Their experiments showed that toxins produced in, for example, the genetically engineered maize MON810, can significantly impact the viability of human cells. The effects were observed with relatively high concentrations of the toxins, nevertheless there is cause for concern.

According to companies like Monsanto, which produces genetically engineered maize with these toxins, the toxins are supposed to be active only against particular insects and should have no effect on mammals and humans at all.

For the first time, experiments have now shown that they can have an effect on human cells. These kinds of investigations are not a requirement for risk assessment in Europe or in any other region.

Another finding of the researchers concerns a herbicide formulation sold under the brand name Roundup. Massive amounts of this herbicide are sprayed on genetically engineered soybean crops and its residues can be found in food and feed.

According to the new publication, even extremely low dosages of Roundup (glyphosate formulations) can damage human cells. These findings are in accordance with several other investigations highlighting unexpected health risks associated with glyphosate preparations.

“We were very much surprised by our findings. Until now, it has been thought almost impossible for Bt proteins to be toxic to human cells. Now further investigations have to be conducted to find out how these toxins impact the cells and if combinatorial effects with other compounds in the food and feed chain have to be taken into account,” says Gilles-Eric Séralini from the University of Caen, who supervised the experiments. “In conclusion, these experiments show that the risks of Bt toxins and of Roundup have been underestimated.”

Bt toxins and tolerance to herbicides are broadly used in genetically engineered plants. Bt proteins only naturally occur in soil bacteria. By introducing the modified toxin gene into the plants, the structure of the toxins is modified and may thereby cause selectivity to be changed. The content of the proteins within the plants is highly variable.

Many genetically engineered plants contain several Bt toxins at the same time. For example, SmartStax produces six different Bt toxins and therefore has a higher overall content of the proteins. In addition, it was made tolerant to herbicides.

So far, there has been no investigation of the combinatorial effects of these toxins and residues from spraying, or their potential risks for human health, which was considered unlikely. The researchers have now shown that interactivity does occur. Under the specific conditions of their experiment, the modified Bt toxin lowered the toxicity of Roundup.

Further investigations are necessary to examine other potential combinatorial effects under varying conditions.

“These results are pretty worrying. Risk assessment requirements for genetically engineered plants and pesticides need to be rigidly enforced. In the light of these findings, we think that the commercialization of these plants is not in accordance with EU regulations”, says Christoph Then at Testbiotech.

Testbiotech is closely following risk assessment at the European Food Safety Authority EFSA and has repeatedly brought attention to gaps in risk assessment.

The research was supported by GEKKO foundation (Germany).  The Committee for Research and Independent Investigation on Genetic Engineering (CRIIGEN) Association (France) and Testbiotech (Germany) were involved in planning the experiments and the discussion of results. Findings were published after peer review process.

A study published this week in the journal Carcinogenesis shows that in both cell lines and mouse models, grape seed extract (GSE) kills head and neck squamous cell carcinoma cells, while leaving healthy cells unharmed.

“It’s a rather dramatic effect,” says Rajesh Agarwal, PhD, investigator at the University of Colorado Cancer Center and professor at the Skaggs School of Pharmaceutical Sciences.

It depends in large part, says Agarwal, on a healthy cell’s ability to wait out damage.

“Cancer cells are fast-growing cells,” Agarwal says. “Not only that, but they are necessarily fast growing. When conditions exist in which they can’t grow, they die.”

Grape seed extract creates these conditions that are unfavorable to growth. Specifically, the paper shows that grape seed extract both damages cancer cells DNA (via increased reactive oxygen species) and stops the pathways that allow repair (as seen by decreased levels of the DNA repair molecules Brca1 and Rad51 and DNA repair foci).

“Yet we saw absolutely no toxicity to the mice, themselves,” Agarwal says.

Again, the grape seed extract killed the cancer cells but not the healthy cells.

A study raises concern about children’s exposure to mercury through fish eating, tying it for the first time to hormone changes that increase chronic stress and associated immune system dysfunction.

The mercury levels measured in the children were well below the levels considered a health risk by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

This new study from Oswego County, New York, finds that higher mercury levels measured in the children’s blood are significantly associated with lower cortisol levels. The hormone cortisol is released in response to stress and is important for metabolism, immune responses and blood pressure. Its levels naturally fluctuate during the day – levels are higher in the morning and lower in the afternoon.

Even lower cortisol levels and responses can result in chronic stress even though stress increases the hormone’s level. The study’s results suggest that mercury exposure at levels commonly seen in fish eating populations may do this. It may act as a chronic stressor and disrupt the stress response. Chronic stress means the body doesn’t relax – cells continually function in high gear and do not return to a normal state. Long-term stress can have many negative health effects such as increased heart disease, more metabolic disorders and lowered immunity.

The findings are in line with prior studies in people and fish. The toxic metal increased inflammation in miners exposed to mercury. Animal studies find reduced cortisol levels in mercury-contaminated fish after capture stress.

Fish consumption is a major source both of beneficial omega-3 fatty acids and toxic mercury. Omega-3s benefit health by protecting against heart disease. Mercury is potentially harmful because it affects the brain and nervous system in children. Although there are fish advisories in many states, it is still uncertain whether the benefit of eating fish outweighs the potential harm in children.

To address the pros and cons of fish eating in children, the researchers examined 100 children from 9 to 11 years old in New York State. Parents reported children’s fish consumption, which was categorized as eating or not in the analysis. Blood mercury levels, blood lipids, cortisol in saliva and inflammation markers were measured. Blood lipids indicate future heart disease risk; cortisol reflects changes of stress response; and inflammation markers indicate immune response differences.

Fish eaters had higher HDL – or so called good cholesterol – related to lower heart disease risk, than non-fish eaters. However, the fish eaters also had much higher – almost three times higher – mercury levels than non-fish eaters (1.1 and 0.4 microgram per liter, respectively).

Mercury levels were related to lower cortisol levels at all time points in the study. The highest mercury levels had about 20-25 percent lower cortisol in saliva samples compared with lowest mercury levels. At the same time, children with higher mercury also had higher inflammatory markers in their blood.

The study is limited by its design as a one-time survey, not a follow-up study. More work is still needed to examine whether the association is robust in larger studies with a follow-up design.

The Polio Global Eradication Initiative (PGEI), founded in 1988 by the World Health Organization, Rotary International, UNICEF, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, holds up India as a prime example of its success at eradicating polio, stating on its website (Jan. 11 2012) that “India has made unprecedented progress against polio in the last two years and on 13 January, 2012, India will reach a major milestone — a 12-month period without any case of polio being recorded.”

This report, however, is highly misleading, as an estimated 100-180 Indian children are diagnosed with vaccine-associated polio paralysis (VAPP) each year. In fact, the clinical presentation of the disease, including paralysis, caused by VAPP is indistinguishable from that caused by wild polioviruses, making the PGEI’s pronouncements all the more suspect.¹

According to the Polio Global Eradication Initiative’s own statistics² there were 42 cases of wild-type polio (WPV) reported in India in 2010, indicating that vaccine-induced cases of polio paralysis (100-180 annually) outnumber wild-type cases by a factor of 3-4. Even if we put aside the important question of whether or not the PGEI is accurately differentiating between wild and vaccine-associated polio cases in their statistics, we still must ask ourselves: should not the real-world effects of immunization, both good and bad, be included in PGEI’s measurement of success? For the dozens of Indian children who develop vaccine-induced paralysis every year, the PGEI’s recent declaration of India as nearing “polio free” status, is not only disingenuous, but could be considered an attempt to minimize their obvious liability in having transformed polio from a natural disease vector into a man-made (iatrogenic) one.

VAPP is, in fact, the predominant form of the disease in developed countries like the US since 1973.³ The problem of vaccine-induced polio paralysis was so severe that the The United States moved to the inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV) in 2000, after the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) recommended altogether eliminating the live-virus oral polio vaccine (OPV), which is still used throughout the third world, despite the known risks.

Polio underscores the need for a change in the way we look at so-called “vaccine preventable” diseases as a whole. In most people with a healthy immune system, a poliovirus infection does not even generate symptoms. Only rarely does the infection produce minor symptoms, e.g. sore throat, fever, gastrointestinal disturbances, and influenza-like illness. In only 3% of infections does virus gain entry to the central nervous system, and then, in only 1-5 in 1000 cases does the infection progress to paralytic disease.

Due to the fact that polio spreads through the fecal-oral route (i.e. the virus is transmitted from the stool of an infected person to the mouth of another person through a contaminated object, e.g. utensil) focusing on hygiene, sanitation and proper nutrition (to support innate immunity) is a logical way to prevent transmission in the first place, as well as reducing morbidity associated with an infection when it does occur.

Instead, a large portion of the world’s vaccines are given to the Third World as “charity,” when the underlying conditions of economic impoverishment, poor nutrition, chemical exposures, and socio-political unrest are never addressed. You simply can’t vaccinate people out of these conditions, and as India’s new epidemic of vaccine-induced polio cases clearly demonstrates, the “cure” may be far worse than the disease itself.

¹ Cono J, Alexander LN (2002). “Chapter 10: Poliomyelitis” (PDF). Vaccine-Preventable Disease Surveillance Manual.
² http://www.polioeradication.org/Dataandmonitoring/Poliothisweek.aspx
³Strebel PM, Sutter RW, Cochi SL, et al. Epidemiology of poliomyelitis in the United States one decade after the last reported case of indigenous wild virus-associated disease. Clin Infect Dis 1992;14:568-79.

Please visit GreenMedInfo to access their vast database of articles and the latest information in natural health.

A new study from the University of North Carolina School of Medicine in Chapel Hill, published in theJournal of the American College of Surgeons this month, shows that most women diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer are not well-informed of their treatment options. Many, in fact, are not even meaningfully involved in treatment discussions or asked their preferences regarding the treatment’s approach.

The study is a retrospective conducted amongst women who were treated at one of four academic medical centers in Boston, San Francisco and Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The women were surveyed with questions regarding their knowledge of breast cancer treatment options and then asked about their dealings with physicians and surgeons before treatment began.

The women averaged only 52.7% in their test scores on treatment knowledge and understanding and only 48.6% of them said they’d held conferences with surgeons or physicians about their treatment options in light of the options given on the test itself.

The knowledge gaps are considered a big problem, though this is the first time a study has attempted to get an overall picture of breast cancer awareness amongst those diagnosed with it. Most studies to this point have focused on specific treatments or cancer types.

One of the more problematic issues raised was the fact that most women were not informed that survival rates for alternatives to mastectomy, such as breast-conservation therapy, are the same. Further, those with a partial mastectomy were less likely to understand recurrence rates versus those who had a full mastectomy – despite the fact that rates are usually higher in partials.

The study sheds light on the long strides needed to improve education in breast cancer amongst the general populace and especially in women who have been diagnosed or are at risk.

The more that researchers truly study the effects of antidepressant drugs on depression patients, the more it becomes painfully obvious that these mind-altering medications are utterly useless. A new study conducted by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has revealed that antidepressant drugs work no better than talk therapy, placebo pills, or basically anything else, at relieving depression.

Funded in part by the drug industry, the new study follows the same pattern as several other recent studies that, even though they were not intended to do so, actually expose antidepressant drugs as a scam. Though the study’s authors and various commentators were quick to dismiss the findings as not necessarily indicative of the fact that antidepressants provide no medical benefits, any reasonable person looking at the study with an open mind can clearly see that this is, in fact, the case.

For the study, which was published in theJournal of Clinical Psychiatry, researchers randomly assigned 156 depression patients to either take the antidepressant drug Sertraline (Zoloft) daily for 16 weeks; a form of psychotherapy called supportive-expressive therapy twice a week for four weeks, then weekly for 12 weeks; or take inactive placebo pills for 16 weeks.

At the conclusion of the study period, researchers reported virtually no difference at all among the groups in how depression patients responded to their treatments — roughly 25 percent from each group saw an improvement in their depression symptoms, while the rest continued to struggle with their symptoms.

“I was surprised by the results,” said lead researcher Jacques P. Barber, dean of the Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies at Adelphi University in Garden City, New York. “They weren’t what I’d expected.”

And to those who put their faith in Western medicine’s drug-based solutions for depression, how could the results not be surprising? After all, a study such as this one is an embarrassment to both the drug and mental health industries, as it shows that their so-called solutions are no better at treating depression symptoms than taking a sugar pill.

It’s not that the drug doesn’t work, it’s that everything works, including the drug!

And in trying to gloss over the results, some outside commentators inadvertently admitted that virtuallyanythingcan work to treat depression — yes, anything. Dr. David Mischoulon, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, for instance, actually told Reuters Health that, rather than disprove the effectiveness of antidepressants, the study actually shows that “everything seems to work to some degree.”

So when a scientific study proves that a certain pharmaceutical drug fails to live up to its hype, experts trying to defend that particular drug just have to claim thateverything, including that drug, can be helpful in treating a condition, and voila, it is still effective. This is, of course, an amazingly unscientific and absurd way of looking at the findings, but it is the only way apart from scrapping the useless drug that its defenders can (very poorly) try to justify its existence.

Sources for this article include:

http://old.news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111221/hl_nm/us_antidepressant

Learn more:http://www.naturalnews.com/034625_placebo_depression_antidepressants.html#ixzz1jfzITsLo

Most Americans do not realize this, but we are on the verge of a major doctor shortage in the United States.  All over America, good doctors are going broke.  The way that our health care system is currently set up, they simply cannot make it.  These days a lot of politicians are warning us about the dangers of “socialized medicine”, but the truth is that we already have it.  About half of all health care dollars in the United States are now spent by the federal government, and a lot of health insurance companies base reimbursements on what the federal government does.  In addition, there are a whole host of parasites that have gotten between the doctor and the patient these days.  Everyone wants a piece of the health care pie.  Health insurance companies, pharmaceutical giants, lawyers, health care “administrators” and government bureaucrats all make a sweet living off of the doctor/patient relationship.  It really is sickening.  And now Obamacare is going to make things much, much worse.  As you will read about later in this article, a stunning percentage of doctors say that they plan to leave the medical profession because of Obamacare.  What this means is that we are headed for a chronic doctor shortage and there is a good chance that there will be no doctor for you when you really need one in the years ahead.

Today, approximately 40 percent of all doctors in the United States are 55 years of age or older.  Large numbers of them are getting ready to retire.

Even before Obamacare was passed, we were already facing a massive shortage of doctors in the coming years.  The American Association of Medical Colleges has projected that we will experience a shortage of more than 150,000 doctors over the next 15 years.

Unfortunately, the passage of Obamacare is going to make this crisis even worse.  A whole host of surveys have shown that a massive number of doctors in America are headed for the exits because of the new health care law….

*According to a Merritt Hawkins survey of 2,379 doctors for the Physicians Foundation that was conducted in August 2010, 40 percent of all U.S. doctors plan to “retire, seek a nonclinical job in health care, or seek a job or business unrelated to health care” at some point over the next three years.

*A shocking IBD/TPP Poll taken in 2010 found that 45 percent of all U.S. doctors are considering leaving the medical profession or retiring early as a result of Obamacare.

At the moment, there are approximately 960,000 doctors in the United States.

So what is going to happen if a couple hundred thousand of them suddenly leave the medical profession?

Already we were in desperate need of a lot more doctors.  The following comes from an article in the Wall Street Journal….

Health-care reform will add an estimated 32 million people to the ranks of the insured, driving them to seek medical attention that in the past they may have avoided due to expense. The aging population will also create much greater demand. The number of seniors who need more medical care is expected to soar to 72 million by 2020—nearly double today’s number.

So what is going to happen if the number of doctors starts declining rapidly?

Most Americans think of doctors as being “wealthy”, but that is not the reality of what is going on out there these days as a recent CNN article explained….

Doctors in America are harboring an embarrassing secret: Many of them are going broke.

This quiet reality, which is spreading nationwide, is claiming a wide range of casualties, including family physicians, cardiologists and oncologists.

Americans spend more on health care than anyone else in the world and yet thousands upon thousands of doctors are going broke.

How can that be?

Well, one huge contributing factor is the mismanagement of the federal government.

The following comes from an article in the New York Post….

Existing government programs already reimburse physicians at rates that are often less than the actual cost of treating a patient. Estimates suggest that on average physicians are reimbursed at roughly 78% of costs under Medicare, and just 70% of costs under Medicaid. Physicians must either make up for this shortfall by shifting costs to those patients with insurance — meaning those of us with insurance pay more — or treat patients at a loss.

So guess who has to make up the difference?

You and I.

When we go to see the doctor we get smacked with a huge bill in order to make up for the Medicare and Medicaid patients.

Things have gotten so bad that a lot of doctors won’t even see Medicare and Medicaid patients anymore.

Just check out what some researchers found when they called around to doctors in Illinois back in 2010.  The following comes from an article in the New York Times….

The study used a “secret shopper” technique in which researchers posed as the parent of a sick or injured child and called 273 specialty practices in Cook County, Ill., to schedule appointments. The callers, working from January to May 2010, described problems that were urgent but not emergencies, like diabetes, seizures, uncontrolled asthma, a broken bone or severe depression. If they were asked, they said that primary care doctors or emergency departments had referred them.

Sixty-six percent of those who mentioned Medicaid-CHIP (Children’s Health Insurance Program) were denied appointments, compared with 11 percent who said they had private insurance, according to an article being published Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Today, one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid.  Without Medicaid, millions of children would not receive health care.

But now large numbers of doctors are rejecting patients on Medicaid because they simply cannot afford to treat them.

And now as Obamacare is fully implemented over the next few years it is going to make our health care mess a whole lot worse.

Obamacare is going to burden our doctors with a gigantic mountain of new regulations and red tape.  It is going to become incredibly difficult to make a living as a doctor and the federal government is going to be pretty much running the entire health care system.

Did you know that Obamacare is so oppressive that it is even causing the cancellation of new hospitals?

According to the executive director of Physician Hospitals of America, Obamacare has already forced the cancellation of at least 60 doctor-owned hospitals that were scheduled to open.

In addition, as Obamacare is fully rolled out the wait to see a doctor is likely to get much longer.  If you urgently need to see a doctor you may simply be out of luck.

If you doubt this, just check out what happened in Massachusetts.  As a result of Romneycare, the average wait to see a doctor in Massachusetts is now much, much longer….

In fact, we have already seen the start of this process in Massachusetts, where Mitt Romney’s health care reforms were nearly identical to President Obama’s. Romney’s reforms increased the demand for health care but did nothing to expand the supply of physicians. In fact, by cracking down on insurance premiums, Massachusetts pushed insurers to reduce their payments to providers, making it less worthwhile for doctors to expand their practices. As a result, the average wait to get an appointment with a doctor grew from 33 days to over 55 days.

Is that the kind of health care system that you want?

The more doctors that leave the system, the worse that things are going to get.

We need a system where doctors can make a living.  It is just as simple as that.

The following is one example of a doctor that is going broke from a recent CNN article….

Beau Donegan, senior executive with a hospital cancer center in Newport Beach, Calif., is well aware of physicians’ financial woes.

“Many are too proud to admit that they are on the verge of bankruptcy,” she said. “These physicians see no way out of the downward spiral of reimbursement, escalating costs of treating patients and insurance companies deciding when and how much they will pay them.”

Donegan knows an oncologist “with a stellar reputation in the community” who hasn’t taken a salary from his private practice in over a year. He owes drug companies $1.6 million, which he wasn’t reimbursed for.

The following is another example from that same article….

Dr. Neil Barth is that oncologist. He has been in the top 10% of oncologists in his region, according to U.S. News Top Doctors’ ranking. Still, he is contemplating personal bankruptcy.

That move could shutter his 31-year-old clinical practice and force 6,000 cancer patients to look for a new doctor.

Are you starting to get the picture?

There are already not enough doctors, and the number of doctors is going to continue to decline unless something is done.

We need to fundamentally restructure the way that health care is done in the United States.  What we are doing now is not working, and Obamacare is going to make things much worse.

Today, the average medical school student graduates with over $295,000 of student loan debt.

So if doctors can’t make any money, then where is the incentive to go into so much debt?

Something has gone very wrong.

It isn’t as if we are not spending enough money on health care.  Just consider the following stats….

-What the United States spent on health care in 2009 was greater than the entire GDP of Great Britain.

-According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, health care costs accounted for just 9.5% of all personal consumption back in 1980.  Today they account for approximately 16.3%.

-Over the past decade, health insurance premiums have risen three times faster than wages have in the United States.

-According to a report released in 2010, Americans spend approximately twice as much as residents of other developed countries do on health care.

So we are definitely spending more than enough money on health care.

So where is it all going?

Well, it is going to the parasites….

-According to a report by Health Care for America Now, America’s five biggest for-profit health insurance companies ended 2009 with a combined profit of $12.2 billion.

-The chairman of Aetna, the third largest health insurance company in the United States, brought in a staggering $68.7 million during 2010. Ron Williams exercised stock options that were worth approximately $50.3 million and he raked in an additional $18.4 million in wages and other forms of compensation.  The funny thing is that he left the company and didn’t even work the whole year.

-There were more than two dozen pharmaceutical companies that made over a billion dollars in profits each during 2008.

-According to the CDC, the percentage of Americans that say that they have taken a prescription drug within the last month has risen to almost 50 percent.

-Lawyers are certainly doing their part to contribute to soaring health care costs. According to one recent study, the medical liability system in the United States added approximately $55.6 billion to the cost of health care in 2008.

Are you starting to understand?

This gigantic mess is causing an increasing number of Americans to seek medical care outside of the country.  According to numbers released by Deloitte Consulting, a whopping 875,000 Americans were “medical tourists” in 2010.

Our health care system is irretrievably broken.  The federal government has messed it up beyond all recognition and it is not going to get better any time soon.

In brief: A growing trend is happening where uninsured and under-insured people in America turn to daily deals sites to get coupons for health care.

The full story

Groupon, one of the most popular of the daily deals sites, occasionally has coupons from medical clinics and dentists and says that they are often some of the most popular, selling out fast.

The deals usually offer 50% off to consumers who purchase it through the site and present the coupon to the provider.

Another similar site, LivingSocial, has seen trends that are much the same. A recent posting for a dentist in New York there received overwhelming response and sold out within hours.

The sites often feature everything from Botox injections to spa treatements to Lasik eye surgery, dental cleanings and exams, and even health checkups including one ad for a Department of Transportation health check for professional drivers.

It’s a growing trend that is helping some Americans who would otherwise not be able to afford coverage to get basic health care.

Breast cancer survival rates are higher now than they’ve ever been in the past, but health challenges including high rates of depression are still a problem. Researchers at the University of Missouri have been testing how meditation techniques can help with this.

The researchers in the Sinclair School of Nursing have found that breast cancer survivors’ health improves after they learn Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), a type of mindfulness training that incorporates meditation, yoga, and physical awareness.

“MBSR is another tool to enhance the lives of breast cancer survivors,” SSN doctoral student Jane Armer says. “Patients often are given a variety of options to reduce stress, but they should choose what works for them according to their lifestyles and belief systems.”

The MBSR program includes eight to ten weeks of group sessions where the participants learn the MBSR skills. The study found that survivors who utilized MBSR had improved moods, more mindfulness, and less depression overall. It can be used for anyone in post-diagnosis, during or after surgery or treatment.