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Why is modern medicine going nowhere in its attempts to treat breast cancer? Our research has found that the answer to this question lies primarily with the politics of medicine, the cancer industry, and the industries that create the pollutants that contribute to breast cancer. We believe that the only way to truly prevent and treat breast cancer is to go outside the current way of doing things in medicine and stop the wholesale pollution of our planet with petrochemicals, but the forces that would keep things the same are very powerful and entrenched. That's why, just as they did with hormone replacement therapy (HRT), women need to educate themselves about pollutants, about breast cancer, and about alternative treatments. They need to rebel against ineffective and harmful treatments, and do what they can to teach their doctors.
Over the past few decades, conventional medicine has done very little to make any meaningful difference in what will happen to you if you get breast cancer, and virtually nothing it has done has reduced the incidence of the disease. The harsh reality is, if you get breast cancer, you'll get more treatment than you did 50 years ago, you and your insurance company will spend a lot more money, and if it's fatal you may gain a few more months of life (usually of very poor quality), but statistics clearly tell us that conventional medicines for treating breast cancer such as tamoxifen, radiation, and chemotherapy just aren't working in the long run. The way breast cancer is currently treated is a way of doing something in the face of not knowing what else to do. If you have an invasive or nonlocal breast cancer, your chances of dying from it are still about one in three, the same as they have been for decades.
The incidence of breast cancer (how many women are getting it) is steadily rising, and the numbers are appalling: According to the National Cancer Institute, breast cancer incidence rates have increased by more than 40 percent from 1973 to 1998. In the year 2000 approximately 182,800 women were diagnosed with breast cancer. Since 1950 breast cancer incidence has risen by 60 percent. Some will argue that this is due to better and earlier detection. But even for women over 80 years of age, where this early detection issue is doubtful, the incidence of breast cancer has risen the past 30 years from 1 in 30 women to 1 in 8 women. The American Cancer Society estimated that in the year 2000, 552,200 people in the United States would die of cancer, and 40,800, or just over 7 percent, of those would be women dying of breast cancer. This means that about 15 percent of women who die of cancer are dying of breast cancer. These are the annual statistics for the United States, but it's even more sobering to realize that worldwide about 1,670,000 women have breast cancer.
The mortality (death rate) from breast cancer is also staggering. If you combine mortality rates from the United States and Canada (which have the highest rates of breast cancer in the world), in North America a woman dies of breast cancer every twelve minutes.
Do Radiation, Tamoxifen, Mammograms, and Chemotherapy Help or Hurt?
Mammograms don't really save lives (G. Sjonell, et al., Lakartidningen 96 (1999): 904-913.
Radiation doesn't really save lives (Lancet, 22 May 2000).
Tamoxifen doesn't really save lives (Mitchell, et al., Journal of the National Cancer Institute, November 1999).
Chemotherapy doesn't save lives (which isn't news; we've known this for a long time).
So what's left for the conventional medical doctor to treat breast cancer patients with? Nothing but the same surgical removal of the cancer that they were doing 50 years ago. More American physicians need to face the hard, cold facts that current therapies just aren't working and open their eyes to alternatives for prevention and treatment of breast cancer. Let's take a broad look at the current treatments.
Radiation is the most common treatment for breast cancer following surgery, and yet a recent article in the prestigious British medical journal Lancet showed that this treatment is not working. In fact, while using local radiation to treat breast cancer reduces deaths from this disease by 13.2 percent, it increases death from other causes, mostly heart disease, by 21.2 percent. The obvious conclusion of this study: "The treatment was a success but the patient died."
In other words, the radiation obliterates the breast cancer tumor in a small percentage of women, but in the process it causes many of them to die from other diseases. Proponents of newer and more localized radiation procedures are claiming that it doesn't cause the damage the older radiation techniques do, but at present this is only a claim and not backed up by long-term follow-up. This means that there's no long-term benefit from using radiation to treat breast cancers, because even though the cancer may not recur at the site of the radiation, the overall chances of survival stay the same or are slightly worse. And yet despite the fact that radiation helps so few women—and eventually kills many of those whom it helped in the short term—it remains the standard of care in medicine for women who have breast cancer. How can this be? It's because conventional medicine has little else to offer that reduces death even by 13.2 percent. If you were starving and someone handed you a bowl of moldy old rice, you'd gratefully eat it up because it's better than nothing.
Despite this study, published in one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world, if you have breast cancer your doctor will most likely insist that you undergo radiation treatments rather than exploring possibly safer alternatives not popular among conventional doctors.
Treating women with radiation who later die of heart disease caused by radiation damage also affects breast cancer statistics. It means that the diagnosed cause of death was shifted from breast cancer to cardiovascular disease. As more and more breast cancer patients are subjected to radiotherapy, fewer will be said to die from breast cancer, but more will be said to die of radiation-induced heart disease. These deaths aren't counted in breast cancer statistics, but they should be if we are to have a truthful picture of what's happening to women who get this disease.
In the same issue of The Lancet as the above study on radiation was a curious letter from Oxford professor Sir Richard Peto, with a graph showing that breast cancer deaths rose about 20 percent from 1960 to 1985. From 1985 to 1997 breast cancer deaths were said to have decreased about 20 percent. Without speculating on the cause of the 1985 rise in breast cancer mortality, or citing the sources of his information, Sir Peto instead addressed only the matter of the recent decline.
An aside: The probable cause of the rise in breast cancer deaths was the prescription of unopposed estrogen (not balanced with progesterone) to menopausal women, a common practice from the early 1950s to the mid-1970s. While the medical community acknowledged that this practice caused endometrial (uterine) cancer, it never admitted that it also caused breast cancer. From the mid-1970s, doctors were instructed to prescribe synthetic progestins along with the estrogen to prevent the endometrial cancer. This is also when the incidence of hysterectomy skyrocketed: Women felt so terrible on progestins that they refused to take them, so doctors offered them a hysterectomy so they would no longer have to take the progestins, and could take estrogen only. To add insult to injury (literally), it was common practice (and still is in some places) to remove a woman's ovaries along with her uterus as a preventive for ovarian cancer. This misguided practice leads to many other health problems, including osteoporosis, heart disease, fatigue, and a diminished quality of life due to low libido, hot flashes, and other symptoms of "instant menopause."
Back to the supposed decline in breast cancer deaths: Because of the "suddenness" of the decline, Sir Richard felt it was not due to fewer breast cancers but more likely to "changes in the way breast cancer is diagnosed and treated." He speculated that it was "not from a single research breakthrough" but from "the adoption of many interventions," whatever that means. He was later quoted in other news articles as giving credit for the fall in breast cancer deaths to the antiestrogen drug tamoxifen.
We hope that those promoting Tamoxifen remember to mention how many women taking it suffer from blood clots, deterioration of vision, and diminished quality of life (hot flashes, night sweats). Also, how many women have been forced to have a hysterectomy due to a particularly aggressive form of tamoxifen-caused uterine cancer? It's rarely mentioned that women actually die of tamoxifeninduced uterine cancer. When these women die of uterine cancer instead of breast cancer, it improves the breast cancer statistics. This makes tamoxifen look good, but it's a moot issue to the women in question.
If the side effects of tamoxifen are this bad, why is it being used at all, and why is it being trumpeted so loudly as the great cure-all, to the extent that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) even approved its use as a preventive? It's the moldy rice problem again. It's the lesser of many evils; it's better than nothing. Very few other FDA-approved pharmaceuticals have been made available to oncologists treating breast cancer. Theoretically—on paper, in test tubes, and in laboratory animals used as models for human breast cancer—tamoxifen looks promising, and the rationale for using it is based on a solid scientific foundation: Estrogens increase the rate that breast cancer cells proliferate, and tamoxifen slows the rate of cell proliferation by acting as an antiestrogen.
Unfortunately, breast cancer cells in a test tube and laboratory animals can't really explain to us how they feel, and don't live long enough to give us a genuine appreciation for long-term health risks. Research investigating the effects of tamoxifen on hormone-dependent cancers looks good in the short term. However, in reality, tamoxifen is unnatural to the human body, and these side effects are the body's warning signals that something is terribly wrong.
Tamoxifen has been available for 25 years and its effect on breast cancer prevention is still being debated: This in and of itself should tell us something. Two studies, a five-year placebo-controlled one from England in 1992, and a nine-year placebo-controlled one from Italy in 1998, showed no difference in cancer incidence between tamoxifen- treated women and controls. The only large study in the United States was cut short, supposedly because the incidence of breast cancer dropped so much in the tamoxifen group that they couldn't justify withholding this treatment from the placebo group. It's worth noting, however, that the trial was stopped at around the same time that breast cancer began to reappear, despite the tamoxifen, in the two European studies.
The lessons we learned from those studies are that in some women tamoxifen may put a breast cancer to sleep for a few years, and in women who have breast cancer it may slow the rate of recurrence for a few years. But in the long term it tends to do more harm than good. Again, the only reason this is such a popular treatment right now is that it seems to oncologists to be better than doing nothing, which many of them believe is the only other viable option open to them. But as you'll discover, it's definitely not the only option available.
For the most part, it's only in the United States that doctors still believe tamoxifen significantly prevents or reverses breast cancer. In fact, now even the National Cancer Institute (NCI) has come out with a statement that in all but a very narrow group of women under the age of sixty, tamoxifen may do more harm than good in terms of preventing cancer. Despite this, the FDA just approved the use of tamoxifen to treat a form of breast cancer known as ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS). You'll understand later in the book why we believe this is an outrageous move.
Like tamoxifen, radiation, and chemotherapy, mammography is big business these days. Mammography is also conventional medicine's only real answer to breast cancer "prevention," although it isn't preventing cancer at all, it's simply detecting it.
Countless advertisements and physicians are telling women to have mammograms. But the value of this procedure is far from clear. We all know women diagnosed with breast cancer that wasn't detected by mammography, and we all know that mammograms present a real risk of false positive and false negative findings. The test procedure is unpleasant and the radiation is potentially harmful. Both tissue damage and radiation are known risk factors for breast cancer, so it may even be logical to assume that mammography can contribute to breast cancer.
A summer 2000 study published in the journal Spine, and looking at data collected over 40 years, showed that women with scoliosis who received many diagnostic X rays during childhood and adolescence have a 70 percent higher risk of breast cancer than women in the general population. The more X rays a woman was exposed to, and the higher the dose of radiation, the greater her risk of breast cancer. Although the dose of radiation in a typical X ray is now much lower than it was when these women were being X rayed, the point is still valid: Radiation is a potent risk factor for breast cancer, its effect is cumulative, and mammography involves forcefully squashing the breast and then shooting radiation through it.
It has been claimed that mammography lowers the risk of dying from breast cancer. Proponents argue that mammography can detect breast tumors a year or so earlier than simple palpation such as breast self-exams. This early detection, so the argument goes, leads to earlier treatment and a lower risk of breast cancer mortality. Statistics, it is claimed, have validated this argument.
Many statisticians, however, disagree. Statistics are not immune from biases, which include mechanical factors (use of different measuring instruments in different subjects), study methodology, conscious or unconscious assumptions, age of subjects, socioeconomic factors, faulty randomization of subjects and controls, duration of observation, and other confounding factors.
More than 15 years ago Dr. John C. Bailar III observed that counting survival time after treatment creates a bias in most mammography studies because mammography detects breast tumors a year before they would have been found by palpation. He pointed out that subjects with breast tumors found by palpation have lived at least a year prior to the time when they would have been found by mammography. When this year is added to the survival time of the control women (those who did not use mammography), their survival results match those of subject women whose tumors were found by mammography.
This means that the apparent difference in survival after treatment was due not to earlier treatment, as a result of mammography, but merely to starting the counting of survival time one year earlier among mammography subjects. When this factor is included in the statistical analysis, the so-called benefit of mammography and earlier treatment disappears. Dr. Bailar, now professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at McGill University and senior scientist in the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, called this the lead-time bias.
This should not be surprising. For a breast cancer cell to become large enough to detect by palpation, the cancer has usually been growing for about ten years. If found one year earlier by mammography, the cancer has been growing for about nine years, which is plenty of time to spawn metastases if the cancer is prone to do that. The one-year difference between palpation and mammography detection is ultimately of little importance.
Does mammography truly save lives? If you read the numerous ads for it, you might think the case is closed—of course it does. If you read the studies themselves, the answer isn't so clear. For example, a 1999 epidemiological study found no decrease in breast cancer mortality in Sweden, where mammography screening has been recommended since 1985.
As a result, two Swedish scientists reviewed all published mammography trials to evaluate their methodological quality. Their purpose was to ascertain whether or not mammography truly saved lives. Their findings are worth a close look.
In their analysis of eight different clinical studies on mammography, the authors found six of them seriously flawed by baseline imbalances and/or inconsistencies of randomization. The flaws were sufficient to nullify the studies' claims of a benefit from mammography. The two adequately randomized trials found no effect of mammography screening on breast cancer mortality.
The meta-analysis conclusion is clear. Since there is no reliable evidence that mammography screening decreases breast cancer mortality, mammography screening for breast cancer is unjustified. This means that physicians should not order routine mammography screening.
However, mammograms have become a substitute for breast selfexams. If you stop having mammograms, it becomes essential that you examine your own breasts thoroughly at least once a month. If you're premenopausal, you should examine them shortly after your period, when hormone levels are low, so that premenopausal lumps aren't confused with a cancerous lump. You should also examine your breasts in the mirror and look for any unusual skin abnormalities or dimpling. After a few months you'll become very familiar with how your breasts feel, and you'll be able to detect very small abnormalities.
It's difficult to make generalizations about chemotherapy these days, because there are so many different kinds, most of them extremely poorly studied: The women who agree to try new chemotherapies are guinea pigs for a type of treatment with a notoriously poor track record. Like most other aspects of the breast cancer industry, there's little agreement about what constitutes chemotherapy. We'll make the generalization that chemotherapy is an attempt to poison the body just short of death in the hope of killing the cancer before the entire body is killed. Most of the time it doesn't work. There are new chemotherapies that target specific parts of the cancer process, but none have proven themselves truly effective in stopping the entire process.
Some chemotherapy does prolong life for a few months, but generally at the high price of devastating side effects, and if a woman does happen to get lucky and survive that bout of cancer, her body is permanently damaged; recurrence rates are high. The use of chemotherapy is purely a gamble, and we don't think it's worth taking. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't, and sometimes it makes things worse. Precious little is known about why it works or doesn't, and it seems much smarter to find an alternative therapy with a good track record that will both support your body in fighting off the cancer and promote health.
There are some chemotherapylike approaches to fighting metastatic cancer, including inducing a high fever for a number of days and insulin potentiation therapy (see the Resources section at the end of the book), that hold much promise with less potential damage done to the body. They are much more widely used in Europe than the United States. They may never be widely available in the United States, because there's no patent medicine to sell. Europe is decades ahead of the us in its approach to treating cancer.
Breast cancer is the most common cause of death from cancer among women between the ages of 18 and 54, and it's the most common cause of death period among women aged 45 to 50.
Women less than 45 years old have a 26 percent higher risk of a recurrence of breast cancer compared to older women. The types of cancer that these middle-aged women are dying from are not the mostly benign, "99 percent curable" DCIS "cancers" that have been detected since the early 1980s with mammograms (thus increasing the rate of detection); they're deadly metastatic cancers that kill quickly once they start to spread.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, cancer ranks higher than heart disease in terms of age-adjusted death rates among people under age 65 in the United States. While heart disease has declined, cancer has not.
Breast cancer is the second most common form of cancer in women after lung cancer, which is almost always due to smoking cigarettes.
The breast cancer industry has been playing a statistical shell game with the disease by including ductal carcinoma in situ as a breast cancer diagnosis when in fact it's rarely fatal, with or without treatment. Many oncologists like to say that DCIS is "99 percent curable." (Since DCIS wasn't detectable-and thus not diagnosed or treated-until the advent of mammograms, we don't even really know the true nature or course of untreated DCIS, because it has always been treated if diagnosed.) We'll go into this in more detail later in the book, but for now, we want to focus on the fact that some 30 percent of breast cancers are DCIS.
Given that DCIS is rarely fatal, let's make some gross generalizations to illustrate a point. If we simply eliminate DCIS from breast cancer statistics, and thus subtract 30 percent of those who have survived breast cancer from the statistics, we would then not have a recent drop of 20 percent (as claimed by some) but rather a rise of 10 percent in breast cancer mortality rates. This is a crude way of making the point, but it's important to consider when a doctor is using these types of statistics to justify a treatment. For example, let's say a doctor justifies putting you on tamoxifen to prevent breast cancer based on the now much-quoted "fact" that breast cancer deaths have dropped by 20 percent thanks to tamoxifen (see chapter 12 for details). If you know going into the doctor's office that this is a highly questionable statistic, you'll be more empowered to make the right decisions for yourself. In fact, we suspect that if women with lowgrade DCIS weren't subjected to tamoxifen, chemo, and radiation, their survival rate would stay the same-but the women wouldn't be damaged for life by the treatments.
Of course the key to reducing the incidence of breast cancer is prevention, but prevention is a dirty word in the breast cancer industry unless you're referring to tamoxifen or mammograms, neither of which is really remotely like prevention. TV personality and author Bob Arnot, M.D., wrote a book called The Breast Cancer Prevention Diet, which contained mostly good, solid, practical dietary advice associated with reducing the known risk factors for breast cancer. Sadly, he was terribly trashed by the American media for using the word prevention, as if he were suggesting that diet was a cure-all (he wasn't), and as if he were somehow hurting women by suggesting that a healthy diet could fend off breast cancer (it can only help). Arnot was an unfortunate victim of the intense breast cancer political establishment, which savagely attacks those who stray outside conventional medical boundaries and dare to suggest that something besides surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, and tamoxifen might be helpful.
It may shock you to know that despite breast cancer being the leading cause of death among middle-aged women in the United States, only 5 percent of the National Cancer Institute's budget is allocated to research on cancer prevention. And just in case you thought some other branch of the U.S. government was going to pitch in with some unbiased, nondrug, prevention-oriented research, the enormously expensive, taxpayer-financed Women's Breast Cancer Initiative will be researching only pharmaceutical drugs (Premarin plus various synthetic estrogens and progestins) in relationship to breast cancer. We believe this is like subsidizing the drug companies—which already make billions of dollars in profits after spending billions on advertising, public relations, and lobbying money to influence congressional decisions. Drug testing should be the responsibility of the drug companies, not taxpayers. To add insult to injury, this is research that should have been done by the drug companies decades ago, before the drugs were approved.
The prevention picture is equally dreary in other big cancer organizations. When you log onto the Web site for the American Cancer Society (ACS) and access the area about cancer prevention, it says, "At this time, there is no way to prevent breast cancer." This is true only in that we can't point to one cause and make it the culprit. The reality is that we know so much about what causes breast cancer that of course we know what we can do to help prevent it, in the same sense that we know how to help prevent heart disease or diabetes.
For example, there's no question that you can significantly reduce your risk of these diseases by eating a wholesome diet, getting regular moderate exercise, maintaining a healthy weight, and managing stress effectively. This same approach will also help you lower your risk of breast cancer by creating better overall health. The factors that dictate which women get breast cancer and which don't include all of the practical commonsense solutions listed above. Yes, we all know a health food nut who has gotten breast cancer, but all the tofu and vegetables in the world may not make up for a devastating insult to breast tissue such as years of estrogen dominance or heavy exposure to pesticides or solvents. And then again they might make a difference, depending on your genetics and a dozen other factors. There is no one right formula for preventing breast cancer in every woman. The key to prevention of breast cancer is being aware of the various factors that cause the disease and avoiding them as much as possible, while at the same time being aware of what discourages cancerous growth in breast tissue and promoting that kind of lifestyle.
Preventive medicine is a multidimensional approach that takes the entire human—the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual aspects—into account, and optimizes health for that particular individual. Conventional medicine, which is narrowly focused on diagnosing disease and then prescribing a drug to kill it, is a failure when it comes to treating cancer and chronic diseases such as diabetes and arthritis because it ignores most of the human it's purporting to heal. And this is also why, in the year 2000, patient visits to alternative health care professionals exceeded visits to conventional physicians—despite the fact that insurance doesn't cover most alternative health care. Take a middle-aged woman with breast cancer who is terribly depressed and emotionally devastated because of a major trauma or loss in her life: All the drugs in the world aren't going to help her unless her emotional and spiritual needs are also addressed.
Prevention is also a dirty word during the richly endowed, muchhyped and -touted Breast Cancer Awareness Month that occurs every October, because it's largely sponsored and funded by the drug company that makes tamoxifen. Ironically, this firm also manufactures some of the toxic chemicals that help cause breast cancer. Breast Cancer Awareness Month is about being aware of cancer establishment treatments; there is little focus on preventing breast cancer or raising funds for independent research. It really should be called Breast Cancer Unawareness Month.
To get to the bottom of why progress isn't being made in preventing or treating breast cancer, it's important to consider the breast cancer industry and what makes it tick. The detection and treatment of breast cancer is hugely profitable in the United States, generating billions of dollars a year. All those mammograms, biopsies, lumpectomies, and mastectomies, and all that chemotherapy, radiation, and tamoxifen, create a substantial income stream for hospitals, physicians, their support staff, those who make all the equipment, and especially those who make the drugs. And that doesn't even take into consideration all the research being done that's funded by the hundreds of millions of dollars donated to nonprofit breast cancer organizations. Where's the financial incentive to go outside this framework?
If just a fraction of the research money now going into perpetuating the above industries were honestly put into prevention and effective treatment, the mortality rate from breast cancer would very likely drop precipitously within a few years. But doctors keep squishing and radiating women's breasts with mammograms, and possibly increasing their chances of getting breast cancer in the process, perhaps because it's lucrative and it's the standard of care. (Thanks to new technology using the—hopefully—safer techniques of thermography and ultrasound, mammograms are becoming obsolete anyway, but it will probably take decades to phase out all those expensive machines.) Doctors keep doing unneeded biopsies because they could get sued if they don't. They keep removing women's breasts and giving them toxic drugs because they don't know what else to do, and they feel they have to do something.
In its zeal to find a magic drug to stop breast cancer, the industry has forgotten about healing. It doesn't have time. It has to run the patients through the HMO mill, get them out of the hospital faster, cut costs, avoid lawsuits, keep positions and funding, and make the drug companies happy by promoting and prescribing their products so that they'll keep funding the universities and hospitals.
Where does this leave the woman with breast cancer? She's terribly afraid and confused, but she's also pretty much crushed by the cog wheels of the medical machinery. Granted, she's what keeps the machinery going, but she certainly isn't the center of attention; she's a supporting player in a much larger drama. She'll be shuffled off to this operating table or that radiation clinic not because it's necessarily best for her as an individual, and not because that's what's going to truly help and heal her, but because she fits into that slot, that's how the breast cancer industry machine works, and there's no other choice. What conventional medicine presents her with is that she's going to die if she doesn't do it. But if she sorts out the statistics accurately, she's going to realize that if she has a nonlocal (non-DCIS) cancer, even if she does everything the doctors tell her to do there's still a one in three chance that she's going to die, from the cancer or as a result of its treatment. These aren't great odds, and the path to possible recovery is paved with treatments that can do permanent damage.
An aside: In contrast, Dr. Zava recently had contact with a woman who was given three to six months to live in 1993 because she had a very large, node-positive breast cancer tumor. She opted against conventional chemoradiation therapy and began juicing and progesterone therapy as an alternative. She called Dr. Zava (in 2001) to update him on her progress and get a saliva test! Granted, this is just one story, but we hear them on a regular basis.
To make matters even more confusing for the average woman with breast cancer who wants to do some research on whatever course of treatment her doctor is suggesting, a great deal of medical research needs to be interpreted in light of the context in which it was conceived and/or carried out. Unfortunately, much of it is sponsored by drug companies, so it's no surprise that thousands of small studies come out every year advocating some point that the companies want to pay a scientist to support. You can come up with all kinds of medical theories and support them, with perfectly reputable references from peer-reviewed journals found on Medline, the National Library of Medicine's huge research database.
The politics of physician attitudes that don't support healing, medical research, and media information on breast cancer are disheartening, because they're largely controlled by large drug companies with one agenda: Sell more drugs.
At the root of physician beliefs and attitudes about breast cancer treatment is the fact that the pharmaceutical industry now powerfully influences both medical education and research. A recent Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reported that 31 percent of medical school funding comes from governmental and pharmaceutical grants; we think this is a gross underestimate. In addition, drug company money is the driving force behind medical research, with a profound influence on the research that's chosen. For example, if a drug that has the potential to be patented is competing for funding with a drug that can't be patented because it's found in nature, there's no contest. The patent drug wins, even if the drug found in nature might be the biggest breakthrough since penicillin.
You don't hear much that's positive about non-drug alternative health treatments in the national media, yet millions of people visit the Internet daily looking for information on alternative health. Would they be flocking to the Web in such large numbers if they were getting what they need from their doctors, or from print media and TV? We think not. Drug company money is a primary source of advertising revenue for the media, especially for TV and magazines, so unless you're Bill Moyers you're unlikely to expose drug company and medical politics or talk about alternative health in positive terms and keep your job.
How about the FDA—aren't they looking out for the consumer? On the contrary, endorsement of a drug or treatment by the FDA should not necessarily give you confidence that it's a safe and effective treatment. According to the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association and New England Journal of Medicine, deaths from the side effects of properly prescribed prescription drugs are the fourth-or fifth-leading cause of death in the United States. This doesn't even include deaths from improperly prescribed drugs, deaths from in-hospital errors, and unreported drug deaths; if these were thrown into the statistics, drug treatments in general would easily be in the top three causes of death in the nation. All the drugs that are killing so many people are approved by the FDA and considered part of the standard of medical care.
A recent scathing editorial in the Lancet took the FDA to task for its inappropriately close association with pharmaceutical companies. The title of the article was "Lotronex and the FDA: a Fatal Erosion of Integrity," and it described the process by which the drug Lotronex, developed for irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), was approved by the FDA after inadequate testing, killed five people, was withdrawn, and then as put back on the FDA table for reinstatement. The Lancet editorial concluded that, "...private communications appear to have subverted official procedures, while suppressed scientific debate has superseded a full and open review process.... The Lotronex episode may show in microcosm a serious erosion of integrity within the FDA, and in particular CDER [Center for Drug Evaluation and Research], whose operating budget now depends on industry money." Buyer beware.
The original intent of the FDA was to protect consumers from dangerous products, but the agency appears to have lost its way, and to be heavily influenced in its decisions by the drug industry. A recent survey conducted by the newspaper USA Today found that 54 percent of the time, experts hired to advise the FDA on which medicines should be approved for sale have a direct financial interest in the drug or topic they're asked to evaluate. In turn, it's very common for FDA employees to retire to well-paid positions on the advisory boards of large drug companies.
So what's a woman to believe? You need to find medical authorities whose opinions you trust: people who have been successful in their practice and proven right in their viewpoints over and over again for decades. People whose opinions are not based on how large a grant they're getting from the drug industry, or the soy industry, or the dairy industry, or a vitamin company, but people who are objectively and intelligently looking at the facts, interpreting experience, and evaluating studies. Put your trust in a physician who's willing to take the time to talk with you; after all, this is a life-and death matter.
How about doctors who would like to try treatments for cancer that are outside the mainstream? They can't: They're forced to use medications (even if they know they aren't working well), because there are no large-scale studies to prove the effectiveness of alternatives and thus the FDA will not approve them. (The evidence proving the effectiveness of conventional medical treatments is scant, but that's politics.) If an alternative treatment doesn't have FDA approval, a doctor can be fined, be reprimanded, or even lose his or her medical license for using it. If you find the rare and courageous physician willing to guide and support you through an alternative treatment, be grateful!
The political and financial implications of admitting that conventional hormone replacement therapy, plastics, pesticides, and other environmental toxins disrupt the body's ability to manufacture normal levels of hormones and consequently contribute to causing breast cancer are enormous. (We'll explain how and why these things can cause breast cancer later in the book.) Just think what would happen to the drug company giants if they were forced to admit that their products had contributed to the deaths of tens of thousands of women? The tobacco companies would have to move over in the litigation courts. However, the largest drug companies alone (never mind the pesticide and plastics companies) spent $74.4 million in 1997-1998 to influence congressional thinking via their lobbying efforts. That's one powerful influence. The only potentially stronger influence is your vote.
Thanks to an undeniably steep rise in the incidence of prostate and testicular cancer, Congress has taken some action to find out more about how chemicals that mimic hormones affect humans. A 1996 mandate from Congress charged the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with examining the hormonal effects of the top 100 selling chemicals in the United States. As the first studies trickle out, the evidence is clear: We are awash in a sea of chemicals, many of them estrogenic in nature, that profoundly affect every aspect of our health. Because estrogens oppose or negate the actions of testosterone, our little boys—and eventually men—are as profoundly affected as women are.
The bottom line is that a woman with breast cancer is left with few viable options from the medical community. She can't completely trust breast cancer research or recommendations about medical treatments, and she lives in a culture that's averting its gaze from the real causes of her disease. Thus, it takes enormous courage and fortitude to stand up and take charge of your health, to question your physician and ask for clear answers, and to carefully examine alternatives. We hope that through this book we can inspire you to do just that.
My deepest appreciation to you for being gutsy enough to tell me your opinion concerning tamoxifen. You advised me against it, giving me the courage to buck my very pushy oncologist who wanted me to take it. I have been thriving without tamoxifen. I've had several follow-up mammograms and was told the opposite breast looked "textbook perfect," and the breast that had the lumpectomy looked normal and benign.
I am 56, postmenopausal, and am using progesterone cream. You reassured me it was safe even for a woman like me with high estrogen and progesterone receptors, explaining this means progesterone can get in and do its job of stopping the cancer when the receptors are present.
When I heard the flap about the "hazards of progesterone" I knew before even checking further that it was probably a botched reporting job that really referred to the synthetic progestins.
Thanks to you my life has been quite serene despite my diagnosis of cancer. I think progesterone is a mood elevator, also. I have blessed you silently many times since you replied to my letter asking about tamoxifen.


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Dalwood Great War Memorial presents for each man their factual military history - where they enlisted and served and what happened to them; where they died and where they are remembered in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission records - whether this be an individual headstone on the Western Front or immortalised on one of the great monuments to those with no known grave.
This is combined with details from research in the local parish records of their lives and their families in this parish community in the years leading up to the outbreak of the War in 1914. The book also contains an account of the early lives and experiences in the War of some other Dalwood men whose military recordshave survived.

industry_corpus2: Literature & Emotions


text:
"The Clean Water Act: Water Quality, Water Resources, and Wetlands Under the Microscope," ALI CLE/ELI Environmental Law 2019, Washington, DC (February 8, 2019). Panelist: David Chung.
"What In-House Lawyers, Regulatory Professionals and Compliance Officers Should Know About The Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA)," Crowell & Moring Webinar (October 11, 2018). Speakers: Richard Lehfeldt and Matthew B. Welling.
"Mitigating Risk Through Environmental Due Diligence in California Real Estate Deals," Presentation for Environmental Data Resources, Inc. (EDR), Costa Mesa, CA (October 10, 2018). Speakers: Kevin C. Mayer and Monty Cooper.
"Legal Roundtable," 2018 NASDA Annual Meeting, Hartford, CT (September 10, 2018). Panelist: David Chung.
"In-House Environmental, Health and Safety Perspective: 'What Keeps Us Up at Night?'" Energy Industry Environmental Law Conference, Houston, TX (May 18, 2018). Moderator: Kirsten L. Nathanson.
"View from Washington – Status of the Trump/Pruitt Regulatory Agenda," Energy Industry Environmental Law Conference, Houston, TX (May 18, 2018). Presenter: Robert Meyers.
"The Supreme Court, the Emerging Federal Judiciary, and Environmental Jurisprudence," American Bar Association 2018 Spring Conference, Orlando, FL (April 20, 2018). Panelist: Kirsten L. Nathanson.
"Theory and Standards for Resilience and Back-Up Power," ESA 28th Annual Conference and Expo, Boston, MA (April 20, 2018). Presenter: Larry F. Eisenstat.
"Task Force Formation & Data Comp Issues," Pesticide Data Compensation and Protection in a Global Marketplace, Cary, NC (April 5, 2018). Presenter: John D. Conner, Jr.
"At the Forefront of Data Compensation," Pesticide Data Compensation and Protection in a Global Marketplace, Cary, NC (April 5, 2018). Presenter: John D. Conner, Jr.

industry_corpus2: Water Resources & Marine


text:
I came home and what did I find? The package from amazon has arrived! “De Stijl” by The White Stripes, which completes my White Stripes collection, and “A Little Deeper” by Ms. Dynamite. I thought I never heard or saw “De Stijl” before i saw a ad for it in “3l3phant”, but after having a look at the inlet I remember listening to the LP at Saturn, I must have totally forgotten about it.
If there wasn´t this urge to visit the toilet I would have written more.

industry_corpus2: Film & Entertainment


text:
This is our Champion Inverter generator loaded extras like USB interface & 3in1 Intelliguage, powered by a 3100 kilowatt powerful engine.
Champion generators are in a league of there own with regards engine technology and features, all champion engines are designed, engineered and tested in the most demanding environments and can be proved by watching the testing videos on the CPE website.
The main outstanding feature on a champion inverter is the delay stop allowing equipment to stop running or power down so no power surge applies and the second outstanding feature is the start up current it has a special peak current of 15.8amp for millisecond that is ideal for RV, motor homes and caravans allowing equipment to start up without tripping or overloading the generator especially running A/C units or similar.
The Champion Power Equipment 73001I-E portable inverter petrol generator is powered by an 171cc Champion single cylinder, 4-stroke OHV engine that produces 3100 max watts.
With a 6 litre fuel tank this unit can run up to 8 hours at 25% load. Our OHV engine is equipped with a low oil shut-off sensor and designed for long life and easy maintenance. This unit also contains true sine wave inverter technology making it safe to power all of you sensitive electronic devices. This unit is ideal for camping trips, hunting, travelling, picnics, tailgating, and light jobs around the house. The built-in handle and wheel kit make it easily portable.
Advanced, true sine wave inverter technology provides safe, reliable power to computers and other sensitive electrical devices. Ideal for powering a small appliance and/or a few household items.
The portable Kipor IG4000P generator is the older sibling of the IG3000P delivering an additional 1.3kVA of power for a total output of 4.3 kVA. The machine is equipped with a 13 litre fuel tank ensuring that the IG4000P can run continuously for up to five hours on a single tank of fuel. If you think the IG3000P is a great generator but crave more power, the IG4000P is a splendid choice.
Kraft Hertz in Germany introduced this great piece of equipment. KH6600D super powerful diesel engine in a silenced insulated machine. Will keep your business up and running during any power failure and blackout. Will keep your entire household going for even long periods of outages and equipment. High reliability and quick service. Incredible value for your money.
Compact, lightweight, and durable, the Kipor IG770 digital generator can power your devices for up to three hours on a full load and four to five hours on a lighter load. With a light weight of just 10.5kg, the Kipor IG770 is a fantastic leisure generator for small jobs.

industry_corpus2: Power & Energy


text:
“Netflix is hoping to learn some new tricks from an old dog,” reported the Los Angeles Times on Saturday.
Brandon Camp, the youngest son of Benji creator Joe Camp, said, “Netflix is the ideal alternative for families who want to watch engaging, inspiring films with their kids, and kids who want to watch them over and over.” The younger Camp wrote and directed the new Benji film, number six for the floppy-eared star.
“Benji’s journey into streaming offers a lesson in deal making in the Netflix era,” the Times article continued.
The smoke from a huge, black cigar lay heavy across the room, stirred only by the cigar itself as it leaped from mouth to hand, swirled and circled up from the chair, danced across the huge office, then paused to jab at the air like a driving piston.
Ed and I sat in stunned silence. There was a dank, black empty feeling oozing down over me. Cold and distant, yet agonizingly painful. The words spewing from the smoke of the fat man’s cigar, were going astray, some hitting, some missing. I was drifting in and out. Had all of this been for nothing? The question was directed at God. With attitude I’m afraid. The years of preparation? The experience? The planning? The dreams?
The words fell out of his mouth like crystal shattering on a tile floor. We had tried Disney. And Fox, and MGM, and Warner Brothers. Everybody! This simply couldn’t be happening!
We couldn’t get a distributor. No one wanted it. Not one. Zero.
The following summer Variety reported that the movie Benji had the #3 box office gross in all the land. Most of it with adults. At night.
God’s hand at work. Up close and personal.
Please list names for each inscription in the “instructions to Seller” field as you check out!
Needless to say when the Oscars are handed out this weekend there will be no prize for a four-legged star.
In fact, when they held the first Academy Awards in 1929 Rin Tin Tin got more votes than any human actors…but the Academy decided it would be inappropriate to give an Oscar to a non-human.


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reCAPTCHA - Apache Click - Apache Software Foundation for your Wiki!
reCAPTCHA is a free CAPTCHA service that helps to digitize books, newspapers and old time radio shows. For more information see the reCAPTCHA website.
Here is a sample of a reCAPTCHA image on a website.
Register your domain with the reCAPTCHA website.
Download the Java library from here.
Download the Div.java and ReCaptchaField.java.
Add the following code into your click form.
Here is two things that I have done.
2. onProcess method will only process field if it participated in the incoming request which in this case does not call the validate() method. So I override the onProcess method.

industry_corpus2: Computing & Telecommunications


text:
You can’t fabricate muscles or lose fat with practice alone. You may be working out for a considerable length of time every day, however until you supplement substantial practice with a diet holding a flawless degree of macro-and micro-nutrients, all your exertions might head off to waste! This article talks about what macronutrients are and what are micronutrients notwithstanding the optimal degrees of these nutrients for building muscles and losing fat?
People require an assortment of nutrients to support flawless health. These nutrients are acquired from diet. A few nutrients are needed by the figure in a noteworthy measure while others are needed in respectably less sum. Appropriately, we order the nutrients into two classifications.
These nutrients are needed in moderately littler amounts. These incorporate, specifically, vitamins (e.g. Vitamins A, B, D, E and K) and minerals (e.g. iron, calcium, sodium, iodine and magnesium). Vitamins perform assorted administrative capacities all through the form which incorporate color vision, bone affidavit and blood clotting.
These are needed by the figure in bigger amounts. These incorporate carbs, proteins and fats. They have a few capacities in the figure. Carbs are all in all answerable for furnishing vigor. Proteins are the building squares of the figure and answerable for making up the diverse structures that structure the form. Fats shape the stores for vigor.
From a viewpoint of muscle building and fat misfortune, overabundance sugars in diet more terrific than an individual’s vigor necessities make the figure change over the abundance vigor into fat which in turn accelerates weight. Proteins are needed for the anabolism of the figure i.e. the building and repairing of the figure and shape the most paramount segment of diet for those looking to increase bulk. Overabundance fat additionally has a few destructive impacts and ought to be evaded. Despite the fact that micronutrients don’t have an immediate bearing on either fat misfortune or muscle building, some vitamins incorporating Vitamin C and E have some part in muscle recuperation and diminishing muscle harm throughout practice. Also, minerals, for example calcium and sodium, if taken in inadequate sums, can cause intense hindrance of muscle quality.
Fat misfortune is an objective looked for by both customary natives and meat heads. The macronutrient proportion for this is, justifiably, diverse as contrasted with that for muscle building. For fat misfortune, the best dietary technique is to enter a catabolic state in which the vigor admission is low so fat archives are used to repay for the vigor lack. Be that as it may, to avert muscles and different structures from debilitating, satisfactory protein admission is needed.
In muscle building, the objective is to expand not just the mass and size of the muscle additionally the generally speaking execution of the muscle. The principle strategy for this is safety preparing. In safety preparing, muscles of the figure are focused. This reasons incredibly expanded amalgamation of proteins in the muscle. Sufficient diet is fundamental to back this high rate of muscle protein combination. The foremost and generally critical supplement for this intention is protein. Sufficient protein in diet guarantees that muscles get sufficient building pieces (amino acids) for the amalgamation of new proteins. Precisely what amount of protein is perfect is a matter of open deliberation.
Carbohydrates are likewise crucial in muscle building preparing in light of the fact that they furnish glycogen, which is utilized as fuel by the muscles. In this connection, the qualification of great carbs and awful carbs ought to be remembered. Exceptional carbs have low vigor for every gram while awful carbs have higher vigor for every gram and can accelerate corpulence. In view of exploration information, Lambert et al. have inferred a carbohydrate admission of 55-60 % of aggregate vigor consumption. Despite the fact that, abundance fat has various negative impacts, definitely lessening fat admission additionally has a negative effect.
Weight reduction and muscle building are objectives looked for by all and sundry in today’s age. From some youngster who needs to fabricate his muscles to look exceptional and astound his companions, to some old man who needs to get thinner to decrease danger of heart assault, everybody is trying at some level to achieve these objectives. On the other hand, just those will succeed who consolidate sufficient practice with an immaculate amalgam of macronutrients and micronutrients.

industry_corpus2: Health & Medicine


text: Abstract: Common components analysis (CCA) may be an efficient method to identify specific program components related to the prevention of child maltreatment. We used adapted CCA to examine home visiting programs designed to reduce or prevent child maltreatment and identify which program components are most likely to contribute to the prevention of child maltreatment. To carry out this process, manualized home-visiting programs were first identified through web-based program repositories. Then, program characteristics and components (i.e., sustainability, service delivery, and program content) were coded. Common components across these coding categories were identified and compared in programs with supporting research evidence and programs without research evidence. Our analyses indicate that problem-solving strategies were a key ingredient of evidence informed programs. Information on home cleanliness, accident prevention, first aid, and social support were also common components of evidence informed home visitation programs to prevent child maltreatment. Using CCA in this manner may assist providers in identifying potentially promising practices and programs among programs with and without evidence that match the needs of their populations.


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Addiction is one of the most destructive forces we can encounter. It can damage relationships, interrupt education, and end careers. These impacts are particularly devastating to younger people, who are only beginning these important things in their lives. Even when they enter treatment, they may have a dark cloud of concern lingering about how they’ll rebuild their outer selves after repairing their inner selves.
For someone entering a young adult rehab program, a key element must be how to regain the things that have been lost during a time of alcohol or drug abuse. That’s part of what sets these programs apart from those that are geared toward addicts of all ages.
If someone you love is in this situation, you’ll have an extra role to play in helping them get back on their feet again. It’s so important that people in recovery are able to restore these parts of their lives. It can help prevent relapse by rebuilding their self-esteem and by building responsibilities that give them a reason to stay on track.
So where can you help out?
A recovering addict may have dropped out of high school and quit or simply skipped post secondary education. Now he or she is faced with the prospect of earning a living with few prospects for good jobs.
The first step will be education. You can help by guiding the person toward GED opportunities, admissions advisors for higher learning, scholarship options, and everything else it will take to get them qualified for a good job.
Education isn’t just about self-esteem or earning potential. It also plays a major role in their ability to stay in recovery. A person who can see a positive direction in life–something as simple as a solid GPA in the first semester back–has something to look forward to and a reason to stay on track.
Addiction can lead to some very bad damage to relationships. It can break up marriages, estrange siblings, and cause parents to disown children. Friends disappear and are replaced by enablers and fellow abusers. Considering that so many of us consider our family to be the one thing we can count on, this can be a devastating mess to find as recovery begins.
The best thing you can do to help is to reach out and help your loved one understand that you are willing to repair your relationship. Once they see that you’re in their corner, you can act as a go-between, someone who can testify to their recovery and encourage others to come back into the addict’s life. It can be a prolonged process, but as you bring in other people, they can help you out and let the process snowball in a positive direction.
For someone who began abusing as a teen and is in recovery during their early 20’s, the whole process of getting a job can be totally foreign. They’ll need people to help them through it, to guide them through searching for job, applying for them, dressing for interviews, and getting hired.
Of course, once they get a job, they’ll need to keep the job. You can mentor them on punctuality, cooperation, getting along with co-workers, and honesty on the job. These are among the most common causes for getting fired, so they’ll benefit greatly from your advice on the subject.
Addiction isn’t just a physical or mental problem. It’s also a social, educational, and economic issue. For someone who is trying to rebuild his or her life after entering recovery, it will take help in each of these areas to be able not just to be happy and financially independent but also to be secure enough to avoid relapse. It’s up to the remaining friends and family who care to facilitate this process, and it’s one that can save a life.


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HAMMOND, Ind. -- With the score tied 7-7 in the bottom of the seventh inning, sophomore Hunter Ryan (Hebron, Ind./Hebron) hit a walk-off RBI single which scored junior Anthony Agne (Plainfield, Ill./Plainfield North) from second which gave PNW an 8-7 victory in game 1. Sophomore Brandon Haczynski (Crown Point, Ind./Crown Point) tossed a complete game shutout in game 2 which allowed the Pride to win game 2, 6-0, as PNW swept Northwood in both games of a doubleheader at Dowling Park Saturday.
Northwood jumped on the scoreboard first in the opening frame to go ahead 1-0. PNW was able to respond with runs and get the lead in the bottom half of the inning.
Freshman Ray Hilbrich (Schererville, Ind./Lake Central) grounded out which scored junior Hunter Thorn (Portage, Ind./Portage) to tie it at 1-all. Couple batters later, sophomore Kevin McCune (Munster, Ind./Andrean) hit an RBI double to right center which scored Brett Veltema (Jenison, Mich./Jenison) to give PNW a 2-1 lead.
PNW added two more runs in the bottom of the second inning to give the Pride a 4-1 lead. Senior Austin Kordik (West Chicago, Ill./Community) ripped an RBI double down the left field line which scored Michael Woods (Elk Grove, Ill./Elk Grove) to make it 3-1. Thorn continued his big day at the plate with an RBI triple to left center to make it 4-1.
The Pride was not done scoring as Agne singled in Veltema to make it 5-1 in the bottom of the third. PNW added two huge insurance runs in the bottom of the sixth inning to go ahead 7-1.
Thorn picked up his third hit of the day with an RBI single which scored Woods to make it 6-1. Ryan scored on a wild pitch which made the score 7-1.
Northwood hesitated to go away quietly in the first game as the Timberwolves answered right back to tie the score at 7 with six runs in the top of the seventh inning. After Agne walked, he advanced to second on a wild pitch, Ryan came up with two outs and had a ripped an RBI single that gave PNW the victory.
Starting pitcher sophomore Chad Patrick (Hebron, Ind./Hebron) took no-decision on the mound after throwing six innings, scattering eight hits, allowing three runs (all earned) and striking out eight. Senior Joe Davi (New Lenox, Ill./Lincoln-Way Central) picked up the win (1-0) in relief after striking out the batter he faced.
The second game was all PNW. Thorn put the Pride on the scoreboard after ripped a double down the left field line which scored Ryan to go ahead 1-0.
A couple of innings later, Thorn made it 2-0 with his RBI single to right field scoring sophomore John Cory (Lowell, Ind./Lowell) from second. The Pride then erupted for four more runs in the bottom of the sixth inning to give Haczynski some more breathing room.
Cory reached on an error which scored junior Ray Hansen (Chicago, Ill./St. Rita) to make it 3-0. Junior Nick Albanese (Algonquin, Ill./Marian Central Catholic) made it 4-0 with his single to left that scored Cory.
Hilbrich extended the lead to 5-0 after ripping a single right back up the middle scoring Albanese. Veltema gave PNW their sixth run of the game after roping an RBI single down the right-field line.
Haczynski threw his first complete-game shutout of the season (2-1), after going seven scoreless innings, allowing only four hits, did not issue any walks and struck out seven.
PNW (4-12, 2-1 GLIAC) and Northwood (14-7, 1-2 GLIAC) conclude their four-game opening Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference series tomorrow, March 24 starting at noon CT.

industry_corpus2: Sports


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As an 'independent' network of Alpha Gamma Delta sisters it saddens me that the blog network has become a 'news source' for when tragedy strikes our sisters, but I think it's important that we know about such events, as these woman are our sisters no matter that we never met them, or that they are miles away, and because of that they are so deserving of our thoughts and prayers.
Monday such tragedy struck Delta Theta chapter at University of Idaho. Alumna Katherine (Katy) Benoit was murdered. Katy was about to start her first year of graduate school at University of Idaho where she also earned her Bachelor's degree in Psychology. I don't feel that is the blog networks place to share further details here, but a simple news search will take you to numerous stories.
Please keep Katy's family, the sisters of Delta Theta, and the University of Idaho community in your thoughts and prayers in this trying time.

industry_corpus2: Subject Education


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In and Out Express Care offers some unique advantages for patients, including four easily accessible locations for urgent care in Hampton Roads, extended and weekend hours (when many other doctor’s offices are closed), on-site lab equipment, vision and hearing tests, EKG, x-ray, and trauma bays for emergencies. We are one of the few urgent care clinics to have our own Slit Lamp for removal of fragments in the eye. For serious eye emergencies, we refer to the appropriate ophthalmological specialist. Many In and Out Express Care urgent care physicians also have Emergency Room experience and are adept at handling minor emergencies such as broken bones and lacerations.
Our In and Out Express Care urgent care clinics offer digital x-ray technology and referrals to many MRI locations, including those that perform Extremity MRI, Open multi-positional MRI and Closed MRI, depending on the patient’s needs.
Our goal is to be a top-notch healthcare provider by listening to our patients, providing comprehensive service, and working collaboratively to promote and maintain health.


text:
Today on the agenda – nine to five and beyond office attire!
You can alwasy count on a Little Navy Dress. You will look elegant and professional. You will wear perfect nine to five and beyond office outfit. Enjoy your day!
The whole outfit would not be complete without modern glass jewellery accentuating your authentic personality. This week I accessorize business attire with Harmony – Modern Glass Earrings and Pendant.
PS. Need a styling advise? Just get in touch!

industry_corpus2: Others


text: Mortgage rates for credit score 647 on Lender411 for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages are at 4.22%. That increased from 4.22% to 4.22%. The 15-year fixed rates are now at 3.63%. The 5/1 ARM mortgage for 647 FICO is now at 4.13%.

industry_corpus2: Finance & Economics


text:
Jezz Vernon and Mahmood Ali-Balogun will join Producers Dapo Oshiyemi and Mickey Dube as Executive Producer’s on the Action Crime-Thriller film ‘INCENSED’.
The widely-respected film executives will take up the positions immediately and work with the team on the financing, production and distribution of the film.
Dapo Oshiyemi, said: “I have known Jezz and Mr Ali-Balogun for a while and they both share our vision for the film so I am extremely pleased they have agreed to bring their wealth of experience, knowledge and contacts to the project as we strive to make ‘Incensed’ a critical and commercial success in today’s global film market”.
Incensed is scheduled to shoot early 2019 and is represented by UK based Talking Drum Entertainment.


text:
Orange Line Tool & Equipment offers design, installation, and repair of all oil dispensing equipment including tanks, pumps, meter guns, reels, and fluid -control systems. Oil equipment is available for purchase or with marketing funds to purchase. For qualified customers, we can design a customized program for marketing funded equipment to fit your needs.
For more information regarding our Marketing Funded Program, please contact your Territory Sales Manager or call our office at (800) 492-6864 today!

industry_corpus2: Petrochemicals


text:
Still, this isn’t smoking-gun evidence anything inappropriate happened in the rate review process.
Minnesota is one of 31 states in the country that can deny rates requested by insurance companies based upon whether the rates are justified. The [Commerce] Department’s actuaries conduct statistical analyses and closely scrutinize the assumptions that health insurance companies use to develop rates. The new plans and rates recently approved that will be available during open enrollment include many consumer protections.
All this sounds good, but we now know the health plans sold in the individual market failed to include one key consumer protection: No one was protected against overzealous and irresponsible actions by the Department of Commerce to pressure unjustifiably low rates.
As a result the lowest rates in the country, Minnesota is now the only state in the country where insurers are not collecting enough in premiums to cover their costs. All this is leading to rate shock and harmful volatility in the market.
Regulators will undoubtedly continue to argue they were simply acting “in the public interest to make sure the rates requested are justified.” However, the emerging facts surrounding PreferredOne’s rate review process—including new information in a document I recently reviewed—increasingly point to irresponsible behavior.
One strong piece of evidence is the fact that regulators asked PreferredOne for additional reductions when the regulators already knew the company’s rates were at or below the rest of the market. PreferredOne would not have known this at the time and surely would not have agreed to set rates lower if it knew it made them such an outlier.
No clear-headed actuary or regulator could agree it was reasonable to assume only 5 percent of MCHA members would enter the individual market. MCHA—the Minnesota Comprehensive Health Association—is the state’s high risk pool that has provided coverage to people with preexisting conditions since the 1970s. It will be shut down at the end of this year and every member had the opportunity to switch to new coverage in the individual market during open enrollment last fall and winter. The new coverage offered better benefits at a more affordable price, especially for people who qualified for subsidies. So, switching was a no-brainer for MCHA members, most of whom were active health care users very aware of the limits of their health plan. The idea that only 5 percent of MCHA members would wake up to these benefits in 2014 is altogether unreasonable.
The fact that the actuary and the senior management would even propose such an unreasonable change in their assumptions to justify lower rates strongly suggests, if not proves regulators were exerting inappropriate pressure on the company to lower rates.
Without such pressure, it’s just too hard to imagine a professional actuary and senior management making this change because it is so clearly aimed at creating a lower rate level, not a justified rate level.
It’s much easier to imagine closed door high pressure negotiations between senior insurance company managers and senior Commerce staff, without the presence or input of an actuary.
Ultimately, it appears Commerce regulators approved PreferredOne’s changed assumptions, which allowed the initial rates to be lowered by 26 percent. Even more assumptions must have been changed later on to justify lowering rates an additional 14.7 percent, which combined resulted in the 37 percent reduction.
We now know 62 percent of MCHA members switched to better coverage in the individual health insurance market. Set aside the obvious pressure placed on insurers to lower rates, by just allowing PreferredOne to assume only 5 percent of MCHA members would enter the market, Commerce regulators are, in part, responsible for the substantial losses the company is experiencing right now and the 63 percent rate hike being imposed on their current enrollees.
Nothing protected consumers from overzealous Commerce regulators. Maybe, if the rate review process were more transparent, consumers would not be facing the rate shock of a 63 percent premium increase today. Clearly, Commerce’s rate review process needs a serious audit and overhaul.
And this may not be the end of the story. It’s not yet known how much other insurers altered their actuarial assumptions to accommodate pressure for lower rates. Consumers deserve to know.


text: This pair of socks comes with a bit more bite! Crafted from bamboo which is hypoallergenic, thermo-regulating and other scientific words. You'd be silly not to snap them up straightaway.

industry_corpus2: Manufacturing


text:
How far does your father’s shadow stretch?
Liam’s father, Charles was in many films. He was killed by Kurt Russell. He was also killed by Clint Eastwood and Robert De Niro. He was shot, bludgeoned, drowned and even burned with a flamethrower. Then he died for real.
Liam is trying to make theatre, like his Dad did. People keep telling him how alike he and his Dad are. But what was his Dad like?
Part-confessional, part documentary, this show explores the life and work of a man who lived and breathed theatre, and celebrates the complex and continuing relationship between a father and son.
The show ran from March 9th to 14th in Smock Alley Boy's School.


text:
Jan Spradlin entered the communications business in 2013 working as Office Manager for Southeastern Telephone. After managing her and her husband’s convenience and grocery store for 6 years she became manager of Ryan Creek Marina for another 6 years. After her husband passed away she moved to the Gardendale area to be close to her aging mother and her sister. She has been with Comtex since 2015 as Office Manager when Comtex brought their expertise in technology and communications to the Birmingham area. Jan greatly enjoys working with people as she truly believes there is good in everyone. Jan’s passion at work is to help Comtex customers fulfill their needs and to help their company grow in the technology field and to also to assist the Birmingham location to grow to its full potential.
When Jan isn’t at Comtex, she finds great joy in spending time with her children and grandchildren. As a family, they spend time hiking, camping and traveling to different National Parks each year.


text:
This has to be the most beautiful love poem ever! What do you think?
So close that when you close your eyes, I fall asleep.


text:
Indian currency futures enable individuals and companies in India to hedge and trade their Indian Rupee risk. Currency futures are needed if your business is influenced by fluctuations in currency exchange rates. Every business exposed to foreign exchange risk needs to have a facility to hedge against such risk. We at Capstocks provide Currency Futures trading also known as FX Future which allow investors to hedge against foreign exchange risk. Exchange-traded currency futures are a superior tool for such hedging because of greater transparency, liquidity, counterparty guarantee and accessibility.
The price of a future contract is in terms of INR ( Indian Rupee) per unit of other currency.. Currency Derivatives are available on four currency pairs viz. US Dollars (USD), Euro (EUR), Great Britain Pound (GBP) and Japanese Yen (JPY). Currency options are currently available on US Dollars.
The contract size of the USDINR futures contract is USD 1,000, EURINR future contract is EURO 1,000, GBPINR future contract is GBP 1,000 and JPYINR future contract is YEN 1,00,000. The contracts shall have a minimum maturity of one month and maximum maturity of twelve months and will be settled in Indian Rupee only.


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Testing Inflation with Hundreds of Fields Concordance or Contradiction?
This blog post was written by Marc Manera.
More than one million galaxies have been observed in the last three years by the 2.5 meter telescope at the Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico. In the picture above you can see the telescope (and me) just before sunset during a visit I made to the observatory some years ago. Some of the astronomers and cosmologists of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey had met nearby to discuss the science that can be done with the forthcoming observations – but now the data are already here.
When you have observations of the position and colour of more than one million galaxies at your fingertips, there are a lot of questions about the universe that can be investigated. In this post I will focus on how we have measured the expansion of the universe using the distribution of galaxies from the BOSS survey, which is part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.
BOSS – the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey – has targeted 1.35 million galaxies covering approximately 10,000 square degrees. Galaxies are observed by setting optical fibres in the focal plane of the telescope. The light of each galaxy is then carried to a spectrograph where it is diffracted into a spectrum of wavelengths or frequencies i.e. colours – like a rainbow – and the data are stored.
As the light travels from the galaxy where it was originally emitted to us, the spectrum of colours of the galaxies shifts towards the red; i.e., the galaxies appear “redder” than their original colour. We call this change in colour redshift, and we can measure it because we know the colour/frequency of a particular atomic transition as it would have been observed in the galaxies when it was emitted. The magnitude of the colour change – the redshift – is an important cosmological quantity, and tells us how much the universe has changed in size since that light was emitted. If the universe has doubled its volume since then, then the wavelength of the light that we observe will have doubled too.
The figure above shows slices through the SDSS 3-dimensional map of the distribution of galaxies. The Earth is at the centre, and each point represents a galaxy, typically containing about 100 billion stars. The outer circle is at a distance of 2 billion light years. The wedges showing no galaxies were not mapped by the SDSS because dust in our own Galaxy obscures the view of the distant universe in this direction. Both slices contain all galaxies between -1.25 and 1.25 degrees declination.
As the SDSS map shows, galaxies in the universe are not distributed randomly. Galaxies tend to cluster in groups of galaxies because they attract each other through gravity. Galaxies also have a particular separation at which they are more likely to be found; this separation is set by plasma physics – it is the Baryon Acoustic Oscillation characteristic distance – and we know it is about 4.5 x 1021 km. This is the distance that galaxies “like” to keep between themselves, in a typical sense.
In the sky, for each set of galaxies that emitted their light at a particular moment during the expansion of the universe, the typical separation of the galaxies subtends a particular angle. Since we can calculate this separation between galaxies from physics (r) and the angle it subtends by observation (θ), using the basic geometry of a triangle we can work out the distance between us and these galaxies (d). This is illustrated in the final figure below.
This shows a person observing two galaxies separated by a typical distance r. If we know then angle θ, we can measure the distance from us to the galaxies.
Finally, because the speed of light in constant, we know how long ago the light from the galaxies was emitted, and thus we have all the information we need to deduce the expansion history of the universe.
So to sum up, to work out the expansion rate of the universe we select several samples of galaxies; each sample will have emitted its light at a different time, and therefore it is at a different distance to us. We can measure this distance using simple geometry by observing the typical angle by which galaxies are separated. Once we have the distance to each sample of galaxies, we also have a measure of how long ago they emitted that light. Now, from the colours of the galaxies (the redshift) we also know how big the universe was at that time. For each set of galaxies we know the age of the universe at a particular moment and how big the universe was at that time. We have therefore determined the expansion history of the universe.
This is exactly what the BOSS survey has done using three sets of galaxies at different distances.

industry_corpus2: Technology & Research


text: By Fanchon Bailly. block. Published at Wednesday, January 16th, 2019 - 21:41:09 PM.


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A conference on the prosperity and security of Africa will take place in Addis Ababa on August 15th and 16th.
It is organized by an international peace NGO called Heavenly Culture, World Peace, Restoration of Light (HWPL) under the UN ECOSOC along with representatives from various sectors and organizations in Ethiopia.
The two-day conference will bring together youth, women, media, religious and political leaders.
According to the program, groups of youth and women will talk about the ethnic or regional conflicts that have been continuing until recently and discuss the legalization of peace necessary for harmony and reconciliation among nations on August 15th.
The host organization, HWPL, is proposing the Declaration of Peace and Cessation of War (DPCW) as a resolution for establishing a legally binding law for peace that can fundamentally prevent war and conflict.
On the 16th, there will be a forum for interfaith dialogue to promote a network among Christian denominations to be one under the meaning of the scripture and the 2018 Addis Ababa Summit to strengthen a cooperative partnership for regional stability and peace by reaffirming the importance of the implementation of an international or internal law for peace.

industry_corpus2: Politics & Administration


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Bill Text - AB-793 Energy efficiency.
An act to amend Section 2790 of, and to add Section 717 to, the Public Utilities Code, relating to public utilities.
AB 793, Quirk. Energy efficiency.
(1) Under existing law, the Public Utilities Commission has regulatory authority over public utilities, including electrical corporations and gas corporations, as defined. Existing law requires the commission to require an electrical or gas corporation to perform home weatherization services for low-income customers if the commission determines that a significant need for those services exists in the corporation’s service territory. For these purposes, existing law authorizes weatherization, where feasible, to include certain measures for a dwelling unit. Existing law also authorizes weatherization, for these purposes, to include other measures determined by the commission to be feasible, taking into consideration the cost-effectiveness of the measures as a whole and the policy of reducing energy-related hardships facing low-income households.
This bill would authorize weatherization, for the above-specified purposes, to include energy management technology determined by the commission to be feasible, taking into consideration the above-described factors.
(2) Existing law requires the commission, by July 1, 2010, and in consultation with the State Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission, the Independent System Operator, and other key stakeholders, to determine the requirements for a smart grid deployment plan consistent with specified policies and federal law. Existing law requires each electrical corporation, by July 1, 2011, to develop and submit a smart grid deployment plan to the commission for approval.
This bill would require the commission to require an electrical or gas corporation to develop a program to provide incentives to a residential or small or medium business customer to acquire energy management technology for use in the customer’s home or place of business. The bill would require the commission to require an electrical or gas corporation to develop a plan to educate residential customers and small and medium business customers about the incentive program. The bill would require the commission to require the electrical or gas corporation to annually report to the commission on actual customer savings resulting from the incentive program.
The bill would require the commission to evaluate all electrical or gas corporation energy savings claims achieved pursuant to the incentive program described above in a manner consistent with commission-adopted evaluation protocols.
(3) Because a violation of any part of any order, decision, rule, direction, demand, or requirement of the Public Utilities Commission is a crime, this bill would impose a state-mandated local program.
(1) Develop a program no later than January 1, 2017, within the electrical or gas corporation’s demand-side management programs authorized by the commission, to provide incentives to a residential or small or medium business customer to acquire energy management technology for use in the customer’s home or place of business. The electrical or gas corporation may allow third parties or local governments to apply for incentives on behalf of customers. The electrical or gas corporation shall work with third parties, local governments, and other interested parties in developing the program. The electrical or gas corporation shall establish incentive amounts based on savings estimation and baseline policies adopted by the commission.
(2) Develop a plan by September 30, 2016, to educate residential customers and small and medium business customers about the incentive program developed pursuant to paragraph (1). The commission may require that the plan be integrated into, or coordinated with, any education campaign required by the commission.
(3) Annually report to the commission on actual customer savings resulting from the incentive program established pursuant to this section. The commission shall evaluate all electrical or gas corporation energy savings claims achieved pursuant to the incentive program in a manner consistent with commission-adopted evaluation protocols and determine if the program shall continue or be modified.
(b) For purposes of this section, “energy management technology” may include a product, service, or software that allows a customer to better understand and manage electricity or gas use in the customer’s home or place of business.
(c) Nothing in this section shall be construed to amend or limit the ability of a community choice aggregator to apply to administer an energy efficiency or conservation program or a demand-side management program as set forth in Section 381.1.
(a) The commission shall require an electrical or gas corporation to perform home weatherization services for low-income customers, as determined by the commission under Section 739, if the commission determines that a significant need for those services exists in the corporation’s service territory, taking into consideration both the cost-effectiveness of the services and the policy of reducing the hardships facing low-income households.
(F) Door and building envelope repairs that reduce air infiltration.
(2) The commission shall direct any electrical or gas corporation to provide as many of these measures as are feasible for each eligible low-income dwelling unit.
(c) “Weatherization” may also include other building conservation measures, energy management technology, energy-efficient appliances, and energy education programs determined by the commission to be feasible, taking into consideration for all measures both the cost-effectiveness of the measures as a whole and the policy of reducing energy-related hardships facing low-income households.
(d) Weatherization programs shall use the needs assessment pursuant to Section 382.1 to maximize efficiency of delivery.
(e) For purposes of this section, “energy management technology” may include a product, service, or software that allows a customer to better understand and manage electricity or gas use in the customer’s home.


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Cozy Chicks: Early Announcement. . .and Movies!
Early Announcement. . .and Movies!
Only one more week until my new release, UNRAVELED, comes out! I know I'm early, but I'm excited! This book is the 9th in the Kelly Flynn Knitting Mystery Series. NINE!! Wow. . .can you believe it? Sometimes I have to pinch myself. I know, I know. . .I'm getting ahead of myself. The book isn't available until next Tuesday, June 7th, but I just thought I'd slip in an "early announcement" at the beginning of my blog today. Next week, I promise to give some hints of what's happening in the next installment of Kelly Flynn's Adventures. So. . .stay tuned, folks!
LIMITLESS---I really enjoyed this movie. There's a fascinating "premise" that comes at the start which you find yourself easily accepting: a new "wonder pill" developed that allows the user to access 100% of his/her brain capacity when taken daily. Considering we only use 20% or so of our brains approximately, that's a fascinating concept. And it leads to a fascinating story-- watching a depressed slacker (Brad Cooper) turn into an intellectual wonder boy. But, there's more going on. Check it out.
THE LINCOLN LAWYER---Michael McConaughey has really nailed the "lawyer" role in films. Of course, he's had some pretty good scripts to work with, such as most of John Grisham's thrillers. This one has an intriguing plotline and excellent characters. Smooth-talking lawyer finds himself outsmarted. . .almost.
HANNA---This has got to be one of the best action/adventure flics I've seen lately. It's right up there with SALT. Maybe, better. Mainly because the premise is more unusual and the young girl playing Hanna is SO good. An actress I haven't seen before. The character Hanna is fascinating, and that's an understatement. And the action does not disappoint. The script is inventive and the European locations chosen really contributed to the mystery and suspense. The director didn't resort to "stock" European scenic settings and set-ups. Oh, no. These locations are decidedly different. Definitely deserves an A+ for creativity and execution. And the actors chosen (including Cate Blanchett) are perfect.
BRIDESMAIDS---Okay, you all know I love, love, love the action/adventure flics, but I occasionally do see a "chic flic" or light romantic comedy. I'm kind of picky, though, so not all of today's offerings entice me. Some look too brainless for words. . .like totally! BRIDESMAIDS, however, is a total winner. It is Laugh Out Loud Funny. No kidding. And the actors are perfect for these roles. Kristin Wiig does a fantastic job as the struggling/well-intentioned, but screwed up Maid of Honor. This movie takes Chic Flic where it hasn't gone before. These bridesmaids get in some outrageous scenes, again---Laugh Out Loud Funny. I've heard guys like this movie as much as girls. I'm not surprised. Check it out, folks.
Yay! Another Kelly Flynn story. I love Kelly and all the adventures she and her friends get involved in.
Thanks for the movie reviews. They all sound good.
I am not much for movies, but I love books! Please keep writing the series for a long time.
Early congrats Maggie. I haven't read this series yet, but they are on my list of great cozies to read!
Bridesmaids was my first 'grown up' movie in a long time and I was so happy I chose it over Thor. I haven't laughed so much in a very long time.
I will get Hanna on DVD and will likely get Limitless, too.
congrats & good luck on your next release!! it is definitely on my ToBeRead list!!!
she is a FANTASTIC actress!!!!!
Can't wait for the new book!!!
Linda----I'm glad you're looking forward to the next Kelly Flynn. I can't wait to tell you folks about it.
Thanks, Aurian, you're a sweetie. So glad you're enjoying the series.
Bella----I hope you give Kelly and her friends a try. I think you'll like them. Meanwhile, enjoy Bridesmaids.
Vickie----LOL about choice between Bridesmaids & Thor. Definitely rent Hanna & Limitless.
cyn209----Thank you! I didn't know what else she had appeared in. I missed Atonement & Lovely Bones. She is excellent! Hanna will definitely move her career into higher gear.
I keep thinking I'd love Bridesmaids. Thanks for the great reviews!
If you haven't read Michael Connelly's books you should. Lincoln Lawyer is a spin-off sort of of his Harry Bosch novels, which are one of my few must buy in HC and digital. I haven't seen the movie because no one I know that has, has read the book and I hate to be disappointed.


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Laser resurfacing is a safe yet aggressive way to treat skin conditions, even deep wrinkles around the mouth and eyes.
ProFractional Therapy is a quick and comfortable laser procedure with a little downtime, used for improving the overall appearance of your skin. The procedure can be customized to your specific skin conditions and desired outcome. Most areas of the body can be treated. Popular treatment areas are the face and neck, though many people also treat the chest and hands.
ProFractional Therapy is “fractionated” laser resurfacing, meaning that only a portion of the skin is treated in a session. The treatment uses a laser beam that ablates thousands of pinpoint channels in your skin. Laser resurfacing precisely ablates (vaporizes) a layer of the skin, eliminating the old, damaged tissue in the process. Wrinkles and blemishes such as sun spots and pigment irregularities are vaporized and replaced by healthy skin.
Excellent results can be obtained in just one treatment, though the number of treatments needed may vary from patient to patient. Dr Umerah and her staff will personalize a plan based on your specific needs and we may choose to combine ProFractional Therapy with other aesthetic procedures to achieve optimal results.
Immediately following the procedure you may experience mild redness and a sensation resembling a sunburn. Your after-treatment care will include analgesics and application of an ointment to keep the skin moist. Your skin will be sensitive to ultra-violet light after the treatment, so you must avoid direct sun exposure until fully healed. It is recommended that you always use some level of solar protection to avoid sun damage.


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Familiar with the words, "You Died?" Grab your friends & come test your mettle.
Band together with up to 3 other survivors against the in this Learn to Play session of the hit Dark Souls Board Game Players will be taught to play the Dark Souls Board Game by an experienced Steamforged Games Event Staffer and will have the opportunity to play though at least one full game.
Warnings: The event was originally listed with rules of "Dark Souls The Board Game (1st)." It has been changed to "Dark Souls The Board Game (1st Edition)."

industry_corpus2: Gaming


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NASHVILLE, TN — Two Nashville-based organizations, Advance Financial and Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC), were named to Forbes’ first-ever ranking of The Best Employers for New Graduates.
Forbes partnered with market research company Statista to conduct an independent survey of more than 10,000 young professionals working for companies that have at least 1,000 employees within the United States. On a five-point scale, employees were asked to rank their workplace based on atmosphere, development, image, working conditions, salary, workplace and diversity. They were also asked if they would recommend their company to someone seeking employment and were able to evaluate their industry’s competitors. The 250 companies that received the highest scores were awarded a ranking on the list.
Founded in 1996, Advance Financial is a leading multi-state fintech company based in Nashville. Family owned and operated, the company is aggressively investing in the expansion of its market presence. In keeping with its vision of a world-class customer experience, Advance Financial is delivering instant lending decisions and brick-and-mortar money services 24/7/365. The company maintains an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau and was named to the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing private companies in the country for the seventh year in a row.