World’s richest men aid GMO-promoting ‘Green Revolution’ center

Associated Press/Eduardo Verdugo – From left, Chair of the International Center for Improvement of Corn and Wheat (CIMMYT) Sara Boettiger, Mexico state Gov. Eruviel Avila, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, Mexican Secretary of Agriculture Enrique Martinez, Mexican telecommunications tycoon Carlos Slim and CIMMYT Director General Thomas Lumpkin cut the ribbon at inauguration of the new research center for the CIMMYT in Texcoco, Mexico, Wednesday, Feb. 13, 2013. Gates and Slim teamed up to to fund new seed breeding research which the CIMMYT says aims to sustainably increase the productivity of maize and wheat systems to ensure global food security and reduce poverty. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)

By MARK STEVENSON

Associated Press | Feb 13

TEXCOCO, Mexico (AP) — The research center largely responsible for launching the “green revolution” of the 1960s that dramatically raised crop yields is getting support from the world’s richest men to develop genetically-modified seeds to help farmers in the developing world grow more grain in the face of a changing climatic conditions and increased demand.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Mexican telecom magnate Carlos Slim donated a total of $25 million to build a new cluster of biotechnology labs at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in Mexico.

The facilities include hothouses “with high-efficiency air particle filters and a water treatment plant to prevent pollen and genetically modified material from escaping to the outdoors,” according to a statement by the billionaires’ foundations.

Both of the philanthropists were on hand for Wednesday’s inauguration of the new labs at the research center, known as CIMMYT, located just east of Mexico City.

Bill Gates is Funding GMO Food – giving billions to the biotech industry

Bill Gates Dodges Questions on Why He Owns 500,000 Shares of Monsanto

Bill Gates, Monsanto, and eugenics: How one of the world’s wealthiest men is actively promoting a corporate takeover of global agriculture

Bill Gates added $7billion to his wealth in 2012 alone (and that’s AFTER he gave away $28million)

Billionaires Try to Shrink World’s Population

The Meat Industry Now Consumes Four-Fifths of All Antibiotics

It was yet another coming of age moment for GM crops, because the nonprofit CIMMYT has become known over the last 50 years for providing low-cost, improved seeds through hybridization efforts, using its vast stockpiles of native corn and wheat genes from across the world to cross-breed the best attributes, like drought-resistance.

But increasingly, genetic splicing is joining the older technique of cross-pollination as “one of the tools in the toolbox,” said CIMMYT Director Thomas Lumpkin.

While Lumpkin claimed that even hybridization represents a sort of genetic modification by selective planting and breeding, he noted that CIMMYT hasn’t shipped any true GM seeds yet, and acknowledged that some countries might have concerns.

“We want to facilitate the movement of those (genetic) traits to the countries of the developing world that request them, that want them,” Lumpkin said. “Nothing is being pushed, nothing is being forced, and CIMMYT will not profit.”

Gates noted there are “legitimate issues, but solvable issues” around wider GM crop use, and that solutions could include distributing GM crops that are patented but require no royalty payments.

That alone would be a big change in the spread of GM crops, which up to now have been largely controlled by a few big biotechnology and agricultural companies that charge steep rates for GM seed and sue any farmer who uses, even accidentally, their patented GM traits, like pest resistance.

CIMMYT, with its ties to farm agencies throughout the world, could be a conduit to deliver GM benefits to the developing world, which has largely been locked out of them.

GM traits could be developed by the center and donated, or they could be bought cheaply. That’s where Gates and his foundation could come in. With his help CIMMYT, which is known for charging farmers as little as possible, could pick up some of the older traits for low prices.

“Some of these traits are getting near the end of their patent life or are available from multiple entities, so that there’s even some competition there,” Gates noted.

Lumpkin said farmers may be scared by the legal risks of GM crops, noting “you can have a law suit of a million dollars” for unauthorized use of patented crops.

“So CIMMYT is primarily focusing on getting tried and true GMO traits that are widely used around the world and bring them to the poor farmers of the developing world, so that the women of the developing world don’t have to spend the entire cropping system pulling weeds in the field … when there is such a simple modification used by all of the farmers in the U.S., Argentina, Brazil, South Africa.”

“Why can’t these poor farmers have these same traits that have been used for 15 years in the developed world?” he asked.

Still national sensitivities in Mexico, where the CIMMYT was founded in 1963, are still strong. Mexico is the birthplace of corn, and concern that GM crops might displace or contaminate genetically-valuable native strains have so far held up large-scale planting of GM corn in Mexico, even as the country has been forced to import about half of its basic grain consumption.

“Under the guise of philanthropy, what they are doing is promoting the use of transgenetic crops, with rhetoric about ending hunger in the world,” said Aleira Lara, of Greenpeace Mexico. “Those things are myths.”

“These (GM) seeds are not any kind of magic wand for increasing production, and they bring new problems to the countryside,” like developing resistance among pests and weeds, Lara said.

Lumpkin noted that CIMMYT is already doing some GM corn research in Africa, but not in Mexico.

“We are doing some research here with wheat, which is not such a sensitive issue in Mexico,” he said.

Lumpkin warned that the world could face a recurrence of the kind of crisis that CIMMYT was able to stave off 50 years ago, this time brought about by new plant diseases, climate change, water shortages and increasing consumption of grain-intensive foods, like meat.

“On one hand, there is rapidly increasing demand … on the other hand, conditions for producing this food are deteriorating rapidly,” he said.

Without new research avenues, he warned, “we have all of the ingredients for a new global food crisis.”

 

Cancer-causing drug could be in horsemeat burgers, consumers warned

Horsemeat containing phenylbutazone should ‘never be used for human consumption’ – video

Five horses slaughtered in the UK last year tested positive for anti-inflammatory phenylbutazone, food safety chiefs admitted

mirror.co.uk | Jan 14, 2013

Danger: Phenylbutazone (bute)

Burgers contaminated with horsemeat could contain a drug linked to cancer, consumers were warned today.

Five horses slaughtered in the UK last year tested positive for phenylbutazone, food safety chiefs admitted.

The anti-inflammatory is banned from the food chain over fears it causes bone marrow and liver problems in humans.

But test delays meant meat from the five contaminated horses still ended up on dinner plates.

The new scare comes after four British supermarkets, including Tesco, were found to have sold beefburgers containing horse.

The Food Standards Agency tonight stressed that no burgers had tested positive for phenylbutazone – also known as Bute.

But Shadow Environment Secretary Mary Creagh warned that contaminated horse could have ended up in other batches.

In the Commons she demanded action to ensure “illegal and carcinogenic horsemeat stops entering the human food chain”.

And she told Agriculture Minister David Heath: “I’m astonished you have not raised this. The public has a right to know.”

Risk: Meat from horses is affected. Getty

Last week supermarkets were forced to withdraw more than 10 million burgers containing Irish horsemeat.

At the time experts said it posed no health risk.

All Irish and UK horses must have a “passport” which is supposed to stop those that have had dangerous drugs from being eaten.

But 75 different UK organisations issue them and a national database has been closed by the government.

An animal treated with a drug such as Bute is worthless. But with a fake passport it can fetch more than £300 from the meat trade.

The UK Food Standards Agency said that of 8,426 horses slaughtered here last year only 145 were tested.

Of these five were contaminated with Bute but it was too late to stop them being eaten in France.

The spokesman added: “Tests take three weeks. Because suppliers want the meat fresh it did go into the food chain. We alerted the French.”

Unison, which represents meat hygiene workers, called for inspections to be stepped up.

Warning: Labour’s Mary Creagh. Rex

Spokesman Ian Adderley said: “Just a small number of horses are checked and the results take weeks to come back.

“They are playing Russian roulette with consumers.”

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs claimed that the horse database would not have helped because it did not include veterinary records.

They added: “Anyone falsifying horse passports can be prosecuted.”

Leeds University’s Prof Alastair Hay said Bute could cause anaemia and bone marrow disorders but the cancer link had not been convincingly proven.

What is Phenylbutazone?

Phenylbutazone, aka Bute, is an anti-inflammatory drug given to horses to treat lameness, pain and fever.

It is banned from entering the human food chain in Europe because it is thought to cause bone marrow disorders in extremely rare cases.

But scientists are still divided about how dangerous the drug could be to humans.

Professor Chris Elliott, director of the Institute for Global Food ­Security at Queen’s University Belfast, explained: “Thankfully the ­residues of drugs such as this that are found in meat are very low, and therefore the risk to the consumer is ­correspondingly low.

“However, the use of veterinary medicines in all animal species that go into the food chain is a matter of food safety and must be treated seriously.”

U.S. government to allow radioactive waste metals to be ‘recycled’ into consumers products like belt buckles, silverware

naturalnews.com | feb 7, 2013

(NaturalNews) The federal government is currently in the process of trying to get rid of tens of thousands of tons of radioactive scrap metal it has accumulated over the years from various nuclear testing and wartime activities. And a recent proposal made by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) would lift existing restrictions on the recycling and reuse of this nuclear waste, allowing it to be formulated into everyday consumer products like belt buckles, silverware, and even surgical devices used by medical personnel on ill patients.

The shocking proposal comes more than a decade after DOE first tried to foist this growing stock of nuclear waste onto the American public back in the late 1990s. Back in 2000, Congressman Ed Markey from Massachusetts reportedly influenced then-Energy Secretary Bill Richardson to reinstate a ban that was temporarily lifted on the unmitigated recycling and reuse of radioactive waste metals in consumer products. But now, DOE is trying once again to secretly dispose of this radioactive waste stock by allowing scrap companies to sell it to consumer product manufacturers.

“A Department of Energy proposal to allow up to 14,000 metric tons of its radioactive scrap metal to be recycled into consumer products was called into question today by Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) due to concerns over public health,” wrote Rep. Markey in a recent news brief about the issue. “In a letter sent to DOE head Steven Chu, Rep. Markey expressed ‘grave concerns’ over the potential of these metals becoming jewelry, cutlery, or other consumer products that could exceed healthy doses of radiation without any knowledge by the consumer.”

If granted its request, DOE could soon be responsible for triggering the widespread poisoning of the public with even more low-dose radiation via metal-based consumer products. Such products include not only cutlery and jewelry, but also automobiles, city buses, coffee makers, toasters, braces for teeth — practically anything that contains metal could end up being tainted with low-dose radiation as a result of DOE’s efforts.

Many imported consumer products already tainted with radiation

Even though DOE’s proposal has yet to become official policy, American consumers already need to be wary of the safety of metal-based products, particularly those imported from other countries. As we reported last January, domestic merchandise retailer Bed, Bath & Beyond recalled a line of tissue holders produced in India from its stores after learning that the metal used in their production was tainted with radio-isotope cobalt-60. In fact, radioactive goods routinely slip through customs, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which is a serious cause for concern.

“India and China were the top sources of radioactive goods shipped to the U.S. through 2008,” explains a March 24, 2012, Bloomberg article about radioactive scrap metal. And there is no indication that things have improved since that time, according to Ross Bartley, a metallurgist who has been tracking radioactive contamination since the early 1990s. In all likelihood, he says, the problem has remained the same or even gotten worse.

Since low-dose radiation has been shown time and time again to cause birth defects, cataracts, cancer, and many other health problems, DOE’s insistence on exposing the public to even more of it is highly disturbing. Perhaps this is at least part of the reason why DOE head Steven Chu recently stepped down from his position at the agency following Rep. Markey’s letter of opposition to the agency’s proposal, not to mention a widespread and growing disapproval among citizens of this serious affront to public health.

Contact DOE and say NO to radioactive poisoning of consumer products

Though DOE insists that the amount of radiation emitted from radioactive waste is “negligible” in terms of being a public health threat, science says otherwise. Cumulative exposure to even low-dose radiation over the course of many months or even years can damage cells, DNA, and even hormone balance. This is why it is important to oppose DOE’s proposal to end the current moratorium on the reuse of radioactive waste metals.

You can contact DOE and urge the agency to keep radioactive metals out of industrial, commercial, and consumer products by emailing: scrap_PEAcomments@hq.doe.gov

Why Germany Is Failing to Boost Its Birth Rate

Germany dumps hundreds of billions of euros into its family policy each year, but it isn’t paying off, with the number of births continuing to shrink. DPA

SPIEGEL | Feb 6, 2013

Germany spends more on families than most European countries, but its birth rate is falling. A government-commissioned study seen by SPIEGEL argues most of the money is being wasted. Instead of complicated benefits and tax breaks, the government urgently needs to invest in preschools.

A study commissioned by the German government has reached a damning verdict on the country’s efforts to boost its low birth rate, saying billions of euros are being wasted on complex benefits and tax breaks that are largely ineffective and in some cases counterproductive.

Europe’s largest economy spends some €200 billion ($270 billion) on promoting children and families per year — that’s almost two-thirds of the federal budget. But its birth rate, at 1.39 births per woman aged 15 to 49, remains among the lowest in Europe and compares with an Office of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) average of 1.74.

The number of births in Germany has fallen to a record low. It was just 663,000 in 2011, 72,000 fewer than a decade earlier.

The German government ordered a detailed cost-benefit study of its family policies five years ago. The panel of experts led by Basel-based consultancy Prognos has completed a 66-page interim report that SPIEGEL has seen.

Its findings could open up a major battleground in this year’s election campaign because they amount to an indictment of 60 years of German family policy. Successive governments, whether from the center-right or center-left or grand coalitions, it seems, got it wrong. And some of the most expensive measures often yield the least benefit.

The study makes enlightening reading for those who wonder why Germany is consistently near the top in international rankings for family spending while its birth rate and job prospects for young mothers are near the bottom.

The government had pledged to release the findings in the current parliamentary term. But officials no longer seem in a hurry and it might not be made public before the September general election. That may be because the study supports calls by the opposition center-left Social Democrats and Greens for a massive expansion in preschool facilities and all-day schools, as well as caps on tax benefits for married couples.

Outdated Notions of Family Life

The findings run counter to a traditional view of the ideal family still held dear by many in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union party: Dad earns the money, Mom stays at home and looks after the children. That, say the government-commissioned experts, can no longer serve as the basis for modern policy-making.

The government’s latest policy initiative caused intense controversy, with opposition parties saying it was trying to transport Germany back to the 1950s. Launched at the insistence of the CDU’s staunchly conservative Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, the “childcare allowance” will come into force this August — and pay a benefit of €100 per month to stay-at-home mothers.

The authors of the study say that the current tax and benefit arrangements discourage women from working full-time when they have children, discriminate against unmarried parents and in general aren’t making it easier for people to raise children.

The web of benefits is so complex that even experts don’t fully grasp it: There’s a “child supplement,” “parental benefit,” an “allowance for single parents,” a “married person’s supplement,” a “sibling bonus,” “orphan money” and “child education supplement,” not to forget the “child education supplementary supplement.”

Responding to the SPIEGEL article, Family Minister Kristina Schröder, 35, mother of a one-and-a-half-year-old child, defended her policies. “I don’t regard family policy like an investment banker with the aim of profit-maximization,” she told the Passauer Neue Presse newspaper on Tuesday. She said she was opposed to a policy “that focuses more on macroeconomic profit than on human solidarity.”

Schröder called on companies to help boost the birth rate. “The most important thing is to adapt working life more to the needs of families instead of going on requiring families to keep on adapting to the requirements of the working world.”

Manuela Schwesig, a deputy leader of the center-left Social Democratic Party, said: “The government’s policy on families is shaped by a picture of the family that is half a century old. Single parents or couples with children but without a marriage certificate are virtually ignored.”

Cash or Daycare

The central question of family policy is whether the government should invest in education and preschool facilities or simply give families cash.

In Germany, governments have always chosen the latter option, not least because benefits and tax breaks tend to win votes. The problem is that the money often doesn’t end up reaching the people who need it.

Take Claudia Kinski and Andreas Schulte*. They both work and are raising a child. He has a public sector job and works in shifts. She does security checks at a major airport. They always await their new shift rotations with trepidation. Will they have to work a lot of weekends this month? Will they have to start work at five in the morning or eight at night? The rotation determines how often Claudia will see her 11 year-old son, when she will need a babysitter, and for how long.

“Sometimes I have to ring him up from work in the morning to wake him up and tell him where he can find his breakfast,” she says. “An hour later I ring him up again to make sure he leaves the house.”

The fundamental problem that faces this family and many others is that they can’t find adequate daycare facilities. They earn too much to qualify for most of the benefits, and they don’t get tax breaks because they’re not married.

The study criticicizes some of the main components of Germany’s family benefits system:

so-called “tax splitting” for married couples, in which the husband and wife each pay income tax on half the total of their combined incomes. This costs the government some €20 billion a year and is one of the most expensive instruments. It rewards married people who have different incomes. The bigger the income difference between them, the bigger the tax advantage. In the best-case scenario, they can get a tax break of up to €15,694 per year, if there’s only one earner. The sytem means the “wedding market is often more lucrative than the labor market,” says family policy researcher Jutta Allmendinger. Single parents, unmarried couples or same-sex married couples with children, get nothing. If Mom and Dad aren’t married, they’re treated as singles.
The child benefit is the most expensive family policy tool, costing some €40 billion. At present, parents get €184 per child per month. Adjusted for inflation, that’s over three times higher than in the 1970s. But the study says it’s a “fiscally relatively expensive way to avoid poverty and doesn’t create any beneficial effects in terms of employment.” Meaning: poorer families don’t really profit because child benefit is offset against other benefits they get. And it tends to encourage women in middle-class families to stay at home.

The system is damaging the economy because it discourages women from seeking full-time employment. That’s the vicious circle of the German tax and benefit system. The state hands out generous payments like the child benefit but in turn charges high taxes and welfare contributions on employment. As a result, almost 50 percent of working women in Germany are in part-time employment — more than in most other European countries.

The study says a far more effective and cheaper way of helping families and boosting the birth rate is to open more preschools. It found that mothers with children aged up to three years who have found a place in a nursery work 12 hours hours more per week on average than mothers who haven’t been able to find a place. The income gain is almost €700 per month before tax. It’s a similar story for mothers of children aged between three and six years.

The researchers say there’s empirical evidence of a correlation between the availability of preschool places and the birth rate. They refer to certain rural districts of western Germany where an increase in the number of daycare spots for children by 10 percent led to an increase in the birth rate to 3.5 percent from 2.4 percent within two years.

So nursing care expansion could be at least partly self-financing. “The rising employment activity of mothers and the resulting increased revenues from taxes and social contributions means that a large part of the original outlay would flow back to the state,” the study says.

Here’s an intriguing statistic: Germans aged between 25 and 29 can expect to receive family related benefits and tax exemptions totalling €133,400 by the end of their lives. That sounds like a tidy sum. But almost 85 percent of it consists of monetary and tax benefits that will have relatively little impact. Only 15 percent is in the form of tangible services like preschools.

Merkel’s government doesn’t see that as a problem. Family Minister Schröder praises the new childcare allowance for stay-at-home mothers as a “fair offer” and says she’s a fan of the married couple’s tax-splitting provision. “Marriage,” says the 35-year-old, “has an intrinsic value for the state, even as a childless community of responsbililty.”

But what many parents really need is a policy that integrates leisure activities into the school system, that pays babysitters more and does more to help private households that employ nannies.

Some Conservatives Realize Need for Change

Even CDU politicians are realizing this, especially at the local government level. Take Sonneberg in the eastern state of Thuringia. The town of 22,000 opened one of Germany’s first 24-hour daycare centers two years ago. The project was initiated by CDU mayor Sybille Abel. It looks like a designer hotel and cost the city €1.4 million to build. Sonneberg has many car components firms and two large hospitals where people work in shifts. Unemployment in the town is just 3.6 percent. The new center, called Zukunft (Future) is the town’s 14th nursery. It’s a rare paradise for parents. “We as former GDR citizens evidently have different priorities in this regard,” says Abel, referring to communist East Germany’s good record on providing childcare facilities.

Even though the study’s findings are critical of government policy, they provide Merkel with an opportunity to sweep aside outdated ideologies and start dealing with the realities of modern life. “It’s time for a paradigm change in family policy,” says one of the authors of the study.

Some politicians may mock subjecting children and families to such a rigorous cost-benefit analysis — but there is no denying that family policy is a massive investment program in the future of society. As such, it should be a central focus of the election campaign.

One-Child policy enforcers crush baby to death with their vehicle

For many in China, the story brings back uncomfortable memories of Feng Jiemei, who last June posted gruesome photographs of her lying in a hospital bed next to her 7-month-old force-aborted fetus.

NBC News | Feb 5, 2013

By Ed Flanagan

BEIJING – A 13-month-old child was fatally crushed by a car containing Chinese officials after they went to collect a fine from the parents for breaching the country’s one-child policy, according to Chinese state media.

The incident reportedly occurred Monday in Dongshantou village near Wenzhou city in the eastern province of Zhejiang, after a delegation of 11 officials from the Ruian Town birth control office drove out to get the unspecified fine.

This did not go down well with the father, Chen Liandi, 39, and the conversation got heated.

According to a briefing given by the Ruian Municipal Propaganda Department and reported by state media, the officials convinced Chen’s wife, Li Yuhong, to accompany them back to Ruian to talk over the couple’s options.

The baby was reportedly left in the hands of his father and the group got back into their cars to leave.

What happened next remains unclear – perhaps due to the politically sensitive nature of this story – but the boy was then found crushed underneath a car.

He was rushed to the Third People’s Hospital in Ruian, but could not be saved.

‘You were too careless’
On China’s Twitter-like service, Weibo, users expressed frustration over the vague account given by Ruian officials and demanded more information, but no other Chinese press have printed much beyond the official government account.

For many in China, the story brings back uncomfortable memories of Feng Jiemei, who last June posted gruesome photographs of her lying in a hospital bed next to her 7-month-old aborted fetus.

Feng’s story created a social firestorm for Beijing when word got out that the 22-year-old mother had been forced to have the abortion because she did not have enough money to pay the $6,400 fine for having a second child.

“I told you, $6,400, not even a penny less. I told your dad that and he said he has no money,” a family planning official wrote to Deng in a blunt text message that quickly went viral. “You were too careless, you didn’t think this was a big deal.”

Feng was grabbed from her home and taken to a local hospital in her native Shaanxi province where she was blindfolded, thrown on a bed and forced to a sign a document she couldn’t read. Thirty hours later, her baby girl was aborted.

China has long defended its one-child policy as a way to prevent overpopulation and to help raise living standards across the country.

However, some experts in China and abroad argue that the policy has outlived its usefulness and may instead be a detriment to future growth.

Others in China have pointed out the abuses meted out in cases like Feng Jiemei’s show that it causes more social harm and have called on Beijing to remove it.

DARPA produces 10 million flu vaccine doses in one month

Tobacco plants used in the development of the vaccine

**Editor’s Warning: This article is highly infectious military/industrial/medical propaganda. Read at own risk. Take necessary precautions.**

gizmag.com | Jan 26, 2013

By David Szondy

A familiar news topic during the flu season is the difficulties that the authorities face in producing enough flu vaccine fast enough to control the outbreak. That’s a serious enough problem, but when the influenza outbreak turns out to be the start of a global pandemic, then hundreds of millions of lives could be at risk. To combat this, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has developed a new way of making vaccines that has turned out 10 million doses of H1N1 influenza vaccine in a month, in a recent test run.

A globalized world means a world increasingly at risk from pandemic diseases. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 20 to 50 percent of the world’s population is at risk from a pandemic outbreak such as that seen in the influenza epidemic of 1918. US military forces are particularly vulnerable because the nature of military life is perfect for the spread of disease, unless countermeasures such as cleanliness and vaccinations are constantly employed.

The problem is, vaccines for new diseases can’t be produced quickly. According to WHO, it can take up to nine months to develop and put a vaccine into production. Worse, egg-based and other conventional vaccine production techniques may not be able to scale up sufficiently to meet the demand – especially for diseases where two doses per person are required for adequate protection.

DARPA’s approach to solving this is the Blue Angel program. Started in response to the 2009 H1N1 swine flu pandemic, its purpose is to quickly develop practical countermeasures to disease outbreaks due to either natural causes or biowarfare attack. The program has a number of aspects, such as finding ways to identify people who are infected before symptoms show, but one major facet is the Accelerated Manufacture of Pharmaceuticals (AMP) project.

Working with Medicago Inc., AMP uses tobacco plants instead of eggs to produce recombinant proteins that are key to vaccines. According to the company, introducing viral genes into tobacco has a number advantages: the full-grown plants can be used because the protein is produced in the leaves; it avoids the need to procure eggs in huge quantities; and, there’s no danger of the virus killing the egg embryo. Medicago said that the tobacco process can generate the proteins within 14 days of the gene sequence of the virus being identified, with vaccine-grade proteins generated within four weeks. In the DARPA tests, 10 million doses of H1N1 influenza vaccine were produced in one month, as defined by an animal model.

According to DARPA, third party testing confirmed that a single dose in an animal model produced hemagglutinin antibodies at a protective strength. However, only clinical trials can determine how effective it would be on humans, and the entire process still needs FDA approval.

Bill Gates Says Global Vaccination Program is “God’s Work”

Dees Illustration

Activist Post | Jan 25, 2013

by Brandon Turbeville

In a recent interview with the London Telegraph, Bill Gates has now claimed that his Foundation’s massive push for vaccination is not just an exercise in philanthropy but that it is, in fact, “God’s work.”

Gates, who, according to the Telegraph, is worth an estimated $65 billion, is now dedicating his life to the “eradication of poliomyelitis,” or, at least he is dedicating himself to the vaccination program allegedly aimed at achieving these ends.

As reported by the Telegraph,

“My wife and I had a long dialogue about how we were going to take the wealth that we’re lucky enough to have and give it back in a way that’s most impactful to the world,” he says. “Both of us worked at Microsoft and saw that if you take innovation and smart people, the ability to measure what’s working, that you can pull together some pretty dramatic things.

“We’re focused on the help of the poorest in the world, which really drives you into vaccination. You can actually take a disease and get rid of it altogether, like we are doing with polio.”

Yet, eradicating polio through a massive vaccination program may be easier said than done writes Neil Tweedie of the Telegraph. “There is another, sinister obstacle: the propagation by Islamist groups of the belief that polio vaccination is a front for covert sterilisation and other western evils. Health workers in Pakistan have paid with their lives for involvement in the programme.”

To this question, Gates responded with seemingly atypical religious zeal, noted by Tweedie in the published article. “It’s not going to stop us succeeding,” says Gates. “It does force us to sit down with the Pakistan government to renew their commitments, see what they’re going to do in security and make changes to protect the women who are doing God’s work and getting out to these children and delivering the vaccine.”

Read More

 

“Medical tragedy”: Swine flu shot linked to narcolepsy, nightmares, hallucinations, sleep paralysis and cataplexy

Emelie Olsson is plagued by hallucinations and nightmares. When she wakes up, she’s often paralyzed, unable to breathe properly or call for help. During the day she can barely stay awake, and often misses school or having fun with friends. She is only 14, but at times she has wondered if her life is worth living.

Stiernstedt says Sweden’s mass vaccination saved between 30 and 60 people from swine flu death. Yet since the pandemic ended, more than 200 cases of narcolepsy have been reported in Sweden.

Reuters | Jan 22, 2013

By Kate Kelland, Health and Science Correspondent

STOCKHOLM – Emelie Olsson is plagued by hallucinations and nightmares. When she wakes up, she’s often paralyzed, unable to breathe properly or call for help. During the day she can barely stay awake, and often misses school or having fun with friends. She is only 14, but at times she has wondered if her life is worth living.

Emelie is one of around 800 children in Sweden and elsewhere in Europe who developed narcolepsy, an incurable sleep disorder, after being immunized with the Pandemrix H1N1 swine flu vaccine made by British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline in 2009.

Finland, Norway, Ireland and France have seen spikes in narcolepsy cases, too, and people familiar with the results of a soon-to-be-published study in Britain have told Reuters it will show a similar pattern in children there.

Flu vaccination ban goes national after fever, convulsions in children

Their fate, coping with an illness that all but destroys normal life, is developing into what the health official who coordinated Sweden’s vaccination campaign calls a “medical tragedy” that will demand rising scientific and medical attention.

Europe’s drugs regulator has ruled Pandemrix should no longer be used in people aged under 20. The chief medical officer at GSK’s vaccines division, Norman Begg, says his firm views the issue extremely seriously and is “absolutely committed to getting to the bottom of this”, but adds there is not yet enough data or evidence to suggest a causal link.

Others – including Emmanuel Mignot, one of the world’s leading experts on narcolepsy, who is being funded by GSK to investigate further – agree more research is needed but say the evidence is already clearly pointing in one direction.

“There’s no doubt in my mind whatsoever that Pandemrix increased the occurrence of narcolepsy onset in children in some countries – and probably in most countries,” says Mignot, a specialist in the sleep disorder at Stanford University in the United States.

30 MILLION RECEIVED PANDEMRIX

In total, the GSK shot was given to more than 30 million people in 47 countries during the 2009-2010 H1N1 swine flu pandemic. Because it contains an adjuvant, or booster, it was not used in the United States because drug regulators there are wary of adjuvanted vaccines.

GSK says 795 people across Europe have reported developing narcolepsy since the vaccine’s use began in 2009.

Questions about how the narcolepsy cases are linked to Pandemrix, what the triggers and biological mechanisms might have been, and whether there might be a genetic susceptibility are currently the subject of deep scientific investigation.

But experts on all sides are wary. Rare adverse reactions can swiftly develop into “vaccine scares” that spiral out of proportion and cast what one of Europe’s top flu experts calls a “long shadow” over public confidence in vaccines that control potential killers like measles and polio.

“No-one wants to be the next Wakefield,” said Mignot, referring to the now discredited British doctor Andrew Wakefield who sparked a decades-long backlash against the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) shot with false claims of links to autism.

With the narcolepsy studies, there is no suggestion that the findings are the work of one rogue doctor.

Independent teams of scientists have published peer-reviewed studies from Sweden, Finland and Ireland showing the risk of developing narcolepsy after the 2009-2010 immunization campaign was between seven and 13 times higher for children who had Pandemrix than for their unvaccinated peers.

“We really do want to get to the bottom of this. It’s not in anyone’s interests if there is a safety issue that needs to be addressed,” said GSK’s Begg.

LIFE CHANGED

Emelie’s parents, Charles and Marie Olsson, say she was a top student who loved playing the piano, taking tennis lessons, creating art and having fun with friends. But her life started to change in early 2010, a few months after she had Pandemrix. In the spring of 2010, they noticed she was often tired, needing to sleep when she came home from school.

But it wasn’t until May, when she began collapsing at school, that it became clear something serious was happening.

As well as the life-limiting bouts of daytime sleepiness, narcolepsy brings nightmares, hallucinations, sleep paralysis and episodes of cataplexy – when strong emotions trigger a sudden and dramatic loss of muscle strength.

In Emelie’s case, having fun is the emotional trigger. “I can’t laugh or joke about with my friends any more, because when I do I get cataplexies and collapse,” she said in an interview at her home in the Swedish capital.

Narcolepsy is estimated to affect between 200 and 500 people per million and is a lifelong condition. It has no known cure and scientists don’t really know what causes it. But they do know patients have a deficit of a brain neurotransmitter called orexin, also known as hypocretin, which regulates wakefulness.

Research has found that some people are born with a variant in a gene known as HLA that means they have low hypocretin, making them more susceptible to narcolepsy. Around 25 percent of Europeans are thought to have this genetic vulnerability.

When results of Emelie’s hypocretin test came back in November last year, it showed she had 15 percent of the normal amount, typical of heavy narcolepsy with cataplexy.

The seriousness of her strange new illness has forced her to contemplate life far more than many other young teens: “In the beginning I didn’t really want to live any more, but now I have learned to handle things better,” she said.

TRIGGERS?

Scientists investigating these cases are looking in detail at Pandemrix’s adjuvant, called AS03, for clues.

Some suggest AS03, or maybe its boosting effect, or even the H1N1 flu itself, may have triggered the onset of narcolepsy in those who have the susceptible HLA gene variant.

Angus Nicoll, a flu expert at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), says genes may well play a part, but don’t tell the whole story.

“Yes, there’s a genetic predisposition to this condition, but that alone cannot explain these cases,” he said. “There was also something to do with receiving this specific vaccination. Whether it was the vaccine plus the genetic disposition alone or a third factor as well – like another infection – we simply do not know yet.”

GSK is funding a study in Canada, where its adjuvanted vaccine Arepanrix, similar to Pandemrix, was used during the 2009-2010 pandemic. The study won’t be completed until 2014, and some experts fear it may not shed much light since the vaccines were similar but not precisely the same.

It all leaves this investigation with far more questions than answers, and a lot more research ahead.

WAS IT WORTH IT?

In his glass-topped office building overlooking the Maria Magdalena church in Stockholm, Goran Stiernstedt, a doctor turned public health official, has spent many difficult hours going over what happened in his country during the swine flu pandemic, wondering if things should have been different.

“The big question is was it worth it? And retrospectively I have to say it was not,” he told Reuters in an interview.

Being a wealthy country, Sweden was at the front of the queue for pandemic vaccines. It got Pandemrix from GSK almost as soon as it was available, and a nationwide campaign got uptake of the vaccine to 59 percent, meaning around 5 million people got the shot.

Stiernstedt, director for health and social care at the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions, helped coordinate the vaccination campaign across Sweden’s 21 regions.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) says the 2009-2010 pandemic killed 18,500 people, although a study last year said that total might be up to 15 times higher.

While estimates vary, Stiernstedt says Sweden’s mass vaccination saved between 30 and 60 people from swine flu death. Yet since the pandemic ended, more than 200 cases of narcolepsy have been reported in Sweden.

With hindsight, this risk-benefit balance is unacceptable. “This is a medical tragedy,” he said. “Hundreds of young people have had their lives almost destroyed.”

Yet the problem with risk-benefit analyses is that they often look radically different when the world is facing a pandemic with the potential to wipe out millions than they do when it has emerged relatively unscathed from one, like H1N1, which turned out to be much milder than first feared.

David Salisbury, the British government’s director of immunization, says “therein lies the risk, and the difficulty, of working in public health” when a viral emergency hits.

“In the event of a severe pandemic, the risk of death is far higher than the risk of narcolepsy,” he told Reuters. “If we spent longer developing and testing the vaccine on very large numbers of people and waited to see whether any of them developed narcolepsy, much of the population might be dead.”

Pandemrix was authorized by European drug regulators using a so-called “mock-up procedure” that allows a vaccine to be authorized ahead of a possible pandemic using another flu strain. In Pandemrix’s case, the substitute was H5N1 bird flu.

When the WHO declared a pandemic, GSK replaced the mock-up’s strain with the pandemic-causing H1N1 strain to form Pandemrix.

GSK says the final H1N1 version was tested in trials involving around 3,600 patients, including children, adolescents, adults and the elderly, before it was rolled out.

The ECDC’s Nicoll says early warning systems that give a more accurate analysis of a flu strain’s threat are the best way to minimize risks of this kind of tragedy happening in future.

Salisbury agrees, and says progress towards a universal flu vaccine – one that wouldn’t need last-minute changes made when a new strain emerged – would cuts risks further.

“Ideally, we would have a better vaccine that would work against all strains of influenza and we wouldn’t need to worry about this ever again,” he said. “But that’s a long way off.”

With scientists facing years of investigation and research, Emelie just wants to make the best of her life.

She reluctantly accepts that to do so, she needs a cocktail of drugs to try to control the narcolepsy symptoms. The stimulant Ritalin and the sleeping pill Sobril are prescribed for Emelie’s daytime sleepiness and night terrors. Then there’s Prozac to try to stabilize her and limit her cataplexies.

“That’s one of the things that makes me feel most uncomfortable,” she explains. “Before I got this condition I didn’t take any pills, and now I have to take lots – maybe for the rest of my life. It’s not good to take so many medicines, especially when you know they have side effects.”

Wealthy Japanese minister: Let the elderly and the sick ‘Hurry up and die’

Taro Aso referred to elderly patients who are no longer able to feed themselves as ‘tube people’. Aso, one of Japan’s wealthiest politicians, has questioned the state’s duty towards its large elderly population. Photograph: Yoshikazu Tsuno/AFP/Getty Images

Let elderly people ‘hurry up and die’, says Japanese minister

Taro Aso says he would refuse end-of-life care and would ‘feel bad’ knowing treatment was paid for by government

guardian.co.uk | Jan 22, 2013 

by Justin McCurry in Tokyo

Japan‘s new government is barely a month old, and already one of its most senior members has insulted tens of millions of voters by suggesting that the elderly are an unnecessary drain on the country’s finances.

Taro Aso, the finance minister, said on Monday that the elderly should be allowed to “hurry up and die” to relieve pressure on the state to pay for their medical care.

“Heaven forbid if you are forced to live on when you want to die. I would wake up feeling increasingly bad knowing that [treatment] was all being paid for by the government,” he said during a meeting of the national council on social security reforms. “The problem won’t be solved unless you let them hurry up and die.”

Aso’s comments are likely to cause offence in Japan, where almost a quarter of the 128 million population is aged over 60. The proportion is forecast to rise to 40% over the next 50 years.

The remarks are also an unwelcome distraction for the new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, whose first period as Japan’s leader ended with his resignation after just a year, in 2007, partly due to a string of gaffes by members of his cabinet.

Rising welfare costs, particularly for the elderly, were behind a decision last year to double consumption [sales] tax to 10% over the next three years, a move Aso’s Liberal Democratic party supported.

The 72-year-old, who doubles as deputy prime minister, said he would refuse end-of-life care. “I don’t need that kind of care,” he said in comments quoted by local media, adding that he had written a note instructing his family to deny him life-prolonging medical treatment.

To compound the insult, he referred to elderly patients who are no longer able to feed themselves as “tube people”. The health and welfare ministry, he added, was “well aware that it costs several tens of millions of yen” a month to treat a single patient in the final stages of life.

Cost aside, caring for the elderly is a major challenge for Japan’s stretched social services. According to a report this week, the number of households receiving welfare, which include family members aged 65 or over, stood at more than 678,000, or about 40% of the total. The country is also tackling a rise in the number of people who die alone, most of whom are elderly. In 2010, 4.6 million elderly people lived alone, and the number who died at home soared 61% between 2003 and 2010, from 1,364 to 2,194, according to the bureau of social welfare and public health in Tokyo.

The government is planning to reduce welfare expenditure in its next budget, due to go into force this April, with details of the cuts expected within days.

Aso, who has a propensity for verbal blunders, later attempted to clarify his comments. He acknowledged his language had been “inappropriate” in a public forum and insisted he was talking only about his personal preference.

“I said what I personally believe, not what the end-of-life medical care system should be,” he told reporters. “It is important that you be able spend the final days of your life peacefully.”

It is not the first time Aso, one of Japan’s wealthiest politicians, has questioned the state’s duty towards its large elderly population. In 2008, while serving as prime minister, he described “doddering” pensioners as tax burdens who should take better care of their health.

“I see people aged 67 or 68 at class reunions who dodder around and are constantly going to the doctor,” he said at a meeting of economists. “Why should I have to pay for people who just eat and drink and make no effort? I walk every day and do other things, but I’m paying more in taxes.”

He had already angered the country’s doctors by telling them they lacked common sense, made a joke about Alzheimer’s patients, and pronounced “penniless young men” unfit for marriage.

In 2001, he said he wanted Japan to become the kind of successful country in which “the richest Jews would want to live”.

He once likened an opposition party to the Nazis, praised Japan’s colonial rule in Taiwan and, as foreign minister, told US diplomats they would never be trusted in Middle East peace negotiations because they have “blue eyes and blond hair”.

While figures released on Monday showed a record 2.14 million Japanese were receiving welfare in October 2012, Aso has led a life of privilege few of his compatriots could hope to match.

He is the grandson of Shigeru Yoshida, an influential postwar prime minister, and is married to the daughter of another former premier.

While campaigning for the premiership in 2008, Aso refused to acknowledge the use of hundreds of allied prisoners of war by his family’s coal mining business during the second world war. He served as president of the firm’s successor, Aso Cement, from 1973-79.

Multiple vaccine doses have resulted in up to 145,000 child deaths in past 20 years

naturalnews.com | Jan 24, 2013

by Jonathan Benson

(NaturalNews) The recommended childhood vaccination schedule has changed dramatically over the years, with children now receiving upwards of 30 vaccines, including multiple combination vaccines, before the age of six. And in many cases, doctors and nurses administer half a dozen or more vaccines all at once during a single visit to make sure children get all these shots and to save time. But according to data compiled from the government’s Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS), as many as 145,000 children or more have died throughout the past 20 years as a result of this multiple vaccine dose approach, and few parents are aware of this shocking fact.

In a study recently published in the journal Human & Experimental Toxicology, researchers evaluated the overall number of hospitalizations and deaths associated with vaccines administered between 1990 and 2010, and compared this data to the number of vaccines given at one time to individual children. Hospitalizations and deaths resulting from one vaccine dose were compared to those of two vaccine doses, in other words, and the same all the way up to eight vaccine doses. Researchers also evaluated overall hospitalization and death rates associated with getting one to four combined vaccine doses, five to eight combined vaccine doses, and one to eight combined vaccine doses.

Upon analysis, the team found that the more vaccines a child receives during a single doctor visit, the more likely he or she is to suffer a severe reaction or even die. According to Heidi Stevenson from Gaia Health, for each additional vaccine a child receives, his or her chance of death increases by an astounding 50 percent — and with each additional vaccine dose, chances of having to be hospitalized for severe complications increase two-fold. To sum it all up, the overall size of the vaccine load was found to be directly associated with hospitalization and death risk, illustrating the incredible dangers of administering multiple vaccines at once.

Parents of children who become injured after just one vaccine tend to cease further vaccinations, suggests data

Interestingly, the total number of reported hospitalizations and deaths from getting just one vaccine was higher than the number reported for getting two, three, or even four vaccines. Though the precise reason for this is unknown, it is believed that newborns mostly fall into the one vaccine category, and those that are injured by a single vaccine tend not to get any more vaccines, hence the immediate decrease observed among children who received only two vaccines. Once a child reaches five vaccinations; however, the hospitalization and death rate jumps dramatically, the reason for which was not investigated as part of the study.

“Our findings show a positive correlation between the number of vaccine doses administered and the percentage of hospitalizations and deaths reports to VAERS,” wrote the authors in their conclusion. “In addition, younger infants were significantly more likely than older infants to be hospitalized or die after receiving vaccines. Since vaccines are administered to millions of infants every year, it is imperative that health authorities have scientific data from synergistic toxicity studies on all combinations of vaccines that infants are likely to receive.”

You can view the complete results of the study in their entirety here: http://gaia-health.com