►January 13, 2004 - Pa. courts asked to collect malpractice suit data - AP via Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - "The state Supreme Court's chief justice wants local court officials across the state to report the number of medical-malpractice claims filed in the past four years and monitor new cases as they come in...Doctors' groups have complained that skyrocketing insurance rates are forcing them to leave the state and have lobbied aggressively for reforms that would lessen their insurance burden."

►January 14, 2004 - Criteria hit for rating hospitals - Volume of procedures may not best measure - The Boston Globe

►January 14, 2004 - Disgust is good for you, shows study - New Scientist - "The purpose of disgust has been quantitatively demonstrated for the first time - it is an evolved response that protects people from disease or harm."

►January 13, 2004 - House of horrors - Sperm counts are falling and cancer levels are rising. Something is very wrong somewhere, but what? The answer, says Hilary Freeman, may be uncomfortably close to home ... - The Guardian, UK - "Buying organic and filtering your water may make you feel more secure, but it does little to protect you or your family from environmental toxins. Forget traffic pollution: the average Briton's home is almost certainly swimming in a cocktail of chemicals, many of which have been linked to allergies, cancers and infertility."

►January 12, 2004 - Bird flu spreading in Asia - www.promedmail.org - "The World Health Organization says an outbreak of bird flu among chickens in Vietnam may be linked to the deaths of 10 people. The bird flu has also sickened and killed thousands of chickens in South Korea and Japan."

Comment:  Is the media not getting its facts straight, or is it WHO? (See WHO Says No Evidence of Bird Flu Jumping to Humans)

►January 14, 2004 - Foregone conclusions - The public is being regularly deceived by the drug trials funded by pharmaceutical companies, loaded to generate the results they need - The Guardian, UK - "How then do companies usually manage to fund research that is favourable to them? An answer is supplied in a recent issue of the BMJ by Dave Sackett and Andy Oxman, two tireless campaigners for the better use of scientific evidence in medicine...The trick is in the question asked and the design of the trial."

►January 12, 2004 - WHO Says No Evidence of Bird Flu Jumping to Humans - Reuters via Yahoo! - "The World Health Organization (news - web sites) (WHO) is waiting for tests on an outbreak of bird flu in Vietnam but said on Tuesday there was no evidence it was behind the deaths of 12 people who fell ill with influenza...'We're investigating any possible link. We have no evidence of the link at the moment,' Peter Cordingley, a spokesman for the WHO's Western Pacific headquarters in Manila, told Reuters."

►January 12, 2004 - Ethnicity may affect allergies in children with asthma - Puerto Rican and African-American children with asthma at risk for multiple allergies - American College of Chest Physicians via www.eurekalert.org

►January 13, 2004 - Cow and A: What's the Chance of Finding a Mad Cow Burger on Your Plate? - Washington Post

►January 13, 2004 - Stages: Many Miss Out on 'Good Death' - (requires registration or subscription) The New York Times - "About a fifth of those interviewed said the patients had not always been treated with respect. Compared with a private home, this was two and half times as likely to occur in a nursing home and three times as likely to occur in a hospital. Survivors often said that they, too, did not receive enough emotional support."

►January 12, 2004 - The un-cola - The Globe and Mail - "Soft-drink purveyors say they will remove colas and other carbonated drinks from vending machines in Canadian elementary and middle schools by the start of the next school year. While insisting that all its products are suitable for kids -- a dubious claim at best -- the industry acknowledges that it is responding to increasing health concerns...It is obvious, though, that this voluntary action is designed to forestall the sweeping bans being imposed or considered by an increasing number of governments alarmed by soaring rates of childhood obesity."

Comment:  Click here to learn about A Miracle in Wisconsin.

►January 14, 2004 - Bioterrorism procedures invoked when chickenpox case first appears as possible smallpox - The Casper Star-Tribune

►January 14, 2004 - Mad cow's untold story - Studies quietly raise questions about threat to humans - Rocky Mountain News - "from government and the cattle industry that mad cow disease poses no threat to public health, a small universe of scientists working on a family of related illnesses are finding disturbing evidence to the contrary...Several little-publicized studies, as well as ongoing research at a government laboratory in Montana, continue to spark questions about human susceptibility not only to mad cow, but to sister diseases such as chronic wasting disease that mainly affects deer and elk, and to scrapie, which infects sheep."

Comment:  For more on the mad cow story, go to the Online Mad Cow Conference at www.redflagsdaily.com

►January 14, 2004 - Polio on rise as Nigerian clerics block vaccinations - The Globe and Mail - "The World Health Organization has confirmed new outbreaks of polio in two African countries that were polio-free -- just as the global effort to eradicate the disease was believed to be on the brink of success...New cases have been confirmed in Cameroon and Benin, and both were caused by a strain from Nigeria that is spreading after Muslim leaders in the north of that country blocked vaccination efforts, saying they were part of a U.S. plot to make Muslim women infertile.

►January 14, 2004 - Zimbabwe Suffers Anthrax Outbreak - www.voanews.com - "An outbreak of anthrax in Zimbabwe has killed three people and infected nearly 200 others. Health officials are struggling to deal with the outbreak."

►November 2003 - Intestinal Lymphocyte Populations in Children with Regressive Autism: Evidence for Extensive Mucosal Immunopathology - by (among others) the now surprising adversaries, Simon H. Murch and Andrew J. Wakefield - journal article (Journal of Clinical Immunology)

Comment:  For some of what has been written on the recent controversy between the two previously aligned doctors, click here.

►January 14, 2004 - Students tested for mercury on Sunday - The Record-Courier - "Investigators from the Center for Disease Control and Nevada Department of Health offered urine analyses over the weekend for students involved in the mercury contamination at Pau-Wa-Lu Middle School...'We'll keep cleaning until we reach 300 parts per trillion -- which is about the amount given off from dental fillings,' said Douglas County School District Superintendent John Soderman on Sunday...'The danger is being overplayed, most definitely,' said his half sister Carmen Daniels, who is visiting from Pine Grove, Calif...Ricky's father, Richard Padovani, disagreed...'You can't over react with something like this. Mercury is pretty dangerous.'"

Comment:  Note that this is external exposure.  Not ingested.  Not injected. 

►January 14, 2004 - Veterans to lobby Govt on vaccine illness link - The Canberra Times, Australia - "Now out of the army, Mr Romer said he and others suffered from debilitating intestinal and skin conditions they believed were caused by the medication...'It scares the hell out of me,' he said...'I'm not there to sue them, I'm not that sort of a bloke. I just want something to be done over all this. Surely to God they can do something to help us.'"

►January 13, 2004 - Health bosses criticised over Hepatitis B - Health officials in Bristol have been criticised for their handling of an outbreak of Hepatitis B. - BBC - "The Health Protection Agency urged the city's primary care trusts to deal with an increase in cases of the liver disease in 2002...But it has been claimed that health managers in the city did not come up with the cash to tackle the outbreak for almost a year."

Comment:  While it's fine and dandy to be concerned about hepatitis B, inflation of figures, using questionable and unreliable methodology to bolster the case for universal vaccination, is not.  Nor is generally ignoring the fact that hepatitis B is mostly a lifestyle disease,  or that much of its spread is due to improperly administrated vaccination and other injections, right. For more on this, go to Scandals: The CDC and “The New Math”, where 1 + 1  does not equal 2 and Scandals: "But Faith, fanatic Faith, once wedded fast To some dear falsehood, hugs it to the last." - Thomas Moore (Scandals - update and "flashback").

►January 14, 2004 - How Using This Drug (cannabis) Effects The Brain - Evening Standard, London (UK) via www.mhnet.org

►January 14, 2004 - New threats to health predicted - The Guardian, UK - "'We should not be surprised if the microbial world responds if it wishes to survive,' Prof McMichael said after addressing a Royal Society conference in London. 'In the 1970s, eminent people were saying it was the end of the infectious disease era. We now find after the experience of the 1980s and 1990s we are sadder and wiser.'... He said that injudicious use of antibiotics had created opportunities for microbes to develop resistance, while 'hyper-hygienic' living in developed countries might explain the rise of asthma and other auto-immune diseases."

Comment:  For more on this, go to Scandals: Changing Disease Epidemiology Via Vaccines - Are We "Robbing Peter To Pay Paul"?.

►January 13, 2004 - Kids left hanging as program to treat autism shuts down - Operator blames switch of funding to counties - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

►January 14, 2004 - Can popping fish-oil pills stop this tantrum? - Since a compelling experiment was shown on the BBC's Child of Our Time last week, sales of Omega-3 supplements have rocketed. But, asks Ian Sample, are behavioural problems so easily solved? - The Guardian, UK

►The Dangers of Smallpox Vaccination - www.naturodoc.com - "The public is now getting lots of medical propaganda about the eradication of smallpox through vaccination.  But in fact, the consensus among leading medical historians that have studied the question have maintained that the eradication of the zymotic, or "filth" diseases, like cholera, dysentery, typhus, plague, in the past that are popularly attributed to mass vaccination campaigns, had actually been due to improvements in diet, hygiene, sanitary measures, non-medical public health laws, and to a host of new non-medical technologies, like refrigeration, faster transportation, removing horse manure from cities, and the like (McKinlay, 1977;  McKeown, 1979;  Moberg & Cohen, 1991;  Oppenheimer, 1992;  Dubos, 1959)."

►Anthrax Vaccine is Dangerous - The following warning on the pending anthrax vaccine also recalls the hazards of aspartame, the artificial sweetener.  Not coincidentally, the current U.S. Secretary Of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, was the influential head of GD Searle, the pharmaceutical company that won FDA approval for aspartame after the FDA advisory committee had recommended AGAINST approval of aspartame –- also known as Nutrasweet™. - www.naturodoc.com

Comment:  It is not clear that it is "not coincidentally".  That is sheer speculation, in my opinion.

►January 2004 - Influenza continues steady march across U.S. - (registration required) - Influenza activity is highest in the western United States, and the CDC is expecting even more cases as the season progresses. - Infectious Diseases in Children

►January 2004 - Incoming AAP President Johnston outlines goals for the coming year - (registration required) - In a special Q&A, Infectious Diseases in Children spoke with Carden Johnston, MD, about the coming year and challenges facing pediatricians. - Infectious Diseases in Children

►January 2004 - Scientists have 14 challenges to conquer - (registration required) - The science community has 14 medical challenges to focus on as part of the Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative. - Infectious Diseases in Children

►January 2004 - Use of cough and cold products - (registration required) - This month’s column will review the use of these products in children and the published evidence of their efficacy. - Infectious Diseases in Children

►January 2004 - Influenza 2004 - (registration required) - Early outbreaks, deaths in children, not enough vaccine — this is shaping up to be an interesting flu season. - Infectious Diseases in Children

►January 14, 2004 - SARS may not be alone - Antibodies to a SARS-like virus hint at repeated infections. - Nature - "A virus similar to that responsible for severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) infected people in Hong Kong 18 months before SARS reared its head, a recent study says. But some experts say the result is tentative and needs to be confirmed by larger studies...The result suggests that the leap from animals to humans was not a one-off event, infectious-disease experts say...In most cases, these coronaviruses probably infect human cells only weakly, perhaps triggering a passing sniffle. Zheng believes that the SARS virus mutated in animals or humans so it can readily jump between people, generating the potentially fatal infection."

►January 14, 2004 - Flu nasal spray vaccine to be available soon -  - "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has 250,000 doses of a nasal spray vaccine, some of which will be given to state health departments free."

Comment:  Of course, nothing is "free".  This vaccine will be paid for by the taxpayers. 

►January 14, 2004 - Tests Planned for Genetically Engineered TB Vaccine - Reuters

►January 14, 2004 - Landrieu, Bayh announce plan to prevent future flu vaccine shortages - Leesville Leader - "As this flu season progressed into a deadly epidemic, Louisianians waited in long lines to receive vaccines in short supply...To prevent such future supply and demand problems, Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) announced their proposed Flu Protection Act, which would prevent future shortages by providing a system for recommending the number of shots needed each year and for removing economic disincentives now facing vaccine manufacturers."

Comment:  Those lucky dogs (the vaccine manufacturers).  They are apparently making plenty on vaccines (see Healthy Defence).  Unlike most markets, which are limited to those that need the drug, vaccines are targeted at entire populations, need them or not.  So just think, the entire world universally getting an endless number of vaccines!  They have their liability covered.  They get to do the research that supports the use of their products and creates demand, and no one blinks an eye (or at least almost no one).  The government and media collude in pushing their products.  And now the government will guarantee sales.  It's the dream business plan to end all dream business plans.

►January 14, 2004 - Conmen Cash in On HIV/Aids Scourge - The Herald (Harare) via www.allafrica.com - "'Diagnosed with Aids?  Look no further, we have holy water and herbs that cure the virus and boost the immune system!...The increase in the number of people succumbing to the deadly HIV/Aids has resulted in an upsurge of 'miracle cures'."

Comment:  Given that there have never been long-term studies comparing those with either HIV or AIDS to those given or not given the toxic AIDS drugs, what makes the "approved" drugs any different?  And at least holy water isn't in itself harmful, unlike the AIDS drugs, which are known to be toxic (but allegedly worth the risk).

►January 14, 2004 - Bird flu could be worse than SARS - Aljazeera.net - "The bird flu spreading through Southeast Asia could turn out to be far more devastating than SARS if it links up with human influenza, an expert said on Wednesday...'The pandemics that occured in the previous century, the 20th century, were really devastating, especially the Spanish flu. We had that in 1918 and 40 million died of that. We should worry. It kills. It kills.'"

Comment:  Here we go.  And spreading fear about a pandemic sells.  It sells (flu vaccine).

►January 14, 2004 - Dow Announces Deal to Develop Vaccines - AP via The Atlanta Journal-Constitution - "Dow Chemical Co. announced a four-year, $5.7 million research agreement with the National Institutes of Health to develop plant-based vaccines that it says will be cheaper and easier to produce than existing vaccines."

►January 13, 2004 - WHO Renews Effort to Wipe Out Polio  - New Infections Emerge in Previously Polio-Free Countries - NPR - "The World Health Organization hopes to eradicate polio worldwide by next year, using the oral polio vaccine. But last year, health officials started to see a dangerous trend: The disease spread from Nigeria to six other West African countries where polio had been eradicated."

Comment:  How is it that the oral polio vaccine, which is live and can cause polio, is thought to be able to eradicate polio?

►January 13, 2004 - Smallpox Scare at Pioneer Valley Hospital - KSL News - "A simple case of Chicken Pox brought out the health department and caused quite a stir at West Valley's Pioneer Valley Hospital...It's not everyday a common childhood disease attracts so much attention. But that's all changed in our post September 11th world with worries over terrorists, getting their hands on chemical and biological agents."