Health News Stories

Excerpts of Key Health News Stories in Major Media

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Note: This comprehensive list of news stories is usually updated once a week. Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.

The mother of a Cheshire teenager who was left severely brain damaged by the MMR vaccine has won a compensation award from the government. Robert Fletcher, 18, from Warrington, suffered a fit 10 days after he had the vaccination when he was 13 months old. His mother Jackie received the Ł90,000 payout from a medical assessment panel last week. The family successfully appealed after their application for compensation was originally turned down in 1997. Robert has frequent epileptic fits, is unable to talk, stand unaided or feed himself, but is not autistic. Mrs Fletcher always believed that her son's epilepsy was triggered by the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. Dr Andrew Wakefield was the lead author of the controversial study, published in The Lancet in 1998, which suggested there may be a link between MMR and autism and bowel disease. His comments and the subsequent media furore led to a sharp drop in the number of children vaccinated against these diseases. The study has since been discredited and The Lancet has said it should not have run it. Mrs Fletcher has campaigned for justice for her son for the past 16 years. She said: "I feel vindicated by it because over the years I've been labelled anti-vaccine and a scaremonger and all sorts of things, when all I've been trying to do is highlight what's happened to my son, to help safeguard other parents' children."

Note: For lots more from major media sources on the dangers to children from vaccines, click here.

U.S. Army specialist Ethan McCord was one of the first on the scene when a group of suspected insurgents was blown up on a Baghdad street in 2007, hit by 30-mm bursts from an Apache helicopter. "The top of one guy's head was completely off," he recalls. "Another guy was ripped open from groin to neck. A third had lost a leg ... Their insides were out and exposed. I'd never seen anything like this before." Then McCord heard a child crying from a black minivan caught in the barrage. Inside, he found a frightened and wounded girl, perhaps 4. Next to her was a boy of 7 or so, soaked in blood. Their father, McCord says, "was slumped over on his side, like he was trying to protect the children, but he was just destroyed." McCord couldn't look away from the kids. "I started seeing images of my own two children back home in Kansas." McCord Pulled the two kids out of the minivan--the boy was still alive--and helped get them to a hospital. The Apache gunship killed a dozen men, including a pair working for the Reuters news agency; the episode became a video sensation after WikiLeaks released footage of it in April. Back at his base, McCord washed the children's blood off his uniform and body armor. That night, he told his staff sergeant he needed help. "Get the sand out of your vagina," McCord says his sergeant responded. "He told me I was being a homo and needed to suck it up." McCord says he never spoke to anyone about it after that because he didn't want to get in trouble and instead did what soldiers have done forever. "I decided to try to push it down and bottle it up," he says.

UC Davis just announced a seminar for the public on "men's health." That title notwithstanding, the program appears to be entirely about prostate cancer and in particular about the prostate specific antigen screening test. Many possible screening programs turn out not to do any good - and in fact some tests like PSA cause harm. That's why virtually all expert public health panels do not recommend the PSA test. A blood test that isn't accurate can fail to find disease that's present, leading to false reassurance. It can also report disease when it's not really there, leading to unnecessary use of other tests (like biopsy) that are not so benign. Perhaps most concerning, the PSA test frequently identifies something that qualifies as cancer under a microscope but acts nothing like cancer in real life. That is to say, the large majority of PSA-discovered "cancers" would never cause any problem whatsoever if they went undetected. Finding something through screening invariably leads to treating it. Most of the men so treated would have been just fine if they never knew about the cancer. But when they're treated ... the majority suffer really life-affecting effects, such as impotence and/or incontinence. That's why both of the two very large trials of PSA screening published in 2009 found no (or at most a tiny) benefit, but a great deal of harm.

Note: This article was written by Michael Wilkes, a professor of medicine at UC Davis, and Jerome Hoffman, a professor of emergency medicine at the University of Southern California. Both are researchers/consultants for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As the Food and Drug Administration considers whether to approve genetically modified salmon, one thing seems certain: Shoppers staring at fillets in the seafood department will find it tough to pick out the conventional fish from the one created with genes from another species. Despite a growing public demand for more information about how food is produced, that won't happen with the salmon because of idiosyncracies embedded in federal regulations. The FDA says it cannot require a label on the genetically modified food once it determines that the altered fish is not "materially" different from other salmon - something agency scientists have said is true. Perhaps more surprising, conventional food makers say the FDA has made it difficult for them to boast that their products do not contain genetically modified ingredients. The decision carries great weight because, while genetically modified agriculture has been permitted for years and engineered crops are widely used in processed foods, this would be the first modified animal allowed for human consumption in the United States. The AquAdvantage salmon has been given a gene from the ocean pout, an eel-like fish, and a growth hormone from a Chinook salmon. Consumer advocates say they worry about labeling for genetically engineered beef, pork and other fish, which are lining up behind the salmon for federal approval.

Note: For an excellent overview of the dangers of genetically modified foods, click here.

Public health experts have called for an independent body to monitor drug safety after it emerged that young children were more likely to end up in hospital because of side effects from a flu vaccine than they were from the disease itself. More than 1000 adverse responses in children under five were reported ... by June this year, including nearly 100 instances of febrile convulsions, a seizure which in a small number of cases has been associated with long-term adverse health outcomes. The side effects were linked to one of the three seasonal flu vaccines, Fluvax and Fluvax junior, from the drug company CSL, but the [Therapeutic Goods Administration] maintained despite that, that "the overall risk-benefit balance of both products remains positive". Research published yesterday in the journal Eurosurveillance showed Fluvax might have caused two to three hospital admissions due to seizure for every admission from flu it prevented. The chief executive of the Public Health Association of Australia, Michael Moore, said further examination of risks was needed, at arm's length from the TGA. The government should consider creating an independent centre. "There is a concern … that the TGA is the body that approves vaccines and is also the body that determines what the risks and benefits are when concerns are raised," he said.

Note: For lots more from reliable souces on the dangers of many types of vaccines, click here.

The risk of children suffering from flu can be halved if they take vitamin D, doctors in Japan have found. The finding has implications for flu epidemics since vitamin D, which is naturally produced by the human body when exposed to direct sunlight, has no significant side effects, costs little and can be several times more effective than anti-viral drugs or vaccine. Only one in ten children, aged six to 15 years, taking the sunshine vitamin in a clinical trial came down with flu compared with one in five given a dummy tablet. Mitsuyoshi Urashima, the Japanese doctor who led the trial, told The Times that vitamin D was more effective than vaccines in preventing flu. Vitamin D was found to be even more effective when the comparison left out children who were already given extra vitamin D by their parents, outside the trial. Taking the sunshine vitamin was then shown to reduce the risk of flu to a third of what it would otherwise be. The trial, which was double blind, randomised, and fully controlled scientifically, was conducted by doctors and scientists from Jikei University School of Medicine in Tokyo, Japan.

Note: For important articles from reliable sources on health issues, click here.

Allergan Inc., the maker of wrinkle-smoothing Botox, has agreed to pay $600 million to settle a yearslong federal investigation into its marketing of the top-selling, botulin-based drug. The Justice Department and the company said Wednesday in a statement it will plead guilty to one misdemeanor charge of "misbranding," in which the company's marketing led physicians to use Botox for unapproved uses. Those included the treatment of headache, pain, spasticity and cerebral palsy in children. Companies are prohibited from promoting drugs for unapproved, or "off-label," uses. Allergan said it will pay $375 million in connection with the plea, which includes the forfeiture of $25 million in assets. Additionally, the company will pay $225 million in civil fines — $210 million to the federal governments and the rest to several states — related to the investigation, although the company denies liability for the civil claims. Allergan "paid kickbacks to induce [physicians] to inject Botox for off-label uses and Allergan also taught doctors how to bill for off-label uses, including coaching doctors how to miscode Botox claims leading to millions of dollars of false claims being to submitted to federal and state programs," Assistant Attorney General Tony West said.

Note: $600 million is nothing to sneeze at, yet this kind of find is becoming almost commonplace in the pharmaceutical industry. Could it be that industry chieftains are more interested in profit that public health? For more powerful information along these lines, see our two-page health summary.

Our diet is indeed killing us, and it's killing the planet too. Earlier this month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta released a study revealing that nearly 27% of Americans are now considered obese (that is, more than 20% above their ideal weight), and in nine states, the obesity rate tops 30%. We eat way too much meat — up to 220 lb. per year for every man, woman and child in the U.S. — and only 14% of us consume our recommended five servings of fruits and vegetables per day. Our processed food is dense with salt and swimming in high-fructose corn syrup, two flavors we can't resist. Currently, enough food is manufactured in the U.S. for every American to consume 3,800 calories per day — we need only 2,350 in a healthy diet. Keeping the food flowing — and the prices low enough for people to continue buying it — requires a lot of industrial-engineering tricks, and those have knock-on effects of their own. Up to 10 million tons of chemical fertilizer per year are poured onto fields to cultivate corn alone, for example, which has increased yields 23% from 1990 to 2009 but has led to toxic runoffs that are poisoning the beleaguered Gulf of Mexico.

Note: For vitally important information showing why organic foods are much safer for you, click here. For important articles from reliable sources on health issues, click here.

The first court award in a vaccine-autism claim is a big one. CBS News has learned the family of Hannah Poling will receive more than $1.5 million dollars for her life care, lost earnings, and pain and suffering for the first year alone. In addition to the first year, the family will receive more than $500,000 per year to pay for Hannah's care. Those familiar with the case believe the compensation could easily amount to $20 million over the child's lifetime. Hannah was described as normal, happy and precocious in her first 18 months. Then, in July 2000, she was vaccinated against nine diseases in one doctor's visit: measles, mumps, rubella, polio, varicella, diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, and Haemophilus influenzae. Afterward, her health declined rapidly. She developed high fevers, stopped eating, didn't respond when spoken to, began showing signs of autism, and began having screaming fits. In acknowledging Hannah's injuries, the government said vaccines aggravated an unknown mitochondrial disorder Hannah had which didn't "cause" her autism, but "resulted" in it. It's unknown how many other children have similar undiagnosed mitochondrial disorder. All other autism "test cases" have been defeated at trial. Approximately 4,800 are awaiting disposition in federal vaccine court.

Note: A CBS affiliate reports that "since the late 1980s, the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP) has paid money for 83 cases involving autism." The article also mentions this has been kept quiet. For a powerful report by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. showing blatant deception and cover up on the part of government and industry around a link between vaccines and autism, click here. For numerous revealing reports from major media sources on the link between vaccines and autism, click here.

Recalls of prescription and over the counter drugs are surging, raising questions about the quality of drug manufacturing in the United States. The Food and Drug Administration reported more than 1,742 recalls last year, skyrocketing from 426 in 2008, according to the Gold Sheet, a trade publication on drug quality that analyzes FDA data. One company, drug repackager Advantage Dose, accounted for more than 1,000 of those recalls. Even excluding Advantage Dose, which has shut down, recalls jumped 50% last year. "We've seen a trend where the last four years are among the top five for the most number of drug recalls since we began tallying recalls in 1988," said Bowman Cox, managing editor of the Gold Sheet. "That's a meaningful development." The fast pace of drug recalls seems to be continuing in 2010. Drug recalls totaled 296 from January through June of this year, said Cox. "If we continue at this same rate, we could get 600 or more recalls by the end of the year," he said. "That's still a very high rate of recalls." High-profile recalls of Tylenol and other products by McNeil Consumer Healthcare, a unit of Johnson & Johnson, have drawn attention to quality concerns in manufacturing. The spike in recalls, especially of generic and over-the-counter drugs, is being driven by manufacturing lapses, experts say. Some of the biggest culprits: the quality of raw materials, faulty labeling and packaging and contamination.

Note: For lots more on corporate corruption from major media sources, click here.

The psychedelic drug psilocybin, the active ingredient in "magic mushrooms," can improve mood and reduce anxiety and depression in terminal cancer patients, Los Angeles researchers reported [on September 6]. A single modest dose of the hallucinogen ... can improve patients' functioning for as long as six months, allowing them to spend their last days with more peace, researchers said. Dr. Charles Grob, a psychiatrist at Harbor- UCLA Medical Center and the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute ... and his colleagues studied 12 patients, ages 36 to 58, with advanced-stage cancer and anxiety resulting from their diagnoses. The patients were given a relatively low dose of psilocybin, 0.2 milligram per kilogram of body weight. Nonetheless, the team reported in the Archives of General Psychiatry, all patients reported a significant improvement in mood for at least two weeks after the psilocybin treatment and up to a six-month improvement on a scale that measures depression and anxiety. Most also reported a decreased need for narcotic pain relievers. No adverse reactions were observed. These types of patients normally do not respond well to psychological therapy, Grob said, but his study showed that the drug has "great promise for alleviating anxiety and other psychiatric symptoms."

Note: For many hope-inspiring reports from reliable sources on new cancer coping strategies and possible cures, click here.

A world-renowned Texas scientist specializing in infectious diseases who was once charged with smuggling dangerous samples of plague bacteria into the U.S. was questioned by authorities after a suspicious item found in his luggage caused a massive evacuation at Miami International Airport [on September 2]. Dr. Thomas C. Butler, 70, was questioned by agents with the FBI and Miami-Dade police [on September 3]. Initial tests on the item have come back negative. Butler was released from questioning and won't be charged in the incident. Sources told NBC Miami that Butler had been coming from Saudi Arabia when the suspicious item was spotted in his luggage as it went through customs. Butler had been on the faculty at Texas Tech since the late 80s until his arrest in 2003 on charges of smuggling and improperly transporting the plague samples, as well as theft, embezzlement and fraud. He was eventually found guilty of exporting the vials of plague and stealing research money. Butler spent nearly two years behind bars and lost his Texas Tech job, despite the protests of several in the scientific community who denounced his prosecution. His controversial story was even featured in a "60 Minutes" piece titled "The Case Against Dr. Butler." He's currently listed as a faculty member at Alfaisal University in Saudi Arabia.

Note: There is likely much more to this story than meets the eye. Why is a world-renowned Texas scientist specializing in infectious diseases who is on faculty at a university in Saudi Arabia carrying deadly biological materials around the world?

While the world was focused on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a BP refinery [in Texas City, Texas] released huge amounts of toxic chemicals into the air that went unnoticed by residents until many saw their children come down with respiratory problems. For 40 days after a piece of equipment critical to the refinery’s operation broke down, a total of 538,000 pounds of toxic chemicals, including the carcinogen benzene, poured out of the refinery. Rather than taking the costly step of shutting down the refinery to make repairs, the engineers at the plant diverted gases to a smokestack and tried to burn them off, but hundreds of thousands of pounds still escaped into the air, according to state environmental officials. Neither the state nor the oil company informed neighbors or local officials about the pollutants until two weeks after the release ended, and angry residents of Texas City have signed up in droves to join a $10 billion class-action lawsuit against BP. The state attorney general, Greg Abbott, has also sued the company, seeking fines of about $600,000. Scores of Texas City residents said they experienced respiratory problems this spring, and environmentalists said the release of toxic gases ranked as one of the largest in the state’s history. Neil Carman of the Lone Star Sierra Club said the release was probably even larger than BP had acknowledged.

Note: For lots more from reliable sources on government and corporate corruption, click here and here.

A recall of a half-billion eggs from two mega-farms in Iowa is stoking a fierce controversy over whether factory farming is inherently unsafe - and a battle in California over a 2008 voter initiative banning the standard industry practice of packing hens so tightly in battery cages that they cannot spread their wings. Voters passed Proposition 2 overwhelmingly in 2008 after animal welfare activists released horrific undercover videos of strangled, deformed and mummified hens in battery cages. Animal welfare activists are linking battery cages to the Iowa salmonella outbreak, saying they are not just cruel to animals but a threat to food safety." Proposition 2 requires cage-free treatment of laying hens, and the evidence is very clear that caging laying hens increases the risk of salmonella," said Paul Shapiro, head of the Humane Society of the United States' Factory Farming Campaign. Animal rights activists and egg farmers, usually arch enemies, came together behind a law signed by Gov. Schwarzenegger last month that will ban all eggs coming from outside the state that fail to comply with the battery-cage ban. The new law could save the state's egg farmers and spread Prop. 2 nationally.

Note: To read the Humane Society's report on the negative impacts of factory farming, click here.

It is a multimillion-dollar business started by a mom who began to see her daughter's brightly colored, juice-filled sippy cups as nothing more than insidious sugar-delivery mechanisms. In late 2004, Kara Goldin put a stop to the juice for her kids - juice from cups, bottles, boxes and pouches - and began experimenting by dropping bits of fresh fruit into glasses of water. "We had always put lemon or lime in our water, so I started putting different types of fruit in the water, and the kids loved it," said Goldin, a mother of four in San Francisco. "Our kids would have playdates, and I'd put a fresh raspberry in the kids' water and later the moms would call me and say, 'What is this raspberry drink you're giving my child?' " Today, Hint - bottled water with a hint of fruit, and not a trace of sugar, calories or preservatives - has retail sales of about $25 million, according to Goldin. The top-selling flavors include watermelon, blackberry, raspberry-lime, strawberry-kiwi, pomegranate-tangerine and mango-grapefruit. "This whole thing began when my daughter was reaching for some more apple juice," Goldin said. "I was noticing how kids were in the habit of moving from milk in a sippy cup to juice in a sippy cup that they'd have throughout the day. That's a lot more sugar than kids should have."

A growing body of evidence is suggesting that exposure to organophosphate pesticides is a prime cause of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, ADHD. The findings are considered plausible to many experts because the pesticides are designed to attack the nervous systems of insects. It is not surprising, then, that they should also impinge on the nervous systems of humans who are exposed to them. Forty organophosphate pesticides are registered in the United States, with at least 73 million pounds used each year in agricultural and residential settings. ADHD is thought to affect 3% to 7% of American children, with boys affected more heavily than girls. The newest study, reported [on August 19] in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, examines the effects of both prenatal and childhood exposure to the pesticides. Epidemiologist Brenda Eskenazi of UC Berkeley and her colleagues have been studying more than 300 Mexican American children living in the heavily agricultural Salinas Valley. After correcting the data to account for lead exposure and other confounders, they found that each tenfold increase in pesticide levels in the mothers' urine was associated with a fivefold increase in attention problems as measured by the assays.

Note: For important reports on health from reliable sources, click here.

The White House was accused today of spinning a government scientific report into the amount of oil left in the Gulf of Mexico from the BP [blowout] which had officials declaring that the vast majority of the oil had been removed. Environmental groups and scientists – including those working with government agencies – said White House officials had painted far too optimistic a picture of a report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency [NOAA] into the fate of the oil. "Recent reports seem to say that about 75% of the oil is taken care of and that is just not true," said John Kessler, of Texas A&M University, who led a National Science Foundation on-site study of the spill. "The fact is that 50% to 75% of the material that came out of the well is still in the water. It's just in a dissolved or dispersed form." Rick Steiner, a former University of Alaska marine biologist, suggested that the White House had been too eager to try to put the oil spill behind it, with Democrats in Congress facing tough election fights in November. "It seems that there was a rush to declare this done, and there were obvious political objectives there," he said. "Even if there is not a drop of oil out there, and it had truly magically vanished, it would still be an environmental disaster caused by the toxic shock of the release of 5m barrels of oil."

Note: For lots more from major media sources on government corruption, click here.

The Obama administration is facing internal dissent from its scientists for approving the use of huge quantities of chemical dispersants to tackle the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the Guardian has learned. Jeff Ruch, the exective director of the whistleblower support group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, said he had heard from five [EPA] scientists and two other officials who had expressed concerns to their superiors about the use of dispersants. "There was one toxicologist who was very concerned about the underwater application particularly," he said. "The concern was the agency appeared to be flying blind and not consulting its own specialists and even the literature that was available." Veterans of the Exxon Valdez spill questioned the wisdom of trying to break up the oil in the deep water at the same time as trying to skim it on the surface. Other EPA experts raised alarm about the effect of dispersants on seafood. Ruch said EPA experts were being excluded from decision-making on the spill. "Other than a few people in the united command, there is no involvement from the rest of the agency," he said. EPA scientists would not go public for fear of retaliation, he added.

Note: For lots more from major media sources on government corruption, click here.

This summer, when Kellogg recalled 28 million boxes of Froot Loops, Apple Jacks, Corn Pops and Honey Smacks, the company blamed elevated levels of a chemical in the packaging. Dozens of consumers reported a strange taste and odor, and some complained of nausea and diarrhea. Federal regulators, who are charged with ensuring the safety of food and consumer products, are in the dark about the suspected chemical, 2-methylnaphthalene. The [FDA and EPA have] no scientific data on its impact on human health. The cereal recall hints at a larger issue: huge gaps in the government's knowledge about chemicals in everyday consumer products, from furniture to clothing to children's products. Under current laws, the government has little or no information about the health risks posed by most of the 80,000 chemicals on the U.S. market today. The information gap is hardly new. When the Toxic Substances Control Act was passed in 1976, it exempted from regulation about 62,000 chemicals that were in commercial use -- including 2-methylnaphthalene. In addition, chemicals developed since the law's passage do not have to be tested for safety. Instead, companies are asked to volunteer information on the health effects of their compounds.

Note: For lots more from major media sources on government corruption, click here.

Hospital doctors who quit their jobs are being routinely forced to sign "gagging orders" despite legislation designed to protect NHS [National Health Service] whistleblowers. Millions of pounds of taxpayers' money are being spent on contracts that deter doctors from speaking out about incompetence and mistakes in patient care. Nearly 90 per cent of severance agreements hammered out between NHS trusts and departing doctors contain confidentiality clauses. The widespread use of "gagging orders" against senior NHS staff who could raise patient safety concerns will intensify the doubts over the protection given to whistleblowers. Campaign groups claim that NHS managers sometimes resort to intimidatory tactics to deter medics from coming forward, while others that break cover can face years of expense and uncertainty before their cases reach court. The result, they say, is that doctors accept the gagging clauses in order to protect their careers and avoid legal wrangling. Mike Parker, of the Royal College of Surgeons, said: "The trusts find something upon which they can influence this individual and hold them virtually to ransom, and say: 'You speak up and this will happen.' It's effectively a form of bullying, if you like, but we do hear about this sort of thing happening."

Note: For lots more from reliable sources on government corruption, click here.

Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.