Gary Null's Blog, page 22
October 22, 2012
Fracking Poisoning Families at Alarming Rate: Report
Residents living near gas fracking sites suffer an increasingly high rate of health problems now linked to pollutants used in the gas extraction process, according to a new report released Thursday.
The study, conducted by Earthworks’ Oil & Gas Accountability Project, pulled from a survey of 108 Pennsylvania residents in 14 counties, and a series of air and water tests. The results showed close to 70 percent of participants reported an increase in throat irritation and roughly 80 percent suffered from sinus problems after natural gas extraction companies moved to their areas. The symptoms intensify the closer the residents are to the fracking sites.
"We use water for nothing other than flushing the commode," said Janet McIntyre referring to the now toxic levels of water on her land, which neighbors a fracking site. McIntyre said her entire family, including their pets, suffered from a wide array of health problems including projectile vomiting and skin rashes, indicative of other families' symptoms in the areas surveyed. Other symptoms include sinus, respiratory, fatigue, and mood problems.
"Twenty-two households reported that pets and livestock began to have symptoms (such as seizures or losing hair) or suddenly fell ill and died after gas development began nearby,” the report finds.
After taking water and air samples, Earthworks detected chemicals that have been linked to oil and gas operations and also directly connected to many of the symptoms reported in the survey on the resident's properties. This study showed a higher concentration of ethylbenzene and xylene, volatile compounds found in petroleum hydrocarbons, at the households as compared to control sites.
“For too long, the oil and gas industry and state regulators have dismissed community members’ health complaints as ‘false’ or ‘anecdotal’,” said Nadia Steinzor, the project’s lead author. “With this research, they cannot credibly ignore communities any longer.”
According to a separate report released earlier this month, EPA regulators are having trouble keeping up with the "rapid pace" of shale oil and gas development, due to a lack in resources, staff, data and a number of legal loopholes.
Daily Vibration May Combat Prediabetes in Youth
Daily sessions of whole-body vibration may combat prediabetes in adolescents, dramatically reducing inflammation, average blood glucose levels and symptoms such as frequent urination, researchers report.
In mice that mimic over-eating adolescents headed toward diabetes, 20 minutes of daily vibration for eight weeks restored a healthy balance of key pro- and anti-inflammatory mediators and was better than prescription drugs at reducing levels of hemoglobin A1c, the most accurate indicator of average blood glucose levels, said Dr. Jack C. Yu, Chief of the Section of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Health Sciences University.
In normal mice, just four days of vibration also dramatically improved the ability to manage a huge glucose surge similar to that following a high-calorie, high-fat meal. "It's a very good sign," said Yu. "If you eat a pound of sugar, your blood glucose will go up. If you are prediabetic, it will go up even more and take longer to come down."
Interestingly, vibration did not produce similar changes in older, normal mice, Yu told researchers at the Third World Congress of Plastic Surgeons of Chinese Descent.
"This is our model: the average American teenager who eats too much," said Yu, who regularly operates on obese and often prediabetic adolescent males who want their abnormally large breasts reduced. "The only way to burn fat is to exercise. We shake the bone for you rather than the body's muscle shaking it. This is a highly efficient way to fool the bone into thinking we are exercising."
It's also one way to deal with the reality that many individuals simply will not exercise regularly, he said.
Yu, also a craniofacial surgeon who studies bone formation, said while it's unclear exactly how vibration produces these desirable results, it seems linked to the impact of movement on bone health. Vibration mimics the motion bones experience during exercise when muscles are doing the work. The slight bending and unbending of bone triggers remodeling so it can stay strong. One result is production of osteocalcin, a protein essential to bone building, which also signals the pancreas to get ready for food. While this prehistoric relationship is tied to the hunt for food, it doesn't work so well in 21stcentury living where folks are moving too little and eating too much, Yu said. The constant demand can produce resistance to the insulin required to use glucose as energy.
Additionally, the body tends to hold onto fat for energy and survival, which researchers think is key to the chronic inflammation found in obesity-related type 2 diabetes. The fat itself produces inflammatory factors; the immune system also can misidentify fat as an infection, resulting in even more inflammation but, unfortunately, not eliminating the fat.
The bottom line is an unbalanced immune response: too many aggressors like the immune system SWAT team member Th17 and too few calming regulating factors like FoxP3. Researchers looked in the mouse blood and found vibration produced a 125-fold increase in immune system homeostasis and similar results in the kidney. This included positive movement in other players as well, such as a five-fold reduction in what Yu calls the "nuclear fuel," gammaH2AX, an indicator that something is attacking the body's DNA.
The animal model researchers used has a defect in the receptor for leptin, the satiety hormone, so the mice uncharacteristically overeat. Vibration also significantly reduced the mouse's diabetic symptoms of excessive thirst and diluted urine, resulting from excessive urination. The mice also seemed to like it, Yu said.
Next steps include learning more about how vibration produces such desirable results and large-scale clinical studies to see if they hold true in adolescents.
Prediabetics can avoid type 2 diabetes by making healthy diet changes and increasing physical activity, according to the American Diabetes Association.
Vibration technology was originally developed by the former Soviet Union to try to prevent muscle and bone wasting in cosmonauts. MCG researchers reported in the journal Bone in 2010 that daily whole body vibration may help minimize age-related bone density loss.
Yu and Biomedical Engineer Karl H. Wenger developed the whole-body vibrator used for the animal studies. Study coauthors include Wenger as well as GHSU's Drs. Babak Baban, Sun Hsieh, Mahmood Mozaffari and Mohamad Masoumy.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121019141258.htm
Mobile phones can cause brain tumours, court rules.
The Telegraph UK, 19 Oct 2012
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/9619514/Mobile-phones-can-cause-brain-tumours-court-rules..html
Innocente Marcolini, 60, an Italian businessman, fell ill after using a handset at work for up to six hours every day for 12 years.
Now Italy's Supreme Court in Rome has blamed his phone saying there is a "causal link" between his illness and phone use, the Sun has reported.
Mr Marcolini said: "This is significant for very many people. I wanted this problem to become public because many people still do not know the risks.
"I was on the phone, usually the mobile, for at least five or six hours every day at work.
"I wanted it recognised that there was a link between my illness and the use of mobile and cordless phones.
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"Parents need to know their children are at risk of this illness."
British scientists have claimed there is insufficient evidence to prove any link to mobiles.
But the respected oncologist and professor of environmental mutagenesis Angelo Gino Levis gave evidence for Mr Marcolini — along with neurosurgeon Dr Giuseppe Grasso.
They said electromagnetic radiation emitted by mobile and cordless phones can damage cells, making tumours more likely.
Prof Levis told The Sun: "The court decision is extremely important. It finally officially recognises the link.
"It'll open not a road but a motorway to legal actions by victims. We're considering a class action."
Mr Marcolini's tumour was discovered in the trigeminal nerve — close to where the phone touched his head.
It is non-cancerous but threatened to kill him as it spread to the carotid artery, the major vessel carrying blood to his brain.
His face was left paralysed and he takes daily morphine for pain.
Alasdair Philips of Powerwatch, which campaigns for more research on mobile use, said: "This is an interesting case and proves the need for more studies.
"People should limit mobile and cordless use until we know more."
The World Health Organisation urged limits on mobile use last year, calling them a Class B carcinogen.
But a spokesman for Britain's Health Protection Agency said: "The scientific consensus is that mobile phones do not cause cancer."
International radiation biology expert Michael Repacholi said: "Studies show no evidence of cancer. But if you are worried, use a headset, hands-free or loudspeaker."
Media lawyer Mark Stephens said the verdict could "open the floodgates" — even though there is no direct obligation on British courts to follow the Italians' lead.
He said: "It is possible people will begin legal action here, but I think the chances of success are less. I think they'll join any class action in Italy."
Scientists Surprised To Find Significant Adverse Effects Of CO2 On Human Decision-Making Performance
Overturning decades of conventional wisdom, researchers at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have found that moderately high indoor concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) can significantly impair people's decision-making performance. The results were unexpected and may have particular implications for schools and other spaces with high occupant density.
"In our field we have always had a dogma that CO2 itself, at the levels we find in buildings, is just not important and doesn't have any direct impacts on people," said Berkeley Lab scientist William Fisk, a co-author of the study, which was published in Environmental Health Perspectives online last month. "So these results, which were quite unambiguous, were surprising." The study was conducted with researchers from State University of New York (SUNY) Upstate Medical University.
On nine scales of decision-making performance, test subjects showed significant reductions on six of the scales at CO2 levels of 1,000 parts per million (ppm) and large reductions on seven of the scales at 2,500 ppm. The most dramatic declines in performance, in which subjects were rated as "dysfunctional," were for taking initiative and thinking strategically. "Previous studies have looked at 10,000 ppm, 20,000 ppm; that's the level at which scientists thought effects started," said Berkeley Lab scientist Mark Mendell, also a co-author of the study. "That's why these findings are so startling."
While the results need to be replicated in a larger study, they point to possible economic consequences of pursuing energy efficient buildings without regard to occupants. "As there's a drive for increasing energy efficiency, there's a push for making buildings tighter and less expensive to run," said Mendell. "There's some risk that, in that process, adverse effects on occupants will be ignored. One way to make sure occupants get the attention they deserve is to point out adverse economic impacts of poor indoor air quality. If people can't think or perform as well, that could obviously have adverse economic impacts."
The primary source of indoor CO2 is humans. While typical outdoor concentrations are around 380 ppm, indoor concentrations can go up to several thousand ppm. Higher indoor CO2 concentrations relative to outdoors are due to low rates of ventilation, which are often driven by the need to reduce energy consumption. In the real world, CO2 concentrations in office buildings normally don't exceed 1,000 ppm, except in meeting rooms, when groups of people gather for extended periods of time.
In classrooms, concentrations frequently exceed 1,000 ppm and occasionally exceed 3,000 ppm. CO2 at these levels has been assumed to indicate poor ventilation, with increased exposure to other indoor pollutants of potential concern, but the CO2 itself at these levels has not been a source of concern. Federal guidelines set a maximum occupational exposure limit at 5,000 ppm as a time-weighted average for an eight-hour workday.
Fisk decided to test the conventional wisdom on indoor CO2 after coming across two small Hungarian studies reporting that exposures between 2,000 and 5,000 ppm may have adverse impacts on some human activities.
Fisk, Mendell, and their colleagues, including Usha Satish at SUNY Upstate Medical University, assessed CO2 exposure at three concentrations: 600, 1,000 and 2,500 ppm. They recruited 24 participants, mostly college students, who were studied in groups of four in a small office-like chamber for 2.5 hours for each of the three conditions. Ultrapure CO2 was injected into the air supply and mixing was ensured, while all other factors, such as temperature, humidity, and ventilation rate, were kept constant. The sessions for each person took place on a single day, with one-hour breaks between sessions.
Although the sample size was small, the results were unmistakable. "The stronger the effect you have, the fewer subjects you need to see it," Fisk said. "Our effect was so big, even with a small number of people, it was a very clear effect."
Another novel aspect of this study was the test used to assess decision-making performance, the Strategic Management Simulation (SMS) test, developed by SUNY. In most studies of how indoor air quality affects people, test subjects are given simple tasks to perform, such as adding a column of numbers or proofreading text. "It's hard to know how those indicators translate in the real world," said Fisk. "The SMS measures a higher level of cognitive performance, so I wanted to get that into our field of research."
The SMS has been used most commonly to assess effects on cognitive function, such as by drugs, pharmaceuticals or brain injury, and as a training tool for executives. The test gives scenarios - for example, you're the manager of an organization when a crisis hits, what do you do? - and scores participants in nine areas. "It looks at a number of dimensions, such as how proactive you are, how focused you are, or how you search for and use information," said Fisk. "The test has been validated through other means, and they've shown that for executives it is predictive of future income and job level."
Data from elementary school classrooms has found CO2 concentrations frequently near or above the levels in the Berkeley Lab study. Although their study tested only decision making and not learning, Fisk and Mendell say it is possible that students could be disadvantaged in poorly ventilated classrooms, or in rooms in which a large number of people are gathered to take a test. "We cannot rule out impacts on learning," their report says.
The next step for the Berkeley Lab researchers is to reproduce and expand upon their findings. "Our first goal is to replicate this study because it's so important and would have such large implications," said Fisk. "We need a larger sample and additional tests of human work performance. We also want to include an expert who can assess what's going on physiologically."
Until then, they say it's too early to make any recommendations for office workers or building managers. "Assuming it's replicated, it has implications for the standards we set for minimum ventilation rates for buildings," Fisk said. "People who are employers who want to get the most of their workforce would want to pay attention to this."
DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "Scientists Surprised To Find Significant Adverse Effects Of CO2 On Human Decision-Making Performance."Medical News Today. MediLexicon, Intl., 20 Oct. 2012. Web.
21 Oct. 2012.
NRC Whistleblowers: Risk of Nuclear Melt-Down In U.S. Is Even HIGHER Than It Was at Fukushima
Numerous American nuclear reactors are built within flood zones:
As one example, on the following map (showing U.S. nuclear power plants built within earthquake zones), the red lines indicate the Mississippi and Missouri rivers:
Numerous dam failures have occurred within the U.S.:
Reactors in Nebraska and elsewhere were flooded by swollen rivers and almost melted down. See this,this, this and this.
The Huntsville Times wrote in an editorial last year:
A tornado or a ravaging flood could just as easily be like the tsunami that unleashed the final blow [at Fukushima as an earthquake].
An engineer with the NRC says that a reactor meltdown is an “absolute certainty” if a dam upstream of a nuclear plant fails … and that such a scenario is hundreds of times more likely than the tsunami that hit Fukushima :
An engineer with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) … Richard Perkins, an NRC reliability and risk engineer, was the lead author on a July 2011 NRC report detailing flood preparedness. He said the NRC blocked information from the public regarding the potential for upstream dam failures to damage nuclear sites.
Perkins, in a letter submitted Friday with the NRC Office of Inspector General, said that the NRC “intentionally mischaracterized relevant and noteworthy safety information as sensitive, security information in an effort to conceal the information from the public.”The Huffington Post first obtained the letter.
***
The report in question was completed four months after … Fukushima.
The report concluded that, “Failure of one or more dams upstream from a nuclear power plant may result in flood levels at a site that render essential safety systems inoperable.”
Huffington Post reported last month:
These charges were echoed in separate conversations with another risk engineer inside the agencywho suggested that the vulnerability at one plant in particular — the three-reactor Oconee Nuclear Station near Seneca, S.C. — put it at risk of a flood and subsequent systems failure, should an upstream dam completely fail, that would be similar to the tsunami that hobbled the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear facility in Japan last year.***
The engineer is among several nuclear experts who remain particularly concerned about the Oconee plant in South Carolina, which sits on Lake Keowee, 11 miles downstream from the Jocassee Reservoir. Among the redacted findings in the July 2011 report — and what has been known at the NRC for years, the engineer said — is that the Oconee facility, which is operated by Duke Energy, would suffer almost certain core damage if the Jocassee dam were to fail. And the odds of it failing sometime over the next 20 years, the engineer said, are far greater than the odds of a freak tsunami taking out the defenses of a nuclear plant in Japan.
“The probability of Jocassee Dam catastrophically failing is hundreds of timesgreater than a 51 foot wall of water hitting Fukushima Daiichi,” the engineer said. “And, like the tsunami in Japan, the man‐made ‘tsunami’ resulting from the failure of the Jocassee Dam will –- with absolute certainty –- result in the failure of three reactor plants along with their containment structures.
“Although it is not a given that Jocassee Dam will fail in the next 20 years,” the engineer added, “it is a given that if it does fail, the three reactor plants will melt down and release their radionuclides into the environment.”
***
In the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Huffington Post, Richard H. Perkins, a reliability and risk engineer with the agency’s division of risk analysis, alleged that NRC officials falsely invoked security concerns in redacting large portions of a report detailing the agency’s preliminary investigation into the potential for dangerous and damaging flooding at U.S. nuclear power plants due to upstream dam failure.
Perkins, along with at least one other employee inside NRC, also an engineer, suggested that the real motive for redacting certain information was to prevent the public from learning the full extent of these vulnerabilities, and to obscure just how much the NRC has known about the problem, and for how long.
Huffington Post notes today:
An un-redacted version of a recently released Nuclear Regulatory Commission report highlights the threat that flooding poses to nuclear power plants located near large dams — and suggests that the NRC has misled the public for years about the severity of the threat, according to engineers and nuclear safety advocates.
“The redacted information shows that the NRC is lying to the American public about the safety of U.S. reactors,” said David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer and safety advocate with the Union of Concerned Scientists.
***
According to the NRC’s own calculations, which were also withheld in the version of the report released in March, the odds of the dam near the Oconee plant failing at some point over the next 22 years are far higher than were the odds of an earthquake-induced tsunami causing a meltdown at the Fukushima plant.
The NRC report identifies flood threats from upstream dams at nearly three dozen other nuclear facilities in the United States, including the Fort Calhoun Station in Nebraska, the Prairie Island facility in Minnesota and the Watts Bar plant in Tennessee, among others.
***
Larry Criscione, a risk engineer at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission who is one of two NRC employees who have now publicly raised questions about both the flood risk at Oconee and the agency’s withholding of related information, said assertions that the plant is “currently able to mitigate flooding events,” amounted to double-speak.
Criscione said this is because current regulations don’t include the failure of the Jocassee Dam — 11 miles upriver from Oconee — in the universe of potential flooding events that might threaten the plant. “I think they’re being dishonest,” Criscione said in a telephone interview. “I think that we currently intend to have Duke Energy improve their flooding protection and to say that the current standard is adequate is incorrect.”
According to the leaked report, NRC stated unequivocally in a 2009 letter to Duke that it believed that “a Jocassee Dam failure is a credible event” and that Duke had “not demonstrated that the Oconee Nuclear Station units will be adequately protected.” These statements — along with Duke’s own flood timeline associated with a Jocassee Dam failure and NRC’s calculated odds of such a failure — were among many details that were blacked out of the earlier, publicly released report.
***
Richard H. Perkins, a risk engineer with the NRC and the lead author of the leaked report, pointed to the analysis by the Association of Dam Safety Officials in an email message to The Huffington Post. “I felt it made a significant point that large, fatal, dam failures occur from time to time,” he said. “They are generally unexpected and they can kill lots of people. It’s not credible to say ‘dam failures are not credible.’”
Dave Lochbaum, the Union of Concerned Scientists engineer who reviewed a copy of the un-redacted report, says these revelations directly contradict the NRC’s assertions that Oconee is currently safe. “Fukushima operated just under 40 years before their luck ran out,” Lochbaum, who worked briefly for the NRC himself between 2009 and 2010, and who now heads the Nuclear Safety Project at UCS, said in a phone call. “If it ever does occur here, the consequences would be very, very high.
“Japan is now building higher sea walls at other plants along its coasts. That’s great for those plants, but it’s too late for Fukushima. If in hindsight you think you should have put the wall in,” Lochbaum said, “then in foresight you should do it now.”
Other Comparisons Between Dangers In U.S. and Fukushima
There are, in fact, numerous parallels between Fukushima and vulnerable U.S. plants.
A Japanese government commission found that the Fukushima accident occurred because Tepco and the Japanese government were negligent, corrupt and in collusion. See this, this and this. The U.S. NRC is similarly corrupt.
The operator of the Fukushima complex admitted earlier this month that it knew of the extreme vulnerability of its plants, but:
If the company were to implement a severe-accident response plan, it would spur anxiety throughout the country and in the community where the plant is sited, and lend momentum to the antinuclear movement ….
The U.S. has 23 reactors which are virtually identical to Fukushima.
Most American nuclear reactors are old. They are aging poorly, and are in very real danger of melting down.
And yet the NRC is relaxing safety standards at the old plants. Indeed, while many of the plants are already past the service life that the engineers built them for, the NRC is considering extending licenses another 80 years, which former chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority and now senior adviser with Friends of the Earth’s nuclear campaign David Freeman calls “committing suicide”:
You’re not just rolling the dice, you’re practically committing suicide … everyone living within a 50 mile radius is a guinea pig.
Indeed, the Fukushima reactors were damaged by earthquake even before the tsunami hit (confirmedhere). And the American reactors may be even more vulnerable to earthquakes than Fukushima.
Moreover, the top threat from Fukushima are the spent fuel pools. And American nuclear plants have fuel pool problems which could dwarf the problems at Fukushima.
And neither government is spending the small amounts it would take to harden their reactors against a power outage.
The parallels run even deeper. Specifically, the American government has largely been responsible for Japan’s nuclear policy for decades. And U.S. officials are apparently a primary reason behind Japan’s cover-up of the severity of the Fukushima accident … to prevent Americans from questioningour similarly-vulnerable reactors.
October 19, 2012
How Kids Are Getting Hooked on Pills for Life
Where do parents and teachers get the idea there's something wrong with kids that only an expensive drug can fix? From Big Pharma's seamless web of ads, subsidized doctors, journals, medical courses and conferences, paid "patient" groups, phony public services messages and reporters willing to serve as stenographers.
Free stenography for Pharma from sympathetic media includes articles like "One in 40 Infants Experience Baby Blues, Doctors Say," on ABC News [4] and "Preschool Depression: The Importance of Early Detection of Depression in Young Children," on Science Daily [5].
For many, the face of the drugs-not-hugs message is Harold Koplewicz, author of the pop bestseller It's Nobody's Fault, and former head of NYU's prestigious Child Study Center. In a 1999 Salon [6] article, Koplewicz reiterated his "no-fault" statement, assuring parents that psychiatric illness is not caused by bad parenting. "It is not that your mother got divorced, or that your father didn't wipe you the right way," he said. "It really is DNA roulette: You got blue eyes, blond hair, sometimes a musical ear, but sometimes you get the predisposition for depression."
Many regard the NYU Child Study Center, which Koplewicz founded and led before leaving in 2009 to start his own facility, as helping to usher in the world of brave new pediatric medicine in which children, toddlers and infants, once expected to outgrow their problems, are now diagnosed with lifelong psychiatric problems. The Child Study Center is “a threat to the health and welfare of children,” and its doctors are “hustlers working to increase their 'client' population and their commercial value to psychotropic drug manufacturers,” charged Vera Sharav [7], president of the watchdog group, Alliance for Human Research Protection.
A look at the center's stated mission [8] provides no reassurance. Its goal of "eliminating the stigma of being or having a child with a psychiatric disorder," and "influencing child-related public policy," sounds a lot like a Pharma sales plan. And its boast about having "a structure that allows recruitment of patients for research studies and then provides 'real-world' testing for successful controlled-environment findings," could send chills down the backs of parents afraid their kids will be guinea pigs or money-making subjects.
In 2007, the fears of the Child Study Center's skeptics were confirmed when it launched an aggressive, scare tactic marketing campaign called Ransom Notes in 2007. "We have your son," said one ad, [9] created with bits of disparate type like a ransom note from a kidnapper. "We will make sure he will no longer be able to care for himself or interact socially as long as he lives. This is only the beginning…Autism."
"We have your daughter. We are forcing her to throw up after every meal she eats. It’s only going to get worse," said another ad signed "Bulimia."
"We are in possession of your son. We are making him squirm and fidget until he is a detriment to himself and those around him. Ignore this and your kid will pay," said another add from "ADHD." Other ransom ads came from kidnappers named Depression, Asperger’s Syndrome and OCD.
Created pro bono by advertising giant BBDO, the ads were planned to run in New York magazine, Newsweek, Parents, Education Update, Mental Health News and other publications and on 11 billboards and 200 kiosks, according to the press release. [9]
Immediate Outrage
The hostage campaign drew immediate public outrage and more than a dozen advocacy groups joined together in an online petition calling for an end to it. “This is a demonstration of the assaultive tactics used by psychiatry today--in particular, academic psychiatrists and university-based medical centers that are under the influence of their pharmaceutical partners,” Vera Sharav wrote in alerts to AHRP’s mailing list. “If Dr. Koplewicz et al. are not stopped, the campaign will be hitting the rest of the country,” she warned, and informed readers that the campaign was formulated by BBDO, “a major direct to consumer prescription drug advertising firm,” asking the New York State Attorney General’s office to investigate.
Days after the backlash, the center revoked the advertising campaign “after the effort drew a strongly negative reaction,” reported [10] the New York Times. Koplewicz told the Times the decision was made by the center with no pressure from New York University and they planned to introduce a new campaign in the next three months. However, he left the Child Study Center at NYU in 2009 to start his own facility, initially called the Child Study Center Foundation, but changed to the Child Mind Institute, in 2010.
There was more controversy when Koplewicz left the center. When he announced his resignation, New York University "forbade him from entering his office and it pushed out professors who had said they wanted to join him at Child Mind Institute,” reported the New York Times. [11] Twelve NYU professors nevertheless followed Koplewicz to the Child Mind Institute as well as most of the Child Study Center’s influential board of directors, which included Garber Neidich, a chairwoman at the Whitney Museum, the founders of the Tribeca Film Festival founders and some well known financiers. The toxic send-off was followed by the New York State Office of Mental Health firing Koplewicz [12] from his job of nearly four years as director of the Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, an affiliate of NYU School of Medicine.
Though Koplewicz' Child Mind Institute is supposedly a non-profit, it is ensconced on Park Avenue in Manhattan and Koplewicz' hourly rate “can be as high as $1,000 (three to four times that of the average Manhattan therapist),” says the Times. In a chilling interview on Education Update Online [13], Koplewicz says the reason his institute works closely with schools "is simply that’s where the kids are" (bringing to mind Willy Sutton, who robbed banks because "that’s where the money is").
Last month in the Wall Street Journal [14], Koplewicz wrote that "no studies have examined the effect of long-term use" of ADHD meds, but they "have been in use for 70 years, and there is no evidence that suggests any adverse effects." But there has been a large federal study of the long-term effects of the drugs and it shows they are "ineffective over longer periods," and "that long-term use of the drugs can stunt children's growth," reported the Washington Post. [15] Oops.
Other Pediatric Drug Proponents
Only one child in 10,000 has pediatric schizophrenia--some say one in 30,000--but for Pharma it is an untapped market. Symptoms of childhood schizophrenia include "social deficits" and "delusions...related to childhood themes," writes Gabriele Masi, in an article titled "Children with Schizophrenia: Clinical Picture and Pharmacological Treatment," in the journal CNS Drugs. [16] What child doesn't have "social deficits" and "delusions" like imaginary playmates?
Masi has received research funding from Eli Lilly, served as an adviser to the drug company Shire, and been on speakers bureaus for Sanofi Aventis, AstraZeneca, GSK and Janssen, according to the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry [17].
Joining Masi in pursuing pediatric pathology is Joan L. Luby, director of the Early Emotional Development Program at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. In an article in the Archives of General Psychiatry, she alerts the world to the problem of "preschool depression [18]." Researchers used to believe that "young children were too cognitively and emotionally immature to experience depressive effects," says the paper, which was widely picked up the mainstream press, but they now believe preschoolers can and do suffer from major depressive disorder (MDD). "The potential public health importance of identification of preschool MDD is underscored by the established unique efficacy of early intervention during the preschool period," says the article. [19] Translation: Big Pharma can clean up if kids are diagnosed young.
Luby "has received grant/research support from Janssen, has given occasional talks sponsored by AstraZeneca, and has served as a consultant for Shire Pharmaceutical," according to a journal article she co-wrote. [20]
Then there is Mani Pavuluri, a doctor who finds deficiencies of mania and bipolar drugs in tots. "Pediatric bipolar disorder (PBD) is complex illness with a chronic course, requiring multiple medications over the longitudinal course of illness, with limited recovery and high relapse rate," she wrote in the journal Minerva Pediatrica last year. [21]Pavuluri receives research dollars from GlaxoSmithKline [22] as well as from the National Institutes of Health, aka our tax dollars, according to the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.
Two features that characterize the pediatric medicine practiced by the NYU Child Study Center, Koplewicz, Mani, Luby and Pavuluri are they term the "diseases" they identify undertreated and underdiagnosed and they urge early treatment when symptoms first appear. (Before the symptoms go away on their own?)
Yet the very fact that such diseases are lifelong conditions is reason to wait to medicate, said Mark Zimmerman, director of outpatient psychiatry at Rhode Island Hospital at the 2010 American Psychiatric Association annual meeting in New Orleans. [23] Nor can parents with medicated children know if their kids even needed the drugs, since symptoms from the drugs are often called the "disease," says Peter Breggin in a recent interview. [24]
One thing doctors on both sides of the pediatric drug controversy agree on is that the decision to put a child on drugs will likely sentence him or her to a lifetime of medications. What they disagree about is whether that is a good thing or a bad thing.
http://www.alternet.org/personal-health/how-kids-are-getting-hooked-pills-life
Why Scientists Are in Alarm Mode Over the Keystone XL Pipeline
Why are scientists in alarm mode over the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, a 1,700-mile long conduit that would transport a chemical-laden synthetic oil from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, to refineries in Texas? Scientists across specialized fields have joined forces to make public statements, penned a formal letter to President Obama, and have even committed acts of civil disobedience in front of the White House during the national Tar Sands Action [3].
What do they know that we don’t?
I sought out these questions, traveling to the furthest southern extent of Cape Cod to the township of Woods Hole; a place of world renown for its oceanic studies and a hub of scientific exploration since the late 1800s. I had come to meet with one of the signatories of the Obama letter [4], ecologist George M. Woodwell, at the Woods Hole Research Center.
While awaiting his arrival, I walked around the facility and its grounds. WHRC, also a campus, is ensconced in eight acres of oxygen-rich forest where burnt and downed tree trunks are left alone to decompose. The carpet of detritus underfoot was so dense and varied its components were indecipherable to the naked eye. The outdoor laboratory is a sliver of what they do on a global scale: WHRC is a preeminent collector of data on forests. They track and record the health of forests worldwide in tandem with cooperators in the Amazon, the Arctic, Africa, Russia, Alaska, Canada, New England, and the Mid-Atlantic.
Taiga Biome
Once the interview was underway, Woodwell, founder and director emeritus of WHRC, did not mince words about the Keystone XL project: “The tar sands is a complete scandal; it’s totally for profit—for Canadian profit, political profit, financial profit—and not for the public good because the oil poisons the world, and the methods of getting it poisons the world in more ways than anybody is admitting.”
Woodwell believes the role of government is to protect the public welfare, and that includes protection of the environment. For those who argue for less oversight, he presented an inventory of what a loosely regulated business world has produced in the past: slavery, the effluence of smelters that killed people and vegetation, silicosis in miners, and chemical and radiation poisoning of workers. For an example of a country in ecological collapse, he pointed to Haiti. “They don’t have a functioning environment, economy, or government. All must stand together. Take one away, or make one fail, and the others fail.”
He has been accused on more than one occasion of being political. Woodwell conducted the groundbreaking research on DDT that formed the basis for its eventual nationwide ban in 1972. He has a very short answer why such accusations exist: “Environmental science gets politicized because it has economic implications.”
Woodwell, who prefers the term “climate disruption” to climate change, is clear on what must be done to stabilize the already teetering-on-the-edge biosphere. The use of fossil fuels must be reduced and “we have to stop deforestation, all of it, all over the world because the carbon pool in the vegetation of the earth is connected to forests.”
The carbon storage capacity of forests is approximately three times as large as the pool of carbon in the atmosphere. If forests are changed, reduced, or eliminated, the pool, or captured carbon, goes into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide (CO2). According to Woodwell, the carbon release from deforestation accounts for “25 to 30 percent of the four to five billion tons of carbon accumulating a year in the atmosphere from the total of all human activities.”
Listening to Woodwell explain the role of the tundra and forests in carbon sequestration, it became evident where his years of scientific research and the Keystone XL pipeline intersect. The tar sands are largely mined in northeastern Alberta in an area classified as boreal forest.
The boreal forest, or taiga, is the largest forest in the world. It is a circumpolar biome—a community of related plant and animal species fostered by a similar climate—occurring at high-altitudes across Alaska, Canada, Northern Europe, and Russia. The boreal forest exists on 14.5 percent of the earth’s surface, but contains over 30 percent of the earth’s terrestrial carbon. The forest in its natural state is considered a sink: a repository for carbon. If disrupted, it becomes a source, releasing carbon back into the atmosphere.
Mining the Tar Sands
Techniques used to extract the tar sands are more akin to mining than drilling, both in the methods employed and amount of land destruction necessary for the removal of a tarry, viscous hydrocarbon called bitumen. Two techniques are used: in situ recovery and surface mining.
In situ recovery begins with drilling wells into bitumen deposits then injecting steam into the reservoir. The steam reduces viscosity and enables the bitumen to be pumped to the surface.
Surface mining, also referred to as strip mining, entails clearing large swaths of land. The forest is first cut down, followed by the removal of carbon-rich peat (the peat is put in storage for later usage in required remediation efforts). The bitumen and surrounding soils are then gouged out by heavy equipment. The usable hydrocarbon is separated on site using a caustic hot-water process, with the resultant wastewater sent to facilities for processing. The water is eventually stored in outdoor tailing ponds.
The tailing ponds, collectively covering more than 19 square miles, contain fine particulate matter and toxic chemicals (naphthenic acid and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons). These open ponds, also a part of required reclamation, allow fine particles to settle. The estimated time for settlement varies from several decades to 150 years.
The total amount of energy used in tar sands extraction and production results in greater amounts of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions than from conventional sources of oil. The amount of increased emissions remains an issue of concern and calculation, though not all studies are equal.
The Department of Energy’s National Environmental Technology Lab estimated the GHG emissions of tar sands production to be “approximately 17 percent higher than gasoline from the 2005 average mix of crude oil consumed in the U.S.,” while a study conducted by TIAX, LLC, found emissions “only 2 percent higher when compared to gasoline from Venezuelan heavy crude.”
That’s a difference of 15 percent, though both reports used a “well-to-wheels” calculation. A well-to-wheels calculation factors in GHG emissions from extraction, processing, distribution, and combustion. But what about the additional emissions as a result of deforestation and the destabilization of associated soils—what scientists refer to as “land-use change”?
From Sink to Source
To some degree, this question is addressed in a paper by Yeh et al. (2010). In tar sands surface mining, by “removing the functional vegetation layer at the surface of a peatland, the disturbed ecosystem loses its ability to sequester CO2 from the atmosphere.” When peat is put into storage for later reclamation purposes, it decomposes, releasing CO2 and CH4 (commonly known as methane, one of six identified greenhouse gases). Over time, tailing ponds also produce CH4 emissions—a gas “25 times more potent than CO2.”
GHG emissions from land-use change factors in the loss of a sink (a natural system known to capture carbon), as well as the addition of sources (gases produced from stored peat and tailing ponds). I queried the State Department on whether these emissions had been considered in their estimates. The first spokesperson responded, “off the record, no.” The question was also submitted to the Clean Energy Branch of Alberta Environment, who quickly replied, “We have supported some scientific research in this respect; that work is currently in the peer review process so we cannot report on that work at this point in time.”
The area of boreal forest to be razed as part of tar sands extraction is small. So far, about 150 square miles of Canada’s two million square miles of boreal forest have been denuded for tar sands operations. If projected GHG emissions from land-use change were available, they would most likely be a fraction of the total. However, fractions add up and the exclusion of that data in final, official reports does say something about an approach to calculation that puts human activity at the top while neglecting to weigh long-term environmental outcomes.
Woodwell cautions it is time to consider environment and economy as mutually dependent: “We’re at a stage we can’t afford to lose any more forests in the world. The building up of carbon, year after the year, is the problem. We're pulling climate out from under all life including civilization, and the consequences of that are devastating."
http://www.alternet.org/environment/why-scientists-are-alarm-mode-over-keystone-xl-pipeline
Pesticide Industry Backed Opponents of GMO Labeling Get Criminal in California
The $36 million No on 37 campaign, bankrolled by $20 million from the world's six largest pesticide companies, has been caught in yet another lie, this time possibly criminal.
These companies and their allies in the junk food industry know that their profit margins may suffer if consumers have a choice whether to purchase genetically engineered foods or not. And that's why opponents are spending nearly a million dollars per day trying to make Prop 37 complicated. But really it's simple - we have the right to know what's in our food.
To date, the No on 37 campaign has been able to repeat one lie after another with near impunity. But has this pattern of deceit finally caught up to it?
Yesterday, the Yes on 37 campaign sent letters to the U.S. Department of Justice requesting a criminal investigation of the No on 37 campaign for possible fraudulent misuse of the official seal of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
The No on 37 campaign affixed the FDA's seal to one of the campaign's mailers. Section 506 of the U.S. Criminal Code states: "Whoever...knowingly uses, affixes, or impresses any such fraudulently made, forged, counterfeited, mutilated, or altered seal or facsimile thereof to or upon any certificate, instrument, commission, document, or paper of any description...shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both."
The letter also provides evidence that the No on 37 campaign falsely attributed a direct quote to the FDA in the campaign mailer. Alongside the FDA seal, the mailer includes this text in quotes. "The US Food and Drug Administration says a labeling policy like Prop 37 would be 'inherently misleading." The quote is entirely fabricated. The FDA did not make this statement and does not take a position on Prop 37.
In addition, the three identified authors of the "Rebuttal to Argument in Favor of Proposition 37" include a Dr. Henry I. Miller, who is identified solely as "Founding Director, Office of Biotechnology of the Food & Drug Administration." Dr. Miller in fact, does not currently work for the FDA in any capacity - as millions of California voters have been erroneously led to believe.
This is not the first blatant act of deception that the No on 37 campaign has been caught perpetrating on the citizens of California - particularly relating to their "top scientist" Dr. Henry Miller.
Consider Miller's growing "rap sheet":
• On Oct. 4 the No on 37 campaign was forced to pull its first ad off the air and re-shoot it after they were caught misrepresenting Miller as a doctor at Stanford University when he is actually a researcher at the Hoover Institute on Stanford's campus, as the Los Angeles Times reported.
• Last week, the campaign was reprimanded by Stanford again for misrepresenting the university in a mailer that went out to millions of voters. And this week, the campaign was caught sending out yet another deceptive mailer involving the University.
In addition to allowing his university affiliation to be repeatedly overblown, Miller has a sordid history of parroting the talking points of some of the world's most notorious corporate bad actors: he's a founding member of a now defunct tobacco front group that tried to discredit the links between cigarettes and cancer, he's repeatedly called for the reintroduction of DDT - known to cause premature birth, fronted for an oil industry funded climate change denial group for Exxon, claimed that people exposed to radiation from the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster "may have benefited from it", and attacked the US Food and Drug Administration's efforts to ensure proper vetting and testing of new drugs safety while urging it to outsource more of its functions to private industries.
This is the man the No on 37 campaign has portrayed to voters as an arbiter of good science and promoted as an expert worthy of our trust. In reality, Miller is nothing more than a corporate shill that will say whatever his paymasters ask him to, be it Exxon, Phillip Morris, Monsanto, or DuPont.
Does the No on 37 campaign stand behind Miller's fringe views on tobacco, climate change, nuclear radiation and DDT?
But this pattern of deceit doesn't end with Miller:
• On Oct. 5, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, the nation's largest professional association for nutritionists and dieticians, accused the No on 37 campaign of misrepresenting its position and misleading voters in the official California Voter's Guide that went to 11 million voters.
• And the anti-Proposition 37 ads that are now blanketing the state have been described as misleading by the San Jose Mercury News, Sacramento Bee, and San Francisco Chronicle.
Perhaps these latest revelations will prompt the mainstream press to begin focusing their attention on the No on 37 campaign's pattern of deceptions - including a potentially criminal act - rather than on easily discredited pesticide industry Prop 37 "red herrings" like common sense exemptions, phony lawsuit scares, bogus "big bureaucracy claims", and "cost increase hysteria".
So who should we trust?
Who should we trust when it comes to our right to know what's in the food we eat: Monsanto, DuPont, and Henry Miller or the millions of California consumers and leading consumer, health, women's, faith-based, labor and other groups; 61 countries that already require GMO labeling; and a growing stack of peer-reviewed research linking genetically engineered foods to health and environmental problems?
Who has our best interests at heart, the pesticide and junk food industry, or Prop 37 supporters like Consumers Union, California Nurses Association, California Democratic Party, California Labor Federation, United Farm Workers, American Public Health Association, Consumers Union, Sierra Club, Whole Foods Market, California Council of Churches, Organic Consumers Association, Center for Food Safety, Consumer Federation of America, Public Citizen, and Food Democracy Now!?
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012...
Michelle Roberts - Typhoid vaccine failure warning
Typhoid fever is uncommon in England, with an estimated 350 cases occurring each year
More than 700,000 people recently immunised against typhoid may not have full protection because of a dud vaccine that has now been recalled, say experts.
Manufacturer Sanofi Pasteur MSD has recalled 88% of its stock - 16 batches - of Typhim Vi vaccine because tests found some samples were too weak.
Anyone immunised with the vaccine since January 2011 could be affected.
Officials stress that the vaccine was safe and posed no health threat.
But it could mean as many as 729,606 people who potentially received the affected vaccine are not fully immunised against typhoid, according to the body that regulates drugs in the UK, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).
Anyone who has been to a typhoid region of the world and has a fever, abdominal pain and vomiting should contact a healthcare professional”
End Quote A spokeswoman from the MHRA
Read More:
Tom Philpott - Some GMO Cheerleaders Also Deny Climate Change
"GMO Opponents Are the Climate Skeptics of the Left," declares the headline of a recent piece by Keith Kloor in Slate. The argument goes like this: Just as certain conservative writers flout science by denying the urgency of climate change, there are progressive writers—he named me as a prominent example—who defy an alleged scientific consensus by criticizing the genetically modified crop industry. We're hypocrites, the charge goes, because we thunder against the denial of good science when it comes to climate, but indulge in denialism when it comes to GMOs.
I think Kloor's critique is nonsense. Sure, there are wackos who campaign against GMOs, but not all GMO critique is wacko. In a 2009 roundtable in Seed Magazine, I debunked the idea that there's a scientific consensus around GMOs analogous to the one around climate.
Read More:
http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/10/gmo-climate-change-science
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