Scotland’s premature birth rate has fallen by 10% since the public smoking ban came into force in 2006, BBC News reported today.
The news is based on the results of a large Scottish study that looked at trends in numbers of premature births and small babies born between 1996 and 2009, and how these related to the introduction of the smoking ban in March 2006. The researchers found that there was a decline in the number of premature births in the three months before the introduction, but since then there has been a slight fluctuation and numbers have begun to rise again overall. Conversely, the number of babies born small for the length of time they were in the womb declined around 2006, and has generally continued to fall.
Smoking is a known risk factor for premature birth and babies born small for the length of time they were in the womb (gestational age , and this research provides valuable clues to the potential impact of the smoking ban. However, the study only found trends, which means it cannot prove the legislation caused the drop in rates seen. It is possible that other factors may be responsible, such as general improvements in antenatal care.
Both smoking in pregnancy and passive smoking are associated with a higher risk of premature birth, babies born small and other pregnancy complications.
Where did the story come from?
The study was carried out by researchers from University of Glasgow and Western General Hospital, Edinburgh. It was funded by Scotland’s Chief Scientist Office. The study was published in the peer-reviewed medical journal PLoS Medicine.
It was reported accurately by the BBC, which pointed out that other factors might have influenced the results.
What kind of research was this?
This time-trend study looked at the numbers of babies born prematurely or small for gestational age in Scotland before and after the introduction of the smoking ban in March 2006. It looked at data on babies born to nearly 717,000 pregnant women between 1996 and 2009.
The researchers examined both trends in data and the possible impact of the legislation in Scotland. However, while this type of study can identify trends, it cannot confirm the various factors that caused the trends. It examined how trends related to both “active” and “passive” smoking, also known as first-hand and second-hand smoking respectively.
Both active and passive smoking during pregnancy are known to increase the risk of various complications. The researchers say the legislation – the Smoking, Health and Social Care (Scotland Bill – has been very successful in reducing exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS in public places. It has also been associated with greater voluntary restrictions on smoking in the home. They say there was an increase in attempts to quit among current smokers three months before the legislation was introduced, and a reduction in the amount smoked by those who continued to smoke.
What did the research involve?
The researchers gathered data from a national administrative database on pregnancy, which collects information on all women discharged from Scottish maternity hospitals and records many factors, including pregnancy complications and smoking status. Data on smoking status were based on women’s self-reported smoking habits, which were reported as “current”, “never” and “former” smokers. The researchers obtained data on all singleton, live-born babies delivered at 24 to 44 weeks of pregnancy between January 1996 and December 2009. They used postcodes as an indicator of the women’s socioeconomic status.
From this data, they collected information on the rates of two complications of pregnancy: babies born small for gestational age and premature delivery. Babies were classed as small for gestational age if their birth weight was within the lowest 10% of babies of the same sex born at the same point in pregnancy. Premature delivery was defined as delivery before 37 weeks of pregnancy, and was categorised as:
- mild - between 34 and 37 weeks
- moderate - between 32 and 34 weeks
- extreme - earlier than 32 weeks
The researchers also looked at other outcomes, such as spontaneous premature delivery (as opposed to overall premature deliveries which would include those that were planned, for example premature induced labour or caesarean due to complications with the mother or baby .
Researchers looked at the trends in these outcomes before and after the introduction of smoking legislation. They were particularly interested in two time points: the date when the legislation was implemented (March 26 2006 , and three months before (January 1 2006 . The latter date, they explain, allows for the possibility of people making changes to smoking behaviour in anticipation of the legislation and was chosen because it coincided with a New Year peak in attempts to quit smoking found in a previous study.
In their analysis, the researchers adjusted their results to account for other factors that may affect these pregnancy outcomes, including maternal age, sex of the infant and socioeconomic factors.
What were the basic results?
The researchers included 716,941 women who fulfilled all their criteria and for whom they had information on smoking status. They found that the number of current smokers fell from 25.4% before legislation to 18.8% after legislation. From looking at the trends in numbers of babies born prematurely or small for gestational age, they noticed that, of the two dates, January 1 2006 (three months before the smoking ban seemed to have a greater influence on the fall.
The graph depicting the trend in premature births between 1996 and 2009 shows a general fluctuation in rates. Around January 2006, there is an apparent decline in rates, but over the following three years, there has been continued fluctuation and numbers have begun to rise again. For the number of babies born small for gestational age, there was a similar decline around 2006. However, the trend, though still fluctuating, seems to have continued downwards since then, rather than rising as it did with premature births.
The researchers report that, after January 1 2006:
- The number of babies born small for gestational age fell by 4.52% (95% confidence interval [CI] -8.28 to -0.60 .
- The number of babies born prematurely fell by 11.72% (95% CI -15.87 to -7.35 .
- The number of babies born after spontaneous premature labour fell by 11.35% (95% CI -17.20 to -5.09 .
These significant reductions were found among all women, including those who still smoked and those who had never smoked.
How did the researchers interpret the results?
The researchers say that three months before the introduction of the new legislation, the numbers of premature deliveries and babies born small for gestational age fell significantly, although they point out that rates of premature births have since begun to rise again. They say this is consistent with a previous study which showed that smokers anticipated legislation, resulting in a significant peak in prescriptions for nicotine replacement therapy in January 2006.
Conclusion
Overall, this analysis of the relationship between pregnancies and the smoking ban in Scotland provides a valuable insight into the possible results of anti-smoking legislation. In particular, the decline in rates of premature births and babies born small for gestational age around January 2006 is interesting. As smoking is a known risk factor for these outcomes, the trend could be the result of higher quit rates, both among pregnant women or the public in general, in anticipation of the new law.
However, the trend analysis performed in this study cannot prove there is a definite relationship between the two, but only that there are associations. It is possible that other factors are involved, such as general improvements in antenatal care and management of pregnant women who are at risk of these complications. Furthermore, there has been continuing fluctuation in numbers of babies born prematurely or small for gestational age since the smoking ban in 2006. The subsequent general increase in premature births makes it even harder to draw any conclusions about the reasons behind this trend.
A further limitation of the study was that women’s smoking status was based on them reporting whether or not they smoked. As the authors point out, there is evidence that pregnant women underestimate how much they smoke and it is possible they felt under pressure to conceal their smoking following the new law. However, this would not affect the overall results of the study, which related to all deliveries irrespective of smoking status.
The study cannot prove that smoking legislation – or anticipation of it – reduced the risk of pregnancy complications. Nevertheless, smoke-free legislation is now recognised as having health benefits and it is plausible that improved pregnancy outcomes are one of them.
Links To The Headlines
Fewer premature births after smoking ban in Scotland. BBC News, March 7 2012
Links To Science
Mackay DF, Nelson SM, Haw SJ, Pell JP. Impact of Scotland's Smoke-Free Legislation on Pregnancy Complications: Retrospective Cohort Study. PLoS Medicine, March 6 2012
“Thousands of patients with advanced Alzheimer’s disease could benefit from drugs,” according to BBC News. The broadcaster said the results of a new medical trial suggest that the drug Aricept reduces the rate at which memory declines during advanced Alzheimer’s disease.
Aricept, also known as donepezil, is already used to help manage earlier stages of Alzheimer’s disease. But new research has looked at the effect of continuing the drug during moderate and severe stages of the disease. In this research, 295 Alzheimer’s patients in England and Scotland were randomly assigned to either continue or stop using the drug for a period of 12 months.
The study found that over 12 months, patients who stayed on donepezil had a slower decline in their mental ability than those who stopped using the drug, as assessed in certain tests. However, improvements in mental ability and the ability to manage daily activities associated with donepezil were small compared with the overall decline that all participants experienced.
The benefits of this modest improvement need to be considered from the patients’ perspective, and this study is likely to ignite debate about whether donepezil should continue to be prescribed to people with dementia once they progress past moderate symptoms. Another factor that contributes to the debate is that much cheaper versions of the drug have reportedly become available recently.
Where did the story come from?
The study was carried out by researchers from England and Scotland and was funded by the UK Medical Research Council and the Alzheimer’s Society. Many of the researchers declared having a conflict of interest, as they received payments (such as grants, lecture fees, consultation fees and expenses from commercial drug companies. These included Eisai and Pfizer, which developed and marketed the drug donepezil under the trade name Aricept.
The study was published in the peer-reviewed New England Journal of Medicine.
This study received wide media coverage, with many sources fielding debate on whether Alzheimer’s patients should continue using donepezil once they progress past moderate symptoms. The reporting of the study in these articles was generally balanced.
What kind of research was this?
This double-blind, placebo-controlled randomised controlled trial looked at continuing Alzheimer’s medication in patients who had previously received donepezil (Aricept and who had moderate or severe Alzheimer’s disease. It also looked at using the drug alongside another medicine called memantine, which is used to treat Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia.
Dementia is a long-term progressive mental disorder that adversely affects memory, thinking, orientation, comprehension, calculation, learning capacity, language and judgement. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE reports that Alzheimer’s is the most common form of dementia and estimates that around 50-64% of people with the condition have mild to moderately severe disease. Approximately 50% of people with Alzheimer’s are estimated to have moderate to severe disease.
The study authors reported that clinical trials have shown the benefits of drug treatments for mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease. However, it is not known whether treatment benefits continue after it has progressed to moderate to severe disease.
The researchers say that very limited evidence is available to guide the difficult decision of whether to stop or continue Alzheimer’s drug treatments when the disease progresses. However, continued treatment is known to be associated with an increase in adverse outcomes, such as loss of consciousness, the need for pacemakers and hip fractures.
What did the research involve?
The researchers recruited 295 Alzheimer’s patients in England and Scotland who had been taking donepezil (Aricept for at least three months and who had moderate or severe Alzheimer’s. Patients were recruited during the period from February 2008 to March 2010. All patients were “community living”, in other words were not in hospital or nursing homes, but had carers who lived with them or visited regularly. The researchers wanted to see if continuing using the Alzheimer’s drug donepezil would benefit these patients and whether starting a second drug, called memantine, could also be beneficial.
A moderate to severe diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease was defined as a score of 5 to 13 on a recognised cognitive examination called the Standardized Mini-Mental State Examination (SMMSE . Scores range from 0 to 30, with higher scores indicating better mental function.
Once recruited, patients were randomised into four groups to receive different combinations of active drugs and inactive placebos. They were not told which combination they would take. The groups received the following treatment plans for 52 weeks:
- continue on donepezil alongside a memantine placebo
- discontinue donepezil, begin taking donepezil placebo alongside a memantine placebo
- discontinue donepezil and start memantine alongside a donepezil placebo
- continue on donepezil and start memantine
Patients, caregivers, clinicians, researchers and statisticians were unaware of the treatments that were assigned. This is a standard procedure used during trials, known as blinding. It is designed to help prevent the study’s results being distorted by people’s knowledge of what drug they are taking.
The researchers looked for changes in patients’ mental ability using SMMSE scores taken before, during and after they received the study treatment. The researchers also assessed patients’ functional ability to manage daily activities. They used a test designed specifically for use in patients with dementia, called the caregiver-rated Bristol Activities of Daily Living Scale (BADLS , which assesses 20 daily living abilities. The researchers reported that the minimum clinically important difference in scores would be a 1.4 point difference on the SMMSE and a 3.5 point difference on the BADLS.
Patients were excluded from the study if they had severe or unstable medical conditions, were receiving memantine before the study or were considered unlikely to adhere to the study regimens.
The statistical analysis of the study’s results was appropriate and on an “intention to treat” basis. This type of analysis looks at the outcomes of all participants originally entered into the study, and not just those who completed the study. It gives a more realistic picture of the effect of the drugs in real world situations, as it includes people who stop taking the drug during the study for various reasons. These reasons could include unpleasant side effects or worsening of the patients' condition, although often participants simply drop out of the trial and the reasons for leaving cannot be recorded.
What were the basic results?
Many comparisons were reported in the study. The key results are highlighted below:
- In all groups, mental ability declined as assessed by the SMMSE, on average from a score of approximately 9 at the start of the study to a score of 3–6 after 52 weeks. Scores on the BADLS test of daily living increased from around 26–29 at the start of the study to 34–42 after 52 weeks. These results indicate an overall decline in mental ability and function over the 12-month study period.
- Patients who continued donepezil scored on average 1.9 points higher (95% confidence interval [CI] 1.3 to 2.5 on the SMMSE compared with those who discontinued donepezil. This suggests continuing the drug was beneficial.
- Patients who continued donepezil scored on average 3.0 points lower (95% CI 1.8 to 4.3 on the BADLS compared with those who discontinued donepezil. This indicated less impairment when continuing the drug treatment.
- The severity of dementia at enrolment significantly influenced the effect donepezil had on SMMSE scores. Larger benefits were observed in patients with moderate disease compared with those who had severe disease.
- Patients assigned to receive memantine alongside donepezil placebo had an SMMSE score on average 1.2 points higher (95% CI 0.6 to 1.8 and a BADLS score that was 1.5 points lower (95% CI 0.3 to 2.8 compared with those assigned memantine placebo alongside donepezil placebo.
- The effectiveness of donepezil and memantine did not differ significantly in the presence or absence of each other.
- There were no significant benefits of the combination of donepezil and memantine over donepezil alone.
- There was no evidence that serious adverse events or death differed according to the treatment groups assigned.
How did the researchers interpret the results?
The authors concluded that, in patients with moderate or severe Alzheimer’s disease, continued treatment with donepezil was associated with cognitive benefits, which exceeded the minimum clinically important differences they had set out before the trial. They said that donepezil led to significant functional benefits over the course of 12 months.
Conclusion
The drug donepezil is already clinically used to treat earlier stages of Alzheimer’s disease, but this new research examined the value of using it as Alzheimer’s disease progresses. To examine the issue, researchers used a robust study design, called a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. They enrolled community-living patients with moderate or severe Alzheimer’s disease who were already receiving treatment with donepezil. Overall, its results showed that there were modest cognitive and functional benefits of continuing donepezil over the course of 12 months.
The study provides important new information on the use of medicines to manage Alzheimer’s symptoms, but the following limitations should be considered when interpreting the results:
- The improvements in cognition (SMMSE score and function (BADLS associated with donepezil and memantine were small compared with the size of the decline overall in cognitive and functional ability experienced by all patients. A “clinically important difference” was defined before the study started, and only the difference in SMMSE score reached this threshold. The impact that this small slowing of decline could have for patients should be given due consideration when debating whether this is an effective treatment.
- The study excluded patients who “were considered to be unlikely to adhere to the study regimens”. This would have the effect of biasing the study, to make it more likely that a beneficial effect was found by giving the drugs. Outside a clinical study, people who are unlikely to adhere to drug treatment may still be given the drug, and the beneficial effect in these patients is likely to be lower than that described in the study.
- All patients were “community living”, in other words not in hospitals or nursing homes. As a large number of people with moderate to severe Alzheimer’s are likely to live in these settings, it will be important to demonstrate a beneficial effect in this setting too.
This study is likely to re-ignite debate about whether donepezil (Aricept should continue to be prescribed to people with dementia once they progress past moderate symptoms. An additional factor sparking renewed interest in the debate is that much cheaper versions of the drug have reportedly become available recently.
Analysis by Bazian
Links To The Headlines
Thousands more should be on dementia drug: researchers. The Daily Telegraph, March 8 2012
Alzheimer's treatment in late stages of disease does slow progression. The Independent, March 8 2012
Hundreds of thousands of dementia patients could be helped by drug breakthrough. Daily Mail, March 8 2012
Alzheimer's patients 'should stay on drugs for longer'. BBC News, March 8 2012
Alzheimer's drugs also work for those in later stages of illness, study finds. The Guardian, March 8 2012
Links To Science
Howard R, McShane R, Lindesay J et al. Donepezil and Memantine for Moderate-to-Severe Alzheimer's Disease. New England Journal of Medicine 2012; 366:893-903
report today alongside a campaign that addresses smoking among youth and young adults. For every tobacco-related death, two people under the age 26 pick up the practice. That's the startling news outlined in today's report. The report: "Preventing Tobacco Use Among Youth and Young Adults: We Can Make the Next Generation Tobacco-Free" is accompanied by a Surgeon General video released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Office on Smoking and Health. Surgeon General Dr. Regina Benjamin identifies teens and young adults as a vulnerable group tempted by tobacco. "The addictive power of nicotine makes tobacco use much more than a passing phase for most teens. We now know smoking causes immediate physical damage, some of which is permanent," Dr. Benjamin said in a statement released by the CDC. Urgency to address teens and young adults was first identified in 1994, when the Surgeon General released its first report on youth and tobacco use. Since then, the knowledge about tobacco use among youth, its prevention and challenges to cessation have been expanded. These new findings and tactics are identified in the report. The numbers on smoking adoption among teens are staggering. Roughly 99 percent of all first use of tobacco occurs by the age of 26. However many smokers start while still in school. More than 600,000 middle school students and 3 million high school students smoke, according to the report. "We don't want our children to start something now that they won't be able to change later in life," Dr. Benjamin said. Health risks associated with smoking are much greater when started at an early age. The report identifies the long-term risks for young smokers including cardiovascular damage and reduction of lung functionality, which can occur early in life for long-term smokers. One half of smokers who started as early adults are likely to die about 13 years earlier than nonsmoking peers. Cigarette use is not under the umbrella of tobacco use among teens. The report finds that nearly one in five White adolescent males aged 12 to 17 uses smokeless tobacco and one in 10 young adults ages 18 to 25 smokes cigars. Further, many teens and young adults use more than one form of tobacco. In the report it states that over half of White and Hispanic male tobacco users report they use more than one tobacco product. Steps taken to reduce the rate of smoking adoption among teens and young adults include the passage of Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control ACT (TCA . Under this act, the Food and Drug Administration have the authority to regulate tobacco products to prevent purchase and use by minors. Actions include age identification verification at retailers, restrictions on the sale of single cigarettes and a ban on certain candy and fruit-flavored cigarettes. TCA activities also include support for state quit lines that provide counseling for smoking cessation. In addition, the government will also launch web and mobile-based interventions aimed to reach young people. While the Surgeon General's campaign ramps up its own marketing, it looks at tobacco marketing, and its practice of targeting young adults. "Targeted marketing encourages more young people to take up its deadly addiction every day. This administration is committed to doing everything we can to prevent our children from using tobacco," said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, in a statement. A video posted by the CDC on YouTube shows teens stating when they began smoking, and what their future holds. "At 15, I was addicted," says one teen. "By 40, I'll have lung disease," says another teen. In the video Surgeon General Dr. Benjamin urges people, including adults, to visit the CDC's site on tobacco to learn how to make the next generation tobacco free. For most people, smoking is a lifelong addiction. As many as three out of four high school smokers continue to smoke into adulthood. To put it into different terms, as many as 88 percent of adult daily cigarette smokers report they started smoking by the age of 18, the report finds. The report and accompanying campaign hopes to curb those statistics. "We can and must continue to do more to accelerate the decline in youth tobacco use," said Dr. Howard Koh, assistant secretary for health at the HHS office, in a statement. "Until we end the tobacco epidemic, more young people will become addicted, more people will die, and more families will be devastated by the suffering and loss of loved ones." --- On the Net:
A year after the power plant's triple meltdown, conflicting official information leaves families confused and fearful for their future
The noise levels soar inside Fukushima city's youth centre gymnasium as dozens of nursery school children are let loose on bouncy castles and pits filled with plastic balls.
The handful of teachers and volunteers on duty are in forgiving mood: for the past year, the Fukushima nuclear accident has robbed these children of the simple freedom to run around.
Instead, anxious parents and teachers have confined them to their homes and classrooms, while scientists debate the possible effects of prolonged exposure to low-level radiation on their health.
"Many parents won't let their children play outside, even in places where the radiation isn't that high," said Koji Nomi of the Fukushima chapter of the Japanese Red Cross, which organised the event. "Unless they have the opportunity to run around, their physical strength is at risk of deteriorating.
"That in turn puts them at risk of succumbing to stress. Some are allowed to play outside for short periods every day, but that's not enough."
Hundreds of thousands of children in the area have been living with similar restrictions since the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant's triple meltdown last March, sending radioactive particles over a wide area.
The immediate threat of a catastrophic release has passed, but residents of several towns, including those outside the 12-mile (20km exclusion zone, say they live in fear of the invisible threat in their midst. Kumiko Abe and her family evacuated from Iitate, 39km from the power plant, weeks after the accident after a study by Tetsuji Imanaka, an associate professor of nuclear engineering at the Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute, found unusually high pockets of radiation in the village.
They now live in private accommodation in Fukushima city, but Abe says she continues to take precautions to protect her nine-year-old daughter, Momoe.
"We have stopped eating rice grown by my husband's parents, and I never buy locally grown vegetables," Abe, 46, said. "I started buying imported meat, and we drink only bottled water. I try not to hang out laundry on windy days ... I'd like to be able to air our futons, but I can't."
Her concerns centre on her daughter, who has a tiny lump on her thyroid gland. Doctors have assured her it is benign. "Even though they say there's nothing to worry about I'd like her to have more frequent tests," Abe said.
Her anxiety is compounded by conflicting messages from experts about the risk of exposure to low-level radiation.
Shunichi Yamashita, a professor at Fukushima Medical University who acts as an adviser on radiation risk management to the local government, angered parents when he said exposure to 100 millisieverts a year – the level recommended for nuclear plant workers in an emergency – was safe, even for children.
He has since claimed that his comments were taken out of context.
A cumulative dosage of 100 millisieverts a year over a person's lifetime increases the risk of dying from cancer by 0.5%, according to the International Commission of Radiological Protection.
No study has linked cancer development to exposure at below that level, but there is agreement that the Fukushima case is unprecedented.
Much of the unease stems from the wildly varying levels of radiation recorded in the same areas: in parts of Fukushima outside the evacuation zone, readings vary from negligible to as high as 50 millisieverts a year. Normally, the Japanese are exposed to about 1 millisievert of background radiation a year.
The emergence of thyroid cancers in children living near Chernobyl is on many parents' minds, despite UN data showing that exposure to radioactive iodine, an established cause of the condition, was much lower in Fukushima.
Campaigners said this week that Japan's government had been too slow to providing health checks and information to residents.
"A year on, we are really not seeing basic health services being offered in an accessible way and we are not seeing accurate, consistent, non-contradictory information being disclosed to people on a regular basis," Jane Cohen, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, told Reuters.
"People have to at least be equipped with accurate information so that they are evaluating their situation based on real facts."
The government has tried to ease health concerns with the launch of a testing programme in Fukushima prefecture that will include 360,000 children aged up to 18. They will undergo thyroid checks every two years until they are 20, and every five years thereafter. In all, 2 million residents will be screened over the next 30 years, but so far only a fraction of those eligible have been tested.
Serious threats
"Our children have all been wearing glass badges [to measure radiation absorption], but only a few of them have been screened," said Mitsue Shiga, a teacher at a kindergarten in Fukushima city's Watari suburb. "We don't allow the children to play outside at all."
Medical professionals in the area say they lack the specialist equipment to quickly test and reassure residents. "We have just one whole body radiation counter, but we need three," said Tomoyoshi Oikawa, assistant director of Minamisoma municipal general hospital.
Anti-nuclear campaigners accused the authorities of putting children's health at risk by ignoring calls to help women and young people leave at-risk areas outside the evacuation zone. "We are finding that radioactive contamination is concentrating in many places, creating hot spots that pose serious threats to health and safety," said Jan van de Putte, Greenpeace's radiation expert.
"These spots are worryingly located in densely populated areas, but people do not have support or even the right to relocate, and decontamination work is patchy and inadequate at best."
According to preliminary estimates, the doses of radiation received by people living near the nuclear facility were probably too small to have much of an effect on health, even among those who were in the vicinity during the meltdowns.
But the relatively small doses measured so far could pose problems for long-term attempts to properly gauge the Fukushima effect.
"There is no opportunity for conducting epidemiological studies that have any chance of success," John Boice, the incoming president of the US national council on radiation protection and measurements, said recently. "The doses are just too low. If you were to do a proposal, it would not pass scientific review."
For a more comprehensive assessment of the accident's impact on health, Fukushima residents will have to wait for the UN scientific committee on the effects of atomic radiation to publish its findings in May 2013.
Iitate residents say the conflicting information has left them confused and fearful about the future. "Young children were living in the village for months after the meltdown," said Toru Anzai, a rice farmer who now lives in temporary housing on the outskirts of Fukushima city said: "We're being treated like lab rats. The authorities should have told us as soon as they knew the reactors had melted down and helped us leave immediately. That's why people here are so angry."
Anecdotal evidence suggests that fear of radiation, rather than contamination, is triggering stress-related problems among evacuees.
A handful of children from Iitate suffered nosebleeds, despite having no history of the condition, and blotches on their skin, according to Anzai, who says he has had stomach pains, pins and needles and hair loss since last spring.
Tadateru Konoe, president of the Japanese Red Cross, said parents from Fukushima were living in an "information vacuum".
Abe was dismissive of promises by Iitate's mayor that the village would be decontaminated and that some residents would be able to move back in the next few years: "I have a young child so I don't think I'll ever go back. There will always be some contamination left, especially in the mountains. It's no place to bring up a child."
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A survey shows attitudes in the UK towards genetically modified food has softened slightly. But would people buy it? Leo Hickman, with your help, investigates. Get in touch below the line, email your views to
leo.hickman@guardian.co.uk or tweet
@leohickman
A new survey commissioned by the
British Science Association suggests that public concern in the UK over genetically modified foods has
fallen slightly in recent years compared to the period a decade or so ago when campaigning against the technology was at its most strident.
The survey's results - which show a 5% fall since 2003 in those who say they are "concerned" about GM - do not suggest a radical change in opinion, but they do align with the common perception that there is less hostility now towards the technology, coupled with signs of positive support from some politicians within government.
The EU is also currently considering whether to relax its rules on the technology and allow each member state to decide whether to impose their own ban on cultivating GM crops, or make their own deals direct with biotech companies on commercial growing.
So, after a period of sometimes extreme hostility towards "
Frankenfoods", could the UK be among the first countries within Europe to embrace the technology? Have the arguments both for and against the technology changed enough in recent years to see GM crops grown around the UK and foods containing GM ingredients routinely offered on supermarket shelves?
Traditionally, there have been three points of concern regarding GM foods:
1 The fear of unintended consequences; hence why environmentalists have long called for the application of the "
precautionary principle".
2 The opportunity for the biotech industry to "own" the technology and, thereby, tightly control and dictate how farmers around the world use it.
3 The instinctive desire within many of us not to consume something that is "unnatural" - the fear of so-called "Frankenfoods".
Have any of these concerns dissipated enough to see the UK embrace GM food? Do issues such as climate change, poverty and a
fast-rising human population mean we now have to put aside these fears?
If quoting figures or scientific findings to support your points, please provide a link to the source. I will also be inviting various interested parties to join the debate, too. And later on today, I will return with my own verdict.
I've just received this response from the
National Farmers Union:
The world faces huge challenges in feeding a growing population (nine billion by 2050 but this has to happen against a backdrop of pressures on natural resources, unpredictable weather patterns, climate change and the need to manage more carefully the use of chemical inputs.
To achieve this we will need every single tool in our toolbox - and that includes GM crops that have been adapted to cope in dry conditions, need fewer pesticides or offer nutritional benefits.
Of course there needs to be a strong legal framework for approvals and effective co-existence measures to allow GM and non-GM systems to operate successfully together but these must be proportional to the need so that growers can retain their markets, and must be based on sound science.
A recent NFU article:
Europe, GM and the perfect storm
And this just in from
Dr Tom MacMillan, director of innovation at the
Soil Association:
Contrary to the headline, the survey doesn't actually show that public concern over GM food has lessened – it shows that attitudes have neither hardened nor thawed. For the comparable questions where there is data for the years in between now and 2003, we actually see a great deal of fluctuation in public attitudes. The share saying they agree that GM food "should be encouraged" actually drops from 46% in 2002 to 27% in 2012. Not only does that directly call into question the notion that there is greater public appetite for GM, but the fact that the figures are 35% in 2005 yet 44% in 2010 suggest it is absolute nonsense to suggest a clear trend here.
There are lots of substantive arguments around GM, the future of food and farming, and so on, that I'm sure this coverage will cause to be rehearsed. But the premise – a new survey shows an important shift in attitudes – is incorrect.
This survey repeats questions people were first asked a decade ago. While that might be an interesting academic exercise, in practice the world has moved on in those 10 years, to new areas of research and innovation, so it is a real throwback to focus on GM. Where we haven't yet seen enough progress is in tackling the democratic deficit at the heart of British research policy, which leaves the public, small businesses and farmers little say in the research that is done with their money and in their name.
GM Freeze, the campaign group that, well, wants to put a freeze on GM foods, has issued a
press release criticising the British Science Association survey:
Overall the poll results show the majority of people are not supportive of a headlong rush for GM crops, so little has changed in the last decade.
The questions used in the poll put a very positive spin on GM crops, include some basic factual errors and ignore problems and scientific uncertainty about their efficacy. We would have expected something tighter and smarter from the BSA.
Overall GM crops in commercial production in the Americas have failed to deliver all that was promised. Many farmers faced with superweeds caused by growing GM crops - where the only control option is hand pulling - deeply regret taking it up. This technology is first and foremost a means to make profits for global seed and chemical companies.
Scientists need to take a step back and develop technologies and approaches that work with nature rather than trying to change it and manipulate it for short-term profits. Crucially they also need to listen to the public.
I am trying to see if the BSA will post the PDF of its survey results online.
My colleague Adam Vaughan, who wrote the
news report about the survey, has
uploaded the full results onto Scribd.com.
I've just received this response from Dominic Dyer, chief executive of the
Crop Protection Association, which represents a number of biotech companies in the UK:
The global development of GM crops is a phenomenal success story. Last year, 160 million hectares of GM crops were planted by 16.7 million farmers in 29 countries. This represents a 94-fold increase in the biotech area since 1996, making GM crops the fastest adopted crop technology in modern history.
The area of GM crops planted in the developing world has now overtaken developed nations, dispelling the myth that this is only a technology for highly industrialised farming systems.
Year after year, GM technology is delivering proven benefits in terms of increased yields, economic growth and reduced environmental impact - but Europe's farmers and consumers remain locked out.
Our own research shows that consumers understand the link between increased food prices and the impact of global factors such as population growth, climate change and rising oil prices. As a result they are more willing to embrace the use of agricultural science and innovation to help boost food supplies. (see
http://www.cropprotection.org.uk/media/20934/impact_of_the_global_food_crisis.pdf
EU policy-makers must recognise that access to the most advanced farming technologies will be essential to tackle the growing food security crisis. On GM foods and crops, it's time to give Europe's farmers and consumers a choice.
In 2010, the
Food Standards Agency published research looking at British attitudes towards "emerging food technologies", such as GM foods:
The research found that people's knowledge of, and attitudes to, food technologies vary considerably. Certain characteristics were found to be in common with people who are more concerned about food technologies, including being older, female, having a low income or generally having a high level of concern about food safety.
The more familiar people are with the names of food technologies the less concerned they are about them. For example, 31% of people were concerned about eating food cooked in a microwave, whereas 57% were concerned about eating food from a magnetron (another name for a microwave .
Compared with 1999, when the same questions were asked, fewer people now said they have a strong attitude to GM food, and there has been a gradual increase in public support for GM food (from 10% in 1999 to 19% in 2008 .
Below the line,
Brian Wynne, professor of science studies at Lancaster University's
Centre for Science Studies and with the
ESRC Centre for Economic and Social Aspects of Genomics, has posted a long comment. He's critical of the BSA survey, but adds:
A key issue not sufficiently examined, is the assumption made by so many official statements from eg the UK chief scientific adviser, and the Royal Society, the EU, and almost everywhere, that we must have 'every tool in the tool-box' including GM, for maximum production. Quite apart from the fact that we have enough global food production now, adequately to feed not just the existing population, but the 2050 projected one of 9 billion people, distribution and access are a crucial dimension of this too, and different possible modes of production will affect these aspects, some negatively, some positively. A key question for our scientists, and politicians to address, and to have the courage to demand that industry addresses too, is also whether GM technology can and will co-exist in the global agricultural toolbox with other technologies, without having the effect of destroying those other tools. Apart from more promise than delivery, and delivery of only private benefits like greater market share for their own chemical pesticides, GM has brought with it a marked narrowing of seed-varieties available to farmers, a concentration of ownership of seed-production and sales, and a concentration in ownership and control of the knowledge (intellectual property rights which is required for agricultural production.
Reuters are reporting that "European Union ministers are unlikely to agree draft rules to let countries decide themselves whether to grow or ban genetically modified (GM crops, despite efforts by Denmark's EU presidency to reach a compromise". The report adds that "strong opposition from France, Germany and some other EU countries has stymied efforts to agree the new rules"..."Britain and Spain had initially appeared willing to support the Danish compromise".
More details here.
My verdict
It's a mark of just how successful the anti-GM campaigns of the 1990s and early 2000s were in persuading people across Europe to largely turn their backs on this technology that we are even asking this question now. A decade on and, as evidenced in the comments beneath this blog, emotions are still running very high. If I had replaced "should" with "would" in the headline question, it seems clear, as the survey itself suggests, there are still more people in the UK who object to the idea of GM food than those who would support it.
There is, however, a large band of undecided people in the middle. Could they be persuaded to reject their indifference and actively support the technology? As I suggested at the start of this blog, there are three central objections to GM foods, each of which need ticking off the list. My own feeling, given all the emotion, alarmism and genuine causes for concern, that have passed under the bridge over the years, is that the biotech industry, and all those who passionately support GM foods, need to rebuild the case for its use from the ground up. They have no choice as the pendulum of public opinion is still a long way from swinging in their direction.
Personally, I'm not particularly moved by the arguments made against GM foods when it comes to health concerns, or environmental pollution and cross-contamination. I fall into the "let's keep on researching" camp. In fact, given issues such as climate change and rising population levels, I think it is a moral imperative to keep actively researching these technologies. As long as regulators keep a very, very close eye on how the technology is being used, I think we should proceed with the usual caution. GM food is what I call a "nosepeg" technology - we might not like the smell of it, but circumstances force us to consider it.
My overriding concern with GM foods is that just a handful of private companies would likely control the global market. This cannot be allowed to happen for reasons that have been rehearsed many times before. That's why I instinctively like the sound of initiatives, as
mentioned by Smartse, of "open-source" GM, whereby the technology is developed for the global common good, rather than for the commercial advantage of a few patent holders. But, as we've seen with medicine, is this just an idealistic pipe-dream? Developing such technologies cost a lot of money. It's hard to get round this, but I think it's now time we tried.
I've just received this from
Monsanto:
Adam Vaughan's statement in his
article today about the proportion of GM seed sold by Monsanto is misleading.
Monsanto develops both seeds and genetic traits. We sell own brand seeds with and without our traits and we license our traits to other seed companies who breed them in to their seeds. Monsanto also licenses traits from other technology developers and breeds them in to some of our own brand seeds.
The point is that having a Monsanto trait in a seed does not necessarily make it a Monsanto seed. This approach creates choice for farmers and seed companies and has helped to enable the rapid adoption of biotech crops globally.
Monsanto
submitted a paper to a US government hearing on seed industry competition. One of the conclusions is that farmers had a wide range of choices offered to them, for both biotech seeds and conventional hybrids/varieties. In corn alone, there were more than 6,000 traited hybrids and over 1,000 conventional ones offered for 2010 planting.
Some patents on first generation biotech traits are
approaching expiry. This illustrates the focus of Monsanto's business on innovation rather than "control" as sometimes claimed.
Regarding who benefits from GM, here are two studies that help explain why more than 6 million Indian farmers choose to buy GM cotton seed each year.
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/pressreleases/gm_crop_produces/
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800911002400
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More Feeds
As an increasingly denigrated category of people who 'should not be here', asylum seekers are among the first to experience the privatisation of state security in the UK. They won't be the last.
Private
security firms are in the news - a national contract worth ?3.5 billion is being rolled out to privatise police functions. Eight public prisons are being market tested with future private contracts worth ?2.5 billion. The largest security company in the world, G4S, figures in all these developments. G4S and two other security companies are also set to take over asylum-seeker housing, privatising the last 'humanitarian' public housing for those fleeing persecution. But this is only the latest evidence of asylum seekers being used as 'guinea pigs' to test unsavoury policies in such areas as welfare reform, legal aid and now housing.
The growing and now endemic 'common sense racism' of political and media discourses with regard to asylum seekers and foreigners has meant that a fundamental erosion in the legal rights and status of social citizenship in the UK has over fifteen or so years been piloted by governments in 'the Orwellian world of immigration controls'.[1] As Judith Shklar describes it, a world where there is 'a symbolic glass floor - citizens exist above the floor and can look down on those beneath who are excluded from citizenship and are thus the most deprived in society'.[2]
Over the past few years, the derisory value of state support for asylum-seeker families and single people has been reduced even more in value and scope. It was very difficult in 2009 and 2010 to find any political support for the campaigns of asylum rights groups to oppose cuts and to defend the income of asylum seekers pilloried in the press and attacked by politicians in election campaigns. Just as later, in 2011 and 2012, the press and the populist narratives of 'scroungers' have dominated the rhetoric and 'bloody battles' over welfare cuts separating claimants out from 'hard working families'.
This week the House of Lords attempts to prevent drastic cuts in legal aid for a whole range of civil cases affecting housing, family cases, and personal compensation. Lobby groups are realising that legal aid and access to justice is the last remaining pillar of welfare rights and social citizenship developed in the 1940s along with education, health, housing, employment, and universal benefits. But massive cuts in legal aid for asylum and immigration cases were already made in 2010 and 2011, resulting in the collapse of the two major voluntary sector providers, the Immigration Advisory Service and Refugee Migrant Justice. But the ongoing demonising of foreigners and asylum seekers ensured then that few voices were raised against cuts which of course affected immigration lawyers - the butt of attacks by successive home and justice secretaries from Jack Straw and David Blunkett to Theresa May and Ken Clarke.
Outsourcing punishment, detention and state violence
British governments since the 1990s have sought to outsource key functions of the modern state - such as the confining and rehabilitating of criminals - which has been rapidly achieved through the rise and rise of global private security companies such as G4S and SERCO.
Almost unnoticed, the UK has now the largest private prison sector in Europe - larger than that of the USA. In December 2011 in England and Wales 11,446 prisoners (13.1 per cent were in private prisons. By the end of March there will be fourteen private prisons. The market testing of a further eight public prisons, at present underway, could mean another 5,700 prisoners in private prisons in the next year or so. The value of these eight contracts over fifteen years is estimated at ?2.5 billion.[3]
The private security companies have profited massively from this management of the prisoner market which just three companies share. G4S will have seven contracts by April 2012, SERCO five, and Sodexo three including the only private women's prison at Bronzefield. On 1 October 2011, HMP Birmingham became the first publicly-run prison to be contracted out to the private sector and G4S with a contract worth ?468.3 million.[4]
The G4S and SERCO prison empires have also hoovered up voluntary organisations. G4S has been jointly providing family services for visitors at its Wolds prison since 2004 with the PreSchool Learning Alliance 'the largest third sector provider of quality childcare'.[5] SERCO won contracts for prisons with its voluntary sector partners Turning Point and Catch 22 providing 'rehabilitation and resettlement solutions' (for instance for Belmarsh West in 2010 and is currently running a pilot 'payments by results scheme' with Catch 22 and Turning Point on rehabilitation at its privatised HMP Doncaster where it already runs a successful 'Families First' programme.[6]
Alongside the prison estate market, the criminalising and 'securitising' of immigration and asylum has meant the development of what G4S has described as 'asylum markets'.[7] Private security firms have come to dominate detention, transport and escort services for asylum seekers, displacing politically accountable public provision. G4S Justice Services opened the first designed, constructed, managed and financed private prison in the UK, HMP Altcourse, Fazakerley, Liverpool in 1997. By 2011 it had seven prison contracts and managed four of the detention centres for asylum seekers including the family-friendly Cedars centre (already attracting criticism for detention of families who are allowed fewer rights than in the prison and detention system .[8] Its management of detention centres was also somewhat problematic. In 2010 there were a record 773 complaints lodged against G4S by detainees including forty-eight claims of assault.[9]
G4S, despite this record and the fact that three of its escort staff are still on bail facing criminal charges related to the death of Jimmy Mubenga an Angolan man, (read an IRR News story:
'Jimmy Mubenga remembered' , is finalising its contract to take over asylum-seeker housing in the North East and Yorkshire and the Humber. (Other security firms, SERCO and Reliance, share contracts in other regions. The company is extending its interests in the asylum market but these contracts signal a further shift in public policy, this time in housing.
Asylum housing as 'house arrest'
Asylum seekers and asylum rights campaigners perceive this extension of the role of for-profit security companies in the prison and immigration estate as creating a form of 'house arrest' for asylum seekers awaiting decisions on their claims. Could this be an initial step towards the policy, called for recently by former home office junior minister Anne Widdecombe, of 'detention centres on arrival' for all asylum seekers?[10] There was after all an earlier attempt in December 2005 to introduce such a regime with a Home Office contract for the security firm Reliance to pilot voice recognition and tagging of 200 asylum seekers in Glasgow and two other areas.[11]
For G4S the asylum housing contract may signal their hope to enter the international privatised social housing and for-profit private rented sector markets. G4S has set up a separate housing division as part of its Yorkshire contract headed by a former president of the Chartered Institute of Housing. Its management methods will be tested on upwards of 500 asylum-seeker families and individuals who will be dispersed from local authority housing in South Yorkshire over the next six months. None of these residents will of course have any rights as tenants nor even as customers - these are all stripped away by the 1999 Immigration and Asylum Act. Asylum seekers are treated as if they have no real legal presence.
Not just a matter of cost
The language of the market and the current climate of 'austerity' often justifies these private contracts in terms of cost.[12] Research actually suggests that private prisons, detention centres and other asylum market services are not always cheaper options.[13] Private prisons certainly tend to be more overcrowded than publicly run institutions,[14] The privately run detention institutions in 'the Orwellian world of immigration controls' are certainly not cheap, but costings are rarely reported. The Home Affairs Select Committee reported some figures in November 2009. The average cost of detention was ?130 per night per person in an immigration removal centre which amounts to around ?45,000 per place per year. This is thus much higher in the mainly privatised detention centre world than the average in the mainly publicly controlled prison world (most prisoners are in category C or local prisons where the costs per male prisoner are ?32,109 and ?35,157 per annum respectively .[15]
Whatever the costs, the detention centres certainly have a disgraceful record As a recent research study has documented over the past few years. 'In the UK's detention centres there have been 16 suicides, alarming rates of self-harm, hunger strikes and appalling levels of mental and physical illness. Thousands of innocent men women and children have been put through the detention wringer'.[16]
In a rather surreal moment in a recent meeting between UK Border Agency (UKBA 'enforcement' staff and asylum rights organisations in Sheffield, the UKBA disclosed that it was striving to get a 'customer service and satisfaction award' for its direct and outsourced escort and detention services. An outsourced escort service then operated by G4S was involved in the death of Jimmy Mubenga and three of his escorts are under investigation for possible prosecution.
The power of the European private security industry
Recent disclosures about the massive ?3.5 billion national contract for privatising police services (at present taken up by West Midlands and Surrey police forces [17] follow the news that G4S has already won a ?200 million contract to transfer half the staff of Lincolnshire police authority and build and run a new police station there.[18]
The private security market in general across the EU is displacing routine state policing duties? In all the countries of the EU there is an average of 31.11 private security personnel per 10,000 people as compared to 36.28 police personnel per 10,000. As one commentator has said this is actually changing the assumed 'norm' that it is the state and not private companies which have a monopoly on state violence.[19]
The UK is amongst the most intensively covered by private security with one private guard to every 170 people compared with one police employee to every 382 citizens -figures comparable to Hungary and Serbia. Germany on the other hand has much lighter private security with one private guard for every 484 citizens and one police employee for every 326 citizens. The private security business in the UK is worth ?3.97 billion annually. Across Europe this is a very powerful lobby for privatising and marketising state functions. Just three companies have 46 per cent of the market in the UK. Just three companies have 56 per cent of the market across the EU. Published data from the EU does not directly name them but it would be strange indeed if G4S and SERCO were not amongst them.[20]
The private asylum market is not neutral, it comes with values
Conor Gearty, in a lecture to
Asylum Aid in November 2010, suggested that: 'We are I think close to or at a paradigm shift in our approach to asylum seekers and immigrants in Europe, that moment when we stop thinking in ways made inevitable by our past ethical truths, and start talking and thinking in a far nastier vein. The latter is becoming normal the former increasingly the exception. The rule is drifting from civility to incivility, from respect for humanity to celebration of inhumanity, from universalist idealism to parochial hostility. And all of this is seemingly supported by a new fast emerging "social consensus".'[21]
In Sheffield and South Yorkshire some local authorities, many trade unionists, church and faith groups, and a network of asylum rights and refugee groups hold to the 'social democratic' world of those past ethical truths. In early April in Geneva the UK will be held to account in the UN's Universal Periodic Review of Human Rights. The South Yorkshire asylum rights 'consensus' submitted their own review of the sustained attacks on the human rights of asylum seekers in Sheffield for submission to the UNHRC.[22]
This 'far nastier' social consensus on asylum is driven in the UK by a common sense and state racism in terms of public policy and is delivered in the market place by the practice of private security firms. These 'far nastier' assumptions about state policies are unfortunately often shared across the boundaries between private and public provision. On the Today programme on Saturday 3 March John Humphrys was challenging Chief Superintendent Phil Kay of the West Midland police about its proposed involvement in the privatisation of the police arguing that the values of a private company subject to shareholders was totally different to 'sworn officers' in police service. Superintendent Kay disagreed, he thought that 'some of their values will be different' but developing the potential 'partnership' he found they shared similar values to our own'. 'You'd be surprised in some respects, there will be overlap.' Unfortunately there may well be 'overlap' in values - but perhaps of the 'far nastier' variety.
Those living outside South Yorkshire might find it difficult to believe that Sheffield still declares itself a City of Sanctuary (in fact it started the national movement , and Barnsley proclaims it still provides 'humanitarian' housing for asylum seekers. A petition against G4S taking over asylum housing presented to the full Sheffield city council meeting on 1 February was applauded by the whole council.
Councillors and campaigners understand that the G4S contract not only privatises this humanitarian function but destroys it and replaces it with the clear message adopted by both Labour and the Coalition that asylum seekers are not welcome here. Indeed they should be treated like criminals with prison guards as their landlords, as part of a deliberate policy of deterrence. As one Zimbabwean asylum seeker in Sheffield declared, 'I do not want a prison guard as my landlord'.
Future tenants and customers confronting G4S in its role as housing provider will no doubt be able to recognise that it piloted its particular brand of housing management on vulnerable asylum seekers 'below that symbolic glass floor'.
Deportation is freedom: the Orwellian world of immigration controls
, London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers 2008. [2] Quoted in Lavalette M. and Ferguson I. eds
International Social Work and the Radical Tradition
, Birmingham: Venture Press 2007, p118. [3] Prison Reform Trust,
Bromley Briefings Prisons Factfile December 2011
, can be downloaded
here (pdf file, 1.5mb . [4],
'Ken Clarke privatises Birmingham prison amid union fury', BBC News, 31 March 2011. [5]
Win-Win : the leadership of private and third sector public service partnerships
, pp 10-11, 2010, ACEVO and CBI, can be downloaded
here (pdf file, 2.4mb . [6]
Serco press release, 5 July 2010 and 11 October 2011. [7] John Grayson,
'G4S turns a profit in "asylum markets": who's speaking out and whose lips are sealed?', Open Democracy, 28 February 2012. [8]
Private Eye
, no. 1303, December 9 to 22, 2011 p.31. [9] Dominic Casciani,
'G4S immigration removal centres complaints revealed', BBC News, 17 June 2011. [10] Ann Widdecombe,
'Why coalition has given me cause to hope',
Daily Express
, 11 January 2012. [11] Corporate Watch,
'Scotland PLC: immigration and asylum in Scotland'. [12] Ian Blair,
'The police: a chance to modernise',
Guardian
, 5 March 2012. [13] In 2007 according to a parliamentary written answer the costs of private prisons per place were higher than public sector prisons in most categories cited in
Bromley Briefings prisons Factfile December 2011
, op cit. [14] Private prisons have held a higher percentage of their prisoners in overcrowded accommodation than public sector prisons every year for the past thirteen years,
Bromley Briefings prisons Factfile December 2011
, op cit. [15] Ministry of Justice, 'Costs per place and costs per prisoner by individual prison', NOMS Annual Report and Accounts 2010/11, 27 October 2011. [16] Melanie McFadyean,
'Detention is no solution',
The International State Crime Initiative (ISCI website. [17] Alan Travis and Zoe Williams,
'Revealed: government plans for police privatisation',
Guardian
, 2 March 2012. [18]
' Lincolnshire police outsource ?200m support contract', BBC News, 22 December 2011. [19] Elke Krahmann,
Private Security Companies and the State Monopoly on Violence
, Peace Research Institute Frankfurt 2009. [20]
CoESS (Confederation of European Security Services , 'Private Security Services in Europe: CoESS Facts and Figures 2011'. [21] Conor Gearty, 'Doing what comes naturally? Asylum, human rights and duties of humanity',
Asylum Aid 20th Anniversary Lecture, 2 November 2010. [22]
South Yorkshire Asylum and Migration Action Group (SYMAAG with
Asylum Seeker Support Initiative - Short Term (ASSIST and the
Northern Refugee Centre (NRC , this evidence will be available at
SYMAAG website. The Institute of Race Relations is precluded from expressing a corporate view: any opinions expressed are therefore those of the authors.
“Just a few minutes of relatively strenuous exercise can dramatically change a person’s DNA,” according to the Daily Mail. The newspaper said new research has found that 20 minutes of exercise can “crank up the genes needed to burn fat and sugar and support the body”.
Exercise is known to affect the energy-making machinery in cells and alter how the body processes sugar. The study examined whether exercise might do this by making a particular type of change to DNA. DNA contains genes, which act as the blueprints for making various proteins, including those involved in releasing energy.
The researchers thought that a process called DNA methylation could be involved. This process influences whether, and to what extent, the body "switches on" genes in our DNA. To test the hypothesis, the researchers asked healthy young people who did not regularly exercise to complete a single, intense cycling session. They tested DNA methylation in samples of thigh muscle taken before and after the exercise. They found that after exercise, the amount of DNA with methylation had decreased, and concluded that this may be the process by which muscle adapts to exercise. However, the changes seen appeared to be only temporary.
It is important to note that this study did not find that exercise changes people’s underlying genetic code (the sequence of "letters" that make up our DNA .
Exercise has numerous benefits for health and weight, which are explained in our health and fitness section.
Where did the story come from?
The study was carried out by researchers from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, the University of Copenhagen and Dublin City University. The research was funded by the European Research Council, European Foundation for the Study of Diabetes and other institutions throughout Europe and Australia.
The study was published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Cell Metabolism.
Media headlines claiming that 20 minutes of exercise changes your DNA oversimplify the research and its conclusions. Exercise did not change people’s underlying DNA code or genetics. Instead, exercise was found to reverse a temporary chemical change called methylation, where a particular chemical compound attaches to the outer part of the DNA strand. DNA contains the genetic “code” that the body uses to produce proteins, and methylation alters the rate at which proteins can be produced by the methylated genes.
The effect was only assessed in muscle cells and the participants did not exercise for 20 minutes. Rather, the muscle samples were taken 20 minutes after the participants had stopped exercising.
What kind of research was this?
This human and animal study involved a small number of participants. The researchers reported that previous studies have shown that exercise increases the production of proteins involved in energy usage and other cell functions, but that the mechanism behind these increases was unclear. The researchers thought that a chemical process called DNA methylation may account for this effect, and conducted various experiments to test their theory.
DNA methylation occurs when a chemical compound (called a methyl group binds to the DNA. Methylation is involved in controlling gene expression, the process by which information contained in DNA is used to create proteins. Methylation of a gene reduces the amount of protein it produces.
What did the research involve?
The researchers recruited 14 men and women, with an average age of 25 years, to complete a single round of exercise on a stationary bike. The participants fasted the night before the sessions. During the experiment, they exercised until they were too tired to want to continue. The researchers took small tissue samples from the participants’ thigh muscles before the exercise session and again 20 minutes after the session.
A sub-group of eight men completed two additional sessions, one low-intensity session at 40% of their maximum aerobic capacity, and another high-intensity session at 80% capacity. The men fasted the night before the sessions. On the day of the experiments, a small sample of thigh muscle was taken and the men then ate a high-carbohydrate breakfast. Four hours after breakfast, they started the exercise session on a stationary bike. They continued cycling until they had expended a predetermined amount of energy (1,674 kJ, approximately 400 calories . A muscle sample was taken immediately after the session, and again three hours later.
The researchers analysed these muscle samples, and compared DNA methylation before and after exercise, and across different exercise-intensity levels. The researchers also looked at methylation levels 48 hours after a three-week exercise programme.
In a separate experiment, the researchers exposed rat muscles in the laboratory to doses of caffeine, which has previously been shown to have similar effects on gene activation to exercise in mice. They then measured gene activation over time.
What were the basic results?
The researchers found that in human muscle tissue, DNA methylation decreased after the single intense bout of exercise. This decrease in methylation led to an increase in the activity of some genes that play a role in various processes in the cell, including those through which the cells generate energy.
When analysing the sub-group of participants who completed both high- and low-intensity sessions, the researchers found that high-intensity exercise led to a greater decrease in methylation than low-intensity exercise.
Further analysis showed that 48 hours after a three-week exercise programme, DNA methylation had returned to the levels seen before the exercise programme. This suggested that the effect is temporary.
The researchers also found that exposing rat muscle to caffeine similarly led to decreases in DNA methylation and increased activity of some genes.
How did the researchers interpret the results?
The researchers say their results suggest that exercise leads to a decrease in the process of DNA methylation in skeletal muscle, and that this decrease is greatest after high-intensity exercise. They believe this decrease may be an early step in the process by which exercise leads to changes in gene expression.
Conclusion
Previous studies have found that levels of proteins involved in the cell’s energy making processes increase after exercise. This new research appears to have found a process that contributes to the phenomenon. It suggests that exercise can lead to changes in gene expression, the process where the body produces proteins based on the genetic code within our DNA. The researchers say that a process called methylation is at least partially responsible for this, although other mechanisms are probably also involved.
The way many news sources presented the research might suggest that exercise actually rewrites a person’s genetic code. This is not the case, as the study found that exercise leads to a temporary change in the DNA strand (called methylation . This affects the rate at which cells produce certain proteins. The significance of this result is not that the DNA fundamentally changes in some way, but rather that the process of methylation appears to be temporarily affected by exercise.
This result is interesting because scientists have generally thought that once methylation has occurred, the chemical modification stays on the gene, and the gene is in a sense “switched off” or at least slows down its production of protein. The researchers say that the study is important because it shows that exercise can alter this process, effectively switching the gene back on temporarily. Again, the significance of this finding is not a change in the DNA itself, but rather that the way the body reads our genetic code appears to be flexible, responding to exercise.
The researchers say that their study provides evidence on how an environmental influence, such as exercise, can cause the muscle to adapt. However, clarifying the mechanism by which this process works is unlikely to influence the daily activities of most people. It’s worth noting that the 20 minutes of exercise described in the Daily Mail’s article is inaccurate. The participants had their muscle samples taken 20 minutes after a session of highly intense exercise had ended. The study does not specify for how long the participants exercised.
The researchers also looked at the effects of caffeine applied directly to extracted rat muscle tissue in the lab. Importantly, in an accompanying article, the researchers emphasised that drinking coffee is not a replacement for exercise, especially since the amount of caffeine required to see the same effect in humans would be close to a lethal dose.
Regular exercise can help maintain a healthy weight and reduce the risk of developing a variety of diseases, such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes. While this study may offer an explanation of how exercise affects muscle tissue, it does not change the underlying message that exercise is good for you.
The Department of Health recommends that adults should get at least 150 minutes of moderately intense aerobic exercise a week, or at least 75 minutes of high-intensity aerobic exercise. Find out more about the UK physical activity guidelines.
Analysis by Bazian
Links To The Headlines
Change your DNA with just 20 minutes of regular exercise. Daily Mail, March 7 2012
Links To Science
Barres R, Yan J, Egan B et al. Acute exercise remodels promoter methylation in human skeletal muscle. Cell Metabolism, March 7 2012, Volume 15, Issue 3, 405-411
University set to open multi-million dollar alternative energy power plant in April
Science & Technology
Brian Platt — The Ubyssey (University of British Columbia
VANCOUVER (CUP — On Oct. 9, 2011, South Carolina’s largest newspaper published
a lengthy expose on an alternative energy power plant at the University of South Carolina (USC .
The plant, which used biomass gasification technology, had been racked by explosions and malfunctions. In March 2011, only four years after opening, it had to be closed down completely. USC is now waiting to recoup its $20 million investment.
The University of British Columbia is about to open a $27-million biomass power plant in partnership with Nexterra Systems Corp., the same company that supplied the technology to the USC power plant.
Nexterra is a Vancouver-based company that has been lauded in the Canadian media as an international pioneer in alternative energy solutions — but no Canadian media outlet has reported on the USC disaster. And that’s not the only problem Nexterra has had with American universities.
Last June, Nexterra made headlines for signing a $16 million contract with the University of Montana (UM for a biomass power plant. “This is our fourth university project and it represents a significant milestone as we expand into the higher educational market across North America,” said Jonathan Rhone, the company’s CEO at the time, in
an article in
The Province
.
By December 2011, the UM project had been scrapped by the university.
According to the local media, the project met its demise due to concerns over “financial viability, fuel supply, increased pollution and the deteriorating [public] discourse.”
Out of the four university projects mentioned by Rhone in the
Province
article, two have turned out to be fiascos. The other two are both in British Columbia. One of them, the UBC project, is set to come online in April. At this time, the only successful Nexterra university power plant is at the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC in Prince George.
Nexterra also has a handful of smaller biomass power plants operating at non-university locations, including at a Kruger Products factory in New Westminster. These plants seem to have avoided the university projects’ problems.
For two years, UBC officials have been touting their almost-completed Nexterra power plant, located between the Totem Park and Marine Drive residences, in press releases and newspaper op-eds as an example of UBC’s commitment to being a global leader in green technology. In his town hall last October, President Stephen Toope praised the Nexterra project at length, calling it a complete “winner” for the university.
But considering the problems with the American projects, is the UBC project as trustworthy as we’ve been told? Will it prove to be a success following the UNBC model, or is it a looming financial catastrophe?
• • •
When the University of South Carolina officially opened its biomass power plant in December 2007, USC officials were brimming with excitement. According to
The State
, the South Carolina newspaper that published the expose on the plant, officials called it “the cat’s meow.”
Biomass technology takes in organic material and turns it into energy. Nexterra has focused on developing biomass gasification systems that take in wood byproduct and turn it into a synthetic gas that can be used to generate heat or electricity.
In other words, Nexterra converts wood chips, tree trimmings and bark into a substitute for natural gas and other fossil fuels.
The USC biomass plant was built by Johnson Controls Inc. (JCI , a Fortune 500 company with a large energy services division. According to
The State
, there was no competitive bidding process for the construction of the plant; it came as part a comprehensive JCI bid to provide energy services to the university. JCI had never built a biomass plant to the scale of what was promised to USC.
“We were a young company,” says Mike Scott, who replaced Rhone as Nexterra’s CEO in October 2011. “At the time, Johnson Controls was only willing to have us do a very, very small part of that project.”
JCI used Nexterra’s technology to build the power plant, but according to Scott, the plant’s fuel handling system, boiler, emission control equipment, turbine, water treatment system, controls and the building itself were managed by other groups. Nexterra only supplied the gasification system.
“Unfortunately, that project had a number of challenges,” says Scott.
On June 28, 2009, an explosion in the USC biomass plant blasted a metal panel 60 feet in the air. Documents obtained by
The State
showed that USC officials described the accident as “potentially lethal.”
“An irrevocable catastrophe may have occurred if a worker or visitor had been in this location,” wrote Thomas Quasney, USC’s associate vice-president for facilities, in an email obtained by
The State
.
In total,
The State
obtained 1,800 pages of documents about the USC biomass plant in its investigation, much of it through freedom of information requests.
The documents showed that the plant had been shut down more than three dozen times in its four-year lifespan. In one two-year period, the plant was only operational for 98 out of 534 days.
According to
The State
, “the [June 28] blast underscored what some USC officials privately grumbled about for years: That the plant has been a $20 million disaster, a money pit that was poorly planned and built by a company [JCI] that had never constructed such a cutting-edge ‘green energy’ power plant before.”
In March 2011, the USC biomass plant was shuttered. Fortunately for the university, their contract with JCI guaranteed $2 million per year in energy savings over what USC’s natural gas heating system would have cost. This means that USC will eventually be able to recoup their $20 million investment in the biomass plant.
“It was a bad plant, but a good contract,” said USC’s chief financial officer, Ed Walton, in an interview with
The State
.
• • •
Brent Sauder says he is not worried about what the USC revelations might mean for UBC’s Nexterra plant.
Sauder is the director of strategic partnerships for the UBC Sustainability Initiative. His job is to create partnerships between UBC and third parties to advance UBC’s goals in sustainability and environmental technology.
“The situation [in South Carolina] is that Nexterra only supplied components of the system and somebody else welded them all together,” says Sauder. “The failures occurred in the integration part, not in the component supply.”
At UBC, in contrast, Nexterra is essentially responsible for the whole plant. UBC staff are being trained to eventually take it over, but unlike at USC, there is no intermediary company between Nexterra and the university. However, this also means that there is no performance contract that would refund the cost if the plant fails.
Scott says that Nexterra quickly learned its lesson from what happened at USC.
“When we looked at doing the next project with Johnson Controls … we insisted, and Johnson Controls agreed, that Nexterra should actually provide everything around the system. The scope of our supply increased around six-fold,” says Scott.
This project was at the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory — the department’s largest laboratory in the United States and a premier nuclear research site.
“Fortunately, this has resulted in a successful project,” says Scott. “We’ve just completed the performance tests, and as you can imagine … that project underwent an enormous amount of scrutiny after the [USC] challenges.”
But Nexterra still features the USC project on its website with no mention that the plant has been shut down for nearly a year. In Nexterra’s press releases, the most recent of which is dated October 12, 2011, the company’s description says that Nexterra “has successfully supplied commercial gasification systems for projects at the U.S. Department of Energy, University of South Carolina, Dockside Green, Kruger Products, the University of Northern B.C. and Tolko Industries.”
Why is Nexterra using a failed power plant in its public relations without stating the project’s problems?
“That’s a fair comment,” says Scott. “But it was a commercial success for us, we delivered the system, the plant did run … Our hope and expectation is that we will have the opportunity to go back and fix it for Johnson Controls. With the success we’re having at Oak Ridge National Labs, we hope [we can go back and fix it].
“We’re not hiding from any of it, and we don’t mean for it to be a representation. Some would say that if we didn’t have it there, that we were trying to hide from the problems. I understand the criticism, but I think you’ll find if you talk to our customers that we’ve been as forthright as possible.”
As it turned out, the full scale of the USC plant’s problems came to light just as another Nexterra project was falling under heavy criticism in Missoula, Montana.
• • •
When the $16-million University of Montana biomass plant was announced in June, the press coverage portrayed it as a breakthrough for Nexterra.
“After installing systems at the University of B.C., the University of Northern B.C., and the University of South Carolina, company president Jonathan Rhone sees the Missoula campus contract as a potential stepping stone into a giant North American market,” said a
Province
article on June 3, 2011.
Shortly after
The State
published its report on the USC disaster, Missoula’s newspaper,
The Missoulian
, began a
careful examination of the project. The paper’s correspondent on the story was Chelsi Moi.
“I think [the university’s] presentation is what made it controversial,” says Moi. “When they first presented the project, they made it look like a win-win, in-the-bag, great project.”
But when a few environmental groups started pushing the university on some of their claims, particularly around air quality and carbon emissions, university officials had to do some backtracking.
“Missoula’s in a valley,” says Moi, “and has had historically poor air quality. Even a couple of years ago, we were deemed an air stagnation zone, and were forced to clean up our act.”
One of the results was that most city residents were no longer allowed to have wood fireplaces — which is why a large wood-fueled power plant at the university raised ire.
The high carbon emissions and particulate matter released by burning wood are some of the biggest problems that biomass companies have worked to solve. Nexterra claims that its plants have made huge strides in this regard.
Public consultations grew contentious between Missoula residents and university officials. At one point the university was forced to apologize after its vice-president of finance and administration said that project opponents were engaged in “low-level eco-terrorism.”
In November, a letter signed by 45 concerned residents — including members of UM’s heating plant staff — asked the university’s Board of Regents to reconsider the project.
“The regents made a decision based on information that was not current,” said one of the letter-writers, John Snively, as quoted by
The Missoulian
. “It’s clear the university doesn’t want to hear from us. The people who are making the decisions at the university don’t feel we have the technical expertise or have valid reasons for interceding in this, never mind that it will cost us all more money and create more pollution.”
But Scott notes that Nexterra obtained all the permits it needed from health authorities to build the plant.
“I think there was a couple of action groups that were opposed to the project,” says Scott, “and they continued to challenge the administration on the basis of emissions … but the administration had a hard time getting out the message that the system they were proposing is the cleanest biomass system that you can get. The state authorities recognized that it would be the cleanest biomass system in the state of Montana.”
One of the action groups opposed to the biomass plant was the Wildwest Institute, an organization focused on forest and wildlife issues. Its executive director, Matthew Koehler, led the charge on challenging the university’s claims about the benefits of the project.
“We had started raising questions about this for about nine months, and we were all but ignored by the university and the press,” says Koehler. “And then we found a bunch of stuff in open-record searches … and you know, it didn’t require too much sleuthing. It just required critical thinking skills to pore through documents.”
Koehler has been a dedicated skeptic of biomass power plants for years. He says he would support small-scale biomass in some instances, but essentially objects to the idea of, as he puts it, “cutting down forests and then burning them to solve global climate change.”
To this, biomass proponents argue that most biomass projects only involve burning the wood industry’s byproduct that would otherwise be waste. Yet Koehler was able to find problems in UM’s plans for fuel supply.
“UM had made this claim that they were going to get this fuel for [a certain price], and then they put out this bid, and nobody bid,” says Koehler. “And then … the university was saying the fuel dealers were going to have to chip [wood] offsite and truck in the fuel, about three chip trucks full a day.” But fuel dealers did not have the storage space to be able to guarantee a steady flow of chip supply.
“So then at the last minute, the university said, ‘Well, we’ll just invest a quarter of a million dollars and chip on site,’” says Koehler. “Okay, so we’re going to run an industrial wood-chipper in the middle of campus?”
On Dec. 2, 2011, UM suspended the biomass project indefinitely. The official reason was that natural gas prices had fallen so far that it was no longer in the university’s financial interests to install an expensive biomass power plant.
“They’ve said that they will revisit the project again in 2012,” says Scott. “If natural gas prices don’t increase, or there’s not a change in the economic and green imperatives for the university, then I think it will be on hold until there’s a change. It’s just unfortunate that the macro energy environment turned on us. I think it would have been a fantastic project.”
• • •
There are many significant differences between the plant being installed at UBC and the failed projects at USC and UM.
Perhaps the most important is that UBC is less focused on biomass as a potentially cheaper alternative to natural gas, and more on the research and development aspect of the facility. As with USC, the biomass project at UM had an energy services company building the plant as part of an energy supply contract to the university. At UBC, the plant will be entirely university-operated.
“With biomass, here was an opportunity to try something new,” said Sauder, UBC Sustainability Initiative’s director of strategic partnerships. “And it could contribute to the heat and power as required by the university, and use technology grown in British Columbia.”
The UBC plant will include a laboratory onsite and university researchers will conduct extensive research with the technology.
UBC was also greatly helped by government subsidies and grants; about 70 per cent of the plant’s $27 million capital cost is covered by these funds.
The biomass plant being built at UBC is a new generation of Nexterra’s technology. “In the first generation of our systems, we took that syngas [the synthetic gas produced from the wood fuel] and burned it to produce steam,” says Scott. “That gas in its untreated form isn’t suitable for firing into internal combustion engines. And so what we’ve done … is developed a system for cleaning up the gas to make it suitable.”
Nexterra’s system at UBC will be able to fire that synthetic gas into an engine developed by General Electric. The engine will then be capable of producing heat and electricity for the campus.
“The system at UBC will be first of its kind built by us,” says Scott. “There have been a number of failed attempts, mostly in Europe, to do what we’re trying to do. Many of those projects in Europe have not met the commercial requirements of a combined heat and gas system. But we’ve done nearly 3,000 hours of testing at our product development centre in Kamloops … and the UBC project will be the first commercial-scale demonstration of this technology.”
Two of the major criticisms of the UM project were air quality and fuel supply; both of those appear to be comprehensively addressed at UBC.
The plant has received a Metro Vancouver air quality management permit, but Sauder says the air quality restrictions will go above and beyond the district requirements. The university will have researchers on site monitoring the emissions continuously. Sauder also authored a 78-page environmental assessment.
“The strictest [air quality standards] we could find in the U.S. is the San Joaquin Valley, and we’re going to be stricter than that,” says Sauder.
Scott also points to the success of the UNBC biomass plant, where third-party studies concluded in August 2011 that the plant’s emission quality was “as good as, or better than, natural gas.”
The UBC plant’s fuel supply will come from a Langley-based company, Cloverdale Fuel, that specializes in “wood byproducts brokering and transport.” Cloverdale already supplies a Nexterra biomass plant at a Kruger Products mill in New Westminster.
The City of Vancouver has signed a memorandum of understanding to provide 5,000 tonnes of municipal tree trimmings annually to the UBC fuel supply. Sauder estimates this will cover about 20 per cent of the fuel; the rest will come from Cloverdale’s suppliers. The fuel will be prepared at Cloverdale according to UBC-ordered standards, and then trucked to the university in two to three truckloads per day.
Jens Wieting, the forests and climate campaigner for Sierra Club B.C., says that there is a lot of local supply for wood waste right now, though he cautions that this may change when pine beetle-damaged wood is used up.
“At some point there is a big risk of … not having resources in the future,” says Wieting. “Because of the pine beetle and the increasing number of forest fires, and lack of reforestation, we have to expect that there will be less timber available in the near future. That’s a concern for any project. A very careful study is required in terms of long term supply.”
The biomass plant itself used cross-laminated timber in its construction, a low-carbon alternative for steel and concrete. “It will be the first industrial building in North America built with cross-laminated timber,” says Sauder.
“I’m quite proud of what we’re doing,” says Scott. “It’s made-in-B.C. technology that the university is taking a leadership role on, and I’m quite happy that we’re taking biomass energy to the next level. I’m confident it’s going to work.”
• • •
If UBC’S biomass plant works as well as the university and Nexterra are promising, it will be a mutually beneficial project. Nexterra gets to test and develop its technology at a commercial scale, UBC researchers get first-hand experience with experimental clean energy production, and the campus will have up to six per cent of its electricity and 25 per cent of its heating steam produced by the project.
But biomass skeptics find it hard to trust these claims. The slick presentations given by universities and company executives often ignore any risks of the project.
“It’s like the Simpsons episode from a few years ago, when the monorail salesman came to Springfield,” says Koehler. “[University executives] generally know jack squat about biomass. But they go to some conference and they get the presentation, and they go ‘Oh wow, that’s neat.’”
Furthermore, the media often can’t be relied on for critical coverage; most articles on biomass technology are indistinguishable from company press releases.
Koehler worries about the reliance the biomass industry has on the vast quantities of money governments have made available for alternative energy projects.
“This biomass stuff cannot pencil out without massive subsidies,” says Koehler. “But biomass proponents seem to be very much true believers in their cause, and they freak out whenever anyone wants to question the economics or the environmental impact of their project.”
Not all environmental groups are of the same mind about biomass. In Nova Scotia, the Ecology Action Network has organized protests against government plans to ramp up biomass production for the electricity grid, out of concern for depleted forest ecosystems. But in B.C., there has been very little pushback against biomass.
The Sierra Club, for example, takes a cautious line but generally supports biomass. “The key questions are: what type of biomass [fuel]? And where does it come from? Is it local, or does it need to be shipped in from far away?” says Wieting. “Waste is generally better than something grown specifically for the use of biomass.”
Wieting also encourages caution over claims of carbon neutrality with wood biomass plants, because it depends heavily on how fast the removed trees grow back.
UBC officials, for now, are excited about the project’s potential and eager to discuss it. In the past two years numerous op-eds have appeared in the Vancouver Sun by UBC professors and executives, extolling UBC’s commitment to clean technology and highlighting the Nexterra project in particular.
“This is the university as a leader,” says Sauder. “People see these goals for sustainability…and they say, ‘Well that’s cool, but how are we going to get there?’ To have the tools to demonstrate the path forward is very important. It’s a neat opportunity for UBC to show how to do these things at a city scale.”
The plant is slated to open in April.
-30-
Even the best nutrition education is likely to fall flat without the opportunity to put it into practice.
"You can teach people, but unless you change the environment it's very difficult for people to actually use what you've taught them," explains Fran Miller, community nutritionist for the Suquamish Tribe of Port Madison, WA.
This means making nutritious foods more available and eliminating opportunities to choose fatty, nutritionally empty options.
Some tribes have started by cutting out sugary beverages at community events. The S'Klallam tribe of Jamestown, WA took a drastic step toward building a healthy environment in 2008 when it requested that the new, large convenience store at its 7 Cedars Casino not have a deep fryer in-store.
"They didn't want to have the fried foods," explains Randy Lemon, the Longhouse Market and Deli's General Manager. "They wanted something healthier and they were very receptive to having the produce."
Instead of fried deli offerings, "A lot of our food is oven-baked," he says. "It's a specific kind of oven that gives food a crunchy texture like what you'd get out of a grease fryer but they are not cooked that way."
Lemon says that coming up with non-fried alternatives was easy after the request was made. One item his store introduced was panini sandwiches. This option is an example of how changing what's offered can change people's preferences.
"[The paninis] were not very popular at first," he says, but "that's probably one of our biggest sellers now."
In addition to cutting fried foods from its menu, the store offers a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables, including apples, bananas, lettuce, tomatoes and other staple produce. The Port Gamble S'Klallam tribe recently finished a waterfront walkway that DeWilde hopes will serve as a path to combatting obesity.
"I tell them just start walking," she says. "Just walk from here to the [convenience store] and then back. "They're starting," she notes, adding that she thinks more people will take to the path as the weather gets warmer.
Diabetes: Not a Death Sentence
With 30 percent of the AI/AN population now suffering from pre-diabetes and over 16 percent diagnosed with the disease, diabetes can seem like an inevitability for many in the population, especially as it is affecting people at a younger and younger age. Between 1994 and 2004, diabetes spiked by 68 percent among Native American youths ages 15-19.
"When you have both parents and grandparents with diabetes, it's a matter of when not if," says Harjo, who herself has diabetes. "It's a Damocles sword. You can't escape it," she says, describing the feeling among some Native Americans that diabetes is a fate rather than a possibility.
But today this attitude is slowly changing. Extraordinarily high diabetes rates among some tribes has called attention to the problem and the need for change, she says.
One key to convincing people that change is possible is helping them understand that diabetes doesn't have to be a death sentence, says DeWilde. It's important to remind Native Americans that they can delay the negative effects of the disease after diagnosis, or even avoid its onset altogether, if they adopt a healthy lifestyle, she says.
"When people come to my office because they were just diagnosed, they're anxious," she says. "They're like, 'What do I eat? Can I eat anything? Do I need to change my diet completely?'
I tell them they can decide that if they want to live a healthy life, there are steps they can take to make sure they don't have complications," she says.
DeWilde describes a young patient who was recently diagnosed with diabetes and came to her, nervous about what this meant. "Before she left she was at ease because she had confidence that with diet and exercise she could control her blood sugar," DeWilde explains.
And for those who don't yet have diabetes but are at risk for it, DeWilde says it's important to realize that you can put the disease off, and by doing so extend your life.
"Obviously we can't help it if we have the genes," she says. "But if we're destined to have it, it's better to have it at age 60 instead of age 45. So if we can delay the onset as long as possible, then we have succeeded."
Miller agrees, noting that at-risk Native Americans shouldn't just take for granted the fact that they'll get diabetes.
"We're really trying to educate people that it's not inevitable. You can do something about it."Slowly but surely, nutritionists like DeWilde and Miller, along with tribal leaders, are working to get this message across.
Poor dietary habits have become deeply engrained since the move to reservations, and transitioning back to healthier foods is a slow process.
Says Harjo, "It's a lot of bad history to overcome."
But it's a change many are dedicated to seeing through.
"I still think we have quite a bit of work to do," says DeWilde. "We're at the infancy of this whole battle with diabetes and obesity, but it's a smaller community and word spreads rather quickly, so it's my hope that we could just step it up a notch, especially with the children." Photo courtesy of Longhouse Market and Deli.
The Guardian. Bakewell received her new kidney but her two own damaged kidneys were left in place. “I feel fantastic now and my kidney function is just amazing. It’s probably quite a lot better than a lot of people my age with two kidneys. When I was on dialysis it was for nine hours a night, seven nights a week. Now I have my freedom. We have booked our first holiday in years for June, to Majorca,” an excited Bakewell said. “The preliminary results from this ongoing study are exciting and may have a major impact on organ transplantation in the future,” said Joseph Leventhal, associate professor of surgery at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. He added that this technique may also improve the lives of people who receive other transplants. While stem cells from organ donors have been used before, this is the first time it has been used for “mismatched” transplants, in which donors and recipients do not have to be related and immunologically similar. If normothermic perfusion proves successful in a larger group of people, future transplant recipients may need to take anti-rejection drugs only briefly, and some who rely on them now could discontinue them safely. The technique could also offer hope for patients receiving bone marrow transplants to treat blood cancers, speeding the process of finding a donor by allowing physicians to use stem cells that would normally be rejected as incompatible. “Few transplant developments in the past half century have been more enticing,” transplant surgeons James F. Markmann and Tatsuo Kawai of Massachusetts General Hospital wrote in a commentary accompanying the study. These findings “may potentially have an enormous, paradigm-shifting impact on solid-organ transplantation.” Markmann told
BBC News that the greatest benefit of techniques described in the research would be to greatly improve the lives of transplant patients by freeing them of a lifetime of anti-rejection drug use. But it might also ease the shortage of transplantable organs somewhat by reducing the number lost to rejection, he said. The National Kidney Foundation states 4,573 US patients died in 2008 awaiting a kidney transplant because of a donor shortage. Markmann said the study offers a “huge potential” for donors who could donate stem cell transplants to patients fighting blood cancers. Currently, many of the 6,000 patients yearly who have a stem cell transplant “have to look far and wide for a perfect match.” In a controversial move to protect the commercial interest in the new technique, the authors of the study declined to detail what stem cells were used and how they are identified and treated. But they reported that earlier studies in mice revealed that these facilitating cells “potently prevent graft-versus-host disease.” Transplant patients were sent home with strict instructions to avoid exposure to sick people and germs and to wash their hands carefully for several days until their immune system stirred to life. At one month after the transplants, three of the eight patients failed to achieve the state that would allow ongoing acceptance of the mismatched kidney. One eventually rejected the kidney and got another; the other two have staved off rejection with continued use of anti-rejection drugs. The remaining five were able to stop all drug use after a year without incident. “We’re really excited about it,” Dr. Suzanne T. Ildstad, director of the Institute for Cellular Therapeutics at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, and lead researcher of the study, told The
Los Angeles Times. She said she hoped next to use the new techniques to explore the transplantation of livers and pancreatic islet cells between mismatched donors and recipients. The success of the new research’s five transplant patients has implications beyond the 93,000 Americans currently awaiting a kidney transplant. For some of the 12,000 patients awaiting hearts, lungs and other organs, the regimen could point the way to improving success rates and reducing reliance on anti-rejection drugs for them as well, said Ildstad. The authors believe their research could also allow for the retroactive treatment of transplant patients who are living with imperfectly matched organs if those donors are still alive and willing to donate stem cells. --- On the Net:
Category: Health News
Created: 3/6/2012 2:05:00 PM
Last Editorial Review: 3/7/2012
Category: Health News
Created: 3/8/2012 8:05:00 AM
Last Editorial Review: 3/8/2012
Category: Health News
Created: 3/7/2012 8:05:00 AM
Last Editorial Review: 3/7/2012
aren't feeling much love for Mitt Romney, and
Super Tuesday did nothing to help convince them. Politico has a rundown of conservative pundits and sortof-pundits
saying mean things about Romney. Included is Inexplicably On CNN Guy:
“I’d be wondering who on my campaign staff gets fired first,” wrote Erick Erickson at the conservative blog RedState. “Were I Mitt Romney I’d be wondering how I spent 5.5 times as much money as Rick Santorum and barely won Ohio…Oh, and here's the guy voted Most Likely To Be Next One Drummed From The Movement:
“Mitt Romney will exit the ten Super Tuesday contests with more delegates than anyone else, but his political reputation damaged,” said conservative writer John Fund at National Review. “Given his crushing financial advantage, Romney should have done better tonight.”The general tenor is exactly what we (and they thought it would be, after Mitt's weak showing yesterday. Here's a candidate who can barely hold his own against notable crazy person Rick Santorum, and who generally looks weaker every time he opens his mouth. He's been blessed with a series of truly incompetent rivals this year (among the things his competing candidates can't quite be bothered to do: get on all state ballots and still is barely squeaking by. As pundit Rich Lowry put it, "Rarely has a candidate seemed so inevitable and so weak at the same time."
The central problem of the campaign is that Republicans demand a strict adherence to conservatism that only the most radical of candidates can meet (when Newt freaking Gingrich is having to tack right, and when Rick freaking Perry is dismissed for being too soft on brown people, you know things have gone of the rails . Mitt, on the other hand, is a far more conventional Republican candidate. He's into the corporate-coddling parts of the movement, but generally indifferent to the social stuff. He had the audacity to promote healthcare reform back when Republicans thought it was a good idea, which was the period from about 1990 to exactly 10 seconds after Barack Obama proposed a similar thing. He's a standard-issue Republican running for nomination of a party whose base has shifted out from under it. Not even people like Orrin Hatch count as "true Republicans" these days, so what chance does a sap like Mitt have?
People like to note how Romney is outspending his rivals by a wide margin, but still not getting anywhere. Inexplicably On CNN Guy blames Mitt's staff, but you can't make a silk purse out of, well, whatever Mitt Romney is. You can't make him seem sincere. You can't ask him to stand by his convictions when his (past convictions would quickly get him drummed out of the race. He may be the worst Republican presidential frontrunner to come along in some time, but he's still a damn site more plausible a nominee than the assortment of clowns "the base" has flitted to and from throughout the season.
So yes, conservatives are grumping about Mitt Romney. Some are grumping that he can't put away his obviously weak opponents. Others are grumping about his more true-to-spirit opponents not being able to find traction against such an obvious fraud. I'm not sure that I could suggest a solution even if I sincerely wanted to. Yes, as a candidate he sucks. And yes, your party has gone so far off the rails that the only people you can put up against him are getting laughed off the national stage one by one.
Category: Health News
Created: 3/8/2012 8:05:00 AM
Last Editorial Review: 3/8/2012
Marine Conservation Society appeals for helpers for Beachwatch Big Weekend in May, with plastic rubbish up 135% since 1994
Adults and children are being urged to take part in what is set to be the UK's largest beach clean-up, as a leading conservation charity warns of the long-term risk to marine life from the huge volume of litter swamping the oceans and being washed up onto shores.
Plastics make up over half the rubbish retrieved, and pose the biggest single threat to wildlife such as turtles, fish and seabirds – and the volume of plastic bottles and tops, bags and ropes has increased by 135% since records began in 1994, according to the
Marine Conservation Society (MCS .
The charity launched a regular annual weekend beach clean in the same year – the so-called
Beachwatch Big Weekend – but this year is teaming up for the first time with retail giant Marks & Spencer to oversee organised
litter-picking sessions at 150 beaches across the UK at the end of May. It hopes that the current record turnout of 5,000 people could be even bigger as a result of the new collaboration.
MCS warns that litter is swamping our oceans – where it is largely unseen – before being washed up on beaches. MCS measures it by density,
last year reporting nearly 2,000 items of rubbish for every kilometre of beach. New figures are due to be published on 22 March.
An MCS spokesman said: "It kills wildlife, looks disgusting, is a hazard to our health and costs millions to clear up. According to last year's Beachwatch report, over half of all litter found was found was made of plastic, which may take thousands of years to fully break down and generally doesn't leave the marine environment.
"Marine wildlife gets entangled in litter and accidentally ingests it. Turtles mistake plastic bags for jellyfish and the bags block their stomachs, often leading to death from starvation. Seabirds mistake floating plastic litter for food, and over 90% of fulmars [a species of seabird] found dead around the North Sea have plastic in their stomachs."
The May clean-up is part of M&S's environmental initiative Plan A, which saw a 5p charge introduced for plastic bags in 2008, cutting use by 80% and raising over ?4 million for charity. As an incentive, customers who
register in advance for the clean-up will receive a money-off M&S voucher and a free M&S lunch on the day.
Free beach
activity packs can be downloaded for children, and at six larger beaches – including Heacham in north Norfolk, Hazelbank near Belfast and Cramond near Edinburgh – there will be a free barbecue and kids' games.
Marc Bolland, chief executive of M&S, who will be helping out at Heacham, said: "We rely on our beaches as places to have fun and relax and we rely on our seas to provide us with fish for us to eat, yet we pollute them by allowing them to become landing points for all sorts of rubbish. We hope that as many beach cleaners – big and small – will come down to our beaches. Together we can make a real difference, and encourage the next generation to care passionately about protecting our beaches and seas for the future."
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More work needs to be done to keep young people from using tobacco, including creating smoking bans and increasing taxes on tobacco products, the U.S. surgeon general's office says in a new report.
Category: Health News
Created: 3/7/2012 8:06:00 PM
Last Editorial Review: 3/8/2012
The term 'local reconciliation' may seem benign, but recent research amongst Tamils in the north of the country highlights the damaging silence hanging over the survivors of the conflict, and a determination to reach justice through transparency over past and present wrongs.
The Sri Lankan government has appropriated the term ‘reconciliation’ to construct a narrative of post-war Sri Lanka in which the rights of non-majority communities are being protected, and their concerns addressed. In reality, the policies and acts of the state show scant regard for the rights of non-majority communities, dismissing the ethno-political nature of the conflict and the need for a political solution as irrelevant.
The argument presented by Sanka Chandima Abayawardena in
‘Reconciliation in Sri Lanka means the youth must lead the way’ – that reconciliation initiatives should be conceived and driven at the local level by Sri Lankan youth – appears reasonable and benign. However, the experience of people in the conflict-affected northern areas illustrates the extent to which Abayawardena has disregarded complex ground realities, while calling upon pressure groups to understand ‘the nature of the country – what Sri Lanka is…’.
This article focuses on recent research conducted among the Tamil community in the north.
Equating calls for justice with revenge: What do the affected say?
The call for an international intervention to establish responsibility for war crimes has been dismissed by Abayawardena as a political move aimed at ‘persecuting the Sri Lankan political and civil leadership out of anger’. Commentators such as Michael Roberts have
argued that the ‘bitterness wrought by the ethnic conflict’ could be fuelling the need for retribution that they assume many Tamils feel, which in turn might lead to the fabrication of allegations of war crimes. There are also those who claim that persons affected by the armed conflict only wish for a better standard of living, jobs, access to education and healthcare, and are not concerned either about violations of human rights and humanitarian law that took place during the armed conflict, including the last stages of the war, or a political solution to the ethnic conflict.
However, research in Mannar, Vavuniya, Kilinochchi, Mullaitivu and the Jaffna peninsula shows that there is an acute need within the Tamil community for an acknowledgement of their singular experience of suffering during the final phase of the war, that goes beyond both a desire for revenge and the natural yearning for an improvement of their material conditions and economic well-being.
When questioned by the Committee Against Torture (CAT in Geneva on 9 November 2011, Senior Legal Advisor to the Cabinet and former Attorney-General Mohan Peiris pointed to the issuance of death certificates for missing persons as the primary method used by the state to deal with the issue of disappearances. Mr. Peiris claimed that the issuance of death certificates would immediately bring the whole episode to a close, and provide families with certainty about what had happened to their family members. In contrast, the testimonies of many from the North, even those whose family members disappeared in the 1990s, were emphatic that they do not wish to obtain death certificates because it would thereby deny them the right to demand answers from the state concerning the disappearances.
Currently, there are over 5000 cases of disappearances on file with the UN Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID , which includes those from the 1990s. The figure therefore does not indicate how many went missing during the last stages of the war, and families have no means of accessing information on their plight. Until very recently it was official state policy to deny there was any loss of civilian life during the war. The Department of Census and Statistics has now published data on the number of civilians who were killed or went missing during last stages of the war. However, Secretary of Defence Gotabaya’s
dismissive statementprior to the completion of the survey that ‘the real number of dead and missing is far too small to provide any substance to the absurd allegations of genocide and war crimes that have been made against our military,’ casts doubt on the government’s commitment to engage in a public dialogue on the issue.
This denial also indicates that anyone seeking answers to questions that challenge the government’s narrative of the armed conflict is unlikely to find redress: to ask about the plight of a family member whose relatives claim was last seen being taken away by the armed forces is inevitably to raise allegations of rights violations by the state. This is illustrated by the government’s only concretely identifiable response to the recommendations of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC , tasking the military along with the Attorney-General to investigate allegations made against the armed forces by those who appeared before LLRC.
The government of Sri Lanka is actively building a hegemonic narrative of the war that is solely about victory and the valiant soldier, with no public acknowledgment of the loss and grief experienced by civilians who lost family members in the armed conflict. Along with the glorification of the warrior-citizen, collective (majoritarian memory is created through celebrations of the war victory, military parades, and the erection of memorials to members of the Sri Lankan armed forces who died in battle. Yet, there is no space for civilians to organise public events to mourn the dead, nor memorials to commemorate the lives lost. Instead, each year on 19 May, the date that marks the official end of the war, the armed forces in the North have actively prevented collective community ceremonies.
I asked Tamils in communities across northern Sri Lanka whether they felt a public ceremony to mark the end of the war and commemorate those killed was desired, and whether they had thought about convening such an event. The immediate response from every person interviewed was that since they felt they couldn’t even speak of issues relating to the ethnic conflict, they couldn’t imagine holding public events to remember the dead. This is evidence not only of the severe restrictions placed upon the freedom of expression and assembly amongst the Tamil communities, but also the alienation this population feels from the state and the majority Sinhalese community. As an interviewee said, ‘we can’t believe anything the government says as they’ve always gone back on their promise’.
Local reconciliation based on the rule of law: an impossibility?
While concurring wholeheartedly with Abayawardena’s statement that ‘reconciliation based on the rule of law is the only way to have a lasting effect on post-war Sri Lanka’ and that ‘justice must be available for victims at a local level’, the feasibility of achieving this should be examined in the context of the current state of civil administration and maintenance of law and order in the North.
Militarization in the North is taking place in complex ways, at multiple levels. The most visible manifestations are the army checkpoint/civil affairs office at every junction in every village, and the large number of new and now permanent army camps along the A9 road from Vavuniya to Jaffna. These are the obvious, and therefore perhaps more benign, signs of militarization. The dictates of the army seem to run far deeper in the Vanni (areas formerly controlled by the LTTE , with excessive scrutiny and surveillance not only of community and non-governmental organisations, but also of any gathering of more than a handful of people. Prior notification has to be given to the army of any meeting or workshop that is held. Interviewees said that even when notification was given, if there were participants coming from outside the Vanni – the mainland area of the north – sometimes army officers attended the meeting and observed the proceedings. Army officers would attend or check- up on smaller community gatherings, such as women’s societies and savings groups, only if the organisers failed to provide prior notification.
Sign post for the military police in Jaffna, in Sinhalese and English only. Some rights reserved.
The paradoxically named Civil Affairs Office (CAO , which is ‘manned’ by the military, is the best example of the entrenched presence and participation of the military in civil affairs in the North. Created during the period when residents of the peninsula had to obtain passes to travel to the South, this office has now morphed into a one-stop monitoring and surveillance unit of the army. For instance, following the end of the war all those who were released after being held at government ‘rehabilitation’ centres for alleged former LTT combatants have been asked to register with the CAO and then report back to sign in on a weekly, fortnightly or monthly basis, depending on the edict of the local commander.
The presence of the military has increased the insecurity of women, who constitute the majority in many villages due to the death, disappearance or detention of men. The feelings of insecurity stem from fears for their physical security, due to living in a heavily militarized environment without any male members of the family, controlled by an army which speaks a language they do not understand. The presence of the military leads women to make a conscious effort to limit movements outside of their homes and communities. These self-imposed restrictions impact adversely on their ability to access livelihood options and education opportunities Nearly three years following the end of the war most of these women do not have a viable livelihood, leaving them open to exploitation and abuse. In this context it seems impossible for the Tamil people to believe that they can access justice at the local level.
The voices of the youth in the North
Following the end of the war, persons who the government termed surrendees (allegedly because they surrendered to the government as members of the LTTE or had links with the group were sent to rehabilitation centres. Although termed ‘surrendees’ the voluntary nature of surrender is in question since many were detained either as they made their way to the government controlled areas or in the IDP camps. The actual number of rehabilitees is unknown but it is estimated that around 12,000 persons were sent to these centres.
In contrast with Abayawardena’s faith in the youth of Sri Lanka, the voices of those youth who were sent to rehabilitation centres for alleged affiliation with the LTTE have effectively been silenced.
Interviews with those who were released from the centres revealed that while all experienced a sense of relief to be free from what they, at one point, felt would be a never ending ordeal, and reunite with their families, they also felt trepidation about the future – about their ability to find employment and re-build their lives free from harassment and surveillance in an environment in which they were still viewed as persons who have to be watched and monitored by the state. Since many released rehabilitees have to report regularly to the CAO (army checkpoint , they are viewed as informants for the army and so regarded with suspicion and fear by their communities. This impacts adversely, particularly upon women. For instance, one woman rehabilitee said that ‘society will talk/gossip about women who visit the army camps to sign-in. Neighbours might even break up marriage proposals by informing the prospective groom’s family about the woman’s visits to the army camp’. This limits their chances of gaining employment and places pressure on their relationship with their families, leading to familial disputes. Due to this many feel they have no future in Sri Lanka and seek to leave the country, either by applying for foreign asylum with little hope of success, or paying huge sums of money and entrusting their fate to human traffickers. In the words of one rehabilitee ‘After I finish my education, I don’t want to stay in Sri Lanka for one minute’.
Which way forward?
The government claims it has put in place adequate measures for post-war reconciliation, rendering outside attention unnecessary. Viewed through the framework of transitional justice the state’s policies and actions do not stand scrutiny – they do not provide recognition to victims and create civic trust. In the North adequate measures have not been taken to ‘normalise’ the former conflict affected areas. Instead militarisation has become entrenched and a large military presence in the North has been formalised.
A welcome sign in English only. Some rights
reserved.
Although Tamil was made an official language in 1987 and the government launched a ten year trilingual programme in January 2012, state action illustrates limited political will to carry this through. For instance, Tamils in many parts of the country, not only the North and East, state that when they lodge complaints at the police station it is documented in Sinhala, a language they do not understand. They are then asked to sign the document indicating that it is a true record of their complaint.
Moreover, in the past six months alone new sign boards in Sinhala only or Sinhala and English have sprung up in the Tamil speaking North. With the lack of even minimal cause for Northerners to trust their governance structures, local reconciliation based on the rule of law as posited by Abayawardena amounts to a denial of the harm done.
The alienation felt by the communities in the North is illustrated by this statement, made by a woman who was displaced multiple times and lost 7 members of her family during the last stages of the armed conflict: ‘The President should look after the Tamils as they are citizens too. He doesn’t care about the Tamils’. In order for Tamils to feel they are equal citizens the onus is on the state to take measures, including but not limited to, demilitarization of the North, enabling people to fully and freely exercise their rights, acknowledgement not only of the violations and loss experienced during the war and provision of reparation, but also acceptance of the ethno-political nature of the conflict and commitment to provide a political solution.
The other important failing on the part of the state is its attempt to impose collective amnesia on the Tamil population in relation to the LTTE. The relationship of the Tamil people with the LTTE was, and remains, a highly complex and sensitive matter. We should remember that this relationship encompassed a nuanced spectrum of opinion within the Tamil community: from those who unequivocally supported both the LTTE’s ideological stance and methods, to those who, faced with a state unresponsive to their political aspirations, tolerated the LTTE in instrumental terms, to yet others, given the attitude of the LTTE in regard to dissent and political pluralism, simply had no choice whether or not to conform. Post-war, and post-LTTE, this is a matter that is best resolved, reconciled and come to terms with,
within
the Tamil community. The high profile insertion of the military into not only the civil administration, but also the civic, social and political space of the North, in a manner designed to impose a history, to control collective memory, and intrude into post-war catharsis, is not only callous, but also myopic and ultimately self-defeating for the state.
In other words, there is no better way than the path the government is currently taking to ensure the sustenance within the Tamil polity of the LTTE’s brand of hard-line nationalism, even without the LTTE.
Also read:
Reconciliation in Sri Lanka means the youth must lead the way, Sanka Abayawardena
'Reconciliation in Sri Lanka means the youth must lead the way': a sceptical response, Asanga Welikala
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