Ho, Ho, Ho.....and Happy New Year, Gang!

 

Hoping that this post finds all of you happy and healthy.  Yesterday, I returned from spending Christmas and New Years with my brother, his 2 daughters, their husbands and 4 kids in Cincinnati.

As usual, we had a wonderful time.

Dom stayed at home this year to hold down the fort and feed my raccoon family.

He asked me to do something "Really Fun" for the family this year, so I'll start off with this batch of pictures.

We headed to THE CHRISTMAS RANCH one evening.  (I was bummed out that Jennifer and her gang were unable to make it.)

Bro and I headed to Jill and Tony's house, loaded up in Jill's mini-van, then hit the road.

Gang, this place was MAGICAL.  500,000 lights, all synchronized to music.

Wagon Rides (which we did), Train Rides (next year), Bon Fire, SANTA, food, drink.....WONDERFUL.  The six of us walked around with big smiles on our faces for about 3 hours.

The Rise of Superweeds—and What to Do About It

It sounds like a sci-fi movie: American farmers fighting desperately to hold back an onslaught of herbicide-defying "superweeds."

But there's nothing imaginary—or entertaining—about this scenario. Superweeds are all too real, and they have now spread to over 60 million acres of our farmland, wreaking environmental and economic havoc wherever they go.

How did we get into this mess, and how do we fix it? A 2013 UCS briefing paper, The Rise of Superweeds—and What to Do About It, answers these questions.

Roundup: the cure that super-sized the disease

The superweed problem began as a promised solution.

In the 1990s, Monsanto introduced a new line of seeds called "Roundup Ready," which were genetically engineered to be immune to glyphosate, the active ingredient in the company’s patented herbicide, Roundup.

Roundup Ready seeds were expensive, but they were widely adopted because they made weed control easier. And because glyphosate is less toxic than other common herbicides, the Roundup Ready system was hailed as an environmental breakthrough.

But there was a catch: as more and more farmers used more and more Roundup, genes for glyphosate resistance began to spread in weed populations. The growth of resistance was accelerated by a trio of factors:

• Monoculture. Growing the same crop on the same land year after year helps weeds to flourish.
• Overreliance on a single herbicide. When farmers use Roundup exclusively, resistance develops more quickly.
• Neglect of other weed control measures. The convenience of the Roundup Ready system encouraged farmers to abandon a range of practices that had been part of their weed control strategy.
  
  
  
  This “perfect storm” of accelerating factors has quickly turned the Roundup resistance problem into a superweed crisis. And because many farmers can no longer rely on glyphosate alone, overall herbicide use in the United States—which Roundup was supposed to help reduce—has instead gone up (see graph at right).

  Industry doubles down

  The pesticide and seed industry has responded to the superweed crisis with a predictable refrain: let's do it again. A new generation of herbicide-resistant crops is awaiting USDA approval, engineered to tolerate older herbicides, such as 2,4-D and dicamba, in addition to glyphosate.
  What's wrong with that?
• 2,4-D and dicamba belong to a chemical class that has been associated with increased rates of diseases, including non-Hodgkins lymphoma.
• They are highly toxic to broadleaf crops, including many of the most common fruit and vegetable crops.
• They are more prone to volatilization (air dispersal) than glyphosate, so their increased use is likely to harm neighboring farms and uncultivated areas.

On top of all these drawbacks is a more fundamental one: weeds that developed glyphosate resistance can develop resistance to the new herbicides as well—and this has already begun to happen. When major weed species develop widespread multi-herbicide resistance, farmers will really be in a bind, because there are no new herbicides coming over the horizon to save the day.

A science-based solution: healthy farms

There's a better way. Farmers can control weeds using practices grounded in the science of agroecology, including crop rotation, cover crops, judicious tillage, the use of manure and compost instead of synthetic fertilizers, and taking advantage of the weed-suppressing chemicals that some crops produce.

Such practices have benefits beyond weed control: they increase soil fertility and water-holding capacity, reduce water pollution and global warming emissions, and make the farm and its surroundings more welcoming to pollinators and other beneficial organisms.

In short, agroecological practices make the farm healthier. And recent research shows that they work.

What we should do

Despite their promise, agroecological practices have been held back by farm policies and research agendas that favor monoculture, as well as a lack of information and technical support for farmers who want to change their methods.

To encourage the adoption of these healthier practices, UCS recommends that Congress and the USDA should take the following actions:

• Fund and implement the Conservation Stewardship Program, which provides support for farmers using sustainable weed control methods.
• Institute new regional programs that encourage farmers to address weed problems through sustainable techniques.
• Support organic farmers and those who want to transition to organic farming with research, certification, cost-sharing, and marketing programs. (Organic farming serves as a "test kitchen" for integrated weed management practices that can be broadly applied to conventional farm systems.)
• Support multidisciplinary research on integrated weed management strategies and educate farmers in their use.
• Bring together scientists, industry, farmers, and public interest groups to formulate plans preventing or containing the development of herbicide-resistant weeds, and make the approval of new herbicide-tolerant crops conditional on the implementation of such plans.
• Fund and carry out long-term research to breed crop varieties and cover crops that compete with and control weeds more effectively.

 DOWNLOAD: The Rise of Superweeds--and What to Do About It

LINK

Tx, Transplant Predict Multiple Myeloma Survival

NEW ORLEANS -- Only about one multiple myeloma patient in 13 will live more than 10 years, according to a database analysis.

But the chances of long-term survival are greater for patients treated at academic centers, according to Ronald Go, MD, of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

Patients also do better if they have an autologous stem cell transplant as part of their initial therapy, Go told MedPage Today before the analysis was presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology.

The findings come from analysis of theNational Cancer Data Base, a joint program of the Commission on Cancer, the American College of Surgeons, and the American Cancer Society, according to Go, who was senior author of the study.

It's the first attempt to try to tease out demographic factors that contribute to longer-term survival in multiple myeloma, a disease that almost always kills relatively quickly.

The researchers analyzed data for 27,987 patients diagnosed in 1998 through 2000, and divided them into four groups based on the median survival -- just 26.7 months at the time. Specifically:

• Cohort 1: Overall survival (OS) that was less than the median and included 55% of the patients
• Cohort 2: OS that was more than the median but less than twice the median with 19% of the patients
• Cohort 3: OS greater than twice the median but less than 10 years and included 18% of the patients
• Cohort 4: OS of 10 years or more with 8% of the patients

More than half the patients were male with a mean age at diagnosis of 67.2 years.

Analysis showed that several factors predicted long-term survival, Go said.

For instance, more than 10% of patients treated at academic centers fell into the long-term cohort 4, compared with about 5% treated at community cancer centers.

Similarly, more than 20% of those who had a stem cell transplant as part of initial therapy lived more than a decade, compared with about 5% of those who did not.

Younger age also predicted survival, although Go pointed out that older patients, even without disease, would be less likely to live a long time.

African Americans also did less well than whites, even though they are known to have better outcomes from multiple myeloma. That's probably a result of comorbidities such as high blood pressure and diabetes skewing the all-cause mortality statistics, Go said.

Sex, ethnicity, and place of residence had no apparent effects, the researchers found.

The study is "really quite striking," commented Noopur Raje, MD, of the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center in Boston, who was not involved in the study.

"From a myeloma investigator's point of view," the interesting part of the study is that -- without going into the biological aspects of the disease -- Go and colleagues were able to pinpoint factors predicting survival, she told MedPage Today.

"What it really tells me is that some of [survival may have] to do with access to drugs and access to therapies," she said. Access to the latest treatments is more likely at academic centers, she noted.

The clinical implication for patients is that "if you have a center which focuses on this disease, go to that site," she said.

LINK 

Non-GMO NestFresh Eggs Give Holiday Recipes Something to Celebrate

DENVER, CO--(Marketwired - Dec 11, 2013) - Avoiding genetically modified organisms or GMOs in your favorite holiday recipes will give you even more reason to celebrate the season. NestFresh cage-free and free-range eggs are the first nationally distributed egg line to receive the Non-GMO Project Verified seal from the Non-GMO Project, a third-party certification program that assures a food product has been produced according to consensus-based best practices for GMO avoidance. 

GMOs are in as much as 80 percent of the conventionally processed food in the United States. A GMO is a plant or animal that has been genetically engineered with DNA from bacteria, viruses or other plants and animals. These experimental combinations of genes from different species do not occur naturally in the environment and, according to the nonprofit Non-GMO Project, a growing body of evidence is connecting them to health problems, environmental damage and violation of farmers' and consumers' rights.

With eggs being called for in almost every holiday recipe, NestFresh non-GMO eggs are a good way to get cracking on a non-GMO-filled celebration. 

NestFresh chickens are fed non-GMO feed consisting of corn and soybeans, which are the most at risk for GMOs. A routine schedule for the non-GMO feed is tested and approved by the Non-GMO Project to ensure the chickens produce non-GMO eggs. 

This groundbreaking commitment to non-GMO verification in eggs by NestFresh currently impacts approximately 400 acres of non-GMO corn and 380 acres of non-GMO soybeans. And by working with multiple small farms across the country, NestFresh provides more opportunities and a safer environment for family farmers. This is another good reason to celebrate, so bring on the eggnog! 

NestFresh cage-free and free-range eggs are the only non-GMO eggs available nationwide (MSRP: $3.49-$4.99). For free holiday recipes visit: http://www.nestfresh.com/recipes.aspx. To see a complete list of Non-GMO Project Verified products, visit: http://www.nongmoproject.org/find-non-gmo/search-participating-products.

LINK 

How Roundup Weedkiller Can Promote Cancer, New Study Reveals

Roundup herbicide (glyphosate) is in our air, rain, groundwater, soil and most food in the U.S., and an increasing body of research reveals it has cancer-promoting properties.

Researchers from the Indian Institute of Toxicology Research have recently confirmed the carcinogenic potential of Roundup herbicide using human skin cells (HaCaT ) exposed to extremely low concentrations of the world's best selling herbicide.

The researchers previously reported on glyphosate's tumor promoting potential in a two-stage mouse skin carcinogenesis model[i] through its disruption of proteins that regulate calcium (Ca^2+- ) signaling and oxidative stress (SOD 1), but were unable in these investigations to identify the exact molecular mechanisms behind how glyphosate contributes to tumor promotion.

The new study, published in the peer-reviewed journal ISRN Dermatology,[ii] sought out to clarify the exact mode of tumorigenic action, finding the likely mechanism behind glyphosate's cancer promoting properties is through the downregulation of mitochondrial apoptotic (self-destructive) signaling pathways, as well as through the disruption of a wide range of cell signaling and regulatory components. Cell proliferative effects were induced by concentrations lower than .1 mM, and as low as 0.01 mM, which is four orders of magnitude lower than concentrations commonly used in GM agricultural applications (e.g. 50 mM). The fact that lower concentrations were more effective at inducing proliferation than higher concentrations (which suppressed cell growth), indicates that Roundup is a potent endocrine disrupter, and further highlights why conventional toxicological risk assessments are inadequate because they do not account for the fact that as concentrations are reducedcertain types of toxicity -- e.g. endocrine disruption -- actually increase.

The researchers used the product Roundup Original (glyphosate 41%, polyethoxethyleneamine (POEA) ≅15%—Monsanto Company, St. Louis, MO, USA), and observed the following changes to human skin cells induced through exposure to this chemical mixture:

• Significant increases in cell proliferation (via disruption of CA2+ levels, i.e. decreased levels)
• Increases oxidative stress, as measured by levels of ROS (reactive oxygen species)
• Cell-cycle dysregulation, marked by an accumulation of cells in S-phase (hallmark feature of cancer)
• Increased proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA), a marker for increased cell proliferation
• Increased Bromodeoxyuridin (BrdU), a marker for increased cell proliferation
• Decreases in the level of the protein IP3R1, an indication of resistance to cell death
• Increases in Bcl-2 protein, a tumor promoter gene product
• Decreases in Bax proteins, a tumor suppressor gene product
• Caspase suppression (associated with prevention of cell death)
• Changes in the expression of the Ca2+- binding family of proteins (S100 family) S100A6/S100A9, associated with various cancers.

It is important to emphasize that while the researchers observed cell proliferation-associated changes in the expression of the Ca2+- binding proteins S100A6/A9 following glyphosate exposure to human skin cells, the implications of these findings reach beyond the skin cell lineage. They explained that related modifications of the expression pattern of S100A6/A9 protein have also been found in "hepatocellular carcinoma [15], lung cancer [16], colorectal cancer [17], and melanoma [18]."

The study included a diagram (shown below) representing graphically the multiple ways in which glyphosate disrupts cellular structure/function to contribute to uncontrolled cell proliferation.

The researchers summarized their findings as follows:

In conclusion, in this study, we demonstrated that glyphosate may possibly exert proliferative effect in HaCaT cells by activating Ca2+ binding proteins to promote the imbalance of intracellular Ca2+ homeostasis and lessen SOD1 to increase ROS generation. This effect was partially reversed by treatment with antioxidant NAC indicating connections between oxidative stress and hypocalcaemia. Reduced Ca2+ levels enhance Bcl-2 and decrease Bax, subsequently leading to decrease in cytochrome c to stimulate further decrease of caspase 3 via the downregulation of IP3R1 level, thus halting apoptosis. The present study for the first time provides insight into the mechanism of glyphosate-induced neoplastic potential in mammalian skin system.

It should be noted that their observation that the carcinogenicity of Roundup may be suppressed by the antioxidant n-acetyl-cysteine (NAC), which is a precursor to the cellular detoxifier and antioxidant known as glutathione and a readily available dietary supplement, has important implications, owing to how widespread exposure to Roundup herbicide has become, both throughenvironmental exposures in air, soil, rain and groundwater, as well as in the tens of thousands of unlabeled products containing GM ingredients contaminated with physiologically significant levels of this chemical.

This study adds to a growing body of research demonstrating the carcinogenicity of Roundup herbicide. Only five months ago, the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology published a study indicating that glyphosate is estrogenic anddrives breast cancer cell proliferation in the parts-per-trillion range. To view the growing body of research on Roundup's potential to contribute to cancer initiation or promotion view our toxicology citations here: Roundup Toxicology Research.

Reflecting on the Implications

We leave the reader with some final reflections on the implications of this research. The wholesale dismissal of attempts to differentiate GMO from conventional products through accurate labeling is based on the idea that they are 'substantially equivalent.' But, this fallacious approach is based on the mistaken view that the only difference between GMO and non-GMO crops of feed and food importance is the presence of either the novel transgenes inserted into them or their novel transgene protein products.

The discover of Roundup's extreme toxicity destroys that argument, and calls into question the credibility of any would-be 'scientist' or pro-GMO advocate who would propose otherwise.  How so? The fact is that the majority of approved GM plants have been genetically engineered to be "Roundup Ready," i.e. resistant to glyphosate, which means that the land they are grown upon is basically carpet-bombed with the chemical mixture to kill any living plant other than the glyphosate-resistant GM monocultures. The GM plants take up glyphosate, convert some of it to a similarly toxic metabolite AMPA, and survive the chemical exposure, while maintaining residues of both chemicals post-harvest -- which ultimately means that the consumer will be exposed to these compounds through their food.

This means that if you are not consuming foods that are explicitly GM free, you are being exposed to glyphosate (and glyphosate metabolites) on a daily basis. The difference, therefore between GMO and non-GMO is vastly more significant than simply the presence or absence of novel transgenes or their proteins.  It is the difference, candidly, between being exposed (poisoned) with a chemical with likely carcinogenicity or not being exposed to it.  For a more elaborate explanation read: Extreme Toxicity of Roundup Destroys GM/non-GM 'Substantial Equivalence' Argument.

Lastly, consider if Roundup (glyphosate) 'weed-killer' bore a warning sign 'may cause cancer,' or the tens thousands of products made with GM ingredients contaminated with it. Would there be any justifiable reason to resist GMO labeling? No, to the contrary, the focus would be on banning them immediately, instead of cow-towing to the powers that be to allow us the choice not to be poisoned by default.

Despite the so called "science" and "reason" based GMO proponents who think it makes sense to have mattresses labeled, but not food you put into your body, the actual empirical, peer-reviewed and published research – not ghost-written or funded by biotech corporations themselves – says that this omnipresent herbicide has multiple models of carcinogenicity, and in concentration ranges far below agricultural application, as far down as to the parts-per-trillion range. It is time those paying lip service to the 'evidence-based' model of GMO risk assessment, and who recklessly promote the dystopian interests of biotech corporations, address the evidence itself, or stop co-opting powerful sounding terms like "Science" to justify their highly irrational and ultimately biased and self-serving perspectives on the subject.

EVIL MONSANTO