Things That Make You Go Hmm
Department of Health and Human Services Approves Fictitious Medical Device Review Board Led by a Dead Dog
"(NaturalNews) Just how trustworthy are medical review boards that review and approve medical devices? In a Government Accountability Office (GAO) sting, investigators were able to invent and register a fictitious review board with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), complete with a fictitious panel of doctors and a canine president named "Truper Dawg" (named after a real pet dog that had long since passed away).
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But that's not all: To check out the credibility of existing Independent Review Boards (IRBs), the GAO invented a fictitious medical product called Adhesiabloc -- an adhesive gel used as a kind of "stomach superglue" following surgery. A proposal to begin a clinical trial of this adhesive gel on humans was submitted to an FDA-recognized IRB company, and the company approved it! This, despite the fact that the clinical trial called for pouring one liter of this adhesive gel into the stomach of patients."
http://www.naturalnews.com/025955.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123811179572353181.html
Medical Alerts
Traffic Noise Causes Heart Attacks:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/trafficnoisecausesheartattacks
"People living in residential areas with high levels of noise from road traffic appear to suffer more heart attacks than people living in quieter neighborhoods, according to a new study by researchers at the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.
Goran Pershagen, who led the study, said 1571 people from the Stockholm area who had suffered heart attacks between 1992 and 1994 were compared with a control group from the same area. The addresses of all the individuals were indentified and the level of noise estimated.
Exposure to air pollution and other heart attack risk factors were also gathered using questionnaires and interviews, the researchers said. Once people with impaired hearing or exposure to other sources of noise had been eliminated from the study, the researchers found that there was a 40 percent higher risk of a heart attack in people exposed to traffic noise exceeding 50 decibels - a relatively quiet level of noise; heavy traffic is usually measured at between 80 and 90 decibels.
"More research will be needed to establish a definite correlation between road traffic noise and [heart attacks], but our results are supported by other studies showing the cardiovascular effects of noise," Pershagen said.
The possible link between noise and heart attacks should be taking into account when planning new roads and residential areas, he added. The study was published in the journal Epidemiology."
Medical Alerts
Maintain Freedom to Purchase Vitamins, Minerals & Herbs
This one is easy and fast just click on the link below and it will take you to Obama's site to voice your opinion on being able to purchase vitamins and herbs, and not water down versions. Next click on the blue box (Of The People, By the People) submit your thoughts. If this is important to you please share this with others.
Click on this link: http://change.gov/agenda/health_care_agenda/
You will be connected to a page on the www.change.gov site where a blue box headlined "Of the people, by the people" urges you to click in and submit your ideas. Colleague Jan Schwartz, LMT, a past chair of the Commission on Massage Therapy Accreditation, shared that he has seen evidence that the ideas don't fall into a void. Obama staffers are known to actually respond. Go and contribute! More on the Obama grassroots strategy is available at this Washington Post article.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/04/AR2008120403852.html
