Publication Bias: selective publication of results of drug trials

See Jamie Horder's sensible article in today's Observer: here.

Professor Sir Michael Marmot warns that the rise of obesity across the world will trigger huge rise in cancer.

Cancer deaths 'to double in next 40 years'
article by David Smith in the Observer

Extract:

Cancer cases are now rising at such a rate in Britain and the rest of the world that the disease poses a threat to humanity comparable to climate change, a leading scientist has warned.

The growing obesity epidemic in industrialised countries will be highlighted this week as a leading cause of cancer in a policy report led by Sir Michael Marmot, professor of epidemiology and public health at University College London.

About seven million people die from cancer worldwide each year, according to the most recent estimate by the World Cancer Research Fund, expected to rise to more than 10 million by 2020. The estimated number of new cases annually is set to increase from 10 million now to 16 million by 2020. Overall the toll is predicted to double in the next 40 years.

"It's enormous, it's catastrophic," said Marmot, who said the crisis demanded urgent action. "The numbers are just frightening on a global scale. After cardiovascular disease, it's the next highest cause of death in this country."

Just as global warming requires a quick and concerted international response, so Marmot believes that cancer now requires intervention on a similar scale. "With the same sense of urgency that at long last we're now starting to address the climate change agenda, let's address the cancer agenda because we think a large proportion of those cancer deaths are preventable or could be delayed. It's urgent to be taking action now," he said.

Marmot chaired a panel of 23 experts from around the world to make recommendations for the World Cancer Research Fund's Policy and Action for Cancer Prevention report. A report by the same panel in 2007, the biggest undertaken into lifestyle and cancer, found that a third of cancers are caused by diet and lack of exercise. The experts urged people to stay slim and abstain from too much fast food, red meat and preserved meat, such as ham and bacon, as well as alcohol.

The new report, to be published on Thursday, will not dwell on the issue of smoking because the science is now so well established. Instead its focus is on weight gain and obesity, which leads to around 13,000 cancer cases in the UK every year. Marmot said: "When we look at what's happened to obesity levels in this country, it's growing at an alarming rate. Anybody looking at the evidence would say there must be social and economic causes of that. It can't be that 20 million people individually said, 'I'll think I'll get fat.'""

It's scarcely credible that this host of highly-paid 'experts' still haven't twigged or still will not acknowledge that obesity (along with its many attendant illnesses) has in the main been caused both directly and indirectly by misinformation churned out by doctors, nutritionists, government agencies, the dieting industry, et al, and by the reckless overprescribing of pharmaceutical drugs by ill-informed, arrogant, prejudiced doctors.

Obesity will continue inexorably to increase unless and until people are told the truth, namely that it is a problem of fluid retention, not a problem of overeating, and that it can be reduced easily on an individual basis by giving up dieting and instead concentrating on avoiding salt and salty food. - It is vital for the general public however, as opposed to the individual patient, that doctors' monumentally high prescribing of drugs be curbed by law, in order to prevent the nation's health from going to Hell in an accelerating handcart!

Lose weight, reduce your risk of most cancers, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, stroke, heart disease, heart attack, vascular dementia, osteopenia, osteoporosis, hypercholesterolaemia, depression, liver and kidney problems, and improve your health in many other ways without drugs, hunger or expense by eating less salt! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

And see Sodium in foods and

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/story.html - my 'political' page

http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/socio.html - social and economic considerations

amitriptyline

prescribed steroids and HRT

See advice for pregnant mothers

Children and Obesity

Associated health conditions

and FAT RETENTION

I can be contacted via my website if you need my further help. My help is free. The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.

The human rights of thousands of elderly people are not being acknowledged in hospitals and care homes

Elderly 'are being denied human rights' - Observer

Extracts:

"Basic human rights of thousands of elderly people are failing to be acknowledged in hospitals and care homes, an influential parliamentary committee will conclude next week.

MPs and peers on the Joint Committee on Human Rights will call on health managers and carers to be more sensitive to the needs of the elderly. Andrew Dismore, Labour chairman of the committee, said: 'The Human Rights Act is not just about terrorists and criminals. It is also about ordinary people's rights in the way that they are dealt with by public bodies.'

The plight of elderly people in care was highlighted last week by a woman of 103 who was forced to leave a nursing home in a row over funding. Esme Collins, from Worksop, Nottinghamshire, who needs 24-hour nursing care, moved to a new home 10 miles away.

The spectacle of a centenarian having to move home has prompted the government to pledge a change in the law. At the moment elderly people whose care home fees are paid by a local authority - a portion of Mrs Collins's fees are paid this way - are not covered by the Human Rights Act."

"The committee will touch on many issues examined in The Observer's Dignity at Home campaign, which calls for elderly people to be allowed to live in comfort in their own homes."

Waitrose, one of Britain's supermarket is going to start selling milk in plastic pouches to cut down on the amount of plastic used in milk containers.

Milk moves from bottles to the bag - Observer

Extract:

"One of Britain's leading supermarket chains is to start selling milk in plastic bags after green campaigners said the sale of millions of plastic milk cartons was threatening the environment.

Waitrose will start selling pouches of milk, alongside special jugs to use them with, from tomorrow. Campaigners hope the scheme will be the first step to abolishing plastic milk bottles, thereby reducing landfill and saving the energy used in their manufacture.

Britons consumes around 180 million pints of milk a week, of which at least two-thirds is sold in plastic bottles, which began to replace 'Tetra Pak' cardboard containers in the Nineties. It has recently been estimated that only one in four plastic bottles is recycled."

Pros and cons of the scheme are examined here: Is the plastic pouch really so eco-friendly? - also in The Observer.

Me - I still get buy my milk in glass bottles, which I wash and return to the milk lady. (I also buy my eggs - free range - from her and return the egg-boxes to her to be re-used.)

Lose weight by eating less salt! - Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
See my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/
Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Electronic tags to use on patients' tissue samples to avoid mix ups

The electronic tags that can save lives on wards - Observer

Extract:

"Scientists claim to have found a way to stop hospitals losing or mixing up patients' tissue samples, a problem that can have fatal consequences.

North Middlesex Hospital in London will next month become the first hospital in Britain to trial Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), a tracking system in which tiny tags respond with a unique identity when scanned, much like a barcode."


Lose weight by eating less salt! - Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
See my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/
Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

What to do if you have problems with your liver...

What can I do if I have cirrhosis of the liver? - Observer

There are suggestions from a reformed alcoholic, a nutritionist and a medical expert. - Here is my own suggestion: - avoid eating salt and salty food. - See http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/conditions.html

NHS failing to cope with increasing incidence of allergies

NHS swamped by an epidemic of allergies The Observer

Extracts:

"The NHS is failing to keep up with the growing number of allergy sufferers, with new figures today showing that only a handful of specialist doctors across the country are running clinics for them.

One in three people in Britain can expect to suffer from some form of allergy during their lifetime - including 2 million people in the UK thought to have some allergy to food - but there has been barely any increase in NHS services to cope with this. Experts will warn this week that demand for care is outstripping the NHS's ability to cope, and many patients go to private clinics or dietitians that may offer unconventional diets."

"Dr Jonathan Brostoff, who will speak on the issue at the Allergy Show in London this week, said: 'If you have a food allergy it can have a debilitating effect on your life. Sometimes people end up in private clinics where they go on really gruelling dietary regimes, such as being told to eat lamb, carrots and pears for three months. It certainly doesn't make them better and they may end up worse as a result. Often they pay quite a bit and end up being left to get on with it.' He said there was still enormous scepticism within the health service about whether patients 'truly' had an allergy or were just imagining it.

Britain has one of the highest rates of allergy in the world, along with America, Australia and New Zealand. For reasons not understood, in the last 20 years the rate of eczema and asthma has at least doubled, and there has been at least a threefold increase in nut allergies. Before the mid-Nineties nut allergies were rare, but one in 50 schoolchildren now has one. In the last four years the number of adults with food allergies has also shot up, partly as a result of more awareness, with thousands suffering reactions to shellfish, vegetables, seeds, nuts, kiwis and plums."

Minimising intake of salt/sodium can definitely reduce problems of eczema, acne and asthma, and is completely safe, as well as improving health in many other ways too.

Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

More than 700,000 elderly people are subjected to abuse in their own homes or privately run nursing homes, study finds.

700,000 elderly people 'are being abused' The Observer

Extract:

"More than 700,000 elderly people are subjected to abuse in their own homes or privately run nursing homes, according to the results of a new study to be published this week.

The report - the first investigation for a decade to look at the abuse of the elderly in the UK - will say the rate of violence, bullying and neglect is significantly higher than was thought.

Although the rates of serious physical abuse and injury are relatively low, there are high levels of neglect, verbal assaults and behaviour that strips people of their self-esteem. The results are so serious that ministers are planning an overhaul of the adult protection system, which could lead to more people being prosecuted.

Care Minister Ivan Lewis, who has campaigned within the government for the dignity and privacy of older people, said: 'We need to have a fresh look at the whole adult protection regime in this country. I want to see a situation where people are as outraged by the abuse of an older person as they are by the abuse of a child. Sadly, we are nowhere near that yet as a society, but that culture has to change.'

Researchers from the King's Institute of Gerontology in London spent two years collecting data on the prevalence of abuse in private homes. The work is the first research funded by Comic Relief, and it was supported by the Department of Health.

The report will say the harm is often done to those who are particularly vulnerable because they have had a stroke or have dementia and cannot communicate properly. It will suggest that relatives need to look out for signs of abuse."


Lose weight and safeguard your health by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk and
http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/conditions.html
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Some doctors are doing tests for new variant CJD on blood samples of haemophiliac patients without the knowledge or permission of the patients.

Patients' fury over blood test 'betrayal' - Observer

Extract:

"Doctors were accused of gross betrayal last night after haemophiliac patients discovered that their blood samples were being tested for the human form of 'mad cow' disease without their knowledge.

They compared the move by one of Britain's leading NHS hospitals to the Alder Hey organ scandal, when samples were taken from the bodies of dead children without their parents' permission.

The secret blood testing for new variant CJD was discovered in the minutes of a meeting of America's Food and Drug Administration, which was attended last year by a leading member of Britain's National Institute for Biological Standards Control.

The minutes revealed that the British scientist told the FDA that haemophiliac blood samples taken from the Royal Free Hospital in London would be 'provided for variant CJD analysis'. He described the samples as 'a bit of serendipity' that could provide 'icing on the cake' for testing the development of an effective blood test for the disease.

Last night testing was criticised by Professor Christine Lee, until recently the head of the Royal Free's haemophilia unit, who said that passing on blood samples without patients' knowledge or consent raised serious ethical issues - particularly in the wake of controversies like the Alder Hey organ scandal.

'You can't go around just grabbing stored samples,' she said."


Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Foxes and cows and pheasants and calves... "The Lie of the Land"

Hay festival: Molly Dineen's shocking new film - The Observer

Extracts:

"Dineen lays bare our hypocritical attitude to animals - why was so much time at the highest levels of government spent on protecting foxes when thousands of pheasants and calves are culled every year because they are simply not economically viable? Why is the value of one animal life so much higher than another's?

Many of us, perhaps wilfully, shield ourselves from the reality of the food we eat - dead cows helpfully appear as abstract chunks of flesh squashed into cellophane wrappers, no extra thinking required to throw it into a frying pan. The effect of that ease of consumption, where supermarket monopolies mean that it's cheaper to import cows from Venezuala than to rear calves born in England, is given a human face in Dineen's film."

"Our refusal to pay an extra penny or three for a pint of milk forces farmers to stop farming; it ends in the conversion of farms across great swathes of the country into second homes for the wealthy. And it isn't helped by a government policy that is indifferent about whether the food Britain eats is grown here."

Food Aid: - does it do more harm than good? - Pros and cons.

How America is betraying the hungry children of Africa - The Observer

Extract:

"Edina gets a free mug of porridge each day. Good news? Well, it is for the US government who dumps its leftovers in the name of charity. Read more from Alex Renton on food aid on our brand new food blog, Word of Mouth and join the debate. "

House of Lords will shame MPs over Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill.

Lords to shame MPs over secrecy bill - The Observer

Extract:

"Members of Parliament who voted to remove themselves from anti-secrecy laws are to be 'put to shame' by peers gearing up to block a similar move for the House of Lords.

The radical action being discussed by peers across the political divide would result in the bizarre situation in which the public could find out about a member of the Lords' expenses, but not those of their local MPs.

Anger was mounting about the methods used to push the controversial Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill through from the Commons on Friday night. It had the tacit backing of Gordon Brown and his supporters, who rejected calls to block the proposals."

More about the HIV and hepatitis C blood contamination scandal. - You can't trust Downing St on matters of health and gross NHS negligence.

Number 10 hiding blood scandal facts - The Observer

Extract:

"An independent public inquiry into how thousands of haemophiliacs contracted HIV or hepatitis C from contaminated blood discovered last night that Downing Street is withholding crucial information about how hundreds of relevant documents were shredded.

More than 1,700 patients died and many more are now terminally ill as a result of one of the biggest medical disasters of recent times, when haemophiliacs were given infected blood clotting products during the late Seventies and early Eighties. The products came from American prisoners who were allowed to sell their blood even though there were fears about the risks of contamination.

But it has since emerged that many of the files detailing the scandal were shredded by civil servants in the Nineties. This week, the second hearing of the contaminated blood inquiry, chaired by the former Solicitor-General, Lord Archer of Sandwell, will ask why the results of an internal inquiry into the destruction of crucial files are being withheld.

Jenny Willott, Liberal Democrat MP for Cardiff Central, has discovered that Downing Street is holding back the report, carried out by the Department of Health in 2000, when Alan Milburn was Health Secretary. Some of the destroyed documents detailed meetings between the blood transfusion service, health boards, government officials and consultants during the Seventies and Eighties. The records also contained information on when precisely the government became aware of the risks from imported blood and what measures were taken to warn patients.

The Haemophilia Society said last night that Downing Street's decision was 'incomprehensible, given the public interest'. In 1989, the society brought legal action on behalf of thousands of patients who had become infected with HIV after being given the clotting product Factor 8. Haemophilia is a rare hereditary condition in which the blood does not clot properly. British doctors used the American products despite some senior scientists knowing that there was a risk. Compensation was then agreed with the Tory government in 1990 and thousands of patients received one-off payments of between £21,000 and £80,000.

However, it then transpired that hundreds of documents relating to the case were shredded, allegedly by accident, by junior civil servants. It is now known that there were two separate instances of documents being destroyed, or mislaid, at some point between 1990 and 1998. Some copies of documents had been made by a solicitor's firm, and these were returned to the government, but others are thought to have been lost forever. The total number of destroyed documents is not known. In 2000, the Department of Health held the audit but it was never published."

Read even more about the COLOSSAL negligence of the Department of Health and the Chief Medical Officer in the early 90s, (actually Kenneth Calman) here http://aboutsalt.blogspot.com/search/label/Kenneth%20Calman and here http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/story.html