American Buddhist Net

Jul 7, 2008 at 5:45 PM PDT
By KATU Staff

SALEM, Ore. - Relax it and tax it.

That's the motto behind a new cannabis initiative that would allow Oregon's state-controlled liquor stores to legally sell marijuana to adults.

Initiative backers said their plan would send 90 percent of the proceeds from the state's sale of marijuana to Oregon's General Fund, which could lower Oregonians' state tax burden.

Smaller percentages would go to funding drug abuse education and treatment programs.

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STROKE IDENTIFICATION:

During a BBQ, a friend stumbled and took a little fall - she assured everyone that she was fine (they offered to call paramedics) .....she said she had just tripped over a brick because of her new shoes.

They got her cleaned up and got her a new plate of food. While she appeared a bit shaken up, Ingrid went about enjoying herself the rest of the evening

Ingrid's husband called later telling everyone that his wife had been taken to the hospital - (at 6:00 pm Ingrid passed away.) She had suffered a stroke at the BBQ. Had they known how to identify the signs of a stroke, perhaps Ingrid would be with us today. Some don't die.... they end up in a helpless, hopeless condition instead.

It only takes a minute to read this...

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Makes a good point. Best to practice Buddhism. ABN
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by John M. Grohol, Psy.D.
July 6, 2008

We’ve all heard the theory — a chemical imbalance in your brain causes depression.

Although researchers have known for years this not to be the case, some drug companies continue to repeat this simplistic and misleading claim in their marketing and advertising materials. Why the FTC or some other federal agency doesn’t crack down on this intentional misleading information is beyond me. Most researchers now believe depression is not caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain.

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July 3, 2008
Jill Ettinger

...as healthy options seem to increase, identifying the healthy choices becomes increasingly difficult. Box after box of “organic” foods line the Whole Foods aisles, boasting claims that may or may not be accurate. What’s more, as the little organic-health-food-brand-that-could makes its way over the hillside into conventional grocery stores, it finds itself needing to sell off chunks of the business to VC’s and investors just to stay alive. Some companies have completely surrendered full ownership and all that’s left is the guise of a brand that maybe once was pure and wholesome that’s now steered by Madison Avenue Marketing Moguls and single bottom-line Corporate Agendas.

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How Prozac sent the science of depression in the wrong direction

By Jonah Lehrer
July 6, 2008

PROZAC IS ONE of the most successful drugs of all time. Since its introduction as an antidepressant more than 20 years ago, Prozac has been prescribed to more than 54 million people around the world, and prevented untold amounts of suffering.

But the success of Prozac hasn't simply transformed the treatment of depression: it has also transformed the science of depression. For decades, researchers struggled to identify the underlying cause of depression, and patients were forced to endure a series of ineffective treatments. But then came Prozac. Like many other antidepressants, Prozac increases the brain's supply of serotonin, a neurotransmitter. The drug's effectiveness inspired an elegant theory, known as the chemical hypothesis: Sadness is simply a lack of chemical happiness. The little blue pills cheer us up because they give the brain what it has been missing.

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July 6, 2008
Flora Bagenal

Pollution around the Olympic stadium in Beijing could be five times worse than levels deemed safe by the World Health Organisation.

Chinese officials admit they can no longer guarantee that the air quality will match international standards as pollution tests by The Sunday Times revealed the full extent of the challenge facing British athletes.

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Very well-said. Short, reasonable, and right to the point. ABN
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Only cops and crooks have benefited from $2.5 trillion spent fighting trafficking.

By David W. Fleming and James P. Gray
July 5, 2008

The United States' so-called war on drugs brings to mind the old saying that if you find yourself trapped in a deep hole, stop digging. Yet, last week, the Senate approved an aid package to combat drug trafficking in Mexico and Central America, with a record $400 million going to Mexico and $65 million to Central America.

The United States has been spending $69 billion a year worldwide for the last 40 years, for a total of $2.5 trillion, on drug prohibition -- with little to show for it. Is anyone actually benefiting from this war? Six groups come to mind.

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July 4th, 2008 by Piyush Diwan

A recent study conducted on 3,000 British subjects, revealed that the memory loss with age is linked with decreased level of HDL (High Density Lipoprotein) Cholestrol.

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It is difficult to believe how the hardy, crunchy often rough looking exterior of raw beets can be transformed into something wonderfully soft and buttery once they are cooked. While beets are available throughout the year, their season runs from June through October when the youngest, most tender beets are easiest to find.

Edible green leaves are attached to the tapered round or oblong root portions that we know as beets. While we often think of beets having a reddish-purple hue, some varieties are white, golden-yellow or even rainbow colored. The sweet taste of beets reflects their high sugar content making them an important raw material for the production of refined sugar; they have the highest sugar content of all vegetables, yet are very low in calories

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Check the paragraph in bold below. Hundreds of millions are suffering, many dying, but the report has been held back to avoid embarrassing Bush? Why does this one person have so much power that such basic information as this is kept from the world? ABN
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# Aditya Chakrabortty
# The Guardian,
# Friday July 4, 2008

Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% - far more than previously estimated - according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian.

The damning unpublished assessment is based on the most detailed analysis of the crisis so far, carried out by an internationally-respected economist at global financial body.

The figure emphatically contradicts the US government's claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than 3% to food-price rises. It will add to pressure on governments in Washington and across Europe, which have turned to plant-derived fuels to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce their dependence on imported oil.

Senior development sources believe the report, completed in April, has not been published to avoid embarrassing President George Bush.

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A Preliminary Study Shows Meditating Turns off Stress-Related Genes

By LAUREN COX
ABC News Medical Unit
July 2, 2008

It turns out peaceful thoughts really can influence our bodies, right down to the instructions we receive from our DNA, according to a new study.

Researchers for the study, published in the Public Library of Science, took blood samples from a group of 19 people who habitually meditated or prayed for years, and 19 others who never meditated.

The researchers ran genomic analyses of the blood and found that the meditating group suppressed more than twice the number of stress-related genes -- about 1,000 of them -- than the nonmeditating group.

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WHO survey of 17 countries finds that we have the highest rates of marijuana and cocaine use.

Bruce Mirken, AlterNet. Posted July 2, 2008.

The United States has some of the world's most punitive drug policies and has led the cheering section for tough "war on drugs" policies worldwide, but a new international study suggests that those policies have been a crashing failure. A World Health Organization survey of 17 countries, conducted by some of the world's leading substance abuse researchers, found that we have the highest rates of marijuana and cocaine use.

The numbers are startling. In the United States, 42.4 percent admitted having used marijuana. The only other nation that came close was New Zealand, another bastion of get-tough policies, at 41.9 percent. No one else was even close. The results for cocaine use were similar, with the United States leading the world by a large margin.

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July 2, 2008
By SUSAN EDELMAN

Of 10,000 Ground Zero workers suing the city, medical records show 67 percent suffer respiratory ailments and 45 percent have a gastrointestinal disease, their lawyers claim.

The numbers, filed in court last night, aim to rebut the city's argument that 30 percent have "only nominal injuries" and that serious claims are not proven.

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July 3, 2008
By MARK LANDLER

FRANKFURT — When Roger Kusch helped Bettina Schardt kill herself at home on Saturday, the grim, carefully choreographed ritual was like that in many cases of assisted suicide, with one exception.

Ms. Schardt, 79, a retired X-ray technician from the Bavarian city of Würzburg, was neither sick nor dying. She simply did not want to move into a nursing home, and rather than face that prospect, she asked Mr. Kusch, a prominent German campaigner for assisted suicide, for a way out.

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July 02, 2008

SHOCKING surveillance camera footage shows a woman collapsing and dying on a hospital emergency room floor and then lying for an hour while staff walk past.

The video has been released to the media as evidence by lawyers suing the hospital for neglect and the alleged abuse of mental health patients.

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July 2, 2008

BEIJING - MORE than 60 children fell ill after drinking water that may have been deliberately poisoned at a primary school in southern China, state media reported.

Thirty-four were still in hospital, suffering from headaches and nausea, and the rest were under observation at their rural school in Guangxi province after drinking the water in their school canteen, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Tuesday.

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Survey shows that profound mental changes induced by psilocybin have lasted for more than a year

By David Biello
July 1, 2008

People who took magic mushrooms were still feeling the love more than a year later, and one might say they were on cloud nine about it, scientists report in the Journal of Psychopharmacology.

"Most of the volunteers looked back on their experience up to 14 months later and rated it as the most, or one of the five most, personally meaningful and spiritually significant of their lives," comparing it with the birth of a child or the death of a parent, says neuroscientist Roland Griffiths of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, who lead the research. "It's one thing to have a dramatic experience you say is impressive. It's another thing to say you consider it as meaningful 14 months later. There's something about the saliency of these experiences that's stunning."

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July 1, 2008
Jeremy Page in Beijing

Wang Cheng has the perfect remedy for athletes struggling to recover from injury during the Beijing Olympics. “Deer's penis,” she said, proferring a desiccated sample across the counter of the Tongrentang traditional Chinese medicine store in central Beijing.

“Mix it with some alcohol, take it every one or two days, and you'll soon feel better,” Ms Wang, a graduate in Chinese traditional medicine, said.

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July 1, 2008
By CHOE SANG-HUN

SEOUL, South Korea — A United States freighter began unloading tons of American wheat in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, on Monday, as the government agreed to give international aid workers unprecedented access to its isolated, hunger-stricken territory, the United Nations World Food Program said.

The shipment is the first installment of 500,000 tons in promised American aid to be distributed by the World Food Program and American groups like Mercy Corps. The aid, and the North Korean agreement to invite 50 more food program experts and a consortium of American relief agencies, followed recent progress in efforts to end the North’s nuclear weapons program.

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The Associated Press
Article Launched: 06/30/2008 02:39:19 AM PDT

LOS ANGELES—California hospitals reported that during a 10-month period ending in May, doctors performed the wrong surgical procedure, operated on the wrong body part or on the wrong patient 41 times, records show.

During the same period, hospitals reported that foreign objects were left in surgical patients 145 times.

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They're in millions of mouths worldwide, but have been linked to heart disease and Alzheimer's. Now a report concedes they may have a toxic effect on the body

By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
Sunday, 29 June 2008

Amalgam dental fillings – which contain the highly toxic metal mercury – pose a health risk, the world's top medical regulatory agency has conceded.

After years of insisting the fillings are safe, the US government's Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a health warning about them. It represents a landmark victory for campaigners, who say the fillings are responsible for a range of ailments, including heart conditions and Alzheimer's disease.

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June 23, 2008 by: Jo Hartley

(NaturalNews) The International Center for Technology Assessment (CTA) and a group of consumer, health, and environmental groups have filed a legal petition with the Environmental Protection Agency demanding the agency use its pesticide regulation authority to stop the sale of several consumer products that are now using nano-sized versions of silver. This legal action is the first challenge of the EPA's failure to regulate nanomaterials.

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Shows how persistent and nasty so many of these chemicals are. ABN
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Gardeners across Britain are reaping a bitter harvest of rotten potatoes, withered salads and deformed tomatoes after an industrial herbicide tainted their soil. Caroline Davies reports on how the food chain became contaminated and talks to the angry allotment owners whose plots have been destroyed.

...It appears that the contamination came from grass treated 12 months ago. Experts say the grass was probably made into silage, then fed to cattle during the winter months. The herbicide remained present in the silage, passed through the animal and into manure that was later sold. Horses fed on hay that had been treated could also be a channel.

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By Elizabeth Pennisi
ScienceNOW Daily News
25 June 2008

MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA--The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1) responsible for most of the AIDS cases in the world infected people approximately 100 years ago, more than 20 years earlier than previously believed, according to findings presented here this week at the Evolution 2008 meeting. Its lesser known cousin, HIV-2, jumped into humans decades later, from a monkey species that carried the virus for just a couple of hundred years, not the millions of years researchers had assumed, according to other research presented at the meeting.

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American researchers will soon start a human trial to determine whether a treatment that can eradicate cancer in mice will do the same in people.

June 28, 2008
CTV.ca News Staff

The treatment will transfuse specific white blood cells, called granulocytes, into patients with advanced forms of cancer. The granulocytes will come from healthy young people with immune systems that produce cells that have high levels of anti-cancer activity.

In the animal studies, white blood cells from cancer-resistant mice cured all lab mice who had malignant tumours. The cells have also been able to kill cervical, prostate and breast cancer tumour cells in Petri dish tests.

"All the mice we treated were 100 per cent cured," lead researcher Dr. Zheng Cui told CTV News. "So that was very surprising for us."

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