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Showing posts with label drugs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label drugs. Show all posts

Thursday, April 29, 2010

The HPV vaccination could be more dangerous than what it "prevents"

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Like many Americans, I watch some television. Though I probably watch less than average, I've grown to enjoy some unwind time with shows like 30 Rock, The Marriage Ref, Fringe and The Mentalist, a few of my favorites, and most of which can be viewed at Hulu.com. (There was a time when I didn't have TV and only watched movies and I also enjoyed that - so I guess I'm flexible within my entertainment options.) Now I like hulu not only because I can watch shows at my own convenience, but because hulu has fewer commercials than regular television. When I do watch "regular" television, it can only be tolerated if I fast-forward through the commercials or (if I don't have tivo or DVR), mute the commercials and read a book while they're extolling the latest fast-food invention (food now is more invention than actual food) or pharmaceutical promising to make my life better.

But lately even Hulu has been getting on my nerves because it's been frequently running these HPV vaccination commercials. Now the following is only my opinion, and I'm going to quote Dr. Mercola, as he's an M.D. and I am not, but these commercials always elicit an adverse reaction in me. I haven't seen this much fear-mongering and propaganda since we studied the Nazi regime in world history. If you haven't seen the ad yet, it basically scares women into getting the HPV vaccination with a series of "what ifs." e.g.: "What if my boyfriend in college gave me HPV and I don't know it and later on it develops into cervical cancer and I can't have husband, children, and the perfect life..." Then the commercial shows a very depressed, hairless, chemo-therapy-receiving young woman looking sad because she (as it is implied) got cervical cancer when it could have been so easily avoided with a simple vaccination.

Well, this vaccination is not so simple, it seems, nor is it harmless. As you will read in the following article from Dr. Mercola's website on the HPV vaccination, the vaccination is not only unreliable, it's potentially deadly  and could cause infertility! And the government is considering requiring the vaccination! Unbelievable! Now I realize I'm doing my own fear-mongering myself here, and that is not my primary intention. My intention is to help people out in the world become more aware so that they can make more informed decisions and lead happy, healthy lives; men and women alike because you women out there need to make informed choices about your bodies, and you men out there need to inform and look out for the women in your life. Also, as Dr. Mercola states in the end of his article, the key is to live a healthy lifestyle, because your immune system will naturally fight off illness and disease the more you live and eat holistically.

I'd love your input in the comments below. Please feel free to share the link to this blog with anyone you feel compelled to share it with. Just send the link:

Here's the article from Dr. Mercola on the dangers of the HPV vaccination:


Three Girls Died, Others Hospitalized, After HPV Vaccine
Posted by: Dr. Mercola
June 14 2007 | 123,860 views

Amid controversy over state legislatures in the U.S. requiring young girls to take Gardasil, Merck's new vaccine for human papillomavirus (HPV), severe side effects are being reported.
1,637 adverse reactions have been reported by Judicial Watch, a public interest watchdog, including three girls who died shortly after receiving the immunization. Judicial Watch obtained the reports from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration using the Freedom of Information Act.
In Australia, 25 girls who had just received their first injection of the vaccine experienced headache, nausea, and dizziness. In some cases, the problems were so severe that they were hospitalized. Shares of the vaccine's Australian developer, CSL, fell after the incident was reported in the news.

British Medical Journal June 9, 2007;334:1182-1183


Dr. Mercola's Comment:
Should young girls be required to take Gardasil by the government when possible side effects include hospitalization and death? There have also been reports from the National Vaccine Information Center about fainting and dizziness reported by dozens of patients as side effects of Gardasil, and there are even some concerns that Gardasil may cause infertility.
These are steep risks for a vaccine that only sometimes protects against HPV, which is virtually 100 percent avoidable without an expensive and potentially fatal vaccine.
Please realize that Merck has manipulated the medical and political system to FORCE children to get this dangerous vaccine for their own bottom line profit.  The potential promised reduction of cervical cancer is the bait they use.
Remember Merck, the manufacturer of this vaccine, is the same company that made Vioxx that killed over 60,000 people.
It is also important to understand that this year, some 11,000 women will be diagnosed with cervical cancer, which can be caused by HPV, and about 3,700 will die from it. In comparison, 16 times more American women will be diagnosed with breast cancer (178,480), and 11 times more will die from it (40,460).

As Merck's own literature says, it is important to realize that Gardasil does not protect women against some "non-vaccine" HPV types. So, even if girls accept the risks and get vaccinated, they can still get HPV.

Finally, although more than 6 million women contract HPV each year, a woman's immune system is often strong enough to clear up the infection on its own. About 90 percent of HPV infections simply clear up within two years.
Remember, it is NOT the infection that is the issue as much as it is the person's immune system. You can be exposed to these bacteria and viruses and if you are living a healthy lifestyle your body's immune system will typically know how to address the infection.


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Saturday, April 17, 2010

Love & Hate. Drugs & Rebellion.


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Love & Hate.

I'm about one-third deep into Andre Agassi's book Open and I'm not only enjoying it, but it's making me think. Usually a good sign that a book has captivated me, but often an ominous sign for my life's philosophies.

You see, early on Andre confesses that he hates tennis.

Hates tennis.

People who follow tennis, or Andre, more closely than I may already know this. I didn't find it surprising exactly as much as, puzzling. I understand that love and hate are usually closer than ambivalence and either love or hate, but I have a hard time really understanding how Andre could hate tennis and play it professionally for 20 years.

But I am only one-third of the way through the book, so maybe more light will be shed.

Also, as the story and Andre's life is very compelling, props should be given to his ghostwriter, J.R. Moehringer, as ghostwriters truly are the unsung heroes of the literary world, especially when it comes to famous people "writing" their autobiographies. Such is the way of the world nowadays, it seems. Anyway, Moehringer is doing an amazing job with Agassi of writing this story.

I must confess, the only thing I have experienced in my life even remotely close to Andre's tennis is music, since I've been singing and playing music at approximately the same age when Andre first started playing tennis. But unlike Andre, I didn't spend my childhood drilling and training music. Practice, yes. Lessons, yes. But I had no foreboding parental figure yelling at or threatening me. In that regard, I was lucky. As an aside, though, maybe I'd be more successful as a musician if I were more forcibly trained, a la Helfgott and Agassi. Though I'd probably also be more messed up. No offense to either man mentioned above. The closest thing I can think of to Andre's story in the music world is David Helfgott, the child-prodigy pianist depicted in 1996's Shine. Helfgott is talented and performing still as an adult, but visibly damaged from the abuse he suffered as a child. It's a testament to Agassi's strength, smarts, and resilience as a person that he's as kind and well-balanced as he is, considering the pseudo-torture he endured as an adolescent. Though it's also testament to the people he had in his life (possibly earth-bound angels as they're depicted in Open), in the form of his older brother, best friend and mother, who balanced out his father's aggression, rage and his tennis-training-camp's overall abuse.

But this is not meant to be a book review, though the last paragraph may skirt into such territory.

How do we, as humans, simultaneously love and hate so easily, so well? And why, when we feel both hate and love, are we prone to poor judgment and decision making?

The easy and most accessible answer is that they are both feelings of passion. Ambivalence is never described as white-hot, but hate and love can both be very hot indeed.

In recent years, scientists in London claim to have explained why love and hate are so similarly experienced in the human brain. Article from Independent.co.uk: Scientists prove it really is a thin line between love and hate

The same brain circuitry is involved in both extreme emotions – but hate retains a semblance of rationality

Love and hate are intimately linked within the human brain, according to a study that has discovered the biological basis for the two most intense emotions.

Scientists studying the physical nature of hate have found that some of the nervous circuits in the brain responsible for it are the same as those that are used during the feeling of romantic love – although love and hate appear to be polar opposites.

A study using a brain scanner to investigate the neural circuits that become active when people look at a photograph of someone they say they hate has found that the "hate circuit" shares something in common with the love circuit.

The findings could explain why both hate and romantic love can result in similar acts of extreme behaviour – both heroic and evil...
The study advertised for volunteers to take part in the study and 17 people were chosen who professed a deep hatred for one individual. Most chose an ex-lover or a competitor at work, although one woman expressed an intense hatred for a famous political figure.

Professor Zeki and John Romaya of the Wellcome Laboratory of Neurobiology analysed the activity of the neural circuits in the brain that lit up when the volunteers were viewing photos of the hated person.

They found that the hate circuit includes parts of the brain called the putamen and the insula, found in the sub-cortex of the organ. The putamen is already known to be involved in the perception of contempt and disgust and may also be part of the motor system involved in movement and action.

"Significantly, the putamen and the insula are also both activated by romantic love. This is not surprising. The putamen could also be involved in the preparation of aggressive acts in a romantic context, as in situations when a rival presents a danger," Professor Zeki said.

"Previous studies have suggested that the insula may be involved in responses to distressing stimuli, and the viewing of both a loved and a hated face may constitute such a distressing signal."

One major difference between love and hate appears to be in the fact that large parts of the cerebral cortex – associated with judgement and reasoning – become de-activated during love, whereas only a small area is deactivated in hate.

"This may seem surprising since hate can also be an all-consuming passion like love. But whereas in romantic love, the lover is often less critical and judgemental regarding the loved person, it is more likely that in the context of hate the hater may want to exercise judgement in calculating moves to harm, injure or otherwise exact revenge," Professor Zeki said.

"Interestingly, the activity of some of these structures in response to a hated face is proportional in strength to the declared intensity of hate, thus allowing the subjective state of hate to be objectively quantified. This finding may have implications in criminal cases."


So every time I read about how Andre hates tennis, there is something in him that likely loves tennis as well. I wonder if maybe he hated how controlled his life was for the first 15 years of tennis playing, or even for the whole time he played tennis, because it seemed he really had no choice but to play tennis.

But what about people?

Have I hated the people I've loved? Have I loved the people I've hated? Years ago I gave a talk at a teenage spiritual retreat (it was of a Christian bent - Catholic to be precise. I never was officially Catholic but I participated in some of their teenage retreats. I think it was because the Catholic boys were cuter than the Protestant boys, but maybe they were just more devout and therefore prone to rebellion.) Anyway, I don't remember everything I said, but I do recall the shock on people's faces when I said I'd rather have someone hate me than be indifferent to me, because at least they were feeling something. I don't even remember the title of the talk, but I remember that. At 15, I already had a sense that feeling something, anything, intensely was better than feeling nothing at all.

Drugs & Rebellion.

I wonder about these child athletes. Child stars too. Are they doomed to hate life in whatever way rebels them the most to authority? Are they doomed (as we've seen time and again) to drug abuse and poor choices? Can we really blame them? Certainly fame or extreme pressure aren't necessary for children to turn into drug abusers or rebels, as many kids who have neither fame nor obvious pressure still turn to drugs and rebellion. But those kids seem to have neglect or desperation if they don't have pressure or fame.

Are we f*cking up our children? Did aboriginal children rebel? How about Native American children (pre-settlement by the pale-faces)? I suppose their options were limited. Rebellion was going off with another tribe or on a sojourn by your lonesome.

This opens a bigger can of worms. Is modernization spoiling the "future" which our children are often said to be? Apparently, we're in a financial recession. So what gets cut? What's been getting cut in education for years? Arts and physical fitness. The two things that kids need most are being cut. Don't get me wrong. Reading, writing, arithmetic and history are important, but they're not more important than arts and fitness.

What is this blog about?

I don't truly know for certain. Love & Hate? Drugs & Rebellion?

But I will leave you with this.

Love & Hate. Drugs & Rebellion. All may be inseparable parts of becoming who we are. But the first two are life long, so you better figure out how to love yourself and your passion with as much fire as you hate it at times. Not only are they closer than you think, but if you don't find the love, you could be swallowed by the fire.



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