25 biggest pharmaceutical companies last year made more than $100billion in profits.---------
Drug companies are quietly pushing through price hikes of 100% — or even more than 1,000% — for a very small but growing number of prescription drugs, helping to drive up costs for insurers, patients and government programs.
The number of brand-name drugs with increases of 100% or more could double this year from four years ago, researchers from the University of Minnesota say. Many of the drugs are older products that treat fairly rare, but often serious or even life-threatening, conditions.
Among the examples: Questcor Pharmaceuticals last August raised the wholesale price on Acthar, which treats spasms in babies, from about $1,650 a vial to more than $23,000. Ovation raised the cost of Cosmegen, which treats a type of tumor, from $16.79 to $593.75 in January 2006.
The average wholesale price of 26 brand-name drugs jumped 100% or more in a single cost adjustment last year, up from 15 in 2004, the university study found. In the first half of this year, 17 drugs made the list.
"This does drive up the price of health care," says Alan Goldbloom, president of Children's Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota. "Hospitals are either eating the cost or passing it along to insurers, so you and I are paying it in increased premiums."
Some of the drugs are administered in hospitals, which bill insurers, patients or government programs for them. Insured patients pay either a flat dollar amount, such as $20, or a percentage of the drug's cost.
Last year, prices rose about 7.4% on average for 1,344 brand-name drugs, according to Express Scripts, which manages drug benefits for large employers and insurers.
Reasons for the larger increases are varied, researchers say.
"There's no simple explanation," says Stephen Schondelmeyer, director of the PRIME Institute at the University of Minnesota, which studies drug industry economics. "Some companies seem to figure no one is watching so they can get away with it."
The price increases are drawing legal and political scrutiny:
• In a decision awaiting approval by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, drugmaker Abbott agreed last week to pay up to $27.5 million to settle a lawsuit over a 400% price increase on its HIV/AIDS drug Norvir. The price did not change.
• Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., asked the Government Accountability Office last week to investigate large price hikes. Klobuchar asked the Federal Trade Commission in April to investigate Ovation Pharmaceuticals, which raised prices on four drugs in 2006 by up to 3,437%.
Drug companies say the price hikes cover the costs of keeping the drugs on the market. They say the drugs are often less costly than alternative treatments, such as surgery or newer, high-tech medicines.
Questcor says on its website that it had to raise Acthar's price after struggling for years to "keep (it) financially viable."
Ovation says it needed to cover its 2005 purchase of the drugs and facility upgrades. "We feel we made an important investment in keeping these older products alive," says spokeswoman Sally Benjamin Young.
USA Today - August 8, 2008
---------
CNA/NNOC Commentary: Drug companies are pushing price hikes of as much as 1,000% -- even though the top 25 biggest pharmaceutical companies last year made more than $100billion in profits.---------
Drug companies are quietly pushing through price hikes of 100% — or even more than 1,000% — for a very small but growing number of prescription drugs, helping to drive up costs for insurers, patients and government programs.
The number of brand-name drugs with increases of 100% or more could double this year from four years ago, researchers from the University of Minnesota say. Many of the drugs are older products that treat fairly rare, but often serious or even life-threatening, conditions.
Among the examples: Questcor Pharmaceuticals last August raised the wholesale price on Acthar, which treats spasms in babies, from about $1,650 a vial to more than $23,000. Ovation raised the cost of Cosmegen, which treats a type of tumor, from $16.79 to $593.75 in January 2006.
The average wholesale price of 26 brand-name drugs jumped 100% or more in a single cost adjustment last year, up from 15 in 2004, the university study found. In the first half of this year, 17 drugs made the list.
"This does drive up the price of health care," says Alan Goldbloom, president of Children's Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota. "Hospitals are either eating the cost or passing it along to insurers, so you and I are paying it in increased premiums."
Some of the drugs are administered in hospitals, which bill insurers, patients or government programs for them. Insured patients pay either a flat dollar amount, such as $20, or a percentage of the drug's cost.
Last year, prices rose about 7.4% on average for 1,344 brand-name drugs, according to Express Scripts, which manages drug benefits for large employers and insurers.
Reasons for the larger increases are varied, researchers say.
"There's no simple explanation," says Stephen Schondelmeyer, director of the PRIME Institute at the University of Minnesota, which studies drug industry economics. "Some companies seem to figure no one is watching so they can get away with it."
The price increases are drawing legal and political scrutiny:
• In a decision awaiting approval by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, drugmaker Abbott agreed last week to pay up to $27.5 million to settle a lawsuit over a 400% price increase on its HIV/AIDS drug Norvir. The price did not change.
• Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., asked the Government Accountability Office last week to investigate large price hikes. Klobuchar asked the Federal Trade Commission in April to investigate Ovation Pharmaceuticals, which raised prices on four drugs in 2006 by up to 3,437%.
Drug companies say the price hikes cover the costs of keeping the drugs on the market. They say the drugs are often less costly than alternative treatments, such as surgery or newer, high-tech medicines.
Questcor says on its website that it had to raise Acthar's price after struggling for years to "keep (it) financially viable."
Ovation says it needed to cover its 2005 purchase of the drugs and facility upgrades. "We feel we made an important investment in keeping these older products alive," says spokeswoman Sally Benjamin Young.
Blue Cross Basics
As the insurance mega-corps get more control over you policies you too may see more of this:
Blue Cross Wants Your Doctor To Help Them Cancel Your Health Insurance
It certainly isn't a new tactic, and it plays in to the move from government funded programs to private insurance. It is not just another Bush favor to his cronies, it is showing up in McCain and Obama plans too.
We don't hear too much about Members of Congress accepting the same type of health insurance as they want all of us to have.
If you still believe doctors are the major cause of increased health care costs and higher insurance rates, I have a bridge I can sell you cheaply.
Look no farther than Big Insurance, and don't for a minute think they'll do you any favors. Insurers like to collect money, they don't like to give it out, even if you policy dictates they do.
Blue Cross Wants Your Doctor To Help Them Cancel Your Health Insurance
It certainly isn't a new tactic, and it plays in to the move from government funded programs to private insurance. It is not just another Bush favor to his cronies, it is showing up in McCain and Obama plans too.
We don't hear too much about Members of Congress accepting the same type of health insurance as they want all of us to have.
If you still believe doctors are the major cause of increased health care costs and higher insurance rates, I have a bridge I can sell you cheaply.
Look no farther than Big Insurance, and don't for a minute think they'll do you any favors. Insurers like to collect money, they don't like to give it out, even if you policy dictates they do.
14 Ways To Save On Drugs Big Pharma Doesn't Want You To Know
I found an informative piece regarding how to save on the cost of drugs.
These days, for people using drugs, about half the population in the US as I posted two days ago, the need to save money on these chemicals of often questionable value is necessary.
Here are some tips from a book by a medical doctor. I suggest it is good advice.
These days, for people using drugs, about half the population in the US as I posted two days ago, the need to save money on these chemicals of often questionable value is necessary.
Here are some tips from a book by a medical doctor. I suggest it is good advice.
From The Consumerist - It's no secret that prescription drugs are expensive, but it is a bit of one that they don't have to be. Dr. Edward Jardini's book, How To Save On Prescription Drugs, has 20 methods that anyone can use to drastically cut the costs of long-term medications, without sacrificing quality. Here's 14 of them:
ELIMINATE NONESSENTIAL PRESCRIPTIONS
1. Eliminate medicines that are no longer needed
2. Eliminate medicines that no longer work
3. Eliminate medicines that have never worked
4. Eliminate medicines that were never needed
THINK OUTSIDE THE PRESCRIPTION DRUG BOTTLE
5. Treat with lifestyle changes
6. Use nondrug treatments
7. Prevent disease naturally
STEER CLEAR OF OVERPRICED REDUNDANT DRUGS
8. Don't "Ask Your Doctor" (for Advertised Drugs)
9. Insist on generic drugs
10. Insist on cheaper medicines with the same class
11. Insist on a cheaper class from the same treatment goal
PLAY IT SMART!
12. Cut costs by splitting tablets
13. Don't treat side effects of one drug with another
14. Comparison-shop
Be sure to talk to your doctor before changing anything about your medication. In fact, that's the very first thing Jardini wants you to do, schedule a "treatment review" visit where you discuss the efficacy and cost and ask the right questions about the treatment you're getting. "It is not just tough luck if your doctor chooses costly medicines for you," writes Jardini, "The system is designed this way....a health care revolution...needs to take place in the United States...but it will only start when patients enlist physician support and refuse to be denied affordable care...prohibitive cost is an intolerable side effect too."
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Dangerous practices: Off-label prescriptions
A study in the Archives of Internal Medicine (Radley DC, Finkelstein SN, Stafford RS. Off-label prescribing among office-based physicians. Arch Intern Med. 2006; 166(9): 1021-6) in 2006 showed that one-fifth of all drugs used in the US are off-label. This means that they are used for a purpose that is not specifically listed on the label, and for which clinical trials have not been undertaken for the purposes of getting the drug approved by the likes of the FDA. The study, even more remarkably, showed that around 70% of the off-label usage was not based on any strong scientific evidence!
This 2007 article from The Independent in the UK follows up on the story.
This 2007 article from The Independent in the UK follows up on the story.
Dangerous practices: Off-label prescriptions
Just because a drug is tested to treat one illness doesn't prove it's safe to combat other conditions. So why do doctors still prescribe 'off-label'? Jerome Burne reports
Tuesday, 3 April 2007
When you go to the GP, you can rest assured that any drugs you are given have been tested to make sure they work and are safe. Or can you? The fact is that hidden in medical journals are many reports showing many drugs are prescribed with no scientific evidence to show they work for the problem you've got.
Last year, the eminent medic Professor Michael Baum used this fact to mount an attack on CAM (complementary and alternative medicine). He urged NHS trusts to only fund treatments that are "based on solid evidence", and won a lot of support. After all, drugs have to be rigorously tested, so why shouldn't the alternatives?
Prescribing a drug for a condition it has not been tested to treat is known as "off-label" prescribing. When a drug gets a licence, it is for a particular use - to treat asthma, lower cholesterol - and the drug company has to provide evidence that it does this better than a placebo.
The scale of the "off-label" problem was revealed in a paper published in the Archives of Internal Medicine recently. It showed that 21 per cent of the 160 most commonly prescribed drugs in the US were given to people on an off-label basis. For instance, 46 per cent of heart drugs (except those to lower cholesterol or reduce blood pressure) were prescribed off-label, while in the case of Neurontin, licensed for epilepsy and nerve pain, 98 per cent of its uses were for unrelated conditions such as bi-polar disorder and depression. In the US, the FDA is under pressure to recognise the possibility that Neurontin increases suicide risk.
Of course doctors should be allowed to use their experience and judgement to prescribe unlicensed drugs where other treatments have failed. But the study - conducted at Stanford University - showed that for nearly three-quarters of the off-label uses, there was "little or no scientific support".
Off-label prescribing has a long history. In the 1980s, people with a mildly irregular heartbeat were given Tambocor or Enkaid, which reduced the risk of sudden death in people with severe arrhythmia. An estimated 200,000 Americans with a mild version were given the drugs on the assumption that it would help them, too. However, when a proper trial was finally done it showed that it doubled or tripled their risk of death.
What also needs to be examined is the role the drug companies play. Encouraging off-label prescribing, for instance, is a cheaper way of increasing drug sales than conducting large trials for every new use.
Reports in both the British Medical Journal and The Lancet have shown that sleeping pills are neither very safe nor very effective, but they still feature regularly in the top 20 most prescribed drugs in both the UK and US. But an extensive review recently found that counselling and psychotherapy were not only more effective but also without side effects. If evidence-based medicine was really what was on offer, counselling is what insomniacs would be offered. But try getting that from your GP.
Children are particularly vulnerable to being given drugs with little or no evidence base. Recently, the journal Science reported that "between 50 and 90 per cent of drugs used on adults have never been tested or licensed for children... as a result 100 million children in the EU are often prescribed off-label or unauthorised drugs".
The risks that this brings was well illustrated by the scandal involving the 60,000 children prescribed antidepressant SSRI drugs off-label in the UK. In December 2003 the drugs watchdog - the MHRA - advised doctors that, with the single exception of Prozac, no other SSRI should be used for children because they doubled the risk of suicide.
A major study in The Lancet had shown that four other SSRIs were not only unlikely to produce any "clinically important improvement" in children with depression but, in one case, had a rate of "suicide-related events" 14 times greater than a placebo. However, questions in the House of Commons revealed that 18 months later more prescriptions for those SSRIs were being issued than for Prozac.
The tendency for people to turn to non-drug treatments for less acute conditions starts to look less like a "flight from reason" and more like a rational option. Of course, the ideal that treatments should be properly tested is an excellent one but the notion that drug-based medicine has a monopoly on testing is a myth - and myths have no place in good science.
Food Is Better Medicine Than Drugs: Your Prescription for Drug-Free Health by Jerome Burne and Patrick Holford is published by Piatkus (£16.99)
Drug testing: the facts
Drugs licensed as safe and effective kill 10,000 people a year in the UK.
Trials run by drug companies have been shown to be four times more likely to produce results favourable to the company than those funded from other sources.
One study on SSRI use in children, sponsored by a drug company, concluded that "most adverse effects were not serious". An independent review found that seven of the children on the drug had been admitted to hospital.
When it was pulled from the market in 2000, the heartburn drug Propulsid had been involved in an estimated 300 deaths and 16,000 cases of heart damage. It had also been used off-label to treat infants in intensive care even though none of 20 trials had shown that it benefited them.
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