AJCDerm1.pdf (application/pdf Object) World Health Organization. NSSM 200 - Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests. Population control: Is it a tool of the rich? 28 October 2011Last updated at 00:08 As the world population reaches seven billion people, the BBC's Mike Gallagher asks whether efforts to control population have been, as some critics claim, a form of authoritarian control over the world's poorest citizens.
The temperature is some 30C. The humidity stifling, the noise unbearable. In a yard between two enormous tea-drying sheds, a number of dark-skinned women patiently sit, each accompanied by an unwieldy looking cloth sack. They are clad in colourful saris, but look tired and shabby. Vivek Baid thinks he knows how to help them. As the world reaches an estimated seven billion people, people like Vivek say efforts to bring down the world's population must continue if life on Earth is to be sustainable, and if poverty and even mass starvation are to be avoided. There is no doubting their good intentions. These critics argue that rich people have imposed population control on the poor for decades.
Population scare 'Unmet need' Us and them. Nations agree on legally binding mercury rules. 21 January 2013Last updated at 06:27 ET By Mark Kinver Environment reporter, BBC News Rising gold prices has seen an increase in small-scale gold mines, most of which use mercury More than 140 countries have agreed on a set of legally binding measures to curb mercury pollution, at UN talks. Delegates in Geneva approved measures to control the use of the highly toxic metal in order to reduce the amount of mercury released into the environment. Mercury can produce a range of adverse human health effects, including permanent damage to the nervous system. The UN recently published data that showed mercury emissions were rising in a number of developing nations. The deal was agreed after all-night talks.
"After complex and often all night sessions here in Geneva, nations have today laid the foundations for a global response to a pollutant whose notoriety has been recognised for well over a century," UN Environment Programme executive director Achim Steiner said on Saturday. Lasting effects. Furor on Rush to Require Cervical Cancer Vaccine. Mexico Mandates HPV Vaccine; U.S. States Consider It. Gov. Rick Perry may be taking heat for his failed plan to require young girls in Texas to get vaccinated against the sexually transmitted disease human papillomavirus, but the Mexican government has decided it's a good idea, and many other U.S. states have considered similar plans. Mexico’s health ministry recently announced it will vaccinate all girls at age 9, beginning in 2012. The ministry said that more than 1.25 million girls had already been vaccinated from 2008 to 2010, and there are plans to vaccinate an additional 433,000 children.
HPV is the leading cause of cervical cancer among women in the country, and cervical cancer is the leading cause of death of women in some southern states in Mexico. One of the most heated exchanges during Monday night’s GOP debate happened when Perry came under fire for his 2007 executive order requiring girls entering middle school to get vaccinated against HPV. Mexico isn't the only government to forge ahead with the HPV mandate, though. Girl, 13, left in 'waking coma' after 'severe reaction. Lucy Hinks is unable to walk or talk after having injections at schoolParents warn others to check on potential side effects of Cervarix vaccine By Paul Sims Created: 11:17 GMT, 14 November 2011 Bad reaction: Lucy Hinks, 13, began to experience extreme exhaustion soon after having the cervical cancer vaccine alongside classmates which her parents are convinced caused it They were told the vaccine had few side-effects and would protect their daughter from cervical cancer.
But Steve and Pauline Hinks are convinced the controversial HPV jab is behind their daughter Lucy’s mystery illness which is making her sleep up to 23 hours a day. Tests have so far ruled out a brain tumour and glandular fever and the 13-year-old’s paediatric consultant is investigating potential links with the vaccine Cervarix. The jab was used in a national vaccination programme which started in September 2008. But it has already been linked to several cases of girls displaying severe side-effects. Eugenics Exposed U S Sterilization Victims Speak Out. Malaria vaccine trial raises hope. A malaria vaccine has shown promising results in a clinical trial in Africa.
Infants given the prototype vaccine had about half the risk of getting malaria compared with those who did not receive the jab, say researchers. The vaccine, known as RTS,S, is one of two experimental malaria vaccines being tested around the world. More than 15,000 children aged under 18 months took part in the year-long study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine . The trial was conducted in seven African countries on two groups of children - newborns aged six-12 weeks - and babies aged five-17 months. One year on, there were about half the number of cases of malaria in the older group of children given the vaccine, compared with those in a control group who received vaccines against other illnesses.
The international team involved dozens of scientists in Africa and also the United States and Europe. Results in the younger infants are still being assessed. EU E.Coli Bioengineered. (NaturalNews) Even as the veggie blame game is now under way across the EU, where a super resistant strain of e.coli is sickening patients and filling hospitals in Germany, virtually no one is talking about how e.coli could have magically become resistant to eight different classes of antibiotic drugs and then suddenly appeared in the food supply. This particular e.coli variation is a member of the O104 strain, and O104 strains are almost never (normally) resistant to antibiotics. In order for them to acquire this resistance, they must be repeatedly exposed to antibiotics in order to provide the "mutation pressure" that nudges them toward complete drug immunity.
So if you're curious about the origins of such a strain, you can essentially reverse engineer the genetic code of the e.coli and determine fairly accurately which antibiotics it was exposed to during its development. It's all problem, reaction, solution at work here. That's what this is all about, of course. E.coli outbreak poses questions for organic farming. Deadly E coli makes doctors shudder. The massive outbreak of E coli O104 in Europe has infected more than 1,800 people and left more than 500 with the potentially deadly complication known as haemolytic-uremic syndrome.
It has leapfrogged borders to at least 13 countries and killed about 20 of its victims. As health authorities try to trace the outbreak to a food that can be removed from the market, it has focused international attention on the complex paths that agricultural produce follows in an era of global trade. One aspect of the epidemic, though, has received little notice: this aberrant strain is resistant to multiple classes of antibiotics. Among all the urgent issues raised by this outbreak, that drug resistance should ring the loudest warning bells – and prompt serious consideration of curbing the vast overuse of antibiotics that has created it.
O104's resistance profile has been briefly mentioned, but as a curiosity that distinguishes the strain rather than as a concern. Plague War | FRONTLINE. In 1998 South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission held hearings investigating activities of the apartheid-era government. Toward the end of the hearings, the Commission looked into the apartheid regime's Chemical and Biological Warfare (CBW) program and allegations that it developed a sterility vaccine to use on black South Africans, employed toxic and chemical poison weapons for political asssassination, and in the late 1970s provided anthrax and cholera to Rhodesian troops for use against guerrilla rebels in their war to overthrow Rhodesia's white minority rule. South Africa's CBW program was headed by Dr. Wouter Basson, a former Special Forces Army Brigadier and personal heart specialist to former President P.W. Botha. Basson ran the CBW program during the 1980s and early 1990s. Developed lethal chemical and biological weapons that targeted ANC political leaders and their supporters as well as populations living in the black townships.
U.S. Admits Bio-Weapons Tests. The United States secretly tested chemical and biological weapons on American soil during the 1960s, newly declassified Pentagon reports show. The tests included releasing deadly nerve agents in Alaska and spraying bacteria over Hawaii, according to the documents obtained Tuesday. The United States also tested nerve agents in Canada and Britain in conjunction with those two countries, and biological and chemical weapons in at least two other states, Maryland and Florida. The summaries of more than two dozen tests show that biological and chemical tests were much more widespread than the military has acknowledged previously.
The Pentagon released records earlier this year showing that chemical and biological agents had been sprayed on ships at sea. The military reimbursed ranchers and agreed to stop open-air nerve agent testing at its main chemical weapons center in the Utah desert after about 6,400 sheep died when nerve gas drifted away from the test range. Researchers infected Guatemalans with STDs. U.S. govt. secretly spread STDs A presidential commission reaffirms previous reports on experiments in GuatemalaWithout their knowledge, subjects were exposed to STDsThe commission will give its report to President Obama in September (CNN) -- A U.S. presidential commission has uncovered more details regarding human experiments conducted by American researchers in Guatemala in the 1940s in which the subjects were exposed to sexually transmitted diseases.
The research reaffirms much of what is already publicly known: that between 1946 and 1948, U.S. researchers intentionally infected non-consenting subjects in Guatemala with STDs, in what the commission called a "clearly unethical historical injustice. " The United States has apologized for the incident, and the government has been sued by some of the victims and their heirs. The commission on Monday said it had completed the first of those tasks, and will present its findings to Obama in September. Scientists Develop Influenza, That Could Kill Millions. It sounds like the setup for a Hollywood thriller: scientists in a lab create a virus as contagious as the flu that kills half of those infected. We're safe as long as the virus remains locked up, but if it escapes or gets into the hands of bioterrorists, it has the potential to become a pandemic and kill millions around the world.
But this isn't the latest summer blockbuster. According to New Scientist magazine, researchers in the Netherlands studying H5N1 -- commonly referred to as the bird flu or avian influenza -- have created a strain of the virus that's easily passed between mammals, and it's just as lethal as the original virus. According to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, the H5N1 virus has infected more than 500 people in more than a dozen countries and is known to kill around 60 percent of those that become infected. Ron Fouchier, a researcher at the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, led the team that successfully created the mutation. What do you think? Pandemic Influenza Training. Facts for Fighting the Flu. The Neville Brothers were formed by the hard life and hard times, but they are also heirs to America’s richest musical tradition: the aural gumbo of New Orleans.
As New Orleans Jazz fest kicks off here’s John Ed Bradley’s 1991 GQ profile on the Neville Brothers. The Neville’s are a national treasure and this behind-the-scenes look lets us in on the men behind the magic. The subject is in good hands. Bradley is the author of six novels, including Tupelo Nights, as well as one of the finest sports memoirs ever written, It Never Rains in Tiger Stadium . Bradley’s seventh novel, Call Me By My Name, is a Young Adult title that will be published in a few weeks. In the meantime, dig into his story, “Bards of the Bayou” and then do yourself a favor and listen to some tunes by the Neville brothers. Tipitina's in the warm blue fog, squatting beneath a crescent moon so sharp and clean you could shave a wild hog with it. “Been four, five, months maybe, since we played Tip’s,” Art is saying. "Duke.” Evidence grows for narcolepsy link to GSK swine flu shot. Insight: U.S. government investment gives flu vaccines a shot in the arm.
Swine flu infected 1 in 5, death rate low, study shows. By Kate Kelland LONDON Fri Jan 25, 2013 4:41pm GMT LONDON (Reuters) - At least one in five people worldwide were infected with swine flu during the first year of the 2009-2010 H1N1 pandemic, an international research group said on Friday, but the death rate was just 0.02 percent. The results echo other studies that found children were hit harder by the H1N1 strain, which swept around the world, than they are by regular seasonal flu outbreaks and that people over 65 were less vulnerable. More accurate early surveillance is needed to plan for and respond to future pandemics, scientists said, in the wake of the international research led by the World Health Organization (WHO) and Imperial College London. "Knowing the proportion of the population infected in different age groups and the proportion of those infected who died will help public health decision-makers plan for ... pandemics," said the WHO's Anthony Mounts who helped lead the study.
Antibiotic 'apocalypse' warning. 24 January 2013Last updated at 08:18 ET By James Gallagher Health and science reporter, BBC News Drug resistance is a problem in tuberculosis The rise in drug resistant infections is comparable to the threat of global warming, according to the chief medical officer for England. Prof Dame Sally Davies said bacteria were becoming resistant to current drugs and there were few antibiotics to replace them.
She told a committee of MPs that going for a routine operation could become deadly due to the threat of infection. Experts said it was a global problem and needed much more attention. Antibiotics have been one of the greatest success stories in medicine. However, bacteria are a rapidly adapting foe which find new ways to evade drugs. MRSA rapidly became one of the most feared words in hospitals wards and there are growing reports of resistance in strains of E. coli, tuberculosis and gonorrhoea. She said there was only one useful antibiotic left to treat gonorrhoea. Continue reading the main story.