posted 11-26-2000 08:37 AM            

The increase in asthma is effecting adults as well. I lost a very dear friend, one year ago tomorrow, a 38 year-old journalist who spent alot of time indoors researching and writing and got very little exercise. He produced a radio show and I did research work for him. Coincidentally, we had just started working on the contrail issue when he was diagnosed with sudden onset asthma in late August, '99. In spite of inhalers, a breathing machine and medication, he died 3 months later. A great loss not only to the people who knew him, but to mankind. http://www.stansolomon.com/brosius/index.html

Also, working part-time in a pharmacy is a real insight. But I tend to think that people may be experiencing chemical reactions to building materials because there are more new homes, schools, office buildings, malls, stores, etc. - places where we spend hours of breathing recycled air. Not to mention viruses and funguses that are passed throughout the workforce. With so many pre-school children in daycare, the odds for contact and re-infecting each other is increased. Common sense verifies that there are more children put in a community setting now than 40 years ago. Women stayed home and children didn't enter school until kindergarten. And let's face it, unless supervised, kids just don't wash their hands properly if at all, and share common toys and utensils on a daily basis. Our recreational habits, especially those of children have changed to accomodate the working parents' schedule and the toys they demand are electronics used indoors. Other than hard-core runners, most adults who even bother, get their exercise on machines in gyms.

If there was a way to collect an honest and verifiable representation, I would really like to know how many people who report "contrail illness" actually have or had allergies, "sick building syndrome," a tendency to bronchitis, sinusitis, migraines, a compromised immune system or preschoolers in day care, plus some. I personally have tremendous immunity to viruses, but bacteria is my worst enemy.

The medical community is becoming very concerned about the increase and spread of viruses, and increased asthma, bronchitis and pneumonia. In the meantime, the pharmaceutical industry is right up there with oil. In metro areas, you used to see 4 gas stations on each corner of an intersection; now you see pharmacies. I am totally amazed at the number of people I talk to at my job who rely on doctors to call in a prescription to the pharmacy for a remedy to their ailment and don't take proper care of themselves or their children for that matter. And the flu hasn't even hit yet. Is it any wonder that the pharmaceutical companies are globalists? (Don't get me going on that one!)

While I make these observations at the practical level, Sore Throat has made a mission of collecting CDC statistics which definitely say something. However, the insinuation that increased illness is due to the contrails is not merited. I think most of us, especially us older folks will agree that our current society has been reworked and molded in many aspects that effect our lives, not only health. We should consider ourselves fortunate to be intelligent, educated and aware while we have to suffer the consequences for the part of society that is not. Vigilance in our discernment of what the reality is and what others attempt to lead us to believe it to be is imperative. Beware of the power of suggestion and take personal responsibility.

For Seeker, "Keep your eyes on the road and your hands upon the wheel."

Big thanks to Thermit for providing a forum where discussion can be discussed and dissected.

posted 11-26-2000 02:09 PM            

It is Deb, isn't it? I hope I remebered that right. Maybe I was wrong about the causes of asthma, you certainly gave me food for thought.

btw, I bet you can't guess which Industry spends the most money lobbying Congresss?

Dang, you got it on the first guess. How about the industry which is second in lobbyist spending? Want a clue? Most people who buy products from the first industry, use the second industry to do so.

posted 11-26-2000 04:39 PM            

Doors, roadhouse blues

posted 11-28-2000 09:15 AM            

DETAILS OF DISCOVERY OF ASTHMA GENE REMAIN A CORPORATE SECRET
Difficulties in the mingling of corporate interests with
scientific research continue to grow in number, perhaps because
the financial stakes are growing. This week Sequana Therapeutics
Inc. (San Diego CA US), in conjunction with collaborators at the
University of Toronto (CA), issued a press release declaring they
had "discovered a gene responsible for asthma", while at the same
time stating that the scientific paper reporting the research was
in the "very early stages" of preparation and might be published
within a year. Sequana is in a financial arrangement with the
pharmaceutical firm Boehringer Ingelheim, and the CEO of Sequana
says no scientific details of the discovery will be revealed
until his company has filed for a patent, the purpose of this to
give Boehringer Ingelheim some "lead time" in commercial
development. The academic collaborators in the project are Arthur
Slutsky and Noe Zamel (University of Toronto CA). Slutsky points
out that the Sequana investment of more than $10 million to find
the gene is more than the Canadian government has spent on the
entire human genome project in the last two years. The price for
the Sequana financial support of the research was apparently
secrecy. (Science 30 May 97)

posted 12-28-2000 09:38 AM            

Disease-causing bacteria growing more immune to 'wonder drugs’

Thursday, December 28, 2000

By GUY GUGLIOTTA
WASHINGTON POST

Health & Fitness


One of nature’s most common - and dangerous - disease-causing bacteria is developing antibiotic-resistant strains at an increasing rate, the latest evidence that overuse of these "wonder drugs" is causing them to lose their effectiveness.

A report in today’s issue of the New England Journal of Medicine found that the rate of multidrug resistance for the microbe Streptococcus pneumoniae had increased from 9 percent to 14 percent between 1995 and 1998. Streptococcus pneumoniae is the most common cause of bacterial meningitis, pneumonia and inner ear infections in the United States.

"The emergence of S. pneumoniae with anti-microbial resistance is a matter of great concern," said the research team, led by Cynthia Whitney of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "Multidrug-resistant pneumococci are common and are increasing."

As recently as the 1930s, the fatality rate from pneumonia in the United States stood at 35 percent. With the introduction of antibiotics, the rate began to drop in sharp increments until it reached 5 percent to 8 percent with the introduction of penicillin.

The CDC team collected 12,045 samples of Streptococcus pneumoniae between 1995 and 1998 from a population of 16.5 million spread throughout the country. During the period, the rate of resistance to penicillin rose from 21 percent to 25 percent, the report said, but the rate of resistance to three or more classes of drugs rose much more sharply - from 9 percent to 14 percent.

The study found a higher proportion of penicillin-resistant bacteria among children and white Americans than among adults and black Americans, statistics the team said probably reflected whites’ easier access to antibiotics and parents’ greater likelihood of dosing their children with drugs.

Furthermore, the report said, although bacterial strains "that are susceptible to penicillin are rarely resistant to another agent," strains "that are resistant to penicillin are likely to be resistant to multiple other agents."

The chief culprit in microbial resistance is overuse of antibiotics, the team said, and in an editorial accompanying the study, Richard Wenzel and Michael Edmond of Virginia Commonwealth University noted that approximately 25,000 tons of antibiotics are consumed each year in the United States, about half by humans and the rest by livestock and agriculture.

©2000 THE PLAIN DEALER. Used with permission.

posted 01-27-2001 07:11 AM            

>"CARMEL -- Air samples taken inside Carmel Elementary School this week should show if recent efforts to rid classrooms of unhealthy levels of mold were successful.

The school district's air quality consultant reported last week that prior tests had detected strains of mold in significant concentrations throughout the building.

Stachybotrys chartarum -- a toxic mold that the consultant said could produce cold and flu symptoms, fatigue and skin rash -- was among fungi targeted in the weekend cleanup that followed.

. . . . .In nearby Westfield, the public library remains closed following an emergency shutdown in September due to mold growth inside library walls. The problem has been blamed on renovation and expansion work in 1995 that did not adhere to the architect's design."<
http://www.starnews.com/news/articles/moldbox0126.html