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Editor's Note: Our new book Lupus Underground describes a non-drug, non-toxic treatment for the autoimmune disease lupus, which includes inflammation and arthritis among its many symptoms. We argue that if our pharmaceutical industry didn't hold excessive power over medical research, practice and the FDA, this proven effective UVA1 phototherapy would be wide-spread instead of long-ignored. Now that an increasing number of anti-inflammatories often used by lupus sufferers are being proven deadly, we can only hope renewed attention will be given to this relatively safe treatment option for lupus induced joint pain and a host of other life-diminishing symptoms. |
| A controversial portrait of President George W Bush, formed using monkey heads, has been projected on a giant billboard in Manhattan. - from the BBC |
| Astronomers announced yesterday that they had discovered three dozen baby galaxies in what passes for nearby space in the universe - two billion to four billion light-years distant. The galaxies, which are blossoming with new stars at a prodigious rate, resemble the infant Milky Way 10 billion years ago, the astronomers said. - from the NYT (reg/req) |
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| In the latest signs of strains on the military from the war in Iraq, the Army National Guard announced on Thursday that it had fallen 30 percent below its recruiting goals in the last two months and would offer new incentives, including enlistment bonuses of up to $15,000. - from the NYT (reg/req) |
| "I think this will be a golden age of investigative journalism...When you marry the power of the state with the power of business, as is the case with the current administration, you are creating a spectacle of corruption that will create a heyday for muckrakers, as long as there are enough of them left." - from the NYT (reg/req) |
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| Lemon, lilac and leather are three of 10 odors that can be used to tell whether a person is likely to develop dementia, according to US scientists. - from the BBC |
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| Scientists in North Carolina have discovered a genetic variation that
could predispose people to depression and may help explain why some people
who develop the condition get no relief from drug treatments.
The findings, posted yesterday in the online edition of the journal Neuron, may allow researchers to develop a test for genetic vulnerability to depression and to create more effective treatments. - from the NYT (reg/req) |
| The rate of childhood cancer has slowly increased over the last three decades, research has found. The International Agency for Research on Cancer, based in France, examined data from 19 European countries. - from the BBC |
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| String theorists agree that it has been a long, strange trip, but they still have faith that they will complete the journey. - from the NYT (reg/req) |
| A secret cable sent by the C.I.A.'s chief in Baghdad warned that the situation in Iraq is deteriorating and may not rebound soon. - from the NYT (reg/req) |
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| Women now entering their 30s want prospective partners willing to break from traditional gender roles. - from the Christian Science Monitor |
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| A top economic adviser to President Bush strongly implied that any overhaul of the system would have to include major cuts in guaranteed benefits for future retirees. - from the NYT (reg/req) |
| More than 40 percent of Americans take at least one prescription drug, and 17 percent take three or more, the government said Thursday in a comprehensive report on the nation's health. The report documented the growing use of medications in the last decade, a trend that it attributed to the growth of insurance coverage for drugs, the discovery and marketing of new products... - from the NYT (reg/reg) - Have we mentioned we just published a book on an effective non-drug treatment for the autoimmune disorder lupus? Oh, we have? Sorry. |
| A forum with Theda Skocpol, Noam Chomsky, Mary Robinson and Jonathan Kozol, among many others. - from The Nation |
| In Fallujah, US forces are going through 50,000 houses one by one. But insurgents are coming back. - from the Christian Science Monitor |
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| The Sun may have captured thousands or even millions of asteroids from
another planetary system during an encounter more than four billion years
ago, astronomers are reporting today.
Such an interstellar ballet would explain many mysteries of the outer solar system - including the strange behavior of the recently discovered Sedna, the system's most distant known object, which occupies a strange elongated orbit far beyond Pluto. The astronomers' calculations, from supercomputer simulations, suggest that gravity from the star at the center of the other planetary system could have kicked Sedna out of a more conventional orbit. In the process, the Sun and the other star would have swapped their outer entourages. Indeed, the astronomers estimate that there is a 10 percent probability that Sedna itself was one of those strangers. If the alien asteroids could be found and studied, these bodies could provide testimony to the conditions under which the Sun and the solar system formed, a time otherwise lost in the mists. Astronomers say the Sun was born 4.5 billion years ago as part of a dense cluster of more than 1,000 stars that has long since disappeared. The star that nearly collided with our solar system so long ago could be on the other side of the galaxy by now. - from the NYT (reg/req) |
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| A confidential report states that the U.S. military has used psychological and sometimes physical coercion "tantamount to torture" on prisoners. - from the NYT (reg/req) |
| Late on the Wednesday afternoon before the Thanksgiving holiday, the
US Defense Department released a report by the Defense Science Board that
is highly critical of the administration's efforts in the war on terror
and in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
'Muslims do not hate our freedom, but rather they hate our policies
[the report says]. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to
what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian
rights, and the long-standing, even increasing, support for what Muslims
collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan,
Pakistan and the Gulf states. Thus, when American public diplomacy talks
about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more
than self-serving hypocrisy.'
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| Since they lost World War II to us, the Japanese have bested us in many ways in the business world. High tech. Automobiles. Newspapers...Japan's total daily newspaper circulation is 52.9 million. Its population is only 127 million...U.S. daily newspaper circulation totals 55.2 million. But our population is more than double Japan's, at 295 million. - from USA Today, via Media Info Center |
| A leading al-Qaida member has told the Arab world his organisation
will continue to attack the US until it changes its policies in the Middle
East.
In an exclusive Aljazeera broadcast on Monday, the Islamist network's second-in-command Ayman al-Dhawahiri said the way the US dealt with Muslims was unacceptable. The new video, apparently made before the 2 November US presidential elections, told the American electorate that it did not matter whether they voted Republican or Democrat. "The two US presidential candidates are challenging each other to satisfy Israel, to continue a crime against the Islamic nation in Palestine that began 87 years ago. "I say to Americans, vote for whomever you want: Bush or Kerry or even the devil - it is not of any importance. "What concerns us is to purify our nation from the aggressors and to resist whoever [is] attacking us, profaning our sanctities and stealing our wealth", said al-Dhawahiri. - from Aljazeera |
| Some stressful events seem to turn a person's hair gray overnight.
Now a team of researchers has found that severe emotional distress - like
that caused by divorce, the loss of a job, or caring for an ill child or
parent - may speed up the aging of the body's cells at the genetic level.
The findings, being reported today, are the first to link psychological stress so directly to biological age. The researchers found that blood cells from women who had spent many years caring for a disabled child were, genetically, about a decade older than those from peers who had much less caretaking experience. The study, which appears in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also suggests that the perception of being stressed can add years to a person's biological age. - from the NYT (reg/req) |
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| For many Americans, opening up the medicine cabinet may seem far more perilous than it did just a few months ago. Revelations about potentially deadly problems with government-approved drugs - from Merck's painkiller Vioxx to Bayer's cholesterol-fighter Baycol - have prompted even the conservative Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) to charge that the Food and Drug Administration's system for protecting consumers is broken. - from the Christian Science Monitor |
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| Despite calls from medical experts and a prominent Republican senator for an independent office to monitor drug safety, the idea, prompted by the Food and Drug Administration's handling of the painkiller Vioxx, is already running into obstacles on Capitol Hill. - from the NYT (reg/req) |
| "Unless we put medical freedom into the Constitution, the time will come when medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship ... To restrict the art of healing to one class of men and deny equal privileges to others will constitute the Bastille of medical science. All such laws are un-American and despotic and have no place in a republic ... The Constitution of this republic should make special privilege for medical freedom as well as religious freedom." - Benjamin Rush, M.D., signer of The Declaration of Independence & physician to George Washington. |
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| Scientists in Spain have discovered fossils of an ape species from about 13 million years ago that they think may have been the last common ancestor of all living great apes, including humans. - from the NYT (reg/req) |
| Archaeologists in South Carolina ... announced radiocarbon dates suggesting ... that people made tools on a wooded hillside near the Savannah River about 50,000 years ago. That would be more than 35,000 years earlier than established evidence for humans in the Americas - a stunning discovery, if true, and one that some archaeologists question. - from the NYT (reg/req) |
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| Gerry Thomas, a company salesman...presented a turkey dinner-filled tray to the Swanson brothers. Then he suggested tying the dinners to the nation's latest craze, television. Packages were designed to resemble a TV screen, complete with volume control knobs - and the TV dinner was born. - from the Christian Monitor |
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| "Global warming is heating the Arctic at a rapid pace - with impacts that could range from the disappearance of polar bears' summer habitat by the century's end to a damaging rise in sea levels worldwide....'The Arctic is warming now, at a faster rate than the rest of the planet. It's affecting people, and its effects are global,' says Robert Corell, a senior fellow with the American Meteorological Society who chaired the team that pulled the study together. - from the Christian Science Monitor |
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| Faced with a surge in deadly guerrilla attacks, Prime Minister Ayad Allawi declared martial law across most of the country today as American and Iraqi troops made final preparations for an all-out assault on the insurgent stronghold of Falluja. - from the NYT |
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| Now, where I come from, 51% is considered a bare majority, not a comfortable margin. If only 51% percent of my family or my editorial staff think I am doing a good job, I might look to moderate my behavior, not repeat or enlarge it. At the minimum, I would not assert that I was overwhelmingly popular. - from Editor & Publisher column |
| Three hundred years from now, the world's population will have stabilized
at about 9 billion and we will look forward to living until age 95. In
Japan, that bastion of longevity, people will be hanging around until they're
106.
India, China and the United States will still be the most populous countries on the planet — if they still exist — and Africa's share of the world's population will double to 25%. The average woman will give birth to two children. Those are just a few possibilities projected in a U.N. report released Thursday, which lowers long-term population estimates because of new thinking about fertility rates in the future. - from The AP |
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| I'm writing this on tenterhooks on Tuesday, without knowing the election results. But whether John Kerry's supporters are now celebrating or seeking asylum abroad, they should be feeling wretched about the millions of farmers, factory workers and waitresses who ended up voting - utterly against their own interests - for Republican candidates. - NYT/Op-Ed |
| Despite starting a war with no discernible end and plunging the federal budget into record deficits, U.S. President George W Bush and right-wing Republicans have scored a significant, if narrow, electoral victory that consolidates their control over an increasingly polarised nation. - IPS News |
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| The US elections take place on Tuesday, 2 November 2004, when tens of millions of voters will cast their ballots in the climax of the presidential campaigns. - from the BBC |
Our special interest health book, Lupus
Underground, is now available.
To download a PDF sample chapter visit www.lupusunderground.com.