Are our smartphones afflicting us all with symptoms of ADHD?

When was the last time you opened your laptop midconversation or brought your desktop computer to the dinner table? Ridiculous, right? But if you are like a large number of Americans, you have done both with your smartphone.

Less than a decade after the introduction of the first iPhone, more people reach for their smartphones first thing in the morning than reach for coffee, a toothbrush or even the partner lying next to them in bed. During the day, with a smartphone in our pocket, we can check our email while spending time with our children just as easily as we can text a friend while at work. And regardless of what we are doing, many of us are bombarded by notifications of new messages, social media posts, breaking news, app updates and more.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that this pervasiveness of smartphones is making us increasingly distracted and hyperactive. These presumed symptoms of constant digital stimulation also happen to characterize a well-known neurodevelopmental disorder: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD. Could the pinging and dinging of our smartphones be afflicting even those of us not suffering from ADHD with some of that condition’s symptoms? As a behavioral scientist, I set out to test this idea in a well-controlled experiment.

Studying digital interruption

My colleagues and I recruited 221 millennials – students at the University of British Columbia – to participate in a two-week study. Importantly, these participants were recruited from the university’s general participant pool, rather than from a population of students diagnosed with ADHD.

During the first week, we asked half the participants to minimize phone interruptions by activating the “do-not-disturb” settings and keeping their phones out of sight and far from reach. We instructed the other half to keep their phone alerts on and their phones nearby whenever possible.

In the second week, we reversed the instructions: Participants who had used their phones’ “do-not-disturb” settings switched on phone alerts, and vice versa. The order in which we gave the instructions to each participant was randomly determined by a flip of a coin. This study design ensured that everything was kept constant, except for how frequently people were interrupted by their phones. We confirmed that people felt more interrupted by their phones when they had their phone alerts on, as opposed to having them off.

Measuring inattentiveness and hyperactivity

We measured inattentiveness and hyperactivity by asking participants to identify how frequently they had experienced 18 symptoms of ADHD over each of the two weeks. These items were based on the criteria for diagnosing ADHD in adults as specified by the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-V).

The inattentiveness questions covered a wide range of potential problems, such as making careless mistakes, forgetting to pay a bill and having difficulty sustaining attention or listening to others. The hyperactivity questions were similarly broad, assessing things like fidgeting, feeling restless, excessive talking and interrupting others.

The results were clear: more frequent phone interruptions made people less attentive and more hyperactive.

Because ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder with complex neurological and developmental causes, these findings in no way suggest that smartphones can cause ADHD. And our research certainly does not show that reducing phone interruptions can treat ADHD. But our findings do have implications for all of us who feel interrupted by our phones.

Smartphone ubiquity poses risks

These findings should concern us. Smartphones are the fastest-selling electronic gadget in history – in the 22 seconds it took to type this sentence, 1,000 smartphones were shipped to their new owners. Even if one of those 1,000 users became more likely to make a careless mistake, ignore a friend in the middle of a conversation or space out during a meeting, smartphones could be harming the productivity, relationships and well-being of millions.

As with all disorders, symptoms of ADHD form a continuum from the normal to the pathological. Our findings suggest that our incessant digital stimulation is contributing to an increasingly problematic deficit of attention in modern society. So consider silencing your phone – even when you are not in the movie theater. Your brain will thank you.        The Conversation

World’s Highest Paid CEO Makes His Killing from Cancer Patients

Natural and affordable cancer remedies seem to be continually ignored by the mainstream cancer industry as alternatives to chemo, radiation and designer drugs, because of one simple fact: cancer and cancer research is a huge industry. According to Bloomberg’s rankings, the highest paid chief corporate officer is Patrick Soon-Shiong, CEO of NantKwest Inc., a cancer research company, which delivered him a $147.6 million pay package in 2015. That’s more than the CEO of Google, who took home a whopping $100.5 million last year.

The Bloomberg Billionaires Index reveals that Soon-Shiong’s net worth is $9.8 billion. His company NantKwest went public in 2015, and now Soon-Shiong’s compensation is tied to reaching “strategic milestones.” Does that mean actually finding a cure? Maybe the company’s marketing team will tell you so, but typically, milestones for publicly traded companies are exclusively tied to revenue growth and profit.

As per its website, NantKwest’s approach to combating cancer is “focused on harnessing the power of the innate immune system by using the natural killer cell to treat cancer, infectious diseases and inflammatory diseases.” The company expects the Natural Killer treatment to be administered in an “outpatient setting as an ‘off-the-shelf’ living drug.” Their stated goal is to “change the current paradigm of cancer care,” and, let’s be honest, make billions along the way.

Considering Soon-Shiong’s history in the pharmaceutical industry, which turned him into a billionaire after the sale of his companies APP Pharmaceuticals and Abraxis BioScience Inc., NantKwest, as most cancer research corporations and pharmaceutical companies, is not likely to explore the many potential natural options to treat cancer, favoring instead the most complex. You can’t patent nature, so a natural cure wouldn’t make them much money. It is unlikely that any of the “strategic milestones” of the key players in this industry are to decrease revenues as a result of developing an effective cure for cancer with permanent effects, or to explore natural cancer treatments to make surviving cancer more affordable.

When an industry develops from a problem that problem will get worse, not better. ~ Unknown

Cancer is a big problem; there is no doubt about that. It comes as no surprise, considering that nearly all conventional products that we put on and into our bodies are filled with some concoction of synthetic and toxic chemicals. The environment is filled to the brim with toxic pollutants, from the type of materials we use to make cookware, to the chemicals being sprayed onto our food and into the air.

Humanity is desperate for a cancer cure as the statistics on cancer worsen every year. As people look to medical professionals for hope and guidance, little credit is given from the mainstream medical establishment to the natural and holistic approaches when it comes to preventing, treating and beating cancer, with food and other natural medicines.

The medical establishment seems to prey on frightened victims of cancer illness, faced with life or death, by directing them to expensive, profit driven pharmaceutical solutions. For example, chemotherapy, regardless of the question about its efficacy, can run anywhere from $7000 for initial treatment to $30,000 for an eight-week period. Some patients are faced with out of pocket expenses as high as $9000+ monthly for chemotherapy drugs.

The conventional approach to “finding the cure for cancer” is not working, but it does continue to perpetuate a lucrative industry, making some, like Patrick Soon-Shiong, immensely wealthy, at least in the material sense.            Walking Times

Sources:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-27/billionaire-nantkwest-ceo-gets-148-million-pay-package-for-2015
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/erin-havel/high-costs-of-cancer-drug_b_7505558.html
http://www.asbestos.com/treatment/expenses.php

Medical error is the third largest cause of death in the United States

Medical error is the third largest cause of death in the United States, according to an analysis published Wednesday in the medical journal BMJ.

In 2013, at least 250,000 people died not from the illnesses or injuries that prompted them to seek hospital care but from preventable mistakes, according to the study.

That number exceeds deaths from strokes and Alzheimer’s combined, and is topped only by heart disease and cancer, which each claim about 600,000 lives per year.

New legislation in the U.S. Congress may speed the arrival of new drugs, but will it leave citizens more exposed to dangerous drugs that have not been thoroughly tested? Julia Wilde examines how a drug moves through the FDA's approval process.

The death toll from medical mishaps would be even higher if nursing homes and out-patient care were included, the researchers found.

“People don’t just die from bacteria and heart plaque, they die from communication breakdowns, fragmented healthcare, diagnostic mistakes, and over-dosing,” said Martin Makary, a professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore and lead author of the study.

“Collectively, these represent the third leading cause of death in the United States,” he told AFP, adding that it is one of the most underreported endemics in global health.

A earlier study estimated the toll at between 250,000 and 440,000 per year.

Experts do not know the exact number of people who die from botched surgeries, faulty prescriptions, or a computer glitch simply because no one is keeping count.

Along with more than 100 other nations, the United States uses a system for collecting national health statistics — recommended by the World Health Organization — that does not keep track of medical errors.

“The absence of national data highlights the need for systematic measurement of the problem,” said Makary.

“Our study took the best science on the incidence of medical mistakes killing people in the delivery of care, and extrapolated that to the amount of care that we administer.”

- Death certificates -

The scope of the problem in the United States — which tops the world in per capita spending on health care — is probably about the same in other rich countries, he said.

As for the developing world, the situation is likely worse.

“I suspect that in Africa, poor quality medical care or preventable complications kill more people than HIV and malaria combined,” Makary said.

While it is not realistic to expect that human error can be eliminated in health care, protocols and “safety nets” can be put in place to track medical errors and reduce their number, the study concluded.

Death certificates, for example, could ask whether a preventable problem stemming from the patient’s medical care might have contributed to the death.

But asking hospitals and doctors to self-report their mistakes without offering a higher degree of protection from possible prosecution is a tall order, Makary acknowledged.

“It is difficult to create an open and honest conversation around the problem of people dying from the care that they have received,” he said.

Among other leading causes of death in the United States in 2013 were accidents (133,000), diabetes (76,500), influenza or pneumonia (55,000), and suicide (43,000), according to the National Center for Health Statistics.    Discovery

Mumps Being Spread by and Among Vaccinated People

May 10, 2016 By Dr. Mercola
Vaccines are a very lucrative business. Pfizer's vaccine Prevnar, which targets 13 strains of pneumococcus bacteria, generated $6.25 billion in revenue last year. And that's just one vaccine.¹
Even ineffective vaccines allow vaccine makers to make a mint. One of the most obvious vaccine failures is the mumps vaccine (part of the measles, mumps, rubella, aka MMR).
Again and again, outbreaks among vaccinated populations occur, yet rarely is the truth of the situation addressed, namely the fact that the vaccine is ineffective and doesn't work as advertised.
In 2010, two virologists filed a federal lawsuit against Merck, their former employer, alleging the vaccine maker engaged in improper testing and data falsification to artificially inflate the efficacy rating of their mumps vaccine.
For details on how they allegedly pulled this off, read Dr. Suzanne Humphries' excellent summary,² which explains in layman's terms how the tests were manipulated.
Just about every media outlet reported the lawsuit, and the hundreds of millions of dollars Merck was said to have defrauded from the U.S. government by selling a vaccine of questionable effectiveness.
As reported by Reuters³ last year, Merck's behavior in and of itself suggests they're trying to cover up fraud:

"Attorneys at Constantine Cannon, who represent the scientists, asked U.S. Magistrate Judge Lynne Sitarski of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania to compel Merck to respond to their discovery request, which asks the company to give the efficacy of the vaccine as a percentage.

Instead of answering the question, the letter said, Merck has been consistently evasive, using 'cut-and-paste' answers saying it cannot run a new clinical trial to determine the current efficacy, and providing only data from 50 years ago.

'Merck should not be permitted to raise as one of its principal defenses that its vaccine has a high efficacy, which is accurately represented on the product's label, but then refuse to answer what it claims that efficacy actually is,' the letter said."

So why are people still surprised when mumps outbreaks occur? And why are the unvaccinated still blamed for most disease outbreaks, even when most of the infected are vaccinated?

Vaccinated People Are Spreading the Mumps

Recently, 41 students at Harvard University came down with mumps and, according to the Public Health department in Cambridge, every single one of those students had been vaccinated.⁴
Four other campuses in Boston are also starting to see cases, as have four universities in Indiana. About 13 cases of mumps have also cropped up in California.
One ridiculous explanation offered by Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious-disease specialist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's Center for Health Security, is that the vaccine only works if the exposure to the virus is low; it can't be expected to work if there are high amounts of exposure, such as in dorms:⁵

"The exposure that they have to mumps is so high in these situations that it overcomes the ability of the vaccine to protect them," Adalja told Live Science. "It may be that, in these special situations, a much higher level of antibodies [against mumps] is needed to keep the virus at bay."

In 2009, more than 1,000 people in New Jersey and New York contracted the disease. At the time, questions arose about the effectiveness of the vaccine because 77 percent of those sickened were vaccinated.
A similar scenario occurred in 2006, when mumps infected more than 6,500 people in the U.S. Most of those cases also occurred among the vaccinated population, primarily among college students who had received two doses of MMR vaccine.
Now, if a vaccine is indeed highly effective, and avoiding the disease in question is worth the risk of the potential side effects from the vaccine, then many people would conclude that the vaccine's benefits outweigh the risks.
However, if the vaccine is ineffective, and/or if the disease doesn't pose a great threat to begin with, then the vaccine may indeed pose an unacceptable risk. This is particularly true if the vaccine has been linked to serious side effects.
Unfortunately, that's the case with the MMR vaccine, which has been linked to at least 98 deaths and 694 disabilities between 2003 and 2015. Considering the fact that only 1 to 10 percent of vaccine reactions are ever reported, those numbers could actually be closer to 980 deaths and 6,940 disabilities.
Meanwhile, death from mumps is "exceedingly rare" according to the CDC,⁶ and no one has died from mumps during any of the recent outbreaks.

The Myth of Vaccine-Generated Herd Immunity

Download Interview Transcript

Vaccine promoters typically stress the importance of compliance with the federally recommended vaccine schedule in order to create and maintain vaccine-induced "herd immunity." This may require multiple doses of certain vaccines, the MMR included, because no vaccine is 100 percent effective.
However, they never quite seem to be able to explain why the majority of outbreaks occur in areas that are thought to HAVE herd immunity status, i.e. where the majority of people are fully vaccinated and "should" therefore not be able to be infected or transmit infection.
The problem stems from a mix-up of terms. While there is such a thing as natural herd immunity, vaccine-induced herd immunity is a total misnomer. Vaccine makers simply assumed that vaccines will work in the same way as natural immunity, but the science clearly shows that this is not the case.
Vaccination and exposure to a given disease produce two qualitatively different types of immune responses. To learn more, I urge you to listen to the video above, in which Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), discusses the concept of herd immunity. As explained by Barbara:

"Vaccines do not confer the same type of immunity that natural exposure to the disease does ... [V]accines only confer temporary protection … In most cases natural exposure to disease would give you a longer lasting, more robust, qualitatively superior immunity because it gives you both cell mediated immunity and humoral immunity.

Humoral is the antibody production. The way you measure vaccine-induced immunity is by how high the antibody titers are. (How many antibodies you have.) The problem is, the cell mediated immunity is very important as well. Most vaccines evade cell mediated immunity and go straight for the antibodies, which is only one part of immunity."

Ineffective Vaccines May Pose an Unacceptable Health Risk

In essence, vaccines are designed to trick your body's immune system into producing the antibodies needed to resist any future infection. However, your body is smarter than that.
The artificial stimulation of your immune system produced by lab-altered killed bacteria or an attenuated live virus is not the same as your body experiencing a natural viral or bacterial infection, which may or may not make you clinically ill but will confer a longer lasting immunity compared to vaccine acquired artificial immunity that is qualitatively inferior and far more temporary.
So the question is, is it well-advised to protect children against a large number of infectious diseases early in life through temporary artificial immunity from vaccines, or might they be better off contracting certain contagious infections in childhood, thereby attaining longer lasting natural immunity that may even last them for the rest of their lives?
And, do vaccine complications ultimately cause more chronic illness and death than infectious diseases do? In the case of the MMR vaccine, this question seems particularly pertinent. While there are 98 reports of death following vaccination between 2003 and 2015, only one child has died from acute measles complications in the decade between 2005 and 2015.⁷

Democrats Seek Taxpayer Money for Zika Vaccine

While millions suffer from government subsidized diseases caused by obesity and diabetes, and tens of thousands die from prescription opioids and antibiotic-resistant diseases — all of which stem from ill-advised government policies, the White House is now seeking $2 billion of your tax dollars to create yet another vaccine, this time against the Zika virus, just like they did for bird flu, swine flu, SARS, and so many other very profitable false alarms. According to The Daily Caller:⁸

"Democrats in Congress and the White House say they're convinced the virus could wreak havoc in the U.S. if the nearly 2 billion dollars isn't appropriated right now to keep the virus from spreading ...

The proposal would direct the bulk of the funds to the Department of Health and Human Services, and a much smaller portion to the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Department of State, to fund increased research on the virus, development of a vaccine and an effort to control mosquito populations."

The problem is, while the Zika virus transmitted by mosquitoes was originally blamed for reports of microcephaly among infants born in Brazil, it quickly became apparent that Zika was among the least likely contributors to this birth defect. The Brazilian government also admitted that overly generous parameters resulted in dramatic over-reporting of the condition.
As details started emerging, it became clear that a number of environmental factors could be at play — all of which were far more convincing than the Zika virus. Yet our politicians are still pandering this fear mongering in order to continue lining the chemical and pharmaceutical industries' pockets.

Is Zika Virus Really Responsible for Birth Defects?

For starters, large amounts of banned pesticides are in use in the area where most of the microcephaly cases have occurred in Brazil.^9,10,11 This includes heavy regional use of the pesticide Atrazine. According to research¹² published in 2011, small head circumference is one potential side effect of prenatal Atrazine exposure.
Lack of sanitation and widespread vitamin A and zinc deficiency are also potential contributing factors to microcephaly increases in Brazil. Vitamin A deficiency has actually been linked to an increased risk of microcephaly specifically,^13,14 and zinc is known to play an important role in the structure and function of the brain.¹⁵ Even the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) lists malnutrition and exposure to toxic chemicals as two of the three known risk factors for microcephaly.
A report^16,17 by an Argentine physician's organization called Physicians in the Crop-Sprayed Towns also challenges the theory that Zika virus is responsible for the microcephaly cases in Brazil. They point out that a chemical larvicide that causes malformations in mosquitoes (pyriproxyfen) has been applied to the drinking water in the most seriously affected area of Brazil.
Pyroproxyfen, which has been linked to birth defects, is manufactured by Sumitomo Chemical, a Japanese subsidiary of Monsanto, and has been used in a state-controlled program to eradicate mosquitoes.
Imidacloprid, a neonicotinoid, has also been shown to produce skeletal malformation^18,19 and, as it turns out, Brazil lifted its ban on aerial spraying of neonicotinoids in October 2012, right around the time the women who gave birth to infants with microcephaly would have become pregnant.²⁰
Addressing these human health issues would mean taking a long hard look at the use of toxic chemicals contaminating the environment, and coming up with more rigorous restrictions on what chemical companies are allowed to pander.
Instead, the government turns a blind eye to the obvious, and comes up with a plan to increase the use of chemicals, both internally and externally, in the form of vaccines and mosquito treatments. In my view, this is a highly irrational decision. It's also a dead giveaway that public health is not their primary focus.

Chinese Parents Question Vaccine Safety

In China, where government mandated mass vaccination programs are a more recent intervention, suspicions about vaccine safety have grown rather quickly, and many parents, whose children have been injured by vaccines, have taken to the streets in ongoing protests. Dong Xiaoxin, whose 4-year-old daughter contracted polio after receiving a polio vaccine, spoke to an NPR reporter, saying:²¹

"Our daughter has made a great sacrifice for the nation's inoculation program, and we're not afraid to fight for the legal rights she deserves. We had no idea that vaccines could produce this kind of result. We felt that any vaccination given by the state had to be a good thing. We were completely unprepared. The state needs to provide us parents with some sort of safeguard. Only then can parents feel assured and fully trust the government."

In her book "Dissolving Illusions: Disease, Vaccines, and the Forgotten History," Humphries addresses the polio vaccine specifically, noting that through her research, she became convinced that the polio vaccine had very little if anything to do with the eradication of polio.
In fact, the successful "eradication" of this disease was accomplished by changing the diagnostic criteria of the disease. What's worse, the initial vaccine actually led to more cases of paralysis than would have developed naturally.
To save the vaccine, they had to make it appear as though it was working, even though it was causing more problems than it solved. The answer they came up with was to change the diagnostic criteria. The original criterion was two examinations within 24 hours. This was changed to two examinations within 60 days. This artificially decreased the polio rate, because within 60 days, most people recover from their bout with poliomyelitis.
They also began using serological testing, and if the polio virus was not found, the patient was not considered to have polio. Since then, virtually every type of polio vaccine has had some kind of issue, including the propagation of mutated strains of the polio virus.
In 1999, when public health officials admitted that the only polio cases in the U.S. were vaccine-induced, there was a switch from the live oral polio vaccine that can cause vaccine strain polio paralysis to the inactivated, injectable polio vaccine that cannot. However, in some developing countries the oral polio vaccine is still used and those vaccinated can become silent carriers of a highly virulent strain of polio that can infect others and cause paralysis.    Dr Mercola

Studies Show Gardening Makes You Happier and Smarter

 Justin Gardner May 8, 2016 

“The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just the body, but the soul.” – Alfred Austin

Gardeners have been knowing for centuries that their hobby gives them joy and peace. In today’s fast-paced world, gardening has become a form of stress therapy for many. There is even an organization called the American Horticultural Therapy Association, which is “committed to promoting and developing the practice of horticultural therapy as a unique and dynamic human service modality.”

The first Saturday of May is World Naked Gardening Day, a growing annual tradition that represents the ultimate act of getting in touch with nature. Even if you remain clothed, there is a uniquely good feeling about interacting with plants and the soil.

As with so many things, science introduces us to the physical wonders behind what we already know on a subliminal level. There are two interesting pieces of research that give credence to the feeling that our bodies and souls are better off from gardening.

Researchers reported in the journal Neuroscience that contact with a harmless soil bacteria called Mycobacterium vaccae triggers the release of serotonin in the brain. This type of serotonin acts on several different pathways, including mood and learning.  Lack of serotonin in the brains is related to depression.

“These studies help us understand how the body communicates with the brain and why a healthy immune system is important for maintaining mental health,” said lead author Dr. Chris Lowry. “They also leave us wondering if we shouldn’t all be spending more time playing in the dirt.”

Basically, the things we do as gardeners—working the soil, planting, mulching, and so forth—can really contribute to happiness. We ingest the bacteria by breathing or through broken skin. The simple act of children playing outside in the grass and dirt can be a natural way for them to reduce anxiety.

In addition to increasing happiness and reducing anxiety, serotonin has positive effects on memory and learning. Research presented at the American Society for Microbiology shows that feeding live M. vaccae bacteria to mice significantly improved their ability to navigate mazes, due to the fact that the bacteria triggers the release of brain serotonin.

“This research suggests that M. vaccae may play a role in anxiety and learning in mammals,” said researcher Dorothy Matthews. “It is interesting to speculate that creating learning environments in schools that include time in the outdoors where M. vaccae is present may decrease anxiety and improve the ability to learn new tasks.”

Have you noticed that you feel really happy when picking those ripe vegetables, especially that first tomato of the season? It turns out that harvesting fruits and vegetables triggers the release of dopamine in the brain. The speculation is that this evolved over 200,000 years of humans harvesting food as hunter-gatherers. Dopamine is strongly correlated with reward-motivated behavior.

So there we have it—two physical reasons why people can be happier and smarter through gardening. Being a gardener myself, I have several other hypotheses that may contribute to this body of research.  These include, but are not limited to: the myriad of colors in plants and animals, trees swaying in the wind, birds singing, squirrels chattering, lady beetles, and fresh air.  Perhaps one day we’ll have scientific explanations for all this, but in the meantime we can take comfort in that innate feeling we know is there.   Source

'Medicine and science are run by human beings, so there will always be crooks,' says journal editor

By Kelly Crowe, CBC News Posted: Apr 19, 2016 5:00 AM ET

It's unusual to watch one of the world's most powerful editors in scientific publishing play with a marionette puppet.

But Dr. Fiona Godlee, editor of the BMJ, specializes in the unexpected. 

The puppet she's holding is dressed as a doctor, complete with a stethoscope around its neck. Its strings represent the hidden hand of the pharmaceutical industry.  

'I think we have to call it what it is. It is a corruption of the scientific process.' -Dr. Fiona Godlee, editor, BMJ

Godlee keeps it on her desk to remind her of the dark forces at work in science and medicine. And she is blunt about the results.

"I think we have to call it what it is. It is the corruption of the scientific process."

There are increasing concerns these days about scientific misconduct. Hundreds of papers are being pulled from the scientific record, for falsified data, for plagiarism, and for a variety of other reasons that are often never explained.

Sometimes it's an honest mistake. But it's estimated that 70 per cent of the retractions are based on some form of scientific misconduct.

"Medicine and science are run by human beings, so there will always be crooks," Godlee says.

Dr. Fiona Godlee, editor of BMJ, playfully demonstrates the hidden strings drug companies use to influence scientific research. (CBC)

"There will be commercial pressures, academic pressures, and to pretend otherwise is absurd. So we have to have many more mechanisms, much more skepticism, and much more willingness to challenge."

As the editor of one of the oldest and most influential medical journals, Godlee is leading several campaigns to change the way science is reported, including opening up data for other scientists to review, and digging up data from old and abandoned trials for a second look.

She has strong words about the overuse of drugs, and the influence of industry on the types of questions that scientists ask, and the conclusions that are drawn from the evidence.

"It's not my job to be popular, I'm very clear about that," she says from her office in the historic British Medical Association building in central London.

"She's taken her licks, as it were, because other people don't like the level of transparency she is bringing to the process," says medical writer Dr. Ivan Oransky, who writes about flawed science on his blog Retraction Watch.

Dr. Ivan Oransky of Retraction Watch tries to shine a light on science's dirty secrets. (CBC)

Based in New York City, Retraction Watch is fascinating reading for anyone interested in what goes on behind science's closed doors.

Every day there are one or two new examples of research that has been quietly withdrawn.

"People leak us things, people send us documents, we get reports from universities that aren't supposed to see the light of day," Oransky says.

"There does remain a really entrenched problem with institutions, when asked to investigate allegations of misconduct. They will tend to close down, will tend to prefer not to investigate, will tend to hide any evidence and see it as a damage to their own reputation if they were to take action," Godlee says.

So retractions are, paradoxically, a good thing.

'I think this trend toward journal retraction is a positive sign.' - Dr. Fiona Godlee

"I think this trend toward journal retraction is a positive sign against what we've known to be going on for quite a long time," Godlee says.

Godlee admires Oransky's work, although they've never met.

"It's doing a good and important job," she said. "It's doing more than retractions, it's looking at misconduct in research."

In that sense, Godlee says, they are on the same page. But Godlee says the journals themselves are part of the problem.

It is up to the journals to decide what science gets published, and they usually choose positive findings. That means a study showing that a treatment or theory doesn't work rarely makes it into a high-profile journal.

It's called "publication bias" and it distorts the scientific record.

"All along the way, the system tends to encourage a sort of optimistic positive view of new drugs and drug treatments generally," Godlee says

Her solution? Transparency. Throw open the windows, let everyone see everything.

"I do have a belief in the fundamentality of science to correct itself. We can't do that under the blanket of secrecy," she says.

"We also need to have more independence in science, less commercial bias, less ability of academics to follow their own biases. All sorts of checks and balances of that sort. But in the end, transparency, to me, seems like the only correct route."

Her policy is already changing the scientific record.

Just last week, the BMJ published the results of a second look at a long abandoned clinical trial testing the hypothesis that a diet high in unsaturated oil would reduce heart disease and death. 

The new conclusion? Not only did corn oil not improve health, the data also showed a higher risk in death from the high corn oil diet.

Two years earlier, the BMJ published an analysis of another lost trial, by the same team. After digging the data out of a box in an old garage, they came to a similar conclusion about the effect of a so-called "healthy" oil on health.

And there was the re-analysis of Study 329, a controversial clinical trial into the use of the antidepressant Paxil to treat teenage depression. The new findings contradicted the original industry-funded researchers, concluding that the drug wasn't safe and didn't work.

It took a court case to get access to the hidden Paxil data, which was protected by corporate secrecy. And that raises another controversial question about who should be testing drugs in the first place.

'Patients do get hurt.' - Dr. Fiona Godlee

"It's led me and others to increasingly question the idea that the manufacturer of the drug could ever be considered the right people to evaluate its effectiveness and safety," Godlee says.

"That seems to me to be very mad idea which has grown up historically, and we have to start questioning it and we have to come up with alternatives, which would mean independent studies done by independent bodies."

And it matters, Godlee says, because bad science can be dangerous.

"Patients do get hurt. Drugs that shouldn't be available are available. Drugs with harms are used and patients are unaware of those harms. Devices that shouldn't be on the market are on the market. So yes, we do know that patients are harmed, and we know that the health systems are harmed as a result of poor science."      CBS 

Studies link cell phones to a slew of health issues in children

May 3, 2016 5:05 PM By Amy Yensi

BALTIMORE (WJZ) — For years, we’ve heard of a possible link between cell phone use and cancer. Now, this week, researchers in Baltimore say the evidence is clear, and children are more at risk.

WJZ’s Amy Yensi with more on the disturbing findings.

The studies link cell phones to a slew of health issues in children. That’s why experts say parents and expecting mothers need to be extra careful.

Cell phones are a part of our every day lives and a cause for concern for researchers who see them as a health risk — especially for infants and children.

“The weight of the evidence is clear: cell phones do cause brain cancer,” said Dr. Devras Davis, president, Environmental Health Trust.

Dr. Davis says the young brain absorbs twice as much radiation as an adult.

Doctors and scientists from across the country took on the issue during a pediatric conference at the Baltimore Convention Center. Panelists also found a connection between exposure to cell phone radiation and other health issues.

“There’s a correlation between cell phone use in pregnancy and behavioral problems in their children,” said Dr. Hugh Taylor, Yale School of Medicine.

“These devices are really stressing and straining our family relationships because the average mom or dad will check their phones 60 to 110 times a day,” said Dr. Catherine Steiner-Adair, clinical psychologist.

Doctors say the infant brain — even while in the womb — is especially vulnerable.

“Keep the phone away from the abdomen — especially toward the end of pregnancy,” said Dr. Davis.

Experts say holding your phone even a few inches away can lower the risk. They recommend using headsets, and when you’re not on your phone, to keep it as far away from you as possible.

“So we’re getting like a triple, quadruple whammy between the biological effect, the psychological effects and the brain waves effects,” said Dr. Martha Herbert, pediatric neurologist.

Effects may not be completely avoidable in a high-tech world.

Some researchers say the U.S. is lagging behind other countries when it comes to radiation research and prevention.

The Environmental Health Trust is calling on cell phone manufacturers and wireless providers to help fund research on how to treat and prevent exposure to radiation.        CBS

Nearly a third of antibiotics in the US are over-prescribed

Published time: 4 May, 2016 01:49

Nearly a third of antibiotics in the US are over-prescribed, according to a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That amounts to about 47 million patients receiving the wrong treatment for colds, sore throats, bronchitis, and flu.

The study published on Tuesday analyzed the use of antibiotics in doctors’ offices and emergency departments throughout the US in 2010 and 2011. The CDC found that 13 percent of all outpatient doctor visits, some 154 million a year, resulted in an antibiotic being prescribed, 47 million of which were unnecessary because they were prescribed for conditions caused by viruses, which do not respond to antibiotics.
“Antibiotics are lifesaving drugs, and if we continue down the road of inappropriate use we’ll lose the most powerful tool we have to fight life-threatening infections,” said CDC Director Tom Frieden in a statement released on Tuesday.
“Losing these antibiotics would undermine our ability to treat patients with deadly infections, cancer, provide organ transplants, and save victims of burns and trauma.”
Researchers found that about 44 percent of outpatient antibiotic prescriptions were written for colds, bronchitis, asthma, allergies, influenza, and viral pneumonia.
“Sinusitis was the single diagnosis associated with the most antibiotic prescriptions per 1,000 population,” researchers wrote in the report entitled Improve Antibiotic use to Combat Antibiotic Resistance, which was published on Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology said “up to 70 percent of people with sinusitis recover without any prescribed medications,” according to NBC News.
The CDC hopes the analysis will help remedy the over-prescription of antibiotics over the next five years. The study was conducted in conjunction with the Obama Administration’s national plan for Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria that was launched in 2015 with the goal of reducing antibiotic use in the US by at least half by 2020. Congress appropriated $160 million in new funding for the CDC to fight antibiotic resistance.
The study confirms the frantic alarms health officials have been sounding for over a decade warning that the overuse of antibiotics, which are designed to treat bacterial infections, has contributed to the development of drug-resistant bacteria, or so-called super bugs. Drug-resistant bacteria can cause public health problems, such as untreatable flesh-eating bacteria or events like a recent outbreak of untreatable gonorrhea.
“We’ve all been hearing, ‘This is a problem, this is problem,’ and we all understood the general concept that there is a lot of antibiotic use,” said Dr. David Hyun, a senior officer with Pew’s antibiotic resistance project who collaborated on the study.
While antibiotics do nothing to help viral infections, patients often strongly believe they will and badger doctors into giving them a prescription.
Dr. Hyun told NBC News that “children younger than 2 receive the most amount of antibiotics.”
The trouble with over-prescribing antibiotics is that the bacteria then evolve, eventually becoming so strong that they can’t be fully wiped out by antibiotics. Those that do survive may not only re-infect patients, but also be passed on to others.
The CDC said that more than two million people are infected by drug-resistant germs each year, of whom 23,000 die from the super-bugs’ onslaught.
“The rise of antibiotic resistance is a global crisis. It’s one of the greatest threats to health today,” WHO director-general Dr. Margaret Chan said last November.     RT

The Dirty Secrets of the Big Food Giants Hormone Disruptors

The Big Food giants, the pesticide and genetic engineering corporations such as Monsanto, the chemical, cosmetics, body care, food packaging, bottled water, and home furnishings industries—they all have a dirty secret.
All of these industries make products that are routinely laced with dangerous, often deadly chemicals called hormone (or endocrine) disruptors. These chemicals can make you (and your children) fat, diabetic, susceptible to cancer and infertility. They can cause damaging mental and behavioral changes. Pregnant women who ingest even tiny amounts of these chemicals can give birth to boys with genital deformities, and girls who will reach puberty at an alarming young age.
All these “Better Living Through Chemistry” companies and their PR firms and trade associations, bolstered by their minions in the mass media and academia, like to reassure us that these toxic, carcinogenic, gender-bending compounds in their products have been thoroughly tested and approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) and other regulatory bodies.
They spend millions of dollars in advertising and lobbying to convince the public and the regulatory agencies not to worry about what they describe as “a tiny amount” of Roundup/glyphosate/atrazine/2,4 D weed killer, phthalate, flame retardant, triclosan, or other hormone disruptor in your food, plastic toy, water bottle, perfume, mattress, anti-bacterial hand soap, or other household product, (and of course your urine and your blood stream). It’s just a little poison. Just like that little bit of  lead or pesticide or nitrogen fertilizer residue in your tap water, hormone disruptors are something you can learn to live with, right?
No wonder millions of consumers, especially pregnant women and parents of young children, have lost faith in big corporations and the government, and are switching to organic food and other truly natural, non-chemically tainted products.
There’s mounting evidence that genetically engineered and chemically sprayed crops can pose great danger to people’s health—danger that starts at the hormonal level. New research shows that the additives (co-formulants) used in glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, may have damaging endocrine-disrupting effects. That’s sobering news, given that billions of pounds of Roundup are sprayed on both GMO and non-GMO crops every year, everywhere in the world.
We don’t have any trouble understanding the potential of a chemical to cause brain damage, or birth defects, or cancer. But damage to the hormone/endocrine system? That’s less obvious to those of us who don’t have a clear understanding of the role hormones play in the human body—or how even tiny amounts of agrichemical and industrial compounds can disrupt those hormones, wreaking havoc with our health.

Biology 101: the endocrine system

Before you can understand how endocrine disruptors work, it’s crucial to learn first what the endocrine system does. This exquisitely balanced yet complex system of glands and hormones regulates vital functions, such as:

• Body growth
• Stress response
• Insulin production and utilization
• Intelligence and behavior
• Sexual development and reproduction
• Metabolism
• Immunity

The endocrine glands, which include the thyroid, pituitary, adrenal, pancreas, thymus, ovaries, and testes, release carefully measured amounts of hormones into your bloodstream. These act as natural chemical messengers that travel to different parts of the body in order to control and adjust many life functions.
Once endocrine disruptors enter the picture, this harmonious process is thrown off balance.

What are hormone/endocrine disruptors?

Endocrine disruptors (also called endocrine-disrupting compounds or EDCs) are synthetic, man-made chemicals used in everyday applications and products, such as personal care and household products, agricultural chemicals, plastics and more. These external substances affect your body by mimicking, antagonizing or complexly disrupting specific endocrine pathways.
There are different ways endocrine disruptors can affect your health. In some cases, they can mimic a natural hormone which then fools the body into over-responding to the stimulus. A good example of this would be if you ingested the IGF-1 growth hormone factor found in Monsanto’s (now Elanco’s) genetically engineered recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH). This hormone, injected into dairy cows to force them to produce more milk, can potentially cause the proliferation of cancer cells in humans consume rBGH-derived milk. (More here).
Other hormone-disrupting chemicals can cause the human body to respond at inappropriate times, for instance by triggering insulin production at times when the body doesn’t actually need it.
Other EDCs can block growth hormones needed for normal development. Some directly stimulate or inhibit the endocrine system, causing overproduction or underproduction of hormones. Too much or too little of a hormone, caused by chemicals outside the body that disrupt the endocrine system, can damage your health in multiple ways.

Associated with a wide range of health problems 

The adverse consequences of EDCs have been proven by scientific research on laboratory animals, fish and wildlife and human epidemiology. In humans, endocrine disruptors are said to cause reproductive health problems (such as poor sperm quality, abnormalities in male sex organs, infertility, and even precocious puberty), affect immune, thyroid and nervous system function, and even raise your risk of certain diseases like cancer.
The World Health Organization (WHO), along with the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), released a report in 2013 on the effects of EDCs. Touted as one of the most comprehensive reports on these chemicals, the findings revealed a wide variety of health problems associated with these synthetic substances. These include:

• Non-descended testes in young males
• Developmental effects on the nervous system in children
• Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children
• Prostate cancer in men
• Breast cancer in women
• Thyroid cancer

Endocrine disruptors have also been associated with other health problems, such as diabetes, obesity, heart disease and impaired mental development. Unborn children are at a particularly high risk, as animal studies found that exposure to even small amounts of certain EDCs during pregnancy may trigger childhood or adult obesity. There are some EDCs that can target beta and alpha cells in the pancreas, as well as liver and fat cells, which may lead to insulin-resistance and Type 2 Diabetes.

Lurking in your home right now?

What really makes endocrine disruptors so dangerous is how ubiquitous they are. There are hundreds of these pervasive chemicals today. Your body can absorb them through inhalation, through your skin or by ingesting them directly from food. And they are everywhere—in food tainted with pesticides, personal care products, antibacterials, electronics, textiles and clothing. Plastics, laundry detergents and cleaning products, and even office supplies may all contain EDCs.
So that means that the food you eat, the water you drink, the bed you sleep in, and even the cookware you use every day may be exposing you to some type of endocrine disruptor.
What are the most common hormone disruptors to watch out for? These include:

• Pesticide residues in foods. Most non-organic grocery store or restaurant foods, including produce, processed foods, meat and animal products contain pesticide residues, many of which are endocrine or hormone disruptors.
• Flame-retardant chemicals like polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) are used in household goods, furniture, and even mattresses. These are said to mimic thyroid hormones, which can lead to decreased fertility. Exposure to PBDEs in utero and during childhood was also associated with neurodevelopmental delays in school-age children.
• Phthalates, commonly used in personal care products like perfumes, hair spray, mousse and gel, and lotions are gender-bending chemicals that can disrupt the endocrine systems of animals, leading to testicular cancer, infertility, and genital deformation.
• Bisphenol-A (BPA) mimics estrogen and may cause brain damage, hyperactivity, poor immune function and prostate health and early puberty. BPA is one of the most widely used chemicals, found in plastics, receipts, and canned goods (it coats 75 percent of cans in North America). Its supposedly “safe” counterpart, bisphenol-S (BPS), is harmful as well.
• Triclosan, found in antibacterial products, soap, and certain toothpaste brands, can alter hormone regulation, interfere with fetal development and increase your risk of cancer. 

Are you consuming EDC-loaded foods?

Going back to pesticides, remember that unless you’re consuming raw, organic fruits and vegetables from trustworthy sources that don’t use pesticides, then you’re at risk of exposure to endocrine disruptors.  
One study clearly demonstrates this. Conducted by British scientists and published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, the study revealed that many agricultural pesticides disrupt male hormones. The study found that 30 of 37 widely used pesticides tested by researchers either blocked or mimicked male hormones. Sixteen of the 30 had no known hormonal activity until now, while 14 had some previous evidence of this effect. None of these 16 pesticides are included in the EPA’s Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program, which will test 200 chemicals in food and water for their hormone-disrupting abilities.
Of the tested compounds, fenitrothion, an organophosphate insecticide used on orchard fruits, rice and other grains, vegetables, was the most potent in terms of blocking androgens. Unsurprisingly, the EPA plan to study fenitrothion faces strong opposition from the pesticide industry.
R. Thomas Zoeller, chairman of the Biology department at the University of Massachusetts, said the British study was very important, as it reveals that the pesticides most prevalent in the human population affect the androgen receptor:

"Considering all the evidence that human male reproduction is exhibiting troubling secular trends (sperm count and quality, hypospadias, cryptorchidism, testis cancer), this is highly troubling."  

Exposure to EDCs isn’t limited to consuming pesticide residue on fruits and vegetables. Meat, dairy and other animal products may put you at risk of EDCs. Animals raised on concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) typically consume antibiotics, hormones and other industrial chemicals that may have hormone-disrupting properties. Even farmed fish and seafood harvested from polluted waters and exposed to heavy metals may also have dangerously high levels of endocrine-disrupting contaminants.

How to reduce your exposure

As the saying goes, prevention is always better than cure. According to the 2013 WHO and UNEP report, the effects of EDCs may not show up until decades later–when it may be too late.
Instead of waiting for the effects of EDCs to strike, you should make a conscious effort to avoid them in the first place. Here are some of the easiest ways to do this:

• Reduce your exposure to EDC-containing pesticides and fertilizers by buying only organic produce and 100% grass-fed, free-range, organic meats. Avoid processed, prepackaged foods as well, as these are common sources of BPA and phthalates.
• Buy products that come in glass jars or bottles, rather than plastic containers or cans.
• Use only natural cleaning products at home. Better yet, make your own. Baking soda, vinegar and lemon are some ingredients you can use.
• Opt for organic personal care brands, like shampoos, toothpaste, cosmetics and antiperspirants. The Environmental Working Group (EWG) has a comprehensive database on safe and high-quality products that are free of EDCs and other potentially harmful chemicals.  
• Avoid products with artificial fragrances like fabric softeners, dryer sheets and air fresheners. Opt instead for those that are fragrance-free.

The best way to avoid endocrine disruptors is to choose products that are made by companies that support sustainability, and that are Earth-friendly and certified organic. By making smart consumer choices, you can limit your exposure to these damaging chemicals and protect your health in the long run.
Elaine Catherine R. Ferrer is a contributing writer to the Organic Consumers Association and Mercola.com.
Ronnie Cummins is international director of the Organic Consumers Association.      Organic Consumers