Philippines declares dengue epidemic as deaths surge

Source

http://www.bbc.com

6 August 2019

Image copyrightEPA

Image captionMost cases of severe dengue fever occur in children, such as this boy treated in Cabatuan, Philippines last month

 

The Philippines has declared a “national dengue epidemic” after at least 622 people lost their lives from the mosquito-borne disease this year.

At least 146,000 cases were recorded from January to 20 July – a 98% increase on the same period last year – the health department said.

The epidemic was declared so that officials can identify areas in need of emergency attention.

The infection causes flu-like illness, but occasionally becomes more severe.

The global incidence of dengue has grown dramatically in recent decades, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

The Philippines declared an initial “national dengue alert” in July.

Media captionOne Filipino mother’s worst fears were realised when her unvaccinated children caught measles

“It is important that a national epidemic be declared in these areas to identify where a localised response is needed, and to enable the local government units to use their Quick Response Fund to address the epidemic situation,” Health Secretary Francisco Duque said in a statement.

Western Visayas had the most recorded cases with more than 23,000, with significant outbreaks also in Calabarzon, the Zamboanga Peninsula and Northern Mindanao.

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First Ever Human-Monkey Chimera Created by Spanish Scientist – Report

We all suspect that these experimentations are going on underground, far away from public scrutiny, right?

Source

sputniknews.com

Aug 3, 2019

CC0 / Pixabay

Last year, a researcher from Shenzhen dropped a news bomb, announcing that he had successfully altered the genes of newly born twin girls. This shocked the scientific community, as genome-editing is frowned upon in many countries, being considered unethical and potentially harmful not only for the individuals affected, but also future generations.

Spanish researcher Juan Carlos Izpisua’s team has managed to produce the first-ever chimeras of a human and monkey in their laboratory-based in China, biologist at the Catholic University of Murcia (UCAM) Estrella Nunez, who worked with him, told the Spanish outlet El Pais. The scientist is reported to have injected human stem cells into the monkey embryos to grow organs for transplantation.

Researchers from UCAM and the US Salk Institute for Biological Studies reportedly genetically modified monkey embryos to inactivate the genes necessary for forming organs and injected human cells that are capable of generating any type of tissue.

However, they did not allow any monkey chimeras with human cells to be born, but interrupted the pregnancies. Nunez and her fellow researchers have not revealed any further details ahead of publications in international scientific magazines, but called the results “very promising”.

According to Izpisua, his team carried out “the world’s first experiment on chimeras of humans and pigs” in 2017, which did not have much success. As his co-author from Argentina, Pablo Ross, explained to El Pais, “human cells contributed to the development of the chimera embryo very little”.

However, the outlet points out that the team earlier managed to create chimeras of mice and rats. It used the CRISPR genetic editing technique to eliminate genes necessary for the development of the heart, eyes, and pancreas in mouse embryos and inserted rat stem cells instead. However, these chimera embryos were also aborted before the “14-day red line”. This limitation was set internationally for such experiments in order to prevent the embryos from developing human central nervous systems, which takes more than two weeks.

The team was not the first to produce such embryos, as research led by Japanese biologist Hiromitsu Nakauchi from Stanford University already did this back in 2010. His group generated mouse pancreas in rats and transplanted them into mice, thereby reversing diabetes. The scientist points out that although the National Institutes of Health of the United States does not support the research of human-animal chimeras, the Department of Defence and the Institute of Regenerative Medicine from California do.

The recent study on monkeys, in turn, was largely funded by the Catholic University of Murcia. While in Spain such experiments are limited to studies on terminal diseases, Nunez revealed that they opted for China to carry out the monkey experiments as they cannot be conducted in Spain due to a lack of infrastructure.

China made news in the scientific community after Shenzhen researcher He Jiankui said in an interview with the AP news agency last year that he had successfully altered the genes of twin girls in order to prevent them from contracting HIV. He later announced that there is “another potential pregnancy” involving a second couple. As the news agency Xinhua reported, he has “privately” organised a project team involving foreign staff and using “technology of uncertain safety and effectiveness” for illegal human embryo gene-editing.

Bioweapons experiments have unleashed another Ebola outbreak in Africa… and the WHO is panicking

Source

For the fifth time in recorded history, the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared a global health emergency, this time in response to an Ebola outbreak that continues to ravage the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

According to official data, some 2,500 people have already been infected this time around – and some of these infected individuals may have entered the United States, as the government has been importing Congolese “refugees” through San Antonio, Texas, and distributing them across the country.

A known testing ground for bioweapons experimentation, Africa is where Ebola outbreaks often start. But they usually stay contained within Africa, which is why health officials are now starting to panic over the prospect that a global pandemic could be in the works.

Despite declaring this Ebola outbreak as a global emergency, WHO’s general director Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stopped short of classifying it as an “international” emergency – the implication being that the disease is still contained within the Congo, despite still being a threat to the rest of the world.

Where Ebola is spreading is still anyone’s guess, however, as Congolese migrants continue to make their way into the United States via Texas, threatening the lives and liberty of American citizens who never voted to allow such an invasion in the first place.

What we do know is that at least 1,700 people have died thus far as a result of this latest Ebola outbreak, which was recently detected in the city of Goma, which has a population of roughly two million people.

“This is still a regional emergency and by no way a global threat,” insists WHO’s emergency committee chairman from the University of Zurich in Switzerland.

Don’t be fooled: disease outbreaks in Africa are practice efforts for a real global pandemic

The other four global health emergencies declared by WHO include one in 2016 for the Zika virus epidemic; another in 2014 for Ebola in West Africa; another that same year for polio resurgence in a handful of countries; and the infamous one in 2009 for influenza.

This latest declaration comes roughly a year after Ebola first struck the Congo and began to spread rapidly, despite efforts to stop it. Ghebreyesus says it’s the worst possible disease to impact one of the world’s most dangerous areas, and that it could continue well into 2020.

It’s currently the second-largest Ebola outbreak in history next to the one from 2014-2015, which is said to have infected nearly 29,000 people, resulting in more than 11,000 deaths.

What’s interesting about these outbreaks is that they often appear in conjunction with calls by the “elite” for better “population control,” which is exactly what happened a few years back when a plague outbreak started not long after Prince William publicly stated that “urgent depopulation efforts” were necessary to save the world.

As Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, warned at the time, deep state globalists are actually creating, and then weaponizing, these deadly diseases as an act of medical genocide against the world’s “useless eaters,” which apparently include black people in Africa.

You see, the “elite” don’t actually think that black lives matter, at least beyond their votes. And since black people in Africa can’t vote in elections where the “elite” hold power, they’re easy targets for elimination.

“[A] covert depopulation program is being run by the World Health Organization, targeting Africans for extermination via infertility chemicals administered under the guise of ‘vaccines.’” (Related: BOMBSHELL science paper documents the depopulation chemical covertly spiked into vaccines.)

“These vaccines, notably, contain chemicals that are administered without the informed consent of the women being injected. In fact, the women are deliberately lied to and told the injections are meant to ‘protect your health.’ But the real reason for the shots is to exterminate blacks in the name of ‘science’ and ‘medicine.’”

See BiologicalWeapons.news for more coverage.

Sources for this article include:

NPR.org

NYTimes.com

They don’t work: Conventional meds for depression and mental disorders treat symptoms, not cause

Source

Natural News

by: Isabelle Z.

Monday, July 22, 2019

Have you ever wondered why so many people who take antidepressants continue to be depressed? The truth is that like many other drugs for mental disorders, they are not the cures that many people believe them to be. They might address symptoms, but they don’t really do much about the cause of depression – and therein lies an important distinction.

In the Waking Times, author Tracy Kolenchuk looks at the logic of a depression diagnosis. What happens when someone is cured of depression? Let’s say their depression was actually caused by a nutritional deficiency. When the deficiency is corrected, their depression goes away – but did they ever really have depression in the first place, or did they just have malnutrition? She argues that depression was a symptom of malnutrition in such a case rather than a disease.

In the case of depression being caused by drugs or toxic chemical exposure, a similar mechanism is at play: Removing the drugs or chemicals from the equation may cure the person’s feelings of depression, but again, it was just a symptom of some type of poisoning rather than a disease. When depression is caused by abuse and then the person is removed from the abusive situation, it wasn’t a mental disorder – it was abuse.

The same can be said of chronic depression, only in this case, the chronic nature of the cause must be addressed to bring about benefits. If a person is in chronically toxic relationships or chronically deficient in nutrition, it’s these causes that must be addressed – but on a wider scale than in the previous cases. A healthy meal or two may help, but if they’re chronically malnourished, they might also be poor, and then their chronic poverty – and by extension, chronic malnutrition – must also be addressed. That’s a much bigger task, of course.

She says that these concepts also apply to anxiety, psychosis, social anxiety, panic attacks, and hyperactivity. If it can be cured, that can be done by addressing the cause – but in that case, it was never really a mental disorder after all.

Getting relief from depression

Of course, all this is just semantics. A depressed person likely just wants relief and doesn’t care about labels, and many of us – depressed or not – have had it drilled into our heads that antidepressants are really the only option out there. That’s the main reason so many people willingly subject themselves to the side effects of these drugs, which include weight gain, insomnia, loss of sexual desire, nausea, constipation, and suicidal thoughts.

Depression is complex and often has multiple causes, and each of these needs to be addressed to make real progress toward feeling better. For many, it’s not just about cleaning up their diet, even though that can help. Consider this: If malnutrition causes a person to become depressed, they may attract toxic relationships into their lives, which could eventually spur them to turn to toxic drugs in a downward spiral of illness. This, too, can be cured, but it requires addressing all of these factors.

Many people don’t realize the strong connection between the gut and the brain. For example, an inflammatory response that starts in your gut that is connected to a lack of nutrients like omega 3s, probiotics, and magnesium, leads to the inflammation in the brain that is behind depression. Therefore, it shouldn’t too surprising to learn that food supplements such as omega 3s, magnesium, zinc, and vitamin D3 and B vitamins can help improve mood and relieve depression and anxiety.

If you or someone you care about is suffering from depression, share this information with them. It could very well help them avoid dangerous antidepressants and finally find some true relief.

Sources for this article include:

WakingTimes.com

WakingTimes.com

Europe faces ‘looming syphilis epidemic’ thanks to dating apps and reduced fear of HIV

Source

http://www.rt.com

21 Jul, 2019

©  REUTERS/Steve Parsons/Pool

Syphilis stopped being “a disease of the past” after its worrying resurgence in Europe, health experts told RT. Less fear of contracting HIV and the rise of dating apps are among the factors behind the problem.

The spread of syphilis in Europe is intensifying due to worrying trends in human behavior, the head of the HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted infections and viral hepatitis program at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), Andrew Amato-Gauci, told RT.

Various factors play into the outbreak, such as “people having sex without condoms, multiple sexual partners and a reduced fear of acquiring HIV from condomless sex,” he said.

A new report by the ECDC shows that between 2010 and 2017, the number of confirmed cases of syphilis across the EU soared by 70 percent.

ALSO ON RT.COMIceland needs condoms in SCHOOLS: Doctor raises alarm on syphilis & chlamydia outbreak

Certain countries have seen a surge of the sexually-transmitted disease, with Iceland ultimately becoming the ‘leader’, as the number of cases has grown by 876 percent there. Ireland follows with 224 percent growth, while Britain and Germany have both seen their syphilis rates more than double.

According to the ECDC, “men having sex with men” (MSM) made up around two-thirds of the cases reported between 2007 and 2017, where sexual orientation was known. Heterosexual men constitute 23 percent of the cases, and women, 15 percent.

Amato-Gauci said that the growing disregard for the use of condoms is not the only factor fueling the surge.

These include: more testing for syphilis in some groups, such as men who have sex with men, lack of or insufficient sex education, poor access to condoms for teenagers and young adults, sex under the influence of alcohol or drugs, including the use of psychoactive ‘party drugs.’

There are reports that dating apps like Tinder and Grindr also contribute to the spread of the disease. Amato-Gauci pointed out that these services “may facilitate more sexual encounters, and with that transmission of STI [sexually-transmitted infections] like syphilis.” At the same time, different apps can be used for promoting disease prevention among users, he noted.

ALSO ON RT.COM‘Skyrocketing’ US STDs: Cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea & syphilis reach record levels

To reverse the spread of syphilis, the countries need to encourage people to use condoms “consistently,” as well as developing better screening and education programs, Amato-Gauci said.

Lorenzo Giacani, associate professor in the Departments of Medicine and Global Health at the University of Washington, told RT that the resurgence of syphilis in developed countries requires a robust response.

It is definitely safe and necessary to speak of a looming epidemic of syphilis in Europe, disproportionally affecting men that have sex with men (MSM), but not only.

“The ECDC data clearly shows that syphilis is not a disease of the past but very present among us,”Giacani said.

Among the most troubling trends in developed nations, he noted a “significant rise” in congenital syphilis rates, which means a greater number of cases in which the disease is transmitted to the fetus during gestation.

ALSO ON RT.COMBlame Tinder? Health officials pin 20% STD increase on dating apps

There is currently no vaccine for syphilis, but several research groups are working on developing one, including Giacani’s. He believes that “more could be done” by various European countries to develop it and study the problem.

“For example, the MSM population, which is more heavily affected by this disease, should team up with scientists to amplify their collective voices and request more government-sponsored efforts to promote research on a syphilis vaccine,” he said.

“Government involvement at this stage is mandatory, as [the medical] industry might not see such effort as a cost-effective one.”

‘We don’t know how well antidepressants work’: Danish study blows lid off flawed medical research

Source

http://www.rt.com

15 July, 2019

Illustration: © Pexels

Researchers from the Nordic Cochrane Centre have expressed alarm at research into the effectiveness of antidepressant medication, citing such degrees of widespread bias and systematic distortion that we can’t be certain they work.

“We are not saying (anti-depression medication) doesn’t work. But the studies that have been done are often of poor quality and it’s therefore difficult to say anything about the effect of antidepressants,” said Asger Sand Paludan-Müller, a Ph.D. student and one of the co-authors of the analysis, as cited by Videnskab.

ALSO ON RT.COM‘Deaths of despair’ soaring among Gen Z & millennials: ‘It’s the economy, stupid’

Previous studies show that the medication is effective but don’t really quantify exactly how much more effective they are than a placebo or alternative treatments. In their recent meta analysis, the Danish researchers highlight pervasive positive selection bias, inadequate reporting of side effects as well as systematic distortion of results in up to 79 percent of the studies analyzed.

“Our argument here is that the uncertainty is so great that we think we should be saying that we don’t actually know for sure.”  

In many cases within the meta analysis, previous researchers had stated a number of goals prior to conducting their studies but would then omit negative results and only focus on the goals achieved without mentioning where there were shortcomings, greatly inflating the apparent effectiveness of a given medication.

There were also repeated failures in double-blind tests, generally considered the highest standard of medical research, as both patients and doctors could quickly tell whether a placebo had been administered or not due to the appearance of side effects.

ALSO ON RT.COMShould Netflix’s 13 Reasons be held responsible for teen suicide spike or should grown-ups own it?

“When you experience side effects, it is easy for the subject as well as for the researchers to guess that you get medication, and then it is not blind,” explained lead author Klaus Munkholm.

The researchers suggest more in-depth analysis and new and better studies into the treatment of depression using so-called active placebos, which mimic side effects to a certain degree to guarantee that studies remain double-blind.

“If we do not and just choose to say that we now believe that the medicine works, then we do not find out how to make better trials and perhaps create a better treatment,” Munkholm concludes.

Meet This Cambridge Scientist on Verge of Curing Multiple Sclerosis

Meet This Cambridge Scientist on Verge of Curing Multiple Sclerosis

realfarmacy.com

July 14, 2019

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an inflammatory disease of the central nervous system, affecting 2.3 million people in our world. MS is as an immune-mediated disease, where the immune system attacks the protective myelin sheath which covers nerve fibers, causing communication issues between your brain and the rest of your body.

Eventually, the disease can cause nerves to deteriorate or become permanently damaged. Currently there is no cure for MS, however Dr. Su Metcalfe and her company, LIFNano are hoping to change that.

Since there is no cure for the autoimmune-like disease, the method of action for people with MS is to suppress the immune system with pharmaceuticals. Since the brain cannot be repaired, such as other vital organs, and the high price tag on MS drugs also come with a list of side effects, Su is working to find a solution.

The Potential Cure

After discovering a small binary switch which regulates inside the immune cells. Su is now working with a stem-cell particle called LIF, which has the potential to control the cell and ensure it doesn’t attack healthy bodily tissues, while still protecting us and releasing an attack when needed. LIF stem-cell particles are a form of regenerative medicine, playing a role in tissue repair while keeping the brain and spinal cord healthy.

Su’s approach is what she calls a “double whammy”, she’s finding a way to reverse the autoimmunity, and also repair the damage caused in the brain.”

After celebrating her discovery, she hit a snag, she found that LIF could only survive for 20-minutes before being broken down by the body, meaning there would not be enough time for the therapeutic actions to deploy. This is where the technology of nanoparticles came in.

The Role of Nanoparticles

A combination of LIF and nanoparticles are compatible with the body, and they slowly dissolve like soluble stitches. The nanoparticles become the delivery device which administers the LIF over a period of five days.

As Su states “the nanoparticle itself is a protective environment, and the enzymes that break it down can’t access it. You can also decorate the surface of the particles with antibodies, so it becomes a homing device that can target specific parts of the brain. So you get the right dose, in the right place, and at the right time.”

The particles themselves were developed at Yale University, but LIFNano has the worldwide license to deploy them, and Su believes we are on the verge of some groundbreaking medicine.

How Nano-Medicine is Helping

She says: “Nano-medicine is a new era, and big pharma has already entered this space to deliver drugs while trying to avoid the side effects. The quantum leap is to actually go into biologics and tap into the natural pathways of the body.

“We’re not using any drugs, we’re simply switching on the body’s own systems of self-tolerance and repair. There aren’t any side effects because all we’re doing is tipping the balance.

Auto-immunity happens when that balance has gone awry slightly, and we simply reset that. Once you’ve done that, it becomes self-sustaining and you don’t have to keep giving therapy, because the body has its balance back.”

LIFNano has already attracted two major funding awards, from drug firm Merck and the Government’s Innovate UK agency. Su hopes to attract more investment in her work, with the aim of starting clinical trials in 2020.

“We’ve got everything we need in place to make the nanoparticles in a clinically compliant manner, it’s just a case of flicking the switch when we have the money. We’re looking at VCs and big pharma because they have a strong interest in this area. We’re doing all our pre-clinical work concurrently while bringing in the major funds the company needs to go forward in its own right.”

Working with immune cells has been a big part of Su’s career, she is passionate about the subject. “The immune cell is the only single cell in the body that is its own unity, so it functions alone.

It’s probably one of the most powerful cells in the body because it can kill you, and if you haven’t got it you die because you haven’t got it.”

While MS is her focus at the moment, this work will “lead into other major autoimmune disease areas.”

I think we’re all looking forward to the future with Su and her works with LIFNano. She also states that “Psoriasis is high up on our list, and diabetes is another.

Downstream from there are all the dementias since LIF is a major health factor for the brain – if we can get it into the brain we can start protecting against dementia.”

Her research is significant and inspiring. You can follow along with LIFNano’s research and progress, here.

Source: theheartysoul.com