Nurses Union Calls for Nationwide Action September 1 to Rebuild Main Street

By Donna Smith
Main Street, USA - Nurses call their neighbors and their elected officials to come to Main Street on September 1, even as many of the elected officials continue chiding one another about returning to DC.

Main Street is where the damage has been done and is being felt most deeply; DC is where deals are cut to protect Wall Street with breath-taking regularity. This is not a time when political posturing for some distant election cycle by those largely insulated from the harsh financial realities they helped create ought to take precedence over the real-time, real-life needs of millions.

Lives depend on it; jobs depend on it; communities depend on it. 170,000 Registered Nurse members of National Nurses United throughout America have come together to re-build Main Street. We need you on our side. So, on Thursday, September 1, the nurses of National Nurses United will gather in more than 60 communities from Maine to Texas, and Massachusetts, Pennsylvania,Minnesota, Michigan, Florida, Illinois, California and beyond to call on the nation's elected officials to chose to protect and repair Main Street and stop cow-towing to Wall Street. Find an action on a Main Street near you and join in.

Study calls for heart drugs at 55

The study says preventive treatments like cholesterol and blood pressure lowering drugs could be given to all people over 55 Continue reading the main storyRelated StoriesWaist fat 'increases heart risk'Tomato pill 'beats heart disease'Gum and heart link 'breakthrough' All those over 55 should be offered drugs to lower cholesterol and blood pressure, according to a new study.

The report says that when assessing the risk of heart problems, offering treatment to all over-55s had the same results as testing for cholesterol or blood pressure problems.

The authors also argue it would be more simpler and cost effective.

But the Department of Health says the focus of the study is too narrow and ignores other health problems.

Writing in the open access journal PLoS ONE the authors, from the Wolfson Institute at Barts and the London Medical School, said age was by far the biggest factor in assessing someone's risk of cardiovascular disease such as heart attack or stroke.

They compared the effects of two screening programmes on a theoretical population of 500,000 people.

The first approach used screening just by age, where, at the age of 55, people would be offered preventive treatment, regardless of whether they were at risk.

Continue reading the main story“Start QuoteThe policy of selecting people above a certain age is, in effect, selecting people at high risk. It recognises that age is by far the most important determinant of that risk with other factors adding little extra prognostic information”

End QuoteProfessor Sir Nicholas WaldDirector of the Wolfson Institute The second approach used existing screening methods, based on age and sex, and whether someone was a smoker or has high blood pressure or cholesterol.

They found that both approaches had an 84% detection rate, but that offering everyone preventive treatment at 55 would be more cost effective.

The two methods also had a broadly similar false-positive rate - in other words, using age alone would diagnose 24% of people as being at risk, when in fact they would not go on to develop heart problems.

Existing methods of screening identified 21% of false-positives.

If screening by age alone was introduced, the authors believe it could prevent as many as 100,000 heart attacks and strokes each year in England and Wales alone.

Professor Sir Nicholas Wald is the lead author of the report and Director of the Wolfson Institute.

He said: "This study shows that age screening for future cardiovascular disease is simpler than current assessments, with a similar screening performance and cost effectiveness. It also avoids the need for blood tests and medical examinations.

"With age screening, all individuals above a specified age would be offered preventive treatment. Everyone would benefit because, for blood pressure and cholesterol, the lower the better.

"The policy of selecting people above a certain age is, in effect, selecting people at high risk. It recognises that age is by far the most important determinant of that risk with other factors adding little extra prognostic information.

"Prevention is better than measurement. Identifying people at high risk of cardiovascular disease needs to be greatly simplified, enabling people to obtain easy access to preventive treatment from nurses and pharmacists as well as from doctors."

Rally at Nashville Farmers' Market Calls for Labeling of Genetically Modified Foods

By Jenny Upchurch
"What's GMO stand for?" a driver yelled at Flo Oakes and her group outside the Nashville Farmers' Market on Saturday morning.

"Genetically modified organisms," they hollered back.

A few dozen people held banners and shouted slogans here as part of a nationwide rally demanding action to help consumers identify from where food comes.

Genetically modified organisms have had changes introduced into their DNA by genetic engineering techniques. The changes make them resistant to viruses and chemicals. Typical plants and products include soybeans, corn and canola and cotton seed oil.

"I'm not a biologist, not a scientist,"Oakes said. "I feel like we're being guinea pigs. We have never put genes together like this and then put them in the environment without proper scrutiny and testing."

Activists want genetically modified foods labeled and they want limits on how closely such plants can be grown to organic agriculture to prevent cross-contamination. They also want more research on the safety of genetically modified organisms.

Civil Society Calls for a Moratorium on Geoengineering Experiments

Extreme Risk Demands Extreme Precaution urges Civil Society Group at UN Ministerial

Nagoya, Japan -- One of the hottest issues before the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Nagoya, Japan is a set of crucial decisions that could bring about a moratorium on proposed experiments in geoengineering, a set of high-risk climate technofixes. At the opening plenary of the conference, the CBD Alliance on behalf of civil society organizations called for a moratorium on geoengineering experiments.

Releasing a critical report on the subject today, the ETC Group called for governments to support the moratorium. The group argues that geoengineering experiments, due to their unprecedented scale, are both beyond the parameters of real-world scientific testing and beyond the scope of current international law. A handful of OECD countries and corporations are pushing for massive "technofix" experiments rather than reducing emissions at home.

"Some of the proponents of these technologies think it's easier to 'manage the sun' than get people to take a bus," said Pat Mooney, Executive Director of ETC Group, in Nagoya.

Earlier this year, the CBD's scientific body proposed a ban on climate-related geoengineering activities that will go beyond the 2008 moratorium on ocean fertilization, to include solar radiation management techniques such as the release of stratospheric aerosols and cloud whitening, until all of the inherent risks and impacts have been fully evaluated.

Civil society organizations gathered this week in Nagoya are urging governments from 193 countries to ratify the proposal and put such experiments on hold. ETC Group's 52-page report, Geopiracy: The Case Against Geoengineering, makes the case for a moratorium, calling geoengineering, "a political strategy aimed at letting industrialized countries off the hook for their climate debt."

Confronted by rising global alarm over climate chaos, nations have the choice of adopting socially responsible policies to dramatically cut fossil-fuel use or to seek silver-bullet solutions. ETC Group's new report offers summaries of the various geoengineering proposals, and details their potential impacts on biodiversity and on equitable climate change solutions.

"Scientists can do research on computer models and in the lab, but they have no right to do real-world experiments on Mother Earth without any prior inter-governmental discussion and agreement that involves the participation of people who will be directly affected," said Neth Dano, Programme Manager for ETC Group in the Philippines.

"Opting for geoengineering flies in the face of precaution," the report states. "Even those who would like to see large-scale investment in the field are quick to acknowledge that we do not know enough about the Earth's systems to risk real-world geoengineering experiments."

A key message of the report is that geoengineering is not simply a cheap technofix for climate change, but a political smokescreen that will be deployed by wealthy nations to avoid undertaking real domestic emission reductions and commitments to help the global South fend off impending catastrophe. Given that only the world's wealthiest countries have the spending capacity to engage in large-scale climate manipulation, the report asks, who will have the right to set the global thermostat?

The report contends that several international treaties could be violated by geoengineering, including the Convention on Biological Diversity, the UN Environmental Modification Treaty (ENMOD), the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the International Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Tom Goldtooth, Director of the North America based Indigenous Environmental Network, said, "These kinds of dangerous experiments, promoted by a small group of scientists and rich industrial countries, are a continuation of the technological nightmare that's been imposed on our peoples for five centuries. Contrary to fixing the problems, geoengineering threatens to wreak more havoc on our biosphere and our communities. It needs to be stopped."

Guatemala calls US tests 'crime'

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President Alvaro Colom: '' I was upset and very angry''

US testing that infected hundreds of Guatemalans with gonorrhoea and syphilis more than 60 years ago was a "crime against humanity", Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom has said.

President Barack Obama has apologised for the medical tests, in which mentally ill patients and prisoners were infected without their consent.

Mr Obama told Mr Colom the 1940s-era experiments ran contrary to American values, Guatemala said.

The US has promised an investigation.

Continue reading the main story“Start QuoteWe deeply regret that it happened, and we apologise to all the individuals who were affected by such abhorrent research practices”

End QuoteStatement from US secretaries of state and health'Shocking, tragic, reprehensible' Syphilis can cause heart problems, blindness, mental illness and even death, and although the patients were treated it is not known how many recovered.

Evidence of the programme was unearthed by Prof Susan Reverby at Wellesley College. She says the Guatemalan government gave permission for the tests.

No offer of compensation has yet been made, but an investigation will be launched into the specifics of the study, which took place between 1946 and 1948.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said on Friday the news was "shocking, it's tragic, it's reprehensible".

In an interview with the BBC, Mr Colom said the test subjects were "victims of rights abuses".