"WebMD Health News" - Walnuts May Fight Breast Cancer

WebMD Health News

http://www.webmd.com/breast-cancer/news/20090421/walnuts-fight-breast-cancer

April 21, 2009 (Denver) -- Just two handfuls of walnuts a day may keep breast cancer away, a study in mice suggests.

And if you have breast cancer, walnuts may help curb tumor growth, the study suggests.

Researcher W. Elaine Hardman, PhD, associate professor of biochemistry at Marshall University School of Medicine in Huntington, W.Va., credits the disease-fighting omega-3 fatty acids, antioxidants, and in particular, phytosterols, in walnuts.

“Phytosterols bind to estrogen receptors, so they would be expected to slow growth of breast cancers,” she says. Estrogen fuels the growth of some breast tumors.

Eat More Walnuts or Not?

Although the study was done in laboratory animals, people should heed recommendations to eat more walnuts, Hardman tells WebMD.

“Research suggests that walnuts can be a healthful part of the diet for the prevention not only of breast and other cancers, but also diabetesand cardiovascular disease,” she says.

But Peter G. Shields, MD, deputy director of the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center in Washington, D.C., says it’s “outrageous” to recommend that people eat more walnuts based on a study in mice.

He notes that animal studies once suggested that beta-carotene reduced lung cancer. "But when we did the [pivotal] study in humans, smokers given beta-carotene got more lung cancer,” he tells WebMD.

“This is a nice study that calls for more research. There needs to be a lot more understood” about how walnuts might prevent breast tumors, Shields says.

The findings were presented at the American Association for Cancer Research 100th Annual Meeting.

Walnuts Delay Breast Tumors by 9 Years

Hardman and colleagues studied genetically altered mice that were programmed to develop tumors within six months.

Half consumed a diet that contained the human equivalent of two 1-ounce servings of walnuts per day. “One serving fits in the palm of your hand,” she says.

The other half was fed a diet that did not include walnuts.

Standard testing showed that eating walnuts cut the risk of developing breast tumors in half.

“If mice did get breast tumors, the growth rate was also slowed, by 50%,” Hardman says.

Looked at another way, eating walnuts delayed the development of tumors by at least three weeks in the mice. “Extrapolating to humans, this would be about a nine-year delay,” she says.

The researchers are now testing the benefits of the walnut-rich diet in male mice genetically altered to develop prostate tumors.

Hardman says she expected similar results, with the nuts both preventing and slowing the growth of

"Science Daily" - Industry Conflicts of Interest Are Pervasive Among Medical Guideline Panel Members, Experts Say

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111011192426.htm

ScienceDaily (Oct. 11, 2011) — Researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine have found that conflicts of interest (COI) are prevalent and potentially underreported among individuals participating in the development of clinical practice guidelines, which inform standards of patient care. The findings provide further evidence of the potential influence of industry on medical practice recommendations. The study is published online Oct. 12 in BMJ: The British Medical Journal.

To assess COI, the Mount Sinai team reviewed the panel members involved in the development of clinical practice guidelines for two highly prevalent conditions -- diabetes and high cholesterol -- from major organizations in the United States and Canada, such as the American Diabetes Association (ADA), the American Heart Association (AHA), and government-sponsored organizations, such as the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF).

Of the 288 total panel members evaluated, 150 (52 percent) had COI. In addition, they found that panel members developing government-sponsored guidelines had significantly fewer conflicts than those from the non-government sponsored guideline panels. Lastly, they revealed that one out of nine panelists who formally declared no COI did in fact have COI.

"Guidelines inform evidence-based practice and ultimately protect patients, so safeguarding against potential sources of bias is important," said the study's lead author Jennifer Neuman, MD, Instructor of Preventive Medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

"The majority of guideline panel members and half of guideline panel chairs in our study received some sort of compensation from industry, indicating a risk of industry influence on guideline recommendations," said Dr. Neuman "But, we found that government agencies were able to effectively staff their guideline panels with individuals with few conflicts of interest, therefore it is possible to convene panels with minimal COI."

The authors support the efforts by the Institute of Medicine and other prominent medical organizations around the world to increase transparency and decrease potential industry bias on guideline development panels. "Conflict-free guideline panels are feasible and would help to improve the quality of the guideline development process," they concluded.

J. Neuman, D. Korenstein, J. S. Ross, S. Keyhani. Prevalence of financial conflicts of interest among panel members producing clinical practice guidelines in Canada and United States: cross sectional study. BMJ, 2011; 343 (oct11 2): d5621

"Alliance for Natural Heatlh" - Shame on AMA’s Archives of Internal Medicine

Alliance for Natural Heatlh, October 11, 2011

http://www.anh-usa.org/shame-on-ama-archives-of-internal-medicine/

Did you hear the breaking news last night—that multivitamins may shorten your life? Here’s how junk science from the AMA set off the media frenzy.

Bloomberg phrased it this way ^[1]: “Multivitamins and some dietary supplements, used regularly by an estimated 234 million US adults, may do more harm than good, according to a study that tied their use to higher death rates among older women.” The study’s authors outrageously concluded, “We see little justification for the general and widespread use of dietary supplements.”

The study ^[2], published in the American Medical Association’s (AMA’s) Archives of Internal Medicine, assessed the use of vitamin and mineral supplements in nearly 39,000 women whose average age was 62. The researchers asked the women to fill out three surveys, the first in 1986, the second in 1997, and the last in 2004, reporting what supplements they took and what foods they ate, and answering a few questions about their health.

That’s right, all the data was self-reported by the study subjects only three times over the course of the 19-year-long study. To say the data is “unreliable” would be a generous description. This kind of “data” has no place in a valid scientific study.

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"Bill Faloon" - How Regulation of Medicine is Bankrupting the United States and What Congress Can Do to Stop It

Life Extension Magazine October 2011

http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2011/oct2011_Regulation-of-Medicine-is-Bankrupting-the-United-States-What-Congress-Can-Do-to-Stop-It_01.htm

By William Faloon

A fierce debate is raging as to who will pay for this nation’s skyrocketing sick-care costs. Private companies have scaled back sharply on health care coverage they used to provide. Employees now pay an increasing percentage of their medical insurance premiums, along with higher deductibles, co-pays, and no-pays (i.e., exclusions). Many businesses provide no health coverage to their employees.1,2 Based on the median income in the United States, the typical family cannot come close to paying the staggering cost of health care themselves. It seems rather odd, but since neither business nor individuals can afford today’s sick-care costs, the burden is increasingly being borne by the sector least able to pay, i.e., heavily indebted state and federal governments. The federal government is already saddled with a huge unfunded Medicare liability. No one has figured out where the money will come from to cover these future health care costs. To put this into context, the most recent estimate of Medicare’s unfunded liability is $24.6 trillion.3 Yet total federal tax revenues taken in annually (which include Medicare premiums) are only around $2 trillion.4,5 As our current President stated last year, we are approaching a point where the government will have to spend more money on Medicare than every other federal program combined!6 The most recent government report states that the Medicare hospital trust fund will go bankrupt five years sooner than what was projected a mere twelve months earlier.7

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"Rose Aguilar" - US Jobs in Danger as NAFTA-Style Deal Heads to Congress

Tuesday 11 October 2011

by Rose Aguilar: , Truthout 

http://www.truth-out.org/us-jobs-danger-nafta-style-deal-heads-congress/1318253738

Despite campaign promises to reform trade deals, President Obama has asked Congress to approve three NAFTA-style deals - negotiated by former President George W. Bush - with Panama, Korea and Colombia. The House and Senate are expected to vote on these deals on Wednesday.

Tim Robertson, director of the San Francisco-based California Fair Trade Coalition, says the deals, which continue to ignore labor and environmental rights, have barely changed under the Obama administration.

"They're now running the campaign, along with GOP leaders, to get them passed," he says.

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"Staff Writers" - Could a Mega-Tsunami Wipe Out the Eastern Seaboard?

by Staff Writers
Los Angeles CA (SPX) Oct 12, 2011

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Could_a_Mega_Tsunami_Wipe_Out_the_Eastern_Seaboard_999.html

As scientists have been baffled by earthquakes in the U.S. and a tsunami in Japan, there is one thing some of them seem to agree on - something really bad is about to happen and it's going to happen soon.

That's the news uncovered by New York Times best-selling novelist Steve Alten from the research he performed for his new book, Phobos: Mayan Fear, a fictional tale of the Mayan 2012 doomsday prediction.

His story incorporates the very real existence of a volatile volcano in the Canary Islands that some scientists believe could pose a catastrophic threat to the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. What's worse is that many believe the volcano is close to erupting.

"Scientists have been tracking this since 2001," said Alten.

"Ten years ago, Dr. Simon Day, of the Benfield Greig Hazard Research Centre at University College London, predicted that if the volcano, called Cumbre Vieja, was to erupt, it would cause a landslide, which in turn would create a massive mega-tsunami.

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"Dean Baker" - Excuses for a Pathetic Recovery

October 11, 2011

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/11/excuses-for-a-pathetic-recovery/

by DEAN BAKER

The September jobs report showed that the U.S. economy created just 103,000 jobs in the month, 45,000 of which were the jobs of Verizon workers who were returning from a strike in August. The economy has created 99,000 jobs a month over the last three months, about 9,000 more than it needs to keep pace with the growth of labor force. At this pace, it will be around 80 years until the economy gets back to normal levels of unemployment.

Nonetheless, the news accounts told the public that the jobs numbers were better than expected. After all, at least the number of jobs is growing; the economy has not sunk back into recession.

Of course slow growth is better than a recession. But this is like saying that we are better off with one major hurricane hitting the East Coast than two. This is true, but why would we expect that two major hurricanes would hit the East Coast in the same year?

This is the same logic with the double-dip recession story. In the last several months many economic analysts have been running around with scary stories about a double-dip recession. While the stories were scary, they never made much sense.

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"Rev. Jesse Jackson" - Winning the Class War: Don't Sleep Through the Revolution

October 11, 2011

by Rev. JESSE JACKSON

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/11/winning-the-class-war/

Occupy Wall Street protests have now spread to some 800 cities.  It’s spreading like a fire on a strong wind over a dry field.  The heat is likely to keep on building.

Conservatives have fallen over themselves rushing to side with the top 1% against the rest.  Eric Cantor, House majority leader, denounces “mobs” and “the pitting of Americans against Americans.”  Herman Cain dismisses the demonstrators as “anti-American.”  Mitt Romney accuses them of waging “class warfare.”

But class warfare is the reason Occupy Wall Street has sounded such a chord.  Sure there’s class warfare, one of America’s richest men, Warren Buffett, concluded, “and my class is winning.”

Last week just before I left for Europe, I joined the Chicago “wing” of the Occupy Wall Street movement last week.  I spoke to students who dropped out of school because they couldn’t afford tuition; now they are left with guaranteed student loan debt.

Students graduate with average student loan debts of over $20,000, and the bankers lobby passes a law that forces payment of those debts, even after bankruptcy.  Now students are graduating from college laden with debts and without a job.  Any wonder they are protesting.

I spoke with professors and teachers who have lost their jobs, as state’s face declining revenues – driven in part by the foreclosure/housing crisis and resulting loss of property tax revenues.

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"Lawrence Wittner" - Romney’s Neocon Foreign Policy Plan

By Prof. Lawrence S. Wittner

Global Research, October 11, 2011

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27026

Presidential contender Mitt Romney has laid out his vision for a foreign policy in a Romney administration – and it looks like it could have been dreamt up by the same neocons who guided George W. Bush’s disastrous pursuit of permanent U.S. military dominance. 

If current polls are correct, Mitt Romney seems likely to become the 2012 Republican presidential candidate and, quite possibly, the next president of the United States.

Therefore, we should carefully examine his first major foreign and military policy address — delivered on Oct. 7 at the Citadel, in Charleston, South Carolina — and ponder the question: Is Mitt Romney ready for the world?

Romney began his speech with a heavy dose of fear. Iran, he warned, could well become “a fully activated nuclear weapons state, threatening its neighbors, [and] dominating the world’s oil supply.” Indeed, “Iran’s suicidal fanatics could blackmail the world.”

In Afghanistan, the Taliban might well “find a path back to power,” with the country sinking “back into the medieval terrors of fundamentalist rule.” Pakistan’s instability could end up placing nuclear weapons “in the hands of Islamic jihadists,” while “the malign socialism” of Venezuela and Cuba could “undermine the prospects of democracy” in Latin America.

Then, of course, there are the heavy dancers. China’s leaders could well take that nation down “a darker path, intimidating their neighbors, brushing aside an inferior American Navy in the Pacific, and building a global alliance of authoritarian states.”

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"Wayne Madsen" - Next Stop is Pakistan

By Wayne Madsen

Global Research, October 10, 2011

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27013

Paraphrasing the old anti-Vietnam War song,

"And it's one, two, three,

What are we fighting for ?

Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Pakistan"

It does appear that for some Pentagon brass, including Defense Secretary Leon Panetta; the CIA under former U.S. Central Command and Afghanistan commander General David Petraeus; and top Republican and Democratic politicians that, indeed, Pakistanis next on the target list of nations that will soon be feeling the military muscle of the United States. Unlike other Muslim nations that have been subjected to U.S. military intervention, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, and Libya, Pakistan’s ultimate prize for the West is its nuclear weapons arsenal…

A number of observers, including former senior figures with the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, have made no secret of western contingency plans, which appear to be going active, to secure Pakistan’s nuclear weapons in order to eliminate the nation as a nuclear weapons power. The plans have been coordinated between the CIA, India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) intelligence service, and Israel’s Mossad.

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