Do Gangs Steal Kidneys?

by ProfKeith on January 20, 2012

It’s a persistent story: that somebody falls asleep (maybe drugged) and wakes up to find a kidney missing. It’s been grabbed by some crooks, to sell on the black market. But is there any truth in this? I found the following at TheStraightDope.com…

The facts: There are no documented cases of kidneynapping, or for that matter any killing, abduction, or mutilation for purposes of organ theft in the United States. The National Kidney Foundation, which fears this persistent myth will scare off donors, has asked victims of organ theft to step forward. So far no takers.

While I suppose it’s possible to remove somebody’s kidneys with a paper plate and an X-acto knife, as a practical matter it can’t be done. The operation customarily takes a five-person surgical team working for three or four hours in a sterile operating room. Much of the equipment required (anesthesia machines, operating tables) is bulky and not the sort of thing you could readily sneak into an apartment, hotel room, etc. The tissue and blood types of the donor and donee must be precisely matched; you can’t just grab the first mope you see in a bar. [click to continue…]

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Liver Cancer Cases Tripled

by ProfKeith on January 20, 2012

Two new studies from the Mayo Clinic find that hepatitis B and C infection and obesity could be to blame for a surge in liver cancer cases, which have tripled over the last 30 years.
If you want to keep a healthy liver, you need to keep your weight in trim. It’s vital—for this reason and all the other reasons I’ve explained. If you already have hepatitis C, you need to get it fixed. The best we have to date is reducing body load, to help your immune system, a major heavy metal detox and complex homeopathy (homotoxicology).

Injectable licorice root has also got some reasonable science, showing that it helps with hepatitis C (don’t eat the candy junk in American stores; it’s not licorice but flavored with anise). You want glycyrrhizin. But this compound may have unwanted side effects, such as raised blood pressure, lowered potassium levels, and salt and water retention when taken in large amounts. Ironically, it can be liver-toxic.

Get expert help.

I’m not talking about cancer metastases to the liver (spread from elsewhere). This is about primary hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), or liver cancer. In the later stages it has only a 10 percent to 12 percent five-year survival rate, according to figures in a Mayo news release.

The researchers examined several decades of medical information from the Rochester Epidemiology Project — a national database on inpatient and outpatient care. Although the U.S. National Cancer Institute estimates the rate of HCC is 5.1 cases per 100,000 people, the new study found a higher rate of 6.9 per 100,000. People are getting liver cancer as a result of scarring from hepatitis C after delays of 20 or even 30 years.

Patients in their 50s and 60s are being diagnosed, who didn’t even know they had had hepatitis C. If you’ve led the high risk life, you need to get checked. Don’t wait till you start to turn yellow!

A slightly higher risk factor for HCC liver cancer was found to be obesity, particularly fatty liver disease. If this is correct, we expect to see a dramatic rise in liver cancer in the coming years.

For more vital information of liver health, which everyone needs, get my book “Love Your Liver”. Read about it here:

http://www.informed-wellness.com/liver

[SOURCE: Mayo Clinic, news release, Jan. 3, 2012]

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Vaccination Does Work. Let’s Talk About Polio

by ProfKeith on January 20, 2012

Despite the continuous storm of ignorant criticisms, the vaccination principle does work. I got cholera when I went to Sri Lanka to help after the 2006 Indian Ocean tsunami. Protection only lasts 6 months but I wish I had taken a shot before I went (remember the heavy arm from that?) Pasadena was in uproar when I got back and went to hospital; they hadn’t seen a case in nearly a hundred years!

Smallpox is virtually wiped from the Earth. That’s due to vaccination, not better hygiene and better nutrition, as is conveniently claimed. There is no better hygiene or nutrition in Somalia!

Polio is 99% down from when I was a kid. Ignorant critics of vaccination (and they are usually ignorant and not medically trained) need to wise up to the stupid “anti-vaccination” attitude. It’s only the same as the homeopathic principle: a small dose of something bad can prepare the body, so it’s rapidly on the case when a real encounter comes along.

Of course some vaccines don’t work and some are toxic, due the chemical crap they put into them. But that’s a far cry from saying vaccines are bad and no-one should ever get a shot against anything. And does not justify forced vaccination in any civilized country.

Like I said, polio is all but wiped out. When I was a kid several fellows at my school had been paralyzed and were struggling around with calipers on their ankles. You just don’t see that any more. However, there is a catch to this story…

Remember me saying, over and over, “Nature will find a way”? I usually cite the movie Jurassic Park: the way the dinosaurs struggled free of the limitation of lysine deficiency, which was supposed to stop them multiplying naturally. Resistant bacteria is just another example of how life adapts.

Now this same ingenuity is rearing its head with the polio vaccine. After sixty years of successful worldwide vaccination for polio, there is almost none left “in the wild”. Now the strain we encounter is the milder “vaccination version” and it is present in a small percentage of carriers. There is also a slight risk of vaccine-associated paralytic poliomyelitis (VAPP). Consequently, the use of routine oral (live) vaccination for polio is not now practiced. An inactivate form is used instead. As a result, we are harboring a population of kids who may be susceptible to the living virus and it could start causing polio once again.

It’s a real concern and is complicated by the fact that there are three strains of polio virus, 1, 2 and 3. Most of the “take” with the vaccine is the type 2 but, unfortunately, this is the one likely to start causing disease again. To counter this, the head of polio eradication as the WHO is asking for approval to vaccinate with only 1 and 3. This will stop pouring type 2 into the environment.

But it will mean we are vulnerable to a resurgence of type 2, if that should happen.

It just goes to show, we can NEVER relax our guard. Nature is much cleverer than us!

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Cops Out Of Control Or Rotten Youth?

by ProfKeith on January 14, 2012

By the time they’re old enough to vote, roughly one in three Americans has had at least one criminal arrest. Does that mean a rotten youth here? Or is it cops that are out of control?

By age 23, an estimated 33 percent — and perhaps as many as 41 percent of young adults — have been arrested at least once, excluding traffic violations. If you are wondering: arson topped the list, followed by vandalism, disorderly conduct, robbery, burglary and car theft.

Of course, arrest does not mean guilt. Many of those arrested are not even charged. But it’s still an exceptional statistic and nowhere else comes close, not even communist China or the old Soviet Union.

Given that young adults are but lately children, pediatricians have a role in preventing violent or unsafe behaviors in young at-risk patients. It is obvious that kids don’t get arrested in isolation, but there will be other issues are going on in their lives.

The new study appears online Dec. 12 and in the January 2012 print issue of Pediatrics. The researchers used National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data from 1997 to 2008 for 7,335 young people aged 8 to 23.

Having lived here for over 8 years, I can tell you it true that the US criminal justice system is more punitive than in most countries. In the years since 1972, the proportion of jailed citizens has gone up fivefold. They are still building more and more jails. None of it is working but that doesn’t stop what is, essentially, a very cruel, stupid and revengeful society from dealing harshly with its misfits.

It’s a kind of hypocrisy, of course.

[SOURCE: January 2012, Pediatrics]

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Still Believe in Antibiotics? Ha, Better Read This

by ProfKeith on January 14, 2012


Death by Sepsis

Despite the widespread belief that antibiotics still work, even if not a good idea, almost a quarter of a million people a year die in the USA alone from widespread sepsis. The best modern antibiotics didn’t save them. That’s a LOT of people.

Worldwide, that figure rises to tens of millions of people a year, according to the Global Sepsis Alliance (GSA). That makes sepsis the likely leading cause of death today, according to Konrad Reinhart, M.D., Chairman of the GSA and director of the Department of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine, University of Jena, Germany.

The fact is, sepsis kills regardless of age, ethnicity, location and access to care. It strikes swiftly and strikes hard. Antibiotics are failing. No new ones are coming along or ever likely to.

“Developing new therapies for sepsis has been particularly challenging, with more than 25 unsuccessful drug trials,” says Jonathan S. Boomer, of the Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis.

750,000 Americans each year contract sepsis and 225,00 die. That’s almost one third.

The problem is the intense inflammatory response that has become poetically christened the ‘cytokine storm.’ Patients with sepsis may present with fever, shock, altered mental status, and organ dysfunction. It’s all due to bacteria running riot in the patient’s body. [click to continue…]

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