Welcome back to New World Next Week - the video series from Corbett Report & Media Monarchy that covers some of the most important developments in alternative news & open source intelligence. This week:
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fanta has 300x more pesticide than tap water from daily mail: Fizzy drinks sold by Coca-Cola in Britain have been found to contain pesticides at up to 300 times the level allowed in tap or bottled water. A worldwide study found pesticide levels in orange and lemon drinks sold under the Fanta brand, which is popular with children, were at their highest in the UK. The research team called on the Government, the industry and the company to act to remove the chemicals and called for new safety standards to regulate the soft drinks market. The industry denies children are at risk and insists that the levels found by researchers based at the University of Jaen in southern Spain are not harmful.
merck seeks fda approval for gardasil in boys from wsj: Merck is asking federal regulators to expand the use of its human papillomavirus vaccine to boys and young men. The company has asked the FDA to approve the Gardasil vaccine’s use in males ages 9 to 26 years to prevent genital warts and other lesions, CNBC’s Mike Huckman reported. In 2006, the FDA approved giving the vaccine to girls and women of those ages. We talked with a Merck spokeswoman who pointed to studies showing Gardasil’s effectiveness in young males. But the request will likely renew questions about Gardasil’s cost-effectiveness, especially with a price tag of $360 for a three-dose regimen. In August, Harvard researchers suggested the vaccine wasn’t worth the cost in older women likely to have been exposed to HPV by the time they were to get vaccinated. Merck has also asked the FDA to expand Gardasil’s use to women ages 27 to 45 years. The vaccine is a key product for Merck, which estimates sales this year of as much as $1.6 billion. But sales have slowed, down 4% in the third quarter compared to a year earlier.
terrorists could enlist '6-legged soldiers' in bio-attack from danger room: Terrorists could easily contrive an "insect-based" weapon to import an exotic disease, according to an entomologist who's promoting a book on the subject. Jeffrey Lockwood, an entomologist at the University of Wyoming, is on the talk show circuit to promote his new book, Six-legged Soldiers: Using Insects as Weapons of War. He told BBC Radio 4's Today program that planning a bio-terror attack using insects would "probably be much easier" than developing nuclear or chemical weapons. 'Today' does not post the transcript, but the Daily Telegraph quotes him as saying: "It would be a relatively easy and simple process ... A few hundred dollars and a plane ticket and you could have a pretty good stab at it."
Nothing like a little bio-warfare scare to drum up sales for your book. Military historian Max Hastings, for one, gave Lockwood's book a less-than-stellar review this weekend in the London Sunday Times. But he also noted:
"The last section of Lockwood's book is the most plausible and interesting, because it addresses the risks of biological terrorism in our own times. In particular, the author speculates about the consequences if terrorists were to broadcast Aedes aegypti, the mosquito that carries the yellow fever virus. The consequences of a yellow fever epidemic in America, where scarcely anyone is inoculated against the disease, could be devastating."
US natural hazard death map is produced from upi: Scientists using nationwide data collected since 1970 have produced a map depicting natural hazard mortality across the United States. Susan Cutter and Kevin Borden from the University of South Carolina said their map presents a county-level representation of the likelihood of dying as the result of natural events such as floods, earthquakes or extreme weather. "This work will enable research and emergency management practitioners to examine hazard deaths through a geographic lens," the researchers said. "Using this as a tool to identify areas with higher than average hazard deaths can justify allocation of resources to these areas with the goal of reducing loss of life." Cutter and Borden found hazard mortality most prominent in the southern part of the nation, where most people were killed by various severe weather hazards and tornadoes. Other areas of elevated risk are the northern Great Plains where heat and drought were the biggest killers, and in the western mountains with winter weather and flooding deaths. Heat and drought ranked highest among the hazard categories, causing 19.6 percent of total deaths, closely followed by severe summer weather 18.8 percent, and winter weather 18.1 percent. The map is featured in the International Journal of Health Geographics.
mystery illness paralyses girl given cervical cancer jab from times online: A 12-year-old schoolgirl has been left paralysed from the waist down by a mystery illness that came on 30 minutes after she was given the new anticervical cancer jab. Ashleigh Cave suffered dizziness and headaches soon after the vaccination at her school and then deteriorated rapidly, collapsing several times over the following days. A week later she was admitted to hospital after losing all strength in her legs and, two months on, there has been no improvement. Her mother Cheryl, 37, from Aintree, Merseyside, is blaming her daughter’s condition on the human papillomavirus (HPV) jab, which was introduced in Britain in September as part of a government-funded vaccination programme... In America, where an immunisation programme using a similar product, Gardasil, began more than a year earlier, there have been dozens of serious “adverse events” reported in which a link to the vaccinations is suspected.
video: sorting sellafield: inventions aid nuclear clean-up from bbc: Sellafield's reactors and reprocessing bunkers are being decommissioned six decades after the plant began life. It made plutonium for nuclear weapons and generated electricity for the national grid. The Nuclear Research Laboratory's Fiona Rayment gives a guided tour of the plant's new research centre. The lab has been designed to reinvigorate the UK's nuclear industry amid a review of how much electricity should be developed by nuclear power stations.
scientists call ap report on global warming 'hysteria' from fox news: Scientists skeptical of the assertion that climate change is the result of man's activites are criticizing a recent Associated Press report on global warming, calling it "irrational hysteria," "horrifically bad" and "incredibly biased." They say the report, which was published on Monday, contained sweeping scientific errors and was a one-sided portrayal of a complicated issue. "If the issues weren't so serious and the ramifications so profound, I would have to laugh at it," said David Deming, a geology professor at the University of Oklahoma who has been critical of media reporting on the climate change issue. In the article, Obama Left with Little Time to Curb Global Warming, AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein wrote that global warming is "a ticking time bomb that President-elect Barack Obama can't avoid," and that "global warming is accelerating." Deming, in an interview, took issue with Borenstein's characterization of a problem he says doesn't exist. "He says global warming is accelerating. Not only is it continuing, it's accelerating, and whether it's continuing that was completely beyond the evidence," Deming told FOXNews.com. "The mean global temperature, at least as measured by satellite, is now the same as it was in the year 1980. In the last couple of years sea level has stopped rising. Hurricane and cyclone activity in the northern hemisphere is at a 24-year low and sea ice globally is also the same as it was in 1980." Deming said the article is further evidence of the media's decision to talk about global warming as fact, despite what he says is a lack of evidence.
1st US face transplant done in ohio from washington times: A woman so horribly disfigured she was willing to risk her life to do something about it has undergone the first near-total face transplant in the U.S., the Cleveland Clinic announced Tuesday. Reconstructive surgeon Dr. Maria Siemionow and a team of other specialists replaced 80 percent of the woman's face with that of a female cadaver a couple of weeks ago in a bold and controversial operation certain to stoke the debate over the ethics of such surgery. The patient's name and age were not released, and the hospital said her family wanted the reason for her transplant to remain confidential. The hospital plans a news conference Wednesday and would not give details until then. The transplant was the fourth worldwide; two have been done in France, and one was performed in China.
study: US media keeps people uneducated about health issues from alternet: "Blaming the media" is a catchphrase that is used in almost cliché-level proportions. But when it comes to health care, a new study indicates it may be appropriate to fault media coverage for a lack of public knowledge about health care policy -- and by extension, the false perception of reproductive rights as ideological "hot rods" rather than women's health concerns. A recently released Pew Research study conducted with the Kaiser Family Foundation monitored health coverage from January 2007 to June 2008 to determine which subjects got the most coverage, and in which media. The study was designed to be particularly broad-ranging -- rather than, for instance, analyzing how TV news covers breast cancer, the study looked at how television, radio, print, online outlets and other forms of media covered everything heath-related, from specific diseases to health policy and more. What were the results? According to the report, "News about health occupies a relatively small amount of American news coverage across all platforms: 3.6 percent of news during 2007 and the first half of 2008." In a list of most frequently covered topics, health came in eighth -- far above religion, education and celebrities, but below the economy, crime, foreign affairs and politics. These results, while hardly thrilling, don't seem abysmal at first. Health gets more coverage than celebrities, after all, which seems like a victory in our current climate. But compounding the small amount of attention devoted to health, the breakdown within existing health coverage shows a tendency to focus on controversial or sensational aspects of health issues, leaving vital policy information behind. One need only to think about the extreme health stories on the nightly news (Are your pills contaminated? Are your children at risk from a rare strain of X?) to understand the crux of the problem. Why focus on the actual public ramifications of various diseases and policies when Jenny McCarthy and Amanda Peet are going at it over autism? Or we can lure people in front of the TV by frightening them?
officials call off controversial autism study from reuters: Health officials have called off plans for a study examining a controversial type of treatment that some autism activists have touted as alternative medical therapy for children with the condition. The National Institute of Mental Health, or NIMH, part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, said in a statement on Wednesday that it has canceled a study aimed at assessing the effectiveness of a treatment called chelation. Chelation (pronounced key-LAY-shun) is a type of therapy in which a man-made amino acid, called EDTA, is added to the blood, and it has been used to treat heavy metal poisoning. Some autism activists have advocated it on the theory - rejected by most scientists - that autism is triggered by exposure to mercury, a heavy metal, from childhood vaccines.
study finds no autism link in vaccine from washington post: A common vaccine given to children to protect them against measles, mumps and rubella is not linked to autism, a study published yesterday concludes. The findings contradict earlier research that had fueled fears of a possible link between childhood vaccinations and a steep increase in autism diagnoses. In February 1998, the Lancet journal published a study by British researcher Andrew Wakefield of 12 children with autism and other behavioral problems that suggested the onset of their behavioral abnormalities was linked to receiving the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine. The new study comes as the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington is in the midst of evaluating evidence on whether children's vaccines are implicated in causing autism. A special master is evaluating three different kinds of claims - two of which specifically link the MMR vaccine with autism.
from steve watson: Immigrants seeking permanent legal residency in the U.S. are now mandated to take an expensive and controversial vaccine that has been linked with thousands of serious complaints and several deaths. The Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine — known as Gardasil — is one of five the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services recently added to the required list, reports Fox 8 News. A press release from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Agency confirms that the requirements for the vaccine went into effect on July 1, 2008. The regulation represents a total dismissal of the recommendation of Dr. Jon Abramson, chairman of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s advisory committee on immunization practices. In February 2007, Abramson said that he and the 15-member panel at the CDC opposed making Gardasil mandatory because the sexually transmitted HPV is not a contagious disease like measles or chicken pox. At $162 per dose, the three-dose vaccine is set to make millions in profits for Gardasil manufacturer Merck, a company that has a history of both lobbying intensely for state mandates and entering into crony deals to hoodwink Americans into believing HPV vaccinations are compulsory.
drugs affect more drinking water from ap: Testing prompted by an Associated Press story that revealed trace amounts of pharmaceuticals in drinking water supplies has shown that more Americans are affected by the problem than previously thought — at least 46 million. That's up from 41 million people reported by the AP in March as part of an investigation into the presence of pharmaceuticals in the nation's waterways. The AP stories prompted federal and local legislative hearings, brought about calls for mandatory testing and disclosure, and led officials in at least 27 additional metropolitan areas to analyze their drinking water. Positive tests were reported in 17 cases, including Reno, Nev., Savannah, Ga., Colorado Springs, Colo., and Huntsville, Ala. Results are pending in three others.
pot kills superbugs from parallel normal: Several compounds in cannabis are known to kill bacteria. Now Italian scientists believe pot can take on today’s superbugs. Anti-bacterial cannabinoids might also “provide a more environmentally-friendly alternative to synthetic antibacterial substances now widely used in personal care items, including soaps and cosmetics,” according to an announcement from the American Chemical Society. The ACS also suggests that marijuana-derived meds can be made without THC, pot’s primary psychoactive substance.
teach 'the pleasure of gay sex' to children as young as five from daily mail: Children as young as five should be taught to understand the pleasures of gay sex, according to leaders of a taxpayer-funded education project. Heads of the project have set themselves a goal of 'creating primary classrooms where queer sexualities are affirmed and celebrated'. The ambition was revealed in documents prepared for the No Outsiders project run by researchers from universities and backed with £600,000 of public money provided by the Economic and Social Research Council.
from raw replay: A Michigan teen suffered a severe reaction two months after getting the Gardasil shot, Abbie Boudreau reports. This video is from CNN.com, broadcast August 11, 2008.
los angeles to resume controversial cloud-seeding project from xinhua: Facing severe water supply shortage, Los Angeles plans to launch a controversial cloud-seeding project that they believe will boost rainfall and raise the levels of local reservoirs, a newspaper report said Monday. The project, which will rely on injecting clouds with silver iodide particles, has won approval from Los Angeles county supervisors and is slated to begin this winter. Officials decided to resume the program after a seven-year lapse caused by concerns over mudslides in some mountain areas ravaged by brush fires, according to the Los Angeles Times. With California gripped by dry weather and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declaring a statewide drought, cloud-seeding is attracting both fresh attention and skeptics.
cdc begins investigation into morgellons from natural news: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is launching an investigation into a still-unexplained collection of symptoms known as Morgellons disease. The condition known as Morgellons disease is characterized primarily by skin lesions that do not heal, as well as unexplained sensations of crawling, biting or stinging on the skin; the presence of foreign materials, such as fibers, on or under the skin; fatigue; joint pain; memory loss; mental confusion and vision changes.
an about-face on natural health products & bill c-51 from vancouver sun: In a surprising about-face, Health Minister Tony Clement has agreed to key demands of the natural health products industry after the sector launched a grassroots campaign against restrictions on homeopathic medicines and herbal remedies in new legislation. When Clement proposed amendments to the Food and Drugs Act in April, natural medicines were lumped in with pharmaceutical drugs, raising concerns they would be subject to the same type of oversight. He now admits it was a mistake not to create a separate category under the law.
scientist says dolphin deaths look like a mass suicide (caused by military sonar yet again) from guardian: The dolphins that died after becoming beached in Cornwall had ingested debris and mud, leading one of the scientists who examined some of the corpses to compare their deaths to a "mass suicide". Vic Simpson, who has been involved in the postmortem examinations of some of the 26 dolphins that died, said yesterday: "On the face of it, it looks like some sort of mass suicide - but the question is why?"
2 more girls die after getting gardasil from natural news: The European Medicines Agency (EMEA) has reported that two young women died shortly after receiving Merck's Gardasil, a vaccine against several varieties of human papillomavirus (HPV).
fruit, veggies & tea may rotect smokers from cancer from intern daily: Tobacco smokers who eat three servings of fruits and vegetables per day and drink green or black tea may be protecting themselves from lung cancer, according to a first-of-its-kind study by UCLA cancer researchers.
the US hs no remaining grain reserves from tri-state observer: Larry Matlack, President of the American Agriculture Movement (AAM), has raised concerns over the issue of U.S. grain reserves after it was announced that the sale of 18.37 million bushels of wheat from USDA’s Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) Bill Emerson Humanitarian Trust. “According to the May 1, 2008 CCC inventory report there are only 24.1 million bushels of wheat in inventory, so after this sale there will be only 2.7 million bushels of wheat left the entire CCC inventory,” warned Matlack.
bird flu can mix with human influenza virus: research from asd: A worrying new research paper has been published in the United States. It proves that H5N1 bird flu, which has so far only killed people in its pure form is capable of combining with conventional human flu viruses. A mutated virus combining human flu and bird flu is the nightmare strain which scientists fear could create a worldwide pandemic. The research was conducted in a laboratory by the US Centers for Disease Control... Listen to the story in REAL AUDIO and WINDOWS MEDIA and MP3 formats.
the grass-roots marijuana wars from time: Don Duncan says he is not a pot smoker. "I haven't in eight or nine years now," says Duncan, 37. "It wasn't the right thing for me." Which is ironic, since he spends most of his day around plenty of cannabis as part owner of a West Hollywood, Calif. dispensary of medical marijuana... Lately, however, Duncan directed more energy toward his role as California director of Americans for Safe Access, a group of merchants, doctors and patients that aims to make it easier to dispense and obtain marijuana for medical purposes. The organization's central mission: fighting U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration raids on dispensaries.
scientists scared of nanotech in common products from azonano: Valued for it's antibacterial and odor-fighting properties, nanoparticle silver is becoming the star attraction in a range of products from socks to bandages to washing machines. But as silver's benefits propel it to the forefront of consumer nanomaterials, scientists are recommending a closer examination of the unforeseen environmental and health consequences of nanosilver. “The general public needs to be aware that there are unknown risks associated with the products they buy containing nanomaterials,” researchers Paul Westerhoff and Troy M. Benn said in a report scheduled for the 235th national meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS).
girls aged 12 'temporarily sterilised' from brisbane times: Aboriginal girls as young as 12 have received long-lasting contraceptive implants, according to the Queensland opposition, which claims "temporary sterilisation" tacitly approves of under-age sex, but fails to prevent sexually transmitted infections. Jann Stuckey, the opposition spokeswoman on child safety, said at least four - and possibly five - adolescent girls had received the implant Implanon over the past two years, in Woorabinda, central Queensland.
merck minimized the true risks of vioxx from afp: The risk of death linked to Merck's anti-inflammatory drug Vioxx was minimized in trial studies the company made public, according to a study out Tuesday. The report, appearing in the April 18 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), compares Merck's internal data from 2001 with the results of clinical tests made public in 2004 and 2005. Merck voluntarily withdrew Vioxx from sale in September 2004 after a 2001 company internal study showed the drug doubled the risks of heart attack in patients who took it for 18 months or longer.
childhood vaccine linked to convulsions from ap: Children suffered higher rates of fever-related convulsions when they got a Merck & Co. combination vaccine instead of two separate shots, according to a new study presented Wednesday. The results prompted a federal advisory panel on vaccines to water down their preference for the combo vaccine ProQuad, which protects against measles, mumps and rubella as well as chickenpox.
don't stop taking anti-depressants, doctors urge from afp: Doctors urged patients to keep taking their anti-depressants Wednesday despite a scientific study showing that the drugs are little more effective than placebos in treating depression. Doctors are warning their patients not to suddenly stop taking the medication prescribed to them... "Given these results, there seems little reason to prescribe anti-depressant medication to any but the most severely depressed patients unless alternative treatments have failed to provide a benefit."
doomsday vault opens in bid to preserve seeds from the herald: When the doomsday vault opens in the freezing Arctic archipelago of Svalbard this week, it will mark the latest attempt to preserve our natural resources in the face of climate change and other threats the planet faces... Cary Fowler, the man behind the doomsday vault, said the back-up crop seed bank had been constructed in the context of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina and a recognition that contingency plans had to be made against natural or man-made disasters.
first look at vast 'book of life' from bbc: The first 30,000 pages have been unveiled of a vast encyclopedia which aims to catalogue every one of our planet's 1.8 million species... The Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) - described as the "ultimate field guide" - is to encompass all six kingdoms of life, and even viruses - which many researchers do not consider to be living organisms... "The thing that makes the encyclopedia possible now, when it would not have been possible five years ago, is that there are many online resources that have been developed which we can draw upon," Dr James Edwards, executive director of the Encyclopedia of Life, told BBC News.
un conference promotes insect eating from click2houston: Crickets, caterpillars and grubs are high in protein and minerals and could be an important food source during droughts and other emergencies, according to scientists. "I definitely think they can assist," said German biologist V.B. Meyer-Rochow, who regularly eats insects and wore a T-shirt with a Harlequin longhorn beetle to a U.N.-sponsored conference this month on promoting bugs as a food source.
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Welcome back to New World Next Week - the video series from Corbett Report & Media Monarchy that covers some of the most important developments in alternative news & open source intelligence. This week: 
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