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United Nations July 2, 2002: - AIDS will kill 70 million people over the next 20 years unless rich nations step up their efforts to curb the disease, the United Nations warned on Tuesday in a report showing the epidemic is still in its early stages. More than 40 million people worldwide have AIDS or are infected with HIV, the virus that causes the disease, up from 34 million two years ago, and infection rates are climbing, said the latest report from UNAIDS, the agency that coordinates U.N. AIDS programs. "We haven't reached the peak of the AIDS epidemic yet," Dr. Peter Piot, the UNAIDS executive director, told Reuters in an interview, scotching experts' hopes it would level off. "It's an unprecedented epidemic in human history." AIDS threatens to wipe out a generation in Africa and destabilize the whole continent, warns the report, released ahead of the 14th International Conference on AIDS which opens next week in Barcelona. "From a pure medical problem, AIDS has become an issue for economic and social development and even for security," Piot warned, saying the disease was eating away Africa's work force, holding back economic development and aggravating famines. "The world can't afford a whole continent to be destabilized because of AIDS. It's going to have implications for all continents," Piot said.
GRIM FIGURES: The latest UNAIDS report, updating its study of two years ago, makes grim reading. AIDS killed a record 3 million people last year -- 2.2 million in Africa alone -- and HIV infected another 5 million worldwide. The disease, which has killed 20 million since its discovery in 1981, has so far created 14 million orphans. Three million of the 40 million people now infected are children under 15 years of age. Although the disease has drifted from the public eye in developed countries after awareness campaigns in the 1980s, the AIDS epidemic is wreaking havoc in sub-Saharan Africa, where 28.5 million people have HIV or AIDS -- more than 70 percent of those infected worldwide. Nine percent of adults between the ages of 15 to 49 in sub-Saharan Africa are now infected, the report said, up from 8.6 percent at the end of 1999. In Zimbabwe, one-third of adults are infected, up from one-quarter two years ago. Botswana, the worst-hit country, now has a staggering 39 percent of adults infected with HIV or AIDS, up from 36 percent two years ago. Because of AIDS, life expectancy in Botswana has dropped below 40 for the first time since 1950. The disease is also spreading quickly in East Asia and Eastern Europe, where the total of infected people has roughly doubled.
RICH COUNTRIES MUST PAY: The report called for more money from rich countries to combat the epidemic. The world must spend $7 billion to $10 billion a year by 2005 to tackle AIDS, under targets set last year at the U.N. General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS in New York. "It's not asking for the moon," said Piot. "By any standards that are used for breaches in security, that's peanuts." Global AIDS funding is now spearheaded by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which was inspired by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and launched in January with the help of the United Nations, the World Bank and others. AIDS spending in poor countries is set to reach $3 billion this year, the report said, well above the $165 million spent in 1998, but far short of the U.N. targets. "The international community has not given what it should have," Piot said. "They have considered it a marginal problem." Rich countries must do more to get drugs to AIDS victims in Africa, Piot said. "It's still an enormous scandal," Piot said, pointing out that just 4 percent of infected people in developing countries have access to the latest antiretroviral drugs, as opposed to about half in North America. In rich countries, where 500,000 are receiving antiretroviral drugs, 25,000 people died of AIDS last year. In Africa, where only 30,000 are receiving these drugs, 2.2 million died of AIDS. Although the price of antiretroviral AIDS drugs dropped recently to about $1 a day, Piot said, the cost of treatment had to fall even more to save lives in Africa. Doctors will be discussing the latest in anti-AIDS medicine at next week's international conference in Barcelona.
Stockholm April 24, 2002 - Potato crisps, french fries, biscuits and bread, eaten daily by millions of people round the world, contain alarmingly high amounts of a substance believed to cause cancer, Swedish scientists said on Wednesday. Research carried out at Stockholm University in cooperation with the government food safety agency showed that acrylamide, well known as a probable cancer-causing agent, is formed in very high concentrations when carbohydrate-rich foods such as rice, potatoes and cereals are fried or baked -- but is not present when they are boiled. The results of the research were deemed so important, and so surprising, that the scientists took the rare step of going public with their findings before publishing them in an academic journal and having them reviewed by other scientists. "I have been in this field for 30 years and I have never seen anything like this before," said Leif Busk, head of the National Food Administration's research department, of the results of the study. Food Administration officials told a news conference they had found that an ordinary bag of potato crisps may contain up to 500 times more acrylamide than the maximum concentration the World Health Organization (WHO) allows in drinking water.
French fries sold at Swedish franchises of the U.S. fast-food chains Burger King Corp, a unit of Britain's Diageo plc, and McDonald's contained about 100 times the equivalent of the WHO limit for water, they said. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency classifies acrylamide, a colorless, crystalline solid, as a "medium hazard probable human carcinogen." The WHO has ruled that one liter of drinking water should contain no more than one microgram of acrylamide. A tougher European Union drinking water directive due to take effect at the end of 2003 sets the maximum permitted concentration at 0.1 microgram per liter, Stockholm University said in a statement -- one-tenth of the WHO limit. A microgram is one-millionth of a gram.
Acrylamide is known to cause damage to the human nervous system, and the International Agency for Research on Cancer says it has been found to induce gene mutations and cause stomach tumors in animals. "The discovery that acrylamide is formed during the preparation of food, and at high levels, is new knowledge. It may now be possible to explain some of the cases of cancer caused by food," Busk said. "Fried, oven-baked and deep-fried potato and cereal products may contain high levels of acrylamide," the Administration said. Boiling the same products did not form acrylamide, said Margareta Tornqvist, an associate professor at Stockholm University's environmental chemistry department. Her study first looked at the buildup of acrylamide in a hemoglobin reactive in the blood of rodents fed with heated rat food, compared with rodents eating the same rat food unheated. Acrylamide levels proved to be about 10 times higher in rats eating the heated food. Tornqvist and her team then tested protein-rich hamburger steaks and again detected an acrylamide buildup related to the heating process, though smaller than for rat food. Assuming that the heated rat food's acrylamide buildup must originate in a source other than proteins, the scientists tested carbohydrates and found that heating potatoes formed a concentration of acrylamide in them between 12 and 40 times greater than in the heated hamburgers, Tornqvist said. "This was surprisingly high and implies a remarkably high cancer risk stemming from a single compound," she said. Busk said the Food Administration's follow-up analysis based on more than 100 random samples was not extensive enough for the agency to recommend the withdrawal of any products from shops or to advise people to change their eating habits. The raw materials used in the analyzes had shown no trace of acrylamide.
Among the products analyzed in the study were potato crisps made by Finnish company CHIPS ABP, whose shares fell 15 percent to six-month lows, breakfast cereals made by U.S. Kellogg, Quaker Oats Co, part of PepsiCo Inc, and Swiss Nestle, and Old El Paso brand tortilla chips. "Burger King is interested in studying the information closely and will launch its own investigation into the subject," Burger King said in a statement. CHIPS ABP, in a statement to the Helsinki stock exchange, said: "For us, these are completely new findings which have never before been known to the world's foodstuffs industry." Nestle spokesman Marcel Rubin said the group did not at present think the findings were very grave. "If it had been serious, the Swedish authorities would not have said that no change is required in eating habits." McDonald's Sweden media relations manager Birgitta Mossberg told Reuters the company was taking the research seriously. "But it is important not to draw hasty conclusions," she said. Spokesmen for the other companies were not immediately available for comment. "We will evaluate this study and look at it but it is important to say that Sweden has not withdrawn any products from the market," said European Commission spokeswoman Beate Gminder. Liliane Abramsson-Zetterberg, a toxicologist at the Swedish Food Administration, said that while the cancer risk from acrylamide was much higher than levels accepted for other known carcinogens, smoking remained a bigger risk. (End of article).
General poisoning notes on potatoes:
Potato (Solanum tuberosum) is a common introduced garden plant cultivated for its edible tubers. The entire plant contains toxic glycoalkaloids but usually in harmless quantities in the edible tubers. However, in the presence of light, the tubers photosynthesize and coincidentally increase the amount of toxins. The skin, eyes, and sprouts of the tubers can develop toxic amounts. Even the flesh of the tuber can develop toxic quantities of the glycoalkaloids. Cattle, sheep, and swine as well as humans were poisoned and died after ingesting parts of potato plant. Other animals were also been poisoned experimentally. A dog became comatose after ingesting green potato tubers. The above ground plant portion can also be toxic. The berries produced by the plant can contain 10-20 times more glycoalkaloids than the tubers (Cooper and Johnson 1984). The glycoalkaloids solanine and chaconine are not destroyed by normal cooking. Alkaloidal levels above 20 mg/100 g are considered unsafe for human consumption. Some cultivars have naturally high concentrations of alkaloids and have been rejected for use. Care should be taken to store potatoes in light-proof paper bags. If any green-colored potatoes are found, they should be discarded. Potato peelings and sprouts destined for a compost heap should be buried and kept from dogs or other animals. Sharma and Salunkhe (1989) provide an excellent review of potatoes and toxins and their effects on animals. These words are found here!........ Here is an interesting work on eating pork.
New Delhi, India February 18, 2002: - Five people in a remote part of northern India have died from a disease doctors fear may be pneumonic plague, hospital officials said Monday. The first death was reported a week ago, and the fifth victim died Monday, said Manju Wadwalkar, an official at a hospital in Chandighar, capital of Punjab state. She said six patients were being treated but that no new cases were reported in four days. Plague is commonly found in rodents, rabbits and certain meat-eating animals, especially those in higher elevations. Bubonic plague affects the lymph nodes, septicemic plague affects the blood and pneumonic plague affects the lungs. The victims, all from remote villages in neighboring Himachal Pradesh state, suffered fever, cough, exhaustion and chest pain, symptoms similar to those of the plague, Wadwalkar said. Doctors hope test results expected Tuesday will identify the disease. The pneumonic and septicemic forms of plague lead to a quick death in almost all cases if not treated with antibiotics. Bubonic plague is fatal only about 60 percent of the time. The disease has occasionally emerged in isolated parts of India areas during the past century. Newspapers said there was an outbreak in Himachal Pradesh in the 1980s.
Washington December 20, 2001: - People who eat a meat-laden diet have more than triple the average risk of esophageal cancer and double the risk of stomach cancer, U.S. researchers reported Thursday. The report adds to several studies that link eating meat, especially ``red'' meat such as beef, with certain cancers. Colon cancer has been the most strongly linked with a high-meat diet. The study of people living in Nebraska found that those who ate the most meat had 3.6 times the risk of esophageal cancer and double the risk of stomach cancer when compared to people eating what the researchers considered a healthy diet.
People who ate a lot of dairy products, who tended also to eat a lot of meat, had double the risk of both cancers, the researchers report in the January issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (news - web sites). Mary Ward, Honglei Chen and colleagues at the National Cancer Institute (news - web sites), Tufts University in Boston and elsewhere surveyed 124 people with stomach cancer, 124 people with esophageal cancer and 449 people who did not have cancer. They asked detailed questions about their eating habits, then characterized their diets as being ``healthy,'' ``high meat,'' ''high milk,'' high in salty snacks, heavy on desserts and heavy on white bread.
The so-called healthy diet had the highest amounts of fruits, vegetables and whole grains and generally matched the government recommendations that people eat at least five servings of fruit and vegetables a day, up to 10 servings of grains, breads and pasta and just two to three small servings of meat. The healthy eating group -- 21 percent of those surveyed -- also generally ate the fewest calories. ``In contrast with this healthy dietary pattern, the high-meat dietary pattern included much higher intakes of meats and much lower intakes of fruits, bread and cereals,'' the researchers wrote in their report. They said 33 percent of stomach cancer patients and 35 percent of esophageal cancer patients ate either the high-meat or high-milk diets.
Geneva December 20, 2001: - An outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus has killed 11 people in Gabon and spread across the border to Congo, where it has claimed four lives, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday. In a statement, the United Nations agency said that a total of 27 cases had been reported in the two countries, 25 of which had been confirmed with two suspected cases under investigation. WHO and other experts deployed on both sides of the border are tracing 227 people believed to have come into contact with the blood or other body fluids of victims, it added. There is no vaccine or known cure for Ebola, whose victims bleed to death within days after early symptoms similar to flu. ``It is still one outbreak. We are dealing with a remote part of the world, essentially the jungle, where people cross the border all the time,'' WHO spokesman Ian Simpson told Reuters. Of the 27 reported cases, 16 were in Gabon, including 11 fatalities, he said. On Tuesday, the WHO said that quarantine and other measures to contain the outbreak in the forested region around Mekambo in northern Gabon -- the third in the central African country since 1994 -- appeared to be working. Eleven cases were in the Republic of Congo, including four deaths, according to the WHO spokesman in Geneva.
Moscow November 28, 2001: - The AIDS epidemic gripping millions worldwide spread at lightning speed in 2001, with countries of the former Soviet bloc now facing the fastest growing infection rate, a U.N. report said on Wednesday. An estimated one million people in the former Soviet Union and ex-communist Eastern Europe now carry HIV, the virus which causes AIDS, the annual report said.``The number of HIV infections is rising faster in this region than anywhere else in the world,'' said Peter Piot, executive director of UNAIDS, the U.N. AIDS umbrella group. ``And the epidemic is only in its early stages -- it will get worse before it gets better,'' he told a press conference. (Editor's Note: this AIDS problem in the ex-USSR nations has greatly intensified itself since the "glasnost-perestroika" market reforms were introduced during the Gorbachev administration in 1985, and not there only, but wherever the "new world order" globalism in trade was indoctrinated into its socio-economic structure! And so the long expounded “moral decadence” of moribund capitalism that roots itself in the complacent cowardice of the manic-depressive trends of this new imperialism against “terrorism” seeks to maintain its reactionary stance through the age-old philosophy of “might is right.” For they fear progressive trends like they do the plagues of ancient times, which are progressing on them nonetheless! No? See Zec 14:12;Rev 16:1-21)!!
Around the globe, AIDS has become the fourth biggest killer -- with heart disease the first -- the report said, adding that 40 million people now carry the virus. ``About one-third of those living with AIDS are aged 15-24,'' the annual UNAIDS report said. ``Most of them do not know they carry the virus. Many millions more know nothing or too little about HIV to protect themselves against it.'' Despite the rising infection rates elsewhere, Africa continues to be the critical blackspot for the virus, with Africans accounting for almost three-quarters of all those infected with HIV or AIDS. The HIV virus, which is carried in the blood and other body fluids, is passed on through sexual contact, drug-use involving sharing of needles and transfusions of contaminated blood.
In Eastern Europe and the ex-Soviet Central Asian states, the focus of this year's report, social and economic turmoil have stoked the fast-spreading epidemic, the report said. ``In the Ukraine one percent of the adult population are infected, the highest in the region,'' Piot said. ``We never thought it could come to these levels in Europe.'' Russia and many of the Central Asian republics have seen spiralling figures with increased use of intravenous drugs. Russia alone has 163,000 recorded cases of HIV/AIDS, though experts say the real figure could be up to five times higher. ``If these trends continue, this will not only be the cause of a lot of suffering, but it will have an economic impact,'' Piot said. ``Russia already has a demographic problem.'' Frederick Lyons, head of the U.N. Development Program in Moscow, said the wildfire spread of HIV/AIDS could weigh down Russia's economic successes. ``HIV could reverse the successful growth pattern Russia has established for itself over the last three years,'' Lyons said. ''The one percent infection rates reached in the Ukraine could be reached very rapidly in Russia...The loss in terms of skill and know-how would become extremely serious.''In Western Europe, as in other high-income countries, AIDS is also on the rise, UNAIDS said, as the safe-sex message fades and therapies that prolong lives are mistaken for cures. For Piot, dwindling investment in awareness campaigns is also to blame: ``It is really the price we are now paying for decreased investment in prevention programs.'' ``In Europe it is not a matter of funding, certainly not in Western Europe. There is no excuse,'' he added.
Though campaigns have increased use of condoms, the survey says millions of young African women remain dangerously ignorant about HIV/AIDS. Figures from the U.N. children's charity UNICEF show more than 70 percent of adolescent girls in Somalia have never heard of AIDS. Asian nations like Cambodia and Thailand have drastically lowered HIV rates with large-scale prevention campaigns but the region's heavily populated countries, including China, have had a different experience. The country's health ministry said 600,000 Chinese were living with HIV/AIDS in 2000. UNAIDS said the total number could well have exceeded one million by late 2001. In Latin America, heterosexual sex remains the main mode of HIV transmission, in contrast to industrialized nations where male homosexual contact remains the chief cause of infection. Some 1.8 million people live with HIV/AIDS in Latin America and the Caribbean, the second-most affected region in the world. AIDS is a syndrome, a combination of illnesses. HIV attacks the immune system and leaves the body vulnerable to life-threatening diseases, such as tuberculosis.
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