News from the left

A recent blog post on the Infoholix site, Euro notes with mint sauce Part 5, lights up the world of alternative medicine with some little known facts. Definitely worth reading... There is also a whole archive - actually a veritable treasure trove - of information on that site you might want to look into. Find it here http://infoholix.net/ "By definition an infoholic is someone who cannot obtain enough information. The world of COMPLEMENTARY MEDICINE is an infoholic's paradise. For within this world there is to be discovered a stunning, treasure trove of diversity, yielding wonderous and life-changing opportunities. Within the pages of this FREE DIRECTORY of COMPLEMENTARY MEDICINE you will discover worldwide connections to many different forms of healing and enlightenment. Each category is accompanied by an introduction to the therapy. The entries are colour coded, according to the world map. You will find new therapies added to the list periodically in my timeless quest for knowledge."...

In his 1996 majority opinion in the case of Romer v. Evans, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy struck down a Colorado constitutional amendment that had forbidden state officials from taking any action designed to protect gays and lesbians from discrimination. “The amendment imposes a special disability upon those persons alone,” Kennedy wrote. “Homosexuals are forbidden the safeguards that others enjoy or may seek without constraint.” Several years later, in his majority opinion in Lawrence v. Texas (2003), Kennedy struck down that state’s ban on sodomy for violating the liberty protected by the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment. "In our tradition the State is not omnipresent in the home," Kennedy wrote. "Liberty presumes an autonomy of self that includes freedom of thought, belief, expression, and certain intimate conduct."

So when 9th Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt sat down to write yesterday’s decision nullifying California’s Proposition 8, which had amended the state constitution in order to forbid gay marriage, Kennedy’s words were not far from his mind. Indeed, Reinhardt repeatedly cites Romer while making the case against Prop. 8. But Reinhardt does not make similar use of Lawrence. Why not?

As I noted yesterday, Reinhardt’s decision did not recognize a constitutional right to gay marriage, it simply holds that in this specific case California has violated the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause by allowing gay marriage and then later taking it away. Had Reinhardt wanted to the address the larger question of gay marriage’s constitutionality, he undoubtedly would have cited Kennedy’s sweepingly libertarian decision in Lawrence. That he did not do so suggests that Reinhardt does not believe that Kennedy is currently ready to vote in favor of that constitutional right. Thus the 9th Circuit offered Kennedy a narrower argument relying on the narrower precedent in Romer. Should the Supreme Court take up the Prop. 8 case on appeal, there’s no way Kennedy is going to go against his previous line of argument in Romer. It was a crafty—if transparent—move by Reinhardt. We'll see if it works.

As Peter Suderman noted below, a 3-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals voted today to strike down California’s Proposition 8, which had amended the state constitution in order to forbid gay marriage. While this is a big win for the cause of gay rights, it is not a definitive judicial ruling in favor of gay marriage. As Judge Stephen R. Reinhardt states in his majority opinion, the court refused to touch the big question of whether the Constitution protects a right to gay marriage:

Whether under the Constitution same-sex couples may ever be denied the right to marry, a right that has long been enjoyed by opposite-sex couples, is an important and highly controversial question. It is currently a matter of great debate in our nation, and an issue over which people of good will may disagree, sometimes strongly. Of course, when questions of constitutional law are necessary to the resolution of a case, courts may not and should not abstain from deciding them simply because they are controversial. We need not and do not answer the broader question in this case, however, because California had already committed to same-sex couples both the incidents of marriage and the official designation of ‘marriage,’ and Proposition 8’s only effect was to take away that important and legally significant designation, while leaving in place all of its incidents. This unique and strictly limited effect of Proposition 8 allows us to address the amendment’s constitutionality on narrow grounds.

In other words, Reinhardt attempted to craft a relatively narrow decision both to minimize the likelihood of the Supreme Court hearing an appeal in the case (if one is filed), and to postpone the ultimate battle over the constitutionality of gay marriage until some later date. Had he issued a sweeping opinion that found gay marriage to be a protected right, the Supreme Court would almost certainly have agreed to hear the appeal. So why not force the vote? Perhaps Reinhardt doesn't think there are five current Supreme Court justices in favor of gay marriage and he doesn't want to give the Court a chance to rule on the issue just yet.

Gay marriage gets a win: A federal appeals court ruled today that California's ban on gay marriage, known as Proposition 8, is illegal. Via The Los Angeles Times:

The 2-1 decision by a panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals found that Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot measure that limited marriage to one man and one woman, violated the U.S. Constitution. The architects of Prop. 8 have vowed to appeal.

The ruling was narrow and likely to be limited to California.

“Proposition 8 served no purpose, and had no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California,” the court said.

Read Jacob Sullum on the weakness of the defense of Prop. 8 here. Reason on gay marriage here. Check out the full decision below.

Perry v Brown

In June 2011, the European Food Safety Authority has called for submission of relevant scientific data on the safety on aspartame, a contested sweetener made of two amino acids and methanol. Campaigners have pointed out that the Authority (EFSA) is missing important but damning details in its review. The FDA's approval of the substance, says Betty Martini "was a political decision, taken over the objection of the FDA's own scientific panel. Studies used to obtain approval were sanitized, to hide damaging effects the sweetener had on laboratory animals and eventually, Donald Rumsfeld was brought in to push through the approval." Now, new data has come to light confirming that early studies showed serious problems and that the FDA knew about the dangers the studies found. In an open letter to the European Food Safety Agency, which is reproduced in the second part of this article, Betty Martini points to those studies, which recently emerged, only as a result of citizens making and pushing through FOI act information requests for the documents. Here is Betty Martini's open letter to EFSA ......

As counter-intuitive as this question might seem, nicotine is actually a nutrient source. It is one form in which we can obtain a vital nutrient: vitamin B3, also called niacin or nicotinic acid. I have never seen this angle to smoking discussed in a clear form until I came across, through some friends on facebook, a very informative but kind of hidden away write-up by a parent who refused to just accept as fact what "everybody knows" - that kids start to smoke because of tobacco company propaganda. Ironically, the article was languishing in a place called the CyberCemetery, an archive of government websites that have ceased operation (usually websites of defunct government agencies and commissions that have issued a final report). The source URL is http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/tobacco/_PReptdisc/00000025.htm Here is the text......

Thanks for this article go to Andrew Saul, editor of the Orthomolecular Medicine News Service which you can subscribe to at http://orthomolecular.org/subscribe.html. You can also see other articles at the orthomolecular.org site. (OMNS, Jan 17, 2012) It's a nutritional "Catch 22": The public is told, confusingly: "Vitamins are good, but vitamin supplements are not. Only vitamins from food will help you. So just eat a good diet. Do not take supplements! But by the way, there is no difference between natural and synthetic vitamins." Wait a minute. What's the real story here? A recent health study reported that the risk of heart failure decreased with increasing blood levels of vitamin C [1]. The benefit of vitamin C (ascorbate) was highly significant. Persons with the lowest plasma levels of ascorbate had the highest risk of heart failure, and persons with the highest levels of vitamin C had the lowest risk of heart failure. This finding confirms the knowledge derived over the last 50 years that vitamin C is a major essential factor in cardiovascular health [2,3]. The study raises several important questions about diet and vitamin supplements. Was it Food or Supplements? The report discussed vitamin C as if it were simply an indicator of how many fruits and vegetables were consumed by the participants. Yet, ironically, the study's results show little improvement in the risk for heart failure from consuming fruits and vegetables. This implies that the real factor in reducing the risk was indeed the amount of vitamin C consumed. Moreover, the study appears to utterly ignore the widespread use of vitamin C supplements to improve cardiovascular health. In fact, out of four quartile groups, the quartile with the highest plasma vitamin C had six to ten times the rate of vitamin C supplementation of the lowest quartile, but this fact was not emphasized. This type of selective attention to food sources of vitamin C, while dismissing supplements as an important source, appears to be an attempt to marginalize the importance of vitamin supplements. Many medical and nutritional reports have maintained that there is little difference between natural and synthetic vitamins. This is known to be true for some essential nutrients. The ascorbate found in widely available vitamin C tablets is identical to the ascorbate found in fruits and vegetables [3]. Linus Pauling emphasized this fact, and explained how ordinary vitamin C, inexpensively manufactured from glucose, could improve health in many important ways [4]. Indeed, the above-mentioned study specifically measured the plasma level of ascorbate, which was shown to be an important factor associated with lower risk of heart failure [1, 2]. The study did not measure blood plasma levels of the components of fruits and vegetables. It measured vitamin C. A known rationale for this dramatic finding is that vitamin C helps to prevent inflammation in the arteries by several mechanisms. It is a necessary co-factor for the synthesis of collagen, which is a major component of arteries. Vitamin C is also an important antioxidant throughout the body that can help to recycle other antioxidants like vitamin E and glutathione in the artery walls [2,3]. This was underscored by a report that high plasma levels of vitamin C are associated with a 50% reduction in risk for stroke [5]....

America's Largest Database Confirms: No Deaths from Vitamins The new 203-page annual report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers, published online at http://www.aapcc.org/dnn/Portals/0/2010%20NPDS%20Annual%20Report.pdf, shows zero deaths from multiple vitamins; zero deaths from any of the B vitamins; zero deaths from vitamins A, C, D, or E; and zero deaths from any other vitamin. Additionally, there were no deaths whatsoever from any amino acid or dietary mineral supplement. Three people died from non-supplement mineral poisoning: two from medical use of sodium and one from non-supplemental iron. On page 131, the AAPCC report specifically indicates that the iron fatality was not from a nutritional supplement. USA: The FDA is closing in on supplements More telling about the FDA’s strategy for more heavy-handed regulation is the statement that “If you look at the numbers of NDI submissions versus the number of supplements introduced to the market since 1994, it would appear there is a significant lag in compliance.” On its face, the marketplace has changed over the last seventeen years. But who is responsible for this 17-year lag in compliance? The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA) required manufacturers to submit pre-market notification applications for supplements and new ingredients when there is a history of use or other evidence establishing that an ingredient is safe when used as directed. The FDA has 75 days to accept or reject the application. A non-decision by the FDA means that the Agency accepts the evidence and that the product has complied, is approved, and can be marketed to the consuming public. Alternatively, a formal petition for a review and FDA issuance of an order prescribing the conditions under which a new dietary ingredient can be used and reasonably be expected to be safe, with the FDA having to respond within 180 days, can be filed. Again, shouldn’t a non-decision on a petition be considered as final Agency approval? If the Agency does not issue a decision either way, or if it cannot find a decision that was issued over the previous seventeen years, has it been the industry or the FDA itself who has not been in compliance with DSHEA? Apparently, the FDA believes that manufacturers and suppliers have not met the FDA’s own self-interpreted DSHEA burden of proof standard to show to the FDA that there is reasonable evidence that supplements and new ingredients in supplements are safe. I wish the FDA were that efficient on pharmaceuticals... Some more details on this story and an action link Food and Nutraceutical Regulations - Global Snapshot Every system of regulation has its pros and cons. The labelling of health-related foods should be based on scientific evidence, always bearing in mind harmonisation with global international standards. There should be a harmonisation of food regulations around the world. Economic growth and urbanisation are not enough evidence of the future growth of nutraceuticals, health demographic trends also support these growth forecasts. Consumers are deeply concerned about how their health care is managed, administered and priced. As health care cost has become high the consumers are frustrated with the expensive disease-treatment approach predominant in modern medicine; the consumer is now seeking alternative beneficial products like dietary supplement, functional food and nutraceuticals. With innovative delivery mechanism to facilitate the use of nutraceuticals amongst its target groups, the world market is expected to witness a gradual shift toward natural ingredients. The article discusses several of the major food regulatory systems and compares them. It becomes obvious that there are huge national differences in how to treat foods and in particular healthy foods. The question is: If those laws are to be somehow brought closer to each other, which would be the model to follow? I believe such a model (for ideal food legislation) needs to be worked out, to balance the current attempts - such as Codex Alimentarius - to put in the international food laws that are written by the large corporations. Can Western guidelines govern Eastern herbal traditions? Other supporters of herbal medicine worry that the rules are too demanding and could ban some therapies on which people depend. Adam Smith, science and communications officer for the Alliance for Natural Health International (ANHI) in Dorking, United Kingdom, a non-governmental campaign group promoting the use of herbal medicines and other approaches to healthcare, fears that patients will lose out on some Asian medicines because they have not been used in Europe for the requisite 15 years, even though they have been consumed in East Asia for considerably longer. ANHI also detects a perceived bias in the THMPD towards products developed in the West, which often contain just one herb. Traditional Asian products contain mixtures of several herbs — making it difficult, time consuming and expensive to meet the directive's requirement to identify and quantify the active botanical ingredients or other biological agents in a herbal product. “These technical assessments require expensive methods,” says Smith. “The cost burden is a problem, particularly for small businesses,” he adds. Middleton agrees that conducting scientific analyses are “tough” — even for products containing just one herb... - - - News grabs are now being collected in a different way and will appear on this site a a stream of articles, linked as I find them. There will no longer be the weekly post that you are used to, and I do not know yet how the weekly feedblitz email alert will turn out. You can always check back directly at the site, however and you might want to get the RSS feed for notifications. The address of the site: http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp the RSS feed for newsgrabs will be feed://feeds.feedburner.com/Robin-Good-Breaking-New-Media-News and the RSS feed for "features", articles that are original to the site, is feed://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/index.xml...

America's Largest Database Confirms: No Deaths from Vitamins The new 203-page annual report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers, published online at http://www.aapcc.org/dnn/Portals/0/2010%20NPDS%20Annual%20Report.pdf, shows zero deaths from multiple vitamins; zero deaths from any of the B vitamins; zero deaths from vitamins A, C, D, or E; and zero deaths from any other vitamin. Additionally, there were no deaths whatsoever from any amino acid or dietary mineral supplement. Three people died from non-supplement mineral poisoning: two from medical use of sodium and one from non-supplemental iron. On page 131, the AAPCC report specifically indicates that the iron fatality was not from a nutritional supplement. USA: The FDA is closing in on supplements More telling about the FDA’s strategy for more heavy-handed regulation is the statement that “If you look at the numbers of NDI submissions versus the number of supplements introduced to the market since 1994, it would appear there is a significant lag in compliance.” On its face, the marketplace has changed over the last seventeen years. But who is responsible for this 17-year lag in compliance? The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA) required manufacturers to submit pre-market notification applications for supplements and new ingredients when there is a history of use or other evidence establishing that an ingredient is safe when used as directed. The FDA has 75 days to accept or reject the application. A non-decision by the FDA means that the Agency accepts the evidence and that the product has complied, is approved, and can be marketed to the consuming public. Alternatively, a formal petition for a review and FDA issuance of an order prescribing the conditions under which a new dietary ingredient can be used and reasonably be expected to be safe, with the FDA having to respond within 180 days, can be filed. Again, shouldn’t a non-decision on a petition be considered as final Agency approval? If the Agency does not issue a decision either way, or if it cannot find a decision that was issued over the previous seventeen years, has it been the industry or the FDA itself who has not been in compliance with DSHEA? Apparently, the FDA believes that manufacturers and suppliers have not met the FDA’s own self-interpreted DSHEA burden of proof standard to show to the FDA that there is reasonable evidence that supplements and new ingredients in supplements are safe. I wish the FDA were that efficient on pharmaceuticals... Some more details on this story and an action link Food and Nutraceutical Regulations - Global Snapshot Every system of regulation has its pros and cons. The labelling of health-related foods should be based on scientific evidence, always bearing in mind harmonisation with global international standards. There should be a harmonisation of food regulations around the world. Economic growth and urbanisation are not enough evidence of the future growth of nutraceuticals, health demographic trends also support these growth forecasts. Consumers are deeply concerned about how their health care is managed, administered and priced. As health care cost has become high the consumers are frustrated with the expensive disease-treatment approach predominant in modern medicine; the consumer is now seeking alternative beneficial products like dietary supplement, functional food and nutraceuticals. With innovative delivery mechanism to facilitate the use of nutraceuticals amongst its target groups, the world market is expected to witness a gradual shift toward natural ingredients. The article discusses several of the major food regulatory systems and compares them. It becomes obvious that there are huge national differences in how to treat foods and in particular healthy foods. The question is: If those laws are to be somehow brought closer to each other, which would be the model to follow? I believe such a model (for ideal food legislation) needs to be worked out, to balance the current attempts - such as Codex Alimentarius - to put in the international food laws that are written by the large corporations. Can Western guidelines govern Eastern herbal traditions? Other supporters of herbal medicine worry that the rules are too demanding and could ban some therapies on which people depend. Adam Smith, science and communications officer for the Alliance for Natural Health International (ANHI) in Dorking, United Kingdom, a non-governmental campaign group promoting the use of herbal medicines and other approaches to healthcare, fears that patients will lose out on some Asian medicines because they have not been used in Europe for the requisite 15 years, even though they have been consumed in East Asia for considerably longer. ANHI also detects a perceived bias in the THMPD towards products developed in the West, which often contain just one herb. Traditional Asian products contain mixtures of several herbs — making it difficult, time consuming and expensive to meet the directive's requirement to identify and quantify the active botanical ingredients or other biological agents in a herbal product. “These technical assessments require expensive methods,” says Smith. “The cost burden is a problem, particularly for small businesses,” he adds. Middleton agrees that conducting scientific analyses are “tough” — even for products containing just one herb... - - - News grabs are now being collected in a different way and will appear on this site a a stream of articles, linked as I find them. There will no longer be the weekly post that you are used to, and I do not know yet how the weekly feedblitz email alert will turn out. You can always check back directly at the site, however and you might want to get the RSS feed for notifications. The address of the site: http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp the RSS feed for newsgrabs will be feed://feeds.feedburner.com/Robin-Good-Breaking-New-Media-News and the RSS feed for "features", articles that are original to the site, is feed://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/index.xml...