The strange case of the man who took 40,000 ecstasy pills in nine years· Usage increased to 25 tablets a day at peak
· Memory problems and paranoia may be lasting
Doctors from London University have revealed details of what they believe is the largest amount of ecstasy ever consumed by a single person. Consultants from the addiction centre at St George's Medical School, London, have published a case report of a British man estimated to have taken around 40,000 pills of MDMA, the active ingredient in ecstasy, over nine years. The heaviest prev... (more)
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Cancer chemical 'in soft drinks'Worrying levels of the cancer-causing chemical benzene have been found in four soft-drinks available in the UK, the Food Standards Agency says.
Benzene was undetectable in most of the 150 drinks tested.
Two companies have already withdrawn their drinks from shops and the FSA says the other two should follow suit.
The FSA urged drinks companies should reduce benzene levels - but says consumers should not be worried if they have drunk the affected produ... (more)
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Food wrap linked to prostate cancer: Lines tin cansA CHEMICAL used to make food wrapping and line tin cans could be the cause of surging prostate cancer rates in men, says a study.
Bisphenol A is widely used in the food industry to make polycarbonate drinks bottles and the resins used to line tin cans, even though it is known to leach into food and has long been suspected of disrupting human sex hormones.
The new research suggests the small but constant level of bisphenol A entering people’s diet has a particular im... (more)
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Biggest Euro Aspartame Producer To Quit ProductionWith all the excuses of Holland Sweetener, obviously the handwriting is on the wall. With the impeccable Ramazzini Study in Italy showing aspartame to be a multipotential carcinogen, peer reviewed by 7 world experts, the studies by the original manufacturer, Searle, which also showed cancer, have been confirmed.
For years FDA and the manufacturers have tried to prevent independent studies, and Gregory Gordon who did the original UPI Investigation once wrote an article on this.... (more)
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Fluoride Levels Too High Say National Academies
In what many are regarding as a first step in the long-awaited correction of a 60-year old nationwide medical mistake, a study by the National Academies' National Research Council (NRC), sponsored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), has found that the current maximum levels of fluoride allowed by the EPA in drinking water should be lowered due to concerns over adverse health effects. The current maximum contaminant level of fluoride is 4 mg/L and the secondary maximum con... (more)
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Aspartame Products As A Potential Danger To Infants, Children & Future GenerationsThe chemicals we ingest may affect more than our own health. They affect the health and vitality of future generations. The danger is that many of these chemicals may not harm us but will do silent violence to our children. Senator Abraham S. Ribicoff (l971)
I have studied the numerous adverse effects of products containing the chemical aspartame for a quarter century as a corporate-neutral physician (Board-certified internist; member of the Endocrine Society and American Academy... (more)
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Vitamin C for Cancer Reconsidered Following studies conducted in the 1970s, two-time Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling touted the benefits of high-dose vitamin C for cancer patients. Since that time, though, the treatment has remained highly controversial. Critics say the study was full of problems, and many follow-up studies -- including those performed at the Mayo Clinic -- found the treatment ineffective. Now, results of three recent case studies published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal show the treatment may, in fac... (more)
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With Tysabri decision, the FDA declares no drug is too dangerous to be FDA approvedThe U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the agency that claims to be responsible for protecting consumers from dangerous food and drug products, has just surrendered its primary responsibility. Recently, an FDA advisory panel voted to recommend that a dangerous prescription drug Tysabri, which was withdrawn from the market a year ago due to its promoting of a deadly brain disease, should now be put back on the market.
But here's the really shocking part: The justification for this ... (more)
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Child drugs linked to heart attackChildren as young as five have suffered strokes, heart attacks, hallucinations and convulsions after taking drugs to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Documents obtained by The Australian reveal that almost 400 serious adverse reactions have been reported to the Therapeutic Goods Administration, some involving children as young as three.
Cases include the sudden death of a seven-year-old, and a five-year-old who suffered a stroke after taking Ritalin. ... (more)
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Pill-Popping Society Fouling Our Water, Official SaysBirth control pills, cancer drugs and a host of other pharmaceuticals that people flush down the drain every day are showing up in our drinking water, says Gord Miller, Ontario's environmental commissioner.
"We need to do a better job of keeping drugs out of lakes, rivers and drinking water," Miller told the Kitchener-Waterloo Record on Wednesday.
Although the drugs are not considered a threat to human health, there is evidence that they can harm wildlife.
... (more)
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Worry About Hospital-Produced Disease, Not the bird flu.We hear a lot about danger posed by bird flu, which so far has resulted in the culling of millions of birds, but is not yet a widespread threat to humans. I sometimes wonder if our attention is not being deliberately diverted from real threats that exist here and now.
In an earlier essay I described some simple ways to avoid taking hospital infections home, namely don’t touch anything with bare hands, wash hands, and spray shoe soles with disinfectant. Hospital bacteria should s... (more)
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Meat-Industrial Complex: How factory farms undercut public healthDrive through Don Oppliger’s Feed Yard in Clovis, New Mexico, and you’ll see 35,000 head of beef cattle confined to pens that stretch across the flat, barren landscape.
The constant shuffling of hooves raises a bacteria-laden dust cloud that’s carried by the prevailing winds into west Texas, where it joins the plumes of hundreds of other feedlots. At one end of the complex sits a giant lagoon that catches the operation’s chemicals, urine, antibiotics and other effluvia. In... (more)
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Bariatric surgery kills 5 percent of patients: Weight loss surgery takes deadly tollA new analysis of bariatric surgery patients, published in the journal Nature, reveals that this surgical procedure may be far more dangerous than most people believe. An astonishing 4.6 percent of patients who undergo bariatric surgery are dead within a year. That's almost one out of 20 people who die within a year following the surgery.
That's a huge number, and it indicates the level of risk associated with bariatric surgery. With the number of bariatric surgeries performed eac... (more)
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Aspartame Is An Excitoneurotoxic Carcinogenic DrugDangers of Aspartame
In 1965, a researcher at G.D. Searle pharmaceutical company inadvertently discovered the artificial sweetener aspartame while working on an anti-ulcer medication. It was discovered that the sweetener was about 150X sweeter than an equal amount of sugar. Over the next decade, the research staff at the G.D. Searle Company conducted a series of studies in an effort to get the product approved by the FDA.
Over all this consisted of about 11 differ... (more)
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Hot Peppers Attack Prostate CancerUCLA researchers have revealed results of a study showing that capsaicin causes human prostate cancer cells to commit suicide. Capsaicin is the chemical that makes hot peppers hot, so of course this is among the happiest medical news I’ve ever heard.
Apoptosis is a self-destruct sequence in which a cell breaks up its o... (more)
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Man's good kidney taken out in errorDoctors admitted yesterday that they removed a healthy kidney from a cancer patient by mistake.
John Heron, a garage owner in his sixties, was in hospital to have a diseased kidney removed. The wrong one was taken out in what NHS Ayrshire and Arran described as a "tragic error".
Surgeons will now have to operate for a second time to remove the kidney that was found to have a tumour. Mr Heron will then have to hope for a kidney transplant or face dialysis treatment f... (more)
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Drug trial victim is like Elephant Man, says girlfriendThe girlfriend of one of the most critically ill victims of a drugs trial mishap said last night that he looked like "the Elephant Man" and could die at any moment.
Myfanwy Marshall's boyfriend and another man were fighting for their lives but yesterday the four other trial participants were beginning to recover. Miss Marshall, a BBC producer, was in tears as she described her boyfriend, a 28-year-old bar manager from London.
"He is largely lifeless," she said. "I c... (more)
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Brush, floss and raise a glass of red to your teethRED wine could help to protect teeth by staving off gum disease, according to Canadian scientists.
But non-drinkers need not fret. The components found in red wine are also in cranberry juice, as a team from the Université Laval, in Quebec, reported yesterday at a meeting of the American Association for Dental Research in Orlando, Florida.
Periodontitis is a common cause of tooth loss because it affects the bones as well as the gums, loosening teeth. About14 per cen... (more)
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Fluoridation of our water is "dangerous unscientific nonsense"The Green Party has slated controversial plans to fluoridate water supplies, claiming that there are many significant questions over fluoride's safety and effectiveness.
Following government bidding, health chiefs around the country are currently deciding whether to adopt fluoridation as their preferred route to reducing tooth decay in children - a move described as "dangerously unscientific nonsense" by fluoride's opponents.
Leading Green Party commentator on fluor... (more)
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That spray under your arm could be a breast cancer linkEXPERTS will today call for more research into a possible link between deodorants and breast cancer.
Evidence is mounting that an aluminium-based compound found in common antiperspirant agents can break through the skin and potentially cause breast cancer.
Once inside the body, it is feared the compounds could mimic the hormone oestrogen, which is know to affect a woman's risk of breast cancer.
A review published today in the Journal of Applied Toxico... (more)
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Cancer chemical found in drinksTraces of a cancer-causing chemical have been found in British soft drinks at eight times the level permitted in drinking water, BBC News has learned.
The Food Standards Agency watchdog says these do not pose an immediate health risk, but questions need answering.
Benzene, which can cause certain cancers, is thought to be formed when two commonly used ingredients react.
The results came in industry tests prompted by the FSA after the chemical was foun... (more)
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JAMA says doctors should stop accepting bribes from drug companiesThe Journal of the American Medical Association is rocking the boat in conventional medicine. An article in JAMA has come up with the suggestion -- aghast! -- that doctors should stop accepting bribes from drug companies. Most people didn't know that doctors routinely accept bribes (including hundreds of thousands of dollars in "contractor's fees" for signing patients up for drug trials), so this news may come as a bit of a shock to some.
Big Pharma spends nearly $19 billion a yea... (more)
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