HOUR ONE: VISION CARE - CATARACTS - MACULAR DEGENERATION - GLAUCOMA - OPTIC NEURITIS

VISION AND EYE CARE - SUPPORT NUTRACEUTICALS PROTOCOL

HOUR ONE: CONNIE FOGAL - CANADIAN ACTION PARTY LEADER - QUEBEC TREASON - SPP SECURITY PROSPERITY PARTNERSHIP

CANADIAN ACTION PARTY AGAINST NAU NORTH AMERICAN UNION AND TREASONOUS SPP SECURITY AND PROSPERITY PARTNERSHIP

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HOLUR TWO: ALAN WATT - CUTTING THROUGH THE MATRIX - NORTH AMERICAN UNION - TREASON NEAR COMPLETION IN MONTEBELLO, QUEBEC, CANADA

CUTTING THROUGH THE MATRIX - ALAN WATT -- READ AND PURCHASE THIS MATERIAL ASAP

NAU NORTH AMERICAN UNION - QUEBEC, CANADA MEETING OF TRAITORS TO OUR NATIONS

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IMPORTANT STORIES FOR TUESDAY, AUGUST 21ST 2007:

Security, trade dominate North American summit

MONTEBELLO, Quebec (AP) -- President Bush, at a North American summit on Tuesday, offered U.S. assistance and expressed his concern for the citizens of Mexico and elsewhere whose lives were effected by Hurricane Dean.

A protester has her eyes cleaned after being hit with tear gas Monday at the summit in Montebello, Canada.

1 of 2 "We stand ready to help," said Bush, standing alongside Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. "The American people care a lot about the human condition in our neighborhood and when we see human suffering we want to do what we can."

Security and trade issues dominated talks among the North American leaders who met at a posh chateau along the Ottawa River. The three leaders began talks Tuesday with a council of corporate executives, who are pushing for broader coordination across North America, from regulatory standards to emergency planning.

About 2,000 demonstrators descended on Montebello in protest; police used tear gas to push back several dozen.

Overshadowing the two-day event was the menacing Hurricane Dean. The summit schedule was rearranged to accommodate Calderon, who was to head home early to deal with the aftermath of Dean.

Hurricane Dean slammed into the Caribbean coast of Mexico on Tuesday as a roaring Category 5 hurricane, the most intense Atlantic storm to make landfall in two decades. It lashed ancient Mayan ruins and headed for the modern oil installations of the Yucatan Peninsula, but it made landfall in a sparsely populated coastline that had mostly been evacuated and skirted most of the major tourist resorts.

"I have a great deal of concern for the housing and the lack of services in that general area for the indigenous people there and that will be the main area of concern for us," Calderon said.

Among the issues getting heavy attention here, Bush and his counterparts want to make their borders safer without impeding trade and tourism.

Canadian PM vows to defend Arctic "We agreed that border security measures, critical as they are, cannot threaten the bonds of friendship or commerce between us," Harper said.

There are plenty of neighborhood disputes, however, ranging from issues as varied as Arctic waterways and passport policies to the war in Afghanistan. But the summit ended on an even keel with few announcements.

One area of dispute between the United States and Canada involves the Northwest Passage through the Arctic. In his meeting with Bush, Harper asserted Canada's claim to the passage.

The race to secure subsurface rights to the Arctic seabed heated up when Russia recently sent two small submarines to plant a tiny national flag under the North Pole.

The United States and Norway also have competing claims in the vast Arctic region where a U.S. study suggests as much as 25 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and gas could be hidden. Harper has announced plans for an army training center and a deep water port.

Harper said the U.S. and Canada have been able to manage their differences over the years, and the Northwest Passage is no exception.

Bush said, "There are differences on the Northwest Passage. We believe it's a international passageway. Having said that, the United States does not question Canadian sovereignty over its Arctic islands and the United States supports Canadian investments that have been made to exercise it's sovereignty."

Both Bush and Harper sidestepped a question about whether Canada should continue its mission in Afghanistan. Canada has 2,500 troops there, and Harper has said the mission will not be extended beyond 2009 without a consensus in Parliament.

Bush thanked Canada for its contribution of troops as well as for its help in building institutions to foster democracy.

"The contribution has been vast and it has been robust, and this government, along with this parliament, will make decisions about what's best for the Canadian people and the people of Afghanistan," Bush said.

Harper said he thought that Canada's presence has "made a real difference," but that the Parliament will make its decision about whether it wants to prolong the mission.

In a joint statement, the leaders agreed to:

? Develop common protocols through the Canada-Mexico-United States Emergency Management Council to manage the movement of goods and people, including emergency responders, across borders during a natural or man-made emergency, such as a terrorist attack or outbreak of avian flu.

? Advance multilateral trade liberalization through a successful conclusion to the World Trade Organization Doha Round of negotiations.

? Strengthen cooperation on identifying and stopping unsafe food and products before they enter the three countries.

? Look for ways to cooperate on national auto fuel efficiency standards and work together on developing clean energy technologies and resolving global warming.

? Streamline regulations and make them compatible to enhance the flow of trade on the continent and eliminate redundant testing and certification requirements.

? Better measure the scope of and improve the detection and deterrence of counterfeiting and piracy in North America. Expand public awareness of the importance of intellectual property rights in protecting North American economies and consumer health.

? Develop a plan to respond to increasing pressures on the U.S., Mexican and Canadian competitiveness in the global markets.

The United States is to host the North America summit in 2008

Putin flexes his military muscles

Luke Harding in Moscow

Tuesday August 21, 2007

Guardian Unlimited

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, watches a fly-past at the biggest air show in the country?s post-Soviet history. Photograph: Dmitry Astakhov/AFP/Getty

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, announced ambitious plans today to revive Russia's military power and restore its role as the world's leading producer of military aircraft.

Speaking at the opening of the biggest air show in Russia's post-Soviet history, Mr Putin said he was determined to make aircraft manufacture a national priority after decades in which the country has lagged behind the west.

"Russia has a very important goal which is to retain leadership in the production of military equipment," he said. "As a state that has acquired new economic capabilities, will continue to attach special importance to high technology and development."

Mr Putin's remarks follow his decision last week to resume long-range missions by strategic bombers capable of hitting targets in the US with nuclear weapons. Patrols over the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic oceans began last Friday for the first time since 1992. A presidential aide hinted today that Russia could soon resume the production of Tu-160 and Tu-95 strategic nuclear bombers, now the aircraft are again flying "combat missions". The bombers would be used as a "means of strategic deterrence", Alexander Burutin told Interfax.

Mr Putin said Russia would also resume the large-scale manufacture of civilian aircraft.

The new emphasis on Russia's revived military prowess comes against a backdrop of deteriorating relations with the west. Mr Putin has denounced US missile defence plans in Europe, scrapped an agreement with Nato on conventional armed forces and laid claim to a large, if symbolic, chunk of the Arctic.

A senior Russian general bluntly warned the Czech Republic today that it would be making a "big mistake" if it pressed ahead with plans to allow the Bush administration to site elements of its missile interceptor system on Czech territory. The Pentagon says the shield is necessary to defend against rogue missiles from North Korea and Iran.

Yuri Baluyevsky, Russia's military chief of staff, said that Prague should hold off any final decision on the shield until after next year's US presidential elections.

"I do not exclude that a new administration in the United States will re-evaluate the current administration's decisions on missile defence," he said, after a meeting in Moscow with the Czech defence minister, Martin Bartak.

Analysts took issue with Mr Putin's claim that Russia was already the world's leading producer of military aircraft but said the country had developed some impressive new "technologies", especially in the field of ballistic and nuclear cruise missiles. These include a new S-400 missile and aircraft interceptor system, similar but better than the US Patriot, and a lethal new supersonic cruise missile, the Meteorit-A. "They have some very good kit," one industry observer said.

Another analyst said that Mr Putin did not want confrontation with the west, but was determined to restore Russia's strategic parity with the United States after a period of weakness and humiliation in the 1990s.

"Russia wants balance. It wants a strategic balance with the US," Ivan Safranchuk, a Moscow-based defence analyst told the Guardian.

"Russia wants to do this as cheaply as possible. But with the Bush administration withdrawing from arms control treaties, Russia is saying it is also ready to keep the balance at a high level of cost," he said.

Asked about Russia's resumption of long-range bomber patrols, he said: "It's significant. For 15 years the political leadership was constraining the military on this. Now it isn't."

In the 1960s and 1970s the Soviet Union produced more civilian planes than any other country in the world apart from America. After the collapse of communism, Russia's impoverished government drastically cut spending on its aircraft industry. Factories producing military planes fared better than those building civilian aircraft, mainly because of buoyant sales to India and China.

But Russia started to fall behind the west in the design of advanced fighters and other military aircraft.

Mr Putin is now also determined to make Russia the world's third largest manufacturer of passenger jets - after the United States, with Boeing, and the European Union, with Airbus.

Russia's passenger airlines own about 2,500 ageing aircraft - of which just 100 are western made models. Last week officials said they planned to build 4,500 civilian aircraft by 2025, while the Kremlin has pledged $250bn to boost the civilian industry.

A new state-controlled organisation, the United Aircraft Corporation, has been created to oversee Russia's resurgent aircraft maunfacturing industry. Its boss is Sergei Ivanov - Russia's hawkish first deputy prime minister, who sat next to Mr Putin during today's air show, and who is a leading candidate to succeed him after next year's presidential elections.

Russia warns Czechs against hosting U.S. shield

Says it would be a 'big mistake' to put missile defense system on its soil

Video

Putin's progress

NBC's Ned Colt profiles the Russian president and sheds light on his meteoric rise from KGB officer to obscure local official and, finally, world leader.

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Updated: 7:48 a.m. ET Aug. 21, 2007 MOSCOW - Russia?s military chief told the Czech Republic it would be making a ?big mistake? to host a U.S. missile defense shield on its soil and urged Prague on Tuesday to delay a decision until a new U.S. president is elected.

The Czech Republic is discussing hosting a radar station which would form part of the U.S. missile shield -- a system designed to intercept and destroy missiles from ?rogues states? but which Moscow sees as a threat to its security.

?We say it will be a big mistake by the Czech government to put this radar site on Czech territory,? said Yuri Baluyevsky, the Russian military chief of staff, after meeting the Czech deputy defense minister, Martin Bartak.

He said the Czech Republic should hold off making a decision until after the U.S. presidential election, scheduled to take place in late 2008. Incumbent President Bush will not be running.

?A decision will be made by the Czech side only after the evaluation of all conditions, technical and otherwise,? said Baluyevsky.

?I and my Russian colleagues simply ask that that process continue through to October-November of 2008, and I think you can all guess why.?

Asked by a reporter to clarify, he said: ?I do not exclude that a new administration in the United States will re-evaluate the current administration?s decisions on missile defense.?

Russia's ex-allies embrace NATO

The missile shield is the latest in a series of moves by Moscow?s former Warsaw Pact allies to embrace NATO, effectively moving the West?s military capabilities closer to Russia.

Baluyevsky said the Czech move was a political rather than a military decision.

?In my opinion it is a great disappointment that today?s discussion sees no change in the last four months by the Czech government. You have taken a decision to continue construction of a radar site on Czech territory,? he said.

?There are unfounded allegations that Russia is attempting to disrupt the peace and tranquility of Western Europe.?

Bartak stressed that his government had not yet made a decision. ?The most important thing I can say is that we have not yet said the final word on this and we will not until we have explored all avenues,? he said.

Baluyevsky made his comments on the 39th anniversary of the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia to crush the ?Prague Spring,? when Soviet tanks ended an attempt by the government of the day to promote liberal reforms.

Senior bishop quits Amnesty in row over abortion

Tue Aug 21, 2007 11:08AM BST

Email this Article |Print this Article | RSS [-] Text [+] By Kate Kelland

LONDON (Reuters) - One of Britain's most senior Roman Catholic bishops has ended three decades of support for Amnesty International after the group backed a woman's right to abortion if her life is threatened or she has been raped.

The bishop of East Anglia, Michael Evans, who has been a member of Amnesty for 31 years and wrote a prayer for the group's "protect the human" campaign, said Amnesty's membership would be split and its work compromised by its abortion stance.

Despite sustained criticism from the Catholic Church, Amnesty decided at its annual meeting in Mexico last week that it would work to "support the decriminalisation of abortion, to ensure women have access to health care when complications arise from abortion and to defend women's access to abortion ... when their health or human rights are in danger".

The church, which considers abortion to be murder and says it can never be justified, had urged Catholic organisations to withdraw support for Amnesty -- a London-based group founded in 1961 by a Catholic layman -- if it did not change its stance. The Vatican accused Amnesty of betraying its mission.

"Very regretfully, I will be ending my 31-year membership of Amnesty International," Evans, who joined Amnesty in 1976, said in a statement on his Web site. It was not clear exactly when the statement was issued.

"I remain deeply committed to Amnesty's original mandate: to work for freedom for prisoners of conscience, an end to torture and the death penalty, and fair trials for all."

Evans warned that Amnesty's decision to support women's access to safe and legal abortion would "almost certainly divide Amnesty's membership and thereby undermine its vital work".

"Among all human rights, the right to life is fundamental," he said. "Commitment to work to 'protect the human' can only be deeply compromised by any support for access to abortion." CONTINUED

CRITICAL NEW PERSPECTIVES ON ATTENTION DEFICIT HYPERACTIVITY DISORDER

by Gwynedd Lloyd, Joan Stead, & David Cohen (Editors) Routledge, 2006 Review by Benjamin J. Lovett, Ph.D. on Aug 21st 2007 Volume: 11, Number: 34

Scientifically speaking, the status of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is shaky. There is no physiological or genetic test for the condition, mental health professionals routinely disagree over whether to diagnose an individual with it, and its symptoms are phenomena that we have all experienced: inattention, overactivity, and impulsiveness. It would seem easy, then, to produce a book exploring these weaknesses of the ADHD construct in detail and pointing out the foundational issues (problems with psychiatric diagnosis more generally, for instance) that make ADHD such a contentious topic.

That is not quite the book that Lloyd, Stead, and Cohen have edited. Instead, the book is a mixture of original empirical research on children's classroom behavior, a theoretical analysis of free will, a synopsis of the eugenics movement, and many other things. The chapters vary widely in quality; some of the contributors appear to be knowledgeable about both their topics and ADHD scholarship more generally, whereas other authors appear to be ignorant of previous work on their topics as well as basic definitions and distinctions in the area of ADHD.

Following an introduction, the book begins with a very useful chapter by David Cohen, who summarizes recent critiques of what he terms the " 'ADHD' enterprise." He helpfully classifies a diverse set of critics into those who view ADHD as a sociocultural construction that fulfills certain societal goals, critics who accuse ADHD advocates and researchers of outright lies and personal intolerance, and critics who focus on the ethical problems with drug treatments for ADHD. Cohen does not evaluate the arguments of these critics, but this is not his aim, and the chapter remains a unique kind of annotated bibliography for readers interested in getting "up to speed" on the critical perspective on ADHD.

The next chapter was contributed by Thomas Armstrong, well known for his 1997 book, The Myth of the A.D.D. Child. Armstrong asserts that our society is too fast-paced, that television commercials have too many sudden "jolts," and that children today are not given enough time to play actively. Somehow these claims are taken as premises supporting a conclusion that ADHD is not a valid diagnosis and that stimulant medications are actually harmful rather than helpful. The causal pathways between these purported failings of contemporary society and ADHD are murky, and Armstrong never makes a clear argument for what they might be. Even his observations are just that?observations, unsupported by anything more than anecdotal evidence. Armstrong supports his claim about children's play time by telling us that his wife knows kindergartners who have two hours of homework each night. Most of his other claims do not specify any information source. He is long on suggestion and short on careful reasoning, offering that Albert Einstein was "seen to possess childlike?qualities that were integral to [his] great discoveries," and leaving us to trust him that this tendentious biographical remark means that ADHD "may actually be an evolutionary advantage."

Armstrong's chapter is, thankfully, unique in its tendency towards radical and sensational claims. More common are detailed case studies of how ADHD has been identified or treated within certain specified populations. The book's fourth chapter focuses on Native American children, and its author, a clinical psychologist serving Native American populations in Washington State, claims that behaviors that appear to be ADHD are actually "overt resistance to teaching approaches and learning styles felt as culturally undesirable or foreign." This claim is not unreasonable, but no evidence is provided to support it. No empirical research on the "learning styles" of Native American children is presented, and we are not even given data on the prevalence of the ADHD diagnosis in this population, information that would seem to be critical in establishing evidence for misdiagnosis. Instead, the chapter fills its pages with a review of the history of eugenics and excerpts from early reports on psychiatric disorders in Native Americans. These artifacts certainly show racial prejudice and cultural insensitivity, but they only distract the reader from the author's weak central claim.

The next chapter, contributed by Gordon Tait, is entitled "A Philosophical Examination of ADHD." Philosophical analysis is known for its stress on careful definitions, and this chapter begins with an odd one: we are told that ADHD is "primarily a theory concerning the misbehavior of children." Does Tait mean that one explanation of why some children misbehave is that they have a disorder called ADHD? How could ADHD itself be a theory? Unfortunately, there is no time to dwell on this puzzle; Tait rushes through some basic philosophical terminology, concisely covering various theories of truth as well as major positions in the free will vs. determinism debate. Through it all, ADHD is used as a running example. Some useful distinctions are drawn; for instance, Tait points out that the question of whether or not ADHD "exists" is itself predicated on certain assumptions about the nature of truth, including that there is one right answer to such questions. He also notes the problems involved in attributing ADHD-related behaviors to the presence of a disorder in some children (those with an ADHD diagnosis) but not in other children. These are important clarifications, but Tait ignores the contributions of clinical scientists to this discussion, failing to engage with, for instance, Russell Barkley's careful analysis of nature of self-control or Frank Gresham and James Ysseldyke's work on pragmatism in special education labels. Tait's reference list, containing more introductory philosophy texts and anthologies than works on ADHD, says a great deal about the chapter's style of scholarship.

Among the remaining chapters, one calls out for special notice. In this chapter, Ken Jacobson reports data from what appears to be his dissertation on the ADHD-related misbehavior of children in different educational settings. Jacobson recorded the individual behaviors (e.g., looking, talking, moving one's body) of children in five classrooms and found that misbehavior, at least as he defined it, was quite common. From this, Jacobson concluded that it is not "scientifically possible to separate 'normal' from 'disordered' levels of behavior" and that "it may well be that?no child should be labeled" as having ADHD. Of course, as Jacobson notes, he had tremendous difficulty in interpreting whether individual behaviors should be interpreted as appropriate or inappropriate. This measurement issue was compounded by Jacobson's awkward role as an "observer" who was sometimes charged with classroom management responsibilities; he tells us of times when he had to ask students to calm down and other times when he responded to misbehavior by giving the child a knowing smile. It is difficult, then, to know how the "data" should be interpreted and what, if anything, can be concluded.

Not all of the chapters are as bad as this, and my summary has been a bit unfair, in that I've focused on the book's most egregious errors and lapses in reason. In fact, the book includes a useful summary of Italy's reception of the ADHD construct, an interesting study about how inclusive education practices in South Africa increase the pressure to label and treat children with disruptive behavior, and a concluding chapter arguing for an appreciation of the environmental factors that affect classroom behavior. These chapters contain novel, helpful information even if some of their conclusions, like those of the other chapters, overreach a bit. But overall, the overreaching is substantial and deeply disappointing. Given a topic (ADHD) that seems so ready for thoughtful critique, the contributors to this volume have missed out on an important opportunity. Rather than offering careful argumentation and sober analysis, most opted for speculation, insinuation, and unsupported assertion. The worthy and timely task of critiquing ADHD without hyperbole, then, remains to be done.

2007 Benjamin J. Lovett

Benjamin J. Lovett, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of psychology at Elmira College, where he teaches classes on a variety of topics in psychology and his research focuses on the conceptual and psychometric foundations of psychoeducational assessment and psychiatric diagnosis.

China's central bank rises interest rates

Associated Press

Tuesday, August 21, 2007 (Beijing):

China's central bank said Tuesday it was raising its benchmark deposit and lending rates the fourth time this year to control inflation expectations, which have threatened to climb out of control on the back of an overheated economy.

Despite global concerns, China's economy barreled ahead this year, with the economy growing 11.9 per cent in the last quarter.

China's inflation worries come even though the People's Bank of China has already raised interest rates three times this year to cool the economic boom in the world's fourth biggest economy and avoid a further rise in inflation.

In the latest interest rate increases, the bank said in a statement on its Web site that, it was raising the one-year Yuan lending rate 18 basis points to 7.02 per cent from 6.84 per cent. The one-year Yuan deposit rate will be boosted 27 basis points to 3.60 per cent from 3.33 per cent.

"This is aimed at the reasonable control of credit and at stabilizing inflation expectations," the central bank said.

Inflationary concerns

Economists have said they were expecting another rate hike ever since the government earlier this month announced that the inflation rate had accelerated to the highest monthly rate in a decade driven by a 15.4 per cent surge in politically sensitive food prices over the year-earlier period.

July's inflation rate of 5.6 per cent was the highest monthly rate since February 1997, and an increase over June's 4.4 per cent rate, the National Bureau of Statistics reported. The government's target rate for 2007 is 3 per cent.

Chinese leaders are concerned about the political impact of rising food prices, which hit the poor, populous countryside especially hard.

China's communist leaders want to keep overall economic growth high to reduce poverty. But they worry that runaway investment in real estate and other industries could push up politically volatile inflation or spark a debt crisis if borrowers default.

Southern hospitals give RFID system the thumbs up

Healthcare IT News

By Molly Merrill, Editorial Assistant 08/21/07

Last week McKesson announced the general availability of its Horizon Real-Time Location system, which uses a hospital?s RFID technology and software to instantly track the location and movements of critical assets and hospital personnel.

According to evaluations at two Southern hospitals, the system has already proven to save money and contribute to patient safety.

Spartanburg Regional Medical Center, a 588-bed research and teaching hospital located in South Carolina, has used the McKesson system for the past nine months to wirelessly track and electronically record the location history of 550 IV pumps to evaluate the effects on patient safety and efficiency throughout the facility.

?This system started paying for itself the day that it was installed,? said Ray Shingler, senior vice president and chief information officer at Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System. ?We cancelled our planned order of 50 new IV pumps at $10,000 each because we located 25 of them in stand-by storage. Now, we know with assurance where all of our IV pumps are at any time. That has saved a tremendous amount of time for our nursing and IT staffs."

WellStar Douglas Hospital, a 100-bed hospital located in Georgia, has also been using the Horizon system to track computers on wheels for the past several months in their facility.

Whenever a tagged unit leaves an approved nursing zone, alerts are sent to the assigned facility IT administrators.

?The main benefits we expect to gain from this system are improved compliance with HIPAA and Sarbanes-Oxley regulations, and an increased ability to prevent theft,? said Leigh Cox, chief information officer at WellStar Douglas Hospital.

The Horizon Real-Time Location System uses small, active RFID tags, which are attached to assets or to individuals. The tags send signals over the wireless network to a location engine that uses software to map and report tag locations on a geospatial view of the hospital.

The system can be accessed by hospital staff using a web browser, which provides location as well as alerts when equipment leaves authorized areas of the hospital. The system also groups the medical equipment into logical groups to manage it for ordering and buying purposes.

Virus throws its weight about

Virus throws its weight about

Page 1 of 2 View as a single page 5:00AM Wednesday August 22, 2007

By Steve Connor

Most experts say a sedentary lifestyle is one of the major causes of obesity. Obesity can be caught like a cold, showing that a common infectious virus can turn human cells into fatty tissue, scientists say.

It is well established that the human adenovirus-36 causes respiratory and eye infections but now scientists have discovered that it can also transform adult stem cells found under the skin into the fat cells of adipose tissue.

The scientists also found that there is a specific gene in the virus that appears to control this fatty transformation, which they observed when human stem cells grown in the laboratory became infected.

The findings were presented yesterday to a meeting of the American Chemical Society.

The research suggested that the growing global epidemic of obesity may involve more than just a lack of exercise and a love of high-calorie food.

"We're not saying that a virus is the only cause of obesity, but this study provides stronger evidence that some obesity cases may involve viral infections," said Dr Magdalena Pasarica of Louisiana State University.

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Advertisement"Not all infected people will develop obesity.

"We would ultimately like to identify the underlying factors that predispose some obese people to develop this virus and eventually to find a way to treat it."

Previous research on animals suggested that adenovirus-36 - along with two related viruses known as Ad-37 and Ad-5 - can trigger the tendency to get overweight or obese.

Another study found a high prevalence of adenovirus in overweight people - about 30 per cent of obese people were infected with Ad-36 compared with 11 per cent of lean people.

This led to suggestions that respiratory viruses may play an important role in triggering the tendency towards obesity in susceptible people with the sort of sedentary lifestyle that favours putting on weight.

The latest study appears to support these claims at the cellular level by looking at how the virus interacts with human stem cells growing outside the body in laboratory cultures.

Dr Pasarica obtained the stem cells from fatty tissue which she obtained from a broad cross-section of patients who had undergone liposuction.

She exposed half of the stem cells to Ad-36, while the other half were not exposed to the virus.

After about a week of growing in the laboratory, most of the adult stem cells that had been infected with the virus developed into fat cells whereas the non-infected stem cells did not, Dr Pasarica said. "A common virus appears to target stem cells in humans to generate more and bigger fat cells," Dr Pasarica said.

"The results are clear. Ad-36 prompts adult fat-derived stem cells to convert to pre-fat cells, rather than other cell types.

Americans Using Painkillers More Than Ever

Main Category: Pain / Anesthetics News

Article Date: 20 Aug 2007 - 11:00 PDT

Healthcare Professional:

General Public:

According to a recent analysis by the Associated Press (AP) news agency of figures from the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Americans are using painkillers more than ever before. Between 1997 and 2007 the volume of five major painkillers sold and distributed in the United States by hospitals, retail pharmacies, doctors and teaching centres has risen by 90 per cent.

The DEA figures show that in the most recent year of complete data, Americans bought in excess of 200,000 pounds of codeine, hydrocodone, meperidine, morphine, and oxycodone. That is equivalent to 300 milligrams of painkillers for each member of the population.

Most of the increased sales is in pills that contain oxycodone, the active ingredient in the painkiller OxyContin. Sales of this compound have risen by nearly 600 per cent in the 8 years between 1997 and 2005 says the AP report.

Oxycodone was once known as "hillbilly heroin" because of its reputation for being bought and sold, mostly illegally in Appalachia. Nowadays however it has gained a strong foothold in major cities in states such as Ohio and Florida.

The other painkiller on the rise, and mostly in rural parts of the country, is hydrocodone, the active ingredient of Vicodin. However, cities are also seeing sharp rises in use of all painkillers, so the problem covers the whole nation.

The AP analysts suggest the following reasons for the rise in painkiller use among Americans:

The proportion of older people in the population is rising.

Massive increase in drug marketing, which has gone up from 11 billion dollars spent in 1997 to 30 billion in 2005. Changes in the way pain is managed, where painkillers are now seen as an essential part of the healing process.

One doctor who specializes in pain management said perhaps the pendulum has swung too far the other way.

However, there may also be other reasons, such as the fact more and more people are surviving cancer and other life threatening diseases, but have increased pain management needs.

The answer is not readily available, and the AP report merely suggests what the reasons might be.

The AP report also draws attention to the fact that some high profile arrests and prosecutions have caused many pain management doctors to become reluctant to prescribe pain medication, although they will offer support and guidance.

One area where painkiller sales had soared was Myrtle Beach, a 60 mile strip of Alantic beach resorts totalling 350,000 residents that is visited by 14 million tourists every year. A joint federal and state investigation resulted in a number of arrests and prosecutions, including one doctor who was sentenced to 15 years and another who was threatened with 100 years if she did not cooperate.

Since these and other prosecutions, many pain management doctors have been nervous about prescribing painkillers and people with legitimate needs are having to travel miles, sometimes to another state, to get their prescriptions filled.

Another source of painkillers is the black market, fuelled by stolen drugs. The AP report only analysed DEA figures, but it mentions a government report issued in 2004 estimated in the region of 2 to 3 million doses of the painkillers codeine, hydrocodone and oxycodone were stolen every year from American pharmacies, drug manufacturers and distributors.

Written by: Catharine Paddock

Group targets toxins in the air

Coalition calls for laws to tell people of dangerous substances and remove them from environment

Coalition calls for laws to tell people of dangerous substances and remove them from environment

Aug 20, 2007 04:30 AM Michele Henry

Staff Reporter

Ontarians are living in a toxic soup that's increasing our risk of getting cancer and it's high time the government takes steps to obliterate this environmental threat, a coalition of health and labour groups says.

This province doesn't have a strategy in place to reduce the amounts of more than 150 toxins and carcinogens in the air we breathe, the food we eat and products we use every day, according to a report released today by the broad-based group.

Organizations, including Cancer Care Ontario, the Canadian Cancer Society, the Ontario Medical Association, the Ontario Federation of Labour and public health units across the province, are calling on all levels of government, with an emphasis in Ontario, for legislation that will decrease, or remove these substances from our air and let us know what we're being exposed to.

"What we need is to develop a full-blown strategy and if this doesn't happen we will only see an increase in toxin- and carcinogen-related illnesses," says Doris Grinspun, executive director of the Registered Nurses' Association of Ontario, one of the groups involved.

The comprehensive study, obtained by the Star, includes a list of toxins and carcinogens emitted in Ontario as well as 10 policy recommendations to help three levels of government get a handle on this health concern. While the exact link between cancer risk and the environment is still the subject of research, it's been shown, Grinspun says, that even fetuses are affected by toxins in the environment, thus increasing incidence of childhood cancers.

If this hazard is left to fester, it will contribute to tens of thousands of new cancer diagnoses each year, the study suggests. In 2020 that number is projected to be 91,000 new cases. The most vulnerable to the toxins are pregnant women, fetuses, children, seniors and aboriginals, the study says.

Substances under fire include cigarette smoke, pesticides, soot and tar from certain industrial operations, asbestos, diesel exhaust, chemicals released by the production of herbicides and refining coal, and even products found in barbershops and hairdressing salons.

Report recommendations ? the result of two years of research into current regulations in the European Union and the United States ? include capping carcinogen use, establishing a provincial institute to research alternative substances and helping industry switch to less- or non-toxic chemicals that do the same jobs. The report also calls for programs to track how these toxic substances impact Ontarians' well-being and the health-care system.

The coalition would like to see labels, indicating which carcinogens are present, on all consumer products sold in Ontario, and public education to make people aware of the risks of being around these hazardous substances.

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