Health Glance
After decades of reminding people about the dangers of cigarettes, offering nicotine gum or patches and making smokers huddle outside, the government is turning to gruesome pictures. Federal health officials Wednesday unveiled plans to replace the warnings cigarette packs began carrying 25 years ago with new versions using images that could include emaciated cancer patients, diseased organs and corpses.
Public health authorities and anti-smoking activists hailed the move as a milestone in the battle against tobacco in the United States that began in 1964 when the surgeon general first declared cigarettes a public health threat. That battle made steady progress for decades, but has been stymied in recent years, with a stubborn one in five adults and teens still smoking.
Updated tobacco warnings could feature graphic images
The Chicken Which Should be Banned
Do you put dimethylpolysiloxane, an anti-foaming agent made of silicone, in your chicken dishes?
How about tertiary butylhydroquinone (TBHQ), a chemical preservative so deadly that just five grams can kill you?
These are just two of the ingredients in a McDonalds Chicken McNugget. Only 50 percent of a McNugget is actually chicken. The other 50 percent includes corn derivatives, sugars, leavening agents and completely synthetic ingredients.
Health insurers sit pretty at their customers' expense
It's a good time to be a health insurer. Three of the biggest names in the insurance game reported rock-solid profits last week. Aetna said its third-quarter net income jumped 53% over the same period last year, to $497.6 million.
WellPoint, parent of Anthem Blue Cross in California, said its profit rose 1.2% to $739.1 million. Health Net posted a net income of $62.7 million, compared with a loss of $66 million a year earlier. Angela Braly, chief executive of WellPoint, attributed the company's strong performance to "disciplined administrative expense control."
Fast-food restaurants target U.S. kids, study shows
Fast-food restaurants are stepping up efforts to market themselves and unhealthy food products to children and toddlers with television ads, websites and even their own menus, researchers said on Monday.
They said efforts by the industry to regulate itself have failed and urged government officials at all levels to declare children a protected group and stop marketing efforts that are fueling child obesity, a serious U.S. health problem.
Tranquilizers linked to brain damage 30 years ago
Secret documents reveal that government-funded experts were warned nearly 30 years ago that tranquillisers that were later prescribed to millions of people could cause brain damage.
The Medical Research Council (MRC) agreed in 1982 that there should be large-scale studies to examine the long-term impact of benzodiazepines after research by a leading psychiatrist showed brain shrinkage in some patients similar to the effects of long-term alcohol abuse.
Cancer vaccine allows body to kill tumours
Researchers at Cambridge University have discovered how tumour cells protect themselves from the body's natural defences.
By turning off this process, they believe that the body would cure itself of the disease.
In the past attempts to harness the immune system have failed because a protein appears to shield – and even nurture – cancer cells.
But destroying this molecule leaves the cancer completely defenceless and it is killed by the immune system.
Big Pharma Censors Ad Warning Women About Cancer Hormone
Last month, when Breast Cancer Action, a non-profit advocacy organization, attempted to rent a billboard in Indianapolis, they got the kibosh by every rental company in the city.
The message was simple–the billboards simply read, “Eli Lilly is making us sick.Tell them to stop,” and referred to Lilly's manufacturing of recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH), which has been linked to cancer. BCA followed the guidelines of all companies contacted, but Indianapolis is home to Eli Lilly's corporate headquarters, and it seems their ad dollars aren't good there.
More Articles...
- Deal between EU and India could cut off the developing world's supply of cheap medicines
- Blood on Their Hands: The World’s Slickest Con Job and a Stack of Deadly LIES...
- Experts: Alcohol More Harmful Than Crack or Heroin
- Girls now reaching puberty at age nine, thanks to chemicals in the food supply (milk and plastics)
Page 133 of 234
