POLICE RADIOS BLAMED FOR PC'S CANCER DEATH
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/156702/Police-radios-blamed-for-PC-s-cancer-death
PC Dring's family claim his radio caused his fatal cancer
Sunday February 7,2010
By Andrea Perry
DOZENS of police forces are facing compensation claims from officers over
radios they say make them ill and have been blamed by the family of one
officer for his death from cancer.
Forces across the country are eagerly awaiting the pre-trial review this
month of a test case being bought by five Lancashire officers at which a
judge is expected to rule on expert evidence.
It is understood claims are pending against other forces over the
controversial Airwave equipment police use to contact each other via their
TETRA radio.
One unnamed officer diagnosed with cancer told a website: ³None of my
consultants or doctors has discounted Airwave as a possible cause of my
cancer.²
Dr Ian Dring, whose brother Neil died of oesophageal cancer in 2004, aged
38, said the Leicestershire PC blamed the radio for his illness.
He said: ³My brother was very angry. If he had survived he said he would sue
them for every penny.²
Campaigners say TETRA is potentially risky because the frequency of its 17.6
hertz signal is close to the 16Hz at which a brain ³loses² calcium.
GAMES FIRMS MUST SAVE CHILDREN THEY'VE MADE INTO HEALTH TIMEBOMBS
Sunday February 7,2010
By James Fielding
BLAMED for soaring child obesity levels and the return of rickets, the computer games industry has never been under greater scrutiny. British youngsters are the most unhealthy in Europe and spend on average 730 hours a year slouched in front of a TV screen rather than taking part in physical activity.
The worrying drop in fitness levels is putting their lives at risk.
To combat the problem before it spirals out of control, the Sunday Express today urges the Government to plough the huge amount of tax generated from video games revenue into developing sports facilities for children.
The NHS has released figures which reveal 100 youngsters are treated for rickets in England alone every year.
The bone-wasting disease, which can lead to bowed legs, has not been seen as a serious problem since Victorian times when it became a curse on poor families living in squalid inner city slums.
Experts believe its return has been triggered by the fact so many youngsters prefer to play on games consoles in their bedrooms rather than experience the great outdoors, meaning vitamin D deficiencies are alarmingly high.
In 2009, the sales of video games and hardware in the UK totalled £3.311billion while for 2008 the figure was even higher at £4.034billion.
The amount the Government would have made from computer games VAT in 2008 is roughly £600million, while in 2009 they would have made roughly £400million. Using the VAT raised from computer games, including those that claim to have health benefits like the Nintendo Wii Fitness range, the Government will have millions available to build more football pitches, athletic tracks and tennis courts.
Such a move would clearly help lower the sky high NHS bill and go some way to improving the antisocial behaviour blighting Broken Britain.
Backing our crusade, Lib Dems Health spokesman Norman Lamb called for the proposal to be investigated fully by the Government.
He said: "Computer games generate a lot of tax which should be invested into preventing problems like child obesity and rickets. Funding new sports facilities through VAT raised from computer games should be looked at. Children have to be encouraged to keep active."
Charity Kidscape has lent its support and believes with London set to host the 2012 Olympic Games, there has never been a better opportunity to break the sluggish lifestyle of the PlayStation Generation.
Director Claude Knight said: "A substantial revenue stream is raised from the VAT on computer games.
"This would be particularly apt as we approach 2012."
Kidscape also believe that software companies should use some of their wealth on promoting physical activity beyond the school gates.
Britain's dismal record on children's health and physical exercise was laid bare in a report last month that showed how child fitness levels are falling twice as fast as anywhere in the world.
Researchers from the University of Essex found that while levels globally were decreasing by around four per cent a year, in the UK they have plummeted by eight per cent.
Dr Gavin Sandercock, who led the research, told how the average British youngster, aged between nine and 16, spends two hours a night playing on games consoles like PlayStation and Xbox, which amounts to 730 hours a year. In contrast, children in Europe spend on average 657 hours a year in front of TV screens.
Dr Sandercock explained how boys are the biggest offenders with 13 per cent of those quizzed admitting they spend up to four hours locked in games.
In more extreme cases, mostly boys aged between 14 and 16, some revealed they do nothing but play video games of an evening, even resorting to eating food with one hand while the other gripped a controller.
Dr Sandercock said: "They come straight home from school and play a games console until they go to bed. That includes playing while they eat.
"There has also been a boom in fitness software like Nintendo Wii Fit but the simple fact is that it's never going to replace playing sport for real or going to the gym."
Clearly computer games can play a major role in enticing youngsters into sport.
Praising the "brain-training" software available on the Nintendo DS, Government Education Minister Mike Russell admitted he believes young people need to develop successfully in a modern society "within which computers are so important".
One fact is clear. With even their colleagues at the Department of Health admitting childhood obesity rates are still too high, something drastic needs to be done.
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Andrew Wakefield, Scientific Censorship, and Fourteen Monkeys
A statement from Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey
Los Angeles, February 5, 2010
http://www.generationrescue.org/wakefield_statement2.html
Dr. Andrew Wakefield is being discredited to prevent an historic study from being published that for the first time looks at vaccinated versus unvaccinated primates and compares health outcomes, with potentially devastating consequences for vaccine makers and public health officials.
It is our most sincere belief that Dr. Wakefield and parents of children with autism around the world are being subjected to a remarkable media campaign engineered by vaccine manufacturers reporting on the retraction of a paper published in The Lancet in 1998 by Dr. Wakefield and his colleagues.
The retraction from The Lancet was a response to a ruling from England's General Medical Council, a kangaroo court where public health officials in the pocket of vaccine makers served as judge and jury. Dr. Wakefield strenuously denies all the findings of the GMC and plans a vigorous appeal.
Despite rampant misreporting, Dr. Wakefield's original paper regarding 12 children with severe bowel disease and autism never rendered any judgment whatsoever on whether or not vaccines cause autism, and The Lancet's retraction gets us no closer to understanding this complex issue.
Dr. Wakefield is one of the world's most respected and well-published gastroenterologists. He has published dozens of papers since 1998 in well-regarded peer-reviewed journals all over the world. His work documenting the bowel disease of children with autism and his exploration of novel ways to treat bowel disease has helped relieve the pain and suffering of thousands of children with autism.
For the past decade, parents in our community have been clamoring for a relatively simple scientific study that could settle the debate over the possible role of vaccines in the autism epidemic once and for all: compare children who have been vaccinated with children who have never received any vaccines and see if the rate of autism is different or the same.
Few people are aware that this extremely important work has not only begun, but that a study using an animal model has already been completed exploring this topic in great detail.
Dr. Wakefield is the co-author, along with eight other distinguished scientists from institutions like the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Kentucky, and the University of Washington, of a set of studies that explore the topic of vaccinated versus unvaccinated neurological outcomes using monkeys.
The first phase of this monkey study was published three months ago in the prestigious medical journal Neurotoxicology, and focused on the first two weeks of life when the vaccinated monkeys received a single vaccine for Hepatitis B, mimicking the U.S. vaccine schedule. The results, which you can read for yourself here, were disturbing. Vaccinated monkeys, unlike their unvaccinated peers, suffered the loss of many reflexes that are critical for survival.
Dr. Wakefield and his scientific colleagues are on the brink of publishing their entire study, which followed the monkeys through the U.S. childhood vaccine schedule over a multi-year period. It is our understanding that the difference in outcome for the vaccinated monkeys versus the unvaccinated controls is both stark and devastating.
There is no question that the publication of the monkey study will lend substantial credibility to the theory that over-vaccination of young children is leading to neurological damage, including autism. The fallout from the study for vaccine makers and public health officials could be severe. Having denied the possibility of the vaccine-autism connection for so long while profiting immensely from a recent boom in vaccine sales around the world, it's no surprise that they would seek to repress this important work.
Behind the scenes, the pressure to keep the work of Dr. Wakefield and his colleagues from being published is immense, and growing every day. Medical journals take extreme risk of backlash in publishing any studies that question the safety of the vaccination program, no matter how well-designed and thorough the research might be. Neurotoxicology, a highly-respected medical journal, deserves great credit for courageously publishing the first phase of this vaccinated monkey study.
The press has been deeply misled in the way The Lancet retraction, and Dr. Wakefield's mock trial, have been characterized. Led by the pharmaceutical companies and their well-compensated spokespeople, Dr. Wakefield is being vilified through a well-orchestrated smear campaign designed to prevent this important new work from seeing the light of day.
What medical journal would want to step in front of this freight train? Moreover, why now, after 12 years of inaction, did The Lancet and GMC suddenly act? Is it coincidence that the monkey study is currently being submitted to medical journals for review and publication?
We urge the media to take a close look at the first phase of the monkey study discussed above and to start asking a very simple question: What was the final outcome of the 14 primates that were vaccinated using the U.S. vaccine schedule and how did that compare to the unvaccinated controls?
The U.S. vaccine schedule has grown from 10 vaccines given to our children in the 1980s to 36 today, perfectly matching the dramatic rise in autism. The work of Dr. Wakefield and his colleagues deserves to be shared with the world to further, rather than censor, scientific progress.
