Showing posts with label children. Show all posts
Showing posts with label children. Show all posts

Six of the Best 573

Mark Valladares asks if using your preferred definition of liberalism a means to suppress reasoned dissent.

"According to a 2015 Prison Reform Trust review, children and young people who are, or have been, in care were more than five times more likely to be involved in the criminal justice system. The most recent inspection report of Medway in 2014, which houses 12 to 17-year-olds who have been remanded or sentenced to detention, found 45% of youngsters there had care histories." Jameel Hadi writes on institutional abuse.

Patrick Barkham reports that more than 10% of children in England haven’t been to a natural environment in past 12 months.

"Trees in Leicester reduce concentrations of road traffic emissions in the city by up to 7% and have a “regionally beneficial impact on air quality”, results from an academic research project have found." Important (and more widely applicable) research from Michael Holder.

Twitter just killed its own product, says Austin Rathe.

Curious British Telly on the short Blue Peter career of Michael Sundin.
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A witness statement by a victim of Greville Janner

Only a few months ago the press was finding conspiracies of powerful child abusers under every stone.

Now, judging by the headlines about Lord Bramall and John Inman, the same papers are incensed if the rich and famous are even investigated.

The truth, no doubt, is somewhere in between.

So to remind ourselves that such people can be guilty of such offences, let's look at one of the witness statements alleging abuse by Greville Janner.

It was reproduced in the Daily Mail and on The Needle in April 2015 and begins:
From my earliest childhood I never knew my parents and believe that I was in the care of the Leicestershire Local Authority from when I was about two weeks of age. I recall that I was fostered by a family called Wilkinson ... until I was about seven years of age when I went to live at The Cottage Homes at Countesthorpe, which was a Local Authority owned establishment.
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The 11-year-old who swam the English Channel

At the end of last year I blogged about five news stories you don't get any more.

One of them was ever younger children swimming the channel:
Once skinny little figures shivering in goose grease appeared regularly in the news. Today you never see them. 
It turns out that the Channel Swimming Association imposed a minimum age of 16 years in 2000, which means that the record is likely to stay with Thomas Gregory, who made the crossing in 1988 aged 11 years and 336 days.
The other day BBC News published a feature on Thomas Gregory and his feat.

You can see why the age limit was imposed:
"When I reached the shore, I was a few notches off compos mentis," he says. "I was dazed, confused. I'd been in cold water for 12 hours, with a high rate of exertion. I'd been told you had to take three unaided steps after reaching land, otherwise you hadn't made it. But I couldn't stand up. I was on my knees. 
"Those steps became massively important. It was a Neil Armstrong moment. Eventually I did three steps, and I sat down. I remember being surrounded by people cuddling me."
Yet the hero of the interview is Gregory's coach:
"If John Bullet was alive today, he'd be getting Unsung Hero Award at the Sports Personality of the Year," says Tom. "He did countless relays of the Channel, and broke two world records, all with kids from a two-mile radius of Eltham Baths. It was incredible. But when John died, the club sort of died. It lived on thanks to some very selfless people, but my connection went. 
"This isn't false modesty, but the Channel swim wasn't about me. It was about the club. I was part of a movement, and I represented all of us. It only happened because of the courage and vision of John. I guess I was the lucky one who got the challenge." 
The crack-of-dawn starts, the hours in the pool, the weeks in Windermere, the cold showers, the open windows, the burn, the pain, the tears. Could any child enjoy that? 
"Oh yeah," Tom says, surprised at the question. "I loved it. That club changed people's lives."
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Dame Janet Smith on Jimmy Savile and the BBC



If the subject matter of Dame Janet Smith's report into Jimmy Savile and the BBC were not so serious, he conclusions would be funny.

Exaro, which has a leaked draft copy of her report, tells us:
In this second package of pieces, Exaro today reveals how Smith's report:
  • reveals that Savile carried out far more sexual assaults on BBC premises than previously realised; 
  • says that the BBC continued to use Savile to present Jim'll Fix It, a BBC1 programme aimed at children, despite "danger signals" about him; 
  • exposes a failure by BBC bosses to notice even public warning signs about Savile's dark side; 
  • recounts the damning private views of Savile from several well-known BBC colleagues; 
  • shows how a BBC programme by Louis Theroux in 2000 exposed Savile as "deeply unattractive" and even raised the issue of his paedophilia. 
We also publish the key extracts from the Smith report's chapters of perceptions of Savile in the BBC, his sexual activities linked to the broadcaster, awareness within Jim'll Fix It of Savile's predatory behaviour, and the public warning signs that went unheeded.
And what does Dame Janet conclude?

Over to the Guardian:
In her final afterword, Smith insists no senior staff could have been made aware of Savile’s misconduct. 
“There is no evidence that any report of physical sexual misconduct or inappropriate behaviour ever reached the ears or the desk of a senior producer or an executive producer let alone a head of department or other senior executive.”
Many will find that inpossible to believe. But if this is true, it reinforces something I blogged about in October 2012.

Large organsations are too complex and too centralised for the people at the top of the hierarchy to have any idea what is really going on.

And it all those highly paid managers at the BBC have no idea what is going, how much would they be missed?

Do not, incidentally, fall for the argument that Savile was a long time ago and things have changed since then.

Nick Cohen reminds us of what happened to the people who exposed finally Savile on Panorama:
Liz MacKean: Resigned. ‘When the Savile scandal broke,’ she told me, ‘the BBC tried to smear my reputation. They said they had banned the film because Meirion and I had produced shoddy journalism. I stayed to fight them, but I knew they would make me leave in the end. Managers would look through me as if I wasn’t there. I went because I knew I was never going to appear on screen again.’ 
Meirion Jones: Took redundancy after his job on Newsnight mysteriously vanished. ‘People said they won’t sack you after Savile but they will make your life hell,’ he told Press Gazette. ‘Everyone involved on the right side of the Savile argument has been forced out of the BBC.’ 
Panorama: After its admirably rigorous documentary on the BBC’s failings, which did so much to restore the BBC’s reputation, BBC managers shifted Tom Giles, the editor of Panorama, out of news. Peter Horrocks, an executive who insisted throughout the scandal that the BBC must behave ethically, resigned to ‘find new challenges’. Clive Edwards, who as commissioning editor for current affairs oversaw the Panorama documentary, was demoted. 
As for Peter Rippon and all the other managers who parroted the corporate line, well, naturally, not one of them has suffered.
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Report on the handling of allegations against Greville Janner


The independent inquiry into the handling of allegations made against Greville Janner which was commissioned last year by the Director of Public Prosecutions issued its report today.

That inquiry was conducted by the retired High Court Judge Sir Richard Henriques.

You can download the full report from the Crown Prosecution Service website, and the Guardian has a summary of his its findings:
The report found:
  • The decision not to charge Janner in 1991 was wrong because there was enough evidence against him to provide a realistic prospect of conviction for offences of indecent assault and buggery. In addition, the police investigation was inadequate and no charging decision should have been taken by the CPS until the police had undertaken further inquiries. 
  • In 2002, allegations against Janner were not supplied by the police to the CPS and so no prosecution was possible. This merits investigation by the IPCC. 
  • There was sufficient evidence to prosecute Janner in 2007 for indecent assault and buggery. He should have been arrested and interviewed and his home searched.
The evidence of the first complainant against Janner, who gave evidence in the trial of Frank Beck in 1991, is particularly strong.

The Guardian says:
These allegations related to 1975 when, it was alleged, the young boy from a children’s home met Janner after the then MP performed magic tricks. 
The alleged victim, known as Complainant One, said he was quickly befriended by Janner and was sexually abused and raped repeatedly. The complainant went to a wedding with the peer’s family, it was alleged, and it was only two decades later in 2014 that a subsequent police investigation found there was film footage of Complainant One at the event. 
According to the report, the prosecuting authorities discussed the possibility of arresting and interviewing the complainant in relation to charges of perverting the course of justice.
ITV News interviewed Bernard Greaves, who was part of Beck's defence team, about the case this evening.
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BBC Inside Out East Midlands on Lord Janner



The first segment of this evening's Inside Out for the East Midlands concerned the allegations against Lord Janner.

I don't think it told us anything new, but it did remind us how longstanding the concerns about him were and how many chances to prosecute him were missed.

Anyway, well done to the BBC for showing it.

The other segments include dirty food outlets in Leicester and the threat to the historic mills at Belper.
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Six of the Best 566

MediaMasters has a cracking interview on Labour and political communication with Gordon Brown's former spin doctor Damian McBride.

"Recess is a lot more than just a free break for kids to play after lunch period. That free, unstructured play time allows kids to exercise and helps them focus better when they are in class. Now a school in Texas says it took a risk by giving students four recess periods a day, but the risk has paid off beautifully." Elizabeth Licata brings news from Fort Worth.

Lion & Unicorn on cautious welcomes.

"It’s time we authors were paid, not in promises of better sales and high profiles, but in money. Yes, actual cash. Is that too much to ask?" Guy Walters complains that literary festivals expect writers to work for nothing.

Andrew Hickey pays tribute to the great Roy Wood and in particular his LP Boulders, which was recorded earlier but released in 1973.

The names proposed for Crossrail's stations are all wrong, argues John Elledge.
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Lenny Harper gives evidence to the Jersey Care inquiry



Lenny Harper, formally a senior police office on the island, has been giving evidence to the inquiry into the care system in Jersey.

BBC News has a report of his evidence. On the policing of Jersey he said:
Lenny Harper, who was appointed deputy chief officer of the force in 2003, told the inquiry there were approaching a dozen suspects who had been arrested and files were presented to the Law Officers Department but they were not charged by the attorney general. 
He said the police took possession of computers senior members of the IT Department "had bought on the police budgets with pornographic films on the computers and no charges were ever brought against them". 
He told the inquiry he could also remember at least four cases in which officers who had been suspended by the States of Jersey Police (SOJP) were reinstated by the States of Jersey.
And on child abuse on the island he
gave evidence about "a culture emerging in Jersey of systematic child abuse" which was "far worse" than a single paedophile ring. 
He said: "Children were in effect being loaned out to people taken on yachting trips" and there were allegations of abuse taking place outside of territorial waters which were not dealt with properly by the police.
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Radical nostalgia? Helen Macdonald on 'What to Look for in Winter'

'What to Look for in Winter' comes from a time when children were expected to relate sensuously and intellectually to the great profusion of life around us.
Helen Macdonald, author of H is for Hawk and admirer of this blog's hero T.H. White, has written a terrific article on the New Statesman.

'What to Look for in Winter' is a Ladybird book with illustrations by Charles Tunnicliffe (who designed the dustwrappers for three similar titles by Malcolm Saville) that was first published in 1959.

She writes:
Books of this kind were designed to build young naturalists with an in-depth knowledge of Britain’s natural and national heritage. Full of assumptions about the correct relationship between children and the natural world, 'What to Look for in Winter' suggests that the world is full of mysteries, such as the mechanism of the germination of mistletoe, which you, the reader, might one day help to solve. 
And it expects you, too, to interact physically with things outside: shake the branches of ivy so that “drunken insects fall to the ground”; collect fungi that are “nice to take home”; discover that snowberries have a strange softness when you squish them; bite the pungent seeds of cow parsnips, which taste of “earth, and autumn and sunshine, and several other things”.
If this is a personal, spiritual response to the Ladybird world, then back in 2005 Malcolm Clark offered a more political appreciation of it:
Public space was not thought to be dangerous then, and this is not just nostalgic idealisation. I grew up in a small town in the early 1970s. The vast public park really did have attendants. It also happened to have well-tended flowerbeds and a boating pond. These days, you have to train your dog to tiptoe over the syringes. The war memorial is covered in graffiti and there isn't a police station for ten miles. If you sent Peter and Jane there to fly a kite, you'd kit them out in bulletproof vests first. 
In fact, the entire old Ladybird project had an indefinable public-spiritedness about it. This partly reflected a strain in British culture that went all the way back to Samuel Smiles's Self-Help and the Victorian reference libraries. The quest for knowledge was seen as an uncomplicated and enjoyable pursuit, one in which young citizens should be encouraged to share.
Dismissing such analysis as mere nostalgia seems to me an inadequate response.

At the heart of political radicalism is the idea that the world could be different. And the idea that the world once was different is not such a bad starting point.
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An appeal against conviction by a dead child abuser from Leicester


Just before Christmas, following the death of Greville Janner, I wrote:
Trying a dead man is surely an absurdity out of the Middle Ages.
Yet things are seldom that clear cut in the law. A trial of facts for an MP who was unfit to plead sounded a fanciful idea, but it turned out that one had taken place as recently as 2012.

Now I have found that in 2002 a dead child abuser from Leicester appealed against his conviction.

The abuser was Father Michael Ingram from Holy Cross Priory, which is shown in the photo above.

Spotlight on Abuse says of him:
For several decades, Ingram had been an open advocate of sex between adults and children, but this had not resulted in his expulsion from the priesthood. 
He also claimed to be an expert on child development and child sexuality, and had written a number of essays on the subject for academic journals which cited highly dubious ‘research’ which minimised the effects of child sexual abuse.
In 2002 Ingram was tried for sexually assaulting and raping six boys on weekend trips to the Leicestershire countryside and camping holidays to the Isle of Wight.

Shortly before the jury retired, in an apparent suicide attempt, he drove his car into a wall.

What happened next is described at the start of his appeal judgment by Mr Justice Leveson, which is reproduced by Cathy Fox Blog:
On the basis that all remained was the summing-up the trial continued. In the event he was convicted upon each count. Prior to sentence, however, unfortunately Father Ingram died. 
Relying on section 44A of the Criminal Appeal Act 1968, by leave of the single judge, his sister now pursues this appeal. For ease of reference, we shall continue to refer to Father Ingram as the appellant.
Leveson dismissed the appeal,

If an appeal can be pursued on behalf of a dead man, is quite so absurd to try a dead man? The fact that, like Janner, Ingram came from Leicester adds piquancy to the parallel.
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Lenore Skenazy and free-range kids



I spent a day at the Battle of Ideas in October partly so I could hear Lenore Skenazy speak.

Skenazy is an American journalist and campaigner who writes the Free-Range Kids blog. (Having no children of my own I am, of course, an expert on such matters.)

She was an entertaining speaker, but I cannot find a video of the session she took part in. So instead here is a brief one where she sets out her ideas.
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The allegations against Greville Janner

What do to about Greville Janner?

Trying a dead man is surely an absurdity out of the Middle Ages, yet handing the affair over to Justice Lowell Goddard's general inquiry risks seems an inadequate response.

Could a separate, immediate inquiry be held in Leicester?

As to what the allegations are, there is a story in The Times today (and thus behind its paywall) under the headline 'Justice evaded by man with influential friends':
Had the case gone ahead, the court would have heard evidence that Lord Janner sometimes groomed boys for "relationships" and on other occasions acted opportunistically to grope and indecently assault teenagers. 
The alleged offences took place primarily in Leicestershire, when Lord Jenner was driven by his parliamentary interns to his constituency from London, where he preferred to spend most of his time. 
The Times is aware, however, that allegations have also been made concerning assaults on children at the Oasis swimming pool in central London. 
Former interns said that he had little interest in constituency work. One former intern gave evidence that the long drives to Leicester sometimes involved stops at particular children's homes and at service stations. 
That account links with evidence from one of the alleged victims, Hamish Baillie, who says that the MP first approached him when he was playing arcade games at Leicester Forest East service station in 1983. 
Mr Baillie believe that Janner was told his name and where to find him by Frank Beck, manager of the care home where he was a resident for nine months.
The Needle blog adds:
Sources familiar with the ‘trial of the facts’ had told The Needle that about 100 witnesses were due to give evidence against Janner and that the evidence was overwhelming.
Other posts about Greville Janner on this blog include:
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Mr Gladstone's orphanage at Hawarden



Lord Bonkers has his Home for Well-Behave Orphans, but then it seems at one time every self-respecting Liberal politician had his own orphanage.

Caroline's Miscellany writes of William Ewart Gladstone and his wife Catherine:
As a regular visitor to the London Hospital, Whitechapel, Catherine saw at first hand the effects of the 1860s cholera epidemics on the East End poor. 
She founded an orphanage for the children of cholera victims, in a large house in Clapton. It also took in convalescent patients, and the convalescent home later moved to Woodford Hall, Essex, in 1866. Adults and children were sent here from the London Hospital in the East End to recover from illness or surgery. The home moved to Mitcham in 1900, eventually closing in 1940. 
As for the orphaned boys, Catherine sent them from Clapton to a new orphanage in the Gladstones' home village of Hawarden. Initially, she took a dozen boys from London to the village and accommodated them in a former coach house; Gladstone paid for their keep. (The couple also accommodated unemployed Lancashire mill girls and elderly women on their estate.) 
The orphanage continued for many years, and seems to have taken in other children in need of a home. A guide to the village of 1890 describes it as housing twenty to thirty boys and being 'hard by the Castle [the Gladstones' home] and across the yard'.
And this blog's hero J.W. Logan had a home in East Langton for the children of men killed on his works.
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A Box of Delights on the radio in the 1960s



Christmas is coming and a lot of people are preparing for it by watching their Box of Delights DVD.

This time last year I wrote:
my heart was lost to A Box of Delights some time in the 1960s, when I heard a radio adaptation.
Since then BBC Genome has been invented and I can work out when exactly that was.

It must have been on 29 December 1968 or 28 December 1969.

Looking for the cast list (it was the same production for both broadcasts) it is noticeable that Kay Harker and Peter Jones were played by women. In Kay's case by the well known actress Patricia Hayes.

It was once common practice for women to play boys in BBC radio drama. I remember Jock Gallagher telling me that Judy Bennett, who played Shula in The Archers, was widely fancied by the production crew. So it was rather disconcerting when she put on her gruff small boy's voice and became the young Adam.

Today Kay and Peter would be played by boys. Interestingly, if you go back to a Children's Hour radio dramatisation of The Box of Delights from 1948 and you find that boys played those parts then too.
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Can we please hear both sides

Another pertussis cluster has led to the banning of non-vaccinated children from a school district in the Tucson area.  In all the news reports the issue of "non-vaccinated children" is the target or emphasized catch phrase.

I recall writing an article in the mid 90s after interviewing a California (MD) pediatrician who also included homeopathy in his practice.  His emphasis was that it is the non vaccinated child who is always the healthiest and has the most resistance to disease.

From NHN 2008: New Focus: Responding to Specific Queries

Now the idea today is that it is the non-vaccinated adult whose childhood vaccine has worn off and has not gotten a booster shot may be the new target.  Or it could be a combined attack.

A funny way to approach public health if you ask me, after spending the bulk of my work over decades with a strong public health focus.

Sadly little has changes at WA DOH since Selecky's departure.  Inslee replaced her with another non- responsive bureaucratic hack.

Maybe, prhaps, this article will get some courageous health care providers thinking outside the box and give this a shot.

But alas, "here we are."***

While it is a tragedy that people are dying from the current pertussis outbreak, I believe it is important for facts rather than propaganda be provided to the community at large.
The AMA (American Medical Association) knew in the late 1920s that pertussis vaccine caused neurological problems.
Now we know that the pertussis vaccine is often associated with whooping cough outbreaks and many who have had the vaccine contract the disease.
And of course the friendly people at WA DOH are announcing everywhere that the only thing that will help this is to get the jab.
New Article re: WA DOH Vaccines and Fluoride
I encourage people to get the facts before you get the shot because the government or anyone giving out these vaccines is required by law to explain it to you, and give you the risk and benefit data as well.  Usually you are not provided with this information in my experience.
You are probably not told that for whooping cough especially, that vitamin C is a valid and effective help.  Vitamin A in the oil form (not single beta carotene) in short runs of high doses will help fight off pneumonia, and it works well with vitamin C.  Usually I use liposomal vitamin C and Hanna Kroeger’s Sunny A.

Babies Sleep Better If They Are Drugged And Vaccinated In The Afternoon

Here is some information from a 1937 medical journal addressing this concern -
“Ascorbic acid has a definite effect in shortening the period of paroxysms from a matter of weeks to a matter of days. We have not checked by cough plates or otherwise in this preliminary work to see whether the infectivity subsides simultaneously with the spasmodic symptoms, but are continuing with a larger series of cases in which these and other tests will be employed.

TABLE

Case
Age
(years)
Sez
Contact
Duration of
Symptoms
Treatment
Results
1
R.T.
6
M
School
6 weeks—typical
150 mg. per day
7 days—cough reduced markedly
10 days—cough disappeared
2
C.H.
1�
M
Unknown
Temperature 102 F.
Bronchopneumonia
when men
3 weeks—typical
10 days “fever”
at home
inhalations
sinapisms
expectorants
}3 daysNo effect
7 days—temperature normal, cough reduced
14 days—cough disappeared
175 mg. daily—11 dys
3
M.C.
12
M
School
10 days—typical
200 mg. daily
6 days—cough reduced
13 days—only occasional night coughs
15 days—all cough absent
4
J.P.
6
F
School
over 4 weeks—
typical
200 mg. daily
3 days—cough less, no vomiting
7 days—occasional cough
5
B.O.
2�
M
Known case
2 weeks—typical
250 mg. daily
5 days—cough disappeared
6
H.F.
7
M
School
2 weeks—typical
375 mg. daily
4 days—cough less
9 days—night cough only
11 days—all cough absent
7
E.H.
22

Maid
Child in house had
whooping cough
4dys., paroxysmal
cough, vomited
once, no whooping
500 mg. daily—3 days
125 mg. daily.
4 days—cough less, no vomiting
6 days—coughed only once in 2 days
11 days—cough absent
8
B.P.
4
M
Known case
10 days—typical
500 mg. daily—4 days
250 mg. daily—4 days
5 days—cough disappeared
9
M.W.
6�
F
School
2 weeks—typical
500 mg. daily—4 days
250 mg. daily—5 days
4 days—cough reduced
7 days—coughed once in 24 hours
9 days—cough disappeared
10
W.C.
4�
F
Sister (Case 9)
1 week—typical
500 mg. daily—4 days
250 mg. daily—5 days
Same as for Case 9
The dosages used have been empirical with a tendency to use larger doses early in the disease as our experience of its effects progressed. The acid is available at reasonable prices, and the danger of overdosage seems negligible. Animals have received 2,000 times their estimated requirements without any deleterious effects. Any excess is excreted by the kidneys.

CONCLUSIONS

  1. A method has been described for the treatment of whooping cough by ascorbic acid (vitamin C).
  2. Ascorbic acid definitely shortens the paroxysmal stage of the disease, particularly if relatively large doses are used early in the disease.
The ascorbic acid used by us was the Hoffmann-LaRoche product sold under the trade name of “Redoxon”. Grootton and Beszonoff 4 have shown that the product is identical chemically, physically and biologically with the original product prepared by Szent-Gy�rgi.

REFERENCES

  1. , T.: Vaccination against whooping cough, J. Am. M. Ass., 1933, 101: 137.
  2. , F.: Internat. Med. Digest, 1936, 29: 121.
  3. , H. H.: Whooping cough. Clin. J., 1936, 65: 246.
  4. , O. and Beszonoff, N.: Action de la vitamine C sur la toxine diphth�rique, et sensibilit� du bacille de la coqueluche vis-a-vis de l’hydroquinol et de le vitamine C. Ann. de l’Inst Pasteur, 1936, 56: 413.
  5. , P. and Sala, T.: Rev. fran�. De P�d., 1921. 4: 509. (Quoted by Grootton and Beszonoff).
  6. , J. and Niederberger, W.: Vitamin C In der Pneumonie-Behandlung., M�nch. med. Wochschr.. 1936, 83: 2074.
  7. , A.: Beobachtungen �ber Ascorbins�urewirkung bei der krupp�sen Pneumonie, Wien. Arch. f. inn. Med., (in press). (Quoted by Gander and Niederberger).
  8. , G. J. and Daniels, A. L: Vitamin C studies with children of pre-school age, J. Nutrit., 1936. 12: 15.
  9. , O. A. and King, C. G.: The distribution of vitamin C in plant and animal tissues and its determination, J. Biol. Chem., 1933. 103: 687.
  10. , M. Almaden, P. and King, C.G.: Vitamin content of human tissues, J. Biol. Chem., 1934, 106: 525.

From The Canadian Medical Association Journal, Volume 37, August 1937, Number 2, pp. 134-136″
This article was originally entered here in April 2012: 
http://blog.seattlepi.com/naturalnotes/2012/04/04/can-we-please-hear-both-sides/

*** with thanks to Baba Ram Das and Bill Greenberg, MD (Harvard)
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CHILDREN RUN BETTER UNLEADED


In the nation’s largest lead Superfund site, Bunker Hill, a 1500 square mile, an EPA designated NPL area stretching from the Idaho, Montana border on into Washington State, children are not running very well.

The lead testing of children is being compromised. Not only are thousands of children not being tested by a multitude of government agencies including the Environmental Protection Agency there are serious repercussions for anyone speaking out about lead and the health problems exposure can cause.

In desperation the Silver Valley Community Resource Center a 25 year old non-profit organization
whose board and members represent six generations of families living in the area with chronic
lead poisoned health conditions reached out to begin a Community Lead Health Project in the summer of 2012. The project began on a small scale with 3 families and five children. Out of the five children tested two were found with elevated lead levels. SVCRC and its outside networking support followed up with Medicaid EPSTD, Early Periodic Screening Diagnostic and Treatment case management recommendations that have never been extended to anyone in the area.

The organization is reaching out to find funds to begin a community supported Lead Health Clinic
designed with the help of international and national lead experts including the late Dr. John Rosen, Montefiore Medical Center, New York, who spent considerable time testing and educating families over many years.

SVCRC is currently seeking funds to extend the critical need of testing children for lead exposure.

If you would like to contribute, please send contributions fully tax deductible to SVCRC, PO BOX 362, Kellogg, ID 83837
Website: www.silvervalleyaction.com
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Aspartame and Seizures



 The attitude of science toward the unwelcome is that it does not exist

June 11, 2013: Today at 5pm eastern time. just click the link and network feed will start automatically. ASPARTAME.

<http://guerillamedianetwork.com/>http://guerillamedianetwork.com/

A disturbing report on the fast rise of seizure disorder in children was something I heard on NPR yesterday morning.

We know aspartame is in some of the vaccine solutions.  We know some of the vaccine ingredients are known to harm brain function along with causing nutrient depletion.  We know some of the seizure drugs contain aspartame. We also know that aspartame, sucralose, acesulfame K, and other neurotoxic artificial sweeteners are in children’s vitamins, children’s antibiotics, chewing gum, and many other food and beverage items. Please inquire and read labels.

81 Medicines with Aspartame  http://euphory.com/medications-containing-aspartame/

Chilling.

My friend, James Bowen, MD, wrote a paper on Splenda (sucralose) describing the issue of seizure from this artificial sweetener too.

Thanks go to Dr. Betty Martini also for responding to NPR regarding this issue.  Some of her material is below.

 "The Goal is to Keep Children Seizure Free"  - It's the Aspartame Issue! (Note error, should say Hayes over-ruled the revoked petition for aspartame approval)


http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/06/10/188639089/with-epilepsy-treatment-the-goal-is-to-keep-kids-seizure-free

Some years ago I attended the American College of Physicians with the late world expert on aspartame, Dr. H. J. Roberts.  In the Neurology workshop the professor said:  "Can anyone tell me why people all over this country are having seizures for no reason."  Dr. Roberts said, "Tell them Betty!"  I explained to the professor that aspartame is in thousands of products and the 50% phenylalanine lowers the seizure threshold.  Even pilots are having seizures in the cockpits of commercial airliners."  The professor said, "But I thought that was in the rare case of  Phenylketonuria."  "No Professor, in all people".  A physician raised his  hand and said, "Professor, she's right.  I'm a pilot and a physician.  I have a friend who flies commercially and has seizures and we're going to have to report him."  Today we have Mission Possible Aviation which I founded after a pilot crashed his plane on aspartame:  http://www.mpwhi.com/pilot_aspartame_alert.htm FAA said they can't do anything because FDA approved this neurotoxin.

When the manufacturers of aspartame and the FDA lie to physicians it ties their hands.  Now let's show you how really bad it gets.  Aspartame interacts with anti-seizure medication so the patient can't be helped.  In Dr. Roberts medical text, "Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic", www.sunsentpress.com there is a chapter on drug interaction.  You see aspartame damages the mitochondria or powerhouse of the cell and interacts with drugs and vaccines.

So what do they do with children who just can't get well?  Sometimes they use the Ketogenic diet and they use Ketocal.  When I checked some years ago it contained aspartame.  I made such a fuss about it I decided to check and see if they had taken it out.  They have and what did they  replace it with?  Sucralose! When Marianne Lamar's husband used Splenda and had a grand mal seizure she called the manufacturer who first told her it didn't cause seizures.  She gave them such a hard time they finally admitted "well okay, yes Splenda causes seizures and migraines".  She asked them why they don't make that known and was told because there are so few cases.  Well, of course, how can you associate Splenda with seizures when its kept a dark secret that it causes them.  So Ketocal is now advertised as aspartame-free but it contains Sucralose.  Dr. Morando Soffritti did a study on sucralose and found it also causes cancer so like aspartame violates the Delaney Amendment and is illegally on the market.

I was talking to a wonderful, brilliant neurologist here in Atlanta, Dr. Ramon Sanchez,  who remembers the aspartame wars  in the beginning and knows it causes seizures.  He told me about a patient who had so many seizures he finally put her in the hospital. He said he tried every anti-seizure medication in the PDR (Physicians Desk Reference) and nothing worked.  Of course, it won't - it aspartame interacts with anti-seizure medication. When Dr. Sanchez went to the hospital he found a case of Diet Coke under the bed and questioned the patient who was addicted to it.  He got her off but she went crazy so he put her in a mental institution.  Aspartame triggers psychiatric and behavioral problems as well.  He had her released a couple of weeks later - no more mental problems and no more seizures.

Dr. Ralph Walton wrote:  "Two years after aspartame was introduced onto the market I first became aware of the negative impact of this artificial sweetener on the central nervous system. I had been treating a then 54 year old woman with imipramine, a tricyclic antidepressant, because of recurrent major depressive episodes. Previous psychoanalytically based therapy had proven ineffective, but she responded dramatically to 150mg of imipramine per day. She had done well for 11 years on this medication, but was then suddenly hospitalized with a grand-mal seizure and subsequent manic episode.

"One could postulate that she was bipolar, and the antidepressant had triggered the mania - but she had been on the same medication for a total of 11 years, and for the previous 5 years at the same 150mg per day dose. Neither the seizure nor her mania was consistent with what we know about the clinical course of bipolar disorder or epilepsy. Careful history revealed that the only change in her life was a recent decision to switch from the sugar which she had always used to sweeten her iced tea to a newly marketed product with aspartame.

"Since aspartame can alter the balance of certain neurotransmitters which we believe are involved in mood disorders and can, in my opinion, alter the seizure threshold, I advised my patient to avoid all aspartame products. She did so, and had no further seizures, no further manic or depressive episodes. I discontinued the lithium carbonate which I had started when I mistakenly concluded that she had a bipolar disorder, reinstated her imipramine and she has continued to do well.

"After this case report was published in the medical literature, many patients with unexplained seizures or treatment resistant psychiatric problems were referred to me. I became increasingly convinced that aspartame could both trigger seizure activity and mimic or exacerbate a variety of psychiatric disorders".  Dr. Walton did a study on aspartame and the reactions were so severe the institution  stopped the study.

Dr. Russell Blaylock in "Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills", www.russellblaylockmd.com wrote about aspartame and seizures:  He said: "In 1985 Dr. Richard J. Wurtman reported three such cases in the journal Lancet.  One case involved a forty two year old secretary who developed a seizure following a practice of drinking seven liters of NutraSweet containing beverages per day.  She had no previous history of seizures.  The second case was a twenty-seven-year-old computer programmer who had a single grand mal seizure after drinking 4 to 5 glasses of "Crystal Light" containing NutraSweet.  It is interesting that this patient also experienced "twitching, trembling, jerking, and hyperventilation."  What makes this interesting is that it resembles the "wet dog shades" seen when dogs are given large doses of the excitotoxin kainate.  The last case was a thirty-six year-old professor who drank one liter of ice tea sweetened with NutraSweet everyday.  After several days of this practice he developed a grand mal seizure."

Dr. Wurtman wanted to do studies on aspartame and seizures and was threatened by the VP of G. D. Searle, the original manufacturer, if he did his research funds would be rejected.  They were.  Read it in the UPI Investigation, 8 months, by Gregory Gordon:  http://www.mpwhi.com/upi_1987_aspartame_report.pdf

Mrs. Barbara Metzler, Mission Possible New Jersey, wrote Dr. Wurtman in 1986.  She said:  -- "I have a 22 year old daughter who was only recently diagnosed as having temporal lobe epilepsy. -- Her behavior has been more and more bewildering for approximately two years.  My mother's intuition told me that something was amiss.  I hammered at her relentlessly by phone.  Finally, and nearly too late, she announced that she has been experiencing bizarre symptoms with increasing frequently.  --- After pondering her revelation for several days, it suddenly occurred to me that aspartame could have triggered her seizures since I develop severe migraine attacks immediately after drinking beverages sweetened with NutraSweet."

Barbara's daughter was having seizures, going blind from the methanol in aspartame and had a complete personality change.  Her daughter, Julia, is an uncommonly brilliant girl with the possibility of a magnificent future at the time.  When she was in high school, she won a Telluride Association Scholarship.  She competed with more than one million students from the entire US for this honor.

Dr. Wurtman wrote Barbara back on April 29, 1986 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and said:  "Dear Mrs. Metzler:  Thank you for writing to us about your daughter's condition that may very well be associated with NutraSweet.  We are very anxious to collect information on people like your daughter and would be very grateful if you would provide us with the information requested on the attached form letter.  Either Dr. Donald Schomer, my neurologist colleague, or I will be back in touch with you as soon as we receive this information.  Cordially yours, Richard J. Wurtman, M.D."

To make a long story short Barbara's daughter got off aspartame/NutraSweet/Equal/Canderel, etc. and the seizures disappeared, her eyesight was restored and her personality went back to normal.

Dr. Richard Wurtman,  was at one-time a Searle consultant,  then resigned to become a critic of NutraSweet. He said  he had been contacted by more than 200 people who suspected their seizures resulted from the toxin. He said it was enough for FDA to remove aspartame from the marketplace.   Today he has aspartame lockjaw, and will not speak out about aspartame but MIT gets research funds. His paper trail is enormous.  Don't fail to read "Dietary Phenylalanine and Brain Function" edited by Dr. Wurtman (Birkhauser).

Has it been proven aspartame triggers seizures.  Sure it has by the manufacturer's own study.  A 52 week oral toxicity study on aspartame with 7 infant monkeys showed 5 had grand mal seizures and 1 died.  Searle used it as pivotal in the approval of this deadly addictive, excitoneurotoxic, carcinogenic, genetically engineered drug and adjuvant.  In the beginning the FDA were heros, first trying to having G. D. Searle indicted for fraud but both US Prosecutors hired on with the defense team and the statute of limitations expired.  So they revoked the petition for approval.  Meanwhile G. D. Searle hired Don Rumsfeld to get it on the market and Searle filed suit at the time the FDA Board of Inquiry revoked the petition. Rumsfeld said he would call in his markers and get it on the market.  He was on President Reagan's transition team and the day after Reagan took office he had someone from the team call FDA Commissioner Jere Goyan who would have signed the petition into law at 3:00 AM and fired him.  Then he wrote an executive order making the FDA powerless to do anything on aspartame or sign the petition until he could get a new commissioner there.  He appointed Dr. Arthur Hull Hayes, a friend of Rumsfeld who then revoked the petition for approval.

Today the FDA is simply Big Pharma's Washington Branch Office.  I call them the Fatal Drugs Allowed folks,.  Even when I filed an amendment to a citizen's petition for ban  based on an imminent health hazard  in 2007 they have refused to answer.  They wrote they had more important things to do. You're suppose to answer in a week or ten days by law but the FDA serves above the law.

Look at the FDA's own report of 92 documented symptoms on aspartame and you'll see four types of seizures listed:  http://www.mpwhi.com/92_aspartame_symptoms.pdf

The aspartic acid in aspartame is an excitotoxin, a product that literally stimulates the neurons of the brain to death causing brain injury.  Call it the sister to MSG, another excitotoxin.  Actually, all three components trigger seizures in aspartame as Dr. James Bowen has discussed.  MSG has a synergistic and additive effect with aspartame.  Jack Samuels some years ago filed suit against the FDA on this issue and labeling.  Let me show you how friendly the FDA is with the glutamate people.

In l993 Jack Samuels, President of the <http://www.truthinlabeling.org/>Truth in Labeling Campaign, was reviewing FDA docket files relating to an FDA study on the safety of amino acids in supplements. In the files, he found a letter dated March 22, l991, from Andrew G. Ebert, PhD, Chairman, International Glutamate Technical Committee, glutamate industry organization where Ebert admitted that aspartame had been used since at least l978 in test and placebo materials that his organization provided to scientists who study the safety of MSG.

A review of studies conducted with the above-referenced test material clearly indicates that some subjects reacted to both MSG test material and placebo material. Scientists conducting such studies concluded that since subjects reacted to both MSG and placebos, their reactions were not from MSG. Even though such logic is highly questionable, we now know that subjects reacted to placebos because of the presence of aspartame, an additive that causes MSG-type responses in MSG-sensitive people. Because of the disclosure of the use of aspartame in placebo material by Jack Samuels, the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, in its July l995 report on the safety of MSG in food, concluded that the use of aspartame in placebo materials was inappropriate.

If you want to read more about this get the new book, "The Man Who Sued The FDA" by Adrienne Samuels.  Unfortunately, Jack Samuels died.  Many of the things used in the hospital had MSG and probably killed him.  He could go into anaphylactic shock if he got MSG.  See his web site, www.truthinlabeling.org

So how can the manufacturer  and their paid flacks do studies on aspartame and seizures and it not show the problems.  Read www.holisticmed.com/aspartame/abuse/seizures.html Seems like there should be a law against these types of studies to cover up the problems.

It was James Turner, Attorney, and the famed John Olney, M.D. who tried to prevent approval of aspartame.  You must get the aspartame documentary "Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World", cori@sweetremedyradio.com  You can google the clip, "Sick on Aspartame, Meet Don Rumsfeld" where James Turner explains approval:  Turner says Dr. Olney got so sick of Searle's shenanigans he insisted they do studies in his laboratory so he could oversee them.  Sure enough aspartame destroyed the brains of the rodents so he thought it could never get approved.  However, Searle never told the FDA!

How heinous a crime can the approval of aspartame be?   The FDA made a deal with G. D. Searle to seal all studies and records on aspartame and birth defects so the public would never know the FDA said aspartame caused birth defects.  It caused neural tube birth defects which as Dr. Monte says in his book "While Science Sleeps" is often a grotesquely disfiguring malformation of the infant that encompasses a spectrum of disorders ranging from cleft palate, through spina bifida, to the always fatal presentations of horrifically deformed skulls with exposed or missing brains.  It has caused an epidemic of autism.  Read the last chapter:
<http://www.whilesciencesleeps.com/While%20Science%20Sleeps%20-%20Chapter%2012%20(ref).pdf>http://www.whilesciencesleeps.com/While%20Science%20Sleeps%20-%20Chapter%2012%20(ref).pdf This is the best book there is on the methanol in aspartame.  Even tells how Dr. Monte's house was blown up with him in it.

Children don't have a chance these days.  In the movie, "Sweet Remedy" the ADD people were interviewed and said before the approval of aspartame the terms ADD and ADHD were hardly used.
Read the "Report for Schools" on the banner on my web site, www.mpwhi.com Feingold, the ADD people wrote an excellent report.

Now to add insult to injury the dairy people have petitioned the FDA to allow aspartame in 17 dairy products removing labeling  like "chocolate milk, reduced calories" which would identify the product as having aspartame or artificial sweeteners to simply "chocolate milk".  Aspartame requires a PKU warning by law.  Consider if someone who has gotten off aspartame doesn't realize its in a dairy product and uses it.  Many are chemically hypersensitive for life and it could cause their death.  In "Sweet Misery" you will see a woman who told the hospital she was chemically hypersensitive to aspartame and couldn't have it.  A dietitian gave her Crystal Lite and she became a Code Blue and they had to resuscitate her to save her life.

In an interview with Dr. James Bowen, some years ago  he stated: "The FDA has made aspartame a self-validating compound, meaning that since they have released it to market generally recognized as safe, it must be held blameless. Therefore, their own studies which show horrendous toxicity must be held invalid." Dr. Bowen who says aspartame triggered his Lou Gehrig's Disease, toxic cardiopathy, and severe depression, not to mention changing his hair from rich, dark brown to total silver gray in six weeks wrote the FDA several years ago telling them that aspartame was a mass poisoning of the American public and more than 70 other countries. Their only response to this, says Dr. Bowen, was to send an FDA investigator to his office after he collected 30 other cases for them. This investigator told Dr. Bowen, "We don't like what you're doing, and we want you to stop." He told me she repeatedly refused to accept the 30 cases of aspartame poisoning he collected. Whereupon he said to her, "Did you come here to intimidate me, or did you come here to review the case reports, as you say you have?" He says she merely glared at him and refused to take the reports until he repeatedly pressured her to do so, and nobody has seen those reports since.

Special warning for diabetics:  Aspartame can precipitate diabetes, simulates and aggravates diabetic retinopathy and neuropathy, destroys the optic nerve, causes diabetics to go into convulsions, and even interacts with insulin.  The free methyl alcohol causes diabetics to lose limbs.  Jeanette Soto, Mission Possible Brookville, Florida who wrote "Blinded Sight" when her husband lost his sight from aspartame was unable to get her father-in-law, diabetic off aspartame because of the addiction.  The free methyl alcohol is classified as a narcotic.  It causes chronic methanol poisoning which affects the dopamine system of the brain and causes the addiction.  When Jeanette's father-in-law, Santiago Echiverria died it had to be a closed casket, the formaldehyde from the free methyl alcohol was oozing out of his skin.

Mothers Using Aspartame
In Pregnancy & Autism Epidemic:
The FDA Knew It Would Happen!
By Dr. Betty Martini, D.Hum
8-13-12

As Dr. James Bowen's paper "Aspartame Murders infants" explained, the poison violates the Federal Genocide Law. Toxic mechanisms the doctor listed include:

Teratogen, it produces birth defects
Adjuvant, it forms antigenic tissue triggering immunologic attack
Fetal Wastage
Chelation, promotes heavy metal poisoning.

 Dr. Bowen said further: "Aspartame. sold as NutraSweet, AminoSweet, E951 and Equal, is in thousands of foods and diet drinks, as well as drugs. At every point in the fertility process APM destroys, beginning with the gleam in Mom and Pop's eyes: it ruins female sexual response and induces male sexual dysfunction. Beyond this, aspartame disrupts fetal development by aborting it or inducing defects. And if a live child is born aspartame may have heinously damaged the DNA of the baby, cursing future generations.

So here we are in 2012 with a global epidemic of autism. Dr. Bill Deagle said:"The European Environmental Association has projected that with the rise of autism caused by toxic foods like Aspartame, MSG, Fluoride, and environmental degradation, by 2013 no one will be born in the Western World that does not to some degree have autism. Our board of AAEM, American Academy of Environmental Medicine and Dr. William Rae, director of the Dallas Environmental Clinic agreed in open discussion at the October 2010 annual meeting".

In 1999 Parents Magazine featured the article What's Happening to Our Children that said almost every family is involved.

To answer Parents Magazine, the aspartame industry used their power to get  this deadly chemical poison on the market that was listed with the pentagon in an inventory of prospective biochemical warfare weapons submitted to Congress <http://www.mpwhi.com/ecologist_september_2005.pdf>http://www.mpwhi.com/ecologist_september_2005.pdf They have used their power to keep it on the market all because of profit, addiction and greed.  Dr. Maria Alemany in Barcelona did the Trocho study on aspartame and showed that it embalmed living tissue and damages DNA.  When I met this courageous and brilliant professor he said, "Betty, aspartame will kill 200 million people."  The aspartame industry tried to assassinate his character for exposing the truth to the world.

Robin Goodwin, Mission Possible Falklands, petitioned for a ban of aspartame but didn't want to wait years.  He  wrote all 3,000 citizens warning them. His wife suffered an aspartame brain tumor and his daughter had seizures for 18 years, which ceased when she abstained. In early April, 2006, he told me aspartame-containing products  were now rotting on the store shelves there.   Aspartame Disease is now a global plague and children are suffering the world over.  If we don't get aspartame banned by Codex it could be used in countries where it is not even approved.

If you value your baby's or child's life you now must be sure they will never get aspartame. A safe sweetener is "Just Like Sugar", www.justlikesugarinc.com  Spread the word.  Email me for the "Aspartame Resource Guide" - bettym19@mindspring.com

Dr. Betty Martini, D.Hum, Founder
Mission Possible International
9270 River Club Parkway
Duluth, Georgia 30097
770 242-2599
www.mpwhi.com, www.dorway.com, www.wnho.net
Aspartame Toxicity Center, www.holisticmed.com/aspartame




Selections from Natural Health News

Jul 11, 2010
EU-funded research has found that pregnant women who drink just one can of fizzy drinks containing artificial sweeteners such as aspartame, have a 37% higher risk of having a premature birth. Routinely drinking 4 or more ...
Feb 23, 2005
When aspartame was news, Dr. H. J. Roberts in a press conference foretold that in 5 or 10 years we would have a global plague. And it was Dr. Roberts who declared Aspartame Disease to be a global plague and published ...
Sep 09, 2006
In July 2005, the most impeccable study ever done on aspartame (Ramazzini) confirmed what the FDA knew a quarter of a century ago, that aspartame is a multipotential carcinogen triggering leukemia, lymphoma, kidney ...
May 30, 2008
The use of the artificial sweetener, aspartame, has long been contemplated and studied by various researchers, and people are concerned about its negative effects. Aspartame is composed of phenylalanine (50%), aspartic ...

Feb 09, 2010
"Nevella is a brand name for the artificial sweetener sucralose, which is also sold under the name Splenda. Sucralose is produced by treating sugar with chlorine chemicals, resulting in a substance 600 times sweeter than ...
Jan 13, 2010
Not only is Splenda a risk to the health of people who use it, it seems as if it is a health risk to everyone because it is not cleared by water treatment systems. Note, however, that *the science proves that sucralose is broken ...
Sep 28, 2008
If you don't know the history of Sucralose or Splenda, it was originally developed as a pesticide. Information withheld from the manufacturer include shrinkage of the thmus (part of your immune system), liver swelling and ...
Sep 23, 2008
Splenda, an artificial sweetener, has been tied to a host of ills by researchers at Duke University, The New York Times reported today. According to an article published on The Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health ...
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