Bornfamous

A new film, “The Corporation” delves into the nature of an Institution
In law, the corporation is a ?person?.
But what kind of person is it?
Considering the odd legal fiction that deems a corporation a ?person? in the eyes of the [...]

CLAIM: “It’s the same Medicare you’ve always counted on, plus more benefits like prescription drug coverage.”
FACT: Millions of Medicare beneficiaries will have less benefits due to this law. Seniors who have supplemental drug coverage through Medigap must drop it if they want to join the new drug benefit. Employers will drop drug coverage for 2.7 [...]

Mad Cow Disease has definitely, by the government’s own admission, entered the pet food supply and there are no regulations that even require monitoring its spread, much less try to minimize it. While dogs may or may not be susceptible (some studies have shown that they are, but the official line is still that more [...]

Study: Eating Organic Decreases Pesticide Levels in Kids
A recent study by Environmental Health Perspectives (March, 2003) found that children who ate primarily organic produce and juice had one-sixth the level of pesticide byproducts in their urine compared with children who ate non-organic food. The study compared children who ate produce and juice that was at [...]

The recent exclusion of most cow brains, eyes, spinal cords, and intestines from the human food supply may make beef safer, but where are those tissues going? These potentially infectious tissues continue to go into animal feed for chickens, other poultry, pigs, and pets (as well as being rendered into products like tallow for use [...]

It was the Christmas tree. After four days of pounding headaches and vomiting, and longer still of just feeling sick, I finally remembered what Barb Rubin said when I told her we got one:
“Are you crazy? Christmas trees are loaded with pesticides! It’ll kill you!”
I didn’t listen, of course, because it was my roomate’s [...]

By JOAN LOWY
Scripps Howard News Service
16-DEC-03
At Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Dr. Martha Herbert is seeing younger and younger children who have been prescribed powerful drugs because their behavior is “so extreme.”
One 4-year-old was treated with Risperdol, an antipsychotic drug usually prescribed to adult schizophrenics, because she tried to kill a sibling. “I’ve had several [...]

…doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you. Witness the postings of alleged time traveler John Titor. He says we’re going to have a civil war starting in 2005 that will erupt in a short, nuclear WWIII around 2012.
Do I believe it? Heck, why not?
Perhaps it’s time to get out of Dodge. Let’s see… [...]

Pharmaceutical giants hire ghostwriters to produce articles - then put doctors’ names on them.
Read the full story here.

I’ve had a migraine almost every day for the past two weeks–maybe three, I can’t remember now. I’ve tried everything I could think of: Imitrex, Excedrin Migraine, Vicodin, compulsive laundering and showering to wash the fragrance/chems out of clothes/bedding and off of me. I don’t know what else to do. Wait–yes I do: I need [...]

As many link health woes to air, EPA papers add to concern.
By Miriam Hill
Inquirer Staff Writer
NEW YORK - There are nights when David Rapp wakes up gasping for air. His days are largely confined to watching television in a small room in his family’s Queens apartment. Just walking up a flight of stairs leaves the [...]

By Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY
A toxic chemical used to make furniture, foam and electronics fire resistant is turning up in high amounts in the breast milk of women in the USA.
Two studies, one out Tuesday, found that all of the women tested were contaminated with polybrominated diphenyl ethers. Their PBDE levels were the highest [...]

Poisoned fairways are among the big winners in Bush’s proposed rollback of pesticide restrictions. The politically untouchable golf industry, where dangerous chemicals are par for the course.
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By Jake Tapper
Methyl bromide gas is some pretty nasty stuff.
The toxic [...]

“Many of the damage suits brought against I.B.M. by individuals claiming to have been harmed by chemicals in the workplace involve birth defects suffered by the children of employees. The stories are inevitably heartbreaking. Heather Curtis said she worked with chemicals at I.B.M. while she was pregnant in 1980. Her daughter, Candac?, was born with [...]

By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor, Independent.co.uk
14 September 2003
Mobile phones and the new wireless technology could cause a “whole generation” of today’s teenagers to go senile in the prime of their lives, new research suggests
The study - which warns specifically against “the intense use of mobile phones by youngsters” - comes as research on their health [...]