Poland under threat from GM crops

The Polish parliament has chosen December 15th 2009 for a debate and vote on the new 'GMO Act' that, if passed, will open the door for planting GM crops on Polish soil, based on EU standards that authorise co-existence between GM and non GM crops on a commercial scale.
Read action letter from the International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside (ICPPC) at gmwatch.org

Art, Politics and Polemic in the Pursuit of Justice and Truth

I should like in this essay to consider the difficulties of the writer holding strong political or other disputatious views and wanting to further them by means of his/her writing.

Propaganda versus Literature? Do they militate against each other? This was constantly asked of the 1930s poets: Spender, Day Lewis, Auden to some extent. (Some Art, surely, was the direct offspring of philosophical commitment, viz. the plays of the great religious festivals of ancient Greece from where the word ‘drama’ originates.) In the mid-19th century, Wesker’s plays attracted criticism as being too overtly propagandist. Certainly The Kitchen could be seen as a powerful argument against nuclear arms; but it was also an entertaining play with accurately observed social commentary. And I remember many years ago seeing Roots at the Sheffield Playhouse and being profoundly moved by Beattie’s discovery of herself, without at that time seeing it as a political play or knowing that it was part of a more political trilogy, or being aware of ‘the personal is political’ as an idea.

Writing that is expressly written with a propagandist intent is not, then, necessarily inferior as art though, of course, if the message is too crudely emphasised or the work itself merely a vehicle for the message, it will be flawed. One has only to think of the many, no doubt apocryphal, works of the kind: Joyfully Serving the State on a Collective Farm, worthy in aim but devoid of intrinsic interest or artistic merit. Certainly there are many novels successful as literature as well as polemical in intention.

The writer has problems of weighting in a particular direction. Will this damage his art? Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress was dogmatic in both tone and message, written by a convinced Christian, but this has not stopped it from becoming one of the most popular books ever written. While Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, of the 1950s, with its sombre, modern lack of belief in a loving God or a redemptive Saviour, is uproariously funny both to watch and to hear. In Bunyan’s book, the characters and the story-line hold our interest. In Beckett’s play there are visual comedy, witty dialogue and, constantly, the unexpected. It is perhaps only when the play has ended that we shudder at the bleakness of the godless vision, these shudders in turn being mediated by Beckett’s recurrent showing forth of human courage in the face of terrible adversity. Deliberate shaping has not damaged these two works. On the contrary.

Why did Harriet Beecher Stowe decide on a novel (Uncle Tom’s Cabin) as the form for her anti-slavery message? Here was a new society. The novel form arose with the new bourgoisie under modern capitalism. The middle class, who read novels, were a progressive, literate and broadening band. Many would have already read reformist ideas in Richardson’s Pamela, in Defoe, Fielding, Dickens, Thackeray, and in Godwin, the political reformer.

Writing in English was writing for the English-speaking/reading world and not just for America. Reformist zeal in Britain would be ready for Stowe’s message, and these zealots were the literate people who read novels. Many novels at that time were long, and in a long work the arguments could be fully expounded and all facets considered. It could be said that at that time ‘all’ novels had a moral message. Stowe’s had a wider, corporate, moral message.

Let us consider other forms available. Stowe had too much material really for a poem. What about a speech? Well, speeches are transitory and may well be given to an already prejudiced audience, and again, the speech would have to be dauntingly long for both speaker and hearers if it were to cover all the ground Stowe had to cover. A sermon would be heard by only a few and very probably an antipathetic few. Initially antipathetic readers of a novel may have their sympathies engaged as they are drawn into the story and identify with the emotions, thoughts and experiences of the characters.

What about a play? A play can certainly move its audience, although its effects may be more transitory than those of a novel. A play today could reach a huge audience on television but in those days it would reach comparatively few in the theatre. A novel had the potential to reach many. There is also a closer communion between reader and novel than there is between audience and play. The novelist creates a world for the reader who lives in a different world. The novel could be like a social documentary showing different points of view sympathetically (or unsympathetically, if the writer wanted to weight the scales).

I am not a gifted playwright or an outstanding novelist. I am not a powerful politician or an influential journalist or broadcaster. But I am, I reckon, an ardent polemicist and seeker after truth, justice, reform, and the prevention and alleviation of avoidable suffering. I seek in this blog, and on my website, to engage your interest and hopefully to move you to concern about the harm done by scandalously over-prescribed pharmaceutical drugs with poorly-understood, and often unacknowledged, adverse effects, by processed salt-laden, nutrition-deficient snacks and ready meals manufactured by a profit-driven food industry reckless of the damage to the health of their customers, and by dieting, and by medical doctors, too eager to prescribe more and more potentially harmful powerful drugs. The greatest scandal of all being the catastrophically wrong beliefs about the causes of obesity and the best ways to prevent or to reduce it being promulgated by the obesity and dieting ‘experts’. I hope you will consider helping me in my mission in whatever way you can.

Margaret Wilde © 2009

Supplement that may help avert dry age-related macular degeneration

The Telegraph reports that Harry Marsland, a retired optician, believes he is the first person in Britain to recover from dry age-related macular degeneration by taking a supplement containing lutein, found in spinach, zeaxanthin, the yellow pigment found in corn, and meso-zeaxanthin, derived from marigolds – called Macushield.

More than 20% of children in England are starting school overweight or obese.

BBC News reports that more than 20% of children in England are starting school overweight or obese. There's unlikely to be any improvement in those figures, however, if the government agencies and obesity 'experts' keep on giving the wrong information and advice about the causes of obesity and the best ways to reduce it.

Child obesity is caused by eating salt and salty food because this results in fluid retention in the bloodstream, and the extra fluid (salt and water) in the bloodstream naturally weighs heavily and causes weight gain. Obesity is not caused by eating too much food or too much fat or by taking too little exercise, so forcing children to eat less/go hungry/take strenuous exercise will not help at all.

Cutting down drastically on salt and salty food, and eating unsalted food instead results in safe, rapid weight loss and feeling a lot better, and having a lot more energy very quickly indeed.

Don't let your children develop a taste for salty food. Eating salty food is very likely to set them on a lifetime course of being too heavy, too tired, very unhappy and with a lot of chronic health problems like high blood pressure, diabetes, arthritis, heart disease, cancer and depression. They will not be able to achieve their full potential and their life chances will be fewer. Look on the labels and buy food with lower salt/sodium levels, or better still, cook fresh food from scratch and don't add salt to it. - Useful information is here: Sodium in foods

A fat child does not need to count calories and run away from butter and full cream milk...(o: - Just protect your child from salty food and watch him or her blossom into a healthier, happier child.

See Children and Obesity

The Telegraph reports on study indicating that breastfeeding lowers risk of post-pregnancy metabolic syndrome, diabetes and heart disease.

The Telegraph reports that breastfeeding lowers the risk of post-pregnancy metabolic syndrome, diabetes and heart disease.

Also nursing mothers who breastfeed for longer are helping to prevent their baby from becoming obese. See Breastfeeding for longer helps to protect your baby from obesity

The main reason for this is that human breast milk is low in salt/sodium. Sodium is more harmful to children than to adults because of their small size, and it is particularly harmful to babies.

See Children and Obesity

and advice for pregnant mothers

Would targeting depression early prove helpful? - Not in my opinion.

BBC News reports that Ministers are saying that targeting depression early is the key to prevention. I can't say that I agree that that will prove successful. In my opinion continually talking about depression and referring to it as though it is a real disease, and as though there is agreement about what it constitutes, tends to lead vulnerable people to focus on the idea that that may be what their problem is. But depression is only a putative disease.

My personal opinion is that the best measures to take to reduce 'Depression', whatever anybody means by that slippery word, is to curb the use of the word in a medical context and concentrate instead on enabling people to eat good nutritious meals.

Dieting or fasting or so-called 'detoxing' or any other form of inadequate nutrition is a major cause of depression, tiredness, sad thoughts and all that syndrome of negativity. Unfortunately, the increasing incidence of obesity is accompanied by more and more pressure on overweight people to "eat less and exercise more". If this advice is taken by overweight people, especially if they are young and sensitive, then they will not lose weight. They will more likely gain weight because inadequate intake of food/calories/nutrients leads to increased fluid retention, which is actually the cause of excess weight gain and obesity. Then being more and more overweight makes most people feel more and more depressed and frustrated.

The government would be well advised to get the food industry drastically to lower the amount of salt/sodium it adds to its products: to do this not by exhortation and by slow increments, but to use the full power of the law. It is added salt that is the main cause of child obesity and is the means by which older fat people who are sensitive to salt usually keep gaining weight. The food industry has harmed the health of the nation for long enough. Their leaders should be taken to court and punished if they do not desist from what is effectively, poisoning, however slowly, the majority of their customers.

The other HUGE problem is the ever-growing numbers of drugs being prescribed. Many drugs, including cortico-steroids and HRT, anti-psychotics, NSAIDS, and, ironically, anti-depressants CAUSE salt sensitivity/weight gain/obesity/depression and a host of other health problems and this proliferation of reckless, inappropriate prescribing should be curbed, again, BY LAW.

Good nutrition is the best and safest medicine.

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

See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.

Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

Sodium in foods

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

Multi-billion pound NHS IT system may be cancelled.

BBC News reports that the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, is likely, in his forth-coming pre-Budget report, to axe the extremely expensive, problem-ridden NHS IT programme. - Well thank goodness for that!

14 year old Ryan McLaughlin succeeds with his vitamin D campaign in Scotland

BBC News reports on the success of 14 year old Ryan McLaughlin, in drawing the attention of the Scottish government to the "urgent need" to provide information to all health professionals who work with pregnant women and young children about current guidance on vitamin D.

"Ryan became the face of a YouTube campaign to publicise the use of vitamin D, and led hundreds of supporters down Edinburgh's Royal Mile to Holyrood before he put his proposals to the petitions committee in June.

He told MSPs research into the genetic effect of vitamin D deficiency showed a link to the development of MS. Vitamin D, which the body needs for healthy, strong bones is largely gained through sunlight and food."

Living in Scotland tends to result in extreme Vitamin D deficiency because of chronic lack of sunlight. While deficiency in the UK is widespread the situation in Scotland is worse than for the rest of the country. Scotland receives 30-50% less ultraviolet radiation (UVB) from the sun than the rest of the UK owing to its high latitude and persistent low cloud cover.

Scotland is thought to have the highest rate of MS in the world.

Study finds Omega-3 in combination with Glucosamine is better for joint health

Combining omega-3 fatty acids with glucosamine achieves better improvements in joint health than glucosamine alone, says a new study from Germany. The study, published in the journal Advances in Therapy, is said to be the first clinical trial to employ the combination of glucosamine omega-3 fatty acids in people suffering from osteoarthritis.
Read article at nutraingredients.com

After reading a very interesting article by John Kay about the undesirable outcomes that, in practice, tend to result from seeking Consensus

I came across this very interesting article by John Kay, about Consensus and the undesirable outcomes that, in practice, tend to result from seeking Consensus. I do urge you to read it. He summarises his thesis in these words:

"Just as universities need to tell people to stop quibbling and work towards a common objective, companies need to realise that clustering around a corporate conventional wisdom that has not been subject to analysis and debate is also not a recipe for success."

Earlier today, on Radio 4, I heard someone (sorry, I didn't catch who he was) speaking critically about Wikipedia, and, if I remember correctly, criticising it essentially for tending to move towards Consensus, rather than towards Truth. Like him, I favour Truth, backed up by Evidence, rather than Consensus, backed up by Assertion.

The Climate Change Science Scandal that has featured prominently in the news recently, rested in essence on one set of scientists, led by Professor Phil Jones, director of the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia, seeking to manipulate access to data and interpretation of data in order to bring more scientists to a consensus favouring his views, in the hope/expectation that consensus would be accepted as truth, even though the data had been doctored.

When I use the word 'doctored' in this context, I do so advisedly. - For many years, law courts and judgments were over-influenced by so-called 'expert' opinions expressed by 'expert' witnesses, in particular by 'expert' medical opinions. Such was the deference the judicial system accorded to these expert medics, that in practice the opinions they expressed were mostly accepted as evidence, rather than opinion. This institutional prejudice was compounded by what was called 'The Bolam Test', which was adopted by some other countries - former British colonies, I believe - as well as Britain.

A doctor, dentist, nurse, etc is deemed to owe "a duty of care" to the patients they treat. But when a doctor, say, was negligent in the way he treated his patient, according to the Bolam Test, it did not necessarily amount to negligence if support could be found for it among other members of his profession - even if there was not a lot of support. This ruling meant in practice that a doctor accused of medical negligence needed only to find an expert who would testify to having done the same thing or would testify that he would have made the same diagnosis as the accused doctor.

Obviously this ruling was widely abused and there was no shortage of venal health professionals willing to testify in such a way as to favour a fellow member of their profession. - I remember when I was on the Steering Committee of the RSI Campaign that we had a young lawyer come to speak to us one evening and he told us that lawyers could always find a doctor to give any opinion their doctor client wanted to be given, provided they paid him enough.

This, of course, is disgraceful and unjust enough, but the Bolam Test spread its baleful tentacles into the clinical sphere, and has had the effect of increasing the incidence of medical negligence. Medical and dental practitioners regarded themselves as pretty safe from being found guilty of negligence because all they had to do when a patient made any charge or complaint of negligence against them was to ensure that colleagues in the profession would back them up in the course of action/inaction they had taken. This was easily achieved because there tends to be a feeling within their profession that "there but for the grace of God, go I", and a tendency to support erring colleagues in the profession, in the expectation that if you got into the same situation, your colleagues would similarly support you.

Thus it was that when I suffered sustained negligent and appallingly cruel treatment at the Charles Clifford Dental Hospital years ago, it proved almost impossible for me to get the treatment I desperately needed, despite seeing several dentists well able to have provided the treatment. See Fighting the System, my first Mensa article.

One of the negligent dentists, Stephen Hatt, Head of Restorative Dentistry, sneeringly invited me to write a letter of complaint about him. - "Much good it will do you!" he jeered, in complete confidence that nothing whatever would be done about his cruel treatment, which had caused me such long, agonising pain. And he was right. Nothing at all was done about the letter I arduously compiled and sent.

I talked about the matter to a young dentist from a different town long after this and asked him why it was that whenever I tried to get help from another dentist at that dreadful hospital, they scrupulously examined the notes about my treatment, instead of examining my teeth! He explained that the system was that they would all say that they would have made the same diagnosis as the negligent senior dental staff who had harmed me, and so that treatment would have been considered correct and they would not have been deemed to be at fault. - This is an example of the law of unintended consequences, and leads to the extraordinary probability that if ALL would have treated the patient badly, then NONE is considered negligent!

Officially the Bolam Test is no longer part of the legal process, but in practice its spirit lives on, and most health professionals do not worry much about getting into trouble about their poor treatment of a patient, because there remains the implicit assumption that doctors and dentists are altruistic, omniscient beings who do not make errors, or if they do, it is not their fault. You have only to remember the terrible harm done by the arrogant, ill-informed Professor Sir Roy Meadow in the case of Sally Clark, and to realise that even now, despite all the tragic consequences of his flawed testimony, colleagues in his profession continue to defend him!

I remember reading years ago - I think it was in The Politics of Schizophrenia by David Hill - that the only time doctors/psychiatrists all agree on a psychiatric diagnosis is when they are all wrong...(o:

You will have gathered that I do not favour consensus as being a reliable guide to the truth of any belief. I look back on those two very famous errors of hundreds of years ago that held sway because of being the consensus view, namely that
1) the Earth is flat, and that
2) the Sun goes round the Earth.

I rest my case.

Some of the many beneficial rôles of Vitamin D

Vitamin D is being appreciated as "nature's antibiotic” as a string of recent discoveries about the multiple health benefits of this nutrient have come to the fore.
Right from the health of your immune system to prevention of heart disease and even vulnerability to influenza, vitamin D is now seen as one of the most critical nutrients for overall health. But it is also one of those most likely to be deficient – especially during winter when production of the "sunshine vitamin" almost grinds to a halt for people.
Read article in The Times of India

Few Universities File Required Conflict Of Interest Reports

Few universities file required reports to the National Institutes of Health about financial conflicts held by their researchers, and even when such conflicts are reported, universities rarely require researchers to eliminate or reduce conflicts, The New York Times reports. The paper writes that a report showing that 90 percent of universities relied solely on researchers to decide whether the money they made in consulting and other relationships with drug and device makers was relevant to their government-financed research (here is the report). Moreover, half of universities don’t ask faculty members to disclose the amount of money or stock made from drug and device makers, and so the report concludes that the potential for extensive conflicts with their government-financed research is often known only to the researchers themselves.
Read article at pharmalot.com