Showing posts with label disease. Show all posts
Showing posts with label disease. Show all posts

Thursday, October 09, 2014

US Government Patent on Ebola?

Problem...Reaction...Solution? Is this the reason the U.S. patented Ebola? Is it possible that Ebola was invented? Is this The Hegelian Dialectic at work?

“Before you dismiss this as far-fetched or even impossible, just run a simple free patent search under the keyword ‘Ebola’. Not only will you see that Uncle Sam owns the patent on Ebola, but they also own the rights to all variations on Ebola, with the rights to all Ebola research. The official owner of this Ebola patent is: The Government of the US as Represented by the Secretary of the Dept. of Health. Essentially, it is a patent issued by The United States government to The United States government

[...]

Regardless of whether or not the original Ebola virus was a government invented germ biological warfare agent or whether the current Ebola virus is a variation of the original virus, one thing is for sure: this current strain of Ebola appears to have the potential of killing millions—if not billions—of people.




Dr. Leonard Horowitz states:
“One day the ‘miracle’ happened, where there was a crisis. And I was the right person at the right time. It was the July 27th 1990 when the case of the ‘Florida Dental AIDs Tragedy’ hit the press. You remember the case of the Florida dentist who infected his patients with the AIDs virus. And three years… at that time I was serving as the world’s leading dental & medical catalogue supply company’s chief professional advisor. And my background was in media, health education, health promotion, fear… because I worked on dental phobia reduction therapy programs… behavioral therapy programs to allay people’s fear going to the dentist. And, I had been a dentist for 16 years, and health education & media, persuasion technology. And here, the media was making so many people afraid to go see their dentists, in the wake of this case. So, I was asked, I was told, I was given the job… opportunity, to develop patient educational literature to help allay people’s fear of going into dental medical practices.

So, I started the research. The Center for Disease Control’s official investigation reports – in the case, I first found them to be scientifically questionable. I then I found them to be scientifically bogus! And then, later found them to be fraudulent!!! They literally covered-up, deleted, the most incriminating evidence against the dentitst! Who, I have to conclude, after three years of studying this case & publishing 3 scientific reports, literally having to go out of the United States to publish. Because the American Dental Association & American Medical Association wanted to maintain a cover-up.

And I wrote a book that was based on those 3 scientific reports called “Deadly Innocence” – my 9th book. Wherein, I have to conclude that the dentist, based on all the evidence, using the FBIs own behavioral science literature – how they, themselves, investigate & evaluate these types of cases… that this dentist – scientifically trained, military dentist for much of his career, very intelligent dentist, believed that he was dying of a virus that the government had created. They covered that up!

He believed that they had intentionally injected this virus during a 1978 experimental Hepatitis B vaccine that was given to a lover of his that he had in 1985. And that is how he got infected & he believed that this was genocide. And he believed that what was called the “World Health Organization (WHO) Theory of AIDs” – the videotape that Danny [dentist] stated he saw – "The Strecker Memorandum” was what Dr David J. Acer believed… That the World Health Organization (WHO), the United States Public Health Service Center for Disease Control (CDC) had something to do with the development of these types of viruses & the deployment of them through Hepititis & other vaccines in Africa & North America.

In essence, I have to conclude at the end of that case that the dentist was most plausibly identical to an organized serial killer – he maintained a classic an organized serial killer personality – you know like the “Unabomber”...."

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Thursday, October 02, 2014

Greater Than 50% Probability that Dallas Ebola Victim Acquired Disease On Flight

Odds are greater than 50%--68%-- that Thomas Duncan acquired Ebola from someone who had the virus during his airplane trip on on Sept 18th--flight # SN1247

From Gotnews:

“Thomas Duncan flew from Monrovia (ROB) to Brussels (BRU) on Brussels Airlines flight 1247 (SN1247) which departed ROB on Thurs. Sept. 18 and arrived in BRU early moring Fri. Sept. 19. He did not depart BRU until the next day aboard United Airlines flight (UA951) which arrived at Dulles (IAD) the same day. He had a round-trip ticket, which was purchased on Sept. 2 from an IATA accredited travel agency in Lagos, Nigeria. It appears his ticket was purchased by a company named “Silson Global Business Liberia Ltd.”. His return flight was scheduled to depart Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) on Oct. 19. The return flight was scheduled for DFW-IAD-BRU-FNA (FNA is Lungi Intl Airport in Freetown, Sierra Leone).

From NBC news:
“Ten experts from the Centers for Disease Control are tracking down those who made contact with Thomas Eric Duncan, the man diagnosed with the Ebola virus, in the days he was sick before being checked in to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital.




links:


Experts: Ebola Could be Transmitted “At a Distance” From Infected Victims

“In a piece published by CIDRAP, the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, authors Dr Lisa Brosseau and Dr Rachael Jones highlight how Ebola currently has “unclear modes of transmission.”

“We believe there is scientific and epidemiologic evidence that Ebola virus has the potential to be transmitted via infectious aerosol particles both near and at a distance from infected patients, which means that healthcare workers should be wearing respirators, not facemasks,” states the article.

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Saturday, June 14, 2014

Is AIDS a Deliberately Created Biological Agent?

We've been led to believe that AIDS came from African Green Monkeys, but  many very intelligent people, including doctors, lawyers and Nobel Peace Prize winners seem to think that this fatal leap from ape to man theory is pure rubbish, backed up by politically motivated, psuedoscience. Moreover, they can prove Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) was created in a lab with documentation. And some, such as Dr. Body 'Ed' Graves, J.D., have experienced, first hand, the ramifications of not only exposing that evidence, but through his personal experience with HIV/AIDS.

In 2004, ecologist Wangari Maathai, the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, claimed that the AIDS virus was a deliberately created biological agent, a genocidal plot against the third world. She won the prize for her work in human rights and reversing deforestation across Africa.

How is this possible when genetic manipulation is, from what we've been told, fairly recent technology? Well, according to Dr. Romesh Senewiratne, if you read the work of Macfarlane Burnet (biological warfare expert) and publications of the Walter and Eliza Hall institute in the 1950s and 60s you will find that techniques for genetic manipulation of viruses through a range of means was underway long before the appearance of HIV. In fact, you can trace the genetic engineering/manipulation back to the early 1900s, beginning with the Rockefeller-funded research of Peyton Rous, who transplanted cancer between species in the early 1900s.

“When "kuru" (a New Guinean term [to represent] infective spongiform encephalitis [now referred to as prion]) ) was first described by Carlton Gadjusek and MacFarlane Burnet as an infective agent "spread by cannibalism" in the 1950s, it was described as a "slow virus". These were later termed "retroviruses". In fact, the infection they called "kuru" is pathologically indistinguishable from a sheep virus known as "scrapie". It so happens that the epidemic broke out very close to an ANZAC Second World War base, and that Macfarlane Burnet (from Melbourne University) and Gadjusek (from NIH) were both biological warfare experts.
[...]
HIV was developed as a retrovirus (previously called a 'slow virus') by scientists in Australia, USA, Japan and France. It was seeded into targeted populations through a number of means - infected batches of vaccines, blood transfusions and other blood products, and possibly specially bred mosquitoes (entomological warfare, at which Australia's CSIRO are world leaders)...
[...]
My research suggests that HIV was manufactured from selective splicing of pathogenic genes into the sheep retrovirus known as "scrapie" using bacteriophage technology (in which the Australian scientist Sir Frank MacFarlane Burnet was a pioneer in the 1940s, 50s and 60s). Infected batches of vaccines (notably hepatitis B vaccines, injected polio and smallpox vaccines) are implicated in the initial epidemics in Africa and the USA and subsequent epidemics in New Guinea and the Pacific Islands.-- Dr. Romesh Senewiratne



One more thing. HIV/AIDS is not a gay disease, which becomes evident once you begin looking at the epidemiological facts. Since this biological agent began ravaging sub-Saharan Africa--which is home to just over 12% of the world’s population but two-thirds of all people infected with HIV, 13 women for every 10 men--in the early 1980s it has NOT been associated with either homosexuality or injecting drug use there.












"Eugenics and Genocide in the Modern World - the Cause of the AIDS Epidemic"

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Monday, November 18, 2013

Mycoplasma, AIDS, Degenerative Diseases: What You Don't Know Can Kill You.

John D. Rockefeller  Sr.'s merger with pharmaceutical and chemical giant, I.G. Farben (Auschwitz was a 100% subsidiary of IG Farben) in 1928 "created the largest and most powerful cartel the world has ever known. Not only has that cartel survived through the years, it has grown and prospered. Today it plays a major role in both the science and politics of cancer therapy."

It's important to know Big Pharma's "crimes against humanity" history, because that history fostered the chemical-based drug treatment basis for our "orthodox" healthcare system today. The industry claims that their aim is finding medical truth, and that may be true; nevertheless, publicizing that truth, once found, if that truth entails inexpensive solutions or remedies, will not happen for obvious reasons. There is nothing Big Pharma likes more than chronic illness, for which they can produce chronic palliative costly treatments that make the patient chronically dependent on them.

Which brings me to the seldom, if ever, publicized human pathogen: mycoplasmas. They are the smallest free-living bacteria that can assume multiple shapes including round, pear shaped and even filamentous forms because they lack a cell wall. This makes it possible for them to pass through  filters used to remove bacteria; and hide inside the cell from our immune system, as well as from common antibiotics, all the while interfering with the cell machinery. Because mycoplasmas have lost most of their genetic material; a strict dependence on the host for nutrients and refuge determines its ability to survive and grow.

Mycoplasma is the co-factor that alters the human immune system and opens the door for the autoimmune degenerative diseases such as AIDS, malignant transformation, chromosomal aberrations, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Gulf War Syndrome (military vaccine), Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), often referred to as Lou Gehrig\'s Disease (every single patient shows mycoplasmal infection), Alzheimer’s, Crohns Disease, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s, Lupus, Lyme disease, Fibromyalgia, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Multiple Sclerosis, Type One Diabetes, Autistic Spectrum Disorder, and cancer.  Yet, these pathogenic organisms show up in vaccines.
“Because certain species of the mycoplasma have an absolute growth requirement for the up-take of pre-formed sterols, including cholesterol they can cause the ‘spontaneous degeneration’ of the cells that they invade. If they do not cause sufficient damage to kill the cell, they at least compromise its capacity to defend itself from other disease agents, such as those which present as Kaposi’s sarcoma, pneumoniae carinii pneumonia, lymphadenopathy, and so on.” Donald W. Scott and William L.C. Scott,
“From its inception, the biowarfare program was characterized by continuing in-depth review and participation by the most eminent scientists, medical consultants, industrial experts and government officials, and it was classified Top Secret. The US Public Health Service also closely followed the progress of biological warfare research and development from the very start of the program, and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States were working with the military in weaponising these diseases. These are diseases that have existed for thousands of years, but they have been weaponized—which means they’ve been made more contagious and more effective. And they are spreading.” Donald W. Scott
Currently, Dr. Alan Cantwell is one of the most well-known popular proponents of the link between cancer and bacteria. He has written numerous articles and books on the subject after he isolated and reported cell wall deficient bacteria in breast cancer, Kaposi’s sarcoma and Hodgkin’s disease. He states,
”If a disease like cancer is indeed caused by microscopic bacteria, it would indicate physicians have been unable to see what was quite plain for some nineteenth and twentieth century scientists to observe using simple light microscopy."
Eventually, constantly under intense criticism, Cantwell was ostracized by many in the medical profession.

Females are four times more likely to be infected with Mycoplasmas than males. The same ratio of males to females applies to Rheumatoid Arthritis, Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue and other related auto-immune disorders. Men, pound for pound, have 25% more blood; hence, hemoglobin - the protein molecule in red blood cells that carries oxygen from the lungs to the body's tissues - than females.

AIDS and Mycoplasma: The Crime Beyond Belief

Donald W. Scott, editor of The Journal of Degenerative Diseases (pictured above) and co-founder of the Common Cause Medical Research Foundation, reveals the true and hidden story of weaponized mycoplasma and the protracted creation of AIDS by governments and private corporations. part 1 of a series drawn from the 90 min. talk given at the 9th annual conference, Sudbury, Ontario (Aug 29-31, 2008).  JODD (Journal of Degenerative Disease); Box 133 Station B; Sudbury Ontario; Canada P3E4N5  $25/year





Links:

Fluid Mosaic Model Membrane


The Linking Pathogen in Neurosystemic Diseases

Mycoplasmas Stealth Pathogens

Campaign for Truth in Medicine

Mycoplasma Protocol

Institute for Molecular Medicine

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Monday, August 27, 2012

The Destruction of Our Food Supply and Rising Rates of Chronic Disease

Over 75 years ago, in 1936, the Department of Agriculture issued a warning to the Senate about our mineral depleted soils, and Linus Pauling, famous for discovering the benefits of Vitamin C, said, "all of our modern diseases can be attributed to a mineral deficiency." Yet, despite these warnings  our food supply has become not only mineral deficient, but altogether nutrient deficient.

Not even two decades later, in 1954, the U.S. government mandated that farmers use chemical fertilizers, rich in phosphates but very low in sulfur. These excess phosphates can interfere with sulfur absorption. Dr. Stephanie Seneff of MIT published an article “Could Sulfur Deficiency be a Contributing Factor to Obesity, Alzheimer’s, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome? ” So, it's no coincidence that, since that time, the rates of disease has increased 4,000%.
"Experts have recently become aware that sulfur depletion in the soil creates a serious deficiency for plants [Jez2008], brought about in part by improved efficiency in farming and in part, ironically, by successful attempts to clean up air pollution. Over the last two decades, the U.S. farming industry has steadily consolidated into highly technologized mega farms. The high yield per acre associated with these farms results in greater depletion of sulfur each year by the tall, densely planted crops. Plants require sulfur in the form of the sulfate radical (SO4-2). Bacteria in well aerated soil, similar to nitrogen fixing bacteria, can convert elemental sulfur into sulfate through an oxidation process. Coal contains a significant amount of sulfur, and factories that burn coal for energy release sulfur dioxide into the air. Over time, sun exposure converts the sulfur dioxide to sulfate, a significant contributor to acid rain. Acid rain is a serious pollutant, in that hydrogen sulfate, a potent acid, penetrates lakes, making them too acidic for lifeforms to thrive. The Clean Air Act, enacted by congress in 1980, has led to substantial decreases in the amount of acid rain released into the atmosphere. Factories have introduced highly effective scrubbing technologies to comply with the law, and, as a consequence, less sulfate makes its way back into the soil.

Modern farmers apply highly concentrated fertilizer to their soil, but this fertilizer is typically enriched in phosphates and often contains no sulfur. Excess phosphates interfere with sulfur absorption. In the past, organic matter and plant residues remained after the fruit and grain were harvested. Such accumulating organic matter used to be a major source of recyclable sulfur. However, many modern machinery-based methods remove a great deal more of the organic matter in addition to the edible portions of the plant. So the sulfur in the decaying organic matter is also lost.
Of course, it's not just sulfur that's important. All minerals are essential for a healthy diet, and since your body does not manufacture minerals, the food supply is one of the only ways to ensure your body is adequately supplied. The seven major minerals are: calcium, phosphorus, potassium, sulfur, sodium, chloride, and magnesium. The nine trace minerals are: iron, zinc, copper, iodide, selenium, potassium, manganese, fluorine, chromium, and molybdenum.  However, many of these minerals are no longer present because our food supply has been completely debased over the past five to six decades alone, more drastically than during any other time in history.

Human beings used to eat wild, fresh foods, mostly in their natural state with minimal processing, and most importantly, without synthetic chemicals. That all changed after the Industrial Revolution when our methods of farming shifted to mass production, and profit became the primary motivator.

From Modern Lifestyles and the Devolution of the Human Species
"The majority of food Americans spend their money on is processed food. It may resemble food, but it certainly is not real food. Food that has been overly processed and packaged into a container is not food for it is virtually devoid of nutrients. Food manufacturers oftentimes must add vitamins and minerals that have been lost during the processing back into the food. These synthetic vitamins and minerals, usually isolated from their natural forms, act more like anti-nutrients than nutrients in these foods, adding to the body’s chemical burden. Modern methods of food preparation and processing have effectively depleted many nutrients and co-factors necessary for the absorption and utilization of foods that in order for the body to process these modern foods, it must use its own store of nutrients. Consider the stress that your body undergoes, the vast amounts of energy that is required for digestion, only to be left short-changed and worse off than before you had that food in the first place."

Read more...

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

New Scientific Study Provides Evidence That Morgellons Is a Physical Illness

Contrary to what so many medical practitioners claim, the controversial illness, Morgellons Disease (MD) does, indeed, have a physiological basis, according to a new research report, "Morgellons Disease: A Chemical and Light Microscopic Study,” published in the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Dermatology Research.

Characteristics of MD commonly described in the medical literature, include: insidious onset, dermatological signs and systemic symptoms, lack of response to immunosuppressive treatment and serological and clinical evidence linking this phenomenon with tickborne diseases such as Lyme borreliosis.

Patients with MD experience symptoms including fatigue, cognitive disability (described as “brain fog”), Fibromyalgia, joint pain, vision decline, neurological disorders, hair loss, disintegration of teeth, intermittent fever, low body temperature, sleep disturbances, reduced exercise capacity, peripheral neuropathy, delayed capillary refill, abnormal Romberg’s sign, decreased body temperature, cardiac arrhythmias, and tachycardia, and many patients with MD report inability or impaired ability to work.

For the first time, this study showed that MD filaments contain keratin (fibrous structural proteins, and the key of structural material making up the outer layer of human skin). "These observations suggest that hyperkeratosis and keratin filament production associated with spirochetal infection is a plausible explanation for the clinical and microscopic findings in MD."

Links:


Filament formation associated with spirochetal infection: a comparative approach to Morgellons disease

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Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Paging Dr. Sanjay Gupta..The Black Death Is Here.

Where the hell are you, Sanjay? Nearly three weeks have passed since doctors in Joplin, Missouri, discovered a rapid, very aggressive fungal infection (zygomycosis although the name has formally changed to mucormycosis) that started showing up amongst the 1700 victims treated after the tornado from Hell ravaged Joplin, Missouri. This deadly black fungus causes nerve damage, blindness, brain and lung blood clots and ultimately, death.

This subcutaneous form of fungus, invades underlying blood vessels of tissue, and cuts off circulation to the skin causing the area to become black according to Dr. Schmidt who says it is “very invasive.” If the fungus stays in a limb, amputation of the infected limb may save the patient; however, as soon as it enters the brain tissue, it's too late.

Up to as many as eight people (3-4 people are being reported, however, my source tells me that 8 people have died to date) have died as a direct result. It wasn't until June 9, that health officials issued a staff warning about the killer fungus. Still, a close approximation of the number of people infected with the deadly fungus is not being revealed.
Spokesperson Jacqueline Lapine said the agency "is not confirming any deaths related to the reported fungal infections." She said samples taken from the suspected cases are being subjected to further testing at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
Cover up? 

As always, if you want an answer to any question concerning our profit driven society, follow the profits, or potential lack thereof. 

If there is no potential profit or potential loss of profit, the CDC will likely take their time, as they are doing now, regarding Morgellon's disease. After having  received reports of "Morgellon's Disease" since the 1990s, the CDC still refuses to officially recognize it. Why?   Perhaps, because of the disease's possible link to GMOs...wouldn't want to jeopoardize Monsanto profits, now, would we?. 

But, what could possibly be the reason for stalling/covering up in this case? Well, besides the fact that there is no profit inducing vaccine waiting in the wings, it could have something to do with what the tornado recirculated from another recent disaster, as a tornado is a natural blender of sorts.

Remember, the news reporters who tried visiting the morgue surrounded by armed guards in Joplin, Missouri, where police not only prevented them from doing ; they ordered cameras be placed in the back of the reporters' vehicle (CNN did cover this story)?  Of course, this does not prove anything, in and of itself; nevertheless, it raises the suspicion level.

So, as farfetched as this may sound, the two-million gallons of Corexit used to break up the BP oil spill, which is very toxic to life, is circulating in the air and the water all around us. It very well may factor into the extraordinarily rare deadly fungus that's killing people in Joplin, MO, as Corexit destroys the natural skin barrier, making people much more vulnerable to infection.

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Thursday, April 30, 2009

Don't cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet and render you dead.

"Give not that which is kodesh unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and render" you dead.

This 2009 image taken through a microscope and provided by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, shows the H1N1 strain of the swine flu virus.

The 1918 global epidemic, killed more people (approx. 40 million), worldwide, in 25 weeks, than the total number of people who succumbed to AIDS in 25-years. In other words, pandemics occur with very little warning, and moves with a lightning swiftness that leaves those in power, powerless to stop the disease's deadly rampage. The only way to lessen the impact of a pandemic of this sort is if people visit their doctor as soon as suspicious signs of infection appear.

Currently, the triple hybrid influenza (incorporates human, avian and swine genes in its DNA), or commonly referred to as the swine flu outbreak, has descended upon us, and barring the worst possible scenario - deadly pandemic similar to 1918 - this may prove to be a blessing in disguise. Supposedly, this strain, the H1N1 flu, lacks the deadly characteristics of the strains involved in previous pandemics.

However, flu viruses are known for their unpredictability because they can mutate rapidly at any time, and a new study has found that "some pigs in Indonesia are carrying the H5N1 avian flu virus, which could mutate into a new strain inside the pigs, and the potential new strain could be more virulent than the current outbreak." On the other hand, the virus can also mutate to a more benign form.

Blessing in disguise?

Our nation's lack of health-care insurance and a badly neglected public health-care infrastructure will only discourage people from seeking care until it's too late to contain the virus in the event of a severe pandemic (if that event is not already here). Assuming, this is not the big one, we should heed its warning, and implement universal health-care sooner than possible.

"From SARS to avian flu to the current escalating outbreaks of swine influenza it has become increasingly clear that we are risking a major catastrophe unless we act to restore the safety net, and devote the resources that are needed to protect the public." -- Deborah Burger, co-president, CNA/NNOC
Tracking swine flu cases worldwide.

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Monday, September 22, 2008

Affluenza: Unsatiable Desire for an Abundance of Possessions

Affluenza, according to author of the book, Affluenza: The All Consuming Epidemic and filmmaker, John De Graaf, is a term describing "a painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety, and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more”.

My guess is this insidious disease, "affluenza" began right around the time President Reagan took office in 1980, and Laissez-faire capitalism dominated most of our thinking. By the end of Reagan's two terms, after he had established "nibor dooh" (steal from the poor to give to the rich) economics, that's what I call it anyway, affluenza began to spread faster than sexually transmitted diseases in the porn industry.

Trickle down or "nibor dooh" economics achieved its true goal, evolving the meaning of the word, "affluent" to encompass the ordinary and the "working class" to include the poor, immensely increasing the divide between the "haves" and the "have-nots". The "noble" reason or rationalization is that income disparities and/or inequality vs. economic growth are supposed to encourage those at the lower end of the earning spectrum, and motivate them to catch up, however, they left out the part about the harder the "low earners" try, the further behind they will get creating a class of people Katherine Neuman calls the "Near Poor" in her book, The Missing Class.

In 1979, the top 1% of the US population earned, on average, 33.1 times as much as the lowest 20%. In 2000, the top 1% earned 88.5 times more than the lowest 20%. By now the discrepancy is much greater proving that President Reagan, Alan Greenspan and George W. Bush did nothing more than transpose the Robin Hood story.

Prior to this time, we were slowly emerging from a time when the importance of sacrifice was paramount. Forfeiture of material goods for the sake of something considered to have greater value placed the emphasis on higher ideals such as God, Country, and "humanity" (New Deal). Of course, this era (1930-1945) of sacrifice followed the pain of a market meltdown - the stock market crash of 1929, prior to which times were much like today.

Man is designed to satisfy his needs and desires with the least possible effort. In addition, the more he owns the more he wants. Lawmakers, who have not transcended their greedy natures, are normally the first in line when society prospers, and will try to create law for their own profit at the expense of others...Enron, Bear Stearns, Haliburton, Iraq War, tax cuts for the rich etc.

Bear Stearns is the latest casualty in what appears to be a growing trend of corporate scandals and failures tied to what appears to be poor fiscal management and lack of regulation, but in reality, is a carefully constructed legal system to benefit those at the top . In other words, as Frederic Bastiat says,

"It is easy to understand how law, instead of checking injustice, becomes the invincible weapon of injustice. It is easy to understand why the law is used by the legislator to destroy in varying degrees among the rest of the people, their personal independence by slavery, their liberty by oppression, and their property by plunder. This is done for the benefit of the person who makes the law, and in proportion to the power that he holds."
When legislators create laws that contradict morality, society will either try to stop the "lawful" crime or as our society has chosen, choose to share in it, - affluenza, - thus making "lawful" crime universal. The victims of these greedy lawmakers - instead of fighting the unjust legislation or lack thereof - will try to fall in and end up following the "evil-doers," out of ignorance or in hopes of gain, even if it means suffering the consequences.

As terrifying as it seems, a financial melt down may be the only cure for "Affluenza" as it will force us to reduce consumption and waste, give us a chance "dry out", and figure out what's really important to us. Who knows? People might start choosing work that reflects their values, what they're good at doing and what they love to do instead of going for the job that can fill up their 28,000 square foot mansion with junk, closets the size of bedrooms to store the junk, hummers and garages large enough to store the hummers, entertainment centers that put movie theaters to shame and so on...

Unfortunately, human nature being what it is, usually requires some sort of comeuppance before true justice has a chance.

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Friday, February 22, 2008

Cool Interactive Health Map and Mapping Disease Hotspots

Health Map: Global disease alert map is really cool! It can be used like Google Map, and you can choose the map, satellite or hybrid view. To get to a part of the world, use one of the links at the top of the map to zoom in by content and/or region.


There are four separate menus that provide options for customization.


Below the map, you’ll see a slider that lets you display alerts by date range. You’ll also see a bar labeled “Heat Index,” that includes the spectrum from yellow to red.

* Marker color represents a composite score based on the recency of alerts, the number of disease outbreaks, and the number of sources providing information at a particular location. Our algorithm applies an exponential weighting, yielding increased heat (redness) for more recent outbreak news.

* The source of the alert is represented by an icon next to the alert headline.

* The square-shaped marker icon indicates a country-level marker, while state, province and local markers are round . We currently have administrative divisions and some major cities for USA, UK, Canada, China, India, Australia, Mexico and Russia, with more coming soon.







Use check boxes to select news feeds and different diseases. The third menu provides links that allow you to display alerts by country. The menu at the bottom offers links to the full text of the most recent alerts, displayed in a separate, smaller window.












HealthMap brings together disparate data sources to achieve a unified and comprehensive view of the current global state of infectious diseases and their effect on human and animal health. This freely available Web site integrates outbreak data of varying reliability, ranging from news sources (such as Google News) to curated personal accounts (such as ProMED) to validated official alerts (such as World Health Organization). Through an automated text processing system, the data is aggregated by disease and displayed by location for user-friendly access to the original alert. HealthMap provides a jumping-off point for real-time information on emerging infectious diseases and has particular interest for public health officials and international travelers.
Below is a world map highlighting hot spots for diseases passed from animals to humans.


Researchers say that areas in which humans and animals come in very close contact are a key grounds for emerging diseases. Above,
Outbreaks of emerging infectious diseases such as Ebola, SARS, HIV and avian influenza are on the rise around the world, researchers report in the journal Nature.

The team found that the developing world was a key ground for emerging diseases, especially in areas in which humans and animals are in very close contact.

"These maps show that the key threat to public health is where human population growth and wildlife diversity clash," says Peter Daszak, one of the authors of the report.


Read more...

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Scariest Ideas In Science

Bringing back the 1918 Spanish Flu Virus:

Up to 50 million people worldwide perished in the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. Within a year, the virus mutated, immunity spread, and the flu vanished. In October 2005, a team led by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pieced together the virus’s genome from lung tissue of a 1918 flu victim buried in Alaskan permafrost and brought her killer back from the dead. It’s out there, in a lab fridge, deadly as ever, right now.

WHY, GOD? WHY? The scientists say that the virus can help reveal the mechanisms of a pandemic and that it offers timely insight into how the emerging H5N1 avian flu might have leapt from birds to humans. Reanimating the monster is a “practical curiosity,” says Erling Myhre, an infectious-disease physician at Lund University in Sweden and a former United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq. “It gives a better understanding of how genetic information in [influenza] can change over time.” The work goes on. Last October, members of the group debuted a vaccine to protect against the reanimated virus.

FEAR FACTOR The project is what experts call “dual-use research”: It has beneficial uses but potentially nefarious ones too. Risk, researchers believe, is inherent to research on human threats. “The public has to understand that in order to be prepared for pandemics and bioterrorism, dangerous work has to happen,” says Michael Stebbins, director of biology policy at the Federation of American Scientists.

The work also freaks out scientists, however. “The 1918 flu reconstruction is a bad example to other countries,” argues Harvard University virologist Jens Kuhn, a member of the science working group for the nonprofit Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. With proper resources, ”anyone can now also reproduce this virus [from the published genome].” A team in Canada is already studying its own version. And escape from the kind of high-level containment labs that store the virus isn’t unheard of—SARS samples inadvertently saw daylight several times during that epidemic several years ago.

Although current antiviral drugs— and the new vaccine—thwart the reconstructed flu in mice, there’s no guarantee that they work as well on humans (a problem because nobody born after 1930 is immune to the 1918 strain). “To proceed with the construction of this virus under those circumstances is irresponsible,” says Rutgers University microbiologist Richard Ebright, a prominent critic of the research. “If it had to be done,” Kuhn agrees, “it should have been done in a different way.”

The 22-Hour Workday

According to the National Sleep Foundation, 71 percent of Americans get eight hours of sleep or fewer on weeknights, and the percentage is rising. “We’re an increasingly sleep-deprived society,” says circadian-rhythm scientist Russell Foster of the University of Oxford. But a new crop of “wakefulness- promoting” drugs can improve alertness—with no real side effects. Last summer Darpa, the U.S. Department of Defense’s advanced-research arm, tested the drug CX717 by exposing subjects to battle conditions for four consecutive 20-hour days. Sleeping only four daylight hours, they remained amped and alert. Meanwhile, prescription modafinil can keep civilians fresh for 48 hours. Its successor, armodafinil, poised for FDA approval, lasts even longer.

WHY, GOD? WHY? Pennsylvania-based drugmaker Cephalon developed modafinil and armodafinil to treat narcolepsy, sleep apnea and shift-work sleep disorder. But fighting drowsiness has world-changing potential. The electric lightbulb allowed workers to remain productive after dark. Drugs that allow us to toil into even wee-er hours is the next leap forward.

FEAR FACTOR The pills make us more productive. But is that a good thing? Will they cast us into true work-all-day/party-all-night zombiehood? “Modafinil is just the beginning,” says Pennsylvania State University sleep researcher David Dinges, who has tested it extensively. Foster agrees. “We may be the first species that will genuinely occupy the 24-hour day,” he says. “But we know very little about the consequences of subduing sleep.” (Rats, it should be mentioned, die after 17 days without shut-eye.)

The drugs appear to act on one or two neurotransmitters. They’re not replicating real rest, though. It takes the combined efforts of four or five neurotransmitters to keep humans awake naturally. “The drugs can be effective for quite a while,” Dinges says, “but a chemical substitute for sleep they’re not.”

You can't reason with them. You can't kill them. They're...
Merciless Robot Soldiers


The South Korean government and Samsung Techwin recently debuted SGR-A1, a weaponized robot that autonomously tracks intruders up to about two and a half miles away with high-resolution and infrared cameras. Anyone who doesn’t give the robot’s voice-recognition system the correct secret code is identified as an enemy to a remote human operator, who directs the ’droid to unleash a warning, rubber bullets, tear gas or live rounds.

WHY, GOD? WHY? South Korea has one of the world’s lowest birth rates and shares a border with one of the most feared military dictatorships. The government is pouring millions of dollars into the development of guard robots to ease manpower shortages along borders, coasts and terrorism targets, and expects the robot to enter service after 2008.

FEAR FACTOR Foster-Miller, the company that created the first weaponized robots—the Iraq-bound Swords—has heard all the safety concerns. “The U.S. was adamant that we absolutely prove beyond any doubt that [Swords] cannot fire on its own,” says vice president Robert Quinn. Samsung insists that it’s taken equal precautions: A person must engage a key before hitting SGR-A1’s “fire” button, and the operator can designate no-fire zones. (“The exact nature of the safety system is classified,” says collaborator Hanseok Ko of Korea University, “but its goal is to prevent accidents.”) Still, soldiers making life-or-death judgments through a robotic proxy is undeniably disturbing.

Planetary Solar Shield

The latest plan for fighting global warming sounds more like intergalactic warfare: Launch clouds of miniature spacecraft that bend 1.8 percent of the sun’s light away from Earth. Roger Angel of Steward Observatory Mirror Laboratory in Arizona has worked out the math. Now, with financial backing from the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts, he’s making a prototype of a light-diverting material. The gram-weight flyers he has in mind would be shot into L1 orbit, a sweet spot that follows the same yearly path as the Earth. From that vantage, the crafts’ collective shadow would help cool the entire planet.

WHY, GOD? WHY? Increasing carbon dioxide levels mean that global temperatures could rise by 10°F by century’s end. Deflecting some of the sun’s heat might mitigate doomsday effects­ like drought, flood, pestilence and extinction.

FEAR FACTOR Isn’t global warming about CO2 levels, not sunlight itself? Don’t we need that light for something . . . crucial? “There would be some small effects on Earth,” Angel admits. Plants might grow a tad slower, and solar energy wouldn’t be at top efficiency. “If you both turn up CO2 and block the sun,” says climate-change expert Richard Alley of the University of Pennsylvania, “you will not have exactly the same climate you had before.”

More chilling to Alley is the idea that the spacecraft might suddenly fail. “Suppose we’ve doubled, tripled, quadrupled CO2, the temperature is up by 10°F, and we’re holding it down,” he muses. “Then something breaks, and the spacecraft disappear. You want to see an abrupt climate change? It would be a shock to the system.”

Angel imagines that his method would be used in concert with other ways to turn down the heat. “This in no way removes the need to wean ourselves off carbon,” he says. “It’s a kind of insurance on the chance that our worst predictions actually play out.”

In The wilds of Siberia, they’re breeding...
The Ultimate Vicious Carnivore


Scientists at the Institute of Cytology and Genetics in Novosibirsk, Russia, have been selectively breeding silver foxes for hostility. After 36 generations, the 200-some foxes scream, snap, and lunge when humans approach their cages.

WHY, GOD? WHY? The late geneticist Dmitry Belyaev began the experiment with a more benign goal: ultimate tameness. Beginning in 1959, Belyaev bred successive generations of friendly foxes, essentially replicating the 12,000-year-old process of domestication in a fraction of the time. The project continues to reveal how wolves may have evolved into docile dogs at the hands of humans.

But in 1970, to explore the spectrum of behavior, the program began to breed vicious specimens. “It was a crackpot scheme,” says Caroline Blanchard, a University of Hawaii aggression researcher who visited the farm. But it made waves. A 1999 American Scientist article by Belyaev’s successor, Lyudmila Trut, “had a huge impact,” says Sergio Pellis of Canada’s University of Lethbridge, who studies aggressive play. “Having animals [at extremes], you can identify processes for each trait.”

FEAR FACTOR The foxes aren’t going anywhere. They live in metal cages outside one of the world’s remotest cities. And even if they managed to escape somehow, they wouldn’t survive for long. “The term ‘aggressive’ is misapplied. These animals are hyper-defensive,” Pellis says. The risk-averse foxes wouldn’t attack—they’d probably hide until they starved.

Grow New Appendages

Amphibians can regenerate limbs. Mammals can’t. “This is a significant problem,” says Tulane University cell biologist Ken Muneoka. Now two teams of bioscientists are out to correct our evolutionary shortcoming under a recent $7.6-million Darpa grant. The current goal is to produce a mammalian blastema—the cell bud that forms a new amphibian limb. In four years, Darpa wants a regrown mouse finger. Human research is the logical next step.

WHY, GOD? WHY? The percentage of American combat amputees has doubled since the Korean War—a side effect of advancements in body armor and field medicine. Darpa funds will help scientists bolster preexisting research on the genetic and cellular processes of tissue regeneration. “Even if we fail,” says Muneoka, a team leader, “we’ll get better wound-healing.”

FEAR FACTOR As unnatural as the project sounds (“No, really, I have two left feet”), it doesn’t require genetic meddling, says the other team leader, Stephen Badylak of the University of Pittsburgh’s McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine. “The genes we need are there.” Mammals can already regrow limbs—to a point. Young children who lose fingertips can remake bone and tissue perfectly.

The teams are following even more curious leads. The regenerative abilities of the “MRL” breed of lab mouse, discovered by immunologist Ellen Heber-Katz of the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, fall between those of amphibians and normal mammals. Holes punched in ears, cut tail tips, even injured heart tissue—all grow back (although when an MRL’s finger is cut lower than the tip, Heber-Katz says, “it’s able to form a structure but not the full digit”).

The research could be life-changing for amputees. The scientists believe that a mixture of cellular and extracellular components —maybe hormones, vita- min A, fibroblasts—could be applied to fresh amputations to steer them toward regeneration. “We grow a whole human in nine months,” Badylak says. “A limb should be nothing!”

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Saturday, January 20, 2007

Parasites May Help Those With Multiple Sclerosis

Autoimmune diseases, such as Multiple Sclerosis have been on the rise in recent decades. Environmental factors could be the cause of this increase. One theory, states that an excessively germ-free environment may contribute to an increase in allergies, or a decline in infectious diseases may play a role in increasing autoimmune disease. The first study examining the relationship between parasite infections and MS in humans suggests that such infections may affect the immune response in a way that alters the course of MS.

Prior studies involving animals have shown that parasite infection can influence the course an autoimmune disease takes. These studies suggest that individuals with parasite infections have a diminished T cell response when unrelated antigens (foreign substances that generate an immune response) are present. The current study, conducted by Jorge Correale, M.D., and Mauricio Farez, B.Sc., of the Raúl Carrea Institute for Neurological Research in Buenos Aires, Argentina, involved 12 patients with MS who also had a parasite infection, 12 controls with MS who were uninfected, and twelve healthy individuals. The two groups of MS patients had a similar disease course. Patients had a neurological exam every three months and a brain MRI every six months, while immunological evaluations were conducted during the last twelve to eighteen months of the study. Patients were followed for an average of 4.6 years.

During the study period, there were three clinical relapses of MS in the infected group and 56 relapses in the uninfected group. Only two infected patients showed minimal Expanded Disability Status Score changes (EDSS is used to measure disability due to MS) that lasted less than three months, while the other ten had no changes in EDSS scores. In the uninfected group, eleven patients showed an overall increase in EDSS. Since MS involves an inflammatory response associated with the production of certain regulatory proteins known as cytokines, the number of cells producing cytokine suppressants was measured and found to be significantly higher in infected patients.

These findings provide evidence to support that an autoimmune response as a result of parasite infection can result in a decrease in the normal inflammatory response associated with MS. The authors note that evidence for production of regulatory T cells (which inhibit the immune response) in parasite infection is now emerging, which offers an explanation for the mechanism by which infected hosts exhibit an altered immune response that affects a secondary antigen, as was the case in the current study. "Thus, parasites may lead to increased regulatory T cell numbers or activity, either by generating new cells or by activating/expanding existing cells," they state.

Because parasites inhabit their hosts for long periods, they can develop molecules that generate strong anti-inflammatory responses, which enhance their survival. Further investigation is warranted in order to identify which molecules cause immune system effects that dampen the inflammatory reactions normally seen in autoimmune diseases. The authors conclude that "induction of a regulatory anti-inflammatory network generated by persistent parasite infections may offer a potential explanation for environment-related suppression of MS development in areas with low disease prevalence."

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