“line up well with the national priorities of the administration”? Say what? I suppose if it doesn’t fit into the mold of the Bush administration’s talking-points echo chamber, then it’s a huge waste of time. They do, after all, admit to only watching FOX News.

Nope. I am NOT surprised.

Sources: White House cut testimony

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House severely edited congressional testimony given Tuesday by the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the impact of climate change on health, removing specific scientific references to potential health risks, according to two sources familiar with the documents.
[...]

But [Dr. Julie Gerberding’s] prepared testimony was devoted entirely to the CDC’s preparation, with few details on what effects climate change could have on the spread of disease. Only during questioning did she describe some specific diseases that likely would be affected, again without elaboration.
[...]

“It was eviscerated,” said a CDC official, familiar with both versions, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the review process.

The official said that while it is customary for testimony to be changed in a White House review, these changes were particularly “heavy-handed,” with the document cut from its original 14 pages to four. It was six pages as presented to the Senate committee.

Associated Press

CNN.com

By CHRIS KAHN
Associated Press

PHOENIX - It sounds like science fiction but it’s true: A killer amoeba living in lakes enters the body through the nose and attacks the brain where it feeds until you die.

Even though encounters with the microscopic bug are extraordinarily rare, it’s killed six boys and young men this year. The spike in cases has health officials concerned, and they are predicting more cases in the future.

“This is definitely something we need to track,” said Michael Beach, a specialist in recreational waterborne illnesses for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“This is a heat-loving amoeba. As water temperatures go up, it does better,” Beach said. “In future decades, as temperatures rise, we’d expect to see more cases.”

According to the CDC, the amoeba called Naegleria fowleri (nuh-GLEER-ee-uh FOWL’-erh-eye) killed 23 people in the United States, from 1995 to 2004. This year health officials noticed a spike with six cases - three in Florida, two in Texas and one in Arizona. The CDC knows of only several hundred cases worldwide since its discovery in Australia in the 1960s.

In Arizona, David Evans said nobody knew his son, Aaron, was infected with the amoeba until after the 14-year-old died on Sept. 17. At first, the teen seemed to be suffering from nothing more than a headache.

read more HERE

By Daniel B. Wood
The Christian Science Monitor

Sherman Oaks, Calif. - Luverne Tupac is sizing up the produce offerings at Ralph’s supermarket here. “There’s spinach, I’ll pass that by. And there’s lettuce. I’ll skip that as well,” she says.

That consumer sentiment is back nationwide as two recalls of leafy greens in three weeks have made headlines, prompting renewed concerns about the safety and oversight of the American food chain.

On Tuesday, Dole Foods recalled packages of its “Hearts Delight” brand sold in Canada and nine US states after E. coli bacteria were found by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. On Aug. 28, Metz Fresh LLC recalled 8,000 cartons of bagged spinach distributed in the US and Canada after lab tests found salmonella. Neither case has included reports of anyone becoming ill from the products.

Coming almost exactly one year after E. coli contamination was blamed for the death of one citizen and the illness of others in 19 states, the latest incidents are renewing cries for mandatory oversight by the Federal Drug and Administration (FDA) of farms, food handlers, processors, and distributors in the US. Recent incidents of poison in fish, food, and other products from China have raised interest in how the US screens and regulates food coming from abroad.

“Dole was on TV in California this spring saying they had a computer chip in each box that would allow them to trace a head of lettuce to a 30-foot by 50-foot space within a field, yet here we are days into a recall impacting industry and consumers in two nations and we have only narrowed the source down to three states,” says state Sen. Dean Florez, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Food-borne Illness.

Dole has said two of the lettuces in its recalled mix came from the Salinas Valley in California, but it has not identified which fields. And three weeks after the Metz recall, Senator Florez has written to the California Department of Food and Agriculture complaining that inquiries about the origin of the salmonella outbreak have not been answered adequately.

read more HERE

By KEVIN SACK
The New York Times

SAN FRANCISCO - Since contracting polio at age 2, Yan Ling Ho has lived with pain for most of her 52 years. After she immigrated here from Hong Kong last year, the soreness in her back and joints proved too debilitating for her to work.

That also meant she did not have health insurance. Not wanting to burden her daughter, who was already paying her living expenses, Ms. Ho delayed doctors- visits and battled her misery with over-the-counter medications.

“Sometimes the pain was so bad, I would just cry,” she said. “I didn-t know what else to do.”

Last month, unable to bear her discomfort any longer, Ms. Ho went to North East Medical Services, a nonprofit community clinic on the edge of Chinatown, and discovered to her delight that she qualified for a new program that offers free or subsidized health care to all 82,000 San Francisco adults without insurance.

The initiative, known as Healthy San Francisco, is the first effort by a locality to guarantee care to all of its uninsured, and it represents the latest attempt by state and local governments to patch a inadequate federal system.

It is financed mostly by the city, which is gambling that it can provide universal and sensibly managed care to the uninsured for about the amount being spent on their treatment now, often in emergency rooms.

After a two-month trial at two clinics in Chinatown, the program is scheduled to expand citywide to 20 more locations on Sept. 17.

read more HERE

By Daniel B. Wood
The Christian Science Monitor

Los Angeles - Pointing south from the corner of Figueroa and Adams in South Central L.A., Tanisha Jackson says when it comes to fast food, her community “has it all.”

“If you want it cheap and quick - McDonald’s, Burger King, Taco Bell, Kentucky Fried Chicken - we’ve got it,” says the mother of two.

Some city officials see the myriad fast-food outlets as a health problem and are seeking change. “Fast food is primarily the only option for those who live and work here,” says City Councilwoman Jan Perry. “It’s become a public-health issue that residents be given healthier choices.”

She has introduced a two-year moratorium on new fast-food outlets in this part of the city, where small, single-family homes dominate and gangs thrive in a rough urban landscape.

Many national food and health experts say the measure - which is slated for a vote on Sept. 18 - may be the first example of a health-zoning law in the United States. In 2006, New York City health committee chairman Joel Rivera lobbied against uncontrolled growth of fast-food chains, but did not introduce legislation. These observers are applauding the idea as a way to raise awareness about America’s obesity epidemic, which hits poorer neighborhoods disproportionately.

read more HERE

AFP

TOKYO (AFP) - Generations have praised the wisdom of getting up early in the morning, but a Japanese study says early-risers are actually at a higher risk of developing heart problems.

The study, conducted by researchers from several universities and hospitals in the western Japanese city of Kyoto, revealed a link between wake-up times and a person’s cardiovascular condition.

“Rising early to go to work or exercise might not be beneficial to health, but rather a risk for vascular diseases,” said an abstract of the study.

The study, covering 3,017 healthy adults aged between 23 through 90, found that early risers had a greater risk of heart conditions including hypertension and of having strokes.

However, the study also noted that early risers were usually older.

The study is being presented this week at the World Congress of the World Federation of Sleep Research and Sleep Medicine Societies, being held in Cairns, Australia.

A separate study released in June by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found that chronic sleep deprivation adds stress to the heart, putting a person at greater risk of cardiovascular disease and death.

Real popcorn, brown paper lunchbag, microwave. Cheaper, safer, tastes better. Who eats microwave popcorn, or any popcorn for that matter, several times a day??? Nice diet!

Consumers, not just factory workers, may be in danger from fumes from buttery flavoring in microwave popcorn, according to a warning letter to federal regulators from a doctor at a leading lung research hospital.

A pulmonary specialist at Denver’s National Jewish Medical and Research Center has written to federal agencies to say doctors there believe they have the first case of a consumer who developed lung disease from the fumes of microwaving popcorn several times a day for years.

More at the AP

It just never ends……..

In an attempt to raise the nation’s historically low rate of breast-feeding, federal health officials commissioned an attention-grabbing advertising campaign a few years ago to convince mothers that their babies faced real health risks if they did not breast-feed. It featured striking photos of insulin syringes and asthma inhalers topped with rubber nipples.

Plans to run these blunt ads infuriated the politically powerful infant formula industry, which hired a former chairman of the Republican National Committee and a former top regulatory official to lobby the Health and Human Services Department. Not long afterward, department political appointees toned down the campaign.

The federal Office on Women’s Health developed an ad campaign several years ago that included insulin syringes and asthma puffers that looked like bottles of formula to make women aware of the risks of passing up breast-feeding.The formula industry objected to the campaign and brought in powerful lobbyists, including Clayton Yeutter, who was agriculture secretary during the administration of George H.W. Bush. In the end, the agency dropped many of the hard-hitting ads and kept the more soft-focus ones, including images of dandelions puffs and ice cream scoops that looked like breasts. In the 2004 letter at right, Yeutter thanks the secretary of health and human services for modifying the ad campaign

The ads ran instead with more friendly images of dandelions and cherry-topped ice cream scoops, to dramatize how breast-feeding could help avert respiratory problems and obesity. In a February 2004 letter (pdf), the lobbyists told then-HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson they were “grateful” for his staff’s intervention to stop health officials from “scaring expectant mothers into breast-feeding,” and asked for help in scaling back more of the ads.

More at the Washington Post

by David Goldstein
The Nation

In November 2006, America’s dogs and cats started dying painful, mysterious and sometimes gruesome deaths–canaries in the coal mine of a food safety system on the verge of collapse. Previously healthy pets would suddenly vomit blood and bile, produce bloody diarrhea and lose control of bladder and bowel. Some animals displayed unquenchable thirst, while others refused to eat or drink at all. Victims became lethargic and withdrawn, their limbs wobbly, eyes cloudy and stomachs painfully distended. Then the seizures set in.

The nationwide veterinary chain Banfield estimates that as many as 39,000 dogs and cats were sickened or killed in this manner between December 2006 and February 2007 alone. Yet nobody seemed to notice–not the Food and Drug Administration, not the Department of Agriculture, not the Centers for Disease Control, not even Menu Foods, the little-known pet food manufacturing giant that had been fielding calls from concerned customers for months. It was not until late February, when its own animals started dropping dead just days into its quarterly taste test, that Menu Foods realized our beloved family pets were being poisoned by their own food.

Cut-rate imported Chinese wheat gluten, used to make the meatlike chunks in “cuts and gravy” pet food varieties, had been adulterated with a deadly cocktail of melamine and cyanuric acid, but what the media largely covered as just a “pet food recall” proved to be only one in a series of regulatory failures that have put our two-legged family members at equal or greater risk. In the months that followed, “voluntary recalls” were belatedly issued because of antifreeze in toothpaste, banned antibiotics in farmed seafood and lead paint on Thomas the Tank Engine toys–all imported from China and all unwittingly consumed or otherwise used by Americans for months, if not years.

read more HERE

from United Press International

LOS ANGELES, July 30 (UPI) — A study by California state health officials links farm fields sprayed with certain pesticides to an increase in the number of autistic children.

The study, which targets organochlorine pesticides, is to be published on Monday, The Los Angeles Times reported.

The rate of autism among children who lived near the fields was very high, suggesting exposure in the womb could play a role. The study is the first to link pesticides to autism, which affects one in every 100 children, the Times reported.

The study suggests that the farther the women lived from the fields, the less likely they were to give birth to children with autism.

Scientists warn that they are dealing with a small population, so the results could be highly preliminary.

The pesticides in the farm fields are older generation compounds created in the 1950s to kill mites, the newspaper said.