Scientists have created genetically modified cattle that produce “human” milk in a bid to make cows’ milk more nutritious.
Researchers say they are able to create cows that produce milk containing a human protein called lysozyme
The scientists have successfully introduced human genes into 300 dairy cows to produce milk with the same properties as human breast milk.
Human milk contains high quantities of key nutrients that can help to boost the immune system of babies and reduce the risk of infections.
The scientists behind the research believe milk from herds of genetically modified cows could provide an alternative to human breast milk and formula milk for babies, which is often criticised as being an inferior substitute.
They hope genetically modified dairy products from herds of similar cows could be sold in supermarkets. The research has the backing of a major biotechnology company.
The work is likely to inflame opposition to GM foods. Critics of the technology and animal welfare groups reacted angrily to the research, questioning the safety of milk from genetically modified animals and its effect on the cattle’s health.
But Professor Ning Li, the scientist who led the research and director of the State Key Laboratories for AgroBiotechnology at the China Agricultural University insisted that the GM milk would be as safe to drink as milk from ordinary dairy cows.
He said: “The milk tastes stronger than normal milk.
“We aim to commercialize some research in this area in coming three years. For the “human-like milk”, 10 years or maybe more time will be required to finally pour this enhanced milk into the consumer’s cup.”
China is now leading the way in research on genetically modified food and the rules on the technology are more relaxed than those in place in Europe.
The researchers used cloning technology to introduce human genes into the DNA of Holstein dairy cows before the genetically modified embryos were implanted into surrogate cows.
‘The IPCC group and the Presidents of the Maldives and Tuvalu continue to claim that the flooding is in progress, and will soon flood the islands and wipe those island nations off the surface of the globe (or rather ocean). Already here we are facing a behavior that well might be termed a “sea-level-gate.” In an open letter to the President of the Maldives (Mörner 2009), I addressed the divergence between his claim and our field observations. No reply has come.’
Exposed: this shots shows a gaping hole in the building of reactor number four. The green crane, circled, is normally used to move spent fuel rods into a 45ft deep storage pond, just out of shot. But the pool has now boiled dry and the spent rods are heating up and releasing radiation
On March 15 Michi Okugawa wrote, “The situation in Tokyo is getting worse. The number of people who are panicking is increasing with more and more people trying to get out of Tokyo or out of the country. The nuclear plant explosion is having a large effect in our daily lives. The biggest problem is transportation. Tokyo is darker now due to power saving. As I am writing this, more people have decided to evacuate from Tokyo. I am living my usual life but the surrounding is in a panic.”
The Japanese government today admitted that it is overwhelmed by unfolding events.
If millions of Japanese wondering what they need to do to get out of harm’s way are confused, there is good reason for it. The Japanese government as well as the American one and health officials around the world are themselves confused about the potential dangers to the people of the greater metropolitan Tokyo area, which is practically in the shadow of the out-of-control nuclear power station.
Imagine how they feel being so close. It’s a nuclear nightmare up there in northern Japan. Is there anyone who really wants to doubt that?
Top U.S. officials have testified before congress this week that the situation in Japan has reached catastrophic proportions on par with Chernobyl. Both the Secretary of Energy Steven Chu and Gregory B. Jaczko, the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave dire testimony before the House Energy and Commerce committee. This is not the same story being told in Tokyo, at least not yet. But Japan’s nuclear agency spokesman conceded that a “Chernobyl solution” of burying the reactors in sand and concrete was in the back of the authorities’ minds. A day later it is moving to the very front of their minds.
American officials in Japan continue to operate on the assumption that the danger level is higher than described by the Japanese and in this essay we continue to assume the dangers are stratospherically higher than even the American officials are admitting. At this point both the primary and secondary containment vessels at the Fukushima nuclear reactor #4 are breached. To make matters worse, radiation readings taken by the U.S. indicate that the cooling pond is empty, indicating the fuel rods are in a state of complete meltdown with no cooling to counteract the meltdown in progress. These events spell out NUCLEAR NIGHTMARE and there will be many deaths in this bad dream.
The U.S. has issued a 50-mile evacuation zone around the plant and even that might be too conservative of a radius as things get further out of hand. This is in contrast to Japanese directives that people within about 12 miles evacuate while those between 12 and 19 miles stay indoors. Yet there are strong indications that fuel rods have begun to melt and release extremely high levels of radiation, suggesting they should really start considering evacuating Tokyo.
“One can put out forest fires like this – by pouring water from far above,” said Gennady Pshakin, a Russian nuclear expert. “It is not clear where this water is falling. There is no control.”
Japanese authorities are considering a “Chernobyl solution” for the stricken nuclear power plant at Fukushima that would bury it in concrete and sand.
Aerial picture of Chernobyl nuclear power plant taken two or three days after the 1986 explosion Photo: AP
As the team of 300 workers continues to try to douse the reactors with water, engineers said they had not ruled out the drastic measure.
But the “messy fix” would be considered only as a last-ditch attempt as it would leave the plant and its surroundings off limits for decades.
“It is not impossible to encase the reactors in concrete, but our priority right now is to try to cool them down first,” a spokesman for Tokyo Electric Power, the plant’s owners, said.
At Chernobyl, authorities literally “threw everything” at the reactor to try to cool it down, including lead, boric acid and liquid nitrogen.
When they finally extinguished the fires, an army of workers conscripted by the then Soviet government buried the reactor in thousands of tons of sand, then threw together a concrete container known as the “sarcophagus”.
Despite costing hundreds of millions of pounds, the “sarcophagus” is already falling apart – and fears are growing that it is leaking radiation again.
Now they want to spend a further £600 million building an even bigger containment building, to put a lasting lid on the leak.
The situation at the Fukushima plant is likely to be even more complex and expensive because it involves not just one reactor but six.
Recently, the world was subjected to the worst kind of manipulative propganda: that emanating from a so-called scientist who used his tenuous affiliation with MIT to lend his ideas credibility and spread outright disinformation and propagate a false sense of calm, which may have well cost people their lives as it came just days ahead of the biggest explosions seen at Fukushima last week.
Today we present what an actual objective, scientific analysis of the risks and pitfalls at Fukushima should look like, courtesy of Ben Monreal of the USCB department of physics. Is this is a comprehensive overview of all that could go wrong (and right)?
Of course not- after all the Japanese government still refuses to release actual actionable information (the world should be demanding thermal imagery from Fukushima, but oddly isn’t). But under the existing conditions, this is probably one of the better reports we have read on the matter.
Understanding the radioactivity at Fukushima (pdf)
As Robert Alvarez, a former nuclear energy adviser to President Bill Clinton, has written, if these waste containers, euphemistically called “ponds,” were to be damaged in an explosion and lose their cooling and radiation-shielding water, they could burst into flame from the resulting burning of the highly flammable zirconium cladding of the fuel rods, blasting perhaps three to nine times as much of these materials into the air as was released by the Chernobyl reactor disaster. (And that’s if just one reactor blows!)
Each pool, Alvarez says, generally contains five to ten times as much nuclear material as the reactors themselves. Alvarez cites a 1997 Nuclear Regulatory Commission study that predicted that a waste pool fire could render a 188-square-mile area “uninhabitable” and do $59 billion worth of damage (but that was 13 years ago).
You are still not told the truth people.
U.S. Calls Radiation ‘Extremely High’ and Urges Deeper Caution in Japan
WASHINGTON — The chairman of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave a significantly bleaker appraisal of the threat posed by Japan’s nuclear crisis than the Japanese government, saying on Wednesday that the damage at one crippled reactor was much more serious than Japanese officials had acknowledged and advising to Americans to evacuate a wider area around the plant than the perimeter established by Japan.
…..
Gregory Jaczko, the chairman of the commission, said in Congressional testimony that the commission believed that all the water in the spent fuel pool at the No. 4 reactor of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station had boiled dry, leaving fuel rods stored there exposed and bleeding radiation. As a result, he said, “We believe that radiation levels are extremely high, which could possibly impact the ability to take corrective measures.”
If his analysis is accurate and Japanese workers have been unable to keep the spent fuel at that inoperative reactor properly cooled — it needs to remain covered with water at all times — radiation levels could make it difficult not only to fix the problem at reactor No. 4, but to keep workers at the Daiichi complex from servicing any of the other problem reactors at the plant.
Destroyed: Damage after the earthquake and tsunami at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo, is seen in this satellite image taken 9:35 am local time (0035 GMT)
Workers battling nuclear meltdown evacuated for hours today after radiation levels increased
French minister: ‘Let’s not beat about the bush, they’ve essentially lost control’
Radioactive steam spews into atmosphere from reactor number three
Crisis is ‘approaching point of no return’
Officials commandeer police water cannon to spray complex
Attempts to dump water on reactors by helicopter fail
Two more previously stable reactors begin to heat up
The rich scramble to book private jets out the country as fleeing passengers pack Tokyo airport
Japanese emergency teams say they are ‘not afraid to die’ as they face dangerous levels of radiation in the fight to stop catastrophe at the tsunami-hit Fukushima nuclear plant.
The stricken power station was abandoned for hours today, as soaring radiation forced the emergency workers to flee for their lives and authorities were reduced to spraying reactors with police water cannons.
But 180 workers this afternoon bravely headed back towards the plant to pump water on to the over-heating reactors. Some experts speculated that they were on a ‘suicide mission’.
The group of 180 employees rotate shifts working at the plant in teams of 50 men. The men – nicknamed the ‘Fukushima Fifty’ – had this morning been pulled back 500 yards from the complex as radiation levels became too dangerous.
However the technicians later headed back in to the reactors for difficult and dangerous work, wearing radiation suits and gas masks or oxygen tanks that provide little protection from the invisible radiation rays bombarding their bodies.
It came after the French government launched an extraordinary attack accusing the Japanese of losing control of the situation and hiding the full scale of the disaster.
Military helicopters also made a failed attempt to drop water on the reactors from above and police water cannons, usually used in riot control, were even requested to spray the site amid desperate efforts to cool nuclear fuel. The helicopter missions are said to have failed because radiation levels put the crews in danger.
Tokyo, March 16 (Jiji Press)–Radiation levels about 6,600 times normal were detected on Tuesday at a place 20 kilometers away from a nuclear power plant at the center of Japan’s nuclear crisis, the science ministry said Wednesday.
Radiation levels reached 195 to 330 microsieverts per hour in the Fukushima Prefecture town of Namie in radiation monitoring activities for about 10 minutes from 8:40 p.m. Tuesday (11:40 a.m. GMT), the ministry said.
The town is about 20 kilometers away from the earthquake-hit Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant of Tokyo Electric Power Co. <9501>, the ministry said.
On Tuesday, the government advised residents within 30 kilometers from the nuclear plant to stay indoors.
The ministry reported the results of its radiation monitoring activities to the government’s disaster management task force.
Tel Aviv – An Israeli nuclear expert has accused Japan of downplaying the danger of a nuclear calamity in the region of its quake-stricken Fukushima Daiichi plant.
‘If there is fallout of plutonium oxide, a most toxic substance that they use in the reactor that exploded, no one will be able to set foot on the site for thousands of years,’ said Uzi Even, one of Israel’s most prominent nuclear scientists, who worked at the country’s Dimona reactor in the southern Negev desert.
‘The Japanese aren’t telling the truth because of shame,’ he told the Ma’ariv daily.
The Israeli chemistry professor believed the Japanese government was hiding facts.
Japan officials told the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that ‘radioactivity is being released directly into the atmosphere’ after a fire broke out in a storage pond for spent fuel at nuclear reactor damaged by Friday’s earthquake and tsunami.
Japanese officials are now ordering 140,000 people living near nuclear power plants damaged by Friday’s 9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami to stay indoors and seal their doors and windows.
(CNN) — The explosion Tuesday at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has elevated the situation there to a “serious accident” on a level just below Chernobyl, a French nuclear official said, referring to an international scale that rates the severity of such incidents.
The International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale — or INES — goes from Level 1, which indicates very little danger to the general population, to Level 7, a “major accident” in which there’s been a large release of radioactive material and there will be widespread health and environmental effects.
“It’s clear we are at Level 6, that’s to say we’re at a level in between what happened at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl,” Andre-Claude Lacoste, president of France’s nuclear safety authority, told reporters Tuesday.
* Radiation leaking directly into the air from stricken Fukushima nuclear plant
* Power station has now suffered three reactor explosions and one fire
* One reactor core ‘exposed to the atmosphere’ through crack in containment wall
* Radiation levels up to ten times higher than normal in Tokyo
* Mass exodus as thousands residents flee towns close to reactor
* Experts warn of cancer risk
* Japan seeks help from U.S. to spray water on over-heating reactors from helicopters
Scores of terrified residents began to flee Tokyo today as a nuclear power plant destroyed by the tsunami threatened to send a cloud of radioactive dust across Japan.
The Fukushima Dai-ichi plant suffered a third reactor explosion last night, another reactor on the site caught fire – and officials today announced the wall of one reactor was cracked.
Radiation levels have soared acoss the country as radioactive material spewed directly into the atmosphere while emergency crews fought to avoid a catastrophic meltdown.
Levels of radiation were ten times higher than normal in the capital today, as experts warned that people in Japan could face an increased cancer risk even if the crisis does not deteriorate.
California ‘monitoring situation closely’ amid dramatic escalation of disaster
Japan’s nuclear crisis now appears worse than the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979 – but not yet as bad as Chernobyl in 1986
Japan PM tells people within 19 miles of plant to stay indoors as radiation reaches levels that could impact human heath
Radioactive wind could reach Tokyo within hours – and radiation levels are already rising in city
Nuclear Regulatory Commission admits it is ‘quite possible’ radiation could reach the U.S.
‘Worst-case scenario’ could see 30,000ft winds sending nuclear cloud across Pacific – possibly hitting by Tuesday night
Fears that America could be hit by the nuclear fallout from the Japan earthquake have dramatically increased as workers prepared to abandon a reactor crippled by the earthquake and tsunami last night in the face of what is set to become the world’s second worst nuclear disaster – topped only by Chernobyl.
Damage at the number two reactor at the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power complex is worse than thought, the Japanese government admitted tonight, sparking fears for human health both in Japan and the U.S.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has admitted it is ‘quite possible’ the fallout could reach America.
IAEA says main vessel of atom plant may be damaged; French Nuclear Authority says crises ranks 6 out of 7 on INES scale of nuclear accidents.
WASHINGTON – The US Navy on Tuesday recommended personnel and families stationed at two bases in Japan take precautions after detecting low-levels of radioactivity, including limiting outdoor activities.
“These measures are strictly precautionary in nature. We do not expect that any United States federal radiation exposure limits will be exceeded even if no precautionary measures are taken,” the Seventh Fleet said in a statement.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said the explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi unit 2 “may have affected the integrity of its primary containment vessel.”
The IAEA said primary containment vessels of units 1 and 3 appeared intact despite explosions there. It said units at the Fukushima Daini, Onagawa, and Tokai nuclear power plants were in a safe and stable condition.
On a scale of one to seven, Japan’s current nuclear crisis in Fukushima is equivalent to a number six on the INES’s scale of nuclear accidents the French Nuclear Safety Authority said. In comparison, the 1986 Chernobyl disaster was a seven.
As the danger rating at the plant was upgraded from five to six out of seven, Europe’s energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger said: “There is talk of an apocalypse and I think the word is particularly well chosen.
“Practically everything is out of control. I cannot exclude the worst in the hours and days to come.”
Japan’s Prime Minister Naoto Kan admitted perilous levels of radiation were leaking from the power station.
At one point it soared to 400 times the annual legal limit.
Mr Kan said on TV: “Radiation has spread from the reactors and the reading seems high. There is a very high risk of further radioactive material coming out.
High temperatures inside the building that houses the plant’s No. 4 reactor may have caused fuel rods sitting in a pool to ignite or explode, the plant’s owner said.
If any of the spent fuel rods in the pools do indeed catch fire, nuclear experts say, the high heat would loft the radiation in clouds that would spread the radioactivity. “It’s worse than a meltdown,” said David A Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “The reactor is inside thick walls, and the spent fuel of Reactors 1 and 3 is out in the open.”
THURSDAY, March 10 (HealthDay News) — Women who have at least one cup of coffee — or even five cups — daily may be reducing their risk of stroke by as much as 25 percent, new Swedish research shows.
And women who don’t drink coffee at all may actually be increasing their risk for stroke, the researchers noted.
However, the researchers added, these findings are preliminary and should not cause any change in coffee-drinking habits.
“Results from our study in women showed that consumption of 1 to 5 cups of coffee per day was associated with a 22 to 25 percent lower risk of stroke, compared with consumption of less than 1 cup a day,” said lead researchers Susanna Larsson, from the National Institute of Environmental Medicine at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.
“Even small amounts of coffee may reduce the risk of stroke,” she added.
Remember how all the conspiracy nuts claimed the chemicals BP was dumping in the water might actually evaporate into the air and then rain down on the Gulf States, poisoning land, water, and of course, people?
And remember how the government officials said, “No, no, no! That could NEVER happen. Not to worry! … But we’re not going to let scientists look at the data we’ve collected…”
Breakfast cereal manufacturers are to stop using recycled cardboard in packaging after a study indicated that current boxes could pose a cancer risk.
Jordans – whose brands include Country Crisp and Crunchy Oats – has already stopped using recycled cardboard, while Kellogg’s and Weetabix say they are taking steps to reduce the risk to human health.
The alert was sparked when researchers in Switzerland found that mineral oils in printing ink from recycled newspapers used in cardboard can get into foods – even passing through protective inner plastic bags.
Brands of pasta and rice which are packaged in recycled cardboard could also pose a risk.
Dr Koni Grob, of the Food Safety Laboratory in Zurich, said toxicologists had linked the oils to inflammation of internal organs and even cancer, though he stressed that individual meals would contain only a tiny dose of the chemicals.
The BBC reported that cereal firm Jordans has stopped using recycled cardboard while other manufacturers are reducing levels of mineral oils in packaging.
The Swiss researchers analysed a total of 119 products bought from German supermarkets last year and found that a large majority contained traces of mineral oils higher than the agreed level. Only those with thicker and more expensive inner lining bags appeared to escape contamination, which increased the longer products were on the shelves.
”Roughly 30 products from 119 were free of mineral oils, nearly all because of an inner barrier,” said Dr Grob. ”For the others, they all exceeded the limits and most exceeded it by 10 times.
”We calculated that before the end of their shelf life, they would probably exceed the limit 50 times on average and many would exceed it by several hundred times.”
Studies on rats have highlighted the dangers to health of mineral oils, said Dr Grob, adding: ”Toxicologists talk about two effects. One is the chronic inflammation of various internal organs and the other one is cancer.”
(NaturalNews) The late, famed herbalist Dr. John Christopher was nicknamed “Dr. Cayenne” because he was constantly recommending the healing powers of cayenne, the substance found in chili peppers that produces a sensation of heat. He especially advocated using it for cardiovascular health and even made the claim that doses of cayenne could stop heart attacks in progress (http://www.naturalnews.com/026869_c…). Now science has come up with proof cayenne does have a remarkable ability to help the heart. University of Cincinnati (UC) scientists have found that capsaicin, the main component of cayenne, may literally stop a heart attack in its tracks when applied topically.
New research just published in the journal Circulation concludes that a common, over-the-counter pain salve containing capsaicin rubbed on the skin during a heart attack could serve as a cardiac-protectant — reducing or even preventing damage to the heart. The researchers found an amazing 85 percent reduction in cardiac cell death when capsaicin was used. This is the most powerful cardioprotective effect ever recorded, according to Keith Jones, PhD, a researcher in the UC department of pharmacology and cell biophysics.
Dr. Jones and his research team applied capsaicin to specific skin locations in mice that caused reactions in the nervous system. Specifically, sensory nerves in the skin were triggered to activate what the scientists call cellular “pro-survival” pathways in the heart. The result? The heart muscle was protected from injury.
The researchers also found that a tiny incision made in the abdomen of the lab rodents triggered an 81 percent reduction in the death of heart cells. “Both this and the capsaicin effect are shown to work through similar neurological mechanisms,” Dr. Jones explained. “This is a form of remote cardioprotection, using a skin stimulus that activates cardioprotection long before the blocked coronary artery is opened.”
(NaturalNews) The reign of censorship and suppression against vitamin D is now coming to an end. Even though the Institute of Medicine (IOM) and many institutions leading the cancer industry (including the ACS) have intentionally tried to downplay the ability of vitamin D to prevent cancer, a new study appearing in the journal Anticancer Research lays out the simple, powerful truth about vitamin D that we’ve been teaching at NaturalNews for years: A typical adults needs 4,000 – 8,000 IUs of vitamin D each day to prevent cancer, MS and type-1 diabetes, not the ridiculously low 400 – 800 IUs recommended by the U.S. government.
The new research was conducted by scientists at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Creighton University School of Medicine in Omaha. It is groundbreaking research because it establishes the relationship between vitamin D dosage and circulating vitamin D levels in the blood.
This is a first. It is crucial information for the health care revolution that will be necessary to save states and nations from total health care bankruptcy in the coming years. Vitamin D turns out to be one of the simplest, safest and most affordable ways to prevent degenerative disease and sharply reduce long-term health care costs.
Up to 8,000 IUs needed daily
“We found that daily intakes of vitamin D by adults in the range of 4,000 to 8,000 IU [international units] are needed to maintain blood levels of vitamin D metabolites in the range needed to reduce by about half the risk of several diseases — breast cancer, colon cancer, multiple sclerosis and type 1 diabetes,” said Dr. Cedric Garland. (http://health.ucsd.edu/news/2011/02…)
Dr. Garland is the professor of family and preventive medicine at the UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center. He went on to say:
“I was surprised to find that the intakes required to maintain vitamin D status for disease prevention were so high — much higher than the minimal intake of vitamin D of 400 IU/day that was needed to defeat rickets in the 20th century.”
Breakthrough? Scientists said they can produce a fuel that runs jet engines using the same ingredients that make grass grow – sunlight, water and carbon dioxide
Scientists have genetically engineered an organism that secretes diesel fuel wherever there is sunlight, water and carbon dioxide.
Biotechnology company Joule Unlimited claims it can produce diesel fuel and ethanol on demand at unprecedented rates.
Researchers at the firm, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said they can produce the fuel that runs jet engines using the same ingredients that make grass grow.
They also claim to be able to make it in facilities both large and small and at costs comparable to the cheapest fossil fuels.
Joule’s website describes the breakthrough as ‘energy independence’, although many remain sceptical.
Chief executive Bill Sims said: ‘We make some lofty claims, all of which we believe, all which we’ve validated, all of which we’ve shown to investors.
‘If we’re half-right, this revolutionises the world’s largest industry, which is the oil and gas industry.
‘And if we’re right, there’s no reason why this technology can’t change the world.’
According to U.S. computer models a regional, limited nuclear war could set-off “unprecedented” worldwide cooling. Rainfall too might be affected.
This is the latest climate theory that owes much to the original promoter of nuclear winter, Dr. Carl Sagan. The pop-culture astronomer and astrophysicist who popularized the idea of a nuclear war thrusting the Earth into an extended Ice Age, also created the message plaques for the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft that went interstellar and left the solar system.
Sagan’s concern focused on an all-out thermonuclear exchange between the USA and the USSR. Such destruction, he argued, could cause huge fires that would produce such great clouds of smoke and ash that sunlight would be blocked for weeks or months.
Sagan predicted that in such a bleak scenario, most humans would die from radiation poisoning, disease and starvation.
Although some believe that can no longer happen, they fail to consider that most of the Russian Federation’s formidable nuclear arsenal is still targeted on American cities—and so are Chinese missiles.
Nevertheless, most Western military analysts believe that if any nuclear exchange is likely to occur it will erupt from a regional conflict such as the developing nuclear countries of Pakistan and India.
Nuclear winter versus global warming
Some scientists theorized that such a limited nuclear exchange might be sufficient to initiate enough climate cooling to reverse the effects of global warming, so NASA decided to test the probability of such an occurrence by creating a simulation using computer modeling.
NASA scientists worked with other institutions and created a hypothetical war between two countries lobbing the total equivalent of one hundred Hiroshima-type bombs. The resulting mega-tonnage of explosive was calculated at a mere three-hundredths of the estimated world nuclear arsenal.
(Maybe we should ask those brilliant scientists if we can nuke NASA first to save the planet?)
Discovering how a rare cancer heals itself could lead to new treatments for other types of the disease, claim scientists.
Researchers believe they have found a key gene involved in Ferguson-Smith disease, otherwise known as multiple self-healing squamous epithelioma (MSSE), a skin cancer that grows rapidly but then a few weeks later, inexplicably, heals itself.
They believe that by finding out how the faults in the gene TGFBR1 cause the cancer and then subsequently heal it could give valuable insights into beating other types of tumour.
Scientists, Led by Karolinska Institute’s Olle Johansson, PhD, Recommend Global Governments Adopt New Exposure Guidelines for Electromagnetic Radiation—Pointing to Biological Hazards and Risks to the Genetic Code from Unchecked Proliferation of Wireless Technologies
February 3, 2011. The scientific journal Reviews on Environmental Health has published a report by international scientists calling for greatly reduced exposure limits for electromagnetic radiation from power line and telecommunications technologies, including cell phones and wireless technologies. The statement, called The Seletun Scientific Statement, was written by seven scientists in five countries, based on a large and growing body of science showing biological effects. They saygovernments should take decisive action now to protect biological function as well as the health of future generations.
The Seletun Scientific Statement represents a Consensus Agreement among the scientists including “10 Key Recommendations to Protect Public Health” (see Video of Olle Johansson, PhD of Karolinska Institute, below.) The warnings strongly emphasize the global population is at risk, and that there is serious disruption to biological systems now occurring.
International Scientists Recommend Global Governments Adopt New Exposure Guidelines for Electromagnetic Radiation, Pointing to Biological Hazards and Risks to the Genetic Code from Unchecked Proliferation of Wireless Technologies
Health Effects Occur at Exposure Levels Many Orders of Magnitude Below Existing Public Safety Standards Around the World, Scientists Say
In November 2009, a Scientific Panel comprised of international experts on the biological effects of electromagnetic fields met in Seletun, Norway, for three days of intensive discussion on existing scientific evidence and public health implications of the unprecedented global exposures to artificial electromagnetic fields (EMF) from telecommunications and electric power technologies. This meeting was a direct consequence of on-going discussions already from the mid-90ties, when cellular infrastructure began to rapidly proliferate, and stretching through, among many, the Benevento, Venice and London Resolutions from this decade, and involving important conclusions drawn from the 600-page Bioinitiative Report published August 31, 2007, which was a review of over 2,000 studies showing biological effects from electromagnetic radiation at non-thermal levels of exposure, which partly was published subsequently in the journal Pathophysiology.
From all of the above, it has become obvious that new, biologically-based public exposure standards, taking into account long-term as well as non-thermal exposures, are urgently needed to protect public health world-wide.
Therefore international scientists gathered in Norway with the objective of developing guidance for global governments on this important emerging public health issue. The Seletun Scientific Panel today announces a Consensus Agreement including 10 Key Recommendations to Protect Public Health. The text below is based on the recent paper published in Reviews on Environmental Health 25 (4), 2010. The original paper can be requested via Olle Johansson, Karolinska Institute, [email protected].
Background
EMF exposures (static to 300 GHz) result from the use of electric power and from wireless telecommunications technologies for voice and data transmission, energy, security, military and radar use in weather and transportation.
The Seletun Scientific Panel recognizes that the body of evidence on EMF requires a new approach to protection of public health; the growth and development of the fetus, and of children; and argues for strong preventative actions. These conclusions are built upon prior scientific and public health reports documenting the following:
1) Low-intensity (non-thermal) bioeffects and adverse health effects are demonstrated at levels significantly below existing exposure standards for telecommunications and power utility technologies in developed and developing countries.
2) ICNIRP and IEEE/FCC public safety limits are inadequate and obsolete with respect to prolonged, low-intensity exposures common today.
3) New, biologically-based public exposure standards are urgently needed to protect public health world-wide.
4) It is not in the public interest to wait. Instead, governments should take decisive action now to protect biological function as well as the health of future generations.
Strong concern has been voiced by the public, and by scientists as well as public health and environmental policy experts, that the deployment of technologies that expose billions of people world-wide to new sources of EMF pose a pervasive risk to public health, and may pose a serious risk to future generations. Such exposures did not exist before the “age of industry and information”. A rapidly accumulating body of scientific evidence of harm to health and well-being constitute warnings that adverse health effects can occur with short-term and prolonged exposures to very low-intensity EMF at biologically active frequencies or frequency combinations.
The Seletun Scientific Panel has adopted a Consensus Agreement that recommends preventative and precautionary actions that are warranted now, given the existing evidence for potential global health risks. We recognize the duty of governments and their health agencies 1) to educate and warn the public, 2) to implement measures balanced in favor of the Precautionary Principle, 3) to monitor compliance with directives promoting alternatives to wireless, and 4) to fund research and policy development geared toward prevention of exposures and development of new public safety measures as well as new, safer communications technologies.
10 Key Points:
1. The Global Population Is At Risk. Global populations are not sufficiently protected from electromagnetic fields (EMF) from emerging communication and data transmission technologies that are being deployed worldwide, affecting billions of people;
2. Sensitive Populations Are Currently Vulnerable. Sensitive populations (for example, the elderly, the ill, the genetically and/or immunologically challenged) and children and fetuses may be additionally vulnerable to health risks; their exposures are largely involuntary and they are less protected by existing public safety standards; and they may amount to 40-50% of the population;
3. Government Actions Are Warranted Now Based on Evidence of Serious Disruption to Biological Systems. The Seletun Scientific Panel urges governments to adopt an explicit statement that “the standard for judging and acting on the scientific evidence shall be based on prudent public health planning principles rather than scientific certainty of effect (causal evidence)”. Actions are warranted based on limited, or weak, scientific evidence, or a sufficiency of evidence – rather than a conclusive scientific evidence (causation or scientific certainty) where the consequence of doing nothing in the short term may cause irreparable public health and economic harm, where the populations potentially at risk are very large, where there are alternatives without similar risks, or where the exposures are largely involuntary;
4. The Burden of Proof for the Safety of Radiation-Emitting Technologies Should Fall on Producers and Providers Not Consumers. The Seletun Scientific Panel urges governments to make explicit that the burden of proof of safety rests with the producers and providers of EMF- producing technologies, not with the users and consumers.
5. EMF Exposures Should Be Reduced in Advance of Complete Understanding of Mechanisms of Action. EMF exposures should be reduced now rather than waiting for proof or understanding of mechanisms of harm before acting. This recommendation is in keeping with traditional public health principles, and is justified now given abundant evidence that biological effects and adverse health effects are occurring at exposure levels many orders of magnitude below existing public safety standards around the world;
6. The Current Accepted Measure of Radiation Risk—the Specific Absorption Rate (‘SAR’)—Is Inadequate, and Misguides on Safety and Risk. SAR is not an adequate approach to predict many important biologic effects in studies that report increased risks for cancer, neurological diseases, impairments to immune function, fertility and reproduction, and neurological function (cognition, behaviour, performance, mood status, disruption of sleep, increased risk for auto collisions, etc);
7. An International Disease Registry Is Needed To Track Time Trends of Illnesses to Correlate Illnesses with Exposures.The Seletun Scientific Panel recommends an international registry be established to track time-trends in incidence and mortality for cancers and neurological and immune diseases. Tracking effects of EMF on children and sensitive EHS populations is a high priority. There should be open access to this information;
8. Pre-Market Health Testing and Safety Demonstration of All Radiation-Emitting Technologies. There is a need for mandatory pre-market assessments of emissions and risks before deployment of new wireless technologies. There should be convincing evidence that products do not cause health harm before marketing;
9. Parity Needed for Occupational Exposure Standards. The Panel discourages use of more lenient public safety standards for workers, as compared to the general public. Separate safety limits are not ethically acceptable. Workers include women of childbearing age and men who wish to retain their fertility;
10. Functional Impairment Designation for Persons with Electrohypersensitivity. The Panel strongly recommends that persons with electrohypersensitivity symptoms (EHS) be classified as functionally impaired rather than with ‘idiopathic environmental disease’ or similar indistinct categories. This terminology accepts responsibility for the environmental cause of the related health challenges and will encourage governments to make adjustments in the living environment to better address social and well-being needs of this subpopulation of highly sensitive members of society.
New Recommended Exposure Standards
The Seletun Scientific Panel recommends global governments adopt the following exposure guidelines to protect public health and the health of future generations
Extremely Low Frequency Fields:
Exposure Limit Recommended. Based on the available evidence, the Seletun Scientific Panel recommends a 0.1 uT (1 mG) exposure limit for extremely low frequency (fields from electrical power) for all new installations, such as powerlines, indoor electric appliances, house-hold items, TVs, radios, computers, and telecommunication devices, based on findings of risk for leukemia, brain tumours, Alzheimer’s, ALS, sperm damage and DNA strand breaks. This exposure limit does not include a safety margin, but starts right at the level where hazardous effects are found. The new recommendation is approx. 1,000 – 10,000 times lower than the current ICNIRP/IEEE standards;
Set-Back Distance. For all newly installed, or newly upgraded electrical power distribution, the Panel recommends a 0.1 uT (1 mG) set-back distance, from residences, hospitals, schools, parks, and playgrounds schools (and similar locations occupied by children) ; this set-back distance easily can amount to 50 meters or more;
Maximum 24-Hour Exposure Limit. For all newly constructed residences, offices, schools (and other facilities with children), and hospitals there shall be a 0.1 uT (1 mG) max. 24 hour average exposure limit;
Radiofrequency and Microwave Radiation:
Regarding radiofrequency/microwave radiation, the present guidelines, such as IEEE, FCC, and ICNIRP, are not adequate to protect humans from harmful effects of chronic EMF exposure. It is now instead recommended that:
• For whole-body (in vivo experiments) or cell culture-based exposure, 33 µW//kg. It is approx. 2,400 times lower than the current ICNIRP/FCC standards. No further safety margin or provision for sensitive populations, such as immune-compromised patients or persons with the functional impairment electrohypersensitivity, is incorporated. This may need to be lowered in the future.
• Based on power density measurements, the Seletun Scientific Panel finds sufficient evidence for a whole-body scientific benchmark for adverse health effect exists down to 0.17 mW/m2 (also 0.000017 mW/cm2 = 0.017 µW/cm2). It is approx. 50,000 – 60,000 times lower than the current ICNIRP/FCC standards.This may need to be lowered in the future.
• The Scientific Panel acknowledges that numeric limits derived here for new biologically-based public exposure standards are still a billion times higher than natural EMF levels at which all life evolved. It is a serious mistake to believe that we have always lived in man-made electromagnetic fields, such as from electrical power, radio, TV, computers, and wireless telecommunication, and therefore should not worry. It was not long ago when people thought that X-rays, radioactivity, strong ultraviolet light and radar were completely without harm. Nowadays we know much better!
“Science is about protecting free and open inquiry. It’s about ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology. It’s about listening to what scientists have to say, even when it’s inconvenient – especially when it is inconvenient!”
– Barack Obama
President of the United States
____________________
The Seletun Scientific Panel is comprised of 7 scientists from 5 countries, including Olle Johansson, PhD, Karolinska Institute, Chair, Adamantia Fragopoulou, Yuri Grigoriev, Lukas Margaritas, Lloyd Morgan, Elihu Richter, and Cindy Sage.
Quotes from Members of the Seletun Scientific Panel:
“Personally, I am very concerned for grave consequences that may ensue if exposure guidelines are not changed by global governments. I therefore urge them to immediately strongly reduce the guidelines for exposure to radiofrequency radiation (RF) and extremely low-frequency electromagnetic1 fields (ELF-EMF) for the reasons given above. It is high time to ask ourselves: What happens when we, 24-hours around the clock, wherever we are, allow ourselves and our children to be used as guinea-pigs, whole-body-irradiated for the rest of our lives?” In not doing so our politicians and health administrators may put us all at stake, since this is the largest human full-scale experiment ever!”
“Current US and ICNIRP standards for radiofrequency and microwave radiation from wireless technologies are entirely inadequate. They never were intended to address the kind of exposures from wireless devices that now affect over 4 billion people.”
Olle Johansson, PhD
Department of Neuroscience
Karolinska Institute
***
“Pregnant women and children of all ages should avoid using cell and cordless phones given the health effects we are seeing already.”
Professor Yuri Grigoriev
Chairman, Russian National Committee on Non-Ionizing
Radiation Protection, a member of WHO’s International Advisory
Committee on “EMF and Health”
***
“WI-FI routers, DECT phones and other wireless devices like baby monitors produce radio frequency emissions that will affect millions of people and babies in their homes, and should be halted until other, less harmful options are investigated.”
Professor Lukas Margaritas
Director, Department of Cell Biology and Biophysics
University of Athens
***
“New, biologically-based exposure limits are crucial to guide new technology development toward solutions that are not harmful to health. The global rollout of wireless technologies has outpaced both health studies and calls for more restrictive public safety limits.”
Cindy Sage
Co-Editor, Bioinitiative Report
***
“We are already seeing increases in health problems such as cancer and neurobehavioural impairments, even though these wireless technologies are fairly new in the last decades or so for the general public. This finding suggests that the exposures are already too high to protect people from health harm. Evidence suggests there are special risks for persons with occupational exposures to RF/MW as well as ELF.”
Elihu Richter MD MPH
Associate Professor (Retired)
Occupational and Environmental Medicine
Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Public Health and Community Medicine
Jerusalem ISRAEL
See video footage from The Commonwealth Club of California’s half-day program Nov. 18, 2010 on the health effects of electromagnetic fields, featuring Martin Blank, PhD, Columbia University, Star Childs, Adjunct Faculty of Yale University, Magda Havas, PhD, Trent University, Joel Moskowitz, PhD, University of California at Berkeley, Lloyd Morgan, BSc., Environmental Health Trust, Samuel Milham, MD, ret. Washington State Dept. of Public Health and David Carpenter, Director, the Institute for Health and the Environment, University of Albany School of Public Health.
Cancer breakthrough: Researchers have developed a smartphone-based system that is up to 100 per cent accurate at telling the difference between benign tumours and their malignant counterparts
A mobile phone that spots cancer – and is more accurate than the techniques routinely used in hospitals – has been developed by scientists.
The smartphone-based system is up to 100 per cent accurate at telling the difference between benign tumours and their malignant counterparts.
It also takes just an hour to make the diagnosis, meaning patients don’t have to spend days or weeks anxiously waiting for test results.
The U.S. researchers said the gadget could ‘transform cancer care’ by also making it easier for doctors to track how well drugs are fighting the disease in a patient’s body.
In initial tests, it was 88 per cent accurate in distinguishing cancerous stomach tumours from benign growths.
Refining the technique boosted accuracy to 100 per cent, the journal Science Translational Medicine reports.
This compares with an average accurate of 84 per cent for the gold standard technique which involves using chemicals that stain cancerous cells and show up under a microscope.
Companies that genetically engineer crops have a lock on what we know about their safety and benefits.
Trust us!!!
Soybeans, corn, cotton and canola — most of the acres planted in these crops in the United States are genetically altered. “Transgenic” seeds reduce the use of some insecticides. But herbicide use is higher, and respected experts argue that some genetically engineered crops may also pose serious health and environmental risks. The benefits of genetically engineered crops may be overstated.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Thursday, February 17, 2011 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 19 Editorial Desk 1 inches; 32 words Type of Material: Correction
Seeds: In a Feb. 13 Op-Ed about seed-company barriers to independent research on genetically modified crops, the owner of the seed company Pioneer was incorrectly identified as Dow Chemical. DuPont owns Pioneer.
We don’t have the complete picture. That’s no accident. Multibillion-dollar agricultural corporations, including Monsanto and Syngenta, have restricted independent research on their genetically engineered crops. They have often refused to provide independent scientists with seeds, or they’ve set restrictive conditions that severely limit research options.
This is legal. Under U.S. law, genetically engineered crops are patentable inventions. Companies have broad power over the use of any patented product, including who can study it and how.
Agricultural companies defend their stonewalling by saying that unrestricted research could make them vulnerable to lawsuits if an experiment somehow leads to harm, or that it could give competitors unfair insight into their products. But it’s likely that the companies fear something else as well: An experiment could reveal that a genetically engineered product is hazardous or doesn’t perform as promised.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish.AcceptRejectRead More https://infiniteunknown.net/dsgvo/
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
