Published: October 23 2009 16:56 | Last updated: October 23 2009 16:56
Sunlight 10,000 IU from 15-20 minutes of midday summer sun Oysters 270 International Units (IU) of vitamin D per half-dozen Dried shiitake mushrooms 172 IU per 100g
Reinhold Vieth is frustrated. A thin, bald professor at the University of Toronto’s Department of Laboratory Medicine and Patho-biology, Vieth is among the most knowledgeable people in the world on the subject of vitamin D. He began studying it as a graduate student in 1974 and hasn’t changed his focus since. “I stick with vitamin D and follow it where it goes,” he says.
In recent years, vitamin D has been going to some exciting places. Reports of new and promising studies seem to emerge almost weekly. A 2007 analysis of vitamin D studies found that individuals with higher vitamin D levels are significantly – as much as 50 per cent – less likely to develop colorectal cancer. Another 2007 study found that women who took 1,100 International Units (IU) of vitamin D per day together with a calcium supplement reduced their overall cancer risk by 60 per cent. And the excitement is not only about cancer prevention. Low vitamin D levels have been linked to an increased risk of osteoporosis, heart disease, multiple sclerosis, type 1 diabetes, depression and rheumatoid arthritis, among other diseases. Perhaps not surprisingly, in light of the other studies, one recent review of the health records of more than 13,000 Americans found that individuals with the lowest vitamin D levels were 26 per cent more likely, in an eight-year period, to die than those with the highest levels.
So why is Dr Vieth so frustrated? You might think he’d have cause for celebration. But for him and other vitamin D researchers around the world, the good news comes with a bitter aftertaste. They believe they can prove vitamin D could help millions live longer and be healthier and yet they have not been able to convince their own governments.
In the US and Canada, official vitamin D policy is set by the Institute of Medicine. And in the opinion of Vieth, the current recommendations – 200 International Units per day for people under 50, 400 for people aged 51-70, and 600 for those 71 and older – are outrageously low. Bruce Hollis, professor of paediatrics at the Medical University of South Carolina, calls 400 IU a day “a joke”. That’s because the best research suggests that to achieve the higher vitamin D blood levels associated with disease prevention, most adults in the US would need to take 1,000-2,000 IU a day: five to 10 times more than the current official recommendation for adults.
In the UK, the government’s Committee on Medical Aspects of Food and Nutrition Policy has declined to set a “Reference Nutrient Intake” value for people “leading a normal lifestyle”, arguing that you can get the vitamin D you need from food and sunlight. But they fall in line with the Americans where they do make recommendations: for people confined indoors, the elderly and pregnant women, they suggest a daily intake of 10 micrograms a day. That’s equal to 400 IU.
. . .
Mackerel 643 IU per 100g. Halibut gives you 230 IU per 100g, pickled herring 113 IU per 100 Tinned sardines 23 IU per 12g fish. Tinned salmon gives you 550 IU per 100g, tinned tuna 270 IU per 100g
Vitamin D was discovered in the early 20th century as scientists searched for a cure for rickets, a disease that softens the bones of children, leaving them bowlegged and deformed. It had been known for some time that children in cities were more likely to suffer from rickets than those in the countryside. But it wasn’t until the 1920s that scientists in the US and UK realised rickets was caused by a vitamin D deficiency, caused in city kids by lack of sunlight. We obtain our other vitamins from our food; but while it’s possible to get vitamin D from oily fish and some other foods, most of the vitamin D in our bodies doesn’t come from diet at all but from a chemical process that takes place when the sun’s ultraviolet light strikes our skin.
In the 1950s and 1960s, when American and other dietary guidelines first specified vitamin D intakes of up to 400 IU for adults, nobody understood that vitamin D could do anything other than regulate calcium. And since 200 IU is enough to prevent rickets in children – assuming they have at least a moderate amount of calcium in their diet – it was assumed that 200 IU was sufficient. It was only in the following decades, as scientists came to understand how vitamin D works in our bodies, that the picture changed.
After it forms in our skin, vitamin D undergoes two critical transformations. First our liver metabolises it, turning it into calcidiol. If you have your vitamin D blood levels checked, it’s the amount of calcidiol in your blood that will be tested. From the liver, calcidiol makes its way to the kidneys, where it is turned into calcitriol, arguably the most potent steroid hormone in the body. In other words, while vitamin D is lumped together with other vitamins, by the time our bodies are done with it, it has more in common with testosterone or oestrogen than with vitamins A or C.
If you have only a small amount of D in your body, it will all be used by the kidneys to produce calcitriol and maintain blood calcium levels. But when there is more vitamin D available, something very different happens. As scientists have discovered in recent decades, it’s not only the kidneys that can make calcitriol from the calcidiol produced in the liver. Many tissues throughout the body can as well. These tissues use the hormone locally, within the cells, to regulate their behaviour.
“Calcidiol is like a blank piece of paper,” Vieth explains. “And calcitriol is like the message written on to it. Calcitriol is needed by our bodies to convey many kinds of messages, and virtually every cell in our body has a receptor that can read and respond to it.”
The first real evidence for the cancer-fighting properties of vitamin D emerged in the early 1980s, when researchers found that if they added calcitriol to immature malignant leukaemia cells, the cells would stop growing. They could only guess why this was, but scientists have since shown that vitamin D interacts with an unusually large number of genes and has the apparent ability to turn them on and off.
. . .
Hard-boiled eggs 26 IU per egg; 25 IU per egg yolk Fortified cows’ milk 250 IU per pint Fortified orange juice 270 IU per pint
This new understanding of how vitamin D works in our bodies, together with a large quantity of evidence of the benefits of higher vitamin D levels, might make it seem like an obvious move for the world’s governments to adjust their recommendations for daily intake. But Vieth and other vitamin D advocates have good reason to think there will be minimal changes made to dietary guidelines. Last December, the World Health Organisation’s International Agency for Research on Cancer issued a 465-page report that concluded there was no need to raise vitamin D recommendations.
The reason is not a lack of research but a lack of the right kind of research, say vitamin D sceptics. Most evidence for vitamin D and health is based on epidemiological surveys. Many of these studies, particularly early ones, were based on geography. Epidemiologists have found, for example, that multiple sclerosis – a disease of the central nervous system – and a number of cancers become more common the farther you move away from the equator. In the US, you are four times more likely to develop MS if you live in a state that borders Canada than if you live in the south. The theory is that as you move away from the equator, you receive less “UVB” ultraviolet sunlight (UVB is a subtype of UV light and the most important for vitamin D production), and thus fewer opportunities to make vitamin D in your skin.
This may sound like persuasive research to lay readers, but for scientists, such correlations aren’t generally convincing, as there could be plenty of other possible reasons why people living at higher latitudes are more likely to suffer from MS.
The more compelling evidence for the connection between vitamin D and disease onset comes from the wide range of studies in recent years that have actually measured vitamin D levels in blood. But even these studies only show correlations. They can demonstrate, as one Harvard School of Public Health study did in 2006, that the vitamin D status of healthy young adults can predict their future risk of developing MS, but they can’t definitively demonstrate that higher vitamin D levels prevent MS. It’s possible, for example, that there is another mechanism at work in the early stage of MS that causes vitamin D levels to drop during the first stage of a progressive disease (see box below for more on MS).
The link to MS
Multiple sclerosis is thought to be caused by a mix of environmental and genetic factors. And while scientists are still trying to unravel how these interact, a growing body of research points to vitamin D as a key environmental factor.
In people with MS, the immune system malfunctions and attacks the protective coating around nerve cells known as myelin sheaths. The disease can affect sight, balance, continence, speech and more, and reduces life expectancy. Vitamin D’s influence on MS – and other autoimmune diseases such as type 1 diabetes – is thought to be related to the vitamin’s ability to suppress autoimmune responses.
The link between vitamin D and MS was for many years thought to be wild speculation. Now more and more studies point in the same direction: people who have higher levels of vitamin D in their blood early in life are less likely to get MS later in life. Also, MS patients have been found to have low levels of vitamin D in their blood– and the levels appear to be even lower during relapses.
One small study published this year found that MS patients who took high doses of vitamin D – an average of 14,000 IU a day for a year – had significantly fewer relapses than those MS patients who took an average of 1,000 IU a day. Studies have also shown that vitamin D prevents experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), the mouse model of human MS.
Few mainstream researchers would disagree that a single correlation study should not be given much weight in determining public policy. It’s only when looked at in aggregate that these survey studies – together with the many small clinical trials and our new knowledge of how vitamin D works at the cellular level – begin to make a powerful case for increasing the current vitamin D recommendations.
And yet, if the WHO report of 2008 is any indicator, such a case isn’t always strong enough to sway a sceptical committee. All the recent research notwithstanding, vitamin D is still missing the gold standard of evidence-based medicine: large, randomised controlled trials which can demonstrate its ability to prevent major diseases. The WHO report concludes that “we should wait for the results of new randomised trials” before changing vitamin D recommendations.
It’s a position echoed in the UK by the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (Nice), which advises the government on whether drugs should be paid for by the state. After reviewing the vitamin D literature, in 2003 Nice pointed to the absence of randomised clinical trials and suggested that there was no need even to recommend vitamin D to pregnant women – a conclusion that was overruled by the government’s chief medical officer after paediatricians objected.
. . .
For Britons, the most alarming aspect of these government responses is that people living in the UK have so much to lose. For much of the year, it is impossible in this country to obtain vitamin D from the sun – for the same reason it is impossible to suffer sunburn. There is simply not enough UVB ultraviolet radiation in our winter and autumn sunlight. And unless you happen to consume a lot of oily fish, it’s very hard to get much vitamin D from your diet. (In addition to oily fish, eggs and fortified foods have small amounts of vitamin D.) It’s no surprise, then, that a 2007 study of middle-aged British adults found that 90 per cent had less-than-optimal levels of vitamin D during winter and spring. In the US, by comparison, three-quarters of teenagers and adults are estimated to be deficient in vitamin D.
Advocates of changes to the vitamin D recommendations in the UK and elsewhere don’t disagree that large, randomised control trials are important. The trouble is, trials that could convince policymakers to advise an across-the-board increase to vitamin D recommendations for all children and adults might never take place.
There are a number of obstacles to the research, but the simplest, and biggest, is money. Vitamin D is not a proprietary compound. It’s cheap and easy to produce. A bottle of 180 1,000-IU capsules can be purchased online for about £9. No pharmaceutical company is going to put up the many millions of dollars necessary to conduct the trials.
Michael Gleimer, a research fellow at Harvard Medical School who has no connection to the vitamin D controversy, notes that it is easy for a medical research fellow to do a small-scale study on something like vitamin D. “It is non-controversial, easy to get approval for, and popular-sciency enough that it may land you in the science section of BBC news,” Gleimer says. “But to do a large, definitive, long-term study, one needs cash. This is something a pharmaceutical company could do. But why would they want to push vitamin D? It’s cheap and there is no patent for it.”
Vitamin D also has to overcome the baggage of other vitamins. Asked for his thoughts on the US and Canada’s current daily vitamin D recommendations, Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, said that “similar ‘signals’ regarding other vitamins and nutritional supplements – suggesting that they decreased the incidence of certain cancers – have not been borne out in subsequent randomised clinical trials.”
The main culprit here is vitamin E, which caused a great deal of excitement in the early 1990s. The enthusiasm for vitamin E at the time was great enough to convince the US government to invest millions in just the sort of large clinical trials that have yet to be conducted for vitamin D. But E turned out to be a disappointment, showing no benefits whatsoever in preventing cancer.
There’s a third obstacle in the way of large clinical trials with vitamin D. Like other nutrients, it faces a systemic problem. A typical clinical trial follows what Vieth calls a “pharmaceutical drug company model”, where a group of sick people are given a carefully selected dose of a drug to see if it makes a difference to their condition, compared with a second group of sick people who receive a placebo.
Fortified tofu 120 IU per 80g Vitamin D capsules 100-5,000 IU; most multivitamin pills contain 400 IU of vitamin D Cod liver oil 450 IU per teaspoon; capsule amounts vary
The drawback of this model is that it doesn’t work nearly as well if the goal of the study is not to determine if a person gets better but to determine if the substance can prevent you from becoming ill at all. “It takes a great deal of time and huge population to look at healthy people and see what develops,” says Mariela Glandt, an endocrinologist and the former director of the Diabetes Clinical Trials Center at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem. “It’s just much more expensive and time-consuming.”
Not even the recent announcement of a $20m study by Harvard Medical School and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston is enough to make Vieth optimistic. Funded by National Institutes of Health and other institutions, the research will look at vitamin D and omega-3 fatty acids (which have also shown disease-fighting promise) in the primary prevention of chronic disease in adults ages 60 and over. If the results are good, they could help make the case for raising vitamin D recommendations for older adults. But Vieth believes it would still be difficult to persuade policy-makers of the need to raise vitamin D levels for everyone. “‘If you start with people older than age 65 and do clinical trials with them’, policy-makers say, ‘Why should we impose this drug on everyone in society?’”
And if it remains challenging to raise enough money to study prevention in older adults, it’s nearly impossible to find the money to study younger people; a younger population is less susceptible to disease, so any convincing study would require an enormous number of participants.
. . .
Then there is a problem that is more specific to vitamin D. The latest research suggests that it takes 1,000 IU a day or more to achieve vitamin D’s anti-cancer benefits. But often when a smaller vitamin D trial does receive funding, it is conducted with the current lower vitamin D recommendation – and then fails to prove effective.
These failures, such as a highly publicised Lancet study in 2005 that found 800 IU of vitamin D and calcium given in prevention trials (trials in which many participants did not take the supplements regularly) did not prevent bone fractures, are then used by review committees as grounds for leaving the current vitamin D recommendations in place.
It was precisely such studies that convinced the authors of the WHO report that there was no need for action on vitamin D. The report concluded that vitamin D recommendations did not need to be raised because there was not yet evidence that supplementing with 400-840 IU of vitamin D could prevent cancer. What the conclusion left out, as though the authors couldn’t imagine anyone taking more than 840 IU, was a randomised clinical trial which found that 1,110 IU taken daily is effective in preventing cancer in women.
With so many factors weighing against a large vitamin D trial for anyone who is not old or sick with cancer or another serious disease, the best hope for advocates of higher vitamin D recommendations may be convincing the medical authorities and the public to take the epidemiology survey studies more seriously. (Even if a large trial did get off the ground, it would probably be at least a decade before there were results.)
It’s not an impossible task. In other instances, the medical community has been ready to recognise survey evidence: “The evidence favouring vitamin D is probably as good as the evidence that shows smoking is bad for you,” Vieth says, explaining that just as smoking is correlated with certain cancers, so are low vitamin D levels. “But when these government officials see the same kind of evidence that deals with vitamin D as they see with smoking they go, ‘Oh wait a minute. We can’t really trust this.’”
Vieth pauses, as though he can barely stand to talk about such a miserable state of affairs. “It’s easy to say ‘don’t do something – don’t smoke’. It’s very hard to say ‘take this. Take vitamin D.’”
Sam Apple is a regular contributor to the FT Weekend Magazine and founder and publisher of the news websiteTheFasterTimes.com
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Can we overdose?
One of the debates surrounding vitamin D is whether too much can be toxic. The US’s Institute of Medicine’s recommendations – unchanged since 1997 – were influenced in part by a 1984 study concluding that 3,800 IU of vitamin D per day could cause hypercalcemia, or too much calcium in the blood. Symptoms include kidney stones, vomiting and muscle atrophy.
But the 1984 study was flawed: it failed to measure the amount of vitamin D administered; based on the findings of other studies, it now looks as though subjects were given 100 times more vitamin D than intended.Moreover, how could it be that 3,800 IU was toxic, when 20 minutes of midday sunbathing in the summer makes at least 10,000 IU of vitamin D in our bodies?
In 1999, Reinhold Vieth (pictured right) published a review of vitamin D research in response to the IOM conclusions. In it, he argued that there was no evidence that amounts lower than 20,000 IU a day could be toxic. “Throughout my preparation of this review, I was amazed at the lack of evidence supporting statements about the toxicity of moderate doses of vitamin D,” Vieth wrote.
Studies have since shown 10,000 IU a day of vitamin D to be safe. While any substance will become toxic in excess, vitamin D researchers today accept that the current vitamin D recommendations could be more than quadrupled with no fear of toxicity.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010. You may share using our article tools. Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.
What's in Your Pet's Food? Is your dog or cat eating risk ingredients? Chinese imports? Petsumer Report tells the 'rest of the story' on over 1800 cat foods, dog foods, and pet treats. For each review you'll discover if ingredients are U.S. only or imported, human quality meat or pet grade meat, shelf life, red flag or risk ingredients, and recall history. New reviews added monthly. 30 Day Satisfaction Guarantee. www.PetsumerReport.com
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The audit also found a $5.1 billion "unexplained variance" between the total amount the agency took in last year and the amount its detailed tax files said it took in.
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As associate counsel in the Clintonadministration, Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan rewrote a report by the AmericanCollege of Obstetrics and Gynecology to strengthen its recommendation that partial-birth abortion remain legal, reports WND columnist Jill Stanek today.
A ban on the procedure, which kills a baby partially emerged from the birth canal by crushing its skull, was performed on pregnant women in the late stages of development until 2003 when both houses of Congress, in bipartisan fashion, overwhelmingly voted to ban it. Congress had twice banned the procedure during the Clinton administration, but the president vetoed the bills both times. In 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the ban as constitutional.
As Stanek reveals in her column today, the Ob-Gyn group issued findings in 1996 to bolster the Clinton administration's opposition to the ban, but it was rewritten by Kagan, a lawyer, in an apparent effort to make it more persuasive.
"Documents released from the Clinton library show ACOG inexplicably (because no one from ACOG will now respond to press inquiries for an explanation) submitted its draft unhelpful opinion of partial birth abortion for review to the White House in the face of a ban being proposed in Congress and then changed it to suit Clinton's pro-abortion agenda," Stanek writes.
However, a select panel convened by ACOG could identify no circumstances under which this procedure, as defined above, would be the only option to gave the life or preserve the health of the woman. Notwithstanding this conclusion, ACOG strongly believes that decisions about medical treatment must be made by the doctor, in consultation with the patient, based upon the woman's particular circumstances.
"In other words, ACOG found no exceptional reason for partial birth abortion's existence," Stanek writes. "Legalized abortion could get along just fine without it. Nevertheless, in ACOG's curious opinion, PBA should remain legal."
Kagan wrote in a White House memo that the findings "would be a disaster."
Kagan then offered a revision that was accepted by the Ob-Gyn group.
Here are the edits Kagan gave ACOG (click to enlarge):
Kagan's suggestion on the key point of contention read:
An intact D+X, however, may be the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman ... .
The final version of ACOG's January 1997 used Kagan's language verbatim:
A select panel convened by ACOG could identify no circumstances under which this procedure, as defined above, would be the only option to save the life or preserve the health of the woman. An intact D&X, however, may be the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman, and only the doctor, in consultation with the patient, based upon the woman's particular circumstances can make this decision.
Stanek concludes Kagan "has demonstrated she doesn't let reason, facts, medicine, or science stand in the way of her pro-abortion ideology."
FEMA Planning Forced Evacuations,Gulf Dead Zone Grows as No-Fishing Area Expand,Kangaroos being poisoned by fluorides,Obama Strategy for G-20 in Ottawa:Push Euro Down, Drive Renminbi Up, Attack Germany, &Keep Toxic Derivatives in Charge of the World Economy
It has been reported that our well-oiled government is planning mass evacuations of Gulf coast cities. Sources close to the government like investigative journalist Wayne Madsenreported: "Plans are being put in place for the mandatory evacuation of New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Mandeville, Hammond, Houma, Belle Chase, Chalmette, Slidell, Biloxi, Gulfport, Pensacola, Hattiesburg, Mobile, Bay Minette, Fort Walton Beach, Panama City, Crestview, and Pascagoula."
Council on Foreign Relations member, Matt Simmons, was quoted on June 23rd in theWashington Post, "We're going to have to evacuate the gulf states. Can you imagine evacuating 20 million people? . . . This story is 80 times worse than I thought."
And to add to the growing speculation that evacuations were being planned, Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen in a Gulf oil spill press conference on June 25th suggested that evacuation plans were underway. He even discussed some of the logistics: "We would designate essential and non-essential personnel, and non-essential personnel would basically take shelter. Ideally, we would not do this at the same time they are trying to do an evacuation of citizens, so there's a staging of this, and we actually would coordinate that with FEMA and the local governments."
If Katrina was any indication of how the U.S. government handles mass evacuations, then responsible residents should begin planning their move now before they are forced to leave at gunpoint. Remember military in the streets and "temporary" FEMA housing? It seems clearer by the day that mass evacuations may be inevitable as several imminent threats to human health are converging with no end in sight. Experts are sounding the alarm on many fronts:
Since these health risks do not carry the immediate shock effect of a powerful Category 5 hurricane, it may be difficult to convince residents to leave the area especially with the EPA's history of lying about air quality. Therefore, the authorities may have to use even harsher measures to get citizens to comply with evacuation orders. And where will the government put 20 million displaced Americans?
Over the years researches have revealed that FEMA camps do in fact exist and surely they will be utilized in an event of this scale. Government documents indicate many more have been built since the last time the U.S. government actively used them to lock up Japanese Americans in internment camps after Pearl Harbor. Surely, FEMA will call these locations something mild like temporary "Relocation" camps to soothe the scared public.
With no viable solutions to stop the oil from gushing and the deadly toxins from leaching into all life systems, it seems the region may become a dead zone for decades to come. Clearly, free-thinking residents must be contemplating their future along the Gulf coast as quite bleak. For Gulf Coasters, it may be wise to evaluate relocation options now before FEMA invites you camping.
Fishery Closure Boundary as of June 28, 2010
(Credit: NOA)
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said it had decided to expand the fishing closure from its current northern boundary as a precautionary measure to make sure consumers don't eat seafood contaminated by the gulf oil spill. All told, a little more than 80,000 square miles, or 33 percent of Gulf of Mexico's federal waters, are now considered a closed area.
Because this remains an evolving situation, NOAA said that it will retest the area and reopen fisheries when they are deemed safe.
Meanwhile, commercial fishermen in the Gulf, who harvested more than one billion pounds of fish and shellfish in 2008, face another threat to their livelihood: a growing "dead zone" with little or no oxygen in the water.
Growing Dead Zone
Scientists tracking this phenomenon for the last few years say the affected area measures between 6,500 and 7,800 square miles - a stretch approximately the size of New Jersey. The dead zone has averaged 6,000 mile the previous five years.
Until the Deepwater Horizon explosion, the chief culprit for the Gulf dead zone was thought to consist of farmland runoff containing fertilizers and livestock waste. Each spring, waste products carrying nitrogen and phosphorus flow down the Mississippi River and into the Gulf, feeding what's been explosive growth in algae. After the algae die and decompose bottom-dwelling bacteria consume oxygen that otherwise would be available for bottom and near-bottom waters. Thus, the creation of the dead zone.
Dead zone in the Gulf
(Credit: Donald Scavia)
The presence of millions of gallons of oil has the potential to exacerbate the problem. As the oil breaks down, the chemical process consumes oxygen and also reduces the diffusion of oxygen from the air into the water. At the same time, the oil might also restrict the growth of hypoxia-fueling algae, helping to limit the size of the Gulf dead zone.
The five largest Gulf dead zones on record have occurred since 2001. The biggest occurred in 2002 and measured 8,484 square miles.
"The growth of these dead zones is an ecological time bomb.
Without determined local, regional and national efforts to control them, we are putting major fisheries at risk," said University of Michigan aquatic ecologist Donald Scavia.
He added that the presence of toxic oil this year has created a "one-two punch that could seriously diminish valuable Gulf commercial and recreational fisheries."
"While there is speculation out there as to how the oil spill might impact the dead zone, we are simply not sure at this point," he said in an email interview with CBSNews.com. "As bacteria decompose the oil, it will use up oxygen and that may make things worse. Also, oil in the water may impede the transfer of oxygen from upper layers to the lower layers and that could make it worse." Ironically, the presence of oily water may prove a short-term boon in terms of slowing the growth of algae. Scavia said the oil could be toxic to algae, reducing its production, and minimizing the amount of organic matter that gets decomposed in the bottom water.
"That would make things better," he said, adding that the oil may shade the algae and also reduce production, making the dead zone better this year.
"In either case, the combo of oil and the dead zone is not good for the coastal communities," he said.
Kangaroos being poisoned by fluoride
Tuesday, June 29, 2010 by: David Gutierrez, staff writer
NaturalNews) Hundreds of kangaroos have been euthanized due to acute fluoride poisoning in the Australian state of Victoria, the country's Environment Protection Authority (EPA) has announced.
The poisonings appear to be occurring due to emissions of fluoride from the Alcoa aluminum smelter at Portland and the Austral Bricks factory at Craigieburn, the state's first and second biggest emitters of fluoride dust, respectively. According to Bruce Dawson of the EPA, the toxic chemical is being absorbed by nearby plants that kangaroos and other animals forage on. The animals may also be breathing in the chemical directly.
The levels of fluoride being emitted by Alcoa and Austral are fully legal under Australian law. The smelter emits 120 tons of the dust per year, while the factory emits 66 tons.
Fluoride can produce discoloration and deformity of teeth and bones, a problem known as "fluorosis" that has been well documented in cattle and humans. According to the Sunday Age, more than 200 kangaroos in Victoria have been euthanized after suffering from lameness caused by fluorosis.
The EPA was first alerted to the problem in 2005, although wildlife workers had noticed lameness in kangaroos in the area as early as 2001. According to Jenny Charles of Melbourne University, 90 percent of 130 kangaroos living near the Alcoa smelter showed signs of dental fluorosis, and 25 percent had visible lumps in their legs or arms.
Forty-eight of 49 kangaroos autopsied after being culled from the smelter area in a single day were suffering from excessive bone growth and lesions on their ankles, calves and paws.
''They were in real pain,'' said wildlife shelter operator Manfred Zabinskas, recounting his horror at seeing so many sick kangaroos.
Although the kangaroos at the brick factory site had lower levels of fluoride in their bodies, their fluorosis symptoms were even worse than those seen near the smelter.
'Two police officers stopped a teenage photographer from taking pictures of an Armed Forces Day parade - and then claimed they did not need a law to detain him.
Jules Mattsson, a 16-year-old freelancer from Hackney, east London, was photographing police cadets on Saturday when he was ordered to stop and give his personal details by an adult cadet officer who claimed he needed parental permission to capture images of the cadets. After arguing his rights in a series of protracted legal debates with officers, the sixth former says he was pushed down a set of stairs and detained for breaching the peace until the parade passed.
He is now considering taking legal action against the Met which has often been criticised for its heavy handed approach towards photographers in the capital.'
'As unconfirmed reports of an imminent Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities pick up steam in the Middle Eastern media, a US-based strategic intelligence company has released a chart showing US naval carriers massing near Iranian waters.
The chart, published by Stratfor and obtained by the Zero Hedge financial blog, shows that over the last few weeks a naval carrier -- the USS Harry S Truman -- has been positioned in the north Indian Ocean, not far from the Strait of Hormuz, which leads into the Persian Gulf. The carrier joins the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, which was already located in the area. The chart is dated June 23, 2010.'
'The Jerusalem District Planning and Building Committee is set to approve an unprecedented master plan that calls for the expansion of Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, a move largely based on construction on privately owned Arab property. The committee's proposal would codify the municipality's pl anning policy for the entire city. In essence, Jerusalem would uniformly apply its zoning and construction procedures to both halves of the city.
Before giving the go-ahead, the committee will give objectors to the plan 60 days to submit their reservations. This is the decisive stage in the planning process, because only rarely are plans altered. Once the 60-day period expires, the plan's approval is a fait accompli. Such a development would probably invite a hail of criticism from the Palestinians, Arab countries and the international community.'
'More than three billion dollars in cash has been flown out of Kabul in recent years amid fears that ill-gotten gains from corruption and narcotics are being stashed overseas, a report said Monday.
The Wall Street Journal said the cash -- more than the Afghan government collects in tax and customs revenue annually -- is legally declared and packed into suitcases or cargo pallets on flights out of Kabul International Airport. "A lot of this looks like our tax dollars being stolen. And opium, of course," a US official who is investigating corruption and Taliban financing told the newspaper.'
'A new study, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry and headed by psychiatrist John H. Gilmore, professor of psychiatry and Director of the UNC Schizophrenia Research, claims to be able to detect "brain abnormalities associated with schizophrenia risk" in infants just a few weeks old. We would like to point out the obvious flaw in this bogus study; there is no medical/scientific test in existence that schizophrenia is a physical disease or brain abnormality to start with.
There is not one chemical imbalance test, X-ray, MRI or any other test for schizophrenia, not one. So with no evidence of medical abnormality to start with, the "associated with schizophrenia risk" amounts to what George Orwell called Doublespeak (language that deliberately disguises, distorts, misleads)—it means nothing.'
'All individuals across the United State will possess a constitutional right to bear arms regardless of their state or city laws banning firearms. The US Supreme Court ruled by a 5-4 margin on Monday to restrict the jurisdiction of state and city governments to impose controls on gun ownership.
The new ruling by the top court extends gun ownership rights to every location across America, including the major city of Chicago which has banned handguns for the past 28 years. Justices said that according to the US Constitution individual Americans have the right to keep and carry arms for self-defense.'
'Thousands of public and private sector workers in Greece are set to stage a nationwide strike protesting austerity measures that include pension cuts.
As the economy continues to spiral downward in much of Europe, the General Confederation of Greek Workers (GSEE) and the Civil Servants' Confederation (ADEDY), which combined represent 2.5 million workers from both public and private sectors, have rallied tens of thousands of people to take part in the fifth national strike since February in the capital city of Athens and other cities.'
#Avigdor Lieberman, Israel's far-right foreign minister, set out this week what he called a "blueprint for a resolution to the conflict" with the Palestinians that demands most of the country's large Palestinian minority be stripped of citizenship and relocated outside Israel's future borders.
Mr Lieberman said that Israel faced growing diplomatic pressure for a full withdrawal to the Green Line, the pre-1967 border, and if such a partition were implemented, "the conflict will inevitably pass beyond those borders and into Israel". He accused many of Israel's 1.3 million Palestinian citizens of acting against Israel while their leaders "actively assist those who want to destroy the Jewish state".'
'British Prime Minister David Cameron has warned against "the destruction" of energy giant BP at a time when the company's shares value have fallen to a record 14-year low. While the London-based oil group is dealing with a disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, Cameron, on Saturday, urged transparency over its liability in addressing the crisis.
"I think it is also in all our long-term interests that there is some clarity, some finality, to all of this, so that we don't at the same time see the destruction of a company that is important for all our interests," said Cameron, who is attending the G8 summit in Canada, AFP reported.'
'They have acknowledged that meat, fish, eggs and dairy products on their shelves could contain "indirect" GM ingredients. Every major supermarket in the country said it was unable to provide a guarantee that it was not selling products from animals given GM feed. Even''high-end'' retailers said only the more expensive organic ranges were certain to have been produced without any GM involvement.
The disclosures have reignited the debate about the use of genetic technology in food production following health and environmental concerns. Opponents of the technology claimed that retailers were using a loophole in labelling rules to "trick" the public over the link to GM.'
'Downtown Toronto has been transformed into a police state ahead of the G8 and G20 conferences, with police given unprecedented powers to to arrest anyone near the security zone who refuses to identify themselves or agree to a police search. The Toronto Star reports: "The regulation was made under Ontario's Public Works Protection Act and was not debated in the Legislature. According to a provincial spokesperson, the cabinet action came in response to an 'extraordinary request' by Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair, who wanted additional policing powers shortly after learning the G20 was coming to Toronto."
The regulation gives the police authority to question anybody entering the restricted zone from June 14 until June 28, the day after the summits are scheduled to end. As Adam Radwanski of The Globe and Mail reports, there are no limits to police powers during the summit, and no clear legal precedent specifying what they can and can't do.'
'President Obama will be handed the power to shut down the Internet for at least four months without Congressional oversight if the Senate votes for the infamous Internet 'kill switch' bill, which was approved by a key Senate committee yesterday and now moves to the floor.
The Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, which is being pushed hard by Senator Joe Lieberman, would hand absolute power to the federal government to close down networks, and block incoming Internet traffic from certain countries under a declared national emergency.'
'Concerned that Lona hadn't taken her medications, Lonnie called 911 in the expectation that an emergency medical technician would be dispatched to the apartment to evaluate the bedridden 86-year-old woman. Instead, that call for help was answered by nearly a dozen armed tax-feeders employed by the El Reno Police Department.
Understandably alarmed — and probably more than a little disgusted — by the presence of uninvited armed strangers in her home, Lona ordered them to leave. This directive, issued by a fragile female octogenarian confined to a hospital-style bed and tethered to an oxygen tank, was interpreted as "aggressive" behavior by Officer Thomas Duran, who ordered one of his associates : "Taser her!"
'But, while the attack on Iran will be seen by the world as the main event, the real purpose for the war will be happening on Israel's doorstep. At the same time as Iran is being attacked, Israel, using the excuse of pre-empting retaliation for attacking Iran, will attack both Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza and then move to occupy south Lebanon up to the Litani River and the Gaza Strip. Israel will also likely fully occupy the West Bank.
This is the scenario that the US and Israel would prefer to see happen; a quick overwhelming move against all of Israel and America's enemies that concludes with the defeat of the Iranian regime and, thus, regime change, together with the demise of Hezbollah and Hamas. This then will give the Israelis a free hand in creating a Greater Israel that ultimately includes the Gaza Strip, south Lebanon up to the Litani River, the West Bank and the Golan Heights. It will also provide the US with an even stronger ally in the Middle East and also a neutered enemy.'
'In an impromptu news conference in the Jordanian capital, Amman , on 12 July, Fatah Secretary-General Farouk Kaddumi revealed that Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas and former Gaza strong man Muhammed Dahlan conspired to murder Yasser Arafat in connivance with Israel and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Kaddumi disclosed that Arafat had confided to him the transcript of a secret meeting involving Abbas, Dahlan , US intelligence officials as well as former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The meeting allegedly took place in March 22, 2004.'
As I have been saying for years from personal experience, Canada is one of the most draconian countries in the 'western' world
'While using his megaphone to inform the people of Toronto about G20 related issues we were surrounded by police who demanded our identification. When Charlie stated that he wishes to remain anonymous he was immediately detained and placed under arrest. The officer stated that Charlie was being detained under the "public works protection act" for failing to identify himself.'
'Please do not worry. Please do not fret about that one thing you always fret about, or that other thing, or even that third thing that might have something to do with erupting oil, dead pelicans and that sickening feeling in your gut that Something is Very Wrong Indeed.
I come bearing fabulous news. There is no longer any need to concern yourself with pesky trifles like love, a mortgage, child rearing, planting a garden, dreams, money, shoes, wristwatches, parking spaces, mysterious rashes, foreign policy, baseball, bridge tolls or generally caring about much of anything in particular.
I am delighted to report it will all be over soon. If not sooner. It's true.'
'A 16-year-old girl lost nearly all of her vision within 10 days of receiving the second course of her vaccine against the human papilloma virus (HPV), reports a case study in the Journal of Child Neurology. The HPV vaccine is designed to prevent infection by the strains of the virus that are responsible for the majority of cervical cancer and genital warts cases.
The study recounts the case of a previously healthy teenage girl who developed a headache on the left side of her head and began to lose vision in her right eye eight days after receiving her second HPV vaccine shot. Over the course of the following 48 hours, the pain spread across her head and she began to lose sight in her left eye as well.'
'Seven oxygen machines donated to the Palestinain Authority by a Norwegian development agency were seized by Israeli officials en route to hospitals in the West Bank and Gaza, the Ramallah-based health ministry said.
The machines, the ministry said in a Thursday statement, were confiscated by Israeli officials who claimed that the generators attached "came under the category of possible use for non-medical purposes" if they were delivered to the southern Gaza governorates. While only one generator was bound for southern Gaza, all seven were taken, the statement said, and "all were badly needed for medical treatment".'
'Israel has threatened to use military force to take the full control of a newly-discovered gas field partly in Lebanese waters in the Mediterranean Sea. Israel's Infrastructure Minister Uzi Landau made the remarks after Beirut announced that parts of the giant reserves actually belong to Lebanon and that it does not allow Tel Aviv to loot Lebanon's resources.
"Israel is racing to make the case a fait accompli and was quick to present itself as an oil emirate, ignoring the fact that, according to the maps, the deposit extends into Lebanese waters," Lebanese parliament speaker Nabih Berri said, adding that "Lebanon must take immediate action to defend its financial, political, economic and sovereign rights".'
… A 'BIBLICAL' CATASTROPHE THAT WILL AFFECT US ALL
THE 'SPILL' (UNCONTROLLED GUSH) WILL DEVASTATE AMERICA?
OH, YES, BUT THAT'S THE IDEA
The David Icke Newsletter Goes Out On Sunday
The toxic oil and gas are being added to by the lethal 'dispersant' being used by BP to (theoretically, for public consumption only) 'disperse the oil'. They are using Corexit 9500 which is so toxic it has been banned in Europe, although Europe is likely to get it anyway via the Gulf Stream.
Corexit is manufactured by a corporation called Nalco, once part of Exxon Mobil, and the current leadership includes executives from Exxon and BP. The European Union Times said of Corexit:
'A dire report prepared for President Medvedev by Russia's Ministry of Natural Resources is warning today that the British Petroleum (BP) oil and gas leak in the Gulf of Mexico is about to become the worst environmental catastrophe in all of human history threatening the entire eastern half of the North American continent with "total destruction" …
… Russian scientists are basing their apocalyptic destruction assessment due to BP's use of millions of gallons of the chemical dispersal agent known as Corexit 9500 which is being pumped directly into the leak of this wellhead over a mile under the Gulf of Mexico waters and designed, this report says, to keep hidden from the American public the full, and tragic, extent of this leak that is now estimated to be over 2.9 million gallons a day.'
BP has told the US government that 400,000 gallons of this environmental destroyer has been sprayed into the sea with another 805,000 gallons already ordered.
You might think at first hearing that it is blatantly crazy to use Corexit when there are some 12 other less toxic and more effective dispersants approved by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Two of those on the EPA list 'were found to be 100 percent effective on Gulf of Mexico crude, while the two Corexit products rated 56 percent and 63 percent effective'.
Well, yes, it is crazy, these people are crazy, but there is method in their madness, as I shall explain.
Police investigating child sex abuse allegations yesterday raided the home of the former head of Belgium's Roman Catholics. They seized a personal computer and documents belonging to Cardinal Godfried Danneels. Around 30 officers and prosecutors took part in raids on his home in Mechelen near Brussels and the archdiocesan palace, headquarters of the church in Belgium.
'A battle is under way in the British countryside to fight off plans for massive factory farms that would house thousands of animals in industrialised units without access to traditional grazing or foraging.
Plans for three large-scale units in England have encountered fierce resistance from campaigners who say they would cause extra noise, smell and disruption and cause more stress and disease for animals. Animal welfare organisations fear the proposals are signs that a new intensive system of agriculture could soon replace the UK's patchwork of small livestock farms.'
'The Japanese government has launched a campaign encouraging people to go to bed and get up extra early in order to reduce household carbon dioxide emissions. The Morning Challenge campaign, unveiled by the Environment Ministry, is based on the premise that swapping late night electricity for an extra hour of morning sunlight could significantly cut the nation's carbon footprint.'
Why is it that the U.S. state apparatus is standing in the way of any serious medical investigation into Mogellons disease? For the simple reason that it would inexorably lead to the covert biological war programmes of the 1950's. Hank Albarelli lifts the veil on a period - which may not necessarily be over - when the military-industrial complex proclaimed to safeguard the "free world" while testing new experiments on the civilian population that it purported to protect; a period when members of the medical profession - including the CDC - developed diseases that they should have been preventing but which they used instead to contaminate the very people they were supposed to protect.'
'Our first step then is to prevent banks from creating money each time they issue a loan. This step is actually remarkably simple – we just set a 'universal rule' that banks can only credit (put money into) an account if they simultaneously debit (take money out of) another account by the same amount. As is explained in this guide, this prevents money being created (or destroyed) within the banking system.'
'The chief constable who resigned amid allegations of financial wrongdoing and misuse of police equipment was also being investigated in connection with his force's dismissal of child abuse claims against a judge, The Times can disclose.
Terence Grange, who resigned from the Dyfed-Powys Police, had been accused by the judge's ex-wife of allowing his professional relationship with the judge to influence the force's treatment of the claims.'
Well, at least he could always get a job with Grampian Police.
'Liz Windsor, true to form, will have the unmitigated gall to unveil a statue of herself in Winnipeg on July 3, just before laying a piece of soil from Runnymede, where Magna Carta was signed, at the foundation of Canada's new "human rights museum", which hosts not a single exhibit of the genocide of Indians in Canada.
Some of us wrote to Queen Liz over two years ago, asking her to identify where the children who died at the hands of her church and state are buried. She never replied. But William Combes, who survived torture and starvation at the Catholic Indian residential school in Kamloops, B.C., wants the Queen to also explain what happened to ten native children who were last seen in her company in the fall of 1964, and disappeared forever.'
'As FEMA and other government agencies prepare for what is now being called the worst oil spill disaster in history, plans to evacuate the Tampa Bay area are in place. The plans would be announed in the event of a controlled burn of surface oil in the Gulf of Mexico, or if wind or other conditions are expected to take toxic fumes through Tampa Bay.
This practice has been used by the US Forestry service, when fire and smoke threaten the health and well being of people. The elderly and those with respiratory problems would be more susceptible to health risks, in the event of a controlled burn.'
'The offshore drilling moratorium that is falling apart in court already contains one major loophole -- and there's little surprise which company is threading the needle. BP plans to begin drilling two miles under the sea just miles away from a delicate wildlife reserve in Alaska. The company will get around the deep-water moratorium by constructing an artificial island -- 31 acres of gravel -- and registering as an onshore rig.
Don't expect the White House to crack down on the loophole. Just the opposite: Ken Salazar said yesterday he would issue a new version of the moratorium that could include provisions to allow drilling in areas where reserves and risks are known.'
'Should a major hurricane push the spill towards the gulf coast there will be nothing that can be done to stop it. No amount of planning or engineering will help. No number of visits to the gulf by the president or any other official will stop the inevitable. The storm surge will drive the water and the oil miles inland. Everything in its path will be coated in a greasy bath of crude. Even the wind may have oil in it.
In New England, I have seen hurricanes and tropical storms that have blown salt spray many miles inland from the coast. The leaves of the trees eventually turn brown and fall off. In the case of the gulf it will be oil that will spray the trees, buildings and everything else in the way. How far inland this oily mess will blow is anyone's guess but it will be unprecedented in its economic and environmental damage.'
Financial conditions appear to have worsened substantially in recent quarters based on our update of the broad index of US financial variables presented earlier this year at the US Monetary Policy Forum. In the wake of recent developments in Europe, increased stress in financial markets has pushed that index halfway back to its immediate post- Lehman crisis lows.'
Excessively armed thugs parading through the streets, military checkpoints at traffic lights, police helicopters hovering over the city, a long chain-link fence around the center of downtown, secret snipers on rooftops, urban warfare weapons, bomb-sniffing dogs, sound canons; this is not the sight of the infamous Green Zone in blood-drenched Baghdad, but a picture of what downtown Toronto will look like this weekend when the city hosts the world's leading heads of states, and government officials.
They are in Toronto for the G20 conference, where they plan to discuss a global economic order, and new austerity measures for heavily indebted nations. It is expected that U.S. Obama will fearmonger about Iran's nuclear capabilities and motives, just as he did at the last G20 meeting that took place in Pittsburgh in September, 2009.
The heavy presence of ground troops on the streets are usually seen in war-torn countries, occupied countries, or countries that are on the edge of a violent revolution, so it has come as an unwelcome surprise to many Canadians that the downtown core of its major city, known for its safety and cleanliness, is being transformed into a military fortress to serve the world's leading politicians.'
'BP is busy setting up what amounts to labor camps in the Gulf states. Trailer cities are being constructed to house and lock-in the clean-up workers. They will be bused from these camps to the job and back again, day in and day out. Private mercenary contractors are being contracted to "police" these camps. Fences are constructed to keep the workers from slipping out after a long day's work. The company stores promise the bleed the workers of their paychecks (what little they actually get) and laundry facilities are being set up by other contractors so that they can charge whatever they like to do their laundry.
These trailers will house 36 or so clean-up workers living stacked one on top of the other in the summer heat of the Gulf of Mexico… no alcohol will be allowed into BP City. I am sure it won't be long before Wal-Mart and Burger King work out some way to put a temporary facility in the middle of this location.'
'The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation continues to throw its support behind risky genetically modified (GM) seeds as a means for feeding hungry Africans, ignoring safer and more reliable technologies that already exist.
Not long after publicly blaming GM critics for prolonging hunger in Africa, Gates announced that his foundation is partnering with DuPont subsidiary Pioneer Hi-Bred to develop higher yield GM strains of corn. Two years ago, the Gates Foundation also partnered with Monsanto to develop drought-tolerant GM corn.'
'Key scientists advising the World Health Organization on planning for an influenza pandemic had done paid work for pharmaceutical firms that stood to gain from the guidance they were preparing. These conflicts of interest have never been publicly disclosed by WHO, and WHO has dismissed inquiries into its handling of the A/H1N1 pandemic as "conspiracy theories." Deborah Cohen and and Philip Carter investigate.'
There is a new and unique development in human history that is taking place around the world; it is unprecedented in reach and volume, and it is also the greatest threat to all global power structures: the 'global political awakening.' The term was coined by Zbigniew Brzezinski, and refers to the fact that, as Brzezinski wrote:
For the first time in history almost all of humanity is politically activated, politically conscious and politically interactive. Global activism is generating a surge in the quest for cultural respect and economic opportunity in a world scarred by memories of colonial or imperial domination'
The controversy over adding sodium fluoride to water supplies in both the U.S. and the UK is intensifying as two separate stories out of India reveal that children are being blinded and crippled partly as a result of the neurotoxin being artificially added to drinking water.
In the Indian village of Gaudiyan, well over half of the population have bone deformities, making them physically handicapped. Children are born normally but after they start drinking the fluoridated water, they begin to develop crippling defects in their hands and feet. "Due to the excess fluoride content in drinking water, the calcium intake is not absorbed in the body, causing disabilities and deformities," said Dr Amit Shukla, a neurophysician.'
'Marilyn Levias, a 19-year-old Seattle girl involved in a jaywalking incident during which a police officer assaulted another 17-year-old girl, displayed "a dangerous refusal to observe a cardinal rule that civilians simply must comply with instructions from police officers," insists Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes.
For this, Miss Levias faces a gross misdemeanor charge of "Obstructing a Police Officer." During the confrontation, Levias's 17-year-old friend, Angel L. Rosenthal, intervened on her behalf and was punched in the face by officer Ian P. Walsh. As is typically the case when a Mundane's face obstructs the trajectory of a police officer's fist, the victim is the one facing criminal charges.'
