Natural Family Awareness

OK to treat kids’ pneumonia at home
Study: Taking antibiotics under parents’ eye as effective as hospital stay

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22494637/

LONDON - Children with severe pneumonia can be treated just as effectively at home as in a hospital, according to new research.

Doctors in Pakistan found that children taking antibiotics at home were as likely to survive serious pneumonia as those treated in hospitals. The study was published Friday in the British medical journal, The Lancet.

“If this (home) treatment was implemented on a wide scale, then we could potentially save millions of children,” said Dr. Renee Van de Weerdt, a child health expert at UNICEF, who was not involved in the study.

“This shows us that we can do something about pneumonia at the community level,” Van de Weerdt said. “It doesn’t always require a sophisticated hospital.”

Pneumonia is the top killer of children under five worldwide, causing one-fifth of the 10 million deaths every year.

Pneumonia is an inflammation of the lungs that causes coughing, breathing difficulties, fever and muscle pain. About five to 10 percent of all children under five in developing countries get pneumonia every year. Children with HIV or malaria are at particular risk.

Under current World Health Organization guidelines, health workers refer children with severe pneumonia to hospitals to receive antibiotics through injections. But in many poor countries, children referred to hospitals often don’t receive care if their parents cannot afford it or if there is no nearby hospital.

In the Lancet study, doctors in Pakistan randomly assigned children with serious pneumonia to either receive antibiotic shots in the hospital for two days, or to take antibiotics at home for five days. Parents of the children sent home were instructed how and when to give their children the antibiotics.

The research was conducted at seven sites across Pakistan: 1,012 children were hospitalized and 1,025 were treated at home. The children were aged between about three months and five years old.

Among the hospitalized children, 87 children did not respond to the treatment or developed complications. That compared to 77 children in those treated at home. Five children died during the study; four were in the hospitalized group and one was at home.

The study was conducted by researchers at Boston University’s School of Public Health and colleagues, and was paid for by WHO and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Treating children with severe pneumonia at home would also save health systems thousands of dollars. A course of medicines to be taken at home costs $2 at most.

Based on the Pakistani results and those of previous studies, WHO said it would soon revise its guidelines for children with pneumonia.

UNICEF said that trained community health workers, rather than parents, should be the ones giving drugs to children at home with severe pneumonia. “At the implementation level, there are quality control challenges,” Van de Weert said. “We don’t want antibiotics to be used wildly by anyone.”

WHO said that not all children with severe pneumonia could be treated at home, and that a small percentage would still require hospitalization.

“Pneumonia is the single biggest killer of children in the world,” said Dr. Shamim Qazi, a pediatrician at WHO. “We are hopeful that with the results from this study, we may be able to change that.”

http://www.newstarget.com/022479.html

Wednesday, January 09, 2008 by: Mike Adams

(NewsTarget) While the mainstream press is widely reporting a new study “disproving” any link between autism and mercury-containing thimerosal in vaccines, no one has bothered to point out that the study was published in a medical journal stacked full of ads from the very same drug companies that manufacture and market vaccines. The Journal, the Archives of General Psychiatry, is the pro-drug psychiatric arm of the American Medical Association, a pill-pushing organization tarnished by a history of conspiracy against alternative medicine and the promotion of toxic substances like cigarettes with full-page ads in its flagship publication, JAMA.

From the outset, the fact that this study appears in a pro-drug, pro-psychiatry journal should bring pause to any scientific-minded person. There is obviously a serious conflict of interest here, especially if this study is to be taken as “fact” and applied to public health policy. There also need to be a close look at any financial links between the researchers involved in this study and various vaccine manufacturers, as virtually all pro-drug “science” (if you can call it that) being published these days is influenced by Big Pharma money.

The only truly honest, independent, peer-reviewed medical journal operating today is PLoS Medicine, an open-source journal that takes no money from drug companies. Notice that the autism/mercury link study did not appear in PLoS Medicine? No, it had to be published with a home field advantage in a pro-drug publication that maintains a strong bias in favor of pharmaceuticals and chemicals.

Junk science and faulty conclusions
Aside from these obvious and worrisome conflicts of interest, the conclusions being made about autism and vaccines in the mainstream media are simply not supported by the study. The (distorted) logic we’re hearing goes like this:

Yes, vaccines used to contain mercury. And yes, all those little kids were injected with mercury. And yes, autism rates skyrocketed. But then when the mercury was taken out of the vaccines, the autism rates didn’t come back down. Therefore, the logic goes, vaccines are safe!

This is such sloppy cause/effect logic that it makes the idiot CNN Health editors who published a story about “junk foods being good for your waist” look like sheer geniuses!

What’s wrong with the logic? Consider the use of mercury in the vaccines: It was used as a preservative chemical to prevent vaccine spoilage. When the mercury was removed, it was replaced with other preservative chemicals that are also toxic to the human nervous system. Thus, the continuing increase in autism rates following vaccination may be due to the toxic chemicals that replaced thimerosal. While mercury injections probably initiated the increase in autism, the toxic substance has been replaced with other dangerous chemicals that are continuing to increase the risk of autism.

Here’s an example to explain this a bit more:

We all know that sodium nitrite in processed meat causes cancer, right? Well, let’s say that for ten years, somebody feeds all the kids sodium nitrite and cancer rates skyrocket. Then, they take all the sodium nitrite out of the food and replace it with a different cancer-causing chemical that they keep feeding the kids. Guess what? The cancer rates don’t come down. Therefore, the logic goes, sodium nitrite didn’t cause cancer in the first place!

Notice that when mercury was removed from vaccines (which is not entirely true, by the way, bringing into question yet more details about this study), the rates of autism did not drop? This means the vaccines remain dangerous to children. Autism continued to climb right alongside vaccination rates, indicating the possibility that something in the vaccines (or a combination of various chemicals) may very well be responsible for the increase. Based on the fact that thimerosal was replaced with other toxic chemicals in the vaccines, there is absolutely no scientific way to clear thimerosal of any harmful effects. There are too many variables operating now, and no study can isolate one variable (thimerosal) out of many and prove it to be harmless.

The truth is that scientists have no idea what’s causing autism. They acknowledge the alarming increase in the rates of autism now being observed in the population, but with this new study, they claim, “Mercury is safe!”

Let me add this study to the enormous stack of other B.S. studies from modern medical researchers. Let’s see, I have a study here that declares aspartame to be safe. A second study in my database says that Vioxx is safe. Another study says Teflon is safe. And yet another study claims that cigarette smoke doesn’t cause lung cancer or heart disease! In fact, for virtually every toxic chemical created by industry, there’s a B.S. study proclaiming its safety! The history of science is full of such nonsense, all funded or influenced by the corporations that manufacture and sell these toxic chemicals or drugs.

The fact that industry has managed to create yet another study declaring a toxic substance (thimerosal) to be safe when injected into children is certainly not surprising. This is an industry that is not bound by the rules of logic, ethics or common scientific sense. It simply finds ways to influence researchers, cherry pick studies and distort science to get whatever results it wants. That’s how we’re now hearing things like, “Mercury is safe to inject into children!” — an idea that’s utterly absurd at any dose.

What the mercury / vaccine study actually proves
Even if you believe the results of this study, it only demonstrates that removing mercury from vaccines does not reduce vaccine toxicity to children. Autism rates are still on the rise, right along with vaccination rates. Multiple toxic chemicals and substances are contained in vaccines, and the mercury in thimerosal may have simply been one factor among many.

The only reasonable, scientifically-minded conclusion we can draw from the study is that removing mercury from vaccines does not reduce autism in children. If removing thimerosal from vaccines made them safer, we should have seen autism rates go down, but we did not! Autism rates continued to climb in direct correlation to vaccination rates, indicating that mercury is not the only toxic substance causing neurological problems in children.

Notice, carefully, that this is nothing close to what’s being reported in the mainstream media, where headlines are blaring junk science nonsense like, “Vaccines pose no risk for autism” (San Jose Mercury News) and “Thimerosal Does Not Cause Autism” (Slashdot, which should know better). Even WIRED News got it wrong with: “California Study Finds No Link Between Vaccines, Autism.”

The correct headline should be, “Removal of Mercury From Vaccines Fails to Halt Rise in Autism.”

Or, “Removing Mercury From Vaccines Does Not Make Them Safer.”

Nobody reported that. Apparently, telling the truth about research involving vaccines is not a popular option in the mainstream media (MSM). Businessweek, publishing a HealthDay report by Randy Dotinga, invokes particularly bad logic with this opening statement, “Adding to a growing body of evidence that rejects the idea that immunizations boost autism rates, a new study finds no proof that incidences of the disorder dropped after makers of most childhood vaccines stopped using a mercury-based preservative in their products.”

Huh? How does a study focused only on mercury “reject the idea that immunizations boost autism rates?” Did the author of that report not notice that autism rates continue to increase as vaccination rates go up? Eliminating one chemical from the causative factors does not in any way clear the safety of all the other chemicals or ingredients used in vaccines.

The mainstream media, which repeatedly demonstrates astonishing ignorance on issues of nutrition and health, also seems to have very little ability to interpret scientific studies and reach reasoned conclusions about what those studies do or do not prove.

Was the vaccine study another example of corrupt science?
Besides, this entire discussion is based on the idea that we can trust the research in the first place. If there’s one thing we’ve learned about modern medicine since watching all the Vioxx scandals, Avandia cover-ups and scientific corruption in research circles, it’s that drug companies can help create whatever research conclusions they want.

And let’s face it: Big Pharma will always produce science that protects its profits. Gee, Big Tobacco came up with all sorts of research that said tobacco smoke wasn’t harmful and nicotine wasn’t addictive. Some of that research appeared in peer-reviewed medical journals, too. Does that mean the research was scientifically accurate and “conclusive?” Of course not. It was just plain old junk science, hijacked by a powerful corporation with a clear profit motive.

If all that sounds familiar, it’s because drug companies are playing the same game with science today that Big Tobacco played decades ago: Influence the science, bury the bad news and propagandize the good news. It’s the oldest play in the spin book, and Big Pharma has patterned it perfectly from Big Tobacco.

You see, the relevant question in this discussion is not simply whether mercury-containing vaccines cause autism. The question at hand is whether we can even trust the “science” being conducted on this subject. Do the researchers who conducted this study have any financial ties to the manufacturers of those vaccines? Have they received any speaking fees? Do they own stock in those companies? If so, this completely discredits their research due to obvious conflicts of interest.

Now, I don’t have any direct evidence that the researchers in this particular mercury vaccine study were corrupted or influenced by Big Pharma, but as an honest, independent think who knows the truth about drug companies, the mainstream media and the profit motive behind much of the science appearing in the press today, I maintain a default position of skepticism when it comes to reading these studies.

By default, I distrust the drug companies and any so-called “research” that claims injecting mercury into the bodies of children is harmless. That should be the default position held by any rational person who understands basic human biochemistry. Toxic chemicals and heavy metals must be distrusted from the outset.

The drug and chemical industries, notably, take precisely the opposite approach. To them, all chemicals and drugs are safe until proven dangerous. This is how dangerous drugs get released into the marketplace and only recalled after tens of millions of prescriptions have been written and many thousands of people have died. The drug companies routinely treat the population as drug testing guinea pigs, and the used of vaccines on children is no different.

I find it interesting that genuine scientific skepticism seems to vanish when the topic shifts to pharmaceuticals. Sure, all the skeptics and quack critics will go to town on topics like acupuncture, mind-body medicine or even the efficacy of botanical medicines, but when the discussion turns to things like mercury in vaccines or amphetamine drugs for kids with ADHD, all such skepticism immediately vanishes. They accept the safety and efficacy of such treatments without question. Rational thought is rapidly discarded. Vaccines simply must be safe. Why? Because everybody else in the medical industry says so!

Were the journalists injected with mercury, too?
With this whole charade about a study “disproving” any link between mercury and vaccines, the modern medical industry has once again shown its infantile intellect and its utter lack or scientific integrity or clear-headed skepticism. Is this study really the best they can come up with? A study that shows absolutely no drop in autism rates when ingredients are reformulated in vaccines? A study that didn’t even attempt to take into account the other toxic ingredients in vaccines?

This is the new standard of “conclusive” science in medicine today?

Give me a break. The only thing that can be conclusively derived from observing all this is that mainstream media journalists continue to function at a very low level of scientific literacy, lacking any skills of mental reason by which scientific studies might be assessed. There is no thought that has gone into the media’s reporting of this story; only bandwagon parroting of each other’s bad conclusions of a study that, in reality, proves nothing. It’s yet another hilarious mainstream media circle jerk, and the fact that so many people keep buying this dim-witted reporting just proves that this nation remains woefully deficient in basic science education.

One point worth mentioning here is that there is absolutely no requirement to have any real understanding of science, medicine, chemistry or physics to graduate from a top-notch journalism school. And when journalists have no idea what they’re talking about, they go the default route and simply rewrite whatever was e-mailed to them in the corporate press release! Thus, modern skills of journalism do not require any independent thought whatsoever. They only require the ability to rephrase something already told to them by the spinmeisters at Corporation X.

Correct me if I’m wrong: Is there a single mainstream reporter — even one? — that reported the correct conclusion from this vaccine research?

I challenge you to find one. I’ve looked. There isn’t one.

The dumbing down of the mainstream media is now complete. I can’t wait to see what headlines will come next:

“Prescription Drugs That Killed Patients Found Innocent Since Patients Did Not Come Back to Life After the Drugs Were Removed”

Or:

“Radiation From Mammograms Found Harmless Because Death Rates Continued to Climb Even After Mammography was Halted”

Or my favorite: “Ephedra Herb Banned After Ten Deaths; Drugs Are Safer Because They Only Kill 100,000 Americans a Year”

I’m beginning to wonder if all the journalists have been injected with mercury.

http://www.baytoday.ca/content/news/details.asp?c=2 (which isn’t there
anymore, naturally)

Urine testing confirms Autism is mercury poisoning
*By Kate Adams
BayToday.ca
Tuesday, October 02, 2007*

US Autism & Asperger Association, Inc.
News Release

********************

WASHINGTON, DC - A new peer-reviewed scientific/medical case study confirms
that many children with autistic spectrum disorders (ASDs) suffer from
mercury poisoning. The new study, “A Prospective Study of Mercury Toxicity
Biomarkers in Autistic Spectrum Disorders” by Mr. David A. Geier and Dr.
Mark R. Geier has been published in the most recent issue of the Journal of
Toxicology and Environmental Health, Part A (volume 70, issue 20, pgs
1723-1730).

This study utilized urinary porphyrin profile analysis (UPPA) to assess
body-burden and physiological effects of mercury in children diagnosed with
ASDs.

Using UPPA, Geier and Geier (2007) examined 71 children diagnosed with ASDs,
neurotypical siblings, and general population controls. The researchers
studied urinary porphyrin patterns using results reported both by the US
Laboratory Corporation of America (LabCorp) and the French Laboratoire
Philippe Auguste.

Their findings demonstrated that:
* Only the non-chelated patients diagnosed with ASDs had porphyrin patterns
indicative of clinical mercury toxicity.
* Treating ASD diagnosed patients with chelating agents resulted in lower
mercury-specific urinary porphyrins.
* The UPPA patterns reported were consistent between the two labs used.

The results of the present study confirm and extend previous observations by
Nataf et al. (2006) and Geier and Geier (2006) on the use of UPPA profiling
to establish the causal role for mercury in ASDs. Additionally, the current
findings are consistent with those observed by many other physicians who
treat patients diagnosed with both ASDs and mercury toxicity.

Thus, urinary porphyrin profile testing is being successfully used to:
* Demonstrate the role of mercury in ASD populations,
* Identify those children and adults who are mercury poisoned, and
* Track mercury excretion from affected children undergoing treatment.

For the past several years there has been a raging controversy as to whether
or not mercury in medicines, especially in vaccines, has caused a dramatic
rise in the rate of children diagnosed with an ASD. Many experts have
insisted ASDs are caused by some yet-to-be-identified genetic cause. A paper
recently published in Nature Genetics described the results of
multi-million-dollar genetics study (which studied a thousand-plus families
with at least two children diagnosed with an ASD using in-depth genetic
screening). Tellingly, the authors reported, “None of our linkage results
can be interpreted as ’statistically significant’.”(The Autism Genome
Project Consortium 2007).

With the current study’s results, public health officials should now
publicly admit what they have been saying in their private transcripts and
memos: Mercury from Thimerosal-containing vaccines and other medicines has
been a major cause of ASD cases, which, based on recent CDC estimates (CDC
2007), may exceed a rate of one in 100 children.

Today, any parent, physician, or healthcare provider can easily confirm
whether a non-chelated child with an ASD diagnosis is mercury poisoned by
having UPPA testing run at either laboratory.

CoMeD’s web site, http://www.Mercury-freeDrugs.org contains:

* Further information on how to order these tests,
* Full copies of the Nataf et al. (2006), Geier and Geier (2006), & Geier
and Geier (2007), and
* Some of the many published papers validating the UPPA test.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/parenting/05/08/mothers.index/index.html

U.S. has second worst newborn death rate in modern world, report says

Research: 2 million babies die in first 24 hours each year worldwide

By Jeff Green

(CNN) — An estimated 2 million babies die within their first 24 hours each year worldwide and the United States has the second worst newborn mortality rate in the developed world, according to a new report.

American babies are three times more likely to die in their first month as children born in Japan, and newborn mortality is 2.5 times higher in the United States than in Finland, Iceland or Norway, Save the Children researchers found.

Only Latvia, with six deaths per 1,000 live births, has a higher death rate for newborns than the United States, which is tied near the bottom of industrialized nations with Hungary, Malta, Poland and Slovakia with five deaths per 1,000 births.

“The United States has more neonatologists and neonatal intensive care beds per person than Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom, but its newborn rate is higher than any of those countries,” said the annual State of the World’s Mothers report.

The report, which analyzed data from governments, research institutions and international agencies, found higher newborn death rates among U.S. minorities and disadvantaged groups. For African-Americans, the mortality rate is nearly double that of the United States as a whole, with 9.3 deaths per 1,000 births.

Sub-Saharan Africa remains the worst place in the world to be a mother or child, with Scandinavian nations again taking the top spots in the rankings by the Connecticut-based humanitarian group.

Sweden heads the list, with Niger last. (10 worst and best)

The “Mothers’ Index” in the report ranks 125 nations according to 10 gauges of well-being — six for mothers and four for children — including objective measures such as lifetime mortality risk for mothers and infant mortality rate and subjective measures such as the political status of women.

Charles MacCormack, president and CEO of Save the Children, said the report card “illustrates the direct line between the status of mothers and the status of their children.”

“In countries where mothers do well, children do well,” he said in a written statement accompanying the report.

But each year, according to the report, more than a half-million women die as a result of pregnancy and childbirth difficulties, 2 million babies die within their first 24 hours, 2 million more die within their first month and 3 million are stillborn.

An unhealthy start

As Americans celebrate Mother’s Day on Sunday, “5,000 mothers will mourn the loss of the newborn they bear that very day in the developing world,” said Anne Tinker, director of Save the Children’s Saving Newborn Lives initiative.

“All children, no matter where they are born, deserve a healthy start in life,” Melinda Gates wrote in a foreword to the report, which was funded in part by the foundation she runs with her husband, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.

MacCormack said “significant progress” had been made in reducing deaths in children under age 5 in recent years, but “we have made little progress in reducing mortality rates for babies during the first month of life.”
Causes of death in the developing world were dramatically different from those in the developed world, the report said. In industrialized nations deaths were most likely to result from babies being born too small or too early, while in the developing world about half of newborn deaths were from infection, tetanus and diarrhea.

The newborn mortality rate in the United States has fallen in recent decades, the report said, but continues to affect minorities disproportionately.

Only 17 percent of all U.S. births were to African-American families, but 33 percent of all low-birthweight babies were African-American, according to the report.

The research also found that poorer mothers with less education were at a significantly higher risk of early delivery. The study added that in general lower educational attainment was associated with higher newborn mortality.
Tinker said some nations ranked high in part because they offer free health services for pregnant women and babies, while the United States suffers from disparities in access to health care.

“We can do better here, but what’s really important is that we do something” in the developing world, she said.

The report said almost all newborn and maternal deaths take place in developing nations — 99 percent and 98 percent, respectively. The newborn mortality rates were particularly high in countries with a recent history of armed conflict, including Liberia and Sierra Leone.

But the report also concluded that political will was more important than national wealth. A “newborn scorecard” ranking 78 developing nations found that some relatively impoverished countries — including Colombia, Mexico, Nicaragua and Vietnam — fare better than others.

Ranking at the bottom of the scorecard were Liberia, Afghanistan, Angola and Iraq — countries where armed conflict and cultural practices impede newborn survival.

“It’s tragic that millions of newborns die every year, especially when these deaths are so easily preventable,” Gates wrote. “Three out of four newborn deaths could be avoided with simple, low-cost tools that already exist, such as antibiotics for pneumonia, sterile blades to cut umbilical cords and knit caps to keep babies warm.”

‘The good news’

The Mothers’ Index — which excluded some nations that lacked sufficient data — highlights huge disparities between the nations at the top and the bottom of the list.

Compared with mothers in the top 10 countries, a mother in the bottom 10 was found to be more than 750 times more likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth.

In top-ranked Sweden, skilled personnel [Lea’s comment: they mean MIDWIVES] are present at nearly all births, but in bottom-ranked Niger, such help is available for only 16 percent of women in labor.

“The good news,” said MacCormack, “is that we know what it takes to help these moms and children survive and thrive.”

The report highlights the three areas it says have the most influence on child well-being: female education, presence of a trained attendant at birth and use of family planning services.

Educated women, the report said, are more likely to marry and give birth later in life, to seek health care and to encourage education for their children, including girls.

The report said that family planning and increased contraception use leads to lower maternal and infant death rates. Many women and children in developing nations, it said, die as a result of births that come at the wrong time — too close together, too early or too late in the mother’s life.