colour of live

The Southern California farm that grew the green onions that were first linked to and then cleared in last year’s E. coli outbreak has filed a libel lawsuit against Taco Bell Corp.

Boskovich Farms, Inc. filed the lawsuit last week in Orange County Superior Court, alleging Taco Bell continued to link its green onions to the December outbreak that sickened more than 70 people in the Northeast despite knowing the produce was not contaminated.

"Taco Bell engaged in an irresponsible and intentional crusade to save its own brand at the expense of an innocent supplier," Thomas Girardi, an attorney for Oxnard-based Boskovich Farms, told the Los Angeles Times.

The false connection between the farm and the fast food chain’s E. coli problem has cost Boskovich "millions of dollars of business," Girardi said.

(more…)

U.S. government researchers launched a trial on Thursday testing creatine, a supplement sold to improve exercise performance, against Parkinson’s disease.

Early research suggests creatine supplements might be able to help slow the progression of Parkinson’s, an incurable brain disorder that can slowly but steadily paralyze patients.

The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, one of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, is launching the trial as the first in a series of government-sponsored studies of new Parkinson’s treatments.

Many clinical studies in the United States are sponsored by drug companies, which means that often only medicines they can make money on get tested.

(more…)

It was nearly a decade ago that Jose Cibelli plugged his own DNA into a cow’s egg in a novel cloning attempt that was condemned as unethical by President Clinton and landed the Michigan State University researcher in a mess of controversy.

Even though Cibelli and his colleagues patented the so-called interspecies cloning technique, they soon abandoned the research as a failure and the uproar subsided.

Now the tempest is brewing all over again.

At least three respected teams of British scientists have reignited the moral debate over inserting human genes into animal eggs by proposing experiments similar to Cibelli’s.

Their goal is to eliminate the need for women to donate eggs for the cloning of human embryos, a research goal they say will enable them to better understand the genetic causes of many diseases and design personalized medicines.

(more…)

>Lm Otero / AP

Doctors are planning an attempt this spring to gradually separate 3-year-old twin girls who were born connected at the head.

For the past 2½ years, Anastasia and Tatiana Dogaru, who are from Italy but are of Romanian descent, have been in Dallas, brought here by the World Craniofacial Foundation about nine months after their birth to be evaluated for separation surgery.

The top of Tatiana’s head is attached to the back of Anastasia’s. Twins born joined at the head — called craniopagus twins — are extremely rare, occurring in about 1 in 2.5 million births.

The separation carries many risks — including the possibility of brain damage, stroke or a deadly amount of blood loss — but doctors say the twins cannot continue to live as they are. Not only is it awkward, but their conjoined condition would lead to a variety of medical problems.

“Without separation, the girls won’t make it,” said Dr. Kenneth Salyer, the plastic surgeon who founded the World Craniofacial Foundation and serves as chairman of the board. “And with separation it’s a high-risk operation.”
(more…)

New "landmark" research finds that alcohol and tobacco are more dangerous than some illegal drugs like marijuana or Ecstasy and should be classified as such in legal systems, according to a new British study.

In research published Friday in The Lancet magazine, Professor David Nutt of Britain’s Bristol University and colleagues proposed a new framework for the classification of harmful substances, based on the actual risks posed to society. Their ranking listed alcohol and tobacco among the top 10 most dangerous substances.

Nutt and colleagues used three factors to determine the harm associated with any drug: the physical harm to the user, the drug’s potential for addiction and the impact on society of drug use. The researchers asked two groups of experts — psychiatrists specializing in addiction and legal or police officials with scientific or medical expertise — to assign scores to 20 different drugs, including heroin, cocaine, Ecstasy, amphetamines and LSD.

(more…)

The likely source of an E. coli outbreak in spinach that killed three people and sickened more than 200 was a small cattle ranch about 30 miles from California’s central coastline, state and federal officials said Friday as they concluded their investigation.

Authorities for the first time said they had isolated the deadly E. coli strain on Paicines Ranch in San Benito County near a field the ranch leased to Mission Organics, a spinach grower.

They found E. coli “indistinguishable from the outbreak strain” in river water, cattle feces, and wild pig feces on the ranch within a mile a from the spinach fields, the California Department of Health Services and U.S. Food and Drug Administration said in a joint report.

(more…)

More people than ever got cosmetic plastic surgery in the United States in 2006, with breast enlargements the most popular procedure, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons reported Thursday.

Nearly 11 million cosmetic plastic surgery operations were performed in the United States in 2006, up by 7 percent from 2005, the group said.

It also said more than 5.2 million reconstructive plastic surgery procedures were performed last year, mostly removal of tumors.

The most popular cosmetic choice was breast augmentation, with 329,000 reported in 2006. This is the first time "breast jobs" have passed nose reshaping surgery, performed on 307,000 people in 2006.
(more…)

By David E. Williams

A late freeze put a snowy exclamation point on a fairly mild winter for much of the United States, and experts say it’s hard to predict what this weird weather means for allergy sufferers.

It’s certain allergy season is on its way, though, bringing sneezing, wheezing, coughing, runny noses, itchy eyes and headaches with it.

The allergy season is really several seasons. Trees start scattering their pollen in early spring, followed by grasses, and then ragweed kicks in during the summer and runs through fall.

But making allergy season really unpredictable is the role of weather, said Mike Tringale with the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America.
(more…)

The Chinese believed human body is just like the Universe. The Chinese believed that the Universe is formed by two elements called “Ying” and “Yang”. “Yang” represents “sun light”, “positive” or “hot”. Ying represents “dark”, “negative” or “cold”.

All the Chinese food or herbal medicine was classified in one way or another as either with “Ying” characteristic or with “Yang” characteristic. The “Ginseng” was considered as one of the herbs with “neutral” characteristic. It means “do not expect “ginseng” to cure most forms of diseases”. Many people have a wrong idea that ginseng heal every forms of disease.

Ginseng is probably the most famous Chinese herb. It has been used in Asia for more than 5,000 years. In China, ginseng has been treasured since the dawn of written history. In the Qing Dynasty of ancient China, ginseng was prized more than gold.

Ginseng is available in literally thousands of tonic formulations and it is featuring the most of the traditional preventative herbal remedies. Many people seeking to improve energy and vitality use ginseng daily.

Over these pages we provide some information on the use of various alternative health methods that have become more popular in recent years. Many of the methods also originate from the East, and use a combination physchological, physical and spiritual methods and ideas to help to relive stress and tension, and to harmonize the body’s energy to improve health and longevity.

Ayurveda Ayurveda (Devanagari: आयुर्वेद ) or ayurvedic medicine is a form of alternative medicine in use primarily in the Indian subcontinent. The word “Ayurveda” is a tatpurusha compound of āyus “life” and veda “knowledge”, and would roughly translate as the “Science of Life”.

Aromatherapy, commonly associated with complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), is the use of volatile liquid plant materials, known as essential oils (EOs), and other aromatic compounds from plants to affect someone’s mood or health. The word was coined in the 1920s by French chemist René Maurice Gattefossé, who devoted his life to researching the healing properties of essential oils after a lucky accident in his perfume laboratory. (In the accident, he lit his arm on fire and thrust it into the nearest cold liquid, which happened to be a vat of lavender oil. Much to his amazement, the burn quickly healed without a scar.)

Two studies demonstrate the dangers of a diet that has high levels of fat and processed foods. A large European study shows that women with high levels of blood sugar face a significantly higher risk of cancer of the pancreas, skin, womb and urinary tract.

And, according to a US study, older women with the fattiest diets have a 15 per cent greater chance of developing breast cancer. It found fat-intake levels of 40 per cent put women most at risk. This was close to the British average of 38 per cent.

High blood-sugar levels have been linked to unhealthy diets containing fatty and processed foods, and can lead to Type 2 diabetes. Previous research has shown an increased risk of cancer in patients with this form of diabetes, which usually occurs in middle age.

What could possibly be healthier about living in hectic New York City compared to the peaceful suburbs of Atlanta? When I moved, I was in for a big surprise.

What a shock! When my husband and I moved from hectic New York City to the beautiful, clean, peaceful suburbs of Atlanta, we were in for a big surprise.

What could possibly be healthier about living in the city compared to the burbs?

The answer is simple. All you have to do is open your garage door in any American suburb to find the culprit. That’s right – your car is suburban public health enemy number one.

According to research published in Public Health, living in a big city like New York, Boston or San Francisco is better for your health than living in a car dependent suburb. Why?