After a six-week trial, a jury in Missouri awarded nearly $4.7 billion in total damages to 22 women and their families on July 12th. The plaintiffs said asbestos in Johnson & Johnson talcum powder contributed to their ovarian cancer. Thousands of women have filed lawsuits against Johnson & Johnson and other companies that sell talcum powder, but this is the largest verdict J&J has faced over talc-based products. It’s also the sixth largest product defect award in U.S. history.

Their lawyers alleged Johnson and Johnson was aware that the talcum-based products contained asbestos since the 1970s but chose not to warn consumers about the risks.

Johnson & Johnson said they were “deeply disappointed” and that the verdict is unfair, saying courts should not have allowed women to sue the company in Missouri when most of them do not live in the state. The company plans to appeal, as it has in previous cases.

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Lawyers said that there were asbestos fibers and talc particles found inside the ovarian tissues of many of the women. Medical experts testified that asbestos is mixed in with the talc, the primary ingredient in Johnson & Johnson’s Baby Powder and Shower to Shower products. Mark Lanier, the lead counsel for the women, said Johnson & Johnson covered up evidence of asbestos in the talc-based products for more than 40 years.

We hope this verdict will get the attention of the J&J board and that it will lead them to better inform the medical community and the public about the connection between asbestos, talc and ovarian cancer. The company should pull talc from the market before causing further anguish, harm and death from a terrible disease.” – Mark Lanier

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Johnson & Johnson has been sued by more than 9,000 women with claims that the talcum powder products contributed to ovarian cancer.

Johnson & Johnson has been ordered to pay $4.7bn (£3.6bn) in damages to 22 women who alleged that its talc products caused them to develop ovarian cancer.

Six of the 22 women represented in this case had died from ovarian cancer.

Sources:

• Jury orders J&J to pay $4.7 billion in Missouri asbestos cancer case – Reuters
• Jury orders J&J to pay $4.7 billion in Missouri asbestos cancer case – NY Times

The FDA is considering restricting the use of the word “milk” to mammal’s milk. This would non-dairy milks like soy, almond, hemp, and coconut milk producers from referring to their products as “milk.” The National Milk Producers Federation has been asking the FDA to end the use of the word “milk” in non-dairy milk products since 2000, according to AP.

Mammals produce milk, plants don’t.” – Jim Mulhern, president of the National Milk Producers Federation

Related: Homemade Vegan Nut Milk Recipes

According to PBS, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottieb says that if the FDA decides to end the use of the word “milk” by non-dairy milks, the FDA, in about a year, will probably start by notifying non-dairy milk companies of the possible change and seek public input. Scott also says that the FDA would likely face lawsuits from the non-dairy industries, and adds that the dictionary definition of milk does include milk produced from nuts.

Related:

• Hellmann’s Vs. Just Mayo – The Very Interesting Battle Within the Mayo Industry
• How to Avoid GMOs in 2018 – And Everything Else You Should Know About Genetic Engineering
• Best Cooking Oils – Health benefits, Smoke Point, Which to Use and Avoid

Sources:

• The Milk Project – Ashleys Green Life (image)
• The government wants to ban soy and nut milks from being called ‘milk’ – Business Insider

After publishing Circumcision Linked to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome a couple of days ago, I said to myself, “If there’s a link between SIDS and circumcision there’s got to be a link between autism and circumcision. And with a quick check, sure enough, I found that there is a correlation.

When I searched for “circumcision autism” I found that many prominent, mainstream websites bring up the topic. I looked for the ones that attempt to debunk the connection, like Vice’s article, Don’t Worry Circumcision Probably Doesn’t Cause Autism but they didn’t actually have any evidence against the findings. So what are the findings?

Based on converging observations in animal, clinical and ecological studies, we hypothesised a possible impact of ritual circumcision on the subsequent risk of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in young boys.” – Study by Morten Frisch and Jacob Simonsen

The study was a national, register-based cohort study done in Denmark, published in 2015. The study looked at 342,877 boys born between 1994 and 2003, with an age range of 0 to 9 years old. The study showed that circumcised boys were more likely than intact boys to develop autism spectrum disorder, regardless of cultural background.

We confirmed our hypothesis that boys who undergo ritual circumcision may run a greater risk of developing ASD. This finding, and the unexpected observation of an increased risk of hyperactivity disorder among circumcised boys in non-Muslim families, need attention, particularly because data limitations most likely rendered our HR estimates conservative. Considering the widespread practice of non-therapeutic circumcision in infancy and childhood around the world, confirmatory studies should be given priority.”

Recommended: Detoxify and Heal From Vaccinations – For Adults and Children

I always find it strange how averse people are to discussing the problems with circumcision. I suspect that the idea that we would do such harm to our children conjures up the strongest cognitive dissonance, even more so than with vaccines. I don’t think people who have had their kids’ circumcised can accept the damage they’ve done. I don’t think most circumcision men can accept that something is wrong with their beloved penis. What surprises me is how angry anti-vaxxers became, claiming that we were trying to hide the real cause of the increasing prevalence of autism spectrum disorder. The topic of the aforementioned circumcision-SIDS article created a very heated debate on social media.

On that note, let me be clear: Autism and SIDS and other chronic childhood diseases are caused by damage. The damage is done with toxins, trauma, and a lack of good nutrition. Poor food choices including most formulas, GMOs, and refined sugars (to name just a few) cause damage. So do vaccines. So does circumcision. So can dropping a baby on his head. So does ignoring a child for long periods of time. As much as we all like simple cause and effect explanations, there is rarely only one cause for chronic illness. Our society’s inability to understand complex systems will be our undoing.

Recommended:

• Detoxify and Heal From Vaccinations – For Adults and Children
• Doctors Against Vaccines – Hear From Those Who Have Done the Research
• Trump’s Administration Is Not A Fan of Breastfeeding
• Galactagogues Foods, Herbs, and other Ways to Increase Breast
• Shaken Baby Syndrome – Child Abuse or Vaccine Injury?
• Common Bad Parenting Advice You Should Ignore
• New Study Suggests Women Could, and Maybe Should, Eat While In Labor

The newest offender in the antibiotic-resistant bacteria epidemic is urgent care centers, where 46 percent of people who entered with conditions that don’t respond to antibiotics (viruses, etc…) left with a prescription anyway. That figure is significantly higher than emergency rooms (25 percent) and standard medical offices (17 percent). Those numbers are scary, as traffic to urgent care centers is on the rise and likely to increase as conventional healthcare becomes a luxury. Right now, urgent care centers and retail clinics account for 40 percent of all antibiotic prescriptions as well as a market share worth 26 billion dollars in the next 5 years.

Where the Numbers Come From

These numbers come from the 2014 Truven Health MarketScan Commercial Claims and Encounters Database and are from individuals under 65 with employer-sponsored health insurance. The database only accounts for those with insurance though. A survey from ten years ago found that uninsured patients at urgent care clinics account for 12 percent of all visitors. Since then, the number of customers at urgent facilities to has increased by more than 20 percent. If nothing changes, that figure will continue to rise. The number of unnecessary and inappropriate antibiotic prescribed will likely continue along with the number of visitors.

Related: How to Detoxify From Antibiotics and Other Chemical Antimicrobials

Saying No

While many people know that doctors prescribe unnecessary antibiotics, not everyone knows how inappropriate some of those scripts are. These are a big deal. In the new era of antibiotic-resistant superbugs, this negligence is unacceptable.

Some conditions are more likely to be given an antibiotic prescription than others. Many of these are viruses or infections that attack the lungs, like viral upper respiratory infection, bronchitis/bronchiolitis, asthma/allergy, influenza, and viral pneumonia. Always do your own research, as this study makes it clear that even doctors are not always clearly informed as to what they are giving you.

Related: Best Supplements To Kill Candida and Everything Else You Ever Wanted To Know About Fungal Infections

The Bottom Falls Out

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria will be one of the major causes of death by 2050 if something doesn’t change. There are no new antibiotic breakthroughs on the horizon. The meat industry will be crippled without antibiotics, as it relies on those medications to make up for diseases that flourish in animals with poor quality food and living conditions. The changes to the medical industry will be as, if not more dramatic.

Every time you turn around, it feels like there is another, previously uninvestigated source of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. From the overuse of antibiotics in food animals, healthcare settings that serve as bacteria breeding grounds, a lack of new antibiotics, among other factors, this is a multi-faceted problem…and one that is here to stay.

That bell cannot be unrung.

Sources:

• Comparison of Antibiotic Prescribing in Retail Clinics, Urgent Care Centers, Emergency Departments, and Traditional Ambulatory Care Settings in the United States – JAMA Network
• Urgent care centers often prescribe unnecessary antibiotics – Reuters
• Urgent care center market on track to hit $26B by 2023 – Health Care Drive
• Urgent care centers in the U.S.: Findings from a national survey – NCBI
• Even Proper Use of Antibiotics Results in the Emergence of Superbugs – Mr. Said Blog
• Patients are flocking to urgent-care clinics. Now hospitals are, too – Modern Healthcare

Every year in the United States 2,500 infants die from SIDS, and sixty percent of those are boys. The origin of SIDS is generally treated as a great mystery. Some of the frequently suggested causes are respiratory failure, low birth weight, bed-sharing, vaccines, and/or abnormal brain cells. Boys are sixty percent more likely to be born prematurely, another risk factor, but a new paper from a researcher at the University of Sheffield suggests another reason SIDS disproportionally affects baby boys – neonatal circumcision.

How They’re Linked

Circumcision is trauma. We don’t know exactly how trauma will affect an infant, but we do know that trauma can halt development and interrupt other important processes in the body.

Related: Circumcision, the Primal Cut – A Human Rights Violation

Due to how quickly circumcisions are performed, most doctors opt out of anesthesia for the treatment, leaving the baby traumatized by the pain. The most common complication as a result of circumcision is bleeding, although shock, sepsis, circulatory shock, hemorrhage, and death can occur.

Dr. Eran Elhaik, the researcher behind the paper, addresses the effect of circumcision on the cardiovascular system and SIDS.

For instance, circumcision reduces the heart rate [20] and together with the loss of blood there is a danger of reducing the blood volume, blood pressure, and the amount of oxygen reaching the tissues [5, 77]. A reduced blood pressure has been associated with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), a condition where the walls of the throat relax and narrow during sleep, interrupting normal breathing [77, 78]. Unsurprisingly, SIDS victims experienced significantly more frequent episodes of OSA [79].”

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Culturally Speaking

The U.S. has one of the highest rates of SIDS in the world. We also have one of the highest rates of circumcision in the developed world, establishing a link between neonatal circumcision and SIDS. Once you break things down into further groups, the connection becomes stronger. There is one group in the U.S. that experiences lower rates of SIDS – Latinos like Mexican Americans, who circumcise 44% of boys at birth in comparison to the white rate of 90.8%. Unsurprisingly, rates of SIDS among Hispanic are 39% lower than whites in the U.S.

Related: 10 Circumcision Myths – Let’s Get the Facts Straight

The data in other countries also suggests that circumcision is a risk factor for SIDS. Japan is recognized for its famously low rate of SIDS. Neonatal circumcision is rarely performed there.

Unnecessary Procedure, Avoidable Deaths

This is by no means a comprehensive study. We still don’t know what causes SIDS. It is amazing that years of research have overlooked such a simple factor. Why have scientists considered sleeping arrangements a bigger issue than a life-altering instance of trauma?

Neonatal circumcision is an unnecessary procedure. Many circumcised adult men express regret regarding their circumcision, and science has determined that negative effects from circumcision persist later in life, reducing sexual pleasure and a greater likelihood of infection or cancer. The damage caused by genital mutilation is very much real and likely still not fully understood. There is no good reason to continue it.

Recommended:

• Detoxify and Heal From Vaccinations – For Adults and Children
• Doctors Against Vaccines – Hear From Those Who Have Done the Research
• Trump’s Administration Is Not A Fan of Breastfeeding
• Galactagogues Foods, Herbs, and other Ways to Increase Breast
• Shaken Baby Syndrome – Child Abuse or Vaccine Injury?
• Common Bad Parenting Advice You Should Ignore
• New Study Suggests Women Could, and Maybe Should, Eat While In Labor

Sources:

• Is MGM a contributor to SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, “cot death”)? – Justice for Men and Boys
• Adversarial childhood events are associated with Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS): an ecological study – Biorxiv
• Why Is SIDS More Common In Boys? Researchers Don’t Have All The Answers – Romper
• The long and short of male circumcision in Japan – Japan Times

On July 1st, Seattle became the first major U.S. city to ban plastic straws and utensils. In 2008 an ordinance was passed that banned any one-time-use food-service items that aren’t recyclable or compostable, but the city made an exception for straws and utensils. Back then, biodegradable utensils and straws weren’t widely available. The exemption ended on June 30, and businesses can be fined $250 if they don’t comply.

Image credit: David Suzuki: Straws Suck

Our shoes, our clothing, our contact lenses, chewing gum, food containers, and so much more – all made of plastic. It’s in our salt, our food, and it’s in our water. Plastic may be the most insidious and enduring product we’ve ever produced. It is suffocating our planet and causing catastrophic pollution, much of it hidden and microscopic.

Related: How to Detox From Plastics and Other Endocrine Disruptors

Here’s a video about a whale dying from eating a plastic DVD case. Here’s a sea turtle with a straw stuck up its nose. Also, check out the documentary, Plastic Ocean.

People in the U.S. discard an estimated 500 million straws every day. Since Seattle has taken a stand against this completely unnecessary plastic waste hopefully others will follow suit.

Related Reading:

• Microplastics In Tap Water and Beer Around the Great Lakes, and Everywhere Else
• Drinking Bottled Water Means Drinking Microplastics, According To Damning New Study
• Many Hand-me-down Plastic Toys Are Toxic for Kids

Source:

• Seattle Becomes First Major U.S. City to Ban Straws – Washington Post

A South Korean family took a vacation to San Francisco two years ago. In a hotel room, their then-8-month-old son fell off their bed and hit his head.  After unsuccessfully trying to console him, they grew concerned. They called 911. An ambulance showed up and transported the family to Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital to check him out for internal injuries.

At the hospital, the doctors determined that the baby was fine. He had a short nap in his mother’s arms and drank some hospital infant formula. He was discharged less than four hours later. The family finished their vacation. Then, some two years later, a hospital bill arrived for $18,836. $15,666 of the charge was  designated “trauma activation.”

It’s a huge amount of money for my family. If my baby got special treatment, okay. That would be okay. But he didn’t. So why should I have to pay the bill? They did nothing for my son.”

If my baby got special treatment, okay. That would be okay. But he didn’t. So why should I have to pay the bill? They did nothing for my son.” – Jang Yeo-im, the mom, told Vox

Jang says they had travel insurance that covers only the first $5,000.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rm9jJYMZR90

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• Galactagogues Foods, Herbs, and other Ways to Increase Breast
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• Common Bad Parenting Advice You Should Ignore
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• New Study Suggests Women Could, and Maybe Should, Eat While In Labor