Tag: causes of death

Roundup causes high levels of mortality following contact exposure in bumble bees

Our results are the first to show that contact exposure to either consumer or agricultural Roundup® products at label recommended concentrations can cause high levels of mortality in bumble bees. The consumer product Roundup® Ready‐To‐Use caused 94% mortality at the pre‐mixed concentration, and still caused significant mortality at a quarter strength. The agricultural product Roundup® ProActive also caused significant mortality, although over a longer time period. Interestingly, Roundup® No Glyphosate caused 96% mortality while the generic GBH Weedol® did not significantly increase mortality. Together, this demonstrates that the co‐formulants in these Roundup® products, not the active ingredient glyphosate, are driving mortality. We suggest that the mechanism driving this mortality may be surfactants in the formulations blocking the tracheal system of the bees, which is essential for gas exchange. Given the hazard demonstrated here with all tested Roundup® products, and the extensive exposure of bees to such GBHs world‐wide, GBHs may pose a high risk to bees, and thus may be an as yet unidentified driver of the bee declines that are occurring around the globe.

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The hidden death toll of lockdown

Evidence-based medicine might sound like a tautology — what kind of medicine isn’t based on evidence? I’m afraid that you’d be surprised. Massive decisions are often taken on misleading, low-quality evidence. We see this all the time. In the last pandemic, the swine flu outbreak of 2009, I did some work asking why the government spent £500 million on Tamiflu: then hailed as a wonder drug. In fact, it proved to have a very limited effect. The debate then had many of the same cast of characters as today: Jonathan Van-Tam, Neil Ferguson and others. The big difference this time is the influence of social media, whose viciousness is something to behold. It’s easy to see why academics would self-censor and stay away from the debate, especially if it means challenging a consensus. Academics who are tenured, like me, don’t have to worry so much about people pulling strings above us. This is the importance of tenure; it allows academic freedom. In a crisis, when tempers run so high, you need a variety of views more than ever.

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Federal 2018 Data: Falling Killed 126 Times More People than Rifles of Any Kind

Federal data on causes of death in America show that, as recently as 2018, falling accounted for at least 126 times as many fatalities as rifles of any kind — an inconvenient fact for Democrat lawmakers who are currently demanding a new round of nationwide gun controls.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) 2018 National Vital Statistics show 37,455 people died from unintentional falls throughout the year.

The same CDC data shows unintentional firearm deaths for 2018 came in at 458, which means accidental death by falling was about 82 times more likely than accidental death via any kind of firearm.

The numbers become especially pertinent to today’s political climate when FBI Unified Crime Report figures are brought into the equation. The FBI figures look at the intentional, criminal use of firearms, and show a total of 297 deaths from rifles of any kind in 2018. This means accidental death by falling occurred 126 times more often than intentional death by a rifle of any kind in 2018.

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‘Superbugs’ kill more than 35K people in the US each year. Doctors may be partially to blame, study suggests

As the medical community develops treatments to combat the coronavirus, another deadly enemy continues to lurk in hospitals across the country: antibiotic-resistant infections.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls antibiotic resistance one of the “biggest public health challenges of our time,” and a new study suggests doctors may be partially to blame for its prevalence.

The study, published last week in the peer-reviewed journal JAMA Network Open, found more than half of antibiotics prescribed in hospitals were not consistent with recommendations, alarming health experts who say inappropriately prescribing medications contributes to antibiotic resistance.  

“We’re in an antibiotic crisis. Many call this the ‘silent pandemic’ going on concurrently with the coronavirus pandemic,” said Dr. Debra Goff, infectious clinical pharmacist and professor of pharmacy who leads antibiotic resistance efforts at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center.

In the agency’s study, researchers looked at 1,566 patients who received antibiotics and found that 55.9% shouldn’t have received them based on practice guidelines.

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TRUST THE SCIENCE: Peer Reviewed Study Suggests CDC Inflated COVID-19 Fatalities

A peer-reviewed study published in the Journal of Science, Public Health Policy & Law last October reveals that the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) disregarded federal laws and regulations in changing how the government counts deaths from COVID, inflating the mortality numbers as a result.

“All federal agencies are required to submit notification for data collection, publication, or analysis to the Federal Register BEFORE gaining approval from the US Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OMB/OIRA) to ensure they are in compliance with the Information Quality Act (IQA) and the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) and therefore, approved to implement the proposed changes,” the authors of the peer-reviewed study said.

“Based upon the complete absence of Federal Register records for ‘Proposed Data Collection Submitted for Public Comment,’ at no point, did the CDC inform the OMB/OIRA or allow for 60 days of public comment in the following unilateral decisions that attempted to bypass Federal oversight,” the study charges.

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