When did this happen? Juice from China...

So why is the manufacturing giant sending Apple juice to apple country? Hopefully there is no melamine equivalent poison that can fool testers into considering this good quality apple juice.

USDA Nutrient database

Use the USDA Nutrient database to get details on all the stuff that you eat. For example, "healthy foods" are dangerous to people with kidney disorders or patients with Renal Tubular Acidosis as the Phosphorus in whole grain cereals leaks into the body and causes considerable damage. Phosphorus is typically low enough not to be listed in the label, but high enough to cause considerable damage to kidney patients. Here is an example for Milk and Soymilk as listed in the USDA nutrient database.

Milk, lowfat, fluid, 1%, fortified with Vitamin A - Contains Phosphorus and Potassium

Minerals
Calcium, Ca	mg	142	0	0
Iron, Fe	mg	0.06	0	0
Magnesium, Mg	mg	16	0	0
Phosphorus, P	mg	111	0	0
Potassium, K	mg	180	0	0
Sodium, Na	mg	58	0	0
Zinc, Zn	mg	0.45	0	0
Copper, Cu	mg	0.010	0	0
Manganese, Mn	mg	0.002	0	0
Selenium, Se	mcg	2.5	0	0

Soymilk - Does not contain Phosphorus and also lower Potassium. The Std Error on Potassium (last column) is quite high, so it may have the same amount of Potassium as regular milk.

Minerals
Calcium, Ca	mg	140	4	24.47
Iron, Fe	mg	0.49	4	0.125
Potassium, K	mg	141	4	29.953
Sodium, Na	mg	50	4	5.739
Zinc, Zn	mg	0.24	2	0
Copper, Cu	mg	0.123	1	0
Selenium, Se	mcg	2.3	1	0

The database has all the food items you find at stores too. So you can check most of the store items. Below is an example.

Puddings, rice, dry mix, prepared with whole milk

Minerals
Calcium, Ca	mg	103	0	0
Iron, Fe	mg	0.37	0	0
Magnesium, Mg	mg	13	0	0
Phosphorus, P	mg	85	0	0
Potassium, K	mg	128	0	0
Sodium, Na	mg	108	0	0
Zinc, Zn	mg	0.38	0	0
Copper, Cu	mg	0.020	0	0
Manganese, Mn	mg	0.059	0	0
Selenium, Se	mcg	1.8	0	0

Phosphorus is an extreme example in that it is found in just about anything. But if you substitute milk with Soymilk here, you provide an enormous improvement in Quality of Life for kidney and RTA patients. Your kryptonite mineral may be something else depending on your ailment; the database gives you a great starting point to figure out what to eat and what to avoid.

You can also get a PDF file of Phosphorus content for all items, but it does not seem to be as accurate as a specific lookup and does diverge quite a bit from the specific lookup. So the PDF file is good if your primary focus is what to take, but not good if your primary focus is avoidance.

Link to many Newsweek articles on Autism

Here's the link to all Newsweek articles on the subject.

Temple Grandin presentation

Temple Grandin

Legal decisions as a medical reference?..nah!!

If you are a smoker and die of lung cancer, good luck proving it. Big Daddy tobacco will throw the kitchen sink at you and eventually settle in a no fault fashion if the opposing party does not tire out. Which has in turn has created an entire breed of trial lawyers just designed for taking on Big Daddies.

Big Daddy government has just indicated that vaccines did not cause autism in three kids. But that conclusion was done with existing evidence. And as we know, as per existing legal evidence, lung cancer is not caused by smoking.

The "innocent until proven guilty" theory works well for the vaccine industry in these cases. As it does for innocent civilians and "hell yeah" guilty tobacco industry. So the burden of proof is on the scientific community to keep moving towards finding the cause.

I will get back to reading my copy of "To kill a mockingbird" now.

Avoid bankruptcy while caring for autism...

The threat of bankruptcy while caring for an autistic child is real. Here is an audio explaining the issues and precautions that need to be taken to ensure financial stability.

Alternate vaccination schedule

Here's an alternate vaccination schedule if your are justifiably paranoid about vaccination. Click on the photo to get an enlarged image and to get a printout of the schedule. Also note that you should avoid vaccination even if the kid has something as normal as a common cold. It gets really tough, but that is one way of avoiding the danger of autism.

Melamine contamination source....

It seems that melamine is not really added to the milk, but to the feed for animals. Melamine seems to be used as a contimination masking agent in animal feed. When impurities (mostly dirt) are added without melamine, protein tests can catch it. Adding melamine allows the "quality inspections" to pass, whether they are Chinese or American quality tests. The melamine seems to pass through the fluid paths of the body and doing a number on the kidneys in the process. Cows should have had this problem a long time ago, assuming that they have a similar physiology as human beings. The first time the problem was officially noticed was in dogs though.

Added later: As usual, the Chinese government is hanging some scapegoats. Continued vigilance will be needed to eliminate this and other forms of food contamination.

Melamine warning for milk chocolate in US...

Sherwood Brand Pirate's Gold Milk Chocolate coins are being recalled due to the fact that they contain Melamine, the ingredient in milk products that has caused many infant and dog deaths in China. These candies are sold at Costco and other bulk and dollar stores. Please make sure to check your child(ren)'s Halloween candy and DO NOT LET THEM EAT THE PIRATE COINS (the ones wrapped in shiny gold foil).

Yummy...life is a box of melamine laced chocolates!!

Here comes more melamine, now in the guise of chocolate. Fortunately, valentine's day is far away. But halloween is not! If you have a sweet tooth, please give your kidneys a thought.

Melamine, melamine everywhere...say bye bye to your kidney...

Thanks to China, pets all over the world got to eat Melamine. Now it is the time for human population. Expect these chinese babies to show up in orphanages soon, so have their kidneys checked if you are adopting from the Communist nation of China. You can be sure that the Chinese will unload these "damaged" human beings to other countries. Ofcourse you cannot have these tests done in China, so consult local doctors for precautions during the flight as it can be quite stressful on the damaged kidneys.

Apparently melamine mimics proteins in tests, so they add it to bypass FDA and other similar organizations. When it comes to food, the contamination dangers are very high. The more backward the country, the higher the probability of contamination. So beware of "high quality organic foods" from these countries.

Living with Mitochondrial Disease

What is the common factor between a group of doctors and a bad cop?

They are both extremely biased. They will care only for their own "kind". Here is AMA apologizing to African American Doctors. Everybody does this; a Caucasian doctor will get similar treatment in downtown Chicago. If you watch Dr.House, imagine him to be a bunch of doctors. A Caucasian bunch one day, an African American bunch another day, a Chinese bunch another day and so on.

So the doctor you get to see is actually determined by all these boards. They will put all possible obstacles in front of the undesired skin color or religious affiliation, which will be different flavors for different regions. They will respectfully ask the undesirable to look for nurses jobs. Or screw them up during referrals. Or ask US citizen minorities to take English tests with sentences like "Jim is a six year old boy" and Questions like "How old is Jim?". Since time is money for doctors and these Test of English as a Foreign Language tests essentially delay the doctor from getting certified, these non US born doctors move on, typically to low paying rural areas in some other state or county. Where they end up encountering patients that get angry that a non-US born doctor is treating them. Talk about irony.

This does work out well for rural areas as these doctors are typically very talented. If a doctors life was based on pure merit, these doctors would be in the top hospitals in big cities. But they are not; partly perpetrated and encouraged by patients too. The urban patient gets as upset as a rural patient psychologically and the value of the placebo effect is pretty high for treatment purposes (This works against you for major diseases though. Cancer pains will return again at a different focal point).

So remember the rule: A bunch of doctors equal one bad cop. Do not let them bunch up to decide what is right for you. Their bad side comes out when they band together. And if you happen to be a doctor that is naive enough to not know this; well, now you know.

Potential enzyme replacement cure for mitochondrial disorders

Some research in Israel is pointing towards some encouraging results. Hopefully, we will have viable implementations of these methods soon.

Autism Spectrum Disorder - Mitochondrial disorder discussion on June 29, 2008 at Indianapolis

In it's own medically quite fast way, the discussions related to the link between Mitochondrial Disorders and Autism Spectrum Disorders are gaining traction. There is meeting to discuss the same at the UMDF conference in Indianapolis on June 29. As I had posted earlier, this is a natural conclusion of limit theorem and this is the only known case of a particular disease causing an autism spectrum disorder as opposed to "no reason" that usually accompanies autism. So this is definitely something worth a discussion.

Meanwhile, a research team in Korea has found another possible triggerchemical in the brain that can cause Autism Spectrum Disorders. This is the area in the brain that carries out primitive emotions.

The cause of food shortage.

Ofcourse the major cause of food shortage is population. But that is too much of a simple explanation and people are now looking at reasons for the shortage, including the growing middle class in India that is apparently eating more now. India and China are easy targets for the US; they are scared of blaming Ethanol and losing blue state votes in the next presidential elections.

There is some sense in this theory; the more developed a country becomes, the more heavier it's people and it's food plate get. So in that sense, the fat person cannot blame anyone else that just joined the club. The McDonalds and Pizza huts are doing their part in these countries to bloat up the digestive tracts of these people and the resultant binge that the developed countries are all too well aware of.

The real culprit is actually our convoluted desire to protect the world while devouring it with a passion unseen in history. So we drive our SUVs with corn oil rather than using public transportation. Using potential food as oil and livestock feed ties these supply chains together and triggers additional food crisis. Use of Ethanol as a fuel works out great for US farmers that produce corn, but is not so good for Sorghum(Jowar) eating people around the world. Why? Because land used for growing Sorghum is now being used to make corn as it fetches a higher price. Good old economics driven by the need to produce a feel good fuel called ethanol.

The solution to the high prices and food shortage is to eliminate competition for resources that go after human food. These currently happen to be livestock and bio friendly fuel (and export, an economic and politicial activity).

So if you go vegetarian and use public transportation, you will eventually end up reducing food price in some bizzare part of the world and end up with a few more pennies or paisas in your pocket. Ofcourse the cow farmer and corn farmer is not going to be much happy about it.

The meat lover in you is probably objecting to this idea vehemently. Just be prepared to shell out more for meat. Plus the eco vegetarian will end up driving meat prices down, if the idea ever catches up. The idea does have potential, a lot of baby boomer flower powerettes happen to be eco vegetarian.

Going vegetarian for new folks can be tiresome and there can be health risks; make sure that you eat pulses so that your protein intake remains at recommended levels. And be prepared for the pangs of desire if you are an eco-vegetarian and do not have any spiritual component to your vegetarianism! We promise to look away if you go for the occasional indulgence!

Enemy medicine....

There are some speculations now that the Heparin contamination was intentional and done deliberately for the 13 countries that received the contaminated Heparin. This is a shocking revelation and will scare people from buying products from countries that are not really friends. In a way, deliberate contamination is an act of war against innocent citizens of another country.

This is similar to cops never buying food that they cannot see visually being prepared. The juvelines at the counter have typically encountered cops before and they see the food preparation as an opportunity to pass on some body fluids to the cops. This makes cops a great fan of doughnuts, Subway and Quiznos.

So China has a lot of explaining to do now. I wonder how many such abuses happen with other food items and medicines that come from other countries.

Genetic discrimination for insurance banned in US...

There is now a bill officially banning genetic discrimination. But insurance carriers and their legal teams have long found a way around this by claiming that you already have the illness. So it is still a good idea not to share any genetic testing results with insurance carriers whenever possible. This is especially true during the times when you are applying for insurance.

One of the things you have to be careful about in these cases is over the counter medications that you might be taking to offset the effect of any future genetic illness. Make sure that this information is not entered into any doctor's record. Talk to the doctor if you wish, but make it absolutely clear to the doctor that the over the counter medication cannot be documented in his records in any way. These OTC medications are one way insurance underwriters are sniffing out potential genetic issues. They will quote you exorbitant rates based on the vitamins or antioxidants you might be taking. There is no rule indicating that OTC drug information has to be available to insurers; make sure that it is not available to them.

Irresponsible research regarding child gender...

There was a recent flurry of activity regarding research that correlated the mothers eating habits to the sex of the child. The researchers were hopefully aware of the fact that male sperm decides the sex of the child.

This is very irresponsible research. Female foeticide is being perpetrated in many parts of the world. Now people will have a new tool to further humiliate females for producing a female child.

The only plus point of this research is that conceiving females in India and China will get to eat a healthy breakfast.

Mitochondrial disorder, autism, vaccine tie up found....

Finally, we have some research which indicates that some of the kids who had an autism diagnosis were later on found to have a mitochondrial disorder too. This ties back to my article from a few days ago. Here is a real bad interpretation of the results; these kids can have other serious issues in addition to muscle weakness. Mitochondrial disorders are a beast in itself, so much so that the parent may not even be concerned about autism when dealing with mito complications.

Mitochondrial disorder is an asymmetric disease; it means that if you have the disorder in your muscles, it does not necessarily mean a disorder in the brain and vice versa. So unless you are performing brain biopsies or some similarly invasive procedure, there is no way to know if you will have a vaccine injury or not. Let us see what the scientific community comes up with to detect brain mitochondrial disorders. From what we have seen for mitochondrial disorders at this point in time, muscle is the only convenient place to check for the disorder and there are a lot of negative results even though other mitochondrial disorder markers are present.