What is Multiple Sclerosis / Rh Negative blood type

About the strange sounds...

STRANGE SOUNDS’ HEARD WORLDWIDE — WHAT IS IT? / ALEX COLLIER'S BAD NEWS

by: maboulette

Most explanations for the strange sounds worldwide phenomenon are being attributed to either man-made activity or something paranormal. But does the answer actually lie in The Holy Bible?

As the frenzy over the strange sounds heats up, it was only a matter of time before religious people chimed in, citing Bible verses and pointing to this curiosity as a portent of Armageddon. For non-believers, it’s easier to think the weird noises being heard worldwide are explained by nature or intervention by mankind.

But considering this religious angle seriously leads to the conclusion that the Bible does have a lot to say, and that, as usual, it is knowledge which goes back to the Ancients.

Some believes the strange sounds are being made by a Shofar, an ancient horn used to bring down the walls of Babylon and still revered to this day. 

Revelation 1:10-11, might explain these weird sounds are explained.

“I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet, saying, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last: and, What thou seest, write in a book, and send it unto the seven churches which are in Asia; unto Ephesus, and unto Smyrna, and unto Pergamos, and unto Thyatira, and unto Sardis, and unto Philadelphia, and unto Laodicea.”

Of course, one must be a believer in Christianity to give this theory weight, but it is striking that the Bible has predicted this phenomenon so chillingly. Many commenters on videos of this global happening liken the booming noises worldwide to that of a trumpet call. And sprinkled throughout the responses are other, more supporting bible verses seemingly predicting this event.

ALEX COLLIER'S BAD NEWS

Why Cinema Audiences Are So Furious About The Devil Inside / An Investigation Into The Invisible World

by Brendon Connelly

Despite it winning at Friday’s box office with almost $17 million, and being on track to close out the weekend in the number one position, the found-footage horror film The Devil Inside is leaving audiences up in arms – and I’ve heard first hand of several crowds pretty much flipping out as the end credits roll.

The market research company CinemaScore use exit polls to grade audience reaction and publish the results and, for the first time that I can remember, they’ve attributed a film the bottom-tier F grade. This just doesn’t happen. In CinemaScore terms, any F is an epic F.

A Paramount exec has responded to the F grade, e-mailing Deadline to say:

People love us or hate us but I think evil spirits corrupted CinemaScore’s model. Because the breakdown was ‘A’ = 16%, ‘B’ = 18%, ‘C’ = 24%, ‘D’ = 23%, ‘F’ = 19%. I’ll admit I went to public school but I think this should have got us a ‘C’!

Whatever the grade, these numbers show an unusual swing towards lower results. And it seems there’s a pretty simple reason why the audience are reacting this way – but to tell you what it is, I have to deliver a spoiler, of sorts.

Now, I haven’t seen it with my own two eyes but the film apparently ends in a very unorthodox and abrupt manner.

Very unorthodox and abrupt. And then a URL and message appear on the screen, directing the audience to “find out more” online.

You may recall a similar debacle with the Red Riding Hood tie-in novel, where the final chapter was missing and only published on the web after the movie had opened.

But this isn’t a tie-in piece of merchandise, this is the actual primary artefact. This is the film itself. You’ll pay your ten dollars – or even worse, pounds – and you take your seat and you give it the benefit of the doubt. And then, in the end… you’ll be spat out and told to go online to scratch around in the search for a conclusion to your experience.

The URL that appears on the screen is The Rossi Files. Should you visit it you’ll see that there’s a series of fake newspaper articles and bits of backstory bric a brac, and a few more video clips.

Interestingly, none of them offer any kind of resolution. Little Bleeders have confirmed that even after they went home, logged on and trawled through this site, they were still left without any kind of narrative closure.

Anecdotal evidence canvassed by Bleeding Cool suggest that audiences are errupting into booing and leaving the cinema angry. Many people have been seen asking for their money back. We’ve called in reports from five separate screenings and every single one, we’ve been told, ended with the audience enraged.

Now, I haven’t seen The Devil Inside and, really, until now, I hadn’t much wanted to. But now I’m curious. Is this ending as flat-out insulting as the widespread dissatisfaction suggests? Or is it a misunderstood provocation (cf. The Last Exorcism)? Mob mentality certainly has a history of getting things wrong.

An Investigation Into The Invisible World

(click on the youtube logo to watch it fullscreen)

Add slaves to a math equation and what do you get: Upset parents in Gwinnett County / The Handbook of Human Ownership

by Maureen Downey

I understand cross pollination between subjects, but interjecting slave imagery into a math problem without any context does not seem to fit the bill.

As a parent, I would have been dismayed to discover my 9-year-old figuring out such math problems as, “Each tree had 56 oranges. If 8 slaves pick them equally, then how much would each slave pick?”

And parents in Gwinnett were perplexed and disturbed by such math questions on a third grade math worksheet, according to Channel 2 Action News.

According to the AJC:

One word problem stated, “Each tree had 56 oranges. If 8 slaves pick them equally, then how much would each slave pick?” Another said, “If Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in 1 week?”

Such questions can evoke bitter memories in Georgia, where African Americans were enslaved for generations until the Civil War and the elimination of slavery.

“It kind of blew me away,” Christopher Braxton, a parent of a child at Beaver Ridge Elementary School, told Channel 2. “I was furious. … Something like this shouldn’t be embedded into a kid of the third, fourth, fifth, any grade.”

Another Beaver Ridge parent, Terrance Barnett, said, “I’m having to explain to my 8-year-old why slavery or slave or beatings is in a math problem. So that hurts.”

Gwinnett County School District officials said teachers were attempting to incorporate history into math lessons. “Teachers were trying to do a cross-curricular activity,” district spokeswoman Sloan Roach told Channel 2. Roach acknowledged the questions gave no context for the issues they raised.

“We understand that there are concerns about these questions, and we agree that these questions were not appropriate,” she said. Parents told Channel 2 that the school’s principal was collecting the assignments and would shred them so they wouldn’t be circulated.

Officials said that under district policy, the worksheet should have been reviewed before being handed out to students, but that process was not followed in this situation. They said they would work with math teachers to come up with more appropriate questions.

The Handbook of Human Ownership - A Manual for New Tax Farmers

Americans Think Science Will Save the Economy / The Venus Project

By BusinessNewsDaily Staff

What does your average American think is the key to economic recovery? Science, according to new research.

According to a compilation of polls, science have benefited society and have helped make life easier for most people. A vast majority (91 percent) also believe that research and development are important to their state's economy.

However, nearly 60 percent of Americans don't believe we are making enough progress in medical research, and 54 percent don't believe the U.S. has the best health care system in the world. Additionally, most believe the lack of progress is affecting America's ability to be competitive, with 77 percent saying that the U.S. is losing its competitive edge in science, technology and innovation.

"Americans support further investment in health research and have indicated that the federal government must do more to sustain and build our economy," said Research!America chair and former Illinois Congressman John Porter, head of the organization that conducted the polls. "Scientific research has proven to be an emerging, economic driver in cities that have committed to building their life sciences industry. To secure our position as a leader in science and innovation, we need to elect officials that will support a robust investment in research. That is why the 2012 elections are critical to our nation's well-being."

The majority of Americans also believe that investing in health research is important to job creation, economic recovery and global competitiveness, and they are willing to pay for it. For example, half of those surveyed are willing to pay $1 per week more in taxes if they knew that the money would be allocated for medical research.

"These findings offer an intriguing look at how research impacts so many aspects of our lives and why it must be more of a focal point in the national conversation, particularly during an election year," said Mary Woolley, president and chief executive officer of Research!America. "Looking at science as a solution to our economic woes and health challenges is a smart strategy for elected officials and candidates. Americans see science as a solution, and our public policy should reflect that."

Grooming the next generation of scientists is also key to our country's health and prosperity, Porter said. More than 70 percent of Americans believe that the federal government should place more emphasis on the number of American students who pursue STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) careers.

The poll data summary also provides a glimpse into some of the top health policy issues for 2012, such as rising obesity rates in this country.

"We need an integrated strategy involving both the public and private sector to address the obesity epidemic," said Woolley. According to America Speaks!, 52 percent of Americans say government should play a role in prevention research to help Americans make behavioral changes that can help them overcome obesity, smoking and other hazardous and costly health threats.

Introducing "The Venus Project"

'Discovery of a lifetime': Stone Age temple found in Orkney is 800 years older than Stonehenge - and may be more important / Kymatica

By TED THORNHILL

A 5000-year-old temple in Orkney could be more important than Stonehenge, according to archaeologists.

The site, known as the Ness of Brodgar, was investigated by BBC2 documentary A History of Ancient Britain, with presenter Neil Oliver describing it as ‘the discovery of a lifetime’.

So far the remains of 14 Stone Age buildings have been excavated, but thermal geophysics technology has revealed that there are 100 altogether, forming a kind of temple precinct. 

‘It’s opening a window onto the mysteries of Neolithic religion.’

Experts believe that the site will give us insights into what Neolithic people believed about the world and the universe.

Nick Card, an archaeologist from the University of the Highlands and Islands, said: ‘It’s an archaeologist’s dream site. The excitement of the site never fades.

‘This site is a one-off.’

Professor Mark Edmonds from the University of York, meanwhile, describes the excavation as ‘a site of international importance’.

Some parts of the temple are 800 years older than Stonehenge, which lies 500 miles to the south in Wiltshire.

The site is very close to the Ring of Brodgar stone circle and the standing stones of Stenness and is surrounded by a wall believed to have been 10-feet high.

Archaeologists found red zigzag lines on some of the buildings’ inner walls that they believe is Stone Age art – the oldest ever found.

So far only around 10 per cent of the site has been examined – and it could take decades to uncover and analyse everything there. 

Kymatica

Scientists have figured out how to make entire events disappear

January 4, 2012 | Jolie O'Dell

nvisibility: It’s not just for fictional magicians anymore.

Scientists at the Pentagon have just published some fascinating (understatement) research on“temporal cloaking”.

As the team noted in Nature,

“To achieve spatial cloaking, the index of refraction is manipulated to flow light from a probe around an object in such a way that a ‘hole’ in space is created, and the object remains hidden. Alternatively, it may be desirable to cloak the occurrence of an event over a finite time period, and the idea of temporal cloaking has been proposed in which the dispersion of the material is manipulated in time, producing a ‘time hole’ in the probe beam to hide the occurrence of the event from the observer.”

Translated into lay-nerd terms, these scientists figured that light allows us to see objects, so to make an object or event invisible, all you have to do is keep the light from hitting it (a key component of other existing invisibility technology). And to keep it invisible for a period of time, you have to speed up the front end of a beam of light while slowing down the back end, creating a gap.

And these blessed souls have found a way to do precisely that.

Here’s a look at how the experiments went down:

Don’t expect to see invisibility “time holes” in your corner Army Navy surplus store any time soon, though. The experiments occurred inside a fiber-optic cable over the course of a few picoseconds. Still, the team noted in its conclusions, “These results are a significant step towards the development of full spatio-temporal cloaking.”

In case you did not see the following video before, here is the evidence:

Web Companies Are Willing To Go Dark In Protest Of SOPA / The Running Man

By Dylan Love, Business Insider


The Stop Online Piracy Act is so polarizing in the tech world that huge web companies like Amazon, eBay, Facebook, and Google are considering going dark in order to spread awareness, reports ExtremeTech.
Imagine going to Google.com to do a search only to find some explanatory text on what SOPA is and how to call Congress to voice your opinion on it.

There's no plan on when the blackout would occur, but January 23 looks like the most likely date given that Congress is scheduled to debate SOPA on January 24.


ExtremeTech shares the full list of companies that may participate in the blackout. Again, consider what the Internet would be like without access to any of these companies' services:

AOL
eBay
Etsy
Facebook
Foursquare
Google
IAC
LinkedIn
Mozilla
OpenDNS
PayPal
Twitter
Wikimedia Foundation
Yahoo!
Zynga

See the following video to have an idea of what the world would become if the government succeed with the media censorship:

Brains Are Injured By Fat Consumption / Dangers of meat, milk & eggs

In Life by Jeffery Racheff .- Binge On Fat, Bruise Your Brain.

Your stomach may be craving that lard-filled cheesecake, but your brain is bracing for impact. A new study reveals that a continuous consumption of fatty food can cause trauma to your brain.

A new study published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation reveals that "hypothalamic neuron injury" is caused after humans eat a high-fat diet. And if the diet is continued, our brain's hypothalamus can begin to show inflammation and structural damage.

Not a good sign, especially considering the fact that the hypothalamus is the part of the brain that controls the body's metabolism.

Researchers believe a damaged hypothalamus may play a big part in the difficulty for an overweight person to keep the body fat off.

"Obese individuals are biologically defending their elevated body weight," says Dr. Michael Schwartz, a professor of medicine at the University of Washington and lead researcher on the study.

Schwartz added that the findings show "solid evidence of a change affecting the key hypothalamic area for body weight control with the potential to explain the problem."

Though the study makes headway on the causes of obesity, researchers say it is far from conclusive. Rodents with strains not as susceptible to diet-induced obesity were not tested, for example.

Either way, it's probably best to take a break from the fast food for awhile. Your brain needs to nurse it's bruises.

You may be interested in veganism after seeing the following videos:

Wikipedia fundraiser ends with $20M in the bank

San Francisco, CA -- January 2, 2012 - The Wikimedia Foundation’s annual fundraising campaign reached a successful conclusion today, having raised a record-breaking USD 20 million from more than one million donors in nearly every country in the world. It is the Wikimedia Foundation’s most successful campaign ever, continuing an unbroken streak in which donations have risen every year since the campaigns began in 2003.

Wikimedia websites serve more than 470 million people every month. It is the only major website supported not by advertising, but by donations from readers.

“Our model is working fantastically well,” said Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation. “Ordinary people use Wikipedia and they like it, so they chip in some cash so it will continue to thrive. That maintains our independence and lets us focus solely on providing a useful public service. I am so grateful to our donors for making that possible. I promise them we will use their money carefully and well.”

Since 2008, the number of Wikimedia Foundation donors has increased ten-fold, and the total dollar amount raised in the campaign has risen to over $20 million from $4.5 million.

The annual fundraiser is how the Wikimedia Foundation pays its bills. Funds raised in this campaign will be used to buy and install servers and other hardware, to develop new site functionality, expand mobile services, provide legal defense for the projects, and support the large global community of Wikimedia volunteers. The Wikimedia Foundation's total 2011-12 planned spending is 28.3 million USD. The bulk of that is raised during the annual campaign, and the remainder comes throughout the year in the form of grants from institutions such as the Sloan Foundation, and many other small donations year round.

This year’s campaign highlighted the volunteers who help to create Wikipedia. It featured testimonials from volunteer editors in countries such as Argentina, Brazil, India, Kenya, the United Kingdom and the United States ranging in age from 18 to 76, explaining why they edit Wikipedia and why they think readers should support the Wikimedia Foundation. More than 100 volunteers translated the banners and appeals into dozens of languages, reaching hundreds of millions of people.

This video explains how wikipedia works and why the first 1999 version failed:

Mount Rainier National Park closed; manhunt on for gunman who killed ranger / MK Ultra

(AP) - A massive manhunt is under way in snow-covered Mount Rainier National Park as an estimated 150 officers from a variety of police agencies seek a gunman who shot and killed park ranger Margaret Anderson Sunday morning.  Early Monday morning, police began escorting about 125 park visitors off the mountain, after they had been quarantined in the park’s primary visitor center after the shooting, which occurred at about 10:20 a.m. Sunday, local time. “All known civilians” have been evacuated, Washington State Patrol spokesman Richard Warren told CNN.

The search for the gunman continued overnight using helicopters with infrared cameras and aircraft armed with flares. Officers from the National Park Service, Washington State Patrol, the FBI, and local agencies are involved in the search, a Park Service statement said. The shooter is believed to still be in the park, which will remain closed Monday.

There are many sources and stories about mind control,  sociopaths and psycopaths created using drugs and secret programs, you may be interested on watching the following video:

NASA probe joins twin at moon on 2012 New Year's Day / Universe Is a Holographic Projection around the Earth

PASADENA, Calif. -- The second of NASA's two Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) spacecraft has successfully completed its planned main engine burn and is now in lunar orbit. Working together, GRAIL-A and GRAIL-B will study the moon as never before.

"NASA greets the new year with a new mission of exploration," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. "The twin GRAIL spacecraft will vastly expand our knowledge of our moon and the evolution of our own planet. We begin this year reminding people around the world that NASA does big, bold things in order to reach for new heights and reveal the unknown."

However, there is scientific evidence that the entire universe is a holographic projection around the Earth.


German scientists have been trying to understand why their equipment that measures gravitational waves has been picking up a particular sound. One possible answer that they’ve come up with is that the entire universe is a holographic illusion:

For many months, the GEO600 team-members had been scratching their heads over inexplicable noise that is plaguing their giant detector. Then, out of the blue, a researcher approached them with an explanation. In fact, he had even predicted the noise before he knew they were detecting it.

 According to Craig Hogan, a physicist at the Fermilab particle physics lab in Batavia, Illinois, GEO600 has stumbled upon the fundamental limit of space-time – the point where space-time stops behaving like the smooth continuum Einstein described and instead dissolves into “grains”, just as a newspaper photograph dissolves into dots as you zoom in. “It looks like GEO600 is being buffeted by the microscopic quantum convulsions of space-time,” says Hogan.

If this doesn’t blow your socks off, then Hogan, who has just been appointed director of Fermilab’s Center for Particle Astrophysics, has an even bigger shock in store: “If the GEO600 result is what I suspect it is, then we are all living in a giant cosmic hologram.”

The idea that we live in a hologram probably sounds absurd, but it is a natural extension of our best understanding of black holes, and something with a pretty firm theoretical footing.

It has also been surprisingly helpful for physicists wrestling with theories of how the universe works at its most fundamental level.

The holograms you find on credit cards and banknotes are etched on two-dimensional plastic films. When light bounces off them, it recreates the appearance of a 3D image.

In the 1990s physicists Leonard Susskind and Nobel prizewinner Gerard ‘t Hooft suggested that the same principle might apply to the universe as a whole. Our everyday experience might itself be a holographic projection of physical processes that take place on a distant, 2D surface.

Sources:
http://m.neatorama.com
http://www.nasa.gov/

LG OLED TV To Be Unveiled At CES / How OLED is made

(AP) — For flat-panel TVs, the choice for years has been between plasma and LCD. In the coming year, there'll be another choice, at least for those prepared to spend big.

LG Electronics Inc. says it's planning to sell a 55-inch set based on organic light-emitting diodes, or OLEDs. The Korean company is set to show it off at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, which starts Jan. 10.

Samsung Electronics Co., LG's Korean rival, will also reveal a nearly market-ready OLED TV at the show, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. They spoke on condition of anonymity because Samsung has yet to make an announcement. Its website says CES announcements will come Jan. 9.

Tim Alessi, director of home electronics development at LG's USA arm, said its set will likely go on sale in the fourth quarter. The company isn't revealing the price.

Paul Gagnon, an analyst at DisplaySearch, estimates that OLED sets will start out above $5,000.

The screen technology is in use in high-end smartphones and provides deeply saturated colors and high contrast. However, it's been very difficult to make larger screens with consistent results. In late 2007, Sony Corp. started selling an 11-inch OLED TV for about $2,500, but it never followed it up with a bigger model.

Since then, LG and Samsung have shown prototype OLED TVs at the annual CES show, but haven't revealed any marketing plans.

If you are interested how this new technology works see the following video:

Brock Lesnar retires after 1st-round VS Overeem

(AP)  

LAS VEGAS — Brock Lesnar took one last kick to his stomach and crumpled at the side of the 

cage, unable to fight back when Alistair Overeem pounced.

Lesnar had been finished by a 6-foot-5 Dutch kick boxer in the first round at UFC 141. A few minutes later, the UFC's former heavyweight champion finished his own meteoric mixed martial arts career.

Lesnar retired from the UFC after Overeem stopped him with one vicious kick to the body at 2:26 of the first round in their heavyweight bout Friday night, leaving the UFC heading into 2012 without its biggest pay-per-view star.

"This is the last time you'll see me in the octagon," Lesnar said.

If you think what you see on UFC are martial arts, then you are wrong, see this video below to have an idea about what martial arts are really meant for...

Buffalo Chicken Dip Recipe

What you need:

• 1 8 oz. cream cheese
• 3-4 chicken boneless chicken breasts
• ½ bottle of hot chicken wing sauce
• ¾ mozzarella or monetary jack cheese shredded (whichever you prefer)
• ¾ blue cheese or 8 oz blue cheese salad dressing

How to prepare:

• Chop or shred and brown the chicken in a frying pan and break it up into bite-sized pieces
• Pour in the hot sauce and cook another 20-30 minutes on low heat
• Spread the cream cheese on the bottom of a 9×12 pan
• Pour chicken and sauce evenly on top of the cream cheese
• Pour ¾ cup blue cheese or 8 oz salad dressing on top
• Sprinkle cheese (mozzarella or monetary jack) on top
• Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes

Mix or leave the dip layered and that's it!

But..... here is something you need to know about chicken:

IS IT CLEAN?

In 1991 the Atlanta Constitution did a special report on the poultry industry. Of 84 federal poultry inspectors interviewed, 81 said that thousands of birds tainted or stained with faeces which a decade ago would have been condemned, are now rinsed and sold daily. Seventy-five of the inspectors said that thousands of diseased birds pass from processing lines to stores every day.  Poultry plants often salvage meat, cutting away visibly diseased or contaminated sections, and selling the rest as packaged wings, legs or breasts, said 70 inspectors. Richard Simmons, inspector at a ConAgra plant said "Practically every bird now, no matter how bad, is salvaged. This meat is not wholesome. I would not want to eat it. I would never, in my wildest dreams, buy cut-up parts at a store today."

     

And just listen to USDA Inspector Ronnie Sarratt: "I've had birds that had yellow pus visibly coming out of their insides, and I was told to save the breast meat off them and even save the second joint of the wing. You might get those breasts today at a store in a package of breast fillets. And you might get the other in a pack of buffalo wings."  Previously, inspectors used to condemn all birds with air sacculitus, a disease that causes yellow fluids and mucus to break up into the lungs. In an 1989 article in Southern Exposure, USDA inspector Estes Philpott of Arkansas estimated that he was forced to approve 40 percent of air sac birds that would have been condemned 10 years ago.

HEALTHIER?

Contrary to the myths that chicken and turkey contain less cholesterol and that, reportedly, they represent a good option for those on a healthier diet, according to studies by Dean Ornish, M.D., from a five-year follow-up of patients on his popular vegetarian plan for reversing heart disease, compared with patients on the chicken and fish diet recommended by the American Heart Association (AHA), the majority following the AHA guidelines got progressively worse, while those who made intensive changes got progressively better.  So bang goes the healthy option myth!

Plant foods contain no cholesterol but animal products always do. For every one percent increase in cholesterol levels, heart attack risks rises by two percent.  For every 100 milligrams of cholesterol in the daily diet; the typical amount in a four-ounce serving of either beef or chicken, one's cholesterol level typically zooms up five points. And, worse still: Unlike fat, cholesterol concentrates in the lean part of the meat. 

A LOW FAT FOOD?

An honest look at the nutritional value of chicken reveals that chicken meat is not low in fat, and "not even close." A 3.5-ounce piece of broiled lean steak is fifty-six percent fat as a percentage of calories, and chicken contains nearly the same at fifty-one percent. Compare that with the fat in a baked potato (one percent), steamed cauliflower (six percent) and baked beans (four percent) and any ideas that chicken is a health food go out the window. Fancy packages can't disguise the fact that chicken and all meats are muscles, and muscles are made of protein and fat  Also, the combination of fat, protein and carcinogens found in cooked chicken creates troubling risks for colon cancer.  Chicken not only gives you a load of fat you don't want, it's Heterocyclic Amines (HCAs) are potent carcinogens produced from creatine, amino acids and sugars in poultry and other meats during cooking. These same chemicals are found in tobacco smoke and are fifteen times more concentrated in grilled chicken than beef.  HCAs may be one of the reasons that meat-eaters have much higher colon cancer rates; about three hundred percent higher compared to vegetarians.

CHICKEN CANCER

Broiler hens are the chickens which are routinely used for large portions or whole portions of chicken meat.  Tony Moore of Joice and Hill broiler breeders was quoted as saying that chicken cancer (Marek's disease) is responsible for the excessively high losses of chickens and, despite chickens being vaccinated against it as day old chicks, mortality is increasingly significant.  There is also a rapidly increasing threat from Gumboro disease, a viral cancer and, on top of this, avian leucosis a bird variety of leukaemia is now commonplace.  In fact, one American report found that: 'Virtually all commercial chickens are heavily infected with leucosis virus'. However, since the tumours induced are not grossly apparent until about 20 weeks of age, the virus is not economically as important as is the Marek's disease virus, which induces tumours by 6-8 weeks of age.

Can chicken cancer spread to humans, you may well ask?  Well, the short answer is that I cover it in detail in my book 'The Undigestible Truth about Meat' and the long answer is, it is quite possible since studies do seem to prove that malignant tumours and other cancers can spread from one species to another.

Indeed, Cox, regarding bovine leukemia (cancer in cow's) cites one scientist as saying "It should be inferred that cattle with leukemia may, in favouring circumstances, be a factor disposing man to neoplasms (cancer), especially to the proliferation of the lymphatic system, either through longer contact with sick animals or the longer ingestion of milk and milk products from cows with leukemia.

However, in some ways the connection is really very simple.  Firstly, we know that some 'meat producing animals' (especially cows and chickens) suffer from tumours and cancers.  Secondly, we know that cancer can be transmitted by virus, from one animal to another and indeed from one species to another. Thirdly, cancerous and tumorous meat are not necessarily removed at the slaughterhouse, and may quite easily find its way to the butcher's shop.  The inevitable conclusion drawn from the above is that the chances are that if you eat meat, sooner or later you will eat part of an animal that either has cancer or has been exposed to a virus that can cause cancer.  It is difficult, however, to quantify the risk you would be running by eating tumorous meat (especially since cancers can take many years to surface).

SALMONELLA, CAMPYLOBACTER

In food processing plants where workers process red meat as well as chicken, the chicken preparation areas are often cordoned off from the rest of the plant.  The work there is carried out behind glass screens in a kind of quarantine just in case bugs which thrive on and in chicken leap out and infect everything else.  One of the most widespread of these bugs is salmonella. Almost every process of chicken production helps to spread bugs from one chicken to another until they finish up inside the plastic wrappers.  There is a danger when touching raw chicken that people can spread the infection elsewhere.

According to an article by Murry Cohen, M.D. and Allison Lee Solin of the PCRM, Campylobacter, the most common cause of diarrohea in the United States, can sometimes lead to a paralysis-inducing disease called Gullian-Barré Syndrome, and Salmonella which causes severe food poisoning, can be fatal. They state that, according to 1997 tests conducted by the Minnesota Health Department, seventy-nine percent of chickens sampled from supermarkets were infected with campylobacter, and twenty percent of those were infected with an antibiotic-resistant strain. About fifty-eight percent of turkeys were infected, and eighty-four percent of those carried the resistant strain. With the introduction of quinolones for use in poultry, resistant strains of campylobacter are now appearing in the U.S., explains Stuart Levy, M.D., a physician with the Tufts School of Medicine, who described the antibiotic-resistance trend as an international public health nightmare.  In February 1999, the British medical journal 'The Lancet' reported that scientists had discovered antibiotic-resistant bacteria in feed being given to chickens in the United States. The authors called it an ominous sign for humans.

Kieswer of the PCRM argues that with live salmonella bacteria growing inside one in every three packages of chicken, chicken meat is making a lot of people sick. Although deaths from salmonella poisonings sometimes make the evening news, millions more cases that cause flu-like symptoms go unaccounted. Salmonella poisoning can cause vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain and low-grade fever, lasting for several days. When it spreads to the blood and other organs, it can be fatal (and is for as many as 9,000 people every year). Also, campylobacter infects as many as two-thirds of all pre-packaged chicken. Salmonella and campylobacter have become increasingly common because modern factory farms crowd thousands of chickens into tightly confined spaces, where excrement and other forms of bacteria spread contaminants. As we have learned, chicken has the same amount of cholesterol as beef; four ounces of beef and four ounces of chicken both contain about 100 milligrams of cholesterol and the cholesterol from chicken similarly clogs arteries and causes heart disease (Ibid.).  The human body produces cholesterol on its own and never needs outside sources. Each added dose contributes to artery blockages which lead to heart attacks, strokes and other serious health problems. 

According to Dr Barnard of the PCRM, chicken may look harmless but fancy marketing campaigns cannot disguise its shortcomings. Chicken may be lighter in colour than beef, but your body can hardly tell the difference. Chicken, like other animal products, contains hefty doses of cholesterol, fat, and animal protein. It leaves your body wanting for fibre, vitamin C, and complex carbohydrates. When heated, chicken produces dangerous heterocyclic amines (HCAs) as creatine, amino acids, and sugar in chicken muscles interact. HCAs, the same carcinogens found in tobacco smoke, are 15 times more concentrated in grilled chicken than beef. The fat, animal protein, and carcinogens in cooked chicken creates risks for colon cancer. What's more, poultry, like all meat, lacks any fibre to help cleanse the digestive tract of excess hormones and cholesterol.  Moreover, you wouldn't dream of taking veterinary medicines, but in choosing chicken you're doing just that. Today's farms increasingly operate much like factories.  Unlike PCBs, which are slow to leave our bodies, chemicals from medicated feed and various veterinary compounds do get eliminated when we stop eating meat. In comparison with the general population, vegetarian women have 98 to 99 percent lower levels of several pesticides as well as many other chemicals ingested by eating animal products. 

LISTERIOSIS

In the US, in one of their biggest-ever meat recalls, agribusiness giant Cargill called back almost 17 million pounds of "ready-to-eat" turkey and chicken products. They were processed at Cargill's Waco, Texas, plant between May Day and mid-December. The fear: possible contamination by the often-deadly bacteria Listeria monocytogenes.  Dr Barnard of the PCRM argues that this development added an exclamation point to the end of 2000, a year already beset by a record-setting pace of more than 70 U.S. meat recalls.

According to Dr Barnard, the latest problem, listeria, may not be the household name that salmonella is, or that E. coli and campylobacter are fast becoming, but it's depressingly familiar to emergency room personnel, who routinely see the human costs of foodborne illnesses. With listeria, that can often entail high fevers, severe headaches, neck stiffness, and nausea. Such symptoms can persist for days, even weeks. Listeria can also trigger miscarriages and stillbirths. And even with treatment, it kills fully one-fifth of those contracting it. Untreated, it kills 70 percent.  Listeria strikes hardest at those with weakened or overtaxed immune systems, notably the elderly, the frail, pregnant women, newborn infants, diabetics, AIDS patients, cancer radiation and chemotherapy patients, and organ transplant recipients.

In fact, the Journal of the American Medical Association reported in 1989, listeriosis exacts dire consequences. Infections in adults younger than 40 years proved fatal 11 percent of the time. In adults older than 60, the death rate was 63 percent. Women infected late in their pregnancies pass the disease to their fetuses, later giving birth to children with central-nervous-system infections in nearly every case.

Scientists detected listeria in up to 70 percent of uncooked poultry and meat samples they collected from seven countries, according to studies published in the Journal of Food Protein in 1989 and 1993. Those pieces snugly fit into the more general pattern. In instance after instance, foodborne illness investigations show the culprit to have been either an animal product or contamination of food or water by faeces from animal agriculture.

As long as we make meat the centre of our diet with foodborne illness will remain a fact of life. As matters stand, estimates put U.S. foodborne illness cases at 76 million per year, including 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,200 deaths, 500 of those from listeriosis.  Even if pathogens such as listeria could somehow be eliminated, digestive-tract cancers, heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, obesity,  and other debilitating illnesses would still make eating a sliced turkey sandwich, chicken salad, or hot dogs akin to wandering through minefields. Fortunately, we can avoid those hazards. One of the most attractive features of bananas, carrots, oatmeal,  pasta, and veggieburgers is that they have no intestines where virulent bacteria may incubate. In the bargain, they contain no cholesterol and very little fat!