Friday, January 7, 2011

Whooping Cough Vaccine Booster Shots. Meningitis Vaccine Wanes After 5 Years

Tags: Whooping Cough Vaccine Epidemic Booster Shots Needed Meningitis Vaccine Lasts 5 years only Booster Needed Controversies

Dr. Mercola practiced as a family doctor and worked with Big Pharma to hawk drugs. He said that in the 1990s, he discovered how they lied to him so he became a health crusader in the late 1990s. Dr. Oz www.doctoroz.com said Mercola has a good website, but you have to check out some of what he claims.


My recent blog on vaccines and whooping cough epidemic said that a lack of vaccination in affluent well-educated communities had the most problems with whooping cough. Mercola said that Pertussis whooping cough bacteria has mutated long ago and the vaccine has not been updated. http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/01/07/traditional-media-now-questioning-whooping-cough-vaccine.aspx


I am skeptical about this claim mainly because the CDC tries to get the latest mutation of organism. It is possible it was ignored in the Bush administration because an incompetent ran the CDC then.


I went to WebMD http://www.webmd.com which has been a reliable source of the latest information to check out Mercola. He claimed that some babies with vaccinations also got the Whooping Mutations were not mentioned.


I always wondered why babies are given the vaccines when their immune response is weak. I guess they feel it is better than nothing. For example the flu shot does not work well until the age of four to six. The Obama administration examined why the flu vaccine was not working well for seniors where 35,000 die each flu season. Seniors should all take the High Dose vaccine because our immune system is much weaker and it does not take.


One thought occurred to me. If the mother was not still protected from whooping cough, she may not pass on any immunity to her baby. I think it is not known how long the immunity of whooping cough vaccine included in Tdap vaccine for babies last, but it might wane over the years. Exposure to the flu seems, however, to protect many seniors who did not die in great numbers during the 1918 deadly Flu Epidemic which lasted research indicates killed 100 million worldwide.


If you travel to Third World countries where polio is still prevalent such as India, make sure you get the vaccine. I agree with Dr. Mercola that often doctors and experts who monitor vaccines have conflicts of interest as Mercola had for a long time. He was a paid lecturer for Big Pharma.

Jim Kawakami, Jan 7, 2010, http://jimboguy.blogspot.com

Whooping Cough Vaccine: Booster Shots Advised

Advisory Panel: More Pertussis, Meningitis Booster Shots Needed

By Daniel J. DeNoon

WebMD Health News

Reviewed by Laura J. Martin, MD


Oct. 28, 2010 -- http://children.webmd.com/vaccines/news/20101028/whooping-cough-vaccine-booster-shots-advised Prompted by a recent surge in whooping cough deaths, particularly in infants, the nation's chief vaccine advisory panel says more Americans of all ages should get Tdap booster shots.


In California, 10 infant deaths from whooping cough led to a massive vaccination campaign. Now the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) has broadened its whooping cough vaccine recommendations.

Whooping cough, formally known as pertussis, is included in the five-dose Dtap (diphtheria-tetanus-acellular pertussis) vaccine series routinely given to children. Nearly all kids get this vaccine. But protection wanes over the years.

About half of teens and about 6% of adults have had the Tdap (tetanus-diphtheria-acellular pertussis) vaccine. One big reason is that ACIP recommendations were confusing: they left out kids ages 7 to 10, as well as adults over age 64.

Moreover, adults who got tetanus shots usually got a tetanus-diphtheria-only vaccine and not Tdap. If they then wanted Tdap, it was unclear how long they had to wait.

The ACIP's new recommendations fix these problems:

  • Any teens or adults who haven't had a Tdap shot or who don't know their vaccine history should get a Tdap shot as soon as possible.
  • Adults who have not had one should get a Tdap shot regardless of how recently they had a tetanus-diphtheria booster shot.
  • All kids ages 11 to 18 who had their Dtap shots as children should get a single Tdap booster instead of one tetanus-diphtheria booster.
  • All adults ages 65 and older who have never had a Tdap booster should get one if they think they'll ever have close contact with an infant.
  • Kids ages 7 to 10 who have not completed the full Dtap series should get a Tdap shot.


Meningitis Booster at Age 16?

By a narrow 6-5 vote, with three abstentions, the ACIP voted to recommend a second meningococcal vaccination at age 16.

Meningococcal meningitis is rare, but when it strikes, it can kill a healthy young person in less than a day. Those who survive often are horribly crippled.

The illness most often strikes young people of college age. The vaccine is recommended at age 11 to 12.

Meningococcal vaccine protection was thought to last at least 10 years. But the ACIP was shaken by new data showing that vaccine protection likely disappears after only five years.

There hasn't yet been an increase in meningococcal cases or deaths, but the majority of the ACIP did not want to wait to see if this would happen.

Those who voted against the recommendation were swayed by the high cost of vaccinating all U.S. kids -- twice -- against a relatively rare, albeit severe, disease.

Moreover, the FDA pointed out to the ACIP that existing meningococcal vaccines are not licensed for use as booster shots -- and that if the booster is recommended, studies of the booster shot's safety and effectiveness are unlikely to be performed.

But spurred on by dramatic testimony by families and individuals affected by meningococcal meningitis, the majority of the panel voted to recommend the booster shot.

The ACIP recommendations must be formally enacted by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). It is extremely unusual for the HHS to override the ACIP, but the close vote and the objection by the FDA makes such an action more likely.

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Thursday, January 6, 2011

Vaccines MMR Autism Fraud Vaccine Fears Causing Measles, Mumps, Flu, Deaths

Tags: Vaccine Fears Causing Epidemics in Babies Autism fears Unfounded Lack Vitamin D May Be Cause

It is truly ironic that epidemics of diseases such as Autism and Vaccine Phobia inhabits some of the most intelligent well educated and well read communities. In California Autism is considered an affluent disease. In Marin County north of San Francisco and in Ashland, Oregon, vaccine phobia and disease is rampant.

Listening to a DVR of Joe Scarborough’s Morning Joe on MSNBC 6 AM ET and 3 AM PT, I heard him say his son has a mild form of Autism. His son was probably born in Pensacola, Florida.

It is amazing that so many smart people do not see the relationship with the introduction sunscreens and a sharp increase in Autism! We need lots of vitamin D3 made from the noon day sun on short exposures of about 15 minutes for White skin individuals. That makes 22,000 IU of vitamin D3 in the skin.

Every cell in our body has activated vitamin D receptors which lead to improved health retarding infections, cancers, obesity, and metabolic diseases. Affluent people listen to the official experts more carefully and suspend common sense so that is why their babies get Autism. Vitamin D activates our T-Cells which can fight infections and disease. It also keeps our genes working right by turning them off or on as required. It kills cancers cells at the early stages. Cancers over time develop proteins to block the vitamin D receptor so it is more difficult cure cancers long neglected such as pancreatic and lung cancers.

Today the official word came out that the original child multi-vaccine caused Autism was based on outright fraud. I knew it was a fraud a long time ago because this result could not be duplicated by other scientists, the Gold Standard for authenticating research done by others. This is the Dark Side of the Internet as commented on by Stanley Fish in the New York Times recently. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/03/anonymity-and-the-dark-side-of-the-internet/?src=me&ref=general

Internet users too often forget that an article on the Internet does not mean that it is factual. Because Autism was a disease of the affluent, word of this study got out massively by persons who were not trained in the Scientific Method which states that if a study cannot be confirmed by others, it is likely fraudulent or the researcher left out crucial elements in their research experiments. The scientists said there was no proof, but they were drowned out on the Internet.

Frauds are usually caught early by other researchers. Unfortunately Big Pharma research is largely secret and many times they lie to the FDA or get bought academics or doctors to verify the safety of drugs. This was done a lot during the Reagan administration and Bush administration by not doing a thorough job. We still don’t know if Gene modified plants by Monsanto and others is really safe in the long term because they were never tested. That also holds for high fructose corn syrup used in prepared foods in high amounts, especially in Colas. Fructose is also high in juices like Apple juice which we get almost all from China.

I thought it amusing on the Letterman Show last night when he was interviewing www.doctoroz.com Dr. Oz about how to lose ten pounds. Dr. Oz told him that he had too many calories for lunch and David Letterman got angry. The latter also said he was hungry all the time, another symptom of eating too much fructose. Read “The Sugar Fix: The High-Fructose Fallout That Is Making You Fat and Sick” by Richard J. Johnson, MD and search his work in http://www.mercola.com/ We do not have the ability to metabolize so much fructose in the liver safely because unlike today, sweet fruits were rare tens of thousands years ago. The by-products of fructose metabolism gives us deadly triglycerides and very low lipoproteins, leading to heart disease and dementia. One by product of fructose metabolism in cells is to produce uric acid which can inflame our blood vessels increasing our blood pressure and possibly inflaming our brain altering what nutrients can get in and out efficiently. This may be one reason that we get excess protein accumulation in our brain which leads to Alzheimer’s Disease. Somehow we are altering the ability of our body to destroy excess proteins.

Most people depend on anecdotal information to make erroneous conclusions. We have seen that very intelligent people make these errors. As the saying goes Garbage In, Garbage Out.

The California H1NI flu virus has now become our seasonal flu virus. The vaccines is working very well and for seniors taking the High Dose Vaccine is necessary because our immune response is much weaker than others. We shall see whether seniors who take the vaccine get sick and die. In 1918 the first H1N1 virus killed people, but not many. The second one a year or so the latter killed many children because their immune response destroyed their organs. Older people had some exposure already so they did not die. Search Autism at my blog in the titles on the left over many months and even years.

Jim Kawakami, Jan 6, 2011, http://jimboguy.blogspot.com

Frontline PBS Portland Tribune Jennifer Anderson, April 22, 2010, The show (www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/vaccines), centers on the debate in Ashland, which has one of the highest rates in the country of parents who claim a “religious exemption” from vaccinations that the state requires for children enrolling in kindergarten.

The exemption rate there is 24 percent; Multnomah County’s is 6 percent. Those numbers are on the rise, however, as an expanding group of liberal, well-educated parents pride themselves on providing their kids a natural environment that may not include all vaccinations.

Amy Lyden and Annie Adams are two of those moms. Both have sons who attend Portland Village School, a Waldorf-inspired North Portland public charter school that happens to have the second-highest rate of kindergarten vaccine exemptions in the county, at 43 percent.

“I just think the human body has the capacity, with proper nourishment, to manage viruses that can attack the body,” Lyden says, noting that the family eats organic, limits its TV exposure and gets plenty of outdoor exercise.

Both she and Adams say they took the advice of their pediatricians with their first child and had them get all of their vaccines. But they later regretted that decision as they did research, opted for a more holistic lifestyle and heard opinions from other parents.

Both mothers say that when their younger sons start kindergarten, they’ll check the religious exemption box because they’ll be picking and choosing which vaccines they receive, rather than following the CDC’s schedule.

When a child in her son’s fifth-grade classroom came down with whooping cough in February, Adams says, the county sent notes home, stirring a buzz among school parents.

Adams says she and others who questioned vaccinations were labeled as “those hippie parents,” but she just took it as an opportunity for dialogue: “I wanted them to come and find out why, and not just judge me.”

Other Portland schools also exceed the statewide average rate of 5 percent exemptions for one or more vaccines. (There’s no public data detailing how many vaccines children don’t receive, or specifying which ones, because parents aren’t asked to provide that information.)

At the top of the list is the private Cedarwood Waldorf School in Southwest Portland, whose 78 percent exemption rate even exceeds Portland Village School.

In fact, the top 18 county schools with the most exemptions – of 10 percent or more of their students – are all Waldorf, Montessori, alternative, private, charter or magnet schools, rather than a plain old neighborhood public school.

Increasingly, parents are claiming a "religious exemption" for not having their children vaccinated, which decreases the overall immunity of children in the classroom.


pastedGraphic.pdf

COURTESY OF OREGON IMMUNIZATION PROGRAM


What about the herd?

County health officer Gary Oxman says he respects the rights of parents to ask questions about vaccines. “They have a different view of what’s healthy for their kids and different view of the social contract of immunization, but they’re not irrational,” he says.

Yet Oxman cautions that there could be public health implications down the road, because as greater numbers of children opt out of vaccinations, the phenomenon known as “herd immunity” breaks down.

That’s the term for the general population’s resistance to the spread of disease, due to those who’ve been immunized.

As long as the population meets a certain threshold of people who’ve been vaccinated (80 percent for most diseases; 92 percent for pertussis), the herd immunity will be strong, experts say. … http://www.portlandtribune.com/news/story.php?story_id=127189135660662400



Katharine Mieszkowski, NY Times, July 10, 2010 … statewide whooping cough epidemic has not changed how Danielle Lawson of San Anselmo feels about vaccinating her 5 1/2-month-old daughter.


A nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization providing local coverage of the San Francisco Bay Area for The New York Times. To join the conversation about this article, go to baycitizen.org.


Ms. Lawson has declined almost all of the standard vaccines recommended for infants, including DTaP, which protects against whooping cough.

“I haven’t categorically ruled them out,” she said. “But I just think at this point she’s too young, and her immune system is still developing. Nothing goes into my baby right now, except for breast milk, so I don’t feel comfortable injecting her with strange chemicals.”

Public health officials in Marin County, which is by many measures the wealthiest and healthiest county in the state, said this kind of attitude toward vaccinations might be one reason that the county, with a population of just 250,000, currently accounts for about 15 percent of all reported whooping cough cases in California.

Of 58 counties in the state, Marin is ranked seventh — and No. 1 in the Bay Area — in parents’ choosing not to get their children the immunizations required for kindergarten. Some 7 percent of kindergartners in the county had a “personal belief exemption” in 2009. … http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/11/us/11bcwhooping.html


ScienceDaily (Jan. 5, 2011) — http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110106145438.htm


The BMJ has declared the 1998 Lancet paper that implied a link between the MMR vaccine and autism "an elaborate fraud."


Dr Fiona Godlee, BMJ Editor in Chief says "the MMR scare was based not on bad science but on a deliberate fraud" and that such "clear evidence of falsification of data should now close the door on this damaging vaccine scare."

She is struck by a comparison between researcher Andrew Wakefield's fraud and Piltdown man, that great paleontological hoax that led people to believe for 40 years that the missing link between man and ape had been found.

She also questions the veracity of Wakefield's other publications and calls for an investigation "to decide whether any others should be retracted."

A series of three articles starting this week reveal the true extent of the scam behind the scare. The series is based on interviews, documents and data, collected during seven years of inquiries by award-winning investigative journalist Brian Deer.

Thanks to the recent publication of the General Medical Council's six million word transcript, the BMJ was able to peer-review and check Deer's findings and confirm extensive falsification in the Lancet paper.

In an editorial, Dr Godlee, together with deputy BMJ editor Jane Smith, and leading paediatrician and associate BMJ editor Harvey Marcovitch, conclude that there is "no doubt" that it was Wakefield who perpetrated this fraud. They say: "A great deal of thought and effort must have gone into drafting the paper to achieve the results he wanted: the discrepancies all led in one direction; misreporting was gross."

Yet he has repeatedly denied doing anything wrong at all, they add. "Instead, although now disgraced and stripped of his clinical and academic credentials, he continues to push his views. Meanwhile the damage to public health continues."

"Science is based on trust," concludes Dr Godlee. "Such a breach of trust is deeply shocking. And even though almost certainly rare on this scale, it raises important questions about how this could happen, what could have been done to uncover it earlier, what further inquiry is now needed, and what can be done to prevent something like this happening again."

The BMJ will explore these and other questions over the next two weeks.

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Global Warming Atlantic Current Shift Gulf Stream Labrador Current Interactions

Tags: Global Warming Gulf Labrador Currents Interaction Change Cold Europe Dry Russia

Several years ago I read an article that showed that the Gulf Stream which normally sinks and turns towards Europe has diminished by two-thirds and the Gulf current going north did not slow down. This AP type report from France does not go into the more complex arguments involved in these currents, so I will not go into this now.

I predicted then that Europe will become colder in the winter. That seems to be happening now. Based on the La Nina winter effects on the east coast states, it is even possible that the warming Gulf Stream may be slowing down in its flow towards us and may be shifting elsewhere. This is just a wild guess.

I am writing a series of articles and ideas about Global Warming effects on my blog and do not plan to e-mail these complex arguments because most of you will not necessary be interested. Some will.

Jim Kawakami, Jan 5, 2010, http://jimboguy.blogspot.com

Atlantic Currents Have Seen Drastic Changes, Agence France-Presse, Jan 4, 2011, http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/01/atlantic-currents-drastic-study/?utm_source=Raw+Story+Daily+Update&utm_campaign=d40d922f93-1_41_4_2011&utm_medium=email

Scientists have found evidence of a "drastic" shift since the 1970s in north Atlantic Ocean currents that usually influence weather in the northern hemisphere, Swiss researchers said on Tuesday.

The team of biochemists and oceanographers from Switzerland, Canada and the United States detected changes in deep sea Atlantic corals that indicated the declining influence of the cold northern Labrador Current.

They said in the US National Academy of Science journal PNAS that the change "since the early 1970s is largely unique in the context of the last approximately 1,800 years," and raised the prospect of a direct link with global warming.

The Labrador Current interacts with the warmer Gulfstream from the south.

They in turn have a complex interaction with a climate pattern, the North Atlantic Oscillation, which has a dominant impact on weather in Europe and North America.

Scientists have pointed to a disruption or shifts in the oscillation as an explanation for moist or harsh winters in Europe, or severe summer droughts such as in Russia, in recent years.

One of the five scientists, Carsten Schubert, of the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Sciences and Technology (EAWAG), underlined that for nearly 2,000 years the sub polar Labrador current off northern Canada and Newfoundland was the dominant force.

However that pattern appeared to have only been repeated occasionally in recent decades.

"Now the southern current has taken over, it's really a drastic change," Schubert told AFP, pointing to the evidence of the shift towards warmer water in the northwest Atlantic.

The research was based on nitrogen isotope signatures in 700 year old coral reefs on the ocean floor, which feed on sinking organic particles.

While water pushed by the Gulfstream is salty and rich in nutrients, the colder Arctic waters carried by the Labrador current contain fewer nutrients.

Changes could be dated because of the natural growth rings seen in corals.

"The researchers suspect there is a direct connection between the changes in oceanic currents in the North Atlantic and global warming caused by human activities," said EAWAG in a statement.

Comcast NBC Internet Mergers Control Content Increase Profits Enormously

Tags: Comcast NBC Universal Merger Profits Cable Bonnie Hammer FCC CJR Analysis Newspapers Magazines

NBC cable has been a showcase in popular programming such as the USA Network. The woman who made it is in the top management at NBC now. Hammer was hired from the Boston Public Television where she was the President. She believes strongly in working as a team and considering the opinion of everyone seriously, not the usual ineffective top down only approach at most corporations.


"Bonnie Hammer, currently the head of NBC Universal cable networks, will take the title of chairman of the NBC Universal Cable Entertainment and Cable Studios. The position will be key in the new company, as the cable networks have been profitable for their respective companies in recent years amidst falling profits in other divisions."

Read more: Comcast names NBC Universal management team | Los Angeles Business from bizjournals


Even though NBC-General Electric has given up controlling interest of NBC universal, it still stands to profit enormously if Comcast does not interfere with programming.


Mergers occur because controlling the market allows the corporations to charge more for their products. This happened in the newspaper industry where profits approached close to 50 percent in markets such as Los Angeles. Then came the Internet and Cable television. Advertising dropped sharply and the high salaries paid to reporters and management no longer were affordable. The FCC did almost all their discussions with Comcast and their supporters with a few distracters. Remember they have to get a job after they leave.


I want newspapers and magazines to survive because they are the ones which really provide original content that the Internet bloggers thrive on. I still subscribe to the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and my local Eugene paper The Register Guard which I find quite good for a smaller city of 150,000.


I also want to keep magazines in business because they do more investigated reporting never done on television or the Internet with rare exceptions. I found Newsweek and Bloomberg Business Week particular good. Sharon Begley has a great article on all the myths of improving intelligence and memory, http://www.newsweek.com/authors/sharon-begley.html but also provides some things that do work including physical exercise such as walking for 45 minutes daily. One philosopher, Immanuel Kant, was sickly as a youth and adult. He started walking each day until he was able walk and think for hours. He became strong to become a great philosopher.


I predict that Comcast will change its name to Infinity, a name now used for their own content for a fee enterprise.


The following is a long article appearing in the Monthly CJR magazine.


Jim Kawakami, Jan 5, 2011, http://jimboguy.blogspot.com


Real Consequences of the Comcast Merger with NBC John Dunbar Columbia Journalism Review

s http://www.cjr.org/feature/a_television_deal_for_the_digi.php?page=all


Update: Two days before Christmas, Julius Genachowski, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, recommended approval of the Comcast-NBC Universal merger. The draft order, which still requires majority approval by the five-member FCC, includes a condition that will in some form require Comcast to provide NBC Universal programs to online-only competitors, like Google TV and Hulu, according to a source familiar with the document.

The Justice Department, which also must approve the transaction, worked closely with the FCC and will likely follow its lead. The pre-holiday timing of the announcement undoubtedly deflected attention from the chairman’s decision, which consumer groups may oppose, but it also came in advance of a new Republican majority in the House of Representatives, which may object to the conditions placed on Comcast.

Logic dictates that if viewers can watch what they want via their Internet connection, it makes no sense to keep paying for both broadband and cable or satellite service. But Comcast in 2009 collected more than $19 billion in revenue from cable TV service and nearly $8 billion in revenue on its broadband service. It is number one in both categories, with more than twenty-two million TV subscribers and more than 16 million Internet subscribers. The company wants to keep both revenue streams, and to grow them.

One way to do that is to keep competition in check. Comcast would be in a unique position to do just that, especially because, by adding NBC Universal to its holdings, Comcast will become one of the nation’s largest television programmers, too—the only company to have such a large position in programming, cable, and Internet distribution. Because it will control not only what content gets produced but also how it is distributed, the powerhouse will be in an unrivaled position to resist competition from Internet TV wannabes.

Merger opponents are concerned that the company could disrupt competitors’ content flowing over its broadband connections, meaning it could make Comcast-produced shows easier to watch over its online network than shows produced by others. It could also refuse to provide its content to online competitors—thus depriving them of any lifeblood—and it could extend its practice of requiring customers who want to watch popular shows online to prove they are subscribers to their local cable service.


Federal regulators will undoubtedly attach conditions aimed at preserving competition and protecting the public interest in return for approval of the deal. Meanwhile, Comcast is conspicuously vague about its plans for Internet TV. …


Neither Comcast nor NBC is an Internet neophyte. They haven’t waited for the online barbarians to reach their gates; rather, each controls a user-friendly path for its content to migrate to the Web.


In addition to shows available on its own NBC.com, NBC partnered with News Corp. to create Hulu in March 2007, with Disney joining in April 2009. The ad-supported website opened to the public in March 2008 and now dominates the free Internet TV world, allowing anyone with a broadband connection to choose from among 2,600 current prime-time television shows for viewing. Hulu’s offerings are extensive, but not all shows are available on the site and, for many TV series, only a few recent episodes are available for free.


Comcast will assume NBC Universal’s 27 percent ownership in Hulu if the deal goes through unscathed by regulators.


Comcast, for its part, joined with Time Warner in June 2009 to create a system called “TV Everywhere” that streams television shows to customers over the Internet—as long as they keep paying their monthly cable bill. It started when Time Warner agreed to allow Comcast cable customers online access to shows from Time Warner networks TBS and TNT. Today, a Comcast subscriber enters a code into a website to access cable shows that are not available for free online. The selection of shows available to stream over the Internet corresponds with the subscriber’s cable package, making sure one isn’t able to access a program online that hasn’t been paid for with cable subscription.


Although management has been guarded about what will happen with online video after the merger, “lots of broadcast content” would go to Hulu and “cable content” would go on TV Everywhere, said Steve Burke, a Comcast executive and the new chief of NBC Universal. Burke was addressing Wall Street analysts the day the deal was announced.


Critics say Comcast will make NBC content less accessible, not more available.

“Comcast will build extensive moats around their content,” predicted Susan Crawford, former special assistant to President Obama for science, technology and innovation policy, who is writing a book about the deal. “I can tell you confidently in the future you will need a cable subscription from Comcast to access online any cable channels that would otherwise be bundled by Comcast.” … http://www.cjr.org/feature/a_television_deal_for_the_digi.php?page=all

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Diabetes 2 33% by 2050 in USA Old Metformin Drug Good Diabetes and Cancer

Tags: Type 2 Diabetes Metformin Victoza® Obesity HFCS Reagan Food Corp Profits Fructose Metabolism Triglycerides Dementia FDA Improved

All of us have friends and family members who have Type 2 Diabetes caused primarily by a sharp increase of high fructose corn syrup HFCS in almost all of our prepared foods, fast foods, and soft drinks. In 1985 Reagan approved the use of an untested fructose plus glucose combination which led to a sharp uptake in weight gain after its introduction after he made HFCS by the end of 1990 which I discussed in my earlier blogs.


High Fructose Corn Syrup differs from natural cane and beet sugar in that the former is a syrup and the later a crystalline solid which limits how much can be used in various foods and drinks. Shortly before the 1970s, Japanese researchers were able to convert corn sugar by using an enzyme that breaks it up into fructose and glucose. However, the expense of the process made it uncompetitive from natural sugar produced in the USA and the Caribbean.


The food corporations profits suffered greatly because they could not competitively sell prepared foods at a cheaper price than the real foods. Reagan solved the problem by subsidizing corn where it could be sold at close to nothing and still sold for profit in Mexico due to the high subsidy. Reagan also put a high tariff on imported corn. This made it possible to make very cheap high fructose corn syrup and had the additional benefit of allowing corporate food companies to use much more of HFCS in prepared foods making it more palatable.


Without this excess sugar in drinks and prepared foods, they will not be palatable or even edible. In an NY Times article on the jump page, one person described the sugarless prepared food as spit out food.


Almost all prepared foods have high levels of corn and or soybeans stripped of fiber and flavor which required the use of artificial flavors and sugar to make frozen foods cook quickly in a microwave oven in minutes. Sugar is a pleasure food so it makes us feel good so we eat more.


One further advantage well known by restaurants and fast food places is that high fructose corn syrup does not suppress our appetite as does cane or beet sugar so we eat more regular food. Mice given equal calories of cane sugar or high fructose corn syrup HFCS at Princeton showed that HFCS flavored rat chow became obese while the normal rats ate less and did not become fat.


Obesity doubled from 1985 to 2,000 in America.


90 minute video at http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/01/02/highfructose-corn-syrup-alters-human-metabolism.aspx


Robert H. Lustig, M.D., University of California at San Francisco, Division of Endocrinology & Metabolism, Dr. Lustig describes the complicated metabolism of Fructose in the liver. Unlike natural cane and beet sugars, it results in triglyceride fat and low density lipoproteins in high amounts which are highly correlated with obesity and dementia. Some doctors now prefer examining the ratio of high density lipoproteins (HDL) to Triglycerides in determining the danger of heart disease.


I recommend watching the 90 minute video in 15 minute segments because he provides information most of you may not be familiar with. I had to rewind and go through it more than once even though I am fairly well versed in biochemistry. You do not have to understand everything, but try to get the general conclusions from his ground breaking research.

Remember when you google, there is contrary opinions from corporations such as http://www.sweetsurprise.com/ sponsored by the Food Corporations. Berman is paid to counteract scientific evidence on many topics with propaganda. What is propaganda? Watch FOX cable news or not. http://maddowblog.msnbc.com Rachel had Berman as a guest.


Jim Kawakami, Jan 4, 2011, http://jimboguy.blogspot.com



http://www.mercola.com/ Scientists have proved for the first time that fructose, a cheap form of sugar used in thousands of food products and soft drinks, can damage human metabolism and is fueling the obesity crisis. Fructose, a sweetener usually derived from corn, can cause dangerous growths of fat cells around vital organs and is able to trigger the early stages of diabetes and heart disease. Over 10 weeks, 16 volunteers on a controlled diet including high levels of fructose produced new fat cells around their heart, liver and other digestive organs. They also showed signs of food-processing abnormalities linked to diabetes and heart disease. Another group of volunteers on the same diet, but with glucose sugar replacing fructose, did not have these problems. … http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/01/02/highfructose-corn-syrup-alters-human-metabolism.aspx


Diabetes in 2010 Treatments Improving but Prevention Critical Anne L. Peters, MD, www.Medscape.com Dec 29, 2010,

… The next bit of news is that the A1c level, long used for treating diabetes, is finally officially part of the diagnostic criteria for diabetes. In January in the standards of care from the American Diabetes Association, the A1c took its place alongside fasting blood glucose level and oral glucose tolerance tests for the diagnosis of type 2 diabetes.


This has engendered a fair amount of controversy, like all change does, but I personally like using the hemoglobin A1c for diagnosing diabetes. To a large extent, I've been doing it for many years. It's a very nice way to tell if somebody has sustained hyperglycemia. It's a measure that tells us what the blood glucose levels have been over the preceding 3 months, and it really helps us clinically determine where a patient fits on the spectrum and what kind of treatment they need. So, I'm very glad we can use the hemoglobin A1c level officially for diagnosing diabetes, and I believe it will be here to stay. …


There were a number of reports and reviews about diabetes and cancer in 2010. I think the key take-home message here is that patients with type 2 diabetes are at increased risk for cancer and that we need to make sure we do cancer screenings and take extra good care of those patients because they may be at greater risk.


In terms of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the news was both good and bad in 2010. The good news was that the drug liraglutide (Victoza®) was approved. This is a GLP-1 agonist, it's a once-daily drug, and I find it extremely helpful in treating my patients with type 2 diabetes.

The first GLP-1 agonist that came out was exenatide (Byetta®) about 5 years ago, and liraglutide was the second agent in this class. We had hoped that there would be a once-a-week Byetta approved, also a GLP-1 agonist, but this drug was slowed down in terms of its approval by the FDA.

There were a number of other devices and techniques that were also slowed down in terms of their approval. For the most part this was not because of new data indicating something was wrong with the new drugs or devices, but rather that the FDA needed more data. The FDA has had a turnover in recent years, so that the people looking at these agents are asking for more data now before they will approve drugs and devices.

A drug that has tangled a great deal with the FDA (Avandia®) -- there are new warnings on Avandia in terms of its use, and it's very restricted now. It's not going to be a first-line drug for the treatment of type 2 diabetes. Pioglitazone (Actos®), which is also a peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-gamma agonist, is still on the market and the recommendations for its use haven't changed much.

My final note for 2010 is that a very old drug, metformin, which has been used worldwide since 1957, has only been shown to be better and better, which is a pretty good thing for a drug. We know the side effects associated with metformin, but recent data suggest that not only does this drug lower blood glucose levels, it also helps reduce rates of cancer in patients with type 2 diabetes and may also reduce mortality.

Metformin holds up over the long haul and in all the treatment algorithms is really the first step in our pharmacologic treatment of patients with type 2 diabetes. So that's 2010. This has been Dr. Anne Peters for Medscape. Thank you. http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/734788?src=mp&spon=17

Sunday, January 2, 2011

Economic inequality undermines social trust and community life, corroding societies as a whole need more prisons and more police

Tags: Economic Inequality Undermines Social Trust and community life, corroding societies as a whole need more prisons and more police

Earlier I did discuss the book on the effects of income inequality on societies by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, two distinguished epidemiologists, “The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger, happiness levels by careful polls show that the more income equality in Scandinavian countries, Germany, and Japan are some of the highest ranking countries verses such countries as the UK and USA some of the worst.

As Kristof rightly indicates below, the top one percent now have the same wealth as the bottom 90 percent of 150 million working Americans. This column is well worth reading.


The psyche of Americans due to many of the earlier immigrants fleeing religious persecution and wars, their temperaments may be more volatile as we have seen in the recent elections. Violence now directed at those at the bottom of the economic totem pole may shift to those at the top as has happened in Brazil where the rich all want bullet proof automobiles.


At some point they will finally realize where their ills really originate. It is economic inequality where the wealthy makes sure they get all the benefits of our economic engine and productivity. Since the Reagan era, our productivity increased by about 80 percent, but the income of the bottom 80 percent hardly budged at all since 1973 corrected for inflation.


Jim Kawakami, Jan 2, 2011, http://jimboguy.blogspot.com


OP-ED COLUMNIST

Equality, a True Soul Food

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: January 1, 2011


John Steinbeck observed that “a sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker, than a germ.”


That insight, now confirmed by epidemiological studies, is worth bearing in mind at a time of such polarizing inequality that the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans possess a greater collective net worth than the bottom 90 percent.

There’s growing evidence that the toll of our stunning inequality is not just economic but also is a melancholy of the soul. The upshot appears to be high rates of violent crime, high narcotics use, high teenage birthrates and even high rates of heart disease.

That’s the argument of an important book by two distinguished British epidemiologists, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. They argue that gross inequality tears at the human psyche, creating anxiety, distrust and an array of mental and physical ailments — and they cite mountains of data to support their argument.

“If you fail to avoid high inequality, you will need more prisons and more police,” they assert. “You will have to deal with higher rates of mental illness, drug abuse and every other kind of problem.” They explore these issues in their book, “The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger.”

The heart of their argument is that humans are social animals and that in highly unequal societies those at the bottom suffer from a range of pathologies. For example, a long-term study of British civil servants found that messengers, doormen and others with low status were much more likely to die of heart disease, suicide and some cancers and had substantially worse overall health.

There’s similar evidence from other primates. For example, macaque monkeys are also highly social animals, and scientists put them in cages and taught them how to push a lever so that they could get cocaine. Those at the bottom of the monkey hierarchy took much more cocaine than high-status monkeys.

Other experiments found that low-status monkeys suffered physical problems, including atherosclerosis in their arteries and an increase in abdominal fat. And as with monkeys, so with humans. Researchers have found that when people become unemployed or suffer economic setbacks, they gain weight. One 12-year study of American men found that when their income slipped, they gained an average of 5.5 pounds.

The correlation is strong around the world between countries with greater inequality and greater drug use. Paradoxically, countries with more relaxed narcotics laws, like the Netherlands, have relatively low domestic drug use — perhaps because they are more egalitarian.

Professors Wilkinson and Pickett crunch the numbers and show that the same relationship holds true for a range of social problems. Among rich countries, those that are more unequal appear to have more mental illness, infant mortality, obesity, high school dropouts, teenage births, homicides, and so on.

They find the same thing is true among the 50 American states. More unequal states, like Mississippi and Louisiana, do poorly by these social measures. More equal states, like New Hampshire and Minnesota, do far better.

So why is inequality so harmful? “The Spirit Level” suggests that inequality undermines social trust and community life, corroding societies as a whole. It also suggests that humans, as social beings, become stressed when they find themselves at the bottom of a hierarchy.

That stress leads to biological changes, such as the release of the hormone cortisol, and to the accumulation of abdominal fat (perhaps an evolutionary adaptation in preparation for starvation ahead?). The result is physical ailments like heart disease, and social ailments like violent crime, mutual distrust, self-destructive behaviors and persistent poverty. Another result is the establishment of alternative systems in which one can win respect and acquire self-esteem, such as gangs.

Granted, humans are not all equal in ability: There will always be some who are more wealthy — and others who constitute the bottom. But inequality does not have to be as harsh, oppressive and polarized as it is in America today. Germany and Japan have attained modern, efficient economies with far less inequality than we have — and far fewer social problems. Likewise, the gap between rich and poor fell during the Clinton administration, according to data cited in “The Spirit Level,” even though that was a period of economic vigor.

“Inequality is divisive, and even small differences seem to make an important difference,” Professors Wilkinson and Pickett note. They suggest that it is not just the poor who benefit from the social cohesion that comes with equality, but the entire society.

So as we debate national policy in 2011 — from the estate tax to unemployment insurance to early childhood education — let’s push to reduce the stunning levels of inequality in America today. These inequities seem profoundly unhealthy, for us and for our nation’s soul.

Economy Who Makes Rules Who Should Cause of Great Depression and 2008 Crash

Tags: Economic Game Banks Greater Equality Income Needed AfterShock Robert Reich Fed Eccles Roosevelt

Earlier in December 2010, Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary under President Clinton and now Chancellor at University of California, Berkeley, Public Policy school, gave a talk to a Peter Drucker business organization in Pasadena, CA about his new book After-Shock: The Next Economy and America’s Future, Robert B. Reich, pages 146, Alfred A. Knopf, Sept 22, 2010, 7th Printing, Nov 2010. http://www.booktv.org/search.aspx?For=Reich Reich did a marvelous job answering many tough questions by this knowledgeable group.

Reich said that of his many books, this was the most difficult to write because he wanted to make it short to get a larger readership. He also did a wonderful job in making the index in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations useful and wrote an introduction to this edition. If only Republicans actually read and understood what Adam Smith really wrote in this book, we would not be having all the political debates about what Adam Smith said about capitalism.

I just started reading Reich’s After-Shock yesterday when I finally got a copy. Chapter 1, Eccles’s Insight describes the person who pushed President Franklin D. Roosevelt to stop continuing Hoover’s policies which made the Great Depression worse.

Of the thousands of books, The Great Depression: American, 1929-1941, by Robert S. McElvaine, 1984, 1993, is non-ideological, easy to read, is both a top down and bottom up book about this tragic and transforming era. Most books are top down and rarely discuss the effects the Great Depression had on the American people. The revised edition is essentially the same as the original with some updates. He also concluded that income inequality was the major cause of the Great Depression.

I did mention earlier that the major cause of the Great Depression was due to the great inequality in income where the top one percent had 23 percent of all income. That is the situation now! Because most of the profits are now being made by the Financial Segment which makes up 63% of our GDP, the increase in GDP does not include the job producing economy.

Robert Reich discusses the positive role that Marriner Eccles, who chaired the Federal Reserve during the Great Depression, was a devout Mormon and extraordinary “business tycoon director of railroad, hotel, and insurance companies, head of a bank holding company controlling twenty-six banks, and president of lumber, milk, sugar, and construction companies spanning the Rockies to the Sierra Nevadas.”

When the depression arrived Eccles said all the men he most respected said it will only be short in duration and when workers save their money and the banks stop giving out loans to preserve capital, we will grow out of it similar to what Republicans are pushing for and the European Union is following. The Great Depression only got worse.

Eccles realized it was not working starting really thinking about what really needs to be done instead of just repeating what happens in times of prosperity and income equality such as 1945 to 1970. He said why would any business want to invest money when the economy is so poor?

(It’s easier to borrow money from the Federal Reserve and then buy government bonds at higher interest rates! I cringe every time Obama says that Americans must save more when half of the Americans families earn $50,000 or less. Oregon has determined that a family of four with an income of $48,000, has to eat all their meals at home, never see a movie, and will never be able to save money. I also cringe when Obama says we must emphasize math and science to boost our economy. Why do this? We will just give away the new technology and jobs to China. Be honest, how many have the inclination or ability to do this? Jim)

Federal Reserve Chairman,Eccles, just like Obama and Bernanke, came to the conclusion that only the government can inject money into the economy. He proposed and Roosevelt finally accepted. In 1937 Roosevelt was forced to stop helping the economy and we fell back into a full Depression before World War II. As Santayana roughly said, “If we fail to know and understand history, we are bound the repeat the same mistakes.”

Eccles pointed out something that is largely not mentioned in our corporate controlled press and media is that … “men with great economic power had an undue influence in making the rules of the economic game, in shaping the actions of government that enforced those rules, and in conditioning the attitude taken by peoples as a whole toward those rules.”

Marriner Eccles concluded … “that I and everyone else had an equal right to share in the process by which economic rules are made and changed.” He concluded that the economic game is not being played on a level playing field.

By thinking out of the box using his logic and experience, Eccles proposed to Roosevelt some of the following: Relief for the Unemployed, government spending on public works, government refinancing of mortgages, a federal minimum wage, federally supported old-age pensions, and higher income taxes and inheritance taxes on the wealthy in order to control capital accumulations and avoid excessive speculation. Not until these recommendations were implemented, Eccles warned, could the economy be fully restored.”

Jim Kawakami, Jan 2, 2011, http://jimboguy.blogspot.com

Bank of American Most Shameless Corporate Outlaw, R.J. Eskow, AlterNet, Dec 31, 2010

Bankers. The red carpet's still being rolled out for them in Washington, but if there's a stain on it they'll pout for days. Jason Linkins documents the latest set of cheap white whines from very wealthy white men. (Discrimination lawsuits are a routine part of their legal troubles, too.) This time they're upset because nobody from the six largest banks in America was invited to the president's CEO Roundtable.

They're offended because they didn't meet with the president? From the looks of things they're lucky not to be meeting with the warden. Their collective rap sheet includes fraud, sex discrimination, collusion to bribe public officials... even laundering drug money for Mexican drug cartels. One of them is accused of ripping off some nuns! None of this criminal behavior has stopped them from sulking over a presidential slight. Let's review the record for these corporate malefactors, and then decide:

Which of these six banks was "America's Most Shameless Corporate Outlaw" in 2010? (I mean, really: Nuns?)

1. Bank of America

Here are some recent headlines for the country's largest bank: (BofA was taken over by a smaller bank in Charlotte, North Carolina so its degree of corruption may be related to the well known corruption pervasive in the South. Jim)

"Bank of America Ends Year With Flurry of Lawsuits"

Here are some of the details:

Associated Press: "Attorneys general in Arizona and Nevada filed civil lawsuits Friday against Bank of America Corp., alleging that the lender is misleading and deceiving homeowners who have tried to modify mortgages in two of the nation's most foreclosure-damaged states."

Courthouse News Service: "Bank of America violated a consent judgment it signed almost 2 years ago to provide loan modifications and help relocate borrowers, the Arizona attorney general claims ... Bank of America has continued to misrepresent 'to Arizona consumers whether they were eligible for modifications of their mortgage loans, when Bank of America would make a decision on their modification requests ... and whether and when Bank of America would foreclose upon their homes.'"

Consumer Affairs: "The bank is also facing at least three suits claiming that it reneged on duties it undertook by accepting $25 billion under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)."

In total, Bank of America's last annual report lists 29 pending lawsuits against the company. Lawsuits are not proof of guilt, of course. But the bank has already paid a fine for illegally concealing $6 billion in payouts to employees, and another fine for concealing major losses at its Merrill Lynch subsidiary. (Both fines were low - not much more than a slap on the wrist - because Bank of America was on taxpayer-funded life support at the time.) BofA also confessed to committing fraud as part of a settlement this month, which the Justice Department noted was restitution "for its participation in a conspiracy to rig bids in the municipal bond derivatives market." The Bank was also ordered to pay Lehman $590 million for illegally seizing its deposits, in violation of bankruptcy law. … http://www.alternet.org/story/149375/which_of_the_six_big_6_banking_houses_was_the_most_shameless_corporate_outlaw?page=entire