Feature articles on diabetes

Radiation Treatment for Cancer Causes Diabetes in Children

Coffee Lowers Risk of Diabetes and Liver Fibrosis, Hepatitis and Prostate Cancer

Chlorella Superfood Fights Body Fat and Diabetes

Spice Up Your Smoothies with Cinnamon Nutrition

Blueberry Drink Protects Mice from Diabetes, Obesity

Pycnogenol pine bark extract shown to protect diabetics from swelling, circulation and vision problems

Researchers Reluctantly Admit Mediterranean Diet Beats Diabetes Drugs for Controlling Blood Sugar

Herbs Help Treat Diabetes: Bilberry, Gymnema, Ginkgo and Salt Bush

Coffee Cure: Coffee Cuts Risk of Diabetes Development

Your Dentist may be able to Determine Your Diabetes Risk

How Regular Exercise can Help with Diabetes

Dire warning: diabetes will double and costs triple by 2034, but only if we don’t prevent it

When you eat can promote weight loss and fight diabetes, researchers find

Sugary cola drinks found to be a huge risk for gestational diabetes during pregnancy

Vitamin D prevents heart disease

An antioxidant in broccoli and cauliflower may treat cystic fibrosis and other diseases

Diabetes Drug Found to Promote Cancer Tumors, But FDA Urges Diabetics to Keep Using it Anyway

Avoid the Sodium Saturation Point

Growing obesity epidemic will double diabetes population and triple medical costs by 2034

Eating processed meat boosts diabetes risk by 40 percent

Vitamin D prevents diabetes, improves insulin sensitivity, say multiple studies

Vitamin D prevents heart disease

Vegetables Provide the Best Diabetes Defense for Your Baby

New research: resveratrol improves diabetes by affecting the brain

Chromium prevents diabetes by improving insulin sensitivity

How magnesium prevents heart disease
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Food Safety Experts Will NOT Eat These Seven Foods

The Food Safety Experts stay away from these seven food items.

OCA | Want to know the foods that the “food safety experts” won’t eat? Prevention Magazine decided to ask. They posed the question, “What foods do you avoid?” to the people whose work is to uncover what’s safe to eat – or not. Here’s what they said:

1. Canned Tomatoes

Fredrick vom Saal, PhD, who studies bisphenol-A (BPA), says the linings of tin cans contain BPA, a synthetic estrogen linked to reproductive problems, heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. The acidity in tomatoes causes BPA to leach into food.

2. Corn-Fed Beef

Joel Salatin, co-owner of Polyface Farms says cattle evolved to eat grass, not grains. Farmers today feed cows corn and soybeans to fatten them faster. A USDA study found that grass-fed beef is higher in beta-carotene, vitamin E, omega-3s, calcium, magnesium and potassium; lower in inflammatory omega-6s; and lower in saturated fats.

3. Microwave Popcorn

Olga Naidenko, PhD, with the Environmental Working Group says chemicals, including perfluorooctanoic acid, in the lining of the bag, are part of compounds that may be linked to infertility in humans. In animal testing, the chemicals cause liver, testicular, and pancreatic cancer.

4. Non-organic Potatoes

Jeffrey Moyer, chair of the National Organic Standards Board says potatoes are treated with fungicides during the growing season, then sprayed with herbicides. Then potatoes are treated yet again to prevent them from sprouting.

5. Farmed Salmon

David Carpenter, MD, wrote a study in the journal Science on contaminated fish. He says fish shouldn’t be jammed into pens and fed soy, poultry litter, and hydrolyzed chicken feathers. As a result, farmed salmon is lower in vitamin D and higher in contaminants, including carcinogens, PCBs, brominated flame retardants, and pesticides such as dioxin and DDT.

6. Milk Produced with Artificial Hormones

Rick North, from the Campaign for Safe Food, says milk producers treat dairy cattle with recombinant bovine growth hormone(rBGH). And rBGH increases udder infections and even pus in the milk. It leads to higher levels of the hormone insulin-like growth factor(IGF-1). In people, high levels of IGF-1 may contribute to breast, prostate, and colon cancers.

7. Non-organic Apples

Mark Kastel, from the Cornucopia Institute, says apples are sprayed very frequently. The industry maintains that these residues are not dangerous. But Kastel counters that it’s common sense to minimize exposure by avoiding the most sprayed produce, like apples.

Reference

Big Pharma researcher admits to faking dozens of research studies for Pfizer, Merck

Mike Adams
Natural News
Thursday, February 18th, 2010

It’s being called the largest research fraud in medical history. Dr. Scott Reuben, a former member of Pfizer’s speakers’ bureau, has agreed to plead guilty to faking dozens of research studies that were published in medical journals.

Now being reported across the mainstream media is the fact that Dr. Reuben accepted a $75,000 grant from Pfizer to study Celebrex in 2005. His research, which was published in a medical journal, has since been quoted by hundreds of other doctors and researchers as “proof” that Celebrex helped reduce pain during post-surgical recovery. There’s only one problem with all this: No patients were ever enrolled in the study!

Dr. Scott Reuben, it turns out, faked the entire study and got it published anyway.

It wasn’t the first study faked by Dr. Reuben: He also faked study data on Bextra and Vioxx drugs, reports the Wall Street Journal.

As a result of Dr. Reuben’s faked studies, the peer-reviewed medical journal Anesthesia & Analgesia was forced to retract 10 “scientific” papers authored by Reuben. The Day of London reports that 21 articles written by Dr. Reuben that appear in medical journals have apparently been fabricated, too, and must be retracted.

After being caught fabricating research for Big Pharma, Dr. Reuben has reportedly signed a plea agreement that will require him to return $420,000 that he received from drug companies. He also faces up to a 10-year prison sentence and a $250,000 fine.

He was also fired from his job at the Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Mass. after an internal audit there found that Dr. Reuben had been faking research data for 13 years.
Read the full article

Trump: Companies Now See That Global Warming Is a Con; China & India Laugh at Our Green Stupidity

Watch the short clip

Family Billed Nearly $28K For Fire

Senator Says More Study Needed Into Fire Fees
UPDATED: 8:25 pm EST February 16, 2010

NEW CASTLE, Ind. — A New Castle family that lost their home in a fire last year said they were shocked to receive a bill for nearly $28,000.

Emergency Services Billing Corporation, based in Brownsburg, sent Brian and Darline Fairchild an itemized bill including charges for water and refilling firefighters’ oxygen tanks, 6News’ Joanna Massee reported.

“I said ‘Oh my God, they’ve got to be kidding,” Darline Fairchild said.

“I always thought that a volunteer fire department was just that, volunteer, and taxes helped pay for that,” said Brian Fairchild.

Company owner Robert Blackford said usually insurance companies foot the bill if a department chooses to charge for its services, with rare exceptions.

He said federal environmental law allows him to bill unlimited fees for the departments’ services, and that Indiana law permits departments to set fees themselves.
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The CIA and NSA Want You to Be Their Friend on Facebook

cryptogon.com
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

Don’t break out the foil, the U.S. News & World Report article states, because the spooks are telling you up front, here we are. Oh sure. What this shit-for-brains article doesn’t explore is how many hundreds or thousands of full time, professionally run honeypots, black propaganda outlets, sock puppets/trolls/shills etc. are operational on Facebook.

See: EFF Sues CIA, DOJ, Others Over Facebook Surveillance:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation sued the CIA, the US Department of Defense, Department of Justice and three other government agencies on Tuesday for allegedly refusing to release information about how they are using social networks in surveillance and investigations.

The not-for-profit internet rights watchdog group formally asked more than a dozen agencies or departments in early October to provide records about federal guidelines on the use of sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Flickr for investigative or data-gathering purposes, according to the lawsuit.

The requests were prompted by published news reports about how authorities are using social networks to monitor citizen activities and aid in investigations. For example, according to the lawsuit, government officials have: used Facebook to hunt for fugitives and search for evidence of underage drinking; researched the activities of an activist on Facebook and LinkedIn; watched YouTube to identify riot suspects; searched the home of a social worker because of Twitter messages regarding police actions he sent during the G-20 summit; and used fake identities to trick Facebook users into accepting friend requests.

So, how many intelligence assets are operating in a covert capacity on Facebook?
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China sells $34.2bn of US treasury bonds

Analysts fear Beijing’s move may suggest a loss of faith in American government’s economic policy

Tania Branigan in Beijing and Heather Stewart
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 17 February 2010 17.11 GMT

China sold $34bn (£21.5bn) worth of US government bonds in December, raising fears that Beijing is using its financial muscle to signal that it has lost confidence in American economic policy.

US treasury figures for the period ending in December 2009 show that, following the sale, China is no longer the largest overseas holder of US treasury bonds. Beijing ended the year sitting on $755.4bn worth of US government debt, compared to Japan’s $768.8bn.

Since the sub-prime crisis that began on Main Street USA grew to engulf the global economy, China’s leaders have repeatedly expressed concerns about US policy. December’s $34bn sell-off made only a tiny dent in Beijing’s total holdings of US assets, which amount to well over $1tn when stakes in American companies, as well as treasury bills, are taken into account.

But the news intensified concerns about China’s appetite for bankrolling ever-widening American deficits. Premier Wen Jiabao told reporters last year: “We have made a huge amount of loans to the United States. Of course we are concerned about the safety of our assets. To be honest, I’m a little bit worried.”
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Olympics, Inc: Inside The Secretive, $6 Billion World Of The International Olympic Committee

Gus Lubin and Lawrence Delevingne | Feb. 17, 2010, 11:51 AM

Hundreds of thousands of people have descended on Vancouver for the 2010 Winter Olympics. Three billion are projected to follow on TV and 75 million more on vancouver2010.com.

And people around the world are learning to love obscure sports like curling and biathlon for a couple of weeks.

But before you get too caught up in the sports, remember that the Olympics have little to do with sports. They’re mostly about money.

In the United States, NBC demonstrates this every day — ruining the Olympics for millions of sports fans by tape-delaying events so it can show a highlight reel during prime time. (To their credit, other countries don’t do this: Our readers remind us every day how great the coverage is in Canada).

But NBC is just a small part of the global industry known as Olympics, Inc.

In the last four years (2005-2008), the International Olympic Committee (the owners and controllers of “Olympics, Inc.”) generated nearly $6 billion of revenue. For the next cycle, revenues are on track to be significantly higher, with Vancouver already doubling Turin for domestic sponsorship.

It’s enough to make you look twice at the IOC, which is based conveniently in tax-haven Switzerland.

Although the IOC is a non-profit organization, employment (“membership”) in the organization is a cushy job with many benefits.

Where does all that money come from and go? Is anyone making a profit? And who put the IOC in charge anyway?

We bring you the answers here.
See the secret $6 billion world of the IOC >

Reference

Same Empire, Different Emperor

By Laurence M. Vance

February 11. 2010 “Lew Rockwell” — Just as Hadrian succeeded Trajan, Domitian succeeded Titus, Nero succeeded Claudius, and Caligula succeeded Tiberius, so Kennedy replaced Eisenhower, Nixon replaced Johnson, Reagan replaced Carter, and Obama replaced Bush.

Same empire, different emperor.

The extent of the U.S. global empire is almost incalculable. We know enough, however, about foreign bases, physical assets, military spending, and foreign troop levels to know that we have an empire in everything but the name.

There are, according to the Department of Defense’s “Base Structure Report” for FY 2009, 716 U.S. military bases on foreign soil in thirty-eight countries. Yet, according to the expert on this subject, Chalmers Johnson, the author of Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire, and Nemesis, that number is far too low: “The official figures omit espionage bases, those located in war zones, including Iraq and Afghanistan, and miscellaneous facilities in places considered too sensitive to discuss or which the Pentagon for its own reasons chooses to exclude – e.g. in Israel, Kosovo, or Jordan.” Johnson places the real number of foreign bases closer to 1,000.

This same Base Structure Report states that the DOD’s physical assets consist of “more than 539,000 facilities (buildings, structures and linear structures) located on more than 5,570 sites, on approximately 29 million acres.” The 307,295 buildings occupied by the DOD comprise over 2.1 billion square feet. The DOD manages almost 30 million acres of land worldwide.

The latest defense budget (Obama’s first) is almost as much as the rest of the world’s defense spending combined. The U.S. military is the single-largest consumer of oil in the world, officially using 320,000 barrels of oil a day. The U.S. Navy’s battle fleet is larger than the next 13 foreign navies combined. And thanks to the work of economist Robert Higgs, we know that total spending for all defense-related purposes is actually about a trillion dollars. And then there are the supplemental appropriation bills not in the Pentagon’s budget.

In addition to the over 1.1 million U.S. military personnel stationed in the United States and its territories, there are about 262,000 U.S. troops in foreign countries – not counting the 130,000 soldiers in Iraq and the 68,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, and not counting the other troops deployed in Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and in Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. And then there is Obama’s new 30,000-man troop surge for Afghanistan. There would be even more troops in Afghanistan if it were not for the 120,000 contractors there on the payroll of the Defense Department, State Department, and USAID.
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The Lobbying-Media Complex

By Sebastian Jones

February 12, 2010 “The Nation” — President Obama spent most of December 4 touring Allentown, Pennsylvania, meeting with local workers and discussing the economic crisis. A few hours later, the state’s former governor, Tom Ridge, was on MSNBC’s Hardball With Chris Matthews, offering up his own recovery plan. There were “modest things” the White House might try, like cutting taxes or opening up credit for small businesses, but the real answer was for the president to “take his green agenda and blow it out of the box.” The first step, Ridge explained, was to “create nuclear power plants.” Combined with some waste coal and natural gas extraction, you would have an “innovation setter” that would “create jobs, create exports.”

As Ridge counseled the administration to “put that package together,” he sure seemed like an objective commentator. But what viewers weren’t told was that since 2005, Ridge has pocketed $530,659 in executive compensation for serving on the board of Exelon, the nation’s largest nuclear power company. As of March 2009, he also held an estimated $248,299 in Exelon stock, according to SEC filings.

Moments earlier, retired general and “NBC Military Analyst” Barry McCaffrey told viewers that the war in Afghanistan would require an additional “three- to ten-year effort” and “a lot of money.” Unmentioned was the fact that DynCorp paid McCaffrey $182,309 in 2009 alone. The government had just granted DynCorp a five-year deal worth an estimated $5.9 billion to aid American forces in Afghanistan. The first year is locked in at $644 million, but the additional four options are subject to renewal, contingent on military needs and political realities.

In a single hour, two men with blatant, undisclosed conflicts of interest had appeared on MSNBC. The question is, was this an isolated oversight or business as usual? Evidence points to the latter. In 2003 The Nation exposed McCaffrey’s financial ties to military contractors he had promoted on-air on several cable networks; in 2008 David Barstow wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning series for the New York Times about the Pentagon’s use of former military officers–many lobbying or consulting for military contractors–to get their talking points on television in exchange for access to decision-makers; and in 2009 bloggers uncovered how ex-Newsweek writer Richard Wolffe had guest-hosted Countdown With Keith Olbermann while working at a large PR firm specializing in “strategies for managing corporate reputation.”

These incidents represent only a fraction of the covert corporate influence peddling on cable news, a four-month investigation by The Nation has found. Since 2007 at least seventy-five registered lobbyists, public relations representatives and corporate officials–people paid by companies and trade groups to manage their public image and promote their financial and political interests–have appeared on MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, CNBC and Fox Business Network with no disclosure of the corporate interests that had paid them. Many have been regulars on more than one of the cable networks, turning in dozens–and in some cases hundreds–of appearances.

For lobbyists, PR firms and corporate officials, going on cable television is a chance to promote clients and their interests on the most widely cited source of news in the United States. These appearances also generate good will and access to major players inside the Democratic and Republican parties. For their part, the cable networks, eager to fill time and afraid of upsetting the political elite, have often looked the other way. At times, the networks have even disregarded their own written ethics guidelines. Just about everyone involved is heavily invested in maintaining the current system, with the exception of the viewer.
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