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| Patient safety stats staggering |
| 05.27.04 (9:46 am) [edit] |
[b]Patient safety stats staggering[/b]
Up to 24,000 Canadians died due to error, says study
Sun May 23 2004
By Mia Rabson
WINNIPEG'S top health official says the public shouldn't panic over a new study that shows as many as 24,000 patients died in Canadian hospitals in 2000 after preventable medical mistakes.
The statistic -- which even health officials acknowledge is staggering -- is one of the key findings of the Canadian Adverse Events Study. It is the first national study estimating the number of medical mistakes made in Canadian hospitals every year.
Overall, the study estimates 185,000 adverse events occurred during the care of surgical and medical patients in 2000. Of that number, 70,000 -- or 38 per cent -- were deemed to have been preventable.
Dr. Brian Postl, CEO of the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority, said he hopes the public doesn't overreact when it sees these numbers.
He noted it's important for the public to understand that while the numbers seem large, there are far more people who are treated in hospital each year without any mistakes or adverse events.
"If you look at the percentage of activities, which measure in the millions even in Manitoba, that actually have an impact that is adverse on the patient, it's very small," Postl said.
The study found that one in every 13 patients in Canadian hospitals suffered an adverse event while receiving medical care that resulted in death, disability or prolonged hospital stay. And 1.6 per cent of patients admitted to hospital in 2000 died following a preventable medical mistake. The study estimates that amounts to between 9,000 and 24,000 deaths.
"We're not trying to alarm you, but this is reality," said Dr. Ross Baker, the study's lead investigator.
"We're not trying to alarm you, but this is reality," said Dr. Ross Baker, the study's lead investigator. "And the reality is, over seven per cent of people admitted to Canadian hospitals are harmed because of hospital care."
Adverse events ranged from an abdominal aneurysm that was diagnosed as kidney stones (the patient died) to a missed but obvious case of uterine cancer to the unscheduled removal of ovaries in what was meant to be a partial hysterectomy.
Baker said the goal of the study was to draw attention to the problem and encourage the health system to improve it. He said by knowing the number and types of adverse events, hospital staff can develop better systems to prevent them.
He said one of the major problems associated with improving patient safety is the punitive consequences of making mistakes. Doctors and nurses worried they are going to be sued are not likely to admit their errors and learn from them, he said. The study was conducted by seven Canadian universities in conjunction with the Canadian Institute for Health Information and the Canadian Institute for Health Research. It examined 3,745 patient charts, randomly selected from 20 Canadian hospitals in five provinces from 2000. Manitoba was not one of the five.
Baker said it's important to note some of the patients who died following an adverse event died because they were sick, not because of a mistake. He said it is not possible to determine exactly who died solely because of the complications caused by a mistake.
Dr. Peter Norton, the study's other principal investigator, said there are a number of recommendations for hospitals and policy makers out of this study, including the need for investments of time and money into the area of patient safety.
"We want to emphasize that system changes -- the way the medical system works -- will be necessary to improve safety in hospitals," Norton said.
Specifically, Norton said evidence is clear that electronic medical records reduce medication errors.
"We would encourage policy makers, managers and care givers to consider that and enter into a debate about how we might accelerate the adoption of the electronic medical record across Canada," Norton said.
Similar studies of adverse events in the U.S., Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Denmark showed Canada's adverse event rate was higher than in the United States, but on par with Britain and lower than the other three.
"Our system is as good or better than other systems that are comparable," Norton said.
Postl said the public has to understand that there will never be a time when no mistakes are made in hospitals. "The truth of the matter is a complex health-care system makes flying an airplane look like a picnic," Postl said.
He said he hopes this study will force the public to ratchet down its expectations of the system and of health providers, and recognize doctors and nurses are human beings, not robots.
[LINE]
[b]1 in 13 is affected [/b]
SOME facts from the Canadian adverse events study, published Tuesday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal:
One in 13 people who go into hospital suffer an adverse event.
Based on 2.5 million admissions in 2000, that means 140,000 to 232,000 people experienced adverse events.
37 per cent of those were preventable.
Adverse events added an average of six days to a hospital stay.
One in five people who had an adverse event went on to die; nine per cent of the adverse events were categorized as highly preventable.
The most common types of adverse events related to surgeries, followed by drug- or fluid-related events.
One in 20 patients who had an adverse event -- or 9,250 people -- ended up with a permanent disability.
The mistake rate was the same for men and women, but the average age of patients experiencing an adverse event was higher than that of those who didn't.
-- Staff and Canadian Press
[LINE]
This information is from an article in the Winnipeg Free Press Dated May 23rd 2004.
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| Toxic Tampons Pose Health Risks |
| 05.22.04 (12:42 pm) [edit] |
[b]Toxic Tampons Pose Health Risks [/b]
by Sara Chamberlain
Earth Island Journal
An American woman uses as many as 11,000 tampons in her lifetime. Most tampons sold by companies such as Tampax, OB, Playtex and Kotex are made of rayon or rayon-cotton blends. Rayon, a woodpulp derivative commonly bleached with chlorine, contains dioxin, an organochlorine formed during the bleaching process.
Mounting evidence suggests that low levels of dioxin may be linked to cancer (especially breast cancer), immune system suppression and low sperm counts. A February 7 Village Voice article estimated that 73 million US women regularly risk dioxin exposure when they put bleached sanitary products in contact with highly absorbent mucous membranes.
In 1992, a congressional subcommittee discovered a March 1989 memo stating that Food and Drug Administration (FDA) scientists had detected trace levels of dioxin in tampons.
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The memo warned that "the risk of dioxin in tampons can be quite high," and that "the most effective risk-management strategy would be to assure that tampons contain no dioxin." Subcommittee chair Ted Weiss accused the FDA of purposely ignoring the dioxin danger in tampons. A New York University School of Medicine study, published in the July 1994 issue of Infectious Diseases in Obstetrics and Gynecology, suggested that rayon also produces Staphylococcus aureus bacteria, which cause toxic shock syndrome (TSS). When researchers tested 20 varieties of tampons for their ability to induce TSS toxins, the bacteria were detected in all US brands.
Despite the deaths of 38 women in 1980 from tampon-related TSS, the tampon industry continues to deny that there is a connection between TSS and rayon. A class- action lawsuit has been filed against Tambrands Inc., the makers of Tampax, and Playtex Family Product Corp. by Jeannie Harding and Sandra Hayes, two Kansas women who allege that they contracted TSS from the company's tampons. According to a May 31, 1994 Wall Street Journal article, the lawsuit "seeks to require manufacturers to adequately notify women of the alleged dangers of their products and to pay restitution, as well as establish a fund for long-term monitoring and treatment of the illness."
Fortunately, dioxin-free, 100-percent cotton tampons have been available to American women since September, 1993. Natracare, a British company, offers a full line of sanitary products, including panty-liners that contain woodpulp bleached with hydrogen peroxide (which has no negative impacts on human health or the environment).
In January, the California Assembly will consider a bill (A1963) to require the state Department of Health Services to determine if sanitary products contain dioxin residue. The bill would also require warning labels on all sanitary products found to contain dioxin residue. Tampon companies are currently not required to list the contents of their products on their packaging.
[b]What You Can Do:[/b]
A1963 is sponsored by Assemblywoman Liz Figueroa (D-Fremont): (916) 445-7874. For free educational material and ordering information, write Natracare at 191 University Blvd., Suite 294, Denver, CO 80206; natra@indra.com; (303) 320-1510
About the Author:
copyright © 1995, Earth Island Journal.
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| More facts on the spraying crisis |
| 05.20.04 (6:59 am) [edit] |
[b]STATEN ISLAND FACT/ACTION SHEET 20001[/b]
[b]FACT:[/b] West Nile Virus is not the virulent plague as being portrayed in the press. West Nile has been declared a mild disease by the NYC Department of Health and by Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health. It is also relevant that not one case of West Nile Virus has been detected on Staten Island.
[b]FACT:[/b] The seven people who were reported to have died from West Nile died after pesticide spraying began. In the absence of toxicological reports and even autopsy reports, there is no way of knowing to what degree the virus or pesticides exposure contributed to their deaths.
[b]FACT:[/b] Dr. Steven Davidson of Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, reports that "this year's version of the flu is early and more severe… . We are also seeing a lot more cases than last year." It is notable that the symptoms of pesticide poisoning mimic those of the flu, such as tiredness, weakness, dizziness, nausea, pain, blurred vision, etc.
[b]FACT:[/b] Many Staten Islanders were seriously affected by the blanket pesticide spraying that took place last Fall. The more than 1000 fish that turned up dead in Clove Lakes pond on Staten Island were definitively diagnosed by the Department of Environmental Conservation as having perished from pesticide spraying. It is extraordinarily negligent that no City agency was set up to record or document the many adverse medical effects on the population, their pets and our wildlife.
[b]FACT:[/b] Children absorb greater concentrations of pesticides per pound of body weight through inhalation, ingestion and contact with the skin. Children are at greatest risk because their blood brain barriers are not fully developed until the age of 15. The residues of spraying have been shown to stay for long periods in soil, grass and playground surfaces where children sit and play. In addition, small doses of neurotoxins can drastically impair learning in children.
[b]FACT:[/b] Aerial spraying is the least effective way to get rid of pests. It is not target efficient and it breeds super resilient insects. We should call upon experts that can advise on proven, alternate long-term procedures that call upon the cooperation of citizens and officials.
[b]FACT :[/b] The effect of pesticide exposure is cumulative and is contributing to the high incidence of cancer, asthma, and autoimmune diseases on Staten Island. Our borough already has a higher than normal burden of environmental toxins as a result of the Fresh Kills Landfill and from the petrochemical refineries in New Jersey. Enough is enough!
[b]FACT:[/b] Being sprayed upon with pesticides is extremely dangerous and can induce asthma attacks, respiratory failure, permanent neurological damage, and cardiac irregularities resulting in an instant heart attack. A second or continued exposure can cause the same or more violent reaction than the initial exposure. This dramatically intensifies our already high incidence of respiratory illness in this Borough.
[b]FACT:[/b] An alarming 45% of the population are most susceptible to chemical poisoning. That includes children, pregnant and nursing mothers, the elderly, those with cancer, HIV and compromised immune systems.
[b]FACT:[/b] Since the crop spraying of NYC neighborhoods last Fall, the Environmental Protection Agency has formally declared malathion a probable carcinogen. Five months after the spraying, air conditioner filters from Manhattan and Suffolk county were tested positive for the pesticides that were sprayed.
[b]FACT:[/b] Integrated Pest Management and public education can eradicate the problem. IPM has been used successfully in California and Oregon and includes monitoring and testing bird populations; the application of larvacidal oils, targeted bacteria, and Mosquitofish to mosquito breeding areas; among other strategies. Public education includes removing standing water in the vicinity; following the Cornell Cooperative with regard to lawn watering, etc.
[u][b]ACTIONS YOU CAN TAKE[/b][/u]
1. Call each of the following representatives to demand a halt to all future spraying; to report any adverse effects from the spraying; and to request a public hearing on Staten Island to allow citizens to express their outrage and concern:
Borough President Guy Molinari (718) 816-2000 Councilmen: Jerome X. O’Donovan (718) 727-9730; James Oddo (718) 980-1017; Stephen Fiala (718) 984-5151 State Senators John Marchi (718) 447-1723; Vincent J. Gentile (718) 491-2350 Senators Daniel Moynihan (212) 661-5150 and Chuck Schumer (212) 486-4430 Congressman Vito Fossella (718) 356-8400
2. For further information and action, contact Staten Island Citizens for Healthy Alternatives….. - Katherine Barbera (718) 273-5489 - Louis Blois (718) 981-2131 email: Blois@Prodigy.net
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| The Case Against Circumcision |
| 05.18.04 (6:09 pm) [edit] |
[b]The Case Against Circumcision [/b]
Issue 85, Winter 1997
By Paul M. Fleiss
Western countries have no tradition of circumcision. In antiquity, the expansion of the Greek and Roman Empires brought westerners into contact with the peoples of the Middle East, some of whom marked their children with circumcision and other sexual mutilations. To protect these children, the Greeks and Romans passed laws forbidding circumcision.1 Over the centuries, the Catholic Church has passed many similar laws.2,3 The traditional Western response to circumcision has been revulsion and indignation.
Circumcision started in America during the masturbation hysteria of the Victorian Era, when a few American doctors circumcised boys to punish them for masturbating. Victorian doctors knew very well that circumcision denudes, desensitizes, and disables the penis. Nevertheless, they were soon claiming that circumcision cured epilepsy, convulsions, paralysis, elephantiasis, tuberculosis, eczema, bed-wetting, hip-joint disease, fecal incontinence, rectal prolapse, wet dreams, hernia, headaches, nervousness, hysteria, poor eyesight, idiocy, mental retardation, and insanity.4
In fact, no procedure in the history of medicine has been claimed to cure and prevent more diseases than circumcision. As late as the 1970s, leading American medical textbooks still advocated routine circumcision as a way to prevent masturbation.5 The antisexual motivations behind an operation that entails cutting off part of the penis are obvious.
The radical practice of routinely circumcising babies did not begin until the Cold War era. This institutionalization of what amounted to compulsory circumcision was part of the same movement that pathologized and medicalized birth and actively discouraged breastfeeding. Private-sector, corporate-run hospitals institutionalized routine circumcision without ever consulting the American people. There was no public debate or referendum. It was only in the 1970s that a series of lawsuits forced hospitals to obtain parental consent to perform this contraindicated but highly profitable surgery. Circumcisers responded by inventing new "medical" reasons for circumcision in an attempt to scare parents into consenting.
Today the reasons given for circumcision have been updated to play on contemporary fears and anxieties; but one day they, too, will be considered irrational. Now that such current excuses as the claim that this procedure prevents cancer and sexually transmitted diseases have been thoroughly discredited, circumcisers will undoubtedly invent new ones. But if circumcisers were really motivated by purely medical considerations, the procedure would have died out long ago, along with leeching, skull-drilling, and castration. The fact that it has not suggests that the compulsion to circumcise came first, the "reasons," later.
Millions of years of evolution have fashioned the human body into a model of refinement, elegance, and efficiency, with every part having a function and purpose. Evolution has determined that mammals' genitals should be sheathed in a protective, responsive, multipurpose foreskin. Every normal human being is born with a foreskin. In females, it protects the glans of the clitoris; in males, it protects the glans of the penis. Thus, the foreskin is an essential part of human sexual anatomy
Parents should enjoy the arrival of a new child with as few worries as possible. The birth of a son in the US, however, is often fraught with anxiety and confusion. Most parents are pressured to hand their baby sons over to a stranger, who, behind closed doors, straps babies down and cuts their foreskins off. The billion-dollar-a-year circumcision industry has bombarded Americans with confusing rhetoric and calculated scare tactics.
Information about the foreskin itself is almost always missing from discussions about circumcision. The mass circumcision campaigns of the past few decades have resulted in pandemic ignorance about this remarkable structure and its versatile role in human sexuality. Ignorance and false information about the foreskin are the rule in American medical literature, education, and practice. Most American medical textbooks depict the human penis, without explanation, as circumcised, as if it were so by nature.
What Is the Foreskin?
The foreskin is a uniquely specialized, sensitive, functional organ of touch. No other part of the body serves the same purpose. As a modified extension of the penile shaft skin, the foreskin covers and usually extends beyond the glans before folding under itself and finding its circumferential point of attachment just behind the corona (the rim of the glans). The foreskin is, therefore, a double-layered organ. Its true length is twice the length of its external fold, comprising 80 percent or more of the penile skin covering,6 or at least 25 percent of the flaccid penis's length.7
The foreskin contains a rich concentration of blood vessels and nerve endings. It is lined with the peripenic muscle sheet, a smooth muscle layer with longitudinal fibers. These muscle fibers are whirled, forming a kind of sphincter that ensures optimum protection of the urinary tract from contaminants of all kinds.
Like the undersurface of the eyelids or the inside of the cheek, the undersurface of the foreskin consists of mucous membrane. It is divided into two distinct zones: the soft mucosa and the ridged mucosa. The soft mucosa lies against the glans penis and contains ectopic sebaceous glands that secrete emollients, lubricants, and protective antibodies. Similar glands are found in the eyelids and mouth.
Adjacent to the soft mucosa and just behind the lips of the foreskin is the ridged mucosa. This exquisitely sensitive structure consists of tightly pleated concentric bands, like the elastic bands at the top of a sock. These expandable pleats allow the foreskin lips to open and roll back, exposing the glans. The ridged mucosa gives the foreskin its characteristic taper.
On the underside of the glans, the foreskin's point of attachment is advanced toward the meatus (urethral opening) and forms a bandlike ligament called the frenulum. It is identical to the frenulum that secures the tongue to the floor of the mouth. The foreskin's frenulum holds it in place over the glans, and, in conjunction with the smooth muscle fibers, helps return the retracted foreskin to its usual forward position over the glans.
Retraction of the Foreskin
At birth, the foreskin is usually attached to the glans, very much as a fingernail is attached to a finger. By puberty, the penis will usually have completed its development, and the foreskin will have separated from the glans.8 This separation occurs in its own time; there is no set age by which the foreskin and glans must be separated. One wise doctor described the process thus, "The foreskin therefore can be likened to a rosebud which remains closed and muzzled. Like a rosebud, it will only blossom when the time is right. No one opens a rosebud to make it blossom."9
Even if the glans and foreskin separate naturally in infancy, the foreskin Ups can normally dilate only enough to allow the passage of urine. This ideal feature protects the glans from premature exposure to the external environment.
The penis develops naturally throughout childhood. Eventually, the child will, on his own, make the wondrous discovery that his foreskin will retract. There is no reason for parents, physicians, or other caregivers to manipulate a child's penis. The only person to retract a child's foreskin should be the child himself, when he has discovered that his foreskin is ready to retract.
Parents should be wary of anyone who tries to retract their child's foreskin, and especially wary of anyone who wants to cut it off. Human foreskins are in great demand for any number of commercial enterprises, and the marketing of purloined baby foreskins is a multimillion-dollar-a-yea r industry. Pharmaceutical and cosmetic companies use human foreskins as research material. Corporations such as Advanced Tissue Sciences, Organogenesis, and BioSurface Technology use human foreskins as the raw materials for a type of breathable bandage.10
What Are the Foreskin's Functions?
The foreskin has numerous protective, sensory, and sexual functions.
Protection: Just as the eyelids protect the eyes, the foreskin protects the glans and keeps its surface soft, moist, and sensitive. It also maintains optimal warmth, pH balance, and cleanliness. The glans itself contains no sebaceous glands -- glands that produce the sebum, or oil, that moisturizes our skin.11 The foreskin produces the sebum that maintains proper health the surface of the glans.
Immunological Defense: The mucous membranes that line all body orifices are the body's first line of immunological defense. Glands in the foreskin produce antibacterial and antiviral proteins such as lysozyme.12 Lysozyme is also found in tears and mother's milk. Specialized epithelial Langerhans cells, an immune system component, abound in the foreskin's outer surface.13 Plasma cells in the foreskin's mucosal lining secrete immunoglobulins, antibodies that defend against infection.14
Erogenous Sensitivity: The foreskin is as sensitive as the fingertips or the lips of the mouth. It contains a richer variety and greater concentration of specialized nerve receptors than any other part of the penis.15 These specialized nerve endings can discern motion, subtle changes in temperature, and fine gradations of texture.16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23
Coverage during Erection: As it becomes erect, the penile shaft becomes thicker and longer. The double-layered foreskin provides the skin necessary to accommodate the expanded organ and to allow the penile skin to glide freely, smoothly, and pleasurably over the shaft and glans.
Self-stimulating Sexual Functions: The foreskin's double-layered sheath enables the penile shaft skin to glide back and forth over the penile shaft. The foreskin can normally be slipped all the way, or almost all the way, back to the base of the penis, and also slipped forward beyond the glans. This wide range of motion is the mechanism by which the penis and the orgasmic triggers in the foreskin, frenulum, and glans are stimulated.
Sexual Functions in Intercourse: One of the foreskin's functions is to facilitate smooth, gentle movement between the mucosal surfaces of the two partners during intercourse. The foreskin enables the penis to slip in and out of the vagina nonabrasively inside its own slick sheath of self-lubricating, movable skin. The female is thus stimulated by moving pressure rather than by friction only, as when the male's foreskin is missing.
The foreskin fosters intimacy between the two partners by enveloping the glans and maintaining it as an internal organ. The sexual experience is enhanced when the foreskin slips back to allow the male's internal organ, the glans, to meet the female's internal organ, the cervix -- a moment of supreme intimacy and beauty.
The foreskin may have functions not yet recognized or understood. Scientists in Europe recently detected estrogen receptors in its basal epidermal cells.24 Researchers at the University of Manchester found that the human foreskin has apocrine glands.25 These specialized glands produce pheromones, nature's chemical messengers. Further studies are needed to fully understand these features of the foreskin and the role they play
Care of the Foreskin
The natural penis requires no special care. A child's foreskin, like his eyelids, is self-cleansing. For the same reason it is inadvisable to lift the eyelids and wash the eyeballs, it is inadvisable to retract a child's foreskin and wash the glans. Immersion in plain water during the bath is all that is needed to keep the intact penis clean.26
The white emollient under the child's foreskin is called smegma. Smegma is probably the most misunderstood, most unjustifiably maligned substance in nature. Smegma is clean, not dirty, and is beneficial and necessary. It moisturizes the glans and keeps it smooth, soft, and supple. Its antibacterial and antiviral properties keep the penis clean and healthy. All mammals produce smegma. Thomas J. Ritter, MD, underscored its importance when he commented, "The animal kingdom would probably cease to exist without smegma."27
Studies suggest that it is best not to use soap on the glans or foreskin's inner fold.28 Forcibly retracting and washing a baby's foreskin destroys the beneficial bacterial flora that protect the penis from harmful germs and can lead to irritation and infection. The best way to care for a child's intact penis is to leave it alone. After puberty, males can gently rinse their glans and foreskin with warm water, according to their own self-determined needs.
How Common Is Circumcision?
Circumcision is almost unheard of in Europe, South America, and non-muslim Asia. In fact, only 10 to 15 percent of men throughout the world are circumcised. The vast majority of whom are Muslim.29 The neonatal circumcision rate in the western US has now fallen to 34.2 percent.30 This relatively diminished rate may surprise American men born during the era when nearly 90 percent of baby boys were circumcised automatically, with or without their parents' consent.
How Does Circumcision Harm?
The "medical" debate about the "potential health benefits" of circumcision rarely addresses its real effects.
Circumcision denudes: Depending on the amount of skin cut off, circumcision robs a male of as much as 80 percent or more of his penile skin. Depending on the foreskin's length, cutting it off makes the penis as much as 25 percent or more shorter. Careful anatomical investigations have shown that circumcision cuts off more than 3 feet of veins, arteries, and capillaries, 240 feet of nerves, and more than 20,000 nerve endings.31 The foreskin's muscles, glands, mucous membrane, and epithelial tissue are destroyed, as well.
Circumcision desensitizes: Circumcision desensitizes the penis radically. Foreskin amputation means severing the rich nerve network and all the nerve receptors in the foreskin itself. Circumcision almost always damages or destroys the frenulum. The loss of the protective foreskin desensitizes the glans. Because the membrane covering the permanently externalized glans is now subjected to constant abrasion and irritation, it keratinizes, becoming dry and tough. The nerve endings in the glans, which in the intact penis are just beneath the surface of the mucous membrane, are now buried by successive layers of keratinization. The denuded glans takes on a dull, grayish, sclerotic appearance.
Circumcision disables: The amputation of so much penile skin permanently immobilizes whatever skin remains, preventing it from gliding freely over the shaft and glans. This loss of mobility destroys the mechanism by which the glans is normally stimulated. When the circumcised penis becomes erect, the immobilized remaining skin is stretched, sometimes so tightly that not enough skin is left to cover the erect shaft. Hair-bearing skin from the groin and scrotum is often pulled onto the shaft, where hair is not normally found. The surgically externalized mucous membrane of the glans has no sebaceous glands. Without the protection and emollients of the foreskin, it dries out, making it susceptible to cracking and bleeding.
Circumcision disfigures: Circumcision alters the appearance of the penis drastically. It permanently externalizes the glans, normally an internal organ. Circumcision leaves a large circumferential surgical scar on the penile shaft. Because circumcision usually necessitates tearing the foreskin from the glans, pieces of the glans may be torn off, too, leaving it pitted and scarred. Shreds of foreskin may adhere to the raw glans, forming tags and bridges of dangling, displaced skin.32
Depending on the amount of skin cut off and how the scar forms, the circumcised penis may be permanently twisted, or curve or bow during erection.33 The contraction of the scar tissue may pull the shaft into the abdomen, in effect shortening the penis or burying it completely.34
Circumcision disrupts circulation: Circumcision interrupts the normal circulation of blood throughout the penile skin system and glans. The blood flowing into major penile arteries is obstructed by the line of scar tissue at the point of incision, creating backflow instead of feeding the branches and capillary networks beyond the scar. Deprived of blood, the meatus may contract and scarify, obstructing the flow of urine.35 This condition, known as meatal stenosis, often requires corrective surgery. Meatal stenosis is found almost exclusively among boys who have been circumcised.
Circumcision also severs the lymph vessels, interrupting the circulation of lymph and sometimes causing lymphedema, a painful, disfiguring condition in which the remaining skin of the penis swells with trapped lymph fluid.
Circumcision harms the developing brain: Recent studies published in leading medical journals have reported that circumcision has long-lasting detrimental effects on the developing brain,36 adversely altering the brain's perception centers. Circumcised boys have a lower pain threshold than girls or intact boys.37 Developmental neuropsychologist Dr. James Prescott suggests that circumcision can cause deeper and more disturbing levels of neurological damage, as well.38,39
Circumcision is unhygienic and unhealthy: One of the most common myths about circumcision is that it makes the penis cleaner and easier to take care of This is not true. Eyes without eyelids would not be cleaner; neither would a penis without its foreskin. The artificially externalized glans and meatus of the circumcised penis are constantly exposed to abrasion and dirt, making the circumcised penis, in fact, more unclean. The loss of the protective foreskin leaves the urinary tract vulnerable to invasion by bacterial and viral pathogens.
The circumcision wound is larger than most people imagine. It is not just the circular point of union between the outer and inner layers of the remaining skin. Before a baby is circumcised, his foreskin must be torn from his glans, literally skinning it alive. This creates a large open area of raw, bleeding flesh, covered at best with a layer of undeveloped protomucosa. Germs can easily enter the damaged tissue and blood-stream through the raw glans and, even more easily, through the incision itself.
Even after the wound has healed, the externalized glans and meatus are still forced into constant unnatural contact with urine, feces, chemically treated diapers, and other contaminants.
Female partners of circumcised men do not report a lower rate of cervical cancer,40 nor does circumcision prevent penile cancer.41 A recent study shows that the penile cancer rate is higher in the US than in Denmark, where circumcision, except among Middle Eastern immigrant workers, is almost unheard of.42 Indeed, researchers should investigate the possibility that circumcision has actually increased the rate of these diseases.
Circumcision does not prevent acquisition or transmission of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). In fact, the US has both the highest percentage of sexually active circumcised males in the Western world and the highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS. Rigorously controlled prospective studies show that circumcised American men are at a greater risk for bacterial and viral STDs, especially gonorrhea,43 non-gonoccal urethritis,44 human papilloma virus,45 herpes simplex virus type 2,46 and chlamydia.47
Circumcision is always risky:Circumcision always carries the risk of serious, even tragic, consequences. Its surgical complication rate is one in 500.48 These complications include uncontrollable bleeding and fatal infections.49 There are many published case reports of gangrene following circumcision.50 Pathogenic bacteria such as staphylococcus, proteus, pseudomonas, other coliforms, and even tuberculosis can cause infections leading to death.51,52 These organisms enter the wound because it provides easy entry, not because the child is predisposed to infection.
Medical journals have published numerous accounts of babies who have had part or all of their glans cut off while they were being circumcised.53,54,55 Other fully conscious, unanesthetized babies have had their entire penis burned off with an electrocautery gun.56,57,58 The September 1989 Journal of Urology published an account of four such cases.59 The article described the sex-change operation as "feminizing genito-plasty," performed on these babies in an attempt to change them into girls. The March 1997 Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine described one young person's horror on learning that "she" had been born a normal male, but that a circumciser had burned his penis off when he was a baby.60 Many other similar cases have been documented.61,62 Infant circumcision has a reported death rate of one in 500,000.63,64
Circumcision harms mothers: Scientific studies have consistently shown that circumcision disrupts a child's behavioral development. Studies performed at the University of Colorado School of Medicine showed that circumcision is followed by prolonged, unrestful non-REM (rapid eye movement) sleep.65 In response to the lengthy bombardment of their neural pathways with unbearable pain, the circumcised babies withdrew into a kind of semicoma that lasted days or even weeks.
Numerous other studies have proven that circumcision disrupts the mother-infant bond during the crucial period after birth. Research has also shown that circumcision disrupts feeding patterns. In a study at the Washington University School of Medicine, most babies would not nurse right after they were circumcised, and those who did would not look into their mothers' eyes.66
Circumcision violates patients' and human rights: No one has the right to cut off any part of someone else's genitals without that person's competent, fully informed consent. Since it is the infant who must bear the consequences, circumcision violates his legal rights both to refuse treatment and to seek alternative treatment. In 1995, the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Bioethics stated that only a competent patient can give patient consent or informed consent.67 an infant is obviously too young to consent to anything. He must be protected from anyone who would take advantage of his defenselessness. The concept of informed parental permission allows for medical interventions in situations of clear and immediate medical necessity only, such as disease, trauma, or deformity. The human penis in its normal, uncircumcised state satisfies none of these requirements.
Physicians have a duty to refuse to perform circumcision. They also must educate parents who, out of ignorance or misguidance, request this surgery for their sons. The healthcare professional's obligation is to protect the interests of the child. It is unethical in the extreme to force upon a child an amputation he almost certainly would never have chosen for himself.
Common Sense
To be intact, as nature intended, is best. The vast majority of males who are given the choice value their wholeness and keep their foreskins, for the same reason they keep their other organs of perception. Parents in Europe and non-Muslim Asia never have forced their boys to be circumcised. It would no more occur to them to cut off part of their boys' penises than it would to cut off part of their ears. Respecting a child's right to keep his genitals intact is normal and natural. It is conservative in the best sense of the word.
A circumcised father who has mixed feelings about his intact newborn son may require gentle, compassionate psychological counseling to help him come to terms with his loss and to overcome his anxieties about normal male genitalia. In such cases, the mother should steadfastly protect her child, inviting her husband to share this protective role and helping him diffuse his negative feelings. Most parents want what is best for their baby. Wise parents listen to their hearts and trust their instinct to protect their baby from harm. The experience of the ages has shown that babies thrive best in a trusting atmosphere of love, gentleness, respect, acceptance, nurturing, and intimacy. Cutting off a baby's foreskin shatters this trust.
Circumcision wounds and harms the baby and the person the baby will become. Parents who respect their son's wholeness are bequeathing to him his birthright -- his body, perfect and beautiful in its entirety.
for further information and notes from this article, visit this link http://www.mothering.com/10-0...
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| WHAT SYMPTOMS TO EXPECT WHEN YOU IMPROVE YOUR DIET |
| 05.14.04 (7:51 am) [edit] |
[b]WHAT SYMPTOMS TO EXPECT WHEN YOU IMPROVE YOUR DIET[/b]
Perhaps the greatest misunderstanding in the field of nutrition is the failure to understand and interpret the symptoms and changes which follow the beginning of a better nutritional program. A remarkable thing happens when a person improves the quality of the food he consumes. When the food you ingest is of a higher quality than the tissues from which the body is made, the body discards the lower quality tissues, to make room for the higher quality materials to make healthier tissue.
During this process of regeneration, lasting about 10 days to several weeks, the emphasis is on breaking down and eliminating lower quality tissue. The vibrant energy often found in the external parts of the body, the muscles and skin, moves to vital internal organs and starts reconstruction. This movement of energy produces a feeling of less energy in the muscles, which the mind interprets as weakness. At this time, more rest and sleep is often needed, and it's imperative to avoid stimulants of any kind which will abort and defeat the regenerative process. Remember, the body isn't getting weaker, it's simply using it's energies in more important internal work rather than external work involving muscle movements. With patience and diligence, a person will soon feel more energy than before.
By ingesting higher quality foods, the body begins a process called "retracing". The initial focus is on eliminating waste and toxins deposited in the tissues. However, the process creates symptoms that are often misinterpreted. For example, a person who stops consuming coffee or chocolate may experience headaches and a general letdown. The body begins discarding toxins (caffeine or theobromin) by removing them from the tissues and transporting them through the bloodstream. However, before toxins are passed, through elimination, they register in our consciousness as pain, in other words, a headache. These same toxins also stimulate the heart to beat more rapidly, thus producing the feeling of exhilaration. The letdown is due to the slower action of the heart which produces a depressed mind state.
The symptoms experienced during "retracing" are part of the healing process! They are not deficiencies. Do not treat them with stimulants or drugs. These symptoms are constructive, even though unpleasant at the moment. Don't try to cure the cure. The symptoms will vary according to the materials being discarded, the condition of the organs involved in the elimination, and the amount of available energy.
They can include:
headaches, fever/chills, colds, skin eruptions, constipation/diarrhea, frequent urination, fatigue/sluggishness, nervousness, irritability, depression.
The symptoms will be milder and pass more quickly if one gets more rest and sleep. Understand that the body becomes healthier by eliminating wastes and toxins. Had they remained trapped in the tissues, eventually they would have brought illness and disease, thus causing greater pain and suffering. "The body is becoming healthier by eliminating toxins"
Finally, don't expect to improve your diet and feel better and better every day, until you reach perfection.
The body is cyclical in nature. Health returns in a series of gradually diminishing cycles. For example, you may begin eating better and start feeling better. After some time, you experience a symptom such as nausea or diarrhea.
After a day, you feel even better than before and all goes well for a while. Then you suddenly develop a cold, the chills and lose your appetite. Without the use of drugs, you recover from these symptoms and suddenly you feel great. This well-being continues for a time until you break out in a rash. The rash flares up, but finally disappears, and suddenly you feel better than you've felt in years. As the body becomes pure, each reaction becomes milder and shorter in duration, followed by longer and longer periods of feeling better than ever before, until finally you reach a level plateau... vibrant health.
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| Chemotherapy and mustard gas |
| 05.11.04 (9:52 am) [edit] |
[u][b]Did you know that the poison used for Chemotherapy is Mustard Gas?[/b][/u]
Knowledge is power and that is why I have created this blog. To share with people what I have learned about the so called health system and how it works.
This is the latest knowledge that I have come to learn. Chemotherapy is Mustard Gas! If you are not familiar with Mustard Gas, it was used in WWI to kill and it kills well. Here is some info on Mustard Gas - or Chemotherapy!
[b]Severe irritant.
Contact with vapor or liquid can be fatal.[/b]
[b]Do not breathe fumes.
Skin contact must be avoided at all times.[/b]
EFFECTS OF SHORT-TERM EXPOSURE:
MUSTARD damages the tissues the eyes, skin and respiratory tract. The skin healing process is very slow. Exposure to nearly lethal doses can injure the bone marrow, lymph nodes, and spleen causing a drop in white blood cell counts and an increased risk for developing infections.
MUSTARD exposure can also cause a cholinergic toxicity: excessive saliva, tearing, urination, gastrointestinal cramping and diarrhea, vomiting, small pupils.
EFFECTS OF LONG-TERM OR REPEATED EXPOSURE:
The rate of detoxification is very slow in the body and repeated exposures produce cumulative effects including chronic lung impairment (cough, shortness of breath, chest pain), cancer of the mouth, throat, respiratory tract and skin, and leukemia. It may also cause birth defects. [u][b]A human carcinogen[/b][/u].
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It is a known human carcinogen! Now if that isn't enough to scare someone away I don't know what is. I know that they say Chemotherapy can save lives, but in my personal life time I have yet to see it and I have seen a lot of people who have cancer, take chemotherapy and die. And a few (only one actually) who did survive the Chemotherapy for a while, ended up getting a more severe cancer a few years later and died.
If Chemotherapy is poison! Which it is!!! No matter how small the amount, you are poisoning your body. Doesn't it make more sense to give your body what it needs to be healthy and build your body up! Someone close to me was diagnosed with prostate cancer five years ago and chose not to take Chemotherapy and Radiation. He chose to change his diet and his life style, and he is doing well today. I believe if he had chosen Chemo, he would be in the grave like so many others I have loved and lost to this injection of poison.
My best friend chose not to take Chemo when she was diagnosed with cancer and she died at 60lbs. Her body wasted away to nothing. [b]She died of Cancer![/b] Most people that take Chemo suffer from some other illness that takes their life, like pneumonia or something like that. Not from the actual cancer. And do you know that they would go down in the books as a pneumonia death and not a cancer death. Now doesn't that change the statistics we are given!!!
Some thoughts and information for the day!
Amanda
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| Pesticides too harmful to use in any form, doctors warn |
| 05.07.04 (7:28 am) [edit] |
""The review found consistent evidence of the health risks to patients with exposure to pesticides," the study said, naming brain cancer, prostate cancer, kidney cancer, pancreatic cancer and leukemia among many other acute illnesses.
As well, the college found consistent links between parents' exposure to certain agricultural pesticides at their jobs and effects on a growing fetus ranging from damage to death. The risks, they concluded, can come even from residue on food, ant spray and the tick collar on the family cat....
....Chris Krepski, a spokesman for the Pest Management Regulatory Agency, an arm of Health Canada, added that a pesticide cannot be registered for use in Canada if it has the potential to cause birth defects."
Here we again see the consistent bull from Health Canada who it seems only work for their industry friends using our tax money. Protecting their constituents, it's primary mandate, is used as a convenient pretense to keep the trusting public at bay.
Here is quote from the fourth federal audit on pesticides:
"The government's failure to produce timely results leaves Canadians wondering if they are being unnecessarily exposed to dangerous toxic substances on their own front lawns. My annual report, tabled yesterday in the House of Commons, found that such delays are common at the Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA), a branch of Health Canada. Ottawa is not managing pesticides effectively, nor can it honestly say that pesticide use in Canada is safe."
Pesticides: a grave oversight http://www.newmediaexplorer.o...
Chris Gupta
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/chris/2004/04/29/pest icides_too_harmful_to_use _in_any_form_doctors_warn .htm" title="http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/chris/2004/04/29/pest icides_too_harmful_to_use _in_any_form_doctors_warn .htm" target="_blank"http://www.newmediaexplorer.o...
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[b]Pesticides too harmful to use in any form, doctors warn[/b]http://www.theglobeandmail.co...
By ALANNA MITCHELL
UPDATED AT 5:26 PM EDT Saturday, Apr. 24, 2004
The link between common household pesticides and fetal defects, neurological damage and the most deadly cancers is strong enough that family doctors in Ontario are urging citizens to avoid the chemicals in any form.
The frightening message came yesterday when the Ontario College of Family Physicians released the most comprehensive study ever done in Canada on the chronic effects of pesticide exposure at home, in the garden and at work.
"The review found consistent evidence of the health risks to patients with exposure to pesticides," the study said, naming brain cancer, prostate cancer, kidney cancer, pancreatic cancer and leukemia among many other acute illnesses.
As well, the college found consistent links between parents' exposure to certain agricultural pesticides at their jobs and effects on a growing fetus ranging from damage to death. The risks, they concluded, can come even from residue on food, ant spray and the tick collar on the family cat.
The researchers also found that children are far more vulnerable to the effects of pesticides than adults because their bodies are growing, they have a greater skin surface in proportion to their size than adults, they ingest more food for their size than adults and they often have less-developed systems to excrete chemicals.
Not only that, but after examining 12,000 studies conducted from 1990 to 2003 around the world, and winnowing that down to the most sound 250, the researchers said there is no evidence that some pesticides are less dangerous than others, just that they have different effects on health that take different periods to show up.
They said they are preparing brochures for patients and education material for family doctors to fill them in on the findings.
However, Lorne Hepworth, president of CropLife Canada, a trade association representing the large multinational companies that manufacture pesticides, said he questioned whether the college, a voluntary, not-for-profit association, really had the public's interest at heart in releasing the data:
"Pesticides used properly constitute no unacceptable risk to people's health or to the environment."
He added that pesticides are highly regulated in Canada by federal health staff and must go through a raft of tests, including some on animals to see if the products cause cancer, before they are approved for use.
Not only that, but the federal laws governing pesticides were tightened two years ago to make them protect children better and match more closely the tougher standards in the United States and in other countries, he said.
He pointed out that other studies have shown that pesticide use also provides a safe and abundant source of fruits and vegetables in Canada, and that consuming these can cut cancer risks.
Chris Krepski, a spokesman for the Pest Management Regulatory Agency, an arm of Health Canada, added that a pesticide cannot be registered for use in Canada if it has the potential to cause birth defects.
"As long as they are used according to the label directions, they can be used safely," he said.
The massive scientific literature review comes as many cities across Canada are trying to ban the use of pesticides to make gardens and lawns pest-free and as efforts increase to get rid of mosquito larvae before West Nile season.
Toronto's law came into effect this month complete with posters showing a dandelion and the caption: "Relax. It's just a weed."
Quebec has already banned the most common lawn and garden pesticides across the province starting next year.
The Canadian Cancer Society, the Learning Disabilities Association of Canada, the Registered Nurses Association of Canada and the Ontario Public Health Association have called for the bans as well.
Cathy Vakil, of the Family Medicine Centre at Queen's University in Kingston and one of the authors of the report, noted that alternatives to pesticides are available in most cases and should be considered because the negative effects of some chemicals can be passed down through generations.
"People need to think long and hard if they want to take that risk for themselves, their children and their grandchildren for the sake of a golf-green lawn," she said.
She also noted that the pesticides used in Toronto's 200,000 storm sewers to kill mosquito larvae emit a product as they break down that is a retinoid, a family of chemicals known to cause limb deformities in fetuses.
That chemical then washes into Lake Ontario and in turn into the drinking water of the Greater Toronto Area.
However, Lorraine Van Haastrecht, spokeswoman for a lobby group representing companies that treat 100,000 lawns in Toronto, said Canada needs "healthy green spaces."
And Gavin Dawson, technical manager of Greenspace Services, the largest company in Canada to treat lawns, said that while his company offers pesticide-free service, only about 10 per cent of customers want that. The rest want pesticides.
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I think if people really knew and understood the harm they are putting everyone, including themselves in by using these toxic chemicals, they would make the choice not to use them. But we are not being told the truth about the potential danger of these chemicals!
[b]Amanda[/b]
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Here I am! After a year and a half of living on mostly raw food, my mind, body and spirit are transformed.
To read my story, visit my web site at www.rawesome.com
Live a vibrant life!
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