HRT drug Prempro-Cancer Law Suit

Jury Returns Verdict in Prempro-Cancer Case


Mary Claire Dale, Associated Press Writer, writing from Philadelphia on October 26th, 2009, says a Philadelphia jury returned a sealed punitive-damages verdict on Monday against drug maker Wyeth Pharmaceuticals after finding a link between a woman's breast cancer and the hormone-replacement drug she took. Connie Baron’s case is one of a handful of Prempro lawsuits to go to trial out of several thousand filed across the country. About 1,500 are pending in Philadelphia.


At Wyeth's request, the amount of Barton's punitive award was sealed pending the verdict in a second Prempro case underway in the same courthouse. The jury had awarded Barton $3.75 million in compensatory damages on Friday and found the company wilfully hid evidence of a cancer link, prompting the deliberations Monday on punitive damages.


"They knew back in the 1970s that these drugs had the potential to cause breast cancer, so they didn't have the studies done," said Esther Berezofsky, one of Barton's lawyers. "When bad study results came out, Wyeth consistently downplayed the results, tried to discredit the results, tried to neutralize the critics."


Sales of the drug have plummeted since 2002 when a large federal health study, the Women's Health Initiative, was stopped when researchers saw more breast cancers in those on Prempro.
Read the full story on http://abcnews.go.com/Business/WireStory?id=8920959&page=1

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Omega-3 Fats Prevent Breast Cancer

• Animal experiments have shown that a diet rich in linoleic acid (omega-6 fatty acids) promotes the growth of malignant breast cancer tumors

• However, the addition of omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids to the diet can block this effect

• Epidemiological studies have shown that countries with a high intake of omega-3 acids from fish have lower breast cancer rates. Researchers evaluated over 250 patients with breast cancer and analyzed their fat relative to 90 women without breast cancer
Int J Cancer March 2002 1;98(1):78-83

While we now know that EFA’s (Essential Fatty Acids) are exactly that – essential to the existence of a healthy body, have you noticed the confusion about how much of each we should be taking? Why do some say ‘we must have all our omegas’, while others say ‘omega-3 is the only one’? Omega-6 is abundant in our diets, its everywhere we look! In nearly all processed and packaged foods under the wording ‘vegetable oil’, it dominates our diets in the form of sunflower, canola (real name ‘rape seed oil’, no wonder they changed its name!) oil and low grade olive oils such as pomace oil, a very cheap oil which is used to fry chips and fast foods, amongst others.

The important point is to keep our EFA intake balanced. Because we have so much omega-6 and 9 (olive oil, seeds, nuts, etc) without even trying, we need to increase omega-3 to get the ratio right. In early humans the ratio was about 1:1 between omega-3 and 6. Currently most Americans eat a dietary ratio that falls between 20:1 and 50:1. For most of us to achieve this we must reduce omega-6 and increase omega-3 on a daily basis. Eating more fish is the natural way to do this, but we must be aware of heavy metal poisoning, so a pharmaceutical grade omega-3 fish oil supplement is free from possible toxic poisoning from deep sea fish and will give you adequate supplies of healthy omega-3

Further reading:
Britsh Journal of Cancer

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Pineapples fed high-dose cadmium poisoned fertiliser from China

First it was poisoned chicken feed and contaminated dog food from China, now its fertilizer stacked with high doses of cadmium. When are complacent customers going to check their food sources, be they struggling farmers looking for a cheap way out, or Regular Joe’s and Jane’s scanning supermarket shelves?

Better still, when are more people going to wake up to the dangers of cheap chemical fertilisers enough to rush helter skelter into organic food production before we all have to grow our own food in case store bought stuff kills us on the spot?

Scientists keep telling us commercial fertilisers are made up of chemicals and ‘chemicals are not dangerous, plants can’t survive without them’. Well, sure enough, but it’s the extra bits in the containers we should be worried about – in the end, our immune systems have to fight off the accumulated and unwanted high levels of chemicals which our bodies cannot assimilate and cannot get rid of either

Who wants to end up with bodies rich as a Swiss Bank in chemicals packed away in dark corners of our tissues like some nebulous demon, waiting to pounce as cancer, heart disease, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis or more?

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What is your skin eating?

It is a medically recognized fact that our bodies absorb significant amounts of what we put on our skin. And now with certified organic food rapidly becoming the nutrition of choice by the health conscious amongst us, why would you accept any less for your skin?

Did you know that:

- An average adult is exposed to 126 harmful chemicals per day, via the 9 or so cosmetic products they use
- There are no mandated safety studies of cosmetics in the world
- Only 11% of the known 10,500 known ingredients have been assessed for safety
- The lipstick or nail polish you may be wearing could be a danger to your health
- And so is could your deodorant, toothpaste, baby lotion and soap

Seemingly innocuous personal-care products contain a large amount of mostly unregulated chemicals and toxic ingredients. Some of them – phthalates, formaldehyde, petroleum, parabens, benzene and lead can be linked to:

- Breast cancer
- Endometriosis
- Reproductive disorders
- Birth defects
- Developmental disorders in children
- Nearly all lipsticks (including well known brand names) contain lead

Women should be particularly concerned as they have a greater percentage of body fat and fat soluble chemicals such as parabens and toluene tend to settle long term in these storage sites

Synthetic chemicals such as alkylphenols (detergents) and bisphenol A (hard plastics), can mimic the body’s natural oestrogens.

There is a very simple test you do to test if you are swallowing lead every day through your lipstick and there is at least one product available that is lead free, so it’s not all bad news

Don’t take your health for granted – learn about the products out there so you can find safer choices for yourself and your family. Find a health practitioner who specializes in organic products and use only healthy creams on your body.

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Power lines link to cancer in new alert

This is not a new idea, but its gathering speed and attention around the world and while the jury’s out on whether the anecdotal evidence will satisfy people who insist on scientific results one way or the other, I’m personally not prepared to take the risk. So I have a gizmo on my mobile, as well as on my computer, digital bedside clock and rib heaters and I keep reading the reports and as much unbiased opinion as I can find.

The choice is yours, but why not do some investigating for yourself – there’s loads of information around – but do think again about making the minimally responsible decision to protect your children’s brains by not giving them mobile phones when they are barely out of Reception class.

An extract by Nicholas Cecil in the Evening Standard highlights that "Homes and schools could be banned from being built near power lines. A secret report has raised fresh fears of a link between power lines and cancer. The confidential study, obtained by the Evening Standard, urges ministers to consider banning the building of homes and schools close to overhead high-voltage power cables because of possible health risks. It says a ban is the best way to reduce significantly exposure to electromagnetic fields from the electricity grid system."

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Reasons to Throw Out Your Microwave Oven

Here are some great reasons from Joseph Mercola – writing in The Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients at www.mercola.com on why microwave ovens are actually not good for us.

1. Continually eating food processed from a microwave oven causes long term, permanent brain damage by ‘shorting out’ electrical impulses in the brain (de-polarizing or de-magnetizing the brain tissue)
2. The human body cannot metabolize or break down the unknown by-products created in microwaved food
3. Male and female hormone production is shut down and/or altered by continually eating microwaved foods
4. The effects of microwaved food by-products are residual (long term, permanent) within the human body
5. Minerals, vitamins and nutrients of all microwaved food are reduced or altered so that the human body gets little or no benefit, or the body absorbs altered compounds that cannot be broken down
6. The minerals in vegetables are altered into cancerous free radicals when cooked in microwave ovens
7. Microwaved foods cause stomach and intestinal cancerous growths (tumours). This may explain the rapidly increasing rate of colon cancer in america
8. The prolonged eating of microwaved foods causes cells to increase in human blood
9. Continual ingestion of microwaved food causes immune system deficiencies through lymph glad and blood serum alterations
10. Eating microwaved food causes loss of memory, concentration, emotional instability and a decrease of intelligence

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Ala and prostate cancer

Quick Tip

A recent review article points out that prostate cancer is increasing, and is the second leading cause of cancer deaths in the Western world. The etiology of prostate cancer remains unclear, course and progression are unpredictable, and definite treatment is not yet established. Lifestyle and diet Prostate Forum Nutrition Guide could contribute to the progression from small, latent, non-metastatic tumors to clinically significant, invasive, metastatic lesions. What Is Metastatic Cancer?

Of six studies done, one showed no correlation. One found a small (not statistically significant) positive correlation. Four studies found a strong positive correlation between ALA (Alpha-Linolenic Acid) and prostate cancer. At least two other studies have also shown a correlation of alpha-linolenic acid with increased prostate cancer.According to Prostate Forum, several labs have found that ALA is one of the most powerful growth stimulants for human prostate cancer cells. The Prostate Forum has recommended against the use of flax oil by men with prostate cancer. Since flax oil is the richest readily available food source of ALA, the reasoning goes, this oil should cause the most prostate cancer.

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