Many Health-Care Workers Have Turned to Alternative Medicine

HealthDay, Aug. 26, 2011

Three out of every four U.S. health-care workers use some form of complementary or alternative medicine or practice to help stay healthy, a new report shows.

What's more, doctors, nurses and their assistants, health technicians, and healthcare administrators were actually more likely than the general public to use any number of wide-ranging alternative medicine options, including massage, yoga, acupuncture, Pilates or herbal medicines.

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State Dept. Aggressively Pushed Genetically-Modified Crops to Help Agribusiness Giants

AllGov. com, Aug. 28, 2011

The latest release of government files from WikiLeaks shows that the State Department has repeatedly pushed foreign governments to approve genetically-engineered crops and promote the international business interests of corporations like Monsanto and DuPont.

U.S. officials have used “outreach programs” in Africa, Asia and South America, where Western biotech agriculture has not been established. In one cable, American diplomats sought funding from Washington to send U.S. biotech experts and trade industry representatives to target countries for meetings with local politicians and agricultural officials.

Several cables showed American diplomats have promoted biotech agriculture in Tunisia, South Africa and Mozambique, which confirms what Truthout previously reported on “front groups” with U.S. and corporate backing that are trying to introduce genetically-modified crops in developing African countries.

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Clean Laundry Can Emit Hazardous Toxins

Laboratory Equipment, Aug. 25, 2011

The sweet smell of fresh laundry may contain a sour note. Widely used fragranced products—including those that claim to be “green”—give off many chemicals that are not listed on the label, including some that are classified as toxic.

A study led by the Univ. of Washington discovered that 25 commonly used scented products emit an average of 17 chemicals each. Of the 133 different chemicals detected, nearly a quarter are classified as toxic or hazardous under at least one federal law. Only one emitted compound was listed on a product label, and only two were publicly disclosed anywhere. The article is published online in the journal Environmental Impact Assessment Review.

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The Health Liberty Revolution & Forced Vaccination

Vaccine Awakening, Aug. 24, 2011 Barbara Loe Fisher

In America today, there is an unprecedented assault on the human right to exercise informed consent to medical risk-taking. It is being led by one of the most powerful and wealthy corporate empires in the world: the global pharmaceutical industry.

What is at stake for Big Pharma is a one trillion dollar market for prescription drugs and vaccines. What is at stake for the American people is our health and our liberty.

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“Smoking Gun” Documents Show Science Ignored in Approval of Cancer-Causing Strawberry Pesticide

FederalJack.com, Aug. 25, 2011

(EARTH JUSTICE) Newly released documents show that a Schwarzenegger political appointee within the state agency that approved the cancer-causing strawberry pesticide methyl iodide favored the input of the chemical’s manufacturer, Arysta LifeScience, over the recommendations of its own scientists. The new documents—released in accordance with a court order in the California-based litigation challenging methyl iodide—show that top scientists in the California Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) warned of the dangers of methyl iodide and strongly criticized the methods by which the “acceptable” levels of exposure were set by DPR management.

“These smoking gun memos show that state officials cherry-picked calculations to support their preferred outcome of approving methyl iodide instead of letting science guide their decision-making,” said Susan Kegley, PhD, Consulting Scientist with Pesticide Action Network North America. “Ignoring the science and prioritizing the needs of the manufacturer has put the health and safety of Californians at great risk.”

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Monsanto Targets Consumers

Farm Wars, Aug. 21, 2011

We are in a race to save agriculture as we need it. We need the land to be fruitful. We need it to supply good, nutritious food. We need what we know as agriculture to not kill us with pesticides, genetic engineering, neurotoxins, heavy metals, and other poisons so liberally dumped on and in what we so fondly remember as food.

Monsanto Co. (MON), the world’s biggest vegetable seed maker, said it will begin selling genetically modified sweet corn in the U.S. this year, the first product it has developed for the consumer market.

The sweet corn seeds are engineered to kill insects living above and below ground and to tolerate applications of the company’s Roundup herbicide, Consuelo Madere, Monsanto vice president for vegetables, told reporters at company headquarters in St. Louis today. They will be introduced to growers serving the U.S. fresh corn market starting in the autumn, she said.

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What’s Making Us Fat? Researchers Put Food Additives On Suspect List

Common Health, Aug. 12, 2011

Consider this slide of ice cream ingredients that Dr. Barbara Corkey, director of the Obesity Research Center at Boston Medical Center, used in a recent lecture. The few elements in yellow, she told her listeners, were ingredients that we normally think of as “food.”

There was a collective gasp from her American Diabetes Association audience, and a buzz of distaste.

In pink, Barbara went on, were some of the substances she was about to discuss. “Virtually none of these non-food compounds have been carefully assessed for a potential causative or contributing role in the obesity and diabetes epidemic,” she said.

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