NightBlogger

(NaturalNews)
Nigeria Issues Arrest Warrants for Top Pfizer Officials After Drug Experiments Conducted on Children — A Nigerian state judge has issued arrest warrants for three top Pfizer officials, saying that they failed to appear in court to face charges of illegally conducting drug trials that led to the deaths of 11 children. Judge Shehu Atiku, sitting in the city of Kano, said that Nigerian Pfizer head Ngozi Edozien and senior company officials Lare Baale and Segun Donguro failed to appear in court in compliance with a Nov. 6 court order. The state of Kano is seeking $2.6 billion from Pfizer, charging that the company illegally tested an experimental antibiotic, Trovan, on children in Kano during a meningitis outbreak in 1996. According to the government, the drug trials were carried out without the informed consent of the children’s parents or the Nigerian government, and led to the deaths of 11 children. Dozens of other children were allegedly harmed by the drug. More

Many dentists and Holistic practitioners have known this for decades.
(Reuters) - Silver-colored metal dental fillings contain mercury that may cause health problems in pregnant women, children and fetuses, the Food and Drug Administration said on Wednesday after settling a related lawsuit.

As part of the settlement with several consumer advocacy groups, the FDA agreed to alert consumers about the potential risks on its website and to issue a more specific rule next year for fillings that contain mercury, FDA spokeswoman Peper Long said. Millions of Americans have the fillings, or amalgams, to patch cavities in their teeth.

“Dental amalgams contain mercury, which may have neurotoxic effects on the nervous systems of developing children and fetuses,” the FDA said in a notice on its Web site. More

MICHELLE ROBERTS
The Texas Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the children taken from a polygamist sect’s ranch should be returned to their parents, saying child welfare officials overstepped their authority. The high court affirmed a decision by an appellate court last week, saying Child Protective Services failed to show an immediate danger to the more than 400 children swept up from the Yearning For Zion Ranch nearly two months ago. “On the record before us, removal of the children was not warranted,” the justices said in their ruling issued in Austin. More

Los Angeles Times
The first study to follow lead-exposed children from before birth into adulthood has shown that even relatively low levels of lead permanently damage the brain and are linked to higher numbers of arrests, particularly for violent crime. Previous studies linking lead to such problems have used indirect measures of both lead and criminality, and critics have argued that socioeconomic and other factors may be responsible for the observed effects.

But by measuring blood levels of lead before birth and during the first seven years of life, then correlating the levels with arrest records and brain size, Cincinnati researchers have produced the strongest evidence yet that lead plays a major role in crime. The researchers also found that lead exposure is a continuing problem despite the efforts of the federal government and cities to minimize exposure. More

Marilyn Berlin Snell
For her groundbreaking work on the effect everyday chemicals have on children, Theodora “Theo” Colborn has been called “the Rachel Carson of the ’90s.” Just as Carson was pilloried for her 1962 book Silent Spring, which warned of the dangers of the pesticide DDT, Colborn has been in the hot seat for her 1996 book Our Stolen Future (co-authored with Dianne Dumanoski and John Peterson Myers). Colborn’s controversial message is that even low-dose exposures to many of the man-made chemicals found in common plastics, cleaning compounds, and cosmetics can affect newborn babies and developing fetuses, and can cause a range of problems, including low IQs, genital malformations, low sperm counts, and infertility.

Though scientists have voiced concerns for more than 25 years about the chemicals that disrupt the endocrine (or hormone-secreting) glands, researchers like Colborn are using a multidisciplinary approach—merging toxicology, endocrinology, embryology, and psychology—which has resulted in recent breakthroughs. Some critics have dismissed Colborn’s work as fear-mongering pseudoscience. However, in a December 1997 report published by the National Institutes of Health, a researcher set out to review the studies cited in Our Stolen Future on lowered sperm counts and was surprised to find that sperm counts in Europe and the U.S. are even lower than Colborn had initially reported. More

Photo Jan Tik
Brian Cuban
In January of 2007, the parents of a girl named Ashley had a surgery entitled “growth attenuation” performed on her to permanently stunt her growth to keep her at 4 feet 5 inches. This treatment also includes sterilizing Ashely. Ashley has severe physical and mental disabilities. The parents stated the treatment was for her comfort and to make it easier to carry her and include her in family activities. Ashely was of course much too young to consent to or even understand what was being done to her.

The case created a huge medical and ethical controversy. The hospital and parents defended their decision to to do the surgery while others in the medical community and general public were outraged. At what point does the attempt to control genetics become perverse and who gets the say in how much is too much? In Ashley case, there was no guardian ad litum appointed. There was no independent voice speaking for Ashley. Do we need better legal checks and balances before we permanently alter the life course of those who can not speak for themselves. Read more

Timesonline
Hostility towards the Jewish state in Iraq is so strong that many parents refuse to travel to Tel Aviv for free life-saving hole-in-the-heart surgery. Some accept the offer but never reveal where their children were treated, even though the operation has not been available in Iraq since its leading cardiac clinic burnt down after the American-led invasion in 2003.

Other parents are seeking treatment elsewhere in the Arab world, despite prices of up to £15,000 for heart surgery in private clinics. They fear the stigma of being treated in Israel. Sara, 2, needs surgery for a defective heart valve. After taking her from Iraq to neighboring Jordan for preliminary tests, her mother, Shatha, 37, turned down treatment at the Wolfson centre. She said she had had no idea before she left for Amman, the Jordanian capital, that the operation would be in Israel. Read more

Michelle Carlile-Alkhouri reports
A new report says some governments, rebels and armed groups are resisting pressure to stop using child soldiers in conflicts. The report is by The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers. The group says firm figures are impossible to produce but it is clear that there are tens of thousands of child soldiers. Most governments accused of using children deny the charge.

news.sky.com
Updated:11:04, Monday May 12, 2008
Five people have been killed, at least four of them children, and more than 100 injured by an earthquake which toppled schools in China. The quake, which measured 7.8 on the Richter scale, brought down two primary schools in the city of Chongqing in the south west of the country.

State news agency Xinhua reported that rows of houses had collapsed in Dujiangyan city, near the quake’s epicentre in Wenchuan County. Tremors were felt across the entire region - shaking buildings in the capital, Beijing, as well as the Thai capital, Bangkok, and Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam.
Read more

Philly.com
Parents of a third-grade student at Chatham Park Elementary School approached the administration on April 16 to ask for help in making a “social transition” for their child.

The Haverford School District consulted experts on transgender children, then sent letters to parents advising them that the guidance counselor would meet with the school’s 100 third-grade students to explain why their classmate would now wear girls’ clothes and be called by a girl’s name. Some parents objected. Eight called the principal to ask that their child not attend the session, and some posted angry messages on the Haverford Township blog. Read more