Activist Post

January 26, 2012

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Read the complete article and related information at Health Groups: Statins Linked to 300+ Negative Effects

Marcia G. Yerman - Reporting – Reviewing – Reflecting

February 3, 2102

The first time I saw Rachel Lloyd was in 2005, the year of the 70^th Annual Academy Awards. “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” had taken the honors for best song. Whenever I complained about that tune being showcased, people would remark, “Lighten up.” Yet when Lloyd  addressed an audience in Soho about the issue of human trafficking, she mentioned “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp,” using it to illustrate the disconnect between reality and the Hollywood version of life on the street .

Since then, while covering the topic of human trafficking, I have heard Lloyd talk at numerous events and panels. I have called her up for quotes and insights, like the time football star Lawrence Taylor was arrested. I had needed to get a lucid response on why the media was portraying an under-age trafficked girl as a “hooker.”

Lloyd always speaks the truth to power. It may be to a New York City police commissioner, or an affluent Manhattan audience learning for the first time that 13-year-old African-American girls in Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn are being bought and sold. Lloyd frequently notes that they are part of an estimated 200,000-300,000 adolescents who are at risk annually for commercial sexual exploitation in the United States.

Consequently, it was no surprise to me that the memoir Lloyd had penned, Girls Like Us: Fighting for a World Where Girls Are Not for Sale, an Activist Finds Her Calling and Heals Herself, would be a tough, gritty and brutally honest account. Lloyd traces how a difficult childhood led to a hair-raising journey that encompassed risk, recruitment, violent abuse, breaking free from sexual exploitation—and ultimately healing. She now is a top activist in the anti-trafficking movement.

Finding her purpose in working with girls “in the life,” Lloyd connects to those in crisis based on shared experiences, understanding without judgment, and respect. Founding Girls Educational and Mentoring Services (GEMS) in 1998, Lloyd went back to school to attain her GED, going on to receive a Bachelors degree in Psychology from Marymount Manhattan College and a Masters in Applied Urban Anthropology from the City College of New York. She has racked up numerous awards for her efforts, all while “owning her experience.”

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Read the complete article and related information at “Girls Likes Us” — Rachel Lloyd’s Memoir Illuminates the Sexual Exploitation of Children

CJAD 800 AM

Posted By: Dan Spector dspector@astral.com · 2/1/2012 10:01:00 PM

On a day when CJAD News was discussing the story of a family intending to sue a massive pharmaceutical company for $200 000 after their daughter died soon after receiving the anti-HPV (Human papillomavirus) vaccine Gardasil, researcher Dr. Lucija Tomljenovic joined Aaron for a fascinating discussion about the safety of the vaccine.

Dr.Tomljenovic hails from the Neural Dynamics Research Group at the University of British Columbia, and along with colleague Dr. Chris Shaw has published a controversial new study that asks: “Is it possible that HPV vaccines have been promoted to women based on inaccurate information?

Their essay was published online in late December in the medical journal Annals of Medicine.

To read about their findings, take a look at the following Medscape article. It sums up Tomljenovic and Shaw’s work nicely. If you’re interested in some of the controversy and backlash resulting from this study, scroll to the bottom.

January 31, 2012 — Is the policy for the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine at odds with evidence-based medicine?

Yes, according to an essay published online December 22, 2011, in the Annals of Medicine.

Canadian researchers Lucija Tomljenovic, PhD, and Christopher Shaw, PhD, from the Neural Dynamics Research Group, University of British Columbia, in Vancouver, point out that there is a major discrepancy in claims regarding the safety and efficacy of Gardasil (Merck & Co) and Cervarix (GlaxoSmithKline) — the 2 HPV vaccines that are currently on the market.

The vaccines have been heavily promoted in the United States by their respective manufacturers, the essayists report. In addition, the vaccines are backed by government agencies in the United States, including the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the US Food and Drug Administration, and by medical authorities in a number of other countries.

HPV vaccination has been mired in controversy since the first vaccine was approved in the United States in 2006. There have been clashes among politicians, parents, professional and advocacy organizations, and public health officials, with heated exchanges over issues ranging from safety, the premise that vaccination will promote sexual activity in teens, cost, and concerns about aggressive lobbying by Merck to make the vaccine mandatory for girls.

Drs. Tomljenovic and Shaw note that skepticism about the vaccine has been increasing for a number of reasons, despite reassurances from the public-health sector. In their essay, they examine the current evidence to answer a key question: “Is it possible that HPV vaccines have been promoted to women based on inaccurate information?”

Does it Prevent Cancer?

One major issue is the claim made by medical authorities that HPV vaccines are an important tool in preventing cervical cancer. The efficacy of the vaccines in preventing cervical cancer has not been demonstrated because the study periods have been too short, say the essayists.

The longest follow-up from phase 2 trials for Gardasil is 5 years and for Cervarix is 8.4 years, but invasive cervical cancer can take 20 to 40 years to develop from the time of HPV infection.

“We don’t know the duration of the immune response of the vaccines,” Dr. Tomljenovic told Medscape Medical News, “so we don’t know if they are actually preventing cervical cancer or simply postponing it.”

Both vaccines very effectively prevent persistent infections with high-risk HPV types 16 and 18 and the associated cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) 2/3 lesions in HPV-naïve young women. However, note the essayists, even persistent HPV infections caused by high-risk strains generally do not lead to precursor lesions in the short term or to cervical cancer in the long term.

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Read the complete article and related information at A new voice in the HPV vaccine debate

The New York Times

By DENISE GRADY
Published: January 29, 2012

Michael Nagle for The New York Times

Bridgette Dunlap, a Fordham University law student, knew that the school’s health plan had to pay for birth control pills, in keeping with New York state law. What she did not find out until she was in an examining room, “in the paper dress,” was that the student health service — in keeping with Roman Catholic tenets — would simply refuse to prescribe them.

As a result, students have had to go to Planned Parenthood or private doctors to get prescriptions. Some, unable to afford the doctor visits, gave up birth control pills entirely. In November, Ms. Dunlap, 31, who was raised a Catholic and was educated at parochial schools, organized a one-day, off-campus clinic staffed by volunteer doctors who wrote prescriptions for dozens of women.

Many Catholic colleges decline to prescribe or cover birth control, citing religious reasons. Now they are under pressure to change. This month the Obama administration, citing the medical case for birth control, made a politically charged decision that the new health care law requires insurance plans at Catholic institutions to cover birth control without co-payments for employees, and that may be extended to students. But Catholic organizations are resisting the rule, saying it would force them to violate their beliefs and finance behavior that betrays Catholic teachings.

“We can’t just lie down and die and let religious freedom go,” said Sister Mary Ann Walsh, a spokeswoman for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

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Read the complete article and related information at Ruling on Contraception Draws Battle Lines at Catholic Colleges

The Daily Beast

Feb 3, 2012 12:00 AM EST

Michelle Goldberg

If a Republican becomes president, says Michelle Goldberg, say goodbye to international programs providing birth control to women in desperately poor countries such as Liberia.

Gertrude Gorma Cole, a midwife in Liberia’s Bong County, is almost universally known as “Mother Dear.” A warm, grandmotherly presence in a traditional lappa dress, she has been practicing at least since the 1970s. In some ways, she is conservative. Speaking of Liberia’s disastrous teenage pregnancy rate—which is high even by West African standards—she blames both the social breakdown caused by the country’s savage civil war and the lax ideas of the international NGOs that swept into the country in its wake. “After the war, the NGO people came in and they brought ‘child rights,’ so the children became so loose, and even to discipline them, they will take you to the police,” she says. Western aid workers dispute this, insisting that the idea of Liberian kids informing on their parents is an urban legend. Still, her views speak to a level of distrust toward the humanitarian agencies that play an outsized role in governing the decimated nation.

Yet there is one thing Mother Dear does not distrust: the programs to provide birth control, which are largely supplied by USAID. In addition to being a midwife, Mother Dear is the county’s reproductive-health supervisor. When I tell her that support for international family planning is controversial in the U.S., and that some candidates for president would like to end it, she is shocked. “If they cut off funding for family planning, more mothers are going to die,” she says.

She’s worth listening to, because whatever effect the upcoming election has on the reproductive health of American women, the effect on women worldwide is likely to be even greater. I was in Liberia recently as part of a World Health Organization-sponsored trip to look at the future of funding for AIDS, TB, and malaria in an age of global austerity. But the country is also an object lesson in the potential global impact of our interminable culture wars.

Those culture wars have turned birth control into a significant issue in the U.S. presidential campaign. All of the Republican candidates have slammed the administration’s refusal to give religious institutions a broad exemption from the mandate that insurance cover family planning. One of them, Rick Santorum, has promised to use the presidency to speak out about “the dangers of contraception in this country,” and has said he believes states should have the right to ban it. Mitt Romney, the likely nominee, has laughed off threats to birth control as an absurd nonissue, but even he has pledged to eliminate Title X, the federal family-planning program founded under Richard Nixon.

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Read the complete article and related information at How a GOP Win Could Spell the End of Reproductive Health for Global Women

 New York Times

By REUTERS
Published: February 3, 2012 at 3:50 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation backed down from its decision to cut funding for Planned Parenthood, which provides abortion and birth control services, following a massive outcry by supporters of the world’s largest breast cancer charity.

Komen’s decision had thrust the group into America’s deeply politicized debate over abortion rights and its apology on Friday may not satisfy the more vocal advocates on either side.

Planned Parenthood supporters, including local directors within Komen’s ranks, say Komen had come under pressure from anti-abortion activists. Social conservatives had lauded the move to disengage from Planned Parenthood and said it would win Komen new supporters.

“We want to apologize to the American public for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women’s lives,” Komen said in a statement on Friday signed by its board of directors and its founder Nancy Brinker.

Komen had said earlier this week it would cease to fund grants for breast cancer screening to Planned Parenthood under new rules to tighten eligibility. The guidelines excluded groups under investigation by U.S. authorities and Planned Parenthood is the subject of a probe by U.S. Rep. Cliff Stearns, a Republican from Florida who opposes abortion.

Planned Parenthood provides a variety of services – including reproductive healthcare, sex education, cancer screenings and information on sexually transmitted diseases – but its abortion role has put it at the forefront of the national debate.

Komen’s move prompted a protest campaign on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook that reached a fever pitch on Thursday. Local Komen chapters sent letters to headquarters opposing the move, and by late Thursday night, its board convened a special meeting.

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Read the complete article and related information at Cancer Group Backs Down on Cutting Off Planned Parenthood

Buenos Aires Herald

February 3, 2012

By Javier Cardenal Taján
BuenosAiresHerald.com staff

GlaxoSmithKline Argentina Laboratories Company was fined 400,000 pesos by Judge Marcelo Aguinsky following a report issued by the National Administration of Medicine, Food and Technology (ANMAT in Spanish) for irregularities during lab vaccine trials conducted between 2007 and 2008 that allegedly killed 14 babies.

Likewise, two doctors -Héctor Abate, and Miguel Tregnaghi- were fined with 300,000 pesos each for irregularities during the studies.

The charges included experimenting with human beings as well falsifying parental authorizations so babies could participate in vaccine-trials conducted by the laboratory from 2007 to 2008.

Since 2007, 15,000 children under the age of one from Mendoza, San Juan and Santiago del Estero have been included in the research protocol, a statement of what the study is trying to achieve. Babies were recruited from poor families that attended to public hospitals.

A total of seven babies died in Santiago del Estero; five in Mendoza; and twoo in San Juan.

Pediatrician Ana Marchese, who reported the case through the Argentine Federation of Health Professionals (FESPROSA in Spanish), and was working at the Eva Perón children’s public hospital in Santiago del Estero when the studies were being conducted, said this morning in conversations with Continental AM radio that “GSK Argentina set an protocol at the hospital, and recruited several doctors working there.”

“These doctors took advantage of many illiterate parents whom take their children for treatment by pressuring and forcing them into signing these 28-page consent forms and getting them involved in the trials.”

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Read the complete article and related information at GSK fined after over vaccine trials; 14 babies reported dead

IPS

By Danilo Valladares
GUATEMALA CITY, Jan 31, 2012 (IPS)

Demonstrators demand that the disappearance of Cristina Siekavizza and her children be investigated. Credit:Danilo Valladares/IPS

The relentless wave of femicides in Guatemala, which has one of the highest female murder rates in the world, has prompted actions by the government, civil society groups, and two Nobel Peace laureates to try to put a stop to this brutal violence against women, which has reached horrific proportions.

According to information from the Presidential Commission against Racism, 705 Guatemalan women lost their lives to gender-related violence in 2011, most of them by gunfire, up from 675 deaths the year before.

This alarming situation has spurred a range of reactions from both civil society and the government.

On Jan. 24, only days after his inauguration as president, right-wing retired general Otto Pérez Molina formed a “task force to combat femicide”, which is the term used in Guatemala to denote gender- motivated killings. Women’s organisations define femicide more precisely as the phenomenon whereby women are murdered because they are women.

This task force, created under the Interior Ministry, the body in charge of domestic security, will be headed by former Prosecutor Mirna Carrera and will focus on intelligence and investigative efforts with the aim of preventing more women from being murdered.

“Femicide is being addressed as a matter of state policy, and a message is being sent out to aggressors that their actions will not be tolerated and that they will be punished,” Mayra Sandoval, a representative of the non-governmental Observatory against Femicide, told IPS.

The activist acknowledged that the Pérez Molina administration – which began its four-year term on Jan. 14 after winning the election on the promise of taking a “firm hand” against crime – “is concerned about violence in general.”

But in the case of the femicide task force, “we need to examine whether its members are qualified to handle a crime scene where the victim is a woman,” she said.

While Sandoval valued the government’s reaction to these crimes, she said “preventive efforts are also needed, otherwise, we’ll just be treating the symptoms without ever getting to the root of the problem.”

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Read the complete article and related information at Guatemala Heeds the Cries of Femicide Victims

Vac Truth

by Christina England
February 2, 2011

A few weeks ago I uncovered the appalling story of how parents in India were prevented from speaking out when their baby daughter died following the pentavalent vaccine. (1) Ancy, was just 56 days old, when she died within hours of the vaccine, however, her death was immediately swept under the carpet by the authorities who silenced her parents before claiming that Ancy had died from apnea.

On 25^th January 2012 IBN Live (2) reported that even though the Health Department had denied the possible connection between the administration of the pentavalent vaccine and the death of the baby, the postmortem report had revealed that her death was caused by a hypersensitivity reaction.

This unusual and highly controversial move by the coroner to write that a hypersensitivity reaction was the cause of death in his report appears to confirm the parent’s belief that Ancy died as a result of the vaccine, although IBN Live continued their report by adding that:

“The postmortem certificate leaves a loophole with regard to hypersensitivity, the report being unspecific on hypersensitivity to what source. While in general usage by scientists and doctors, the term hypersensitivity refers to a very unusual allergic reaction to a vaccine. Health Secretary Rajeev Sadanandan said further studies were needed to conclusively prove as to whether it was the vaccine that triggered the allergy.”

I doubt if the coroner could safely be any more specific and given the age of the child it is highly probable that she did die as a result of the vaccination.

The pentavelent vaccine is a 5 in 1 vaccine. This means that the vaccine protects a person from five individual diseases but instead of receiving five separate vaccines the person, in this case a baby, receives only one. In Ancy’s case we know that she received a vaccine containing diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, hepatitis B, Hib or meningitis.

Vaccines are made up of several different substances. To enable me to explain this in more detail I will begin by quoting Dr Viera Scheibner. (3) Dr Scheibner says that:

Vaccines contain a number of substances which can be divided into the following groups:

1. Micro-organisms, either bacteria or viruses, thought to be causing certain infectious diseases and which the vaccine is supposed to prevent. These are whole-cell proteins or just the broken-cell protein envelopes, and are called antigens.

2. Chemical substances which are supposed to enhance the immune response to the vaccine, called adjuvants.

3. Chemical substances which act as preservatives and tissue fixatives, which are supposed to halt any further chemical reactions and putrefaction (decomposition or multiplication) of the live or attenuated (or killed) biological constituents of the vaccine.

A Parents Basic Guide To Synergistic Toxicity

When a baby receives a vaccine the desired immune response is the production of antibodies. Dr Scheibner says that this is enhanced by adding certain substances to the vaccines. These substances as she explains are called adjuvants. She says:

There are several types of adjuvants. Today the most common adjuvants for human use are aluminium hydroxide, aluminium phosphate and calcium phosphate. However, there are a number of other adjuvants based on oil emulsions, products from bacteria (their synthetic derivatives as well as liposomes) or gram-negative bacteria, endotoxins, cholesterol, fatty acids, aliphatic amines, paraffinic and vegetable oils. Recently, monophosphoryl lipid A, ISCOMs with Quil-A, and Syntex adjuvant formulations (SAFs) containing the threonyl derivative or muramyl dipeptide have been under consideration for use in human vaccines.

Many professionals believe that it is a combination of these aduvants mixed together that are affecting children so adversely. This is known as synergistic toxicity and can worsen when a child receives multiple vaccines.

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Read the complete article and related information at Vaccines Are Exploding Kids’ Immune Systems

Hey guys – this buds’ is for you…welcome to our world…

Natural News

Wednesday, February 01, 2012 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer

Mass vaccination is apparently not the only depopulation strategy being employed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as new research funded by the organization has developed a way to deliberately destroy sperm using ultrasound technology. BBC News reports that the Gates Foundation awarded a grant to researchers from the University of North Carolina (UNC) to develop this new method of contraception.

For their study, the UNC team tested ultrasound on lab rats and found that two 15-minute doses “significantly reduced” both sperm counts and sperm integrity. When administered two days apart through warm salt water, ultrasound caused the rats’ sperm counts to drop below ten million sperm per milliliter, which is five million less than the “sub-fertile” range, and stay that way for up to six months.

The report claims the technology is for contraceptive purposes only and not for causing sterility. However, Dr. James Tsuruta, who led the research, told reporters that it is unclear whether or not the technology can cause long-term damage, and that more research is needed to determine whether or not repeated ultrasounds cause permanent damage.

The Gates Foundation awarded 78 different research projects with $100,000 grants each as part of its “Grand Challenges in Global Health Program.” Ten of these projects specifically addressed new technologies for contraception, according to TIME, including one for a pill that inhibits the growth and maturation of sperm, and another for creating chemical compounds that prevent sperm from reaching the egg (http://healthland.time.com/2010/05/14/male-birth-control-stopping-sperm-with-ultrasound/).

“We think this could provide men with up to six months of reliable, low-cost, non-hormonal contraception from a single round of treatment,” wrote the researchers in their report. “Our long-term goal is to use ultrasound … as an inexpensive, long-term, reversible male contraceptive suitable for use in developing to first world countries.”

Back in 2010, Bill Gates explained to attendees at the TED Conference that year his ideas for culling the world population, one of which involved increasing vaccination rates (http://www.naturalnews.com/029911_vaccines_Bill_Gates.html). Now, his organization is actively funding research into advanced contraceptive methods that could render individuals infertile. Coincidence?

Sources for this article include:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-16756381

http://healthland.time.com/2010/05/14/male-birth-control-stopping-sperm-with-ultrasound/

http://www.naturalnews.com/029911_vaccines_Bill_Gates.html

Read the complete article and related information at Bill Gates funds technology to destroy your sperm