H1N1 Vaccine Risks and Tamiflu Risks for Kids

As the new school year gets underway, we’re hearing a lot more about H1N1 “prevention,” including, of course, the “importance” of vaccinations. We’ve already writtenquitea bit about problems with vaccinations and the need for people to be completely informed before opting for or against jabs for themselves or their children. Now, reports the Daily Mail, there appear to be some specific concerns about the H1N1 vaccine in particular:

A warning that the new swine flu jab is linked to a deadly nerve disease has been sent by the Government to senior neurologists in a confidential letter.

The letter from the Health Protection Agency, the official body that oversees public health, has been leaked to The Mail on Sunday, leading to demands to know why the information has not been given to the public before the vaccination of millions of people, including children, begins.

It tells the neurologists that they must be alert for an increase in a brain disorder called Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS), which could be triggered by the vaccine.

GBS attacks the lining of the nerves, causing paralysis and inability to breathe, and can be fatal.

The letter, sent to about 600 neurologists on July 29, is the first sign that there is concern at the highest levels that the vaccine itself could cause serious complications.

Concerns have already been raised that the new vaccine has not been sufficiently tested and that the effects, especially on children, are unknown.

It is being developed by pharmaceutical companies and will be given to about 13 million people during the first wave of immunisation, expected to start in October.

As the article details at some length, this scenario bears a haunting resemblance to the 1976 American flu shot fiasco in which swine flu vaccine killed 25 individuals and sickened thousands more. (You can see 60 Minutes ‘ 1979 story on the matter here: Part 1 and Part 2.)

Notably, the US government has already granted legal immunity to federal officials and makers of H1N1 vaccines alike.

Meanwhile, another warning has gone out about the effects of the main flu “medicines,” Tamiflu and Relenza. Byron Richards reports that an Oxford research team has found that the drug provides less benefit to children than the risks may merit.

A systematic review and meta-analysis on the use of anti-viral drugs, Tamiflu and Relenza, on children under 12 was conducted to determine their safety and effectiveness in treating children with flu and in the ability of these drugs to prevent children from getting the flu.

The drugs were found to reduce the duration of the flu by a day, yet not to reduce the complications of the flu such as fewer asthma problems in children with existing asthma or the need to use antibiotics to treat secondary ear infections arising as part of the flu illness process. This data alone suggests any benefits are very weak and offer far less protection than basic nutrients that have no adverse effects such as vitamin D, vitamin C, zinc, and acidophilus.

In the preventive sense, a full level treatment dose needs to be given to 13 children simply to prevent one case of the flu – again a very weak result.

On the other hand, 1 in 20 children develop nausea and vomiting from these drugs, which not only could be mistaken for flu symptoms but can cause life-threatening dehydration in any child who gets the flu as well. For such little benefit, public health officials are willing to expose millions of children to potentially serious and life-threatening medical “prevention” treatment.

So although we’ve said it before, we’ll say it again: Learn all you can. Ask tough questions. Become informed so you can make the best choices possible for both your own health and that of your children. 

The True Story of Max Cleland's Vietnam Injuries

The True Story of Max Cleland's Vietnam Injuries

I
wrote last night in response to the column by Ann Coulter.
My father, who has close personal ties with Max, has responded to me
and I
forward his reply.

What
follows is the true account of Max Cleland's injury in Vietnam.

---------

Thank
you Chris. I did not have the links to this, but Max called me about
it
in case I needed to tell the real truth should someone want to
know. This
Ann Coulter has written real slime. Only in America. Our service
men and
women fight and die to defend your right to a free press. The press
needs to
be aware of their responsibility to use this democratic tool in
a
responsibility way.



------------------------------

The
2nd of the 12th Cavalry was engaged in a combat operation at the time
of
this incident. Max Cleland was with the Battalion Forward Command
Post in
heavy combat involving the attack of the 1st Cavalry Division
up the valley
to relieve the Marines who were besieged and surrounded at the
Khe Shan
Firebase. The whole surrounding area was an active combat zone
(some might
call the entire country of Vietnam a combat zone). (Is Iraq a
combat zone?)
Max, the Battalion Signal Officer, was engaged in a combat mission
I
personally ordered to increase the effectiveness of communications
between
the battalion combat forward and rear support elements: e.g.
Erect a radio
relay antenna on a mountain top. By the way, at one point the
battalion rear
elements came under enemy artillery fire so everyone was in harms
way.

As
they were getting off the helicopter, Max saw the grenade
on the ground
and he instinctively went for it. Soldiers in combat don't leave grenades
lying around on the ground. Later, in the hospital, he said he thought
it
was his own but I doubt the concept of "ownership" went through
his mind in
the split seconds involved in reaching for the grenade. Nearly two decades
later another soldier came forward and admitted it was actually his grenade.
Does ownership of the grenade really matter? It does not.

Maury Cralle'

Battalion Executive Officer

2d/12th Cavalry Battalion

1st Air Cavalry Division

During the assault on Khe Shan

Holly Hester Pictures

Holly Hester Pictures: Revealed!

October 5th, 2009 7:41 AM 
by Free Britney

Photos of Holly Hester - the second woman who acknowledged she had a sexual relationship with David Letterman in the 1990s - have been obtained.The photos were obtained when she was an intern for Letterman.Here's Holly Hester with segment producer Frank Gannon (top) and writer Joe Furey (bottom) at Dave's offices back when he was still at NBC ...

Holly Hester with former Late Night co-workers. [Photos: TMZ]

Prior to the Late Show with David Letterman's CBS debut in August 1993, the host starred on Late Night on NBC (he was replaced by Conan O'Brien).His relationship with Hester took place prior to his move to CBS and lasted a year. Holly said she was "madly in love with him" but he broke it off.He had a relationship with Stephanie Birkitt later in the '90s.Letterman confessed that his affairs with staff members (how many, he did not elaborate) recently made him the target of a $2 million extortion plot.

Florida unemployment rises to 10.6 percent in June

By Jeff Harrington, Times Staff Writer
In Print: Saturday, July 18, 2009

Despite signs the recession is easing, Florida's unemployment rate made an unexpectedly large jump last month, fueling predictions the state could break modern-era jobless records set in 1975.

On Friday, Florida officials reported the state's unemployment rate catapulted to 10.6 percent in June, the highest in 34 years, with the Tampa Bay area among the leaders in job losses.

The Florida Economic Estimating Conference, consisting of various state economists and financial staff, met Friday to update an already-out-of-date prediction from March that unemployment would top out at 10.2 percent in early 2010. No consensus had been reached by late Friday, but some economists say it's increasingly likely state unemployment could top 12 percent.

Rebecca Rust, chief economist with the Florida Agency for Workforce Innovation, said it's possible unemployment will surpass Florida's 11.9 percent peak during the 1975 recession, "but we're going to hope stimulus funds help pull us out."

Prior to the '70s, analysts would have to stretch to the Great Depression for higher levels of joblessness. But the methodology for estimating unemployment was different then, making direct comparisons difficult.

The state's jobless figure for June, up from a revised 10.3 percent a month earlier, represents 970,000 out-of-work Floridians in a statewide workforce of 9.19 million.

In the Tampa Bay region, unemployment jumped a half percentage point, from an adjusted 10.6 percent in May to 11.1 percent. Hernando County, where unemployment reached 13.1 percent, continued to be the hardest hit in the region.

Michael McHugh, business development director for Hernando County, said Hernando's heavy dependence on the construction industry made it one of the first to feel the recession's bite. And a summertime drop-off in tourism hurts employment prospects even more.

"It's very hard to look at these numbers month to month,'' McHugh said.

Sean Snaith, director of the University of Central Florida's Institute for Economic Competitiveness, was somewhat surprised by the latest numbers — not that unemployment continues to drift up, but that the jump was so sizable.

"If you're in search of green shoots in the economy, the labor market is not the place to look," Snaith said. "That earth has been salted by this recession."

Over the past year, the bay area has shed 55,400 jobs, second among Florida metro areas only to Miami-Fort Lauderdale's drop of 96,400 jobs. All told, there are about 147,000 bay area residents counted as unemployed.

Overall, Florida has been losing jobs at a quicker pace than the national average. The national unemployment rate was 9.5 percent for June.

Friday's news was simultaneous with national reports raising hopes that the recession may be in its final throes: an earnings boost at some megabanks and an unexpected jump in housing construction in June to the highest level in seven months.

Rust cited several economic pluses in Florida: housing starts and housing sales are both up month over month and foreclosures are down; tax revenues came in slightly higher than expected; and the state's employflorida.com job site posted 300,000 openings in the month of June.

But often in recessions, unemployment continues to rise or remains high even after the economy starts improving. Nationally, the unemployment rate is widely expected to top 10 percent early next year.

Florida's unemployment rate could rise another few percentage points before we're through, economist Scott Brown with Raymond James Financial in St. Petersburg said Friday.

"It's anybody's guess if it's going to top out at 12 or 13 percent. It's hard to put a fine point on it," Brown added.

"This may not be even a jobless recovery. This could be a job-loss recovery, like we saw after the 2001 recession where we kept losing jobs even after the economy recovered."

Adding to the job market frustration is the rising tide of long-term jobless. As part of the federal stimulus package, states are receiving hundreds of millions of dollars to extend coverage for the unemployed who have exhausted regular insurance benefits while still unable to find work.

But a report Friday from the National Employment Law Project argues that aid isn't enough. Barring a dramatic turnaround in hiring, the group estimates that 540,000 Americans will exhaust their unemployment benefits by the end of September, and 1.5 million, including more than 130,000 Floridians, will run out of coverage by year's end.

"It is clear we are coming up on a tidal wave of need for more extensions and help from the federal government," said Andrew Stettner, deputy director of group, an advocacy group for low-wage workers that tracks unemployment data.

The housing bust paved the way into the recession three years ago, but it's since morphed into a widespread downturn.

One of the few exceptions in Florida, the health care and social assistance sector, is up a meager 1 percent in jobs year over year. One subset of that category sticks out: there are 6,100 more jobs in nursing care facilities than a year ago, a 6.5 percent increase.

Times staff writer Barbara Behrendt contributed to this report. Jeff Harrington can be reached at jharrington@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8242.

Jobless rates
Sampling of unemployment rates, listed as percentages, throughout Florida:
Hillsborough	10.7
Pinellas	10.9
Citrus	11.8
Pasco	12.2
Hernando	13.1
Liberty (lowest statewide)	5.5
Flagler (highest statewide)	15.5
Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater	11.1
Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach	10.7
Orlando- Kissimmee	10.8
Tallahassee	7.6
Cape Coral-Fort Myers	13.0
Statewide average	10.6

Jobless rates
Sampling of unemployment rates, listed as percentages, throughout Florida:
Hillsborough	10.7
Pinellas	10.9
Citrus	11.8
Pasco	12.2
Hernando	13.1
Liberty (lowest statewide)	5.5
Flagler (highest statewide)	15.5
Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater	11.1
Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach	10.7
Orlando- Kissimmee	10.8
Tallahassee	7.6
Cape Coral-Fort Myers	13.0
Statewide average	10.6

Numbers of Note

392,800



Number of jobs Florida has lost over the past year

88,500 Lost jobs in professional and business services

86,300 Lost jobs in trade, transportation and utilities

80,400 Lost

jobs in construction

10,000 Added jobs in health care and social assistance, the state's only growing sector

$100M

Amount in extended unemployment benefits paid out to Floridians as of Friday

31,513 Number of Floridians expected to exhaust extended unemployment benefits through September.

131,893 Number of Floridians expected to exhaust extended unemployment benefits through December.

Sources: Florida Agency for Workforce Innovation; Florida Employment Law Project

Regina Lasko Picture

To open your reprehensible intimate relationships publicly can be a difficult task, David Letterman did exactly that due to a possible extortion attempt and now he is going to face his bad days as his wife Regina Lasko is very disappointed and outrageously hurt by his conduct of exposing his life overtly. He apologized to his wife Regina Lasko, on Monday’s “Late Show” for his reprehensible intimate relationships.

“Late Night Show” host 62-year-old Letterman always tried to keep his personal life veiled from public view, but on Thursday David Letterman unexpectedly claimed that one of CBS News employee tried to extort him for $2 million by exposing his sexual relationships with his female subordinates, and he blasted open the tightly shut door to his personal life.

He lives in a tony Westchester, N.Y. suburb with 6-year-old son and his wife, Regina Lasko, who never seen as openly and widely. Letterman told viewers about his marriage to Lasko earlier this year after 23-year long relationship with her. Both have a five years old son. He confessed that he was not serious about married life. He said that he furtively felt that men who were married appreciated him in the way as he was the last of the real gunslingers.

Public was shocked by this extraordinary confession of letterman and viewers thought that he was just joking.He felt sorry for his staff members to put them in this disgraceful position and especially he apologized to his wife for throwing her in instability.

Halderman, who was accused of threatening letterman,has pleaded not guilty.

Regina Lasko Picture

www.ma wirlebenautos.de:World News

Autos sind unsere Leidenschaft und seit 110 Jahren unser Kerngeschäft. Mit Begeisterung und Kompetenz entwickeln, bauen und verkaufen wir innovative Fahrzeuge. Dies drückt sich in jenem neuen Leitsatz aus, der Sie und die Marke Opel fortan begleiten wird. Die Philosophie, die Werte und die Überzeugungen, die dahinter stehen, möchten wir gerne mit Ihnen teilen.

„Wir leben Autos.“ ist der lebendige Ausdruck der langjährigen Markenwerte von Opel.

„Wir leben Autos.“ bezieht sich nicht nur auf unsere deutschen Wurzeln und unsere Liebe zu deutscher Ingenieurkunst. Es ist darüber hinaus auch ein Ausdruck unserer Hingabe und Leidenschaft, die all unser Denken und Arbeiten prägt.

Das „Wir“ steht für die Begeisterung und bejahende, positive Einstellung, die unsere Mitarbeiter und Händler miteinander teilen - Grundvoraussetzung für die Entwicklung intelligenter, überraschender und innovativer Produkte für unsere Kunden.

Aber wir bauen nicht nur Autos, wir leben für Autos. Das Wort „leben“ steht für unser hohes Maß an Energie – eine Energie, die jeder spüren kann, der Opel erlebt; durch die Vielfalt sinnvoller Funktionen, begeisternder Innovationen und das faszinierende, dynamische Design unserer Fahrzeuge.

Nicht zuletzt glauben wir, dass „Autos“ auch in Zukunft sehr viel mehr sein werden als ein Fortbewegungsmittel. Bei unseren Fahrzeugen geht es nicht allein ums Fahren – sie sind ein wesentlicher Teil unseres Lebens.

Wir verbinden unsere persönlichen Erfahrungen mit denen unserer Kunden, um ihre tägliche Mobilität einfacher und angenehmer zu machen. Indem wir jeden Tag aufs Neue darüber nachdenken, wie wir das Leben von Menschen innovativ und nachhaltig bereichern können. Eine anspruchsvolle Herausforderung, die für uns niemals abgeschlossen sein wird.

„Wir leben Autos“ – das ist unsere Leidenschaft, unser Engagement, unsere Liebe zum Detail, unser Verantwortungsbewusstsein, unser Ziel und, ja, unsere Zuversicht.

Das ist es, was uns ausmacht.
Opel. Wir leben Autos.

Reggie Jackson

Reggie Jackson

AKA Reginald Martinez Jackson

Born: 18-May-1946
Birthplace: Wyncotte, PA

Gender: Male
Race or Ethnicity: Black
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Baseball

Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Baseball player, candy bar

Reggie Jackson's parents divorced when he was six, and Jackson was raised by his father, who had played for the Negro Leagues' Newark Eagles. At Arizona State University, the younger Jackson played baseball and football. He was drafted by the Kansas City Athletics in 1966, and made his major league debut with the A's the next summer. After the A's moved to Oakland, Jackson bloomed into a home run hitting star through the 1970s and 80s, and also played for the New York Yankees, Baltimore Orioles, and California (now Anaheim) Angels. He remains among baseball's all-time home run leaders, but when he was not hitting home runs, Jackson struck out more than anyone else, ever -- 2,597 times in 11,416 plate appearances (a .227 strikeout average). Only once did he bat .300 in a season, in 1980, but Jackson's game almost always improved in the post-season.

In his five World Series, Jackson's batting average ballooned to .357, and he won the World Series Most Valuable Player Award twice. In the final game of the 1977 Series, Jackson hit three home runs off three different pitchers, and each blast came on the first pitch. His clutch playoff performances earned him the nickname, "Mr. October".

Jackson was one of his own biggest fans, occasionally telling reporters about "the magnitude of me", and once declaring himself "the straw that stirs the drink". With the Yankees, Jackson famously feuded with manager Billy Martin and teammates Thurman Munson and Goose Gossage, among others. Jackson also once said he would give anything to be "half the player Willie Mays is". At the height of his fame, a candybar was named for Jackson -- the "Reggie" bar. It was mostly peanuts and caramel, covered in chocolate. The Reggie bar was discontinued after Reggie retired, but was re-introduced in 1993, when Jackson was inducted into the Hall of Fame. In retirement, Jackson has done some acting, runs the Mr. October Foundation for Kids, and is co-owner of a NASCAR racing team. His jerseys have been retired by the New York Yankees (#44) and Oakland Athletics (#9).

Father: Martinez Jackson (Negro Leagues baseball player)
Wife: Juanita Campos (div.)
Girlfriend: Jenilee Harrison (ex)

    High School: Cheltenham Township High School (Wyncote, PA)
    University: Arizona State University

    American League MVP 1973
    World Series MVP 1973
    World Series MVP 1977
    Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame 1993
    Baseball Hall of Fame 1993

    SPORTS FRANCHISE HISTORY
    Oakland Athletics (1987)
    California Angels (1982-86)
    New York Yankees (1977-81)
    Baltimore Orioles (1976)
    Oakland Athletics (1968-75)

    FILMOGRAPHY AS ACTOR
    The Benchwarmers (7-Apr-2006) Himself
    Summer of Sam (20-May-1999) Himself
    BASEketball (28-Jul-1998) Himself
    Bad Day on the Block (1997) Himself
    Richie Rich (21-Dec-1994)
    The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (2-Dec-1988)