Aftermath News

Doctors to decide who lives and who dies in coming pandemic

Who should MDs let die in a pandemic? Report offers answers

AP | May 5, 2008

By LINDSEY TANNER

CHICAGO (AP) — Doctors know some patients needing lifesaving care won’t get it in a flu pandemic or other disaster. The gut-wrenching dilemma will be deciding who to let die.

Now, an influential group of physicians has drafted a grimly specific list of recommendations for which patients wouldn’t be treated. They include the very elderly, seriously hurt trauma victims, severely burned patients and those with severe dementia.

The suggested list was compiled by a task force whose members come from prestigious universities, medical groups, the military and government agencies. They include the Department of Homeland Security, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services.

The proposed guidelines are designed to be a blueprint for hospitals “so that everybody will be thinking in the same way” when pandemic flu or another widespread health care disaster hits, said Dr. Asha Devereaux. She is a critical care specialist in San Diego and lead writer of the task force report.

The idea is to try to make sure that scarce resources — including ventilators, medicine and doctors and nurses — are used in a uniform, objective way, task force members said.

Their recommendations appear in a report appearing Monday in the May edition of Chest, the medical journal of the American College of Chest Physicians.

“If a mass casualty critical care event were to occur tomorrow, many people with clinical conditions that are survivable under usual health care system conditions may have to forgo life-sustaining interventions owing to deficiencies in supply or staffing,” the report states.

To prepare, hospitals should designate a triage team with the Godlike task of deciding who will and who won’t get lifesaving care, the task force wrote. Those out of luck are the people at high risk of death and a slim chance of long-term survival. But the recommendations get much more specific, and include:

_People older than 85.

_Those with severe trauma, which could include critical injuries from car crashes and shootings.

_Severely burned patients older than 60.

_Those with severe mental impairment, which could include advanced Alzheimer’s disease.

_Those with a severe chronic disease, such as advanced heart failure, lung disease or poorly controlled diabetes.

Dr. Kevin Yeskey, director of the preparedness and emergency operations office at the Department of Health and Human Services, was on the task force. He said the report would be among many the agency reviews as part of preparedness efforts.

Public health law expert Lawrence Gostin of Georgetown University called the report an important initiative but also “a political minefield and a legal minefield.”

The recommendations would probably violate federal laws against age discrimination and disability discrimination, said Gostin, who was not on the task force.

If followed to a tee, such rules could exclude care for the poorest, most disadvantaged citizens who suffer disproportionately from chronic disease and disability, he said. While health care rationing will be necessary in a mass disaster, “there are some real ethical concerns here.”

James Bentley, a senior vice president at American Hospital Association, said the report will give guidance to hospitals in shaping their own preparedness plans even if they don’t follow all the suggestions.

He said the proposals resemble a battlefield approach in which limited health care resources are reserved for those most likely to survive.
Bentley said it’s not the first time this type of approach has been recommended for a catastrophic pandemic, but that “this is the most detailed one I have seen from a professional group.”

While the notion of rationing health care is unpleasant, the report could help the public understand that it will be necessary, Bentley said.
Devereaux said compiling the list “was emotionally difficult for everyone.”
That’s partly because members believe it’s just a matter of time before such a health care disaster hits, she said.

“You never know,” Devereaux said. “SARS took a lot of folks by surprise. We didn’t even know it existed.”

The medications have side effects which accelerate mental decline, triple the risk of stroke, and double the chances of premature death.

Telegraph | Apr 28, 2008

Ministers should step in to stop inappropriate prescriptions of powerful antipsychotic drugs for Alzheimer’s patients, an influential group of MPs said today.

Up to 105,000 people with dementia in Britain are wrongly being treated with the drugs, which are used to control behavioural symptoms such as aggression, they claim. Research has shown that the medications have side effects which can accelerate mental decline, triple the risk of stroke, and double the chances of premature death.

They are intended for psychotic patients suffering from delusions, paranoia and hallucinations. Yet the drugs continue to be used as a first resort to address the challenging behaviour of people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia, according to the MPs. A report from the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on dementia demanded Government action on the problem and urged the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), the health watchdog, to carry out a review.

The report, A Last Resort, points out that no audit or regulation of such prescriptions exists. Jeremy Wright, the group’s chairman, said: “Antipsychotics can double risk of death and triple the risk of stroke in people with dementia, (can) heavily sedate them, and (can) accelerate cognitive decline.

“The Government must end this needless abuse. Safeguards must be put in place to ensure antipsychotics are always a last resort. We need to include families in decisions, give people with dementia regular reviews, and equip care staff with specialist training.”

The inquiry was told that 150,000 people with dementia were prescribed antipsychotic drugs in British care facilities. Psychiatric experts said 70 per cent of these prescriptions were inappropriate.

Neil Hunt, the chief executive of the Alzheimer’s Society, said more than 70 per cent of dementia patients exhibited challenging behaviour.

“More often than not this is an expression of unmet need, not a symptom of dementia, and there is no excuse for reaching for the medicine cabinet,” he said.

“Day by day, the liberty and privacy of the British public is being undermined by Labour’s surveillance state. People will be shocked that taxpayers’ money is being spent on intrusive surveys. Now state spies want to log and record who sleeps with whom and how often. Not even the Stasi went this far.”

- Shadow Communities Secretary Eric Pickles

“Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible.”

- Bertrand Russell, “The Impact of Science on Society”, 1953

Prying: With government questions couples’ sex lives will no longer be a private matter

Daily Mail | Apr 19, 2008

State to snoop on your sex life with probing questions about promiscuity and contraception

By TOM HARPER

Government inspectors are to pry into the intimate details of more than 500,000 people a year, asking a series of probing questions about their sex lives and earnings.

Snooping officials will want to know about previous sexual partners, contraception, and how long couples lived together before marriage.

The 2,000-question survey from the Office for National Statistics will raise major concerns about privacy – especially as the data will be logged with the respondents’ names and addresses.

Some of the questions seem remarkably insensitive. One asks: “Have you ever had a baby – even one who only lived for a short time?”

Interviewers are told starkly: “Exclude: Any stillborn; Include: Any who only lived for a short time.”

Civil servants claim the sensitive personal information will be made anonymous once it is processed at the department’s headquarters in Newport, South Wales – but that is not enough to satisfy privacy campaigners.

Doubts have also been raised about how useful the information will be, as people have a proven tendency to lie when quizzed about their sex lives.

Investigators conducting the new Integrated Household Survey – at a cost of more than £3.5million a year – will visit 200,000 homes at random each year and question each occupant – about 500,000 individuals altogether.

They have 35 questions on contraception alone, such as whether men have had vasectomies, the brands of pill women take, and whether they have ever used a “morning after” pill.

Other intimate questions include the exact dates when previous relationships ended, the precise amount of take-home pay, and whether people earn extra money from second jobs or from bonuses.

Investigators will find out about the health of children, as well as asking probing questions about respondants’ drinking and smoking habits, such as: “How soon after waking do you usually smoke your first cigarette of the day?” and whether they drink beer in pints, halves, cans or bottles.

Some of the questions verge on the ridiculous, such as: “How many hearing aids do you have that you don’t wear?”

Documents seen by The Mail on Sunday also suggest that even though the survey is voluntary, inspectors will press people into revealing personal details, with follow-up questions designed to draw out more information.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) claims it needs the comprehensive annual poll to keep up with social trends that will help Whitehall mandarins formulate policy.

But some experts have cast doubt on how useful the survey would be.

Frank Furedi, professor of sociology at Kent University, said: “When researchers ask about sexual habits there is a very strong tendency for people to clam up, or to say what they think they want to hear.

“This is not a particularly useful exercise. If you want to find out about intimate details they should do it in a much more sensitive way.

“I would resent being asked these questions and I don’t think the Government should be doing it.”

The ONS denies it will follow other Government agencies, such as the DVLA, in selling the information to private companies – but the sensitivity of the data has prompted fears about privacy.

The Government has previously been rocked by scandals such as the loss of 25million child benefit records, and the fact the new survey will collect the names and addresses of respondents has alarmed protesters.

Shami Chakrabarti, director of human rights group Liberty, said: “If this survey is purely to inform public policy, why is the data not anonymised at the point of collection?

“The ONS will need to work incredibly hard to make sure this doesn’t go horribly wrong. The last thing anyone wants is another crisis over data security.”

Shadow Communities Secretary Eric Pickles said: “Day by day, the liberty and privacy of the British public is being undermined by Labour’s surveillance state.

“People will be shocked that taxpayers’ money is being spent on intrusive surveys. Now state spies want to log and record who sleeps with whom and how often. Not even the Stasi went this far.”

Last night, an ONS spokesman said the new survey was a “high quality, adaptable and efficient” way of “meeting the Government’s future information needs”, adding: “Names and addresses are stripped off the files as soon as they arrive in our office, and the data is then held on a secure server.

“We have never sold information to the private sector and that will continue.”

Legend has it that the institute, which opened in 1927, was born of a secret Soviet plan to create a man-ape hybrid that would become a Soviet superman and propel the Soviet Union ahead of the West. The Soviet elite, goes the apocryphal tale that has appeared widely in Russian media, wanted to create a prototype worker that would be inhumanly strong and mentally dulled, to carry out the gruelling work of industrialising the vast expanses of newly Sovietised territory.

Independent | Apr 15, 2008

From the old railway station, now a hollow shell covered in weeds, a long concrete stairway, sheltered by sub-tropical foliage, winds from the centre of Sukhumi up to a collection of buildings, many pocked with bullet holes or crushed by bombs.

The first thing that registers is the putrid smell of animal faeces, then from inside one building comes a primeval squawking that sounds like a child being tortured. Cage after cage of distraught-looking monkeys come into view, nearly 300 in all, gnawing at mandarins and scampering around their enclosures.

This is what remains of the Institute of Experimental Pathology and Therapy, the first primate testing centre in the world, and possibly the site of a macabre Stalinist experiment to breed a human-ape hybrid. Set amid palm trees and lush greenery on a hill just outside the centre of Sukhumi, it was once the envy of the West. Its behavioural and medical experiments set it at the forefront of groundbreaking medical discoveries, and trained monkeys for space travel.

But the years of Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika, then the Georgian-Abkhaz war, took a heavy toll on the centre. Most of its scientists left to set up a new centre in Russia, along with most of the monkeys that were not killed. What is left today is a disturbing shadow of the institute’s former glory.

Legend has it that the institute, which opened in 1927, was born of a secret Soviet plan to create a man-ape hybrid that would become a Soviet superman and propel the Soviet Union ahead of the West. The Soviet elite, goes the apocryphal tale that has appeared widely in Russian media, wanted to create a prototype worker that would be inhumanly strong and mentally dulled, to carry out the gruelling work of industrialising the vast expanses of newly Sovietised territory.

Scientists at the institute today admit that these experiments did go on at the institute, though they deny it was part of any overarching plan for the creation of a new race. The tests were performed by Ilya Ivanov, an eminent Russian biologist who had also collaborated with the Pasteur Institute in Paris. About the turn of the century he had perfected the technique of artificially inseminating mares, and had also produced cross-breeds between various different species. Then, Europe was alive with ideas of eugenics, and the Soviets were out to prove once and for all that Darwinism had superseded religion.

“Professor Ivanov started these experiments in Africa and continued them here in Sukhumi,” says Vladimir Barkaya, who started at the institute in 1961 and is now scientific director. “He took sperm from human males and injected it into female chimpanzees, although nothing came of it.” Professor Barkaya denies monkey sperm was used on human females, although letters were apparently received by the institution by people of both sexes offering to participate in the experiments.

In time, the institute evolved from science fiction to evidence-based practice. Work at the institute was instrumental in the creation of a Soviet polio vaccine, and its scientists worked on all the major diseases of the 20th century.

One man’s name is synonymous with the centre. Boris Lapin was born in 1921 and after a heroic turn in the Second World War, started work at the Sukhumi monkey colony in 1949. In 1959 he was appointed director of the institute, and ran it up until 1992, when during the Abkhaz-Georgian war he fled along with the majority of employees and monkeys across the border to Russia. Despite being in his late eighties, he still runs the institute set up at Adler in Russia.

“My biggest achievement over all this time is that we were able to build the institute up from scratch again,” he says, from his Adler office, plastered with photographs of famous visitors to the Sukhumi institute over the years, from Nikita Khrushchev to Ho Chi Minh.

In the 1950s, as Professor Lapin was taking over, word got out to the rest of the world about the uses to which monkeys were being put at Sukhumi. “At the time of Sputnik, there was a huge amount of curiosity in the West about what else the Soviets might have up their sleeves in the fields of science and technology,” says Douglas Bowden, an American primatologist who has co-operated with the Sukhumi, then Adler centres since 1962. An expert commission headed by President Dwight Eisenhower’s personal doctor went to the Soviet Union in 1957 and visited Sukhumi. “They were so impressed with what they found there that when they came back to the US they recommended to Eisenhower that a similar institute should be set up in the US.” In the end, seven centres were set up in the US.

As time went on, the centre also became closely involved with the Soviet space programme, training six monkeys to send into space. “We had to make sure they were intelligent monkeys to perform all their duties in space,” Professor Lapin says. “Not every monkey was capable of that sort of thing.” After the monkeys blasted off, the centre’s employees would watch them on television at Sukhumi.

Then came the collapse of the Soviet Union, which was a disaster for scientists across the vast empire. They went from the pride of the country to being neglected and unfunded. “They were terrible times,” says Professor Barkaya. “Many monkeys died, and many people too. We had nothing to feed the monkeys with, and there was no electricity or heating. Many of them simply froze to death.”

Violeta Agrba, who was the acting director of the institute during the war, while Professor Lapin was arranging the transfer to Adler, says: “I remember walking around the cages in the winter of 1992, during the war, and seeing a baboon shivering in his cage. It was so sad. But even though we couldn’t do any medical work, and there was a war on, we all came to work every day.” Professor Agrba once found an unexploded shell on the conference table in her office. There was a huge hole in the ceiling.

The centre also had 1,000 monkeys that lived freely in a special zone in the mountains in the south of Abkhazia, where they were monitored and their behaviour studied. When the war started, many died in the crossfire; some were stolen by troops and used as mascots. “Some are still alive,” Professor Agrba says. “But after everything that happened in the war, they are so scared of people they don’t approach anyone. We need to do a helicopter survey and find the remaining ones, but there’s no money for that.”

Today, the centre at Sukhumi, where a few staff who refused to leave during the war have bravely remained and tried to resurrect their scientific work, is struggling to get back on its feet. A German scientist who worked with the institute before the war and took pity on their situation ships them medicines and equipment each year. But most of the best employees went to Alder, and the monkeys seem to have nothing to eat except mandarins.

“The level we had before is very difficult to attain now,” Professor Barkaya says. “But while we used to write to people asking to co-operate with them, now they’re again coming to us. We had an interesting proposition from St Petersburg, from a company that has produced medicine to reduce blindness in old people. They’ve tested it on dogs and horses and now they want to test it on monkeys.”

The Adler centre in much better shape, with all the most modern equipment and is still at the forefront of medicine, working on stem-cell research and birdflu vaccines, and testing the effects of radiation on monkeys in preparation for a manned flight to Mars. “We’ve discovered that their immune systems are severely weakened by the radiation given off by solar flares,” says Professor Agrba. “Now we need to see how serious this is and how long it lasts.”

But even at Adler, the financial situation isn’t easy. “One girl used to work here as a lab assistant and got paid 3,000 roubles (£65) a month,” Professor Agrba says. “She left to work selling blankets in the market and now she makes 15,000 roubles (£325).”

Obtaining new monkeys is almost impossible now, with most countries banning their export. The days when Professor Lapin and colleagues would simply fly to Nigeria and spend weeks negotiating with tribes for the purchase of monkeys, as happened in the 1960s, are long gone. The Adler institute has a breeding programme, which ensures that its population of 3,700 monkeys is refreshed each year. But for Sukhumi, with just 286 monkeys, inbreeding is a serious problem.

The staff at both centres is split between dignified octogenarians with decades of scientific experience, and budding young scientists. The middle ground is missing. “It’s a problem across the former Soviet Union,” Professor Barkaya says. “The generation of scientists who came of age during perestroika went into business. Now there is again an interest in science, and it’s left to us to pass on our knowledge as best we can to the younger generation to ensure the good work continues.”

Ethical concerns that would undoubtedly surround such ventures in Europe are absent both in Abkhazia and in Russia. Neither institute has any security; the thought of animal rights protesters attacking does not even occur to the scientists.

“Of course, we’re aware of the ethical difficulties,” says Professor Lapin. “But in some cases monkeys are the only animals we can use. Thalidomide was tested on mice and other animals but not on monkeys, and you remember what happened there.”

Seattle Times | Apr 15, 2008

By Kyung M. Song

The maker of the controversial arthritis drug Vioxx knew of dangers associated with it for as many as three years before a massive nationwide recall, but withheld the information from federal officials and played down the number of deaths associated with the pain medication, according to an analysis published today by University of Washington professors.

The article, which appears today in the prominent Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), contends that Merck, which pulled Vioxx from the market in 2004, knew internally as early as 2001 that people at risk of Alzheimer’s disease who were enrolled in two Vioxx clinical trials were dying at three times the rate of those taking a placebo.

The article, which examined previously secret Merck documents, contends the company switched calculations to minimize the number of deaths.

A Merck attorney, Jim Fitzpatrick of New York, countered today that the company disclosed all its clinical results thoroughly and that “we completely disagree” with allegations that Merck misrepresented its findings.

The article is one of two papers in this week’s issue of JAMA investigating the clash of corporate interests and scientific integrity involving Vioxx, the subject of the most expensive drug recall in history.

In an accompanying editorial, JAMA’s top editors call for “drastic actions” against corporate manipulation of clinical research and the practice of ghostwriting medical articles by unnamed authors on corporate payroll. It argues that researchers, regulators and even editors of medical journals such as JAMA are complicit. It singled out doctors who lend their names as authors on research papers for money for behavior “that is unprofessional and demeaning to the medical profession.”

Both the article by UW professors and the companion paper on hidden authorship of articles on clinical trials rely on documents disclosed through some of the 27,000 Vioxx lawsuits against Merck. In November, the New Jersey company agreed to settle a majority of those suits for $4.85 billion without admitting guilt.

The co-author of the UW paper, Richard Kronmal, professor of statistics at UW, is a paid expert witness for Vioxx plaintiffs. The lead author is Bruce Psaty, UW professor of medicine.

Vioxx is a prescription arthritis drug and painkiller that was promoted as a gentler alternative to other drugs such as aspirin. Merck withdrew it in September 2004 after disclosing that a study found it doubled the risk of heart attacks and strokes.

But information was available well before 2004 that showed that Vioxx posed serious potential harm to subjects in clinical trials. As early as June 2000, unpublished data submitted to the Food and Drug Administration showed that taking Vioxx significantly raised the rate of heart attacks and strokes, as well as edema and hypertension, according to subsequent analysis by independent researchers.

Some of the same early evidence prompted pharmacists from Seattle’s Group Health Cooperative to decide against adding Vioxx to its formulary. As a result, Group Health has never covered Vioxx for its members, said Jim Carlson, the co-op’s director of pharmacy.

In the latest JAMA article, the UW researchers compared internal Merck memos about two Vioxx studies involving patients at risk of dementia against information the company submitted to the FDA and published later in two clinical papers.

In April 2001, a Merck statistician concluded that 34 people in the Vioxx groups had died, compared with 12 in the two placebo groups. But in its submissions to the FDA three months later, Merck used different methods to reduce the mortality risk, coming up with 29 deaths among Vioxx takers and 17 in the placebo groups.

Merck apparently did this in part by omitting some of the deaths that occurred after the subjects had stopped taking the drug, said Psaty.

“They were not being forthright,” he said in an interview today. “They minimized the appearance of risk.”

Related

Merck Masked Vioxx Risk, Hired Study Ghostwriters

· Anger over wealthy breaking one-child rule

· Beijing to impose higher penalties to enforce law

The Guardian | Jan 22, 2008

Tania Branigan in Beijing

Their wealth and fame buy apparently endless privilege. But celebrities’ perks do not extend to larger families, Chinese authorities have warned.

Sports people and pop stars who violate the one-child policy will face harsher fines and tarnished credit records, according to a senior family planning official.

The authorities believe the rich and famous are setting a bad example to ordinary couples - yet barely notice the financial penalties because of their wealth.

“Celebrities and wealthy people would be more heavily fined for giving birth to more than one child. The commission is still deliberating on the amount,” said the head of the municipal family planning commission, Deng Xingzhou.

His remarks come amid growing bitterness about the ease with which the well-off flout the rules while others are crippled financially for having a second child. Many see the disparity as emblematic of the country’s wealth gap. In a survey by China Youth newspaper and GQ.com last year, more than 60% of respondents said it was unfair that stars and the affluent could breach the rule.

The director of the state family planning commission has described famous offenders as a “negative social influence” and officials in other parts of China have promised to tackle the issue by naming and shaming rich and influential offenders, or banning them from receiving awards and civic honours.

According to Xinhua, the state news agency, Deng said the commission planned a threefold system of punishment, based around tougher fines, the inclusion of family planning violations in personal files in the national credit system - affecting celebrities’ ability to borrow -and the censure of party members.

But he told the municipal political advisory body that proposals were still being finalised, and that it had yet to decide who would be recognised as a celebrity.

At present, couples face fines of up to 10 times the local per capita income if they break the law. Penalties are believed to average around 100,000 yuan (£7,000) in Beijing, where average per capita income was 22,000 yuan last year.

Xia Xueluan, professor of sociology at Beijing University, said financial penalties would not deter the wealthy.

“It means you pay to have a second child and if you are rich enough you can afford to do that,” he said. “But adding the credit record will make celebrities - especially businessmen - think more seriously.”

But he questioned how much impact such a change would have in rural areas, where birth control policies have proved less effective than in cities - despite exemptions allowing many rural couples to have a second child: “Farmers who are deeply influenced by traditional Chinese agricultural thinking or Confucian thoughts might not be influenced by celebrities. They just want more kids.”

The government argues it must continue with its controversial rules because of the demographic pressures it faces. China’s population is expected to continue growing over the next two decades, peaking at 1.5 billion.

Officials argue that the policy has reduced environmental pressures, pointing out that its introduction in the late 70s has made the population an estimated 400 million lower than it would have been.

Famous babies

· Footballer Hao Haidong was reportedly fined 50,000 yuan (£3,500) for having a second child. Although he had an annual salary of 5m yuan, some commentators speculated that it encouraged “China’s Alan Shearer” to leave for Sheffield United in 2005.

· Pop star Sun Nan, who has won millions of fans with his emotional ballads, is likely to become less popular with the authorities: he and his wife, who already have a daughter, are expecting another child.

· Zhao Benshan, an actor and director, has four children - although those with his second wife are twins. The exemption of multiple births from the one-child policy is thought to have encouraged some couples to turn to fertility drugs so they can enjoy a larger family without penalty.

Sufferers Say Mysterious Colored Fibers Grow on Their Skin, Like Hair

Those living with Morgellons disease describe a mysterious fibrous material running through their skin. 

ABC | Jan 16, 2008

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced today that it is launching a study to learn about an unexplained condition that causes people to feel as if they have foreign substances growing from their bodies.

People with the condition, referred to as Morgellons disease, say they have fibers and other inorganic material growing out of their skin.

“We earnestly want to learn more about this unexplained illness, which affects the lives of those who suffer from it,” said Dr. Michele Pearson, principal investigator leading the study for the CDC, in a press release. “Those who suffer have questions, and we want to help them.”

“We have a team of epidemiologists, laboratorians and pathologists to carry out the study,” Pearson said.

The study will be conducted in conjunction with Kaiser Permanente’s Northern California Division of Research. For more information, CLICK HERE to visit the CDC’s Unexplained Dermopathy Web site.

Watch the story tonight on “Nightline” at 11:35 p.m. ET and “Good Morning America” Thursday at 7 a.m.

In 2006, a number of Morgellons sufferers told ABC News in interviews that when they consulted doctors, they received diagnoses they called wrong or dismissive. Brandi Koch, the wife of former Major League Baseball player Billy Koch, said that she felt as if she were living in a horror movie, claiming she had colored fibers coming out of her skin.

Koch, of Clearwater Beach, Fla., said that her life was good until one day in the shower when she noticed something strange — tiny fibers running through her skin.

“The fibers look like hair, and they’re different colors,” Koch said.

Koch said she knows that what she experienced “sounds crazy,” but it’s true. “If I had a family member call me up and say, ‘I have this stuff,’ I’d say, ‘I’m sending a straitjacket over. You need some help,’” she said.

Anne Dill described a similar condition. Looking at Dill’s life in Florida, she seemed to be living the American dream — her three daughters excelled in sports and were straight-A students.

But life in the Dill household was far from idyllic. Anne’s 40-year-old husband, Tom, died in January 2006, and she believes his death was due to a contagious illness that has infected her entire family.

Dill described her family’s skin: “There’s this fibrous material. It’s in layers.” Dill said the skin on their hands was particularly bad, very swollen and itchy, and said it felt as if bugs were crawling underneath the skin.

Consulting Doctors

Dr. Greg Smith of Gainesville, Ga., has been a pediatrician for the past 30 years. He claimed that a fiber was coming out of his big toe, and he had video footage to prove it.

“It felt like somebody stuck a pin in my toe and wiggled it, and it just continued to hurt,” Smith told ABC News in 2006.

He said he never thought he had bugs. “I’ve certainly had those crawling sensations, and the fibers which come out of the skin are really bizarre, and really odd.”

Smith was handed over to a hospital psychiatrist when he went to the emergency room complaining of a fiber in his eye. He admits that he, too, would be skeptical if a patient came to him with the same story.

“I would wonder if they’d taken their medicine that day. It makes no sense. It’s totally bizarre. It’s something that — just telling the story is so outlandish on the face of it — that no one would believe it,” Smith said. Dill’s doctor told her to stop scratching, even though many of her sores were in places she could not reach.

Koch went to the Mayo Clinic, where doctors didn’t believe that the fibers she’d brought them had grown from her body.

“I saw the infectious disease doctor, and I showed him some samples that I had and he snickered,” she said. “I can’t go through another doctor blowing me off or looking at me like I’m crazy. I know I’m not.”

Dr. Vincent DeLeo, chief of dermatology at New York’s St. Lukes-Roosevelt Medical Center, weighed in on what he’d say to someone who came to him with this condition. “I don’t think this is any different than many patients I’ve seen who have excoriations and believe that there is something in their skin causing this,” he told ABC News in 2006.

DeLeo said the open lesions were most likely a result of scratching the skin.

Relying on Your Own Research

But biologist Mary Leitao refused to accept the medical skepticism surrounding Morgellons.

Leitao’s son, Drew, was just 2 years old when Leitao noticed an odd sore on his lip that would not heal.

“He very simply said ‘bugs,’ and he pointed to his lips,” said Leitao.

Leitao never expected to find herself at the center of a medical storm. But when her son complained about the strange sore, the biologist, who once ran the electron microscope at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, did what any scientist would do. She took a closer look.

“What I saw were bundles of fibers, balls of fibers,” Leitao says. “There was red and blue.” Even stranger, they glowed under ultraviolet light.

Armed with research, Leitao took her son to a doctor at one of the country’s leading hospitals. He dismissed her tale of fibers and wrote to her pediatrician, saying that her son needed Vaseline for his lips and that his mother needed a thorough psychiatric evaluation.

Undaunted, Leitao began poring through medical literature looking for clues. What she discovered was a 17th-century reference to a strange disease with “harsh hairs” called “Morgellons.”

She named the strange fibers Morgellons disease and put the information on a Web site, Morgellons.org. At the time of her interview in 2006, more than 4,500 people had contacted Leitao, claiming they had Morgellons-type symptoms. The name stuck, and the disease was featured on the television show “ER.”

But do these fibers grow from inside the body, as Morgellons patients believe, or do they come from the external environment — a kind of lint — as the medical skeptics say?

Searching for an Answer

Forensic scientist Ron Pogue at the Tulsa Police Crime Lab in Oklahoma checked a Morgellons sample against known fibers in the FBI’s national database. “No, no match at all. So this is some strange stuff,” Pogue said in 2006. He thought the skeptics were wrong. “This isn’t lint. This is not a commercial fiber. It’s not.”

The lab’s director, Mark Boese, said the fibers are “consistent with something that the body may be producing.” He added that, “These fibers cannot be manmade and do not come from a plant. This could be a byproduct of a biological organism.”

Dill said she looks at pictures of her family and finds them unrecognizable. “My kids have to see not only their dad but their mom disintegrating, and that’s gotta be really scary.”

While they wait for evidence that they hope will convince the medical community to take them seriously, some Morgellon’s sufferers wear pink bracelets that say, simply, “Fortitude.”

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Weird X-Files skin disease treated as a psychological disorder

Telegraph | Jan 13, 2008

By Richard Gray

Britain’s tap water should be monitored for powerful medicines after traces of cancer and psychiatric drugs were detected in samples, a report has warned.

Trace levels of bleomycin, a cancer chemotherapy drug, and diazepam, a sedative, have been found during tests on drinking water, the report reveals.

While the levels are considered too low to pose a direct risk to health, doctors have expressed concern about exposing pregnant women to drugs that could harm an unborn child.

The report, compiled for the DWI by the consultants Watts and Crane Associates, recommends that drinking water should be monitored for hazardous drugs.

The report states: “The observed concentrations of pharmaceuticals in raw waste water indicate that the major source of pharmaceuticals to the environment is via sewage treatment works effluent.

“Drinking water treatment works use a wider and technically more advanced range of processes, but again these are not specifically designed to remove pharmaceuticals and several compounds have been reported in drinking water.”

But it adds: “Even in the worst-case situation, there is no significant risk to health from the intake of pharmaceuticals via drinking water.”

Sue Pennison, from the DWI, said: “The recommendations are now being considered and this may include conducting testing on drinking water.”

The report comes as a separate study by environmental scientists has warned that toxic chemotherapy drugs used to treat cancer patients are being washed into Britain’s rivers. They, too, have called for testing of tap water to ensure there is no risk to people.

The study, carried out at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Wallingford, Oxfordshire, examined the risks posed by chemotherapy drugs that escape into the environment through sewage.

The researchers estimated that an adult drinking more than three pints of water a day would receive a weekly dose of between 300 and 30,000 times lower than recommended safety levels.

They warn that a developing foetus would also be exposed to the drugs in the womb.

Andrew Johnson, the scientist who led the Wallingford study, said: “In the foetus, which is rapidly growing and comparatively tiny, the dose would be relatively higher and any damage to its cells could be far more serious.

“There is not evidence to show that drinking water treatment removes all these drugs, so while we are not wanting to alarm people, it would be foolish to assume there is no risk.”

Global Research | Jan 2, 2008

Reviewing F. William Engdahl’s “Seeds of Destruction” - by Stephen Lendman (Part I)

by Stephen Lendman

Today, we’re all lab rats in an uncontrolled, unregulated mass human experiment the results of which are unknown. Once GM seeds are introduced to an area, the genie is out of the bottle for keeps.

Bill Engdahl is a leading researcher, economist and analyst of the New World Order who’s written on issues of energy, politics and economics for over 30 years. He contributes regularly to publications like Japan’s Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Foresight magazine, Grant’s Investor.com, European Banker and Business Banker International. He’s also a frequent speaker at geopolitical, economic and energy related international conferences and is a distinguished Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization where he’s a regular contributor.

Engdahl also wrote two important books - “A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order” in 2004. It’s an essential history of geopolitics and the importance of oil. Engdahl explains that America’s post-WW II dominance rests on two pillars and one commodity - unchallengeable military power and the dollar as the world’s reserve currency combined with the quest to control global oil and other energy resources.

Engdahl’s newest book is just out from Global Research: “Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation” and subject of this review. It’s the diabolical story of how Washington and four Anglo-American agribusiness giants plan world domination by patenting life forms to gain worldwide control of our food supply and why that prospect is chilling. The book’s compelling contents are reviewed below in-depth so readers will know the type future Henry Kissinger had in mind in 1970 when he said: “Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people.”

Remember also, this cabal is one of many interconnected ones with fearsome power and ruthless intent to use it - Big Banks controlling the Federal Reserve and our money, Big Oil our world energy resources, Big Media our information, Big Pharma our health, Big Technology our state-of-the-art everything and watching us, Big Defense our wars, Big Pentagon waging them, and other corporate predators exploiting our lives for profit. Engdahl’s book focuses brilliantly on one of them. To fully cover its vital contents, this review will be in three parts for more detail and to make it easily digestible.

Part I of “Seeds of Destruction”

In 2003, Jeffrey Smith’s “Seeds of Deception” was published. It exposed the dangers of untested and unregulated genetically engineered foods most people eat every day with no knowledge of the potential health risks. Efforts to inform the public have been quashed, reliable science has been buried, and consider what happened to two distinguished scientists.

One was Ignatio Chapela, a microbial ecologist at the University of California, Berkeley. In September, 2001, he was invited to a carefully staged meeting with Fernando Ortiz Monasterio, Mexico’s Director of the Commission of Biosafety in Mexico City. The experience left Chapela shaken and angry as he explained. Monasterio attacked him for over an hour. “First he trashed me. He let me know how damaging to the country and how problematic my information was to be.”

Chapela referred to what he and a UC Berkeley graduate student, David Quist, discovered in 2000 about genetically engineered contamination of Mexican corn in violation of a government ban on these crops in 1998. Corn is sacred in Mexico, the country is home to hundreds of indigenous varieties that crossbreed naturally, and GM contamination is permanent and unthinkable - but it happened by design.

Chapela and Quist tested corn varieties in more than a dozen state of Oaxaca communities and discovered 6% of the plants contaminated with GM corn. Oaxaca is in the country’s far South so Chapela knew if contamination spread there, it was widespread throughout Mexico. It’s unavoidable because NAFTA allows imported US corn with 30% of it at the time genetically modified. Now it’s heading for nearly double that amount, and if not contained, it soon could be all of it.

The prestigious journal Nature agreed to publish Chapela’s findings, Monasterio wanted them quashed, but Chapela refused to comply. As a result, he was intimidated not to do it and threatened with being held responsible for all damages to Mexican agriculture and its economy.

He went ahead, nonetheless, and when his article appeared in the publication on November 29, 2001 the smear campaign against him began and intensified. It was later learned that Monsanto was behind it, and the Washington-based Bivings Group PR firm was hired to discredit his findings and get them retracted.

It worked because the campaign didn’t focus on Chapela’s contamination discovery, but on a second research conclusion even more serious. He learned the contaminated GM corn had as many as eight fragments of the CaMV promoter that creates an unstable “hotspot.” It can cause plant genes to fragment, scatter throughout the plant’s genome, and, if proved conclusively, would wreck efforts to introduce GM crops in the country. Without further evidence, there was still room for doubt if the second finding was valid, however, and the anti-Chapela campaign hammered him on it.

Because of the pressure, Nature took an unprecedented action in its 133 year history. It upheld Chapela’s central finding but retracted the other one. That was all it took, and the major media pounced on it. They denounced Chapela’s incompetence and tried to discredit everything he learned including his verified findings. They weren’t reported, his vilification was highlighted, and Monsanto and the Mexican government scored a big victory.

Ironically, on April 18, 2002, two weeks after Nature’s partial retraction, the Mexican government announced there was massive genetic contamination of traditional corn varieties in Oaxaca and the neighboring state of Puebla. It was horrifying as up to 95% of tested crops were genetically polluted and “at a speed never before predicted.” The news made headlines in Europe and Mexico. It was ignored in the US and Canada.

The fallout for Chapela was UC Berkeley denied him tenure in 2003 because of his article and for criticizing university ties to the biotech industry. He then filed suit in April, 2004 asking remuneration for lost wages, earnings and benefits, compensatory damages for humiliation, mental anguish, emotional distress and coverage of attorney fees and costs for his action. He won in May, 2005 but not in court when the university reversed its decision, granted him tenure and agreed to include retroactive pay back to 2003. The damage, however, was done and is an example of what’s at stake when anyone dares challenge a powerful company like Monsanto.

The other man attacked was the world’s leading lectins and plant genetic modification expert, UK-based Arpad Pusztai. He was vilified and fired from his research position at Scotland’s Rowett Research Institute for publishing industry-unfriendly data he was commissioned to produce on the safety of GMO foods.

His Rowett Research study was the first ever independent one conducted on them anywhere. He undertook it believing in their promise but became alarmed by his findings. The Clinton and Blair governments were determined to suppress them because Washington was spending billions promoting GMO crops and a future biotech revolution. It wasn’t about to let even the world’s foremost expert in the field derail the effort. His results were startling and consider the implications for humans eating genetically engineered foods.

Rats fed GMO potatoes had smaller livers, hearts, testicles and brains, damaged immune systems, and showed structural changes in their white blood cells making them more vulnerable to infection and disease compared to other rats fed non-GMO potatoes. It got worse. Thymus and spleen damage showed up; enlarged tissues, including the pancreas and intestines; and there were cases of liver atrophy as well as significant proliferation of stomach and intestines cells that could be a sign of greater future risk of cancer. Equally alarming - this all happened after 10 days of testing, and the changes persisted after 110 days that’s the human equivalent of 10 years.

GM foods today saturate our diet. Over 80% of all supermarket processed foods contain them. Others include grains like rice, corn and wheat; legumes like soybeans and soy products; vegetable oils; soft drinks; salad dressings; vegetables and fruits; dairy products including eggs; meat and other animal products; and even infant formula plus a vast array of hidden additives and ingredients in processed foods (like in tomato sauce, ice cream and peanut butter). They’re unrevealed to consumers because labeling is prohibited yet the more of them we eat, the greater the potential threat to our health.

Today, we’re all lab rats in an uncontrolled, unregulated mass human experiment the results of which are unknown. The risks from it are beyond measure, it will take many years to learn them, and when they’re finally revealed it will be too late to reverse the damage if it’s proved GM products harm human health as independent experts strongly believe. Once GM seeds are introduced to an area, the genie is out of the bottle for keeps.

Full Story

Not so friendly: Energy-saving light bulbs create an environment damaging for many people with light sensitivities

Daily Mail | Jan 4, 2008

By JENNY HOPE

Energy-saving light bulbs can be bad for your skin, doctors are warning.

Eco-bulbs are due to become compulsory in British homes within four years. But campaigners want the Government to allow an opt-out so people with health problems can still use old-style incandescent bulbs.

There have been growing concerns that low-energy light can trigger migraines, as well as dizziness, loss of focus and discomfort among those with epilepsy.

There have also been complaints from sufferers of lupus - an auto-immune disease causing many symptoms including pain.

The latest warning was issued by Spectrum - an alliance of charities working with people with lightsensitive conditions - and the British Association of Dermatologists (BAD).

Critics complain low-energy lights are either “cold” or “green,” take up to a minute to warm up properly and because they are fluorescent, flicker.

Dr Colin Holden, president of the BAD, said: “It is important that patients with photosensitive skin eruptions are allowed to use lights that don’t exacerbate their condition. Photosensitive eruptions range from disabling eczema-like reactions, to light sensitivities that can lead to skin cancer.

“It is essential that such patients are able to protect themselves from specific wavelengths of light emitted by fluorescent bulbs, especially as they are often trapped indoors because they can’t venture out in natural sunlight.”

Andrew Langford, of the Skin Care Campaign, said: “Incandescent light bulbs are the only source of electric light for many thousands of people with light-sensitive conditions.

“Add to this the thousands whose conditions or treatments may secondarily cause them to be light-sensitive, and you have a large number potentially being isolated in the dark.

“The Government simply must allow incandescent light bulbs to be available to these people, their families, friends and employers, and at a fair price.”

Spectrum, which is running a campaign to raise awareness of the impact on health of switching to lowenergybulbs, says as many as 340,000 people could be affected.

Last week, the Migraine Action Association was inundated with calls from sufferers who linked attacks to exposure to the newstyle lighting.

Spectrum is urging the government to allow incandescent light bulbs to be supplied to people with health problems, which would enable protection of the environment without penalising those unable to live with fluorescent lighting.

One option could be to allow the purchase of environmentally friendly energy efficient incandescent bulbs which GE Consumerand Industrial is currently developing and hopes to market in 2010.

The Lighting Association says modern low-energy bulbs give a constant flicker-free light, although a small number of health problems have been reported by people using cheap poor-quality varieties.

The Energy Saving Trust, the Government’s body to promote energy efficiency, says we should buy only bulbs with the Energy Saving Recommended - ESR - logo.

. . .

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Homeowners face punishment for carbon crimes

Al Gore’s ‘Inconvenient Truth’? — A $30,000 Utility Bill