A top level Republican IT consultant who was set to testify in a case alleging GOP election tampering in Ohio died in a plane crash late Friday night.................READ THE REST HERE
Michael Connell -- founder of Ohio-based New Media Communications, which created campaign Web sites for George W. Bush and John McCain -- died instantly after his single-prop, private aircraft smashed into a vacant home in suburban Lake Township, Ohio.
"The plane was attempting to land around 6 p.m. Friday at Akron-Canton Airport when it crashed about three miles short of the runway," reports the Akron Beacon Journal.
Connell's exploits as a top GOP IT 'guru' have been well documented by RAW STORY's investigative team.
The interest in Mike Connell stems from his association with a firm called GovTech, which he had spun off from his own New Media Communications under his wife Heather Connell’s name. GovTech was hired by Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell to set up an official election website at election.sos.state.oh.us to presented the 2004 presidential returns as they came in.
Connell is a long-time GOP operative, whose New Media Communications provided web services for the Bush-Cheney ’04 campaign, the US Chamber of Commerce, the Republican National Committee and many Republican candidates. This in itself might have raised questions about his involvement in creating Ohio’s official state election website
Finding Solutions
We must find in-depth, innovative solutions to our health care crisis. Reform can’t –and won’t- come overnight, but by working together I’m confident we can make great strides in health care reform.
Under my plan:
• Insurance companies will compete for business- which will bring down costs- but they will also be required to meet minimum standards for coverage, including preventive care. (don't they already compete...or is that an illusion...the same illusion of competition youll see if this bill is passed....denials, rate hikes, red tape...its a damn business...they need to make a profit...off of your illness)• No one would be denied coverage or face higher costs because of their past medical history or for going to the doctor more often.
• A technology based medical records system would streamline the health care application process.(they just want to track your info better so they can deny you, this is kinda bizzaar...im curious about this records system)
• More people who can’t afford health insurance to be immediately covered through Medicaid, Medicare and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. (until you get a job then employers control your health insurance, this plan really sucks...and to think I had hope in Baucus)In Montana, we know how to solve problems, how to build our communities, how to take care of each other. If a neighbor is sick, we bring soup, medicine and comfort. Now, our health care system is ailing. And the time has come to find the cure.
Together we can make this happen.
On the occasion of Barack Obama's rollout of his health policy team, and given that, according to a couple of pieces of paper I have around here somewhere, I'm a doctor, this seems a good time to spout off -- yet again -- on the state of health care in the US. What it really boils down to is this: we need to reduce cost and raise quality. As long as the discussion is only about paperwork, ie, single payer vs current insurers, electronic vs paper records; and as long as the only real efforts to control costs are in reducing payments to providers, we'll be getting nowhere. As usual.
I've written about why I favor single-payer, and have acknowledged that among physicians I'm in a distinct minority. I've said pretty much all I know about that aspect of it. Moreover: as controversial as it is, it's really only nibbling around the edges. Solutions --REAL solutions -- will come from fundamentally changing the nature of care itself, and how we provide it. And if you think addressing insurance is complicated and daunting, you ain't seen nothin'
Being a Milton Friedman capitalist, DrRich is all in favor of having plenty of robust, profit-seeking entities knocking about within the American economy, even within the healthcare sector of the economy. In principle, he is even in favor of giving for-profit health insurance companies a chance to prove that they can deliver quality healthcare with greater efficiency and better outcomes than certain non-profit entities, such as, say, the government. If the insurance companies can give us good healthcare at lower cost,...............................read more here
Breast cancer is the leading cause of death among American women between the ages of 44 and 55. Dr. Gofinan, in his book, Preventing Breast Cancer, cites this startling statistic along with an in-depth look at mammographic screening, an early-detection practice that agencies like the American Cancer Society recommend to women of all age groups. According to most health experts, catching a tumor in its early stages increases a woman's chances of survival by at least 17 percent.
The most common method for early detection is mammography. A mammogram is an X-ray picture of your breast that can reveal tumor growths otherwise undetectable in a physical exam. Like all x-rays, mammograms use doses of ionizing radiation to create this image. Radiologists then analyze the image for any abnormal growths. Despite continuous improvements and innovations, mammography has garnered a sizable opposition in the medical community because of an error rate that is still high and the amount of harmful radiation used in the procedure.
Effectiveness of Mammography
Is mammography an effective tool for detecting tumors? Some critics say no. In a Swedish study of 60,000 women, 70 percent of the mammographically detected tumors weren't tumors at all. These "false positives" aren't just financial and emotional strains, they may also lead to many unnecessary and invasive biopsies. In fact, 70 to 80 percent of all positive mammograms do not, upon biopsy, show any presence of cancer.
At the same time, mammograms also have a high rate of missed tumors, or "false negatives." Dr. Samuel S. Epstein, in his book, The Politics Of Cancer, claims that in women ages 40 to 49, one in four instances of cancer is missed at each mammography. The National Cancer Institute (NCI) puts the false negative rate even higher at 40 percent among women ages 40-49. National Institutes of Health spokespeople also admit that mammograms miss 10 percent of malignant tumors in women over 50. Researchers have found that breast tissue is denser among younger women, making it difficult to detect tumors. For this reason, false negatives are twice as likely to occur in premenopausal mammograms.
Radiation Risks
Many critics of mammography cite the hazardous health effects of radiation. In 1976, the controversy over radiation and mammography reached......
Danger and Unreliability of Mammography Breast Examination is a Safe, Effective, and Practical Alternative
by Samuel S. Epstein , Rosalie Bertell, Ph.D., GNSH and Barbara Seaman
Published in International Journal of Health Services, Volume 31, Number 3, Pages 605-615, 2001
2001, Baywood Publishing Co., Inc.
Mammography screening is a profit-driven technology posing risks compounded by unreliability. In striking contrast, annual clinical breast examination (CBE) by a trained health professional, together with monthly breast self-examination (BSE), is safe, at least as effective, and low in cost. International programs for training nurses how to perform CBE and teach BSE are critical and overdue.
Contrary to popular belief and assurances by the U.S. media and the cancer establishment--the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and American Cancer Society (ACS)--mammography is not a technique for early diagnosis. In fact, a breast cancer has usually been present for about eight years before it can finally be detected. Furthermore, screening should be recognized as damage control, rather than misleadingly as «secondary prevention.
DANGERS OF SCREENING MAMMOGRAPHY
Mammography poses a wide range of risks of which women worldwide still remain uninformed.
Posted Apr 3, 07 8:16 AM CDT in US, Science & HealthPost
(Newser) – Forty-something women should consider skipping their annual mammograms, the American College of Physicians is suggesting after a new review of research. Docs point to danger from radiation and unnecessary biopsies, surgery and chemotherapy, thanks in part to a high rate of false positives. "We don't think the evidence supports a blanket recommendation," one of the authors told the Washington Post.
The guidelines contradict the advice of the American Cancer Society, which encourages women over 40 to get yearly mammograms. But the ACP's study, which reviewed the past four decades of scientific literature on mammograms, found that screenings might not reduce that population's breast cancer rate at all.
Wyeth, the pharmaceutical company, paid ghostwriters to produce medical journal articles favorable to its female hormone replacement therapy Prempro, according to Congressional letters seeking more information about the company’s involvement in medical ghostwriting. At least one article was published even after a federal study found the drug raised the risk of breast cancer.Read more here
"Roughly one in three cancers in low-income countries are caused by chronic infections like hepatitis B, human papilloma virus (HPV), and HIV. These cancers are increasingly preventable or treatable, but vaccination, screening, and treatment are not widely available in these countries. "
We can only afford to do this now because of the artificially low energy prices that we currently enjoy, and by externalizing the environmental costs of such a wasteful food system. We do this also to the detriment of small farmers by subsidizing large scale, agribusiness-oriented agriculture with government handouts and artificially cheap energy.
Cheap energy and agricultural subsidies facilitate a type of agriculture that is destroying and polluting our soils and water, weakening our communities, and concentrating wealth and power into a few hands. It is also threatening the security of our food systems, as demonstrated by the continued e-Coli, GMO-contamination, and other health scares that are often seen nowadays on the news.
Most produce in the US is picked 4 to 7 days before being placed on supermarket shelves, and is shipped for an average of 1500 miles before being sold. And this is when taking into account only US grown products! Those distances are substantially longer when we take into consideration produce imported from Mexico, Asia, Canada, South America, and other places.
These large-scale, agribusiness-oriented food systems are bound to fail on the long term, sunk by their own unsustainability. But why wait until we're forced by circumstance to abandon our destructive patterns of consumption? We can start now by buying locally grown food whenever possible. By doing so you'll be helping preserve the environment, and you'll be strengthening your community by investing your food dollar close to home. Only 18 cents of every dollar, when buying at a large supermarket, go to the grower. 82 cents go to various unnecessary middlemen. Cut them out of the picture and buy your food directly from your local farmer.
WASHINGTON — Two federal drug officials have concluded that asthma sufferers risk death if they continue to use four hugely popular asthma drugs — Advair, Symbicort, Serevent and Foradil. But the officials’ views are not universally shared within the government.................more at NY Times
The two officials, who work in the safety division of the Food and Drug Administration, wrote in an assessment on the agency’s Web site on Friday that asthma sufferers of all ages should no longer take the medicines. A third drug-safety official concluded that Advair and Symbicort could be used by adults but that all four drugs should no longer be used by people age 17 and under.
Dr. Badrul A. Chowdhury, director of the division of pulmonary and allergy products at the agency, cautioned in his own assessment that the risk of death associated with the drugs was small and that banning their use “would be an extreme approach” that could lead asthmatics to rely on other risky medications.
Once unheard of, public disagreements among agency experts have occurred on occasion in recent years. The agency is convening a committee of experts on Wednesday and Thursday to sort out the disagreement, which has divided not only the F.D.A. but also clinicians and experts for more than a decade.
Sudden deaths among asthmatics still clutching their inhalers have fed the debate. But trying to determine whether the deaths were caused by patients’ breathing problems or the inhalers has proved difficult.
The stakes for drug makers are high. Advair sales last year were $6.9 billion and may approach $8 billion this year, making the medication GlaxoSmithKline’s biggest seller and one of the biggest-selling drugs in the world. Glaxo also sells Serevent, which had $538 million in sales last year
...."Bush: The biggest regret of all the presidency has to have been the intelligence failure in Iraq. A lot of people put their reputations on the line and said, you know ... the weapons of mass destruction is a reason to remove Saddam Hussein. It wasn't just people in my administration, and um ... You know, that's not a do-over, but I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess.
Gibson: If the intelligence had been right, would there have been an Iraq war?
Bush: If he had had weapons of mass destruction, would there have been a war? Absolutely.
Gibson: No, if you had known he didn't.
Bush: Oh, I see what you're saying. Uh ... You know, that's an interesting question. That is a do-over I can't do. It's hard for me to speculate."
.."About one in 10 U.S. doctors who vaccinate privately insured children are considering dropping that service largely because they are losing money when they do it, according to a new survey."
..."About half said they had delayed buying at least one vaccine because of the cost. Roughly one in five said they felt strongly that reimbursement for the purchase and administration of vaccines was not adequate."
...."Most pediatricians are likely to keep giving vaccinations to kids, partly because of altruism and partly because giving shots drives business. "For us to give up vaccines would hurt our core business because that's why kids come in," Lessin said.
But family practice doctors — who are not as dependent on vaccinations for patients — may decide the shots are too much of a financial headache, he added."
Some have been unusually expensive, including Gardasil, a vaccine for girls against cervical cancer which is given in three doses over six months and is priced at about $375 for the series."
"Even so, Dr. Meyer asked that the issue be ''quietly solved without alerting the Congress, the medical community and the public,'' according to Cutter's account of the 1985 meeting. Dr. Meyer said later that he could not recall making that statement, but another blood-product company's summary of the meeting also noted that the F.D.A. wanted the matter settled ''quickly and quietly.'' Dr. Meyer died in 2001."read the whole story here
"Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) recently summed up the dilemma in an interview with Politico, saying, "The big thing for Republicans is to communicate that it is not acceptable for 40 million people in America not to have health insurance. But it's also unacceptable to turn our whole health care system over to the same people who ran Katrina and ran the Iraq war and [are] running the bailout.""
There are three things you need to understand about this issue: First, after the melamine scandal broke in China and sickened tens of thousands of babies, the FDA assured the American people that U.S. infant formula products were 100% safe and contained no melamine.
They were wrong.
Secondly, when the FDA's own tests discovered melamine contamination in U.S. infant formula products, it actively sought to hide the test results from the public. It only disclosed the test results after being forced to do so by a FOIA petition filed by the Associated Press. (We gotta thank AP for doing this, by the way. Nice job on their part!)
Thirdly, once the melamine contamination results were made public, the FDA abruptly announced that 1ppm (or less) of melamine in infant formula was suddenly "safe." This decision was based on no science whatseover and was obviously a panicked defense of the U.S. infant formula manufacturers whose products are contaminated with melamine.
the list of scientists, doctors, public health officials and government leaders who now believe that a vaccine-autism connection is at the least possible, and should be researched further.
Earlier this week, Dr. Peter Fletcher, former Chief Scientific Officer at the UK Department of Health was added. Now, eight more prominent researchers have joined the group. (See list below – they are the last eight names added)."
"....the Harvard researchers have also pushed for the aggressive treatment of the disease with antipsychotics, which are not licensed for such a use. The discovery that those same researchers concealed massive payments from the drug industry has cast further doubt on their motivations, and has led many to wonder if too many children are now being diagnosed and treated with potentially dangerous drugs...."
..."Breast cancer rates increased significantly in four Norwegian counties after women there began undergoing mammography every two years, according to a report in the November 24 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. Rates among regularly screened women remained higher than rates among women of the same age who were screened only once after six years, suggesting that some of the cancers detected by mammography may have spontaneously regressed had they not been discovered and treated."
...."The findings do not answer the question of whether mammograms prevent deaths from breast cancer, the authors note. "Instead, our findings simply provide new insight on what is arguably the major harm associated with mammographic screening, namely, the detection and treatment of cancers that would otherwise regress," they conclude."
..."This does not mean breast cancer should be ignored or not treated. After all, breast cancer is the second leading cause of death among American women. But the extraordinarily good and hopeful news is that it appears invasive breast cancer sometimes can be destroyed naturally -- at least in some people -- by the body's own innate defenses."
In his first book, Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills (Health Press, 1994), Dr. Blaylock made the connection between food additives (in particular, monosodium glutamate and aspartame) and degenerative diseases of the nervous system — Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and ALS.
Citing new studies, Dr. Blaylock revisits the increasingly inescapable relationship between food chemistry and degenerative disorders.
..."Tonight I want to have an unpleasant talk with you about a problem unprecedented in our history. With the exception of preventing war, this is the greatest challenge our country will face during our lifetimes. The energy crisis has not yet overwhelmed us, but it will if we do not act quickly."
"Because we are now running out of gas and oil, we must prepare quickly for a third change, to strict conservation and to the use of coal and permanent renewable energy sources, like solar power."
"The sixth principle, and the cornerstone of our policy, is to reduce the demand through conservation. Our emphasis on conservation is a clear difference between this plan and others which merely encouraged crash production efforts. Conservation is the quickest, cheapest, most practical source of energy. Conservation is the only way we can buy a barrel of oil for a few dollars. It costs about $13 to waste it."
"The tenth principle is that we must start now to develop the new, unconventional sources of energy we will rely on in the next century."
--Reduce the annual growth rate in our energy demand to less than two percent.
--Reduce gasoline consumption by ten percent below its current level.
--Cut in half the portion of United States oil which is imported, from a potential level of 16 million barrels to six million barrels a day.
--Establish a strategic petroleum reserve of one billion barrels, more than six months' supply.
--Increase our coal production by about two thirds to more than 1 billion tons a year.
--Insulate 90 percent of American homes and all new buildings.
--Use solar energy in more than two and one-half million houses.
"Other generation of Americans have faced and mastered great challenges. I have faith that meeting this challenge will make our own lives even richer. If you will join me so that we can work together with patriotism and courage, we will again prove that our great nation can lead the world into an age of peace, independence and freedom."
"One of the worst types of drivel is naturopathy. This "specialty" advertises itself as "medicine-plus", but really it's "healing-minus": minus the evidence, minus the training, minus intelligent thought."
..."First, like all fake doctors, this place has lots of testimonials in place of real evidence. I don't list testimonials at my office. It's tacky, and it doesn't give a measure of success in keeping people healthy. All it measures is how much someone liked a doctor as a person."
....."You sound threatened...!! We just lost our 9 year old to cancer at Seattle children's...what an education! after his death our Harvard educated doctor and others told us they knew he would die!! and that "they wanted us to have hope from the chemo and other treatment they provided". well that was a change from what they were saying during treatment...treatment that was essentially anything that came from a pharmaceutical company.
This selling us hope at a very high price is what the establishment is going after homeopathic and natural cure companies for!! shouldn't I be able to choose the type of hope..false or real that I want.
until you wake up and and open up to alternatives and integrate progressive approaches in your practice, you are only doing your patients and yourself harm. Yes, the problem is systemic and there are no easy answers...but clearly bashing as you say "well intentioned professionals" only discredits you!"
..."At issue is Mr. Daschle's work since leaving the Senate four years ago as a board member of the Mayo Clinic and a highly paid adviser to health care clients at the law and lobbying firm Alston & Bird.
In a detailed list of campaign promises, Mr. Obama pledged that "no political appointees in an Obama administration will be permitted to work on regulations or contracts directly and substantially related to their prior employer for two years."
..."Of course, in addition to Daschle's personal conflicts of interest, there is also the matter of his wife, Linda Daschle, who has been a lobbyist for many years."SOURCE
"By nominating Tom Daschle to head up the Department, President Elect Obama has selected a man who has demonstrated an unflinching willingness to question vaccine safety, and to fight for the rights of those people who believe they have been, or may be, seriously injured by certain vaccinations."
..."The military has reported that up to 2% of all military service members may have received debilitating injuries from vaccines they were given. That could mean upwards of 48,000 men and women, some of them likely wounded by the same anthrax vaccine that Senator Daschle was trying to kill.
Again, I am sure that Senator Daschle is not anti-vaccine, and I have no idea what his views are on the vaccine-autism debate today.
But I do know that, six years ago, he said that "mercury-based vaccine preservatives actually have caused autism in children." And I know that he tried to stop production of a vaccine that he felt was hurting far too many people.
Seems to me that there are two camps developing in reference to the hot topic of vaccination. Fear seems to have underpinnings in most people sentiments, be it getting a dreaded life altering disease like Whooping cough or will the vaccine cause Autism or some other horrible reaction. Good and credible information is key for many of us to make good choices for ourselves and our families, and there is a lot of information much of it mis-information or information that is complex and confusing. Doctor have a Legal and Ethical obligation to have a communication process with patients that can be referred to as informed consent, this includes but is not limited to disclosing and discussing the risks and benefits of a treatment or proceedure.
Here is a link to there website if you think about going...Golgi Clinic
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