Critical Health Alerts

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There have been three recent, and troubling tidbits in the news that directly effect the health of millions of people, and possibly the entire human population. I wanted to pass these along as a public service and to point to a troubling trend.

The first report, and having the narrowest impact, that Merck is pulling Vioxx. For years, researchers have been concerned that the pain reliever Vioxx was tied to heart attacks and strokes. Merck, disputed the concerns, and waved away the results of their own studies. This is a testimony to the power of pharmaceutical companies over the FDA - in my not so humble opinion. The FDA approved the drug in 1999. Troubling questions were raised in 2000. In September of 2004, Vioxx was finally recalled.

The second report is even more troubling and indicative of a the impact of toxins in our environment. Northwest Environment released the results of a study on toxins in breast milk. They tested breast milk from 40 women in British Columbia, Oregon, Washington, and Montana. They found PBDEs in 100% of the samples. PBDEs are toxins commonly found in flame retardants. There are speculations about where the toxins are coming from and how they are being ingested. The two most likely hypothesis are dust from furniture (which is commonly treated with flame retarding chemicals), and from the food supply - particularly dairy products and meat. I hate to say it, but most cows aren't laying around on sofas, so how these toxins are getting into milk and meat suggests a broader environmental exposure (to me). Regardless, the article notes:

The study found levels ranging from 6 to 321 parts per billion, with half the samples measuring above 50 ppb and half below. Although these levels are about the same as those found in other studies in North America, they are 20 to 40 times higher than levels found in Sweden and Japan, Williams-Derry said. Sweden and Japan have already taken steps to phase out or ban PBDEs.

"The levels (in the United States) are high and rising rapidly," he said. "They have increased approximately 15-fold over the last two decades."

The last report is on an issue that I have discussed several times on Uncommon Thought - Avian Flu. There is an excellent article by Mike Davis of CommonDreams - The Monster at the Door discussing the deadly scenario that we are facing. The Avian flu, also known as "bird" flu has mostly been found in Asia, but there have been cases of concern in both the US and Canada. The fear of epidemiologists has been that the Avian Flu would merge with human flu. Originally, the avian flu has passed from birds (primarily chickens) to humans, and human to human transmission had not been proven. The fatality rate of the avian flu is very high - 70% this year. Yes, that means that 7 out of 10 people who contracted H5N1 (the current bird flu) this year died. That is a fatality rate that is closer to other dreaded viruses such as variants of ebola.

This issue gains more urgency in that there is now a suspected case of human to human transmission - a case of a mother catching H5N1 from her baby and dying. If H5N1 is making the transmission leap, the world is ill prepared to deal with it, and this is particularly true where the virus is most present - Asia. Even in Europe and the US vaccine is only being made for medical professionals (according to Davis). As Davis points out, pharmaceutical companies have not seen it as profitable to produce the necessary vaccines, and so they have not.

As I have discussed before, and Davis highlights in his article, this is a pandemic not just waiting to happen. It is a pandemic in which the ground has already been tilled. The bird flu has moved from confined bird populations such as chickens to the wild population (herons, gulls, etc). It has also moved from birds to pigs (a very bad sign). The report of a likely human to human transmission raises the specter of a global pandemic which could make the influenza pandemic of 1918 seem minimal. As Davis notes:

The precedent always invoked to illustrate how this might happen is the 1918-19 influenza pandemic: the single greatest mortality event in human history. In only 24 weeks, a deadly avian flu strain killed from 2 to 5 per cent of humanity (50 to 100 million people - including 675,000 Americans) from the Aleutians to Patagonia.

What is even more frustrating is that authorities are doing virtually NOTHING to address the situation. Davis notes that neither Bush nor Kerry are raising this as an issue - though Nader wrote a letter to Bush in August on the "looming threat."

This threat, like the threat of climate collapse, is just not an "issue." Certainly H5N1 is not the only possible deadly pandemic (SARS, West Nile, antibiotic resistant bacteria, and ebola come to mind - not to mention the damned genetically engineered bugs that too many are playing with). And climate collapse is not the only potential "natural catastrophe" headed our way - there is always the civilization killing possibility of the exhaustion of the Earth's oil reserves. But these global issues are not important enough to even make it to the campaign sound bite list - much less any movement to deal with them via policy or plan.

I know, I know, most of this is grim news, but I think important. The fact that these issues are largely "slipping under the radar" (a euphemism for being buried) of the corporate media is beyond a disservice - it is life threatening. Whose interests are being served by this crime of omission? Certainly not us. And why are the Presidential candidates largely ignoring these issues (Kerry has at least send the words "global warming." I heard him). That means it is up to us to spread the word and apply the pressure - a g a I n.

Posted by rowan at October 2, 2004 03:39 PM | TrackBack | Printable Version | [eMail this article!] |