Why are Americans sick and getting sicker?

Another reason:

A late-breaking study shows that genetically engineered (GE) crops have led to a 404 million pound increase in overall pesticide use from the time they were introduced in 1996 through 2011. This equates to an increase of about seven percent over the last 16 years.

The report, published in the journal Environmental Sciences Europe,1 effectively undermines the declared value of crops genetically engineered to be protected against herbicides and insects. The whole premise for GE crops was to make it easier to kill weeds and diminish crop loss to harmful pests.

But instead, these modified crops have led to resistance, both in weeds and pests, leaving farmers to struggle with an increasingly difficult situation. More than two dozen weed species are now resistant to glyphosate, the primary ingredient in Monsanto’s broad-spectrum herbicide Roundup.

Things are Rapidly Getting Worse…

According to the author, Charles Benbrook, a research professor at the Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources at Washington State University:

“Contrary to often-repeated claims that today’s genetically-engineered crops have, and are reducing pesticide use, the spread of glyphosate-resistant weeds in herbicide-resistant weed management systems has brought about substantial increases in the number and volume of herbicides applied.

If new genetically engineered forms of corn and soybeans tolerant of 2,4-D are approved, the volume of 2,4-D sprayed could drive herbicide usage upward by another approximate 50 percent. The magnitude of increases in herbicide use on herbicide-resistant hectares has dwarfed the reduction in insecticide use on Bt crops over the past 16 years, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.”

According to Benbrook, rapidly increasing weed resistance is now driving up the volume of herbicide needed by about 25 percent annually. In a statement to Reuters,2 Benbrook said:

“Things are getting worse, fast. In order to deal with rapidly spreading resistant weeds, farmers are being forced to expand use of older, higher-risk herbicides. To stop corn and cotton insects from developing resistance to Bt, farmers planting Bt crops are being asked to spray the insecticides that Bt corn and cotton were designed to displace.” …

One of those higher-risk chemicals is 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) – one of the ingredients in Agent Orange, which was used to defoliate battle fields in the jungles of Vietnam, with horrendous consequences to the health of those exposed. If you want to see some of its effects on children who were exposed in the womb, you can do so on DigitalJournalist.org3 – but I warn you the photos are very graphic and upsetting.

Benbrook’s paper includes a model showing how a 2,4-D-resistant corn product, if released in 2013, would affect the use of 2,4-D on farm fields. According to his projections, which he refers to as “conservative” assumptions, use of 2,4-D could reach 103.4 million pounds annually as early as 2019 – up from the current level of 3.3 million pounds in 2010.

Due to the toxic nature of 2,4-D, the results of such a massive increase in use would raise risks of birth defects and reproductive problems in those who consume the food, not to mention the severe hazard it poses to aquatic and other ecosystems. This is valuable information indeed, considering the fact that biotech giant Dow’s new GE product, dubbed “Enlist,” is a three-gene, herbicide-tolerant soybean engineered to be resistant to not only glyphosate, but glufosinate and 2,4-D as well!

Talk about a triple whammy of trouble coming down the pike…

Ironically, Dow touts their new product as a solution to Monsanto’s failing Roundup Ready GE crops. This despite the fact that 28 species across 16 plant families have already evolved resistance to herbicides with a similar mode of action as 2,4-D, according to a 2011 article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,4 in which the authors criticize speculation that 2,4-D would not cause resistance. Remember that Monsanto recently won a billion dollar award in their suit against Dow. …
Via Mercola | New Report Shreds Claims that GE Crops Reduce Pesticide Use

US military’s plans for flying saucers explained in declassified documents

… Newly released diagrams show scale of the future that never was after air force cancelled funding for wobbly disc-shaped craft

These days, flying saucers are most commonly associated with sci-fi films and conspiracy theories, but in the 1950s, some saw them as the future of aviation.

Documents published by the US National Archives give new information about a craft commissioned by the US air force, which if successfully developed would have achieved speeds of 2,600mph and flown at around 100,000ft.

Details of the proposed craft have been around for years. But the declassified papers include new diagrams and documents that demonstrate the scale of the project’s ambition.

The US air force contracted the work to a now-defunct Canadian company, Avro. In one document, Avro envisaged a “top speed potential between Mach 3 and Mach 4, a ceiling of over 100,000ft and a maximum range with allowances of about 1,000 nautical miles”. That would have sent the flying saucer spinning into the Earth’s stratosphere.

Language in a report labelled “final development summary” was optimistic: “It is concluded that the stabilization and control of the aircraft in the manner proposed – the propulsive jets are used to control the aircraft – is feasible and the aircraft can be designed to have satisfactory handling through the whole flight range from ground cushion take-off to supersonic flight at very high altitude.”

Such lofty ambitions were never achieved; video footage of other disc-shaped crafts constructed by Avro show a machine wobbling uncertainly around 3ft off the ground.

The cost for the endeavour is listed as $3,168,000, which Wired estimates at $26.6m in today’s money.

Sadly, the project was cancelled and the craft were never built.

“Imagine those two formidable weapons of modern warfare, the airplane and the armored tank, combined into one terrible machine of destruction!”

Hurrah! Stick some wings on your tank and watch it fly. Apparently “initial tests were successful”, but clearly flying tanks did not become the ‘terrible machine of destruction’ envisaged in the 1930s. More robust aeroplanes meant tanks were placed inside aircraft, rather than strapped underneath. …

via US military’s plans for flying saucers explained in declassified documents | World news | guardian.co.uk.

Interesting comment on Guardian web site:

Canadian Prime Minister Diefenbaker should be considered a criminal for the damage he did to Avro by cancelling the Arrow contract. Did you know in addition to this project, that many of the designers of the Space Shuttle were hired from the Canadian Avro factory in Malton, Ontario, near the current Pearson Airport? If you go and visit the area now, you can see traces of what would have been the greatest aviation and space research and manufacturing company on earth. What could POSSIBLY have made Diefenbaker cancel the Arrow orders?

Answer from another web site:

It is now AIR TIGHT that they canned the Arrow due to the machinations of John Foster Dulles, Ike and others in JULY 1958!! – AvroArrow.org

 

A Neurosurgeon’s Experience With the Afterlife, Proof of Heaven or Narrow Expertise?

… As a neurosurgeon, I did not believe in the phenomenon of near-death experiences. I grew up in a scientific world, the son of a neurosurgeon. I followed my father’s path and became an academic neurosurgeon, teaching at Harvard Medical School and other universities. I understand what happens to the brain when people are near death, and I had always believed there were good scientific explanations for the heavenly out-of-body journeys described by those who narrowly escaped death.

The brain is an astonishingly sophisticated but extremely delicate mechanism. Reduce the amount of oxygen it receives by the smallest amount and it will react. It was no big surprise that people who had undergone severe trauma would return from their experiences with strange stories. But that didn’t mean they had journeyed anywhere real.

Although I considered myself a faithful Christian, I was so more in name than in actual belief. I didn’t begrudge those who wanted to believe that Jesus was more than simply a good man who had suffered at the hands of the world. I sympathized deeply with those who wanted to believe that there was a God somewhere out there who loved us unconditionally. In fact, I envied such people the security that those beliefs no doubt provided. But as a scientist, I simply knew better than to believe them myself.

In the fall of 2008, however, after seven days in a coma during which the human part of my brain, the neocortex, was inactivated, I experienced something so profound that it gave me a scientific reason to believe in consciousness after death.

I know how pronouncements like mine sound to skeptics, so I will tell my story with the logic and language of the scientist I am.

Very early one morning four years ago, I awoke with an extremely intense headache. Within hours, my entire cortex—the part of the brain that controls thought and emotion and that in essence makes us human—had shut down. Doctors at Lynchburg General Hospital in Virginia, a hospital where I myself worked as a neurosurgeon, determined that I had somehow contracted a very rare bacterial meningitis that mostly attacks newborns. E. coli bacteria had penetrated my cerebrospinal fluid and were eating my brain.

When I entered the emergency room that morning, my chances of survival in anything beyond a vegetative state were already low. They soon sank to near nonexistent. For seven days I lay in a deep coma, my body unresponsive, my higher-order brain functions totally offline.

Then, on the morning of my seventh day in the hospital, as my doctors weighed whether to discontinue treatment, my eyes popped open.

There is no scientific explanation for the fact that while my body lay in coma, my mind—my conscious, inner self—was alive and well. While the neurons of my cortex were stunned to complete inactivity by the bacteria that had attacked them, my brain-free consciousness journeyed to another, larger dimension of the universe: a dimension I’d never dreamed existed and which the old, pre-coma me would have been more than happy to explain was a simple impossibility.

But that dimension—in rough outline, the same one described by countless subjects of near-death experiences and other mystical states—is there. It exists, and what I saw and learned there has placed me quite literally in a new world: a world where we are much more than our brains and bodies, and where death is not the end of consciousness but rather a chapter in a vast, and incalculably positive, journey.

I’m not the first person to have discovered evidence that consciousness exists beyond the body. Brief, wonderful glimpses of this realm are as old as human history. But as far as I know, no one before me has ever traveled to this dimension (a) while their cortex was completely shut down, and (b) while their body was under minute medical observation, as mine was for the full seven days of my coma.

All the chief arguments against near-death experiences suggest that these experiences are the results of minimal, transient, or partial malfunctioning of the cortex. My near-death experience, however, took place not while my cortex was malfunctioning, but while it was simply off. This is clear from the severity and duration of my meningitis, and from the global cortical involvement documented by CT scans and neurological examinations. According to current medical understanding of the brain and mind, there is absolutely no way that I could have experienced even a dim and limited consciousness during my time in the coma, much less the hyper-vivid and completely coherent odyssey I underwent.

It took me months to come to terms with what happened to me. Not just the medical impossibility that I had been conscious during my coma, but—more importantly—the things that happened during that time. Toward the beginning of my adventure, I was in a place of clouds. Big, puffy, pink-white ones that showed up sharply against the deep blue-black sky. …

via Proof of Heaven: A Doctor’s Experience With the Afterlife – Newsweek and The Daily Beast.

Before you get too excited, realize that a neurosurgeon is not a neuroscientist. Sam Harris had this to say:

Everything—absolutely everything—in Alexander’s account rests on repeated assertions that his visions of heaven occurred while his cerebral cortex was “shut down,” “inactivated,” “completely shut down,” “totally offline,” and “stunned to complete inactivity.” The evidence he provides for this claim is not only inadequate—it suggests that he doesn’t know anything about the relevant brain science. Perhaps he has saved a more persuasive account for his book—though now that I’ve listened to an hour-long interview with him online, I very much doubt it. In his Newsweek article, Alexander asserts that the cessation of cortical activity was “clear from the severity and duration of my meningitis, and from the global cortical involvement documented by CT scans and neurological examinations.” To his editors, this presumably sounded like neuroscience.

The problem, however, is that “CT scans and neurological examinations” can’t determine neuronal inactivity—in the cortex or anywhere else. And Alexander makes no reference to functional data that might have been acquired by fMRI, PET, or EEG—nor does he seem to realize that only this sort of evidence could support his case. Obviously, the man’s cortex is functioning now—he has, after all, written a book—so whatever structural damage appeared on CT could not have been “global.” (Otherwise, he would be claiming that his entire cortex was destroyed and then grew back.) Coma is not associated with the complete cessation of cortical activity, in any case. And to my knowledge, almost no one thinks that consciousness is purely a matter of cortical activity. Alexander’s unwarranted assumptions are proliferating rather quickly. Why doesn’t he know these things? He is, after all, a neurosurgeon who survived a coma and now claims to be upending the scientific worldview on the basis of the fact that his cortex was totally quiescent at the precise moment he was enjoying the best day of his life in the company of angels. Even if his entire cortex had truly shut down (again, an incredible claim), how can he know that his visions didn’t occur in the minutes and hours during which its functions returned?

I confess that I found Alexander’s account so alarmingly unscientific that I began to worry that something had gone wrong with my own brain. So I sought the opinion of Mark Cohen, a pioneer in the field of neuroimaging who holds appointments in the Departments of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Science, Neurology, Psychology, Radiological Science, and Bioengineering at UCLA. (He was also my thesis advisor.) Here is part of what he had to say:

This poetic interpretation of his experience is not supported by evidence of any kind. As you correctly point out, coma does not equate to “inactivation of the cerebral cortex” or “higher-order brain functions totally offline” or “neurons of [my] cortex stunned into complete inactivity”. These describe brain death, a one hundred percent lethal condition. There are many excellent scholarly articles that discuss the definitions of coma. (For example: 1 & 2)

We are not privy to his EEG records, but high alpha activity is common in coma. Also common is “flat” EEG. The EEG can appear flat even in the presence of high activity, when that activity is not synchronous. For example, the EEG flattens in regions involved in direct task processing. This phenomenon is known as event-related desynchronization (hundreds of references).

As is obvious to you, this is truth by authority. Neurosurgeons, however, are rarely well-trained in brain function. Dr. Alexander cuts brains; he does not appear to study them. “There is no scientific explanation for the fact that while my body lay in coma, my mind—my conscious, inner self—was alive and well. While the neurons of my cortex were stunned to complete inactivity by the bacteria that had attacked them, my brain-free consciousness …” True, science cannot explain brain-free consciousness. Of course, science cannot explain consciousness anyway. In this case, however, it would be parsimonious to reject the whole idea of consciousness in the absence of brain activity. Either his brain was active when he had these dreams, or they are a confabulation of whatever took place in his state of minimally conscious coma.

There are many reports of people remembering dream-like states while in medical coma. They lack consistency, of course, but there is nothing particularly unique in Dr. Alexander’s unfortunate episode.

- link

New, Bizarre Species of Small Dinosaur Identified

N ot every dinosaur grew up to be a mighty predator like Tyrannosaurus rex or a hulking vegan like Apatosaurus. A few stayed small, and some of the smallest dinosaurs that ever lived — tiny enough to nip at your heels — were among the first to spread across the planet more than 200 million years ago.

Fossils of these miniature, fanged plant-eaters known as heterodontosaurs, or “different toothed reptiles,” have turned up as far apart as England and China. Now, in a discovery that has been at least 50 years in the making, a new and especially bizarre species of these dwarf herbivores has been identified in a slab of red rock that was collected in the early 1960s by scientists working in South Africa.

In a report published Wednesday in the online journal ZooKeys, Paul C. Sereno, a paleontologist at the University of Chicago and a dinosaur specialist, described the strange anatomy of the newfound member of the heterodontosaur family and gave the new species the name Pegomastax africanus, or “thick jaw from Africa.” He also apologized in an interview for not getting around sooner to this piece of research.

When he first viewed the specimen at a Harvard laboratory, Dr. Sereno said, “my eyes popped, as it was clear this was a distinct species.”

Embedded in the rock were remains of a creature with a short parrotlike beak, one-inch jaws, sharp teeth and a skull no less than three inches long. The entire body was less than two feet in length and probably weighed less than a small house cat.

“I’m embarrassed to say how many years ago that was — 1983,” he said. “But I was an enterprising graduate student then at the American Museum of Natural History. All the while since then, I wondered if anyone else might spot the creature hiding among the lab drawers.”

The Pegomastax fossils were eventually returned to the South African Museum in Cape Town, the true nature of the one slab still undiscovered, Dr. Sereno said. The main researcher responsible for collecting the fossils was Alfred Crompton, a Harvard professor now retired. Part of Dr. Sereno’s research was supported by the National Geographic Society, where he also is an explorer-in-residence.

His close examination showed that behind the parrot-shaped beak were a pair of stabbing canines up front and a set of tall teeth tucked behind for slicing plants. These teeth in upper and lower jaws operated like self-sharpening scissors, Dr. Sereno said, with shearing facets that slid past each other when the jaws closed. The parrotlike skull, he noted, may have been adapted to plucking fruit.

Dr. Sereno said it was “very rare that a plant-eater like Pegomastax would sport sharp-edged enlarged canines.” Some scientists suggested that the creature may have consumed some meat, or at least insects. …

via New, Bizarre Species of Small Dinosaur Identified – NYTimes.com.

Alligators found in NY supermarket parking lot

Alligators are a common enough sight in Florida. But in a New York parking lot? Rare. At least until two showed up at a Pathmark supermarket parking lot on Long Island two days in a row: a 2- to 3-foot-long gator on Tuesday, and then a 3- to 4-foot-long one on Wednesday.

Luckily, responding officers were able to catch the animals and turn them over to the Emergency Services Unit.

While some gators are welcome, even making a splash at kids’ pool parties (it’s true, check out the video), these alligators on the loose are definitely doing a good job of scaring the locals.

There seems to be a trend in the area: An alligator was found on a front lawn at a Mastic beach home last Friday. And in Brooklyn last week, a 3-foot pet gator was discovered in a couple’s apartment along with loaded guns. (For anyone thinking that having an alligator for a pet in New York City is a great idea, think again: It’s illegal.)

Unfortunately for the pet gator, police were quoted as saying the animal “didn’t look very good” and may have been starved by its owners. It was picked up by the Center for Avian and Exotic Medicine.

Those with knowledge of why the heck so many gators are running amok in Nassau County are asked to contact the Nassau County SPCA, which is offering a $1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the people responsible for releasing the alligators in the Pathmark lot.

Meanwhile, those two parking lot gators will be sent to a reptile sanctuary in Florida.

via Later, gators: Alligators found in NY supermarket parking lot | The Sideshow – Yahoo! News.

Bedford couple unwittingly grow cannabis

An elderly couple have unwittingly grown the “biggest cannabis plant” police officers had seen after buying what they thought was an innocuous shrub from a car boot sale.

The couple, who live in Bedford, had planted the drug in their garden.

Police officers were astounded when they spotted the plant. They have collected it and a spokesperson said it would be disposed of.

The couple will face no action from the police.

The officers took to their @bedfordlpt Twitter account to express their surprise at the find, saying: “Seized today. Elderly couple bought shrub at car boot sale, tended carefully – biggest cannabis plant we had seen!!”

via BBC News – Bedford couple unwittingly grow cannabis.

Kidnapped Goat Returned With Mysterious Pink, Manicured Hooves

… A pair of suspects in San Diego were caught on tape abducting a 6-month-old goat from a local petting zoo sometime between Sunday evening and Monday morning.

The goat, whose name is “Billy,” was returned early Monday with bright pink nail polish painted on its hooves, according to Darryl Dadon, owner of PB Pumpkins, where the petting zoo is located.

“We’ve tried to remove [the polish], but it’s not coming off,” he told The Huffington Post.

Surveillance tape captured the goat-nappers in action, but not the nefarious hoof-painting. The suspects are described as a white woman in her 20s who climbed over the fence, assisted by a white man in his 20s with a thin build wearing jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, according to KSWB-TV.

Dadon said nothing else was stolen from the property.

At first, the theft got his goat, and he filed a police report, but he canceled it when the kid was returned before business the next day.

“I was just happy to get the goat back,” he said. …

via Kidnapped Goat Returned With Mysterious Pink, Manicured Hooves (VIDEO).

Strange Exits: Man dies after cockroach-eating competition

The winner of a cockroach-eating competition died shortly after scoffing dozens of the live insects and worms in Florida, authorities have said.

Edward Archbold, 32, became ill and collapsed at a pet shop where the contest took place in the city of Deerfield Beach on Friday.

About 30 others competed in the event at the Ben Siegel Reptile Store.

Officials are waiting for the results of an autopsy to determine Mr Archbold’s cause of death.

None of the other contestants became ill afterwards, the sheriff’s office said.

“We feel terribly awful,” said Ben Siegel, the owner of the shop.

“He looked like he just wanted to show off and was very nice,” he said, adding that Mr Archbold did not appear to be ill before the competition.

A lawyer for Mr Siegel said all the contestants had signed disclaimers “accepting responsibility for their participation in this unique and unorthodox contest”.

The grand prize for the winner was a python, and Mr Archbold had planned to sell the snake to a friend who took him to the contest, according to the shop owner.

via BBC News – Man dies after cockroach-eating competition.

Curiosity rover finds shiny – possibly metal – object on Mars

Cameras on the £1.5billion Curiosity spotted the mysterious object while it prepared to take its first soil sample.

The find has got alien hunters in a frenzy, speculating it might be part of a UFO.

But experts suspect the object is much more likely to be a part of the rover that has broken off.

NASA has suspended testing while it investigates the fragment.

If it does turn out to be part of Curiosity, it’ll prompt fears the ‘science lab on wheels’ is falling apart under the strain of Mars’ hostile atmosphere.

The find is the latest dramatic twist in the two-year mission to learn if Mars ever harboured life.

Last month the rover captured images of a rock formation that could only have been created by fast flowing water.

Experts believe that particular site was once the bed of a fast-flowing river.

via Curiosity rover finds shiny – possibly metal – object on Mars | The Sun |News.

Link between microwave popcorn and Alzheimer’s?

If you like to snack on the occasional bag of microwave popcorn, it’s probably the buttery flavoring that you crave.

This comes from an artificial flavoring called diacetyl, which is a natural byproduct of fermentation found in butter, beer and vinegar… and also a chemical made synthetically by food companies because it gives foods that irresistible buttery flavor and aroma.

Many companies who manufacture microwave popcorn have already stopped using the synthetic diacetyl because it’s been linked to lung damage in people who work in their factories.

But now a new study at the University of Minnesota shows that diacetyl is not only a risk to workers’ lungs… it may also pose a risk to your brain.

Microwave Popcorn Chemical Linked to Alzheimer’s Disease

Researchers conducting test-tube studies revealed that diacetyl has several concerning properties for brain health. Not only can it pass through the blood-brain barrier, which is intended to help keep toxins out of your brain, but it can also cause brain proteins to misfold into the Alzheimer’s-linked form known as beta amyloid. It also inhibits mechanisms that help to naturally clear the dangerous beta amyloid from your brain.1

It’s not known at this time whether eating diacetyl-containing foods (it’s used not only in microwave popcorn but also in other snack foods, baked goods, pet foods, some fast foods and other food products) increases your risk of Alzheimer’s, but the finding that it may contribute to brain plaques linked to Alzheimer’s at very low concentrations is concerning, to say the least.

How many other synthetic chemicals have we been told are perfectly safe, only to find out over time that they aren’t. MSG and aspartame come to mind… but there are countless others as well.

Removing Diacetyl from Microwave Popcorn Doesn’t Make it Safe…

As mentioned, diacetyl is known to cause serious, sometimes life-threating respiratory illness in microwave popcorn-plant and flavoring plant workers. Many companies therefore began to stop using the chemical in their products, replacing it with another ingredient called 2,3-pentanedione (PD), which is also used to impart a buttery flavor and aroma.

Now researchers have revealed that PD, too, can lead to respiratory toxicity similar to that caused by diacetyl.2 The chemical was also capable of pathologically altering the gene expression in rat brains, leading to neurotoxicity. The study’s lead researcher noted:

“Our study is a reminder that a chemical with a long history of being eaten without any evidence of toxicity can still be an agent with respiratory toxicity when appropriate studies are conducted.”

Not to mention, perfluoroalkyls (PFCs), which are chemicals used to keep grease from leaking through food wrappers, are widely used in microwave-popcorn packaging. These chemicals migrate into your food and are processed by your body, where they can disrupt your endocrine system and affect your sex hormones. PFCs have been linked to infertility, thyroid disease, cancer, immune system problems, and more. …

Via mercola