From Chicago Tribune
Reuters 1:26 p.m. CST, February 15, 2013

U.S. health regulators have sent letters to nine Internet distributors of dietary supplements warning them against making false claims about their products' ability to fight the flu.

The Food and Drug Administration posted the letters on its website late Thursday to steer consumers away from a variety of herbal products that the distributors claim reduce the duration or severity of the flu.

Stephen Dinan
washingtontimes.com
February 6, 2013

President Obama’s health care law will push 7 million people out of their job-based insurance coverage — nearly twice the previous estimate, according to the latest estimates from the Congressional Budget Office released Tuesday.

CBO said that this year’s tax cuts have changed the incentives for businesses and made it less attractive to pay for insurance, meaning fewer will decide to do so. Instead, they’ll choose to pay a penalty to the government, totaling $13 billion in higher fees over the next decade.

But the non-partisan agency also expects fewer people to have to pay individual penalties to the IRS than it earlier projects, because of a better method for calculating incomes that found more people will be exempt.

Overall, the new health provisions are expected to cost the government $1.165 trillion over the next decade — the same as last year’s projection.

With other spending cuts and tax increases called for in the health law, though, CBO still says Mr. Obama’s signature achievement will reduce budget deficits in the short term.

During the health care debate Mr. Obama had said individuals would be able to keep their plans.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/inside-politics/2013/feb/5/obama-health-law-will-cost-7-million/#ixzz2L55m1ZYB

Imported seafood is full of dirt and chemicals. So why is the FDA inspecting practically none of it?—By Tom Philpott  January/February 2013 Issue
From Mother Jones
Next time you tuck into a Red Lobster "Endless Shrimp" special or score some $7-per-pound salmon at a supermarket, consider this: You're very likely eating imported seafood raised on a factory-style farm in Asia—and it almost certainly was never inspected by the Food and Drug Administration on its way into the country and onto your plate.

Is that…safe? Big retailers like Walmart and restaurant chains like Darden (owner of Red Lobster) say yes, in part because some of the seafood they buy bears the Best Aquaculture Practices label. Who issues that label? The Global Aquaculture Alliance, an industry endeavor--its board consists of representatives from (you guessed it) Darden, as well as Cargill, the Chilean salmon industry, and a large farmed-shrimp importer called Eastern Fish Company. Not surprisingly, BAP standards for farmed fish placed near the bottom (16 of 20) in a 2012 ranking of aquaculture labels by the University of Victoria's Seafood Ecology Research Group. (Darden says it independently tests its shrimp for contaminants but declined to share its results; Walmart did not answer our questions about inspections.)

Friday, June 22, 2012 by: D Holt
(NaturalNews) For many years the stories from devastated parents have been eerily similar. A young, bright child vaccinated with MMR, has minor side effects such as high temperature and being off food, and then develops the debilitating disability of autism.
Whilst the mainstream medical profession deny the link between autism and the triple shot of measles, mumps and rubella, there have been many who have argued to the contrary. Statistics show the increases in autism correlate alarmingly with the introduction and uptake of the MMR vaccine. And Now in an Italian court, there has been a landmark ruling for a child whose parents claim that his autism was triggered by MMR.
The parents of Valentino Bocca have been awarded 112,000 Euro to be paid by the Italian ministry of health. They are now seeking a further 800,000 Euro in a civil case. The story is a tragic one, Valentino, developing normally, was given the shot at 14 months and started to suffer from diarrhea, lost interest in food and within a few days lost the ability to use his spoon. Worse was soon to come when he began to be restless at night, screaming in pain for hours. It was later found that he was suffering from a painful bowel condition that is common in autistic children. With an adjusted diet of no wheat or milk, he was able to sleep but the autism symptoms continued, and even at the age of nine, he still does not speak.

By Corydon Ireland
Harvard News Office

Ganmaa Davaasambuu is a physician (Mongolia), a Ph.D. in environmental health (Japan), a fellow (Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study), and a working scientist (Harvard School of Public Health). On Monday (Dec. 4), she drew on all those roles during a lunchtime talk to most of her fellow fellows. Ganmaa's topic was lunch-appropriate: the suspected role of cow's milk, cheese, and other dairy products in hormone-dependent cancers. (Those include cancers of the testes, prostate, and breast.) The link between cancer and dietary hormones - estrogen in particular - has been a source of great concern among scientists, said Ganmaa, but it has not been widely studied or discussed.

UNZA researcher attributes increase in cancer in Zambia to consumption of foods that contain soya
 From Lusaka Times

A researcher from the University of Zambia School of agricultural sciences has attributed the increase in breast and cervical cancers in Zambia to consumption of foods that contain soya.

The researcher has further disclosed that soya foods are leading to the development of other non communicable diseases such as leukemia, high blood pressure and diabetes.

Martin Sampa made the revelation on Friday when he appeared before the parliamentary committee on health, community development and social welfare which is looking at breast, cervical cancer and diabetes in Zambia.