Eating red meat increases the chances of dying prematurely, according to a large federal study offering powerful new evidence that a diet that regularly includes steaks, burgers and pork chops is hazardous to your health. The study of more than 500,000 middle-age and elderly Americans found that those who consumed the equivalent of about a small hamburger every day were more than 30 percent more likely to die in the following 10 years, mostly from heart disease and cancer. Processed meats also increased the risk. The new study is the first large examination of the relationship between eating meat and overall mortality. In contrast, routine consumption of fish, chicken, turkey and other poultry decreased the risk of death slightly, the study found. Although pork often is promoted as ‘white meat,’ it is believed to increase the risk for cancer because of its iron content, said Rashmi Sinha of the National Cancer Institute, who led the study published today in the Archives of Internal Medicine. ‘This would be the Rolls-Royce of studies on this topic,’ said Barry Popkin, a professor of global nutrition at the University of North Carolina, who wrote an accompanying editorial. There […]
A federal judge ordered the Food and Drug Administration on Monday to make the Plan B morning-after birth control pill available without prescription to women as young as 17. The judge ruled that the agency had improperly bowed to political pressure from the Bush administration in 2006 when it set 18 as the age limit. The agency has 30 days to comply with the order, in which the judge also urged the agency to consider removing all restrictions on over-the-counter sales of Plan B. The drug consists of two pills that prevent conception if taken within 72 hours of sexual intercourse. Some women’s health advocates hailed the decision. ‘It is a complete vindication of the argument that reproductive rights advocates have been making for years, that in the Bush administration it was politics, not science, driving decisions around women’s health, said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, the attorneys for the plaintiff in the suit against the F.D.A. But some conservative groups voiced concern that the ruling could promote sexual promiscuity. ‘Now some minor girls will be able to obtain this drug without any guidance from a doctor and without any parental […]
Romeo and Juliet would approve: A new study found that romantic love can stand the test of time. Though it is widely held that romance and sex must ultimately yield to friendly companionship over time, new research found that’s not the case. Instead about 13 percent of people reported high levels of romance in their long-term relationships, in a new study published in the March issue of the journal Review of General Psychology. Researchers analyzed data from surveys of more than 6,000 people, including some in newly-formed pairs and many in marriages of more than 20 years. The scientists found that a surprisingly high number of people were still very much in love with their long-term partners, though the researchers drew a distinction between romantic love, which can endure, and passionate or obsessive love, which often fades after the beginning of a relationship. ‘I think generally, in the literature, love has been measured as passionate love, so I think that’s one reason for this widely-held assumption that love had to fade in relationships,’ said Bianca Acevedo, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who authored the study while she was a graduate student at […]
US and coalition efforts to eliminate the massive opium poppy trade in Afghanistan have failed under tremendous waste, according to Ambassador Richard Holbrooke. ‘The United States alone is spending over 800 million dollars a year on counter-narcotics. We have gotten nothing out of it, nothing,’ Ambassador Richard Holbrooke said, at the Brussels Forum conference. ‘It is the most wasteful and ineffective programme I have seen in 40 years in and out of the government,’ the new US representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan told an audience of senior world politicians and experts. Despite an alleged 19 percent decrease in opium poppy production in 2008, Afghanistan remains the world’s largest producer of the drug. Efforts to destroy poppy crops ‘hasn’t hurt the Taliban one iota because whatever money they’re getting from the drug trade, they get whatever they need whether we reduce the acreage or not,’ he said. … By forced eradication we’ve all been pushing farmers into Taliban hands.’ Aerial fumigation One of the eradication methods that was resisted by the US-backed Afghan President amid Karzai but put into place under President George W. Bush’s State Dept. is aerial fumigation. The Bush-era policy of spraying […]
While a sobering read, even more sobering to readers will be understanding how the environmental costs of conflict are not limited only to the Middle East, but that war costs the environment no matter where it occurs. Among the costs detailed by the Strategic Foresight Group specifically because of conflicts in the Middle East: * Stress on water resources (the Israel-Hezbollah war caused severe damage to South Lebanese water networks) * Arable land degradation * Forest utilization and destruction * Oil spills (almost 55 million barrels of oil were spilt in the desert and at sea during the first gulf war) * Sewage dumping (since the 2003 Iraq war, over 300 000 tonnes of raw sewage are dumped into the Tigris daily) * Habitat loss, leading to increased stress on local species and overall biodiversity levels * Increased and significant carbon emissions caused by the machinery of war (as detailed in another report on Red, Green and Blue, an Abrams tank’s fuel efficiency is rated at 0.56 miles per gallon!) […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
