Results matching “safety” from Jeanette Hada's Wellness and Happiness Blog

As a parent-to-be, I'm both concerned and torn over when and what to vaccinate. I understand that we need to protect our children from illnesses and disease, but don't feel comfortable taking everything a doctor says as truth (perhaps, it is as they know it, they've been known to be wrong before), it seems negligent to leave the safety and well-being of my baby without doing more research.

So far, since I plan to work from home and will not have our daughter in daycare, we will have her immunizations start at age 2. We'll request vaccines to be free of Thimerosal and order them ahead of time and have her shots spaced apart. This is thinking way ahead. Hopefully by the time she's due for her vaccinations, most of this mess will have been sorted through.

"If a dirty bomb exposed a large segment of US citizens simultaneously to Hepatitis B, Hepatitis A, Pertussis, Tetanus, Diptheria, Haemophilous Influenza B, 3 strains of Polio viruses, 3 strains of Influenza viruses, Measles, Mumps and Rubella viruses, the Chickenpox Virus, and 7 strains of Streptococcus Bacteria, we would declare a national emergency. We would call it an " Extreme Act of BIO-TERRORISM" . The public outcry would be immense and our government would act accordingly. And yet, those are the very organisms that we inject through vaccines into our babies and our small children, with immature, undeveloped immune systems. Many are given all at the same time. But, instead of BIO-TERRORISM we call it protection. Reflect a Moment on that Irony." -Dr. Sherri Tenpenny

In recent news: Families will make case for vaccine link to autism
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080512/ap_on_re_us/autism_court_case

Dear Friends,

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced last month that
the Agency will likely approve the sale of cloned foods this
year. FDA's action flies in the face of widespread scientific
concern about the risks of food from clones, and ignores the
animal cruelty and troubling ethical concerns that the cloning
process brings. What's worse, FDA indicates that it will not
require labeling on cloned food, so we will have no way to avoid
these experimental foods!

In response to FDA's pending approval, US Senator Barbara
Mikulski (D-MD) has introduced Senate Bill S.414, the Cloned
Food Labeling Act, and U.S. House Representative Rosa DeLauro
(D-CT) introduced an identical bill, HR 992 a few weeks later.

Tell Congress to support the Cloned Food Labeling Act! Please
take a moment today to send an email to your Senators and
Representative in support of these important bills. It only
takes a minute and you can take action now through the Center
for Food Safety at
http://ga3.org/ campaign/ Cloning_Label? rk=p7suhdK11UVcW

I am one of the world's biggest chocolate lovers, though I usually try to refrain from going overboard especially during Halloween. When going to Walgreens I'll sometimes pick up a bag of bite-sized Twix or Snickers to share; however, if the recent email I received from PETA a few days ago (please see below) is even a little bit true, I'll stop buying every single product this company makes and encourage my friends and family to do the same. It's sickening and just doesn't make sense to torture and kill animals for food testing (or almost any testing for that matter). Forget the flavanol health claims if it means harming these tiny creatures. If it's humans that are supposed to benefit from this antioxidant, shouldn't they test these products on people? ---------------------------------- PETA has uncovered gruesome evidence that candy giant Mars has been paying experimenters to conduct deadly tests on mice, rats, guinea pigs, and rabbits. We're launching a worldwide boycott of Snickers, M&M's, Twix, Milky Way, 3 Musketeers, Starburst, Dove, Skittles, and other Mars-made products until the company has a heart and stops hurting animals. Right now, Mars is funding a study at the University of California, San Francisco, in which experimenters force-feed rats by shoving plastic tubes down their throats. The animals are then killed and cut open. Mars has also paid experimenters to do the following: * Force mice to swim in a pool of water and paint and find a hidden platform to avoid drowning—only to be killed later * Surgically attach plastic tubes to guinea pigs' carotid arteries and inject cocoa ingredients into their jugular veins to induce dramatic decreases in blood pressure * Force rabbits to eat high-cholesterol diets with varying amounts of cocoa and then cut out and examine primary blood vessels to their hearts Not one of these tests is required by law for candy. Mars' chief competitor, Hershey's, has already signed PETA's statement of assurance pledging never to conduct or fund tests on animals. We need your help to end Mars' cruel experiments! Visit our new MarsCandyKills.com campaign Web site to find out what you can do to help. Sincerely, Jason Ullman Anti-Vivisection Campaigner PETA -------------------- PETA boycotting Mars candy co. over animal cruelty Fri Dec 7, 9:25 PM ET People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is calling for a boycott of M&Ms, Twix candy bars and other snack foods made by Mars Inc, claiming the company funds experiments that kill mice, rats, guinea pigs and rabbits. "In violation of its own written policy, the candy company is currently funding a study at the University of California, San Francisco, that uses rats. The rats are force fed by having plastic tubes shoved down their throats, and they are then cut open and killed," PETA said in a statement. "In response to this new information, PETA is filing a legal complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over Mars' false statement," the group said in a statement. The FTC investigates claims of dishonesty in advertising. Mars spokeswoman Alice Nathanson said regarding the University of California experiment: "I can't speak to any information that PETA may or may not have. I can't speak to any experiments." But, she said that the privately held company "would never issue or post a statement that we were not 100 percent confident in." PETA spokeswoman Kathy Guillermo said in an interview the experiments seemed aimed at developing health claims for chocolate because it contains flavonoids. Health studies have found that flavonoids protect against heart disease and cancer. Guillermo said the boycott would start on Monday. Mars says on its Web site that it bars animal research "involving euthanasia, vivisection or the suffering of any animal" in developing its snacks, drinks and pet products. But the Web site also says that a separate business unit, Symbioscience, would undertake "limited forms of animal testing" when required to demonstrate the safety or efficacy of "pharmaceutical and therapeutic food products." PETA said in its statement that Mars paid for experiments in which mice had to swim in a pool of water and paint and find a hidden platform to avoid drowning and were killed later. The group also accused Mars of funding an experiment in which plastic tubes were surgically attached to guinea pigs' carotid arteries and cocoa ingredients were injected into their jugular veins to cause a sharp drop in blood pressure, and another experiment in which rabbits were fed high-cholesterol diets with varying amounts of cocoa and later the main blood vessels to their hearts were cut out and examined. The University of California, San Francisco, confirmed in a statement that it was conducting a Mars-funded study of the potential health benefits of cocoa flavanols involving testing on rats. "UCSF takes seriously the responsibility of working with animals and is committed to maintaining the highest standard of humane treatment in animal care and use," Clifford Roberts, interim associate vice chancellor for research said in the statement. (Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Toni Reinhold)

http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/mad_cow_di3.cfm

For over 30 years, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Agriculture have been flirting with a mad cow disease epidemic. The public has largely been kept in the dark about regulatory decisions leading toward this potential public health catastrophe and even about the dangers associated with eating contaminated meat and meat products. Recently, some of the glaring deficiencies in the regulation of the U.S. meat production system were revealed when a cow with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) was discovered in Washington.

Mad cow disease, or BSE, belongs to a group of related brain-wasting diseases known as "transmissible spongiform encephalopathies" (TSEs). While TSEs are known to occur spontaneously, they also are spread through cattle herds by feeding infected nervous system tissue to other animals. Beginning in the 1970s, the meat rendering industry began processing dead, dying, disabled, and diseased animals for use in livestock feed--and pet feed--as a way to increase the protein consumption of cattle, pigs, sheep, and poultry (cattle can get the disease by eating less than one gram of diseased meat and bone meal fed to them as a protein source). Consequently, these quasi-cannibalistic feeding practices quickly spread the fatal TSE diseases, resulting in hundreds of thousands of diseased animals, some of which ended up in the food supply in Britain and Europe. Over 140 people in Britain have been infected with vCJD from contaminated beef.

Humans who eat contaminated beef products are at risk of contracting the human version of mad cow disease known as new variant Creutzfeld-Jakob disease (vCJD). The disease slowly eats holes in the brain over a matter of years, turning it sponge-like, and invariably results in death. There is no known cure, treatment, or vaccine for TSE diseases.

Tissue from infected cows' central nervous systems (including brain or spinal cord) is the most infectious part of a cow. Such tissue may be found in hot dogs, taco fillings, bologna and other products containing gelatin, and ground or chopped meat. The process of stripping every last piece of meat from a cow carcass, including connective tissue from bone, can contaminate this meat with infected nervous system tissue. Transmission of vCJD between people has also occurred in over two-dozen cases as a result of transplants or injections of body tissue from infected people.

Despite the adoption of additional safeguards following the discovery of mad cow in the United States, the FDA still allows the risky practice of recycling animal offal into feed: ruminant animals (cattle, sheep, goats, deer) are fed to non-ruminants (pigs and poultry), and these non-ruminants are rendered and fed back to ruminants. Such practices are banned in Britain and Europe. Also, in spite of the wake-up call the FDA and the USDA recently received, only a small percentage of slaughtered or soon-to-be slaughtered cows are tested for BSE in the U.S. By contrast, Britain tests 70 percent of its beef cattle and Japan tests 100 percent.

So far, none of the vCJD cases diagnosed in the U.S. have been linked to domestically-produced beef, but this fact may have little bearing on the reality of the situation: the disease has a long incubation period and few dementia-related deaths in the U.S. are investigated. Creutzfeld-Jakob disease is not yet a reportable disease with the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

CFS seeks to make CJD a reportable disease so occurrences can be tracked, and to plug the loopholes that still exist in FDA and USDA regulations, i.e., require testing of all cattle over 20 months of age and ban all animal products from feed.