6.25.2009

How Our Medical System is the 3rd Leading Cause of Death in America


Cancer and heart disease are the top 2 killers in the US. Is it surprising that the 3rd is not a disease? According to research in the Journal of the American Medical Assoc (JAMA) and from the Institute of Medicine, our own medical system kills upward of 225,000 people every year.

The author is Dr. Barbara Starfield of the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health and she desribes how the US health care system may contribute to poor health.

ALL THESE ARE DEATHS PER YEAR:
* 12,000 -- due to unnecessary surgery
* 7,000 -- due to medication errors in hospitals
* 20,000 -- due to other errors in hospitals
* 80,000 -- due to infections in hospitals
* 106,000 -- due to non-error, negative effects of drugs


These total to 225,000 deaths per year from iatrogenic causes!! (Iatrogenic is defined as induced in a patient by a physician's activity, manner, or therapy. Used especially of a complication of treatment).

<> Click below for links to this article and others:

Doctors Are The Third Leading Cause of Death in the US, Killing 225,000 People Every Year

Medical Mistakes Kill 100,000 Americans A Year


The incidence and severity of adverse events affecting patients after discharge from the hospital



US Health System Most Expensive in World

6.23.2009

Swine Flu Vaccine: Will We Have A Choice?

An Update on the current status of our government and public policy with regard to the Swine Flu Vaccine. It will likely be added to the already long list of mandatory vaccines for children to attend public school, daycares, etc.. As with all vaccines, parents need to become very well versed in the dangers that come with injecting these chemicals into the human body, especially that of a child. Please take the time to become informed.

nW

6.17.2009

Vaccines Being Experimented on US Soldiers



A Short video. Please check it out. Kids in public schools aren't the only one's being forced to take vaccines.

-nW

The FDA Protects Animals from Mercury but Not Humans


A good way for Dr. Hamburg (FDA’s new Commissioner) to begin would be to reverse years of FDA inaction on mercury amalgam – a step she assured Senator Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) she would take in response to his question during the confirmation process. Inexplicably, the FDA zealously protects animals from mercury exposure, while taking almost a laissez-faire approach to human exposure to mercury.

In 2002, the agency pulled from the market a mercury-containing ointment for horses, and proclaimed zero tolerance for mercury in any product used to treat an animal. The FDA ruled that mercury is so toxic to mammals, it had no duty to prove its presence actually harms horses.

When it comes to mercury-containing products marketed to the humans however the FDA’s zeal evaporates. The FDA requires mercury critics to prove actual and widespread harm -- the shocking opposite of its position on protecting animals. Interestingly, the FDA policies ignore warnings from the Environmental Protection Agency that one in seven American women of childbearing age has so much mercury she is at risk of having a brain-damaged child.

6.14.2009

Children Who Get Flu Vaccine Have 3X Risk Of Hospitalization For Flu

The above headline comes from Science Daily on May 20, 2009. The ensuing article reports on research presented at the International Conference of the American Thoracic Society that stated that children who get the flu vaccine are more at risk for hospitalization than those children who do not.

In this study researchers followed 263 children ages 6 months to 18 years, who were evaluated at the Mayo Clinic and had laboratory-confirmed influenza between 1996 to 2006. The researchers determined who received the flu vaccine and who did not. They then looked at their asthma status and who did and did not require hospitalization. The records were reviewed for each child with influenza-related illness to see if they had the flu vaccination preceding the illness and if they required hospitalization during that illness.

The researchers found that children who had received the flu vaccine had three times the risk of hospitalization, as compared to children who had not received the vaccine.

Avni Joshi, M.D., of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, responded in the Science Daily article by noting, "The concerns that vaccination may be associated with asthma exacerbations have been disproved with multiple studies in the past, but the vaccine's effectiveness has not been well-established." Dr. Joshi, continued, "This study was aimed at evaluating the effectiveness of the TIV (vaccine) in children overall, as well as the children with asthma, to prevent influenza-related hospitalization." He continued by explaining that this study does not mean that the cause of the hospitalizations was the vaccine, "While these findings do raise questions about the efficacy of the vaccine, they do not in fact implicate it as a cause of hospitalizations."