US scientists back autism link to MMRThe measles virus has been found in the guts of children with a form of autism, renewing fears over the safety of the MMR jab.
American researchers have revealed that 85 per cent of samples taken from autistic children with bowel disorders contain the virus. The strain is the same as the one used in the measles, mumps and rubella triple vaccine.
The findings will spark fresh concern about MMR, because they back theories of a causal link between the jab, autism and p... (more)
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Would immortality be ethical?: 'Toward Immortality': Questions about quality of life take on new twistA woodcut from the year 1486 illustrates the stages of life from infancy to old age. How will longer life spans affect that balance between the various stages?
For John Harris, saving a life and delaying its end is one and the same. Using this logic, Harris, a bioethicist at the University of Manchester, England, figures that scientists have a moral duty to extend the human life span as far as it will go, even if it means creating beings that live forever.
"W... (more)
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The Good, the Bad and the Ugly SpermWith more than 500 sperm banks in the United States and tens of thousands of donors, it was bound to happen. As reported Friday in the Journal of Pediatrics, a sperm donor from Michigan passed on a rare and potentially deadly genetic disorder to five children.
The disorder, called severe congenital neutropenia, affects only one in five million newborns. Those with the disorder lack a certain type of white blood cell, and this leaves them vulnerable to a host of infections and al... (more)
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A frightening new trend in public schools is the TeenScreen program.This is, believe it or not, a computer program - provided by a private company that makes oodles of money from it - that actually DIAGNOSES CHILDREN FOR MENTAL ILLNESS.
That's right. Psychiatrists aren't even pretending mental illness is a medical condition anymore, apparently. A computer can evaluate and diagnose your child, based on a simple questionnaire.
If you have kids in public school, you need to be aware that this program in some places operates with "passi... (more)
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Spiritually deadening cymbaltaKathyJ: I also feel the numbness. Emotionally and physically. I dropped a 10 lbs weight on my foot and broke my pinky toe and didn't feel it. Emotionally I feel dead. This is 5 weeks off of Cymbalta. My husband and I are very close to each other and we have been trying to adopt a baby for 2 years and now after Cymbalta I feel nothing. Complete emptiness. No emotions or ability to connect to sadness or happiness. Emotionally hollow. All the things I enjoyed previously I find little joy in... (more)
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Toward Immortality: The Social Burden of Longer LivesAdam and Eve lost it, alchemists tried to brew it and, if you believe the legends, Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de Leon was searching for it when he discovered Florida.
To live forever while preserving health and retaining the semblance and vigor of youth is one of humanity's oldest and most elusive goals.
Now, after countless false starts and disappointments, some scientists say we could finally be close to achieving lifetimes that are, if not endless, at least ... (more)
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Preschoolers used as guinea pigs in psychotropic drug testsAs ClinicalTrials.gov reveals, in 2005, Massachusetts General Hospital conducted an 8-week trial study that recruited children as young as four years old to be drugged and monitored, including having their blood drawn, to see if their tiny four-year-old bodies would tolerate a powerful psychotropic drug (Seroquel).
Here's more from ClinicalTrials.gov:
This is an 8-week open-label study aimed at assessing the effectiveness and tolerability of Quetiapine, in the t... (more)
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Christian MD: Dangerous Eugenics Research Being Funded With Taxpayer Dollars(AgapePress) - The executive director of the Christian Medical & Dental Associations (CMDA) says taxpayer dollars are going to fund a dangerous area of scientific research. The National Institutes of Health has given a grant of nearly three-quarters of a million dollars to Professor Maxwell Mehlman, a scientist at Case Western University, to assist him in studying the genetic enhancements of human beings.
Dr. David Stevens of the CMDA says Mehlman is a known leader in the field of... (more)
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Why Embryonic Stem Cell Research? It's About Human Engineering, Not Ending DiseaseDr. David Reardon, Ph.D., best known for his voluminous research on the after-effects of abortion on women, has launched a new venture to pre-emptively ban human engineering which he contends is the root of the quest for embryonic stem cell research.
Many have wondered at the insistence on funding for and pursuit of embryonic stem cell research given the fact that there is not even one embryonic stem cell therapy currently in use while adult stem cell therapies are used every day ... (more)
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Tots Used as Human Guinea Pigs?ABC News has learned that a Massachusetts hospital is currently recruiting pre-schoolers to test the safety and effectiveness of a powerful antipsychotic drug called Quetiapine.
The study, conducted by the Department of Pediatric Psychopharmacology at Massachusetts General Hospital, is testing subjects from four to six years of age with Bipolar Disorder. An earlier Massachusetts General study of the antipsychotic drugs Risperidone and Olanzapine recruited children as young as thr... (more)
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Designer Babies: First baby in Britain designed cancer-freeA WOMAN is pregnant with Britain’s first designer baby selected to prevent an inherited cancer, The Times can reveal.
Her decision to use controversial genetic-screening technology will ensure that she does not pass on to her child the hereditary form of eye cancer from which she suffers.
Although they did not have fertility problems, the woman and her partner created embryos by IVF. This allowed doctors to remove a cell and test it for the cancer gene, so onl... (more)
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Antidepressant linked to suicide risk in adults· Top-selling drug already banned for children
· Minister announces move towards talking therapies
Britain's bestselling antidepressant, Seroxat, can cause adults as well as children to become suicidal, according to the manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline.
GSK, which for years denied there was a problem with the drug, has sent a letter to all doctors in Britain warning of the potential risk in some adult patients. The company has reanalysed data from ... (more)
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Give addicts contraception in methadone, says McNeilHeroin-addicted women should be pressured to take contraception with their treatment, according to a senior back-bench Labour MSP who argued yesterday they were not fit to be parents.
Duncan McNeil, the member for Greenock and Inverclyde and convener of his party's parliamentary group, provoked strong criticism when he suggested the radical measure of putting contraception in methadone to tackle the problem of around 50,000 Scottish children who live with drug-abusing adults.
... (more)
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Genetically 'Enhanced' Humans: The Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity Denounces NIH Funding of Genetic Re-Engineering ProjectCHICAGO, May 3 -- The Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity strongly denounces the decision by the National Institute of Health (NIH) to fund a project to develop guidelines for the use of human subjects in genetic enhancement research. The grant, totaling almost three-quarters of a million dollars, is being given to Maxwell Mehlman and Case Law School to promote the genetic re-engineering of human beings for non-therapeutic purposes under the rubric of "enhancement."
"This is a ... (more)
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NIH eugenics project a flashback to Nazi researchCHICAGO (BP)--A new age of tax-funded eugenics has just officially begun. On April 29 Medical News Today announced that Case Law School in Cleveland was receiving $773,000 from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to “develop guidelines for the use of human subjects in what could be the next frontier in medical technology -- genetic enhancement."
Professor of law and bioethics Max Mehlman will lead a team of law professors, physicians, and bioethicists in a two-year proje... (more)
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Yale-Lilly Experiment: Adolescents Rx Toxic Drug for Presumed Mental Illness They Do Not HaveWhen the Times refers to an experiment as "bold and controversial" the reporter is sanitizing the fact that the experiment is UNETHICAL—it violates medicine's cardinal rule "First, do no harm."
The New York Times reports: "In recent years, psychiatric researchers have been experimenting with a bold and controversial treatment strategy: they are prescribing drugs to young people at risk for schizophrenia who have not yet developed the full-blown disorder."
The... (more)
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Mercury preservative will continue in some flu vaccinesLegislation that would prevent Tennessee children from getting flu shots that contain a controversial mercury preservative was withdrawn because the bill’s sponsor didn’t think it would pass.
The bill, sponsored by Rep. Susan Lynn, R-Mt. Juliet, would not allow pregnant women or any child younger than 8 to receive flu vaccines that contain more than trace amounts of thimerosal, a vaccine preservative that is 49.6% ethyl mercury.
Some people believe that ... (more)
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Vaccines at birth a possibilityA study has shown that vaccinating newborn babies might be possible.
Currently, most immunisations are given to babies at two months of age because they are unable to mount an immune response to the majority of vaccines.
But US scientists have found a way to stimulate an immune response in newborns, following the discovery of a type of molecule present at birth.
The team, writing in the journal Blood, say infant mortality could be reduced if babies ar... (more)
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Eugenics and population control in CanadaTwo recent events have provided food for thought. First, a private member’s bill, C-407, was introduced to Parliament that proposed to allow any person, under certain conditions, to aid a person close to death or suffering from a debilitating illness to “die with dignity” if that person has expressed the free and informed consent to die. Second, Health Canada plans to introduce pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) regulations in May, 2006. These two events are linked. How s... (more)
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UT Professor, Others Support Forrest Mims’ Account of Evolutionary Ecologist Eric Pianka's SpeechAfter scientist and science writer Forrest Mims described University of Texas ecologist Eric Pianka's speech to the Texas Academy of Science in which he expressed a longing for an ebola virus to wipe out 90 percent of the world's population, Pianka's defenders quickly went on the attack, claiming that Mims had wantonly misrepresented Pianka. But several lines of evidence suggest that Mims described Pianka's speech quite accurately.
James Redford provides an excellent one-stop post... (more)
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Experts Defining Mental Disorders Are Linked to Drug FirmsEvery psychiatric expert involved in writing the standard diagnostic criteria for disorders such as depression and schizophrenia has had financial ties to drug companies that sell medications for those illnesses, a new analysis has found.
Of the 170 experts in all who contributed to the manual that defines disorders from personality problems to drug addiction, more than half had such ties, including 100 percent of the experts who served on work groups on mood disorders and psychot... (more)
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U.S. Scientists To Begin Human Clone Farms For Stem Cell HarvestingApril 13 (Bloomberg) -- American scientists plan to create stem cells that have a genetic makeup identical to that of living human adults, a feat that Korean scientists falsely claimed they accomplished last year.
U.S. researchers at Harvard University and in California said they first will create ``cloned'' human embryos in the lab by combining women donors' egg cells with DNA provided by other adults. The scientists will then isolate and extract stem cells from the embryos.
... (more)
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Drug firms 'inventing diseases'Pharmaceutical firms are inventing diseases to sell more drugs, researchers have warned.
Disease-mongering promotes non-existent diseases and exaggerates mild problems to boost profits, the Public Library of Science Medicine reported.
Researchers at Newcastle University in Australia said firms were putting healthy people at risk by medicalising conditions such as menopause.
But the pharmaceutical industry denied it invented diseases.
Re... (more)
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UC Regents lose control of nuclear weapons program: Five admirals, Carlyle Group and Rand take overResearch on population control, preventing future births, is now being carried out secretly by biotech companies. Dr. Ignacio Chapela, a University of California microbiologist, discovered that wild corn in remote parts of Mexico is contaminated with lab altered DNA. That discovery made him a threat to the biotech industry.
Chapela was denied tenure at UC Berkeley when he reported this to the scientific community, despite the embarrassing discovery that UC Chancellor Berdahl, who ... (more)
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Drug firms 'hype up diseases to boost sales'Drug companies are inventing diseases to sell more of their products, it has been claimed. Scientists have accused major pharmaceutical firms of "medicalising" problems like high cholesterol or the symptoms of the menopause in a bid to increase profits.
Experts from around the world will meet in Australia today to discuss what they have labelled "disease-mongering".
The group, which includes experts from Britain, will gather in Newcastle, New South Wales, where rese... (more)
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First Goat Kids With Human Genes Born in BelarusThe first two kids have been born into an experimental herd of goats with a transplanted human gene in Belarus, the head of a Russian-Belarussian transgenic research project said on Monday.
Alexander Budevich who is also a staff member of the Belarussian Cattle Breeding Research Institute said the kids “do not show any signs of ailment or abnormal development. Yet scientists must still verify that the kids are transgenic,” Interfax news agency quoted him as saying.
... (more)
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Getting Evolution Up to SpeedNew evidence suggests humans are evolving more rapidly -- and more recently -- than most people thought possible. But for some radical evolutionists, Homo sapiens isn't morphing quickly enough.
"People like to think of modern human biology, and especially mental biology, as being the result of selections that took place 100,000 years ago," said University of Chicago geneticist Bruce Lahn. "But our research shows that humans are still under selection, not just for things like disea... (more)
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Most human beings 'natural born slaves'IN A counterintuitive paper, Malcolm Heath, of Leeds University, defended Aristotle’s politically incorrect view that some people are natural born slaves.
Aristotle argued that the majority of human beings could and should be enslaved because they are naturally slaves.
Aristotelians usually cough nervously and move on past such passages.
Professor Heath argues that Aristotle was not saying that natural slaves lack the distinctive human capacity ... (more)
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