Flu shots are virtually worthless, says new British Medical Journal analysis

(NaturalNews) Flu vaccines are largely ineffective in the populations for which they are most highly recommended, according to a new study published in the Oct. 28 issue of the British Medical Journal.
Dr. Tom Jefferson, coordinator of the Cochrane Vaccines Field in Rome, Italy, conducted an extensive review of previous studies on the effectiveness of inactivated [dead virus] flu vaccines on hospital admissions, death rates and time off work.
"We've got an exaggerated expectation of what vaccines can actually do," Jefferson said. "I'm hoping American and European taxpayers will be alerted and start asking questions."
Most developed and developing countries have influenza vaccination programs that are believed to help reduce the number of flu deaths and hospitalizations. United States health authorities currently recommend flu vaccine shots for most Americans -- children 6 to 23 months; kids 23 months to 5 years old; those 50 and older; people with chronic health conditions such as diabetes, asthma, HIV or heart disease; health-care professionals and caregivers; and anyone with household contact of high-risk individuals, such as stay-home mothers with young children.
Jefferson notes that recommendations for flu vaccines have significantly increased in recent years -- a move he says may not be justified.
"I looked at the evidence described by systematic reviews and confronted it with policy and I found that there is a massive gap," he said. "Almost none of the benefits that these policy documents list are actually given by inactivated vaccines or, if they are, they are given in slighter measure."
Consumer health advocate Mike Adams, author of "Conquering the Common Cold," called flu vaccine shots "one of the greatest medical cons perpetrated on the populations of the world," and questioned new U.S. policies pushing the vaccines on young children and expectant mothers.
"Flu shots only prevent colds in about 1 percent of people who get them, making them 99 percent useless," Adams said. "They also inject unhealthy substances such as mercury preservatives directly into tissues, poisoning the patient with a chemical burden that accumulates with each flu shot."
http://www.naturalnews.com/020912_flu_vaccine_shots.html

Vaccines Did Not Save Us – 2 Centuries of Official Statistics

http://childhealthsafety.wordpress.com/graphs/

NSAID use associated with future stroke in healthy population

Stockholm, Sweden (updated) - Short-term use of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) was associated with an increased risk of stroke in a Danish population study including only healthy individuals.

Presenting the study at last week's European Society of Cardiology (ESC) 2010 Congress, Dr Gunnar Gislason (Gentofte University Hospital, Hellerup, Denmark) said the results could have "massive public-health implications."

"First we found an increased risk of MI with NSAIDs. Now we are finding the same thing for stroke. This is very serious, as these drugs are very widely used, with many available over the counter," Gislason told heartwire. "We need to get the message out to healthcare authorities that these drugs need to be regulated more carefully."

Cochair of the session at which the study was presented, Dr Robert Califf (Duke Clinical Research Institute, Durham, NC), agreed that the results raised a major public-health issue, especially in the US, where many NSAIDs were available without a prescription.

For the current study, Gislason and colleagues examined the risk of stroke and NSAID use in healthy individuals living in Denmark. He explained to heartwire that information on each individual in the Danish population is kept in various national registries. His team started with the whole population of Denmark aged over 10 years. To select just the healthy individuals, they excluded anyone admitted to the hospital within the past five years or those prescribed chronic medications for more than two years. This left a population of around half a million, who were included in the study. By linking to prescribing registries, the researchers found that 45% of these healthy individuals had received at least one prescription for an NSAID between 1997 and 2005. They then used stroke data from further hospitalization and death registries and estimated the risk of fatal and nonfatal stroke associated with the use of NSAIDs by Cox proportional-hazard models and case-crossover analyses.

Results showed that NSAID use was associated with an increased risk of stroke. This increased risk ranged from about 30% with ibuprofen and naproxen to 86% with diclofenac.

Risk of stroke with various NSAIDs

NSAID	HR (95% CI) for risk of stroke
Ibuprofen	1.28 (1.14-1.44)
Diclofenac	1.86 (1.58-2.19)
Rofecoxib	1.61 (1.14-2.29)
Celecoxib	1.69 (1.11-2.26)
Naproxen	1.35 (1.01-1.79)

To download table as a slide, click on slide logo above

Gislason noted that there was also a dose-relationship found, with the increased risk of stroke reaching 90% (HR 1.90) with doses of ibuprofen over 200 mg and 100% (HR 2.0) with diclofenac doses over 100 mg. He pointed out that the results were particularly striking, given that this study was conducted in healthy individuals.

He conceded that his results could have some confounding but noted that the data were controlled for age, gender, and socioeconomic status and the patient population did not include those with chronic diseases. "We also have to think about the degree of confounding needed to nullify risk. It would have to increase risk four- to fivefold, which is very unlikely," he commented.

He said he did not find the results that surprising in view of the accumulating evidence of increased MI risk with these drugs, adding that the mechanism was probably the same. There have been several hypotheses about the mechanism linking NSAIDs with cardiovascular events, including increased thrombotic effect on platelets, the endothelium, and/or atherosclerotic plaques; increasing blood pressure; and effect on the kidneys and salt retention.

Gislason told heartwire that there is reluctance among the medical profession to limit the prescribing of these drugs. "The problem is that we don't have randomized trials, and it is very hard to change the habits of doctors. They have been using these drugs for decades without thinking about cardiovascular side effects."

He also stressed that the public needs to be protected by not allowing NSAIDs to be bought without a prescription. He has had some success in this regard in Denmark at least, where diclofenac became available over the counter recently, but after some of the MI data came out, Gislason's group campaigned the health authorities, and it has now become a prescription-only drug again. But he noted that many more NSAIDs are available over the counter in the US.

He believes the harmful effects of these agents are relevant to huge numbers of people. "If half the population takes these drugs, even on an occasional basis, then this could be responsible for a 50% to 100% increase in stroke risk. It is an enormous effect."

These results have been partly published in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes earlier this year [1]. Gislason told heartwire that the novelty of the results presented at the ESC meeting was that "we had further analyzed our data regarding specific stroke and looked at the risk of ischemic stroke, and we confirmed that the risk of ischemic stroke was substantially elevated." He added: "We are in the process of analyzing these data related to time to risk and the effect of duration of treatment on stroke risk."

[1] Fosbøl EL, Folke F, Jacobsen S, et al. Cause-specific CV risk associated with NSAIDs among healthy individuals. Circ Cardiovasc Qual Outcomes 2010; 3:395-405.

http://www.theheart.org/article/1119849.do

Pediatricians trying to obliterate parent's right to refuse vaccinations for children

(NaturalNews) Just when you think some progress is being made for allowing exemptions from required vaccination schedules, along comes a threatening policy statement from a group that does most of those vaccinations. The Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society (PIDS) has issued a position statement opposing secular exemptions from vaccinations.

Already, many pediatricians are refusing healthcare to children of parents, who oppose heavy vaccination schedules.

Pediatricians Are Vaccine Crazy

The vaccination schedule begins at birth with the Hep B shot, which is followed by two more Hep B shots before two years of age. Hepatitis B is transmitted sexually or with hypodermic needles. Even if the mother is not at risk, the Hep B shots are pushed on newborns.

Two other vaccinations come as three different doses in one package. And those are given more than once before age six. They are the MMR (mumps, measles, and rubella) and the DTP (Diphtheria, Tetanus, Pertussis) vaccinations.

Including the two inoculations that inject three vaccines, there are a total of fifteen different vaccines inoculated into a child well over 30 times by the age of six. Those shots aren't cheap, and they are hazardous. The USA requires more infant vaccinations than any other nation, yet it ranks 34th in infant mortality.

So this vaccination nation has more infant deaths than 33 other nations. But the pediatricians want to make sure more are given to protect "herd immunity" and prevent outbreaks. They believe 90% of the population should be vaccinated with the full schedule of vaccines. Hold on a second. Those who are vaccinated shouldn't be concerned about disease carriers if they are "immunized", right? The outbreak threat is obviously illogical.

Real Science

It has been documented that the most dangerous disease carriers are those who have been recently vaccinated. The attenuated live viruses used in the vaccine "shed" off the vaccinated child for a few weeks after the shot.

There have been scientific studies that prove SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome) is linked to the Hep B and DTP vaccinations. There are also many cases of severe infant vaccine adverse effects reported, but many more are not reported because too many parents do not realize vaccines can have adverse reactions. Of course, the medical people usually deny any connection even if a baby drops dead immediately after a vaccination.

There are two studies linking SIDS to early vaccinations. Dr. Viera Scheibner, the author of one of the studies, concluded that "vaccination is the single most prevalent and most preventable cause of infant deaths." Dr. William Torch, of the University of Nevada School of Medicine at Reno, discovered that almost 80% of SIDS deaths occurred shortly after the DPT vaccination. There are other similar studies with similar results. (3)

Warning

Pediatricians consider parents, who are concerned about vaccine safety, virtually criminal for not permitting them to vaccinate their children. Their position paper claims vaccines are the medical miracle of modern medicine, but hysterical celebrities and junk science has led many astray from honoring this miracle. Hypocritically, they say this without scientific proof of their own.

If you protest or refuse vaccinations for your child, there is a looming possibility that legal actions could be taken against you. Children could be taken away and foster homed, and parents can be arrested unless they yield to pediatricians' warped demands. This is where medical fascism is headed as the medical mafia continues their lobbying for more control.

Some parents are avoiding pediatricians and using regular MDs they trust or holistic practitioners for their children to avoid possible confrontations. These are difficult times for raising children safely. So do your research and connect with supportive groups (5), who are really invested in children's safety instead of vaccine profits.

Sources for more information include:

(1) The article featuring PIDS position statement http://www.pediatricsupersite.com/v...
(2) Vaccination schedule for ages zero through six http://aapredbook.aappublications.o...
(3) Scientific analysis proving SIDS is vaccination related http://www.thinktwice.com/sids.htm
(4) Several vaccination common questions and confusions handled here http://www.thinktwice.com/faq.htm
(5) Probably the most comprehensive detailed site for parents concerned about vaccinations http://thinktwice.com/

http://www.naturalnews.com/033291_pediatricians_vaccinations.html

Pfizer: Nigeria drug trial victims get compensation

US-based pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has made the first compensation payment to Nigerian families affected by a controversial drug trial 15 years ago.

It paid $175,000 (£108,000) each to four families in the first of a series of payments it is expected to make.

The payouts are part of an out-of-court settlement reached in 2009.

In 1996, 11 children died and dozens were left disabled after Pfizer gave them the experimental anti-meningitis drug, Trovan.

The children were part of a group of 200 given the drug during a meningitis epidemic in the northern city of Kano as part of a medical trial comparing Trovan's effectiveness with the established treatment.

For years Pfizer maintained that meningitis - not the drug - caused the deaths and disabilities.

But after a lengthy and expensive litigation process, it reached a settlement with the Kano government in northern Nigeria.

DNA tests

The trials were carried out in Kano and the state government fought Pfizer on behalf of victims and their families.

It has taken two years and DNA tests to establish who is entitled to payments, the BBC's Jonah Fisher in Lagos says.

It could take another year for payments to be concluded, he says.

Pfizer also agreed to sponsor health projects in Kano as well as creating a fund of $35m to compensate those affected.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14493277

'Amazing' therapy destroys leukemia in 3 patients

NEW YORK (AP) — Scientists are reporting the first clear success with a new approach for treating leukemia — turning the patients' own blood cells into assassins that hunt and destroy their cancer cells.

They've only done it in three patients so far, but the results were striking: Two appear cancer-free up to a year after treatment, and the third patient is improved but still has some cancer. Scientists are already preparing to try the same gene therapy technique for other kinds of cancer.

"It worked great. We were surprised it worked as well as it did," said Dr. Carl June, a gene therapy expert at the University of Pennsylvania. "We're just a year out now. We need to find out how long these remissions last."

He led the study, published Wednesday by two journals, New England Journal of Medicine and Science Translational Medicine.

It involved three men with very advanced cases of chronic lymphocytic leukemia, or CLL. The only hope for a cure now is bone marrow or stem cell transplants, which don't always work and carry a high risk of death.

Scientists have been working for years to find ways to boost the immune system's ability to fight cancer. Earlier attempts at genetically modifying bloodstream soldiers called T-cells have had limited success; the modified cells didn't reproduce well and quickly disappeared. (It's so easy to boost the immune systems ability to fight cancer that its criminal that they aren't doing it. ask me how.)

June and his colleagues made changes to the technique, using a novel carrier to deliver the new genes into the T-cells and a signaling mechanism telling the cells to kill and multiply.

That resulted in armies of "serial killer" cells that targeted cancer cells, destroyed them, and went on to kill new cancer as it emerged. It was known that T-cells attack viruses that way, but this is the first time it's been done against cancer, June said.

For the experiment, blood was taken from each patient and T-cells removed. After they were altered in a lab, millions of the cells were returned to the patient in three infusions.

The researchers described the experience of one 64-year-old patient in detail. There was no change for two weeks, but then he became ill with chills, nausea and fever. He and the other two patients were hit with a condition that occurs when a large number of cancer cells die at the same time — a sign that the gene therapy is working.
"It was like the worse flu of their life," June said. "But after that, it's over. They're well."
The main complication seems to be that this technique also destroys some other infection-fighting blood cells; so far the patients have been getting monthly treatments for that.
Penn researchers want to test the gene therapy technique in leukemia-related cancers, as well as pancreatic and ovarian cancer, he said. Other institutions are looking at prostate and brain cancer.
Dr. Walter J. Urba of the Providence Cancer Center in Portland, Ore., called the findings "pretty remarkable" but added a note of caution because of the size of the study.
"It's still just three patients. Three's better than one, but it's not 100," said Urba, one of the authors of an editorial on the research that appears in the New England Journal.
What happens long-term is key, he said: "What's it like a year from now, two years from now, for these patients."
But Dr. Kanti Rai, a blood cancer expert at New York's Long Island Jewish Medical Center, could hardly contain his enthusiasm, saying he usually is more reserved in his comments on such reports.
"It's an amazing, amazing kind of achievement," said Rai, who had no role in the research.
None of the three patients wanted to be identified, but one wrote about his illness, and his statement was provided by the university. The man, himself a scientist, called himself "very luck," although he wrote that he didn't feel that way when he was first diagnosed 15 years ago at age 50.
He was successfully treated over the years with chemotherapy until standard drugs no longer worked.

Now, almost a year since he entered the study, "I'm healthy and still in remission. I know this may not be a permanent condition, but I decided to declare victory and assume that I had won."

http://news.yahoo.com/amazing-therapy-destroys-leukemia-3-patients-191634246.html 

Dieting forces brain to eat itself, scientists claim

Dieters struggle to lose weight because a lack of nutrition forces their brain cells to eat themselves, making the feeling of hunger even stronger, scientists claim.

Like other parts of the body, brain cells begin to eat themselves as a last-ditch source of energy to ward off starvation, a study found.

The body responds by producing fatty acids, which turn up the hunger signal in the brain and increase our impulse to eat.

Researchers from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University in New York said the findings could lead to new scientifically proven weight loss treatments.

Tests on mice found that stopping the brain cells from eating themselves – a process known as autophagy – prevented levels of hunger from rising in response to starvation.

The chemical change in their brains caused the mice to become lighter and slimmer after a period of fasting, the researchers reported in the journal Cell Metabolism.

Dr Rajat Singh, who led the study, said: "A pathway that is really important for every cell to turn over components in a kind of housekeeping process is also required to regulate appetite.

"Treatments aimed at the pathway might make you less hungry and burn more fat, a good way to maintain energy balance in a world where calories are cheap and plentiful."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/8677200/Dieting-forces-brain-to-eat-itself-scientists-claim.html

Scientists reverse stance on sun and cancer: Now they admit sunlight can prevent skin cancer

(NaturalNews) Since the 1980s, physicians and cancer groups have regularly warned the public against the potential health dangers of direct sunlight on skin. As a result, many people have stayed out of the sunlight completely, covered their limbs even in warm weather or slathered themselves with UV protection products, all in the interest of lowering their risk of melanomas.

However, more recent findings indicate that this kind of nearly vampiric avoidance of the sun may not benefit your cancer odds after all.

A 2009 study by a group of Leeds University researchers found that higher levels of Vitamin D were linked to improved skin cancer survival odds. Other studies have found that Vitamin D has a connection to a strong immune response in the body. In fact, Vitamin D may hasten the death of tumor cells.

Unfortunately, most people have low levels of Vitamin D, leaving them at higher risk for a host of diseases including breast cancer, prostate cancer, bowel cancer, cervical cancer, rickets and osteoporosis. (For more in-depth information on this, see this report:http://www.naturalnews.com/rr-sunli...)

"It's common for the general public to have low levels of vitamin D in many countries," said Professor Julia Newton Bishop of the Leeds Institute of Molecular Medicine and author of the Leeds study. "Melanoma patients tend to avoid the sun as sunburn is known to increase the risk of melanoma. We use sunshine to make vitamin D in the skin, so melanoma patients' levels of vitamin D may be especially low."

Bishop also noted that people can get more Vitamin D through dietary sources such as fatty fish. She points out that balance is key, as extremely high levels of Vitamin D can have a negative effect on health.

The mainstream media continues to run stories every summer warning people against the sun even two years after the Leeds study. While hours of sunbathing may be risky behavior for your long-term health, receiving a moderate amount of sunlight while out gardening or walking is actually as good for you as eating a low-fat diet and engaging in regular exercise. In fact, laying off the sunscreen may help you not only absorb sunshine into your skin to help fight tumors, but also helps you avoid the chemicals in most commercial sun blocking products. Some studies have indicated that these chemicals can actually generate harmful free radicals in the body.

So this summer, relax, and enjoy the sunshine.


Learn more:http://www.naturalnews.com/032533_sun_exposure_skin_cancer.html#ixzz1TtnhgMwP

J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 2011 Aug;52(8):907-15. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-7610.2011.02406.x. Epub 2011 Apr 18.

Breastfeeding, brain activation to own infant cry, and maternal sensitivity.

Kim P, Feldman R, Mayes LC, Eicher V, Thompson N, Leckman JF, Swain JE.

Source

Child Study Center, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA Department of Human Development, Cornell University, USA The Leslie and Susan Gonda Brain Science Center, Bar-Ilan University, Israel The Anna Freud Centre, London, UK Department of Psychiatry, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.

Abstract

Background:  Research points to the importance of breastfeeding for promoting close mother-infant contact and social-emotional development. Recent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have identified brain regions related to maternal behaviors. However, little research has addressed the neurobiological mechanisms underlying the relationship between breastfeeding and maternal behavior in human mothers. We investigated the associations between breastfeeding, maternal brain response to own infant stimuli, and maternal sensitivity in the early postpartum. Methods:  Seventeen biological mothers of healthy infants participated in two matched groups according to feeding method - exclusive breastfeeding and exclusive formula-feeding at 2-4 weeks postpartum. fMRI scanning was conducted in the first postpartum month to examine maternal brain activation in response to her own baby's cry versus control baby-cry. Dyadic interactions between mothers and infants at 3-4 months postpartum were videotaped in the home and blindly coded for maternal sensitivity. Results:  In the first postpartum month,breastfeeding mothers showed greater activations in the superior frontal gyrus, insula, precuneus, striatum, and amygdala while listening to their own baby-cry as compared to formula-feeding mothers. For both breastfeeding and formula-feeding mothers, greater activations in the right superior frontal gyrus and amygdala were associated with higher maternal sensitivity at 3-4 months postpartum. Conclusions:  Results suggest links between breastfeeding and greater response to infant cues in brain regions implicated in maternal-infant bonding and empathy during the early postpartum. Such brain activations may facilitate greater maternal sensitivity as infants enter their social world.

© 2011 The Authors. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry © 2011 Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health.

Every time I try to post the link to this study I lose everything. So if you are interested in seeing the study, your gonna have to search on PubMed. Sorry.