Current Events Watch

Scariest article read last week had to be Mike Adam’s over at Natural News spilling the tale of how Big Pharma is killing us all. The article is huge so I thought I would break it down into four parts. Today’s take: Time to Choose, pills or plants.

Centuries of the chemical Destruction of our planet

Scariest article read this week had to be Mike Adam’s over at Natural News spilling the tale of how Big Pharma is killing us all. The article is huge so I thought I would break it down into four parts. Today’s take: Big Pharma is not our friend.

Big Pharma as a major chemical polluter

By Mike Adams, Natural News

These findings are now added to the revelations of pharmaceutical contamination unveiled by the Associated Press last year, which found that the public water supplies in virtually all U.S. cities tested were contaminated with pharmaceutical chemicals.

What’s emerging from these disturbing discoveries is a picture of Big Pharma as a global corporate polluter that’s dumping chemicals into the world’s sensitive waterways, polluting villages, cities and aquatic ecosystems around the world.

Polluted waters are not a pretty picture

Under the Bush Administration, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency outright refused to regulate pharmaceuticals as environmental hazards. With Obama in the White House, it remains to be seen whether the new administration will clamp down on pharmaceutical pollution.

Big Pharma now has something in common with Exxon, Cargill, Alcoa and Chevron: The outrageous pollution of the environment with toxic chemicals. But in many ways, Big Pharma’s chemicals are far more dangerous. HRT drugs, for example, are toxic at parts per billion, and they’re now being found in public water supplies around the world.

Municipal water treatment facilities, by the way, don’t remove pharmaceutical chemicals from the water! Whatever HRT drugs, psychiatric drugs or other chemicals that exist in the water are passed right through the water treatment centers which unwisely add yet more chemicals (fluoride and chlorine, typically) to the toxic brew.

Citizens drinking public water supplies in India, the U.K., Canada and the United States are now verifiably participating in a grand experiment involving the mass medication of the population with low levels of utterly untested pharmaceutical combinations.

A tidal wave of prescription drugs.

How long will this be allowed to continue before the environmental protection authorities clamp down on pharmaceutical dumping?

So far, environmental regulators have done nothing to stop the dumping of drugs into public water supplies. This is true even in America, where hospitals routinely dispose of drugs by simply flushing them down the toilet (injecting them directly into the water supply consumed downstream).

Consumers also need to realize that the drugs you swallow are also environmental pollutants. Many drugs pass right through the human body unaltered, where they are flushed back into the water supply that’s consumed downstream. (Yes, the toilet water from one city becomes the drinking water of the next city down the river. If you didn’t know this, you have a LOT to learn about the water supply, and you probably won’t like what you learn… especially if you live downstream…)

to be continued Monday…

Scariest article read this week had to be Mike Adam’s over at Natural News spilling the tale of how Big Pharma is killing us all. The article is huge so I thought I would break it down into four parts. Today’s take: toxic stew, it isn’t what you want for dinner.

India has miles of waterways

India’s Waterways A Toxic Stew of Pharmaceutical Chemicals Dumped from Big Pharma Factories

by Mike Adams, Natural News Editor

Many of the pharmaceuticals consumed in the United States are made in India, where labor is cheap and environmental laws are lenient on powerful corporations. U.S. drug companies are exploiting this situation to manufacture hundreds of millions of doses of high-profit pharmaceuticals in India, where ingredients purchased for a few cents can be re-sold to U.S. health patients for hundreds of dollars (the markup on some drugs is literally over 500,000%).

There’s something else Big Pharma doesn’t want you to know about its drug operations in India: Big Pharma’s manufacturing facilities dump millions of doses of toxic pharmaceutical chemicals directly into India’s waterways.

Chemicals being dumped into waterway.

Researchers were recently stunned to discover that 100 pounds of a powerful antibiotic called ciprofloxacin was being dumped into a local stream every day! That’s a quantity of antibiotics that could treat an entire city of 90,000 people every day.

But that’s not all: The same waterway contained an astonishing 21 pharmaceutical chemicals reports the Associated Press, some at levels that were 150 times the highest levels of contamination found in U.S. waterways. (And even the levels found in the U.S. were quite alarming.)

Constant vigilance is required to beat infections.

U.S. Hospitals: Still Unsafe and Too Often Deadly

by Sherry Baker, Health Sciences Editor

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(NaturalNews) We’ve all heard some hospital horror stories over the years - tales of the wrong leg or breast removed, accounts of horrendous hospital-acquired flesh eating bacterial infections and reports of babies mixed up in the nursery and sent home with the wrong parents. But with all the publicity about these types of examples and the high tech, computerized record keeping and monitoring systems available to doctors and staff, hospitals are surely getting safer and safer, right?

Wrong, according to Johns Hopkins critical care specialist Peter Pronovost, M.D., Ph.D. In an article by Dr. Pronovost published in the Dec. 24 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), he points out that despite an increased emphasis on patient safety, little progress has been made in actually making hospitals safer places.

In a statement to the media, Dr. Pronovost pointed out an average adult will receive recommended therapy only 53 percent of the time while hospitalized. This explains, at least partially, the approximately 100,000 patients who die each year in the United States because of hospital error. “Imagine, America has some of the best doctors and medicine in the world, yet we are only getting it right half of the time,” he said. “It’s been almost 10 years since the Institute of Medicine published To Err Is Human, its treatise on the need for increased patient safety initiatives at hospitals. Yet we really haven’t made much progress.”

In his JAMA article, Dr. Pronovost says hospitals can improve patient safety by incorporating three principles. First, doctors must balance their autonomy with team-based standardized care protocols. Second, medical students and residents need to be trained to understand their roles as patient agents rather than autonomous decision makers. Dr. Pronovost also recommends that students from different clinical disciplines should train together in order to foster trust and teamwork. Third, he says the way in which evidence-based standards and protocols for treating patients are developed should be standardized and made clear. Groups developing these standards, according to Dr. Pronovost, should include representative patients, physicians, methodologists, regulators and payers to ensure that all points of views are reflected.

While changes in the way physicians are trained, work together and practice medicine based on well-thought-out standards could help improve hospital care, there is another major source of danger in hospitals that also clearly needs attention — infections. In fact, nearly one out of every 20 patients ends up with an infection during their hospital stay that is not related to the reason they came to the hospital in the first place. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) statistics show that in U.S. hospitals, healthcare-associated infections account for an estimated 1.7 million infections and lead to 99,000 deaths annually.

For more information on the CDC’s report on health-care related infections, visit: http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dhqp/hai.html

A special light reveals deadly bacteria

About the author

Sherry Baker is a widely published writer whose work has appeared in Newsweek, Health, the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, Yoga Journal, Optometry, Atlanta, Arthritis Today, Natural Healing Newsletter, OMNI, UCLAís “Healthy Years” newsletter, Mount Sinai School of Medicineís “Focus on Health Aging” newsletter, the Cleveland Clinicís “Menís Health Advisor” newsletter and many others.

http://www.NaturalNews.com/z025281.html

It used to bother me, not having medical insurance, but after articles like this, not so much. Between the sadistic prescription meds, that list deadly diseases as “side effects”, and the incompetence of doctors and other medical staff, I have no desire to be treated by western medicine.

Now, if I get a limb cut off, I imagine a good surgeon would be appreciated. But other than situations like that, I much prefer a more natural, holistic approach to health.

Philanthropic wordsmiths, take note! This is cool. John Breen, a computer programmer from Indiana who operates the Poverty.com website, has now also developed an online game that teaches vocabulary … and helps to fight world hunger at the same time.

It’s fun, it’s free, and it feeds. Not to mention that you’ll also pick up a few new words along the way with which to impress friends and family.

FreeRice.com is quickly becoming quite popular. Breen said the idea came to him one day in his kitchen while he was sitting with his two teenage sons, preparing for the SAT, when he decided, as he said, “to do something on the computer to help my son learn vocabulary words.”

It’s a simple multiple-choice game. You’re presented with a word and four possible definitions from which to choose. Get it right, and 20 grains of rice are donated to the U.N. World Food Programme. The U.N. then distributes the rice worldwide.

Pfffft, you say. Twenty grains? Well, pfffft yourself. They do add up. And quickly. The game is quite an addictive pastime, and before you know it, you’ll find that you have earned several thousands of grains to help feed some starving kid or family somewhere, and every little bit really does count.

Consider the fact that FreeRice.com is up to more than 8.2 billion grains of rice since Breen launched the site just this past October. That is more than enough to feed 325,000 people, according to the spokesperson for the World Food Programme.

Given my addictive personality, I’ve no doubt fed an entire village already. I can’t stop playing the game. Okay, so I have way too much free time on my hands, but at least I spend it well. Sometimes.

freerice.com, free rice, world hunger, word games, john breen, world food programme

“There but for the grace of God go I.” Traveling preacher man John Bradford’s modified sixteenth-century quote has over the subsequent centuries, for whatever reason, become the catchphrase of choice when waxing philosophical, humble and compassionate about the misfortune of others. Sincerity, of course, is optional. I’m sure John really meant it, though, watching his fellow execution-bound inmate being taken away to meet his Maker.

He was simply thankful that, well, he wasn’t that poor bastard! Of course, ultimately, despite the grace of God, there John went, too. Burned at the stake. Yikes.

These days, most people generally utter such drive-by platitudes from airbag-laden, DVD player-equipped, OnStar-optioned SUVs, while passing a homeless person on the street. Or maybe when they hear about the plight of the sick and uninsured, the cold and hungry (still harping about yesterday’s post, sorry, but Bush pisses me off), in some random story they may have channel-surfed through on their satellite-fed digital HDTVs … there are just so many poor people for which to be thankful that they are not! So sad, too bad.

I was one of those sympathetic people. I thought I cared, even though I’ll admit that I did avoid eye contact with the guy at the corner of 47th and Oak on the Country Club Plaza (KC plug there … it might come in handy later, read on) holding the Hungry - Need Food cardboard sign, just thinking to myself, “Come on, light, turn green already! I’m running late for my dinner reservation!”

That was secondary, of course, to my compassion for the poor guy and his misfortune. If memory serves, I think my first thought was that obligatory “there but for the grace of God blah blah blah” thing. Yeah, I’m sure that was it, because I am a caring person, after all. I should have probably really spent a bit more time pondering how true that is, before moving on to more important things, like whether to order the tater skins or the onion blossom appetizer.

Because, you know what? Despite the grace of God, there go I now, too. Possibly to the street corner with the cardboard sign-wielding guy. I’m not there yet, but it’s getting close. Not being dramatic or bemoaning my situation but, yeah, I may have to eventually make eye contact with the guy after all, maybe partner up for the sign-holding events and such. Take turns or something. (Hence the KC plug link for the Plaza above … 47th & Oak. If you’re in town, look us up, and thanks for your support!) Poverty sucks.

Here’s the deal, though. I’ve been blessed with the best of fortune, but the rags to riches story we all love sometimes has a nasty plot twist. Believe me, I know, because here I am getting all raggedy. Still, when I sometimes feel like wallowing in my most terrible misfortune (boo hoo), I am reminded, as I was yesterday, that it’s true, I guess, that things really could be worse. Thanks, Oprah! (Okay, give me a break, I love my Oprah. I’m gay, remember?) The guests booked on yesterday’s show were people who are dying. It was kind of creepy in a way, actually, now that I think about it.

But, even if I ultimately have to hook up with Harold at the street corner (I don’t know his real name, but he looks like a Harold) in a couple of months, scheduling sign-holding shifts, at least I’ll still be around to hold that sign. Computer science professor Randy Pausch most likely won’t be passing by, though. He’ll probably be dead. He’s dying, he knows it, and yet he’s determined to be a Tigger and not an Eeyore in these, his final days. Quite an inspiration. You’ll have to watch the video at the end to get the Pooh reference.

If you’re not familiar with Professor Pausch, he’s the 46-year-old husband, and father of three small children, dying of pancreatic cancer. He’s down to the last few weeks, doctors can do nothing more. When he participated in the Last Lecture series at his university, he suddenly became something of a celebrity. These exercises are apparently not uncommon at various universities across the country, the challenge being for the professors to deliver the lecture they would present if it was to be their last, reflecting upon their personal journeys and lessons learned. In Professor Pausch’s situation, the rules here of course hit very close to home.

There have been snippets all over the Internet from his Last Lecture, the full thing being over an hour long. If you do want to watch his lecture (including all of the introductions, just like being there, only not!) here’s a link.

This video from Oprah’s show yesterday, though, pretty much sums it up. He was on, and gave a reprise of his original lecture. Watch the video. It’s true, things could be worse, no matter how bad things might seem. Even a street-corner beggar can hear rich guy Professor’s story and say, “There but for the grace of God go I.” Of course, Randy Pausch can also consider our charred friend Brother John B, who originally imparted such wisdom, and probably think the same. I doubt really if it could get much worse than that. Burned alive at the stake sets the bad luck bar pretty high.

randy pausch, cancer, pancreatic cancer, last lecture, oprah, homelessness, poverty