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Showing posts with the label World Health Organization

What We Already Knew

A major study, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, found a significant reduction in cancer risk in those individuals who eat lots of organic food. If you want to be one of those individuals, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) suggests you refrain from eating oat-based cereals made by General Mills or Quaker. Here's why: The EWG hired Anresco Laboratories to test samples of 28 different breakfast products made by Quaker and General Mills. In all but 2 of the products tested, the amount of Monsanto's weed killer Roundup was found at levels that endanger the lives of children, i.e., higher than 160 parts per billion (ppb)*. As you no doubt recall, the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) deems the active ingredient in Roundup, glyphosate, "probably carcinogenic to humans." This decision was reached after the review, in 2015, of U.S., Canadian, and Swedish epidemiological studies of glyphosate. Real-world exposures and g...

Monsanto and the EPA

April 2, 2017 - The following was sent to me by Credo by email today. Please read and take action: Stunning new documents unsealed by a federal judge suggest that Monsanto worked directly with  federal regulators to hide the health risks of and manipulate the science behind its best-selling herbicide, RoundUp. The documents reveal that Monsanto pressured Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials to not publicly release information on the cancer risks of glyphosate, the main ingredient in RoundUp, ghost- wrote research for the EPA and worked with a senior official at the agency to quash a federal review of the chemical. These documents suggest an unprecedented level of collusion between the EPA and Monsanto  to cover up evidence that RoundUp is a likely carcinogen.  The Office of Inspector General of the  EPA, an independent office tasked with investigating fraud and abuse in the agency, must immediately lau...

One Very Small Step for Humankind

March 25, 2015 - I recall, back in the early 1970's, the constant stream of news stories telling Americans that virtually every new product recently developed contained something that caused cancer.  Honestly, it was hard to know what to do with the information.  I think because there were so many stories - several a week, it seemed like - there was also a lot of skepticism.  All these years later, I will confess we should have demanded that the products be pulled from the shelves.  We didn't, and now we pay the price with our own lives, and the lives of our children and grandchildren. I volunteer at the elementary school's library.  The librarian, incredibly competent and caring, is also the mother of two daughters.  Her younger child has had to be treated twice for leukemia.  The second go-round was caused by the first; yes, that's what I'm saying - the chemotherapy caused her to contract leukemia for a second time.  In all likelihood, chemica...

Ah, to be in Denmark

March 19, 2012 - The World Health Organization (WHO) announced last week that antimicrobial resistance (AMR) to antibiotics could well put an end to the practice of modern medicine.  Dr. Margaret Chan, WHO's Director-General, told participants at an EU health conference that AMR is exacerbated by three current global conditions: inappropriate use of antibiotics in humans and animals, increasing world travel, and lack of development of new drugs.  Rates of death among patients infected with drug-resistant germs is on the rise. In 2010, there were 650,000 cases of drug-resistant tuberculosis worldwide.  (If I am remembering correctly, the increase in tuberculosis was first observed in Russian prisons, and in Russian AIDS victims.)  As a result, only an extremely expensive, prolonged battle is capable of curing as many as 50% of these cases.  The drugs used are toxic, and in constant short supply.  Other illnesses are drug resistant as we...