Showing posts with label Doctors. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Doctors. Show all posts

Monday, March 17, 2014

How doctors make fake diagnoses for diseases


How doctors make fake diagnoses for diseases


by Jon Rappoport


March 17, 2014


www.nomorefakenews.com


I never grow tired of explaining this issue, because people write to me with the assumption that they understand disease diagnosis. And they don’t. They’re not off by a little bit. They’re off by a mile.


Two of the most prevalent tests for diagnosing diseases are antibody tests and what’s called the PCR.


Prior to 1984, it was well understood by most doctors that the presence of antibodies specific to a given germ meant: the patient’s body had contacted and successfully thrown off the germ.


Antibodies are scouts for the immune system. They “go hunting” for germ invaders and ID them, so other troops can knock them out. That’s the conventional view.


Therefore, if a test shows that antibodies are present, it’s taken to mean: victory. The body IDed and rejected the germ in question.


That view was turned upside down in the mid-1980s. All of a sudden, the presence of antibodies meant: the patient was ill or would get ill.


Actually, the presence of antibodies simply indicates that the body’s immune system contacted the germ in question. That’s all it means.


To say that a positive antibody test means a patient has a certain disease is fatuous, wrong, and absurd. Yet, that is what doctors do every day.


The PCR diagnostic test takes tiny genetic fragments of what are assumed (but not always proven) to be germs and enlarges them, amplifies them, so they can be observed.


That very fact tells you why the test is useless for diagnosing disease. Even by conventional medical standards, you need lots and lots and lots of a given germ in the body to even begin to assume the germ is causing the patient any harm.


And the PCR test is based on the idea that there is so little of the germ available that you need to enlarge it fantastically, just to be able to see it.


There is a medical term that refers to the quantity of a given germ in the body: titer. It is usually ignored in today’s medical “science.” But it is vital.


Saying a germ is present in the body is irrelevant to disease, unless you can show there are lots and lots of that germ doing harm.


When researchers say, “We found germ X in the patient,” people tend to assume that means the germ is causing disease, but this isn’t necessarily so.


When researchers are trying to discover whether there is a new disease they haven’t seen before, they must isolate the previously unknown germ as the first step. This isn’t done indirectly by antibody or PCR test.


For example, in my last article about hepatitis C, I mentioned Nick Regush, the late ABC News medical reporter, and his discovery that the so-called virus reputed to cause hepatitis C had never been properly isolated.


Not properly isolated=never really discovered.


Doctors and researchers, in a stunning display of incompetence and/or dishonesty, are misdiagnosing patients every hour of every day. They are using tests that don’t work. They are misinterpreting the meaning of the tests they run. They are lying.


And the general public blithely accepts these false diagnoses.


To put the cherry on the cake, on top of everything I’ve written here, it is really the individual’s immune system that determines whether a germ causes disease. It’s not the germ all by itself. The medical establishment has it backwards.


There may be exceptions to this rule, as in the case of certain bioengineered germs. But for the wide range of typical diseases which are said to plague humankind, it’s all about immune systems, and whether they are strong or weak.


And that is not a medical issue. It’s an issue involving nutrition, environmental toxins, poverty, sanitation, overcrowding.


No conventional doctor deploys tests to assess these vital factors, and he doesn’t have drugs to treat them.


False diagnosis of disease is huge problem and a huge hoax.


Jon Rappoport


The author of two explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED and EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at www.nomorefakenews.com




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How doctors make fake diagnoses for diseases

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Doctors “afraid to diagnose health conditions linked to the oil and gas industry”



tar sands - evacuationLater today hearings are scheduled to begin on emissions and vapours emanating for the tar sands, specifically around the Peace River area.


The hearings, which have been scheduled by the Albertan Energy Regulator, have come after years of complaints by local residents into the odours, which are so bad some families have been forced to move from their homes.


Local residents have been complaining of symptoms such as severe headaches, dizziness, sinus problems, vomiting, muscle spasms and fatigue, amongst others.


But we do not know how badly the tar sands are really impacting people’s health. This is because according to a report commissioned specifically for the hearings by a public health specialist, some local doctors are reluctant to treat patients who draw connections between the tar sands industry and their personal health problems.


The report, prepared by Dr Margaret Sears, concludes that: “There were reports from various sources that physicians would not diagnose a relationship between bitumen exposures and chronic symptoms.”


“Physicians are quite frankly afraid to diagnose health conditions linked to the oil and gas industry,” she adds.


And it gets worse. For those individuals who suggested there was a “connection” between their health problems and the tar sands, Sears records how “Physician care was refused … and that analytical services were refused by an Alberta laboratory when told that the proposed analysis was to investigate exposure to emissions related to bitumen extraction.”


Locals are arguing that the regulator must force the industry to capture the emissions: “The best result possible is that they make some regulations to get companies to capture their vapours,” believes Alain Labrecque, who has had to vacate his farm after suffering numerous symptoms including headaches, dizziness, fatigue and memory loss.


His family only started experiencing symptoms in 2011, after Baytex Energy purchased nearly 50 wells and in the area and started heating bitumen in above-ground tanks to extract the oil.


“There is definitely a regulatory gap,” Labrecque argues “We just want more accountability. We want the regulator to take on a greater role, and have regulations in place so they can enforce them, and just provide more accountability to industry.”


Baytex, for its part, predictably argues that “there are no human health impacts associated with the emissions from our projects.”


The Labrecques have also now filed an injunction against Baytex to force the company to stop operating. The hearing though won’t be heard until March.


Local residents will also have to wait until March for the report into the hearings to be published by the regulator.


http://priceofoil.org/2014/01/21/doctors-afraid-diagnose-health-conditions-linked-oil-gas-industry/





2012 The Awakening



Doctors “afraid to diagnose health conditions linked to the oil and gas industry”

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Ed Schultz Touts His Made-Up Statistic: "Most" Doctors Don"t Like Government, Vote GOP


According to Ed Schultz on Wednesday, “most” doctors hate government and vote Republican. What source did he cite for these claims? Well, none. The MSNBC anchor happily admitted he was just saying what came into his head. Railing against the compromise budget plan that passed the Senate, Schultz mentioned the “doc fix,” an effort to correct a problem in how doctors are paid by Medicare. Schultz snarled, “This is about the vote. Most doctors in this country vote Republican. Most of them don’t like government.” [MP3 audio here.]


For proof, the host touted, “Do I have anything to back that up? No, that’s just a gut feeling.” He added, “I’m willing to say that, because it’s just instinctively, that’s what I feel in this country.” The liberal New York Times disagreed with Schultz’s hunch.


In a May 30, 2011 article entitled, “As Physicians’ Jobs Change, So Do Their Politics,” writer Gardiner Harris suggested that Doctors may be moving towards the Democrats:


Doctors were once overwhelmingly male and usually owned their own practices. They generally favored lower taxes and regularly fought lawyers to restrict patient lawsuits. Ronald Reagan came to national political prominence in part by railing against “socialized medicine” on doctors’ behalf.


But doctors are changing. They are abandoning their own practices and taking salaried jobs in hospitals, particularly in the North, but increasingly in the South as well. Half of all younger doctors are women, and that share is likely to grow.


There are no national surveys that track doctors’ political leanings, but as more doctors move from business owner to shift worker, their historic alliance with the Republican Party is weakening from Maine as well as South Dakota, Arizona and Oregon, according to doctors’ advocates in those and other states.



A partial transcript of the December 17 segment is below:


5:07


ED SCHULTZ: You see, they believe, the Republicans, that all of these unemployed people in America, they’re Democrats. And they also believe that they’re not going to vote for the Republicans anyway. So that’s part of the equation. Oh, we did get the doc fix in this bill. How many Democratic doctors do you know? This is about the vote. Most doctors in this country vote Republican. Most of them don’t like government. Do I have anything to back that up? No, that’s just a gut feeling. I’m willing to say that, because it’s just instinctively, that’s what I feel in this country. So the game plan for the Democrats starts with something they really have no ledger to go on. You know what they have when it comes to dealing with John Boehner? A blank sheet of paper. That’s what they have.




— Scott Whitlock is Senior News Analyst at the Media Research Center. Follow Scott Whitlock on Twitter.





BiasAlerts



Ed Schultz Touts His Made-Up Statistic: "Most" Doctors Don"t Like Government, Vote GOP

Monday, November 18, 2013

VIDEO: Top 10 Doctor Who Villains







When you fly around in a time traveling police box, there’€™s no shortage of enemies to be made. Join http://www.WatchMojo.com as we count down the top 10 Doctor Who Villains.













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VIDEO: Top 10 Doctor Who Villains







When you fly around in a time traveling police box, there’€™s no shortage of enemies to be made. Join http://www.WatchMojo.com as we count down the top 10 Doctor Who Villains.













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VIDEO: Top 10 Doctor Who Villains

Friday, November 8, 2013

Syria"s Polio Threatens Europe, Warn Doctors


(Newser) – Polio might just be looking at a comeback tour, thanks to the Syrian civil war. There’s a significant risk that the now-rare disease could spread from Syria to Europe, as refugees seek asylum there, a group of German scientists warned in The Lancet today. The danger is that many people may not know they’re carrying the disease; only about 1 in 200 people infected develop symptoms. The vaccine commonly known in Europe exacerbates this, because it’s good at preventing symptoms but only partially effective at preventing infection.


It could take almost a year of “silent transmission” before the outbreak is detected, “although hundreds of individuals would carry the infection,” they warn. Simply vaccinating Syrian refugees is “insufficient,” they argue, pressing for a broader approach that might include testing sewage near Syrian refugee settlements, Reuters reports. But the news isn’t all disease and death in Syria; inspectors yesterday reported that they have thus far destroyed all but one of the 23 chemical weapons sites the Assad regime pointed them toward, the New York Times reports.




Green from Newser



Syria"s Polio Threatens Europe, Warn Doctors

Sunday, October 6, 2013

Survey - 83 percent of US doctors have considered abandoning their practices over Obamacare











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(NaturalNews) The implications of the so-called Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, are apparently so drastic that as many as 83 percent of private physicians have considered calling it quits. This is according to a new survey recently released by the Doctor Patient Medical Association (DPMA), a nationwide physicians group dedicated to maintaining and protecting individualized care for all patients.

The survey, which included nearly 700 doctors from at least 45 U.S. states, revealed that most doctors and care providers are incensed by the nationalization of medicine, and believe that the transition from privatized care to government-run care will further erode the quality of healthcare in America. Not only will demand for patient care increase dramatically as a result of the Affordable Care Act, but pay for doctors will also decrease, which will drive many practices out of business.


“Doctors clearly understand what Washington does not — that a piece of paper that says you are ‘covered’ by insurance or ‘enrolled’ in Medicare or Medicaid does not translate to actual medical care when doctors can’t afford to see patients at the low-ball payments, and patients have to jump through government and insurance company bureaucratic hoops,” said DPMA co-founder Kathryn Serkes to The Daily Caller about the survey results.


Out of the 36,000 doctors surveyed, only 4.3 percent actually responded, according to DPMA. The vast majority of those who responded work in solo or small group practices, and are office-based rather than hospital-based, representing a true cross-section of America’s most personalized physicians. And more than three-quarters of respondents are considered to be mid-career, meaning they have been practicing for between 11 and 30 years.


A whopping 65 percent of respondents indicated that their existing problems are a result of too much government involvement, and that more government involvement in the form of the Affordable Care Act will make things work. 95 percent of doctors also said that private practice is already suffering as a result of “corporate medicine,” which will only get progressively worse under the Affordable Care Act.


Interestingly, nearly 75 percent of the doctors surveyed said less government, rather than more government, would help fix the existing problems with the medical system. These problems presumably include things like government oppression against so-called alternative and non-mainstream medical treatments and procedures, as well as the persistent dilemma of “too many hands in the financial cookie jar,” which raises medical costs for everyone.


You can view the complete results of the DPMA survey here: http://www.doctorsandpatients.org


Sources for this article include:


http://www.doctorsandpatients.org


http://dailycaller.com


http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA606.html





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WHAT REALLY HAPPENED



Survey - 83 percent of US doctors have considered abandoning their practices over Obamacare

Friday, September 27, 2013

Ex-pharmacist gets 14 years in federal prison for covering hospital surfaces with same toxic substance doctors inject into children











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(NaturalNews) It can still be found in virtually every influenza vaccine available at your local CVS, Rite Aid or Walgreens pharmacy, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) maintains an official position that it is perfectly safe when injected into a child’s arm. But the heavy metal mercury has landed a former New York pharmacist in the slammer following a conviction that he intentionally spread the substance on surfaces throughout the Albany Medical Center in New York out of anger over a hospital bill.

According to reports, the saga began when 60-year-old Martin Kimber of Ruby, New York, underwent two separate treatments at the Albany Medical Center back in December 2010. According to CSMonitor.com, Kimber was outraged when he received the bill for these treatments, which he tried to contend were too high. When hospital administrators denied these claims and explained that the charges were, in fact, correct, Kimber apparently went ballistic and decided to seek “revenge.”


Official court documents explain that, over the course of several months, Kimber applied at least six pounds of mercury, which he had apparently stolen, to surfaces throughout the facility’s cafeteria and elsewhere. He reportedly engaged in this activity on at least four different occasions, spreading mercury on the cafeteria salad bar, inside a toaster, inside an ice cream freezer and even directly on some chicken tenders that were later found to have made a hospital employee sick.


“Kimber’s action placed … others in imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury because he placed the mercury in food and food containment areas where cafeteria patrons would be directly exposed,” reads a federal agent’s sworn affidavit. “[Kimber] was observed reaching into the ice cream cooler while cupping something in his hand and engaging in a pouring action. He did not take anything from this or other food stations, nor did he stay to eat any food.”


It was later confirmed through toll road records and security footage that Kimber had, indeed, been the culprit in each of these acts of “domestic terrorism,” to pull the words directly from official reports, and police later tracked him down and searched his vehicle and residence. Agents apparently found 21 firearms and roughly 50 knives in Kimber’s car and a Nazi swastika on a wall inside his home.


Kimber’s actions were obviously malicious and designed to harm innocent people, which clearly warrants his sentence. But what is most interesting about many of the reports on the case is their repeated use of terms like “highly hospital. But when a drug company poisons children with it, we call it “medicine.”

If mercury is really as toxic as all these reports claim, however — and it truly is, as we have been saying around here for years — then the vaccine industry is just as guilty as Kimber of committing crimes against humanity. Except vaccines have harmed far more people than the mere handful that ate Kimber’s mercury-laced foods. When will the vaccine companies and their executives be held criminally liable for domestic terrorism against the millions of children who have been forcibly vaccinated with mercury-containing vaccines?


Sources for this article include:


http://www.syracuse.com


http://www.dailyfreeman.com


http://www.csmonitor.com


http://science.naturalnews.com





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Ex-pharmacist gets 14 years in federal prison for covering hospital surfaces with same toxic substance doctors inject into children

Monday, September 23, 2013

Doctors Brace for Surge of Ailing Patients...


Holy Cross Hospital’s health center in Aspen Hill, Maryland, is bracing for more business.


The center treats the uninsured, and has been busy since it opened in 2012 with a waiting list of more than 400 people at its clinic. Now, as a result of the U.S. Affordable Care Act, it’s mulling adding staff and hours in anticipation of next year’s rush of newly-insured patients, many with chronic medical conditions that have gone untreated for years.


Poorly controlled diabetes can cause stroke, kidney failure and blindness. Undiagnosed cancer can translate into complex end-of-life care, and untreated high blood pressure can lead to heart attacks. In effect, the 2010 health law’s biggest promise becomes its most formidable challenge: unprecedented access to care for a needy population when the nation is already grappling with overtaxed emergency rooms and a shortage of physicians.


“When you’re getting people that haven’t had insurance, they have significant health issues,” said Kevin Sexton, president and chief executive officer of Holy Cross Health, in a telephone interview. “A lot of people need these services.”


About 25 million Americans are expected to gain coverage under the health law, commonly known as Obamacare. Starting Oct. 1, as many as 7 million uninsured Americans will begin shopping for private plans through government-run exchanges, with many people eligible to have their premiums subsidized by taxpayers. On Jan. 1, Medicaid programs for low-income people will be expanded in about half the U.S. states.


Strained System


The increase in newly insured patients arrives at a time when the nation has 15,230 fewer primary-care doctors than it needs, according to an Aug. 28 assessment by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. And emergency rooms report being strained with visits that have risen at twice the rate of population growth.


“It’s like we’re handing out bus tickets and the bus is already full,” said Perry Pugno, vice president for medical education at the American Academy of Family Physicians, by telephone. “The shortfall of primary-care access is not an insignificant problem, and it’s going to get worse.”


Almost half of all uninsured, non-elderly adults had a chronic condition, based on a 2005 report by the Urban Institute and the University of Maryland. One in six with hypertension reported no visits to health professionals in a year.


Most who come to Holy Cross’s health center now lack insurance, and have lived for years with serious ailments, according to Elise Riley, the center’s medical director. “It’s frustrating to see diseases that could have been prevented,” she said in an interview in her office.


More demand may lead to months-long waits to see doctors, delays in finding specialists, and strains on hospitals and outpatient clinics, others said.


Patient Access


Ensuring patient access is critical to the Affordable Care Act’s success: if the newly insured swamp the medical system, it could hand critics pushing to derail the law another argument to fray public support. Sara Rosenbaum, a health-law professor at George Washington University in Washington, said she doesn’t believe it’s going to happen.


“It’s going to be a slow ramp up,” Rosenbaum said in a telephone interview. “It’s not like seven million people will get insurance at once. They’re not going to all come racing in the door.”


While that number of new patients can be debated, the status of those who do come in the door is not.


Patients who have had gaps in health insurance were more likely to have not gone to a doctor when sick or to have skipped getting prescriptions, according to an April 2013 report by the Commonwealth Fund, a New York-based foundation that works for health-care access. The uninsured were less likely to be up-to-date on recommended cholesterol, blood pressure, colon cancer screenings and mammograms.


Massachusetts Overhaul


Massachusetts pioneered health reform in 2006 when it enacted near universal coverage under then governor Mitt Romney. Community health centers and hospitals that care for a larger share of lower-income residents saw a 12 percent jump in patient volume from 2009 to 2010, with almost 100,000 more visits to safety net hospitals during that time, according to a 2012 report by the Kaiser Family Foundation.


David Longworth, chairman of the Medicine Institute at Ohio’s Cleveland Clinic, was working in Massachusetts when the state passed near universal health coverage.


“Practices closed and patients would wait for eight to nine months to get in,” Longworth said by telephone. “We overwhelmed the primary care health system.”


In cities such as Lawrence, Massachusetts, a former textile city that has long been home to a large immigrant community, doctors have coped with rising volume.


Patient Surplus


The Lawrence Family Medicine Residency, which provides primary care and other medical services to a largely low-income patient population, saw an uptick in patients, said Joseph Gravel, chief medical officer and residency program director.


“When you look at the experience in Massachusetts, it’s going to be bumpy” when Obamacare rolls out, Gravel said in a telephone interview.


The percentage of family doctors in the state accepting new patients has dropped 19 percent in the past seven years and the percentage of internists accepting new patients has fallen 21 percent over nine years, according to a July report by the Massachusetts Medical Society, an advocacy group for patients and physicians. Only about half of family doctors were accepting new patients this year.


The Cleveland Clinic predicts as many as 90,000 new patients in northeast Ohio if everyone signs up for coverage. The health system is working to ramp up its primary care practices in anticipation.


Exciting Challenge


At Grady Health System in Atlanta, more patients are expected, especially at its six outpatient centers. San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center in California has some expanded hours its 19 primary care centers. The centers are located in the hospital and out in the community.


“We anticipate an increase in primary care and specialty,” Chief Executive Officer Sue Currin said.


On a recent Friday morning at the Holy Cross clinic in Aspen Hill, Riley donned a white coat and prepared to see patients. While there may be more patients under reform, Riley said an increase in business will be welcome.


“I’ve very excited,” Riley said. “I’ve been dealing with uninsured patients for a long time. If they get coverage, we can prevent a lot of problems.”


To contact the reporter on this story: Stephanie Armour in Washington at sarmour@bloomberg.net


To contact the editor responsible for this story: Reg Gale at rgale5@bloomberg.net




Enlarge image Affordable Care Act Literature

Affordable Care Act Literature


Affordable Care Act Literature


About 25 million Americans are expected to gain coverage under the health law, commonly known as Obamacare.





About 25 million Americans are expected to gain coverage under the health law, commonly known as Obamacare. Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg




Acorda

4:45



Sept. 20 (Bloomberg) — Ron Cohen, chief executive officer of Acorda Therapeutics Inc., talks about implementation of the Affordable Care Act and its implications for the health-care industry. Cohen speaks with Sara Eisen, Tom Keene and Anna Edwards on Bloomberg Television’s “Surveillance.” Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard also speaks. (Source: Bloomberg)






Drudge Report Feed



Doctors Brace for Surge of Ailing Patients...

Saturday, August 3, 2013

Nigeria: Doctors treat lead-poisoned children








FILE – A Thursday, June 10, 2010 photo from files showing local health workers removing earth contaminated by lead from a family compound in the village of Dareta in Gusau, Nigeria. The Nigerian village that suffered one of the worst recorded incidents of lead poisoning is now habitable and doctors can start treating more than 1,000 contaminated children, a doctor and a scientist from two international agencies said Friday. For some, it already is too late to reverse serious neurological damage, said Dr. Michelle Chouinard, Nigeria country director for Doctors Without Borders, told The Associated Press on Friday, Aug. 2, 2013. Some children are blind, others paralyzed, many will struggle at school with learning disabilities, she said. Doctors Without Borders uncovered the scandal in 2010 but nothing was done until this year about the worst-affected village, Bagega, because the federal government did not provide a promised $ 3 million, the group said. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba, File)





FILE – A Thursday, June 10, 2010 photo from files showing local health workers removing earth contaminated by lead from a family compound in the village of Dareta in Gusau, Nigeria. The Nigerian village that suffered one of the worst recorded incidents of lead poisoning is now habitable and doctors can start treating more than 1,000 contaminated children, a doctor and a scientist from two international agencies said Friday. For some, it already is too late to reverse serious neurological damage, said Dr. Michelle Chouinard, Nigeria country director for Doctors Without Borders, told The Associated Press on Friday, Aug. 2, 2013. Some children are blind, others paralyzed, many will struggle at school with learning disabilities, she said. Doctors Without Borders uncovered the scandal in 2010 but nothing was done until this year about the worst-affected village, Bagega, because the federal government did not provide a promised $ 3 million, the group said. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba, File)





FILE – In this Wednesday, June 9, 2010 file photo, men walk amongst the graves of children killed by lead poisoining, in Yangalma village, in Gusau, Nigeria. The Nigerian village that suffered one of the worst recorded incidents of lead poisoning is now habitable and doctors can start treating more than 1,000 contaminated children, a doctor and a scientist from two international agencies said Friday. For some, it already is too late to reverse serious neurological damage, said Dr. Michelle Chouinard, Nigeria country director for Doctors Without Borders, told The Associated Press on Friday, Aug. 2, 2013. Some children are blind, others paralyzed, many will struggle at school with learning disabilities, she said. Doctors Without Borders uncovered the scandal in 2010 but nothing was done until this year about the worst-affected village, Bagega, because the federal government did not provide a promised $ 3 million, the group said. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba, File)





FILE – A Thursday, June 10, 2010 photo from files showing local health workers removing earth contaminated by lead from a family compound in the village of Dareta in Gusau, Nigeria. The Nigerian village that suffered one of the worst recorded incidents of lead poisoning is now habitable and doctors can start treating more than 1,000 contaminated children, a doctor and a scientist from two international agencies said Friday. For some, it already is too late to reverse serious neurological damage, said Dr. Michelle Chouinard, Nigeria country director for Doctors Without Borders, told The Associated Press on Friday, Aug. 2, 2013. Some children are blind, others paralyzed, many will struggle at school with learning disabilities, she said. Doctors Without Borders uncovered the scandal in 2010 but nothing was done until this year about the worst-affected village, Bagega, because the federal government did not provide a promised $ 3 million, the group said. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba, File)













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(AP) — The Nigerian village that suffered one of the world’s worst recorded incidents of lead poisoning is now habitable and doctors can start treating more than 1,000 contaminated children, a doctor and a scientist from two international agencies said Friday.


For some, it already is too late to reverse serious neurological damage, said Dr. Michelle Chouinard, Nigeria country director for Doctors Without Borders, told The Associated Press on Friday.


Some children are blind, others paralyzed and many will struggle at school with learning disabilities, she said.


Doctors Without Borders uncovered the scandal in 2010 but nothing was done until this year about the worst-affected village, Bagega, because the federal government did not provide a promised $ 3 million, the group said.


The poisoning caused by artisanal mining from a gold rush killed at least 400 children, yet villagers still say they would rather die of lead poisoning than poverty, environmental scientist Simba Tirima told the Associated Press Friday. Villagers make 10 times as much money mining as they do from farming in an area suffering erratic rainfall because of climate change, he said.


Managing five landfills with some 13,000 cubic meters (nearly 460,000 cubic feet) of highly contaminated soil, and teaching villagers how to mine safely are major challenges to prevent new contamination, he said.


“That’s a big, big worry. But I am joyful that for the kids who will be born in Bagega, we have at least removed one of the major strikes against them because they have so many strikes against them — nutritional problems, diseases …” said Tirima, who is the field operations director in Nigeria for TerraGraphics International Foundation.


The Moscow, Idaho-based foundation advised Nigeria’s northern Zamfara state government and oversaw the 5 ½-month cleanup, or remediation, of Bagega that ended two weeks ago.


There, people were exposed to mindboggling rates of lead contamination: Some residential soil with up to 35,000 parts per million of lead and the processing area with over 100,000 parts per million, Tirima said. The United States considers 400 parts per million safe for residential soil.


At the peak of the gold rush, Tirima said, more than 1,000 itinerant miners and followers were camped around the village — deep in the countryside, beyond the reach of paved roads and electricity and quite cut off in the rainy season when dirt roads become impassable.


Despite its remote location, the booming economy attracted people from Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger to Bagega, which also drew many locals as a regional commercial center with a primary and high school, a hospital and weekly market. In addition, cattle herders and nomads came here to water their animals at a reservoir so dangerously contaminated it killed goats and cows.


The entire human population of 6,000 to 9,000 was exposed, including some 1,500 children under the age of 5. Human Rights Watch said the death toll of 400 was only an estimate as villagers initially tried to hide the deaths, fearing the government would stop their illegal mining. The group said it was the worst epidemic of its kind in modern history.


The government released money for the cleanup in February, Doctors Without Borders began prescreening in March and found that nearly every one of 1,010 children tested need therapy, Chouinard said. Of them, 267 are severely contaminated and will get chelation — where medication binds the lead to a child’s blood and helps them to eliminate it faster from their system.


All the children had more than the international standard maximum of 10 micrograms per deciliter of lead in their blood. Some had as much as 700 micrograms per deciliter, she said. The children will have to be treated for one to two years, she said.


The more basic methods used to get at gold helped cause the poisoning. Some women used hammers to beat open rock ore. Others used some of the 60 grinding mills at a processing area adjacent to the village and water reservoir, Tirima said.


Many took the rocks that carried high concentrations of lead into their homes for processing. The poisoning was facilitated because the particular lead compounds are very toxic and easily absorbed into the body, unlike other forms of lead, Tirima explained.


His TerraGraphics Foundation has trained dozens of Nigerians to clean up any future contamination.


Government officials initially reacted by trying to enforce a ban on illegal mining. When that did not work, they promised to find other sources of income for villagers, but nothing has happened in a country where corruption is endemic.


Tirima pointed to mounting evidence linking lead poisoning to crime waves and said he fears for the community when their poisoned children grow up.


Associated Press




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Nigeria: Doctors treat lead-poisoned children