Monday, November 18th, 2013
CHARLIE COOPER, - The Independent (UK)
Stephan: This is the latest in the Superbug trend, and it is very scary. Having experienced what contracting one of these Superbugs did to my late brother Alan, and my late wife, Hayden, I have a direct sense of what this story is about. This problem is human created, arising from the over prescription of antibiotics, dumping unused ones into the toilet thus polluting the ground water and, particularly, the over-use of antibiotics in industrial animal husbandry. Yet the governments of the world, led by the U.S., just can't seem to put the welfare of the many ahead of the profits of the few.
See also the current issue of the Medical journal The Lancet: http://www.thelancet.com/commissions/antibiotic-resistance-the-need-for-global-solutions
Drug-resistant ‘superbugs’ represent one of the gravest threats in the history of medicine, leading experts have warned.
Routine operations could become deadly ‘in the very near future’ as bacteria evolve to resist the drugs we use to combat them. This process could erase a century of medical advances, say government doctors in a special editorial in The Lancet health journal.
Although the looming threat of antibiotic, or anti-microbial, resistance has been known about for years, the new warning reflects growing concern that the NHS and other national health systems, already under pressure from ageing populations, will struggle to cope with the rising cost of caring for people in the ‘post-antibiotic era’.
In a stark reflection of the seriousness of the threat, England’s deputy chief medical officer, Professor John Watson, said: ‘I am concerned that in 20 years, if I go into hospital for a hip replacement, I could get an infection leading to major complications and possible death, simply because antibiotics no longer work as they do now.’
About 35 million antibiotics are prescribed by GPs in England every year. The more the drugs circulate, the more bacteria are able to evolve to resist them. In the past, drug development kept pace with evolving […]
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Monday, November 18th, 2013
ANN WERNER, - The Top Information Post
Stephan: Here is the latest report on the Fukushima catastrophe that I think is credible. I take it as a given that the Japanese government, TEPCO, and certain branches of the American government are either lying or don't actually know the truth about Fukushima, and put out information whose real purpose is not to inform but to keep people calm. The fact is there has never been an event like this, and no one really knows quite what the implications are.
Every bluefin tuna tested in the waters off California has shown to be contaminated with radiation that originated in Fukushima. Every single one.
Over a year ago, in May of 2012, the Wall Street Journal reported on a Stanford University study. Daniel Madigan, a marine ecologist who led the study, was quoted as saying, ‘The tuna packaged it up (the radiation) and brought it across the world’s largest ocean. We were definitely surprised to see it at all and even more surprised to see it in every one we measured.
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Monday, November 18th, 2013
Stephan: Here is some good news on the climate change front, a modest victory for good sense. It shows that the climate problem is both real, and largely the result of a failure of political will, in which profit is placed above planetary wellness.
Click through to see the useful chart.
Climate deniers like to point to the so-called global warming ‘hiatus’ as evidence that humans aren’t changing the climate. But according a new study, exactly the opposite is true: The recent slowdown in global temperature increases is partially the result of one of the few successful international crackdowns on greenhouse gases.
Back in 1988, more than 40 countries, including the United States, signed the Montreal Protocol, an agreement to phase out the use of ozone-depleting gases like chlorofluorocarbons. (Today the protocol has nearly 200 signatories.) According to the Environmental Protection Agency, CFC emissions are down 90 percent since the protocol, a drop that the agency calls ‘one of the largest reductions to date in global greenhouse gas emissions.’ That’s a blessing for the ozone layer, but also for the climate. CFCs are a potent heat-trapping gas, and a new analysis published in Nature Geoscience finds that slashing them has been a major driver of the much-discussed slowdown in global warming.
Without the protocol, environmental economist Francisco Estrada of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México reports, global temperatures today would be about a tenth of a degree Celsius higher than they are. That’s roughly an eighth of the total warming documented since 1880.
The […]
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Sunday, November 17th, 2013
TOM JACOBS, - AlterNet (U.S.)
Stephan: Here is the latest on the Schism Trend that is reshaping America.
Does your next-door neighbor vote the same way you do? How about the couple who live across the street, or your friends on the next block?[1]
The odds you answered ‘yes
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Sunday, November 17th, 2013
, - Ethics, Medicine, and Pharma
Stephan: This is a book review of the new volume by Peter C. Gøtzsche, Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime: How Big Pharma Has Corrupted Healthcare (New York: Radcliffe Publishing, 2013). It presents the evidence for an aspect of the pharmaceutical industry that almost never gets discussed, but that you should be aware of.
The book features Forewords by two heavy hitters, Richard Smith, former editor of BMJ, and Drummond Rennie, long-time deputy editor of JAMA. If you read between the lines, the two editors both convey more or less the same message-this guy comes across as a raving lunatic, but it would be a shame if you were put off by that tone, because he actually has something important to say.
By way of the lunacy quotient, I append a representative list of quotes:
‘In the United States and Europe, drugs are the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer.
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