‘Death and dying continues to be seen as a big taboo’ | Mary O’Hara

Dr BJ (Bruce) Miller is convinced that how we care for people towards the end of their lives needs an urgent, radical rethink. An American palliative care specialist, Miller is in the UK this week as the keynote speaker at a conference marking the 50th anniversary of modern hospice care in Britain. He will argue that much more needs to be done to ensure the best possible quality of life for people as they deal with illness and approach dying.

“The way in which we handle death and dying is enormous, fascinating and elemental, and yet it is something that continues to be seen as a taboo,” Miller says of how societies like Britain and America tend to confront the issue. Palliative care is not as high a priority as it should be, he says, and while there are encouraging signs of a growing understanding of the importance of end-of-life care, “at least here in the United States, and I presume [in Britain], a lot of people don’t understand what the heck palliative care is”.

A physician and faculty member at the University of California, San Francisco Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, Miller has emerged in the US as a leading advocate for an approach to palliative care that focuses on promoting people’s quality of life, not merely managing pain. It also emphasises the involvement of others including healthcare workers and caregivers in making that happen.. The 46-year-old sprung to prominence with a 2015 TED Talk, What Matters Most at the End of Life, which ended up being among the 15 most viewed online that year. In it he laid out his vision and talked of how his own life experience (at 19 he almost died in an accident and lost both his lower legs and a forearm) informed his perspective on dying and end-of-life care.

Like his UK counterparts in the palliative care sector, including this month’s conference co-organisers Hospice UK and St Christopher’s Hospice, Miller promotes a focus on the individual and the quality of their life, not just on the disease, illness or disability. Palliative care, including hospices and home visits delivered by “interdisciplinary” teams that include doctors, social workers, volunteers, carers and family as well as fresh perspectives from areas like design and art, should contribute to a better life even as it nears the end, he says.

Delivering first-rate palliative care is not just a worthy ambition, it’s a necessity, Miller says. Wider health and social care systems need to respond to the fact that so many more people are living much longer with chronic or degenerative conditions. “People at the end of their lives often do not have access to the services they need, and with an ageing population demand continues to grow.” The availability of hospice services needs to meet the demand, he says.

Miller’s assessment appears to tally with public opinion, at least in Britain. A recent ComRes poll for Dying Matters, a coalition of voluntary and public sector organisations found that only 16% of people agreed there is enough support for people dealing with death, dying and bereavement.

It’s good news that people are living longer, Miller says, but “we’ve opened up these enormous ranges of lifespans too quickly, soour society has not kept up. And that’s a problem.”

We don’t need to demonise hospitals; we just need to use them more surgically

The “default” mode within healthcare systems of “a strictly medicalised approach” won’t suffice, he says. A situation where older or dying people end up in hospitals because there isn’t a better, more appropriate place for them to be is unacceptable. “Being sick, dying; these are hard things that we all go through, but they are much harder than they need to be. The seduction of acute care remains outrageously and disproportionately the receiver of funding and attention,” he adds. “Let’s not ask them to do everything. We don’t need to demonise hospitals; we just need to use them more surgically.”

To truly transform things, Miller says, the public needs to be properly informed about what palliative care is – where the quality of life for people with advanced or serious illnesses is the focus of teams with a range of skills. They need to be made aware of the benefits too, not least because once they do understand, they are likely to put pressure on politicians to make it a priority. This is why he “keeps banging the public education drum”, he says. And policy-makers need to realise that palliative care can be cost-effective.

“Part of the good news of palliative care is that if you are to take the total cost to the system point of view, time and again this approach saves the damn system money. Even if you’re the most narrow-minded bean counter, you’re still going to arrive at palliative care and the approach it provides as good for the system.”

The US and UK palliative care systems may be different, but both should concentrate spending on residential hospices, more homecare services, video conferences and teleconferencing to reach people in rural areas, says Miller. “These things exist. They just need to be developed and amplified.”

He accepts that the challenges are vast. At a time when social care and healthcare in the UK is under huge financial strain, and when Republicans in the US are attempting to dismantle Obama’s Affordable Care Act – which saw healthcare provision expanded to millions who were previously without insurance (including the very sick, disabled and older people) – the climate is far from conducive.

But he firmly believes the status quo can’t continue: “I believe there is a true urgency to this.”

Curriculum vitae

Age: 46.

Lives: Mill Valley, California.

Family: Dog named Maysie and two cats: The Muffin Man and Darkness.

Education: St George’s school; Princeton, undergraduate studies in art history; University of California, San Francisco, MD as a regents’ scholar; Cottage Hospital, Santa Barbara, California, internal medicine residency as chief resident; Harvard Medical School, fellowship in hospice and palliative medicine, with clinical duties split between Massachusetts General Hospital and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Career: 2007 to present: assistant clinical professor of medicine, UCSF; 2011-16: executive director, Zen Hospice Project; 2008-11: associate director, Symptom Management Service, UCSF; 2008-10: associate programme director, UCSF; 2008-10: associate fellowship director, hospice & palliative medicine, UCSF.

Interests: Nature, the arts, the built environment.

‘Death and dying continues to be seen as a big taboo’ | Mary O’Hara

Hitler’s legacy continues

We know that Hitler back in WW2 implemented the eugenics or population reduction program.

When he died everyone in the world was happy and it was business as usual. But, what we didn’t know was that this plan never died when Hitler died. It was just kept in the closet.

On March 20, 1969, Dr. Richard Day, the National Medical Director of the Rockefeller sponsored “Planned
Parenthood” program and professor of Pediatrics at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, spoke before a group of students and health professionals at the Pittsburgh Pediatric Society.

Dr. Day, an atheist and a eugenics advocate, was aware of the “Secret Agenda” hidden in the closet within organized medicine to reduce the world’s population. Despite this being a closely guarded secret or conspiracy, it was time to open the closet door whereby Day said, “…everything is in place and nobody can stop us now.

So, not too long ago, the Pope and many people in the “haves” group preached about how essential it is to greatly reduce the population. Unfortunately, all they are doing is expounding upon Hitler’s plan, which was revealed roughly five decades ago.

Despite Hitler losing the war, the Rockefellers, Prescott Bush, I.G. Farben and other “haves” including Monsanto decided to push forward with emphasis and implementation of the following:

Population control;
Permission to have babies;
Redirecting the purpose of sex to have sex without reproduction and reproduction without sex;
Contraception universally available to all;
Sex education and to direct the youth as a tool of world government;
Tax funded abortion to ease population control;
Encouraging homosexuality and introducing it in elementary schools;
Technology created for reproduction without sex;
Families to diminish in importance;
Euthanasia and the “demise” pill (Remember the movie Soylent Green);
Limiting access to affordable medical care making the elimination of the elderly easier;
Medicine would be tightly controlled;
Elimination of private doctors;
New difficult to diagnose and untreatable diseases;
Suppressing cancer cures as a means of population control;
Inducing heart attacks as a form of assassination;
Education as a tool for the accelerating the onset of puberty and evolution;
Blending all religions into one and eliminating old religions;
Changing the teaching of the Bible through revisions of key words;
Restructuring education as a tool of indoctrination;
Have kids spend more time in schools but learning less;
Controlling who has access to information;
Making schools the hub of the community;
Having books disappear from the libraries;
Changing laws to promote moral and social chaos;
Encouraging drug use to create a jungle atmosphere in cities and towns;
Promoting alcohol abuse;
Restrictions on travel;
The need for more jails and using hospitals as jails;
No more psychological or physical security;
Crime used to manage society;
Curtailment of US industrial preeminence;
Shifting populations and economies and tearing out social roots;
Sports as a tool of social engineering and change;
Sex and violence being accepted through entertainment;
Travel restrictions and implanted I.D. cards;
Know how people respond and make them do what you want;
Falsified scientific research and the use of terrorism;
Surveillance implants and televisions that watch you;
Home ownership a thing of the past;
The arrival of a totalitarian global system.

If you look at what’s happening today with government, food choices, the pharmaceutical industry and Monsanto, you can see many of the issues Dr. Day spoke about coming into play.

When discussing cancer cures they talked about numerous cancer cures sitting at the Rockefeller Institute and withheld from the public and the medical profession. While Dr. Day spoke about this, he also said, “You will forget most or much of what I’m going to tell you tonight”.

Why would they forget? Do you think a huge sumptuous meal and unlimited alcohol would have anything to do with that? Even then people were dumbed down.

When talking about changing the image of the doctor it was to turn them into a high-paid technician rather than a professional who exercises independent judgment on behalf of his independent patient. Looking at today’s physician, for the most part you see a “hooker” for the Big pHarma “pimp” treating a symptom endlessly with toxic, synthetic chemicals instead of trying to dig for the cure. And what does this lifetime of filling the body with endless toxic chemicals do? It shortens the life span.

Then they compared the Americans to the Europeans and said that the Americans were too trusting and never ask the right questions while the Europeans were more skeptical and more sophisticated. The Americans had a lack of discernment and were easily tricked because they were too trusting.

In other words, if you want someone to do something and you know that initially he might balk at it because it’s against his morals or religious beliefs, you would have to substitute another reason that will be acceptable. And then, after he accepts it, it will be a done deal and there would be no turning back.

In this vein, look how quickly so-called AIDS education was introduced and ultimately accepted. If a group wanted to introduce the concept of sodomy or initiate sex earlier and earlier in children and that was the reason given, most parents would not go for it. So, you change the reason and it’s accepted. And the new reason was to protect the children from AIDS. So now, that education is available from K to 12 grades. But, it is a great boon to the homosexual network because they now have access to the kids from their earliest years.

You see, the emphasis on youth was stated explicitly because people beyond a certain age are set in their ways and they are not likely to change or discard their values. But the little kids are pliable and can be molded in any direction you want to point them in. So, you target the young because they will be around a lot longer than the old fogies that will be dying off anyway.

Dr. Day recognized homosexual activity as a bizarre abnormal behavior, but that activity was just another element in the law of the jungle because “people who are stupid enough to go along with it are not fit to inhabit the planet and they will just go by the wayside. And if you are dumb enough to be convinced by the promotion of homosexuality you don’t deserve a place and we’ll be rid of you soon enough. The people who will survive this are also smart enough not to be deluded by our propaganda”. The guy was a true humanitarian.

From this promotion of homosexuality came the concept of downgrading or eliminating God from the equation altogether. The concept of not being able to see Him led to the propaganda of doubting His existence. After all, since God heartily denounced, rejected and punished homosexual behavior, if you can take Him out of the picture than anything goes. Wait and see how long it will be before pedophilia emerges big time.

Actually, pedophilia exists right now in the Catholic Church. And what happens when a priest is found to be a pedophile? He is sent to another parish.

When Dr. Day attacked religion, because he was an atheist, he advocated creating “our own religion”, because in doing so they could then define what religion is. And their target – the Roman Catholic Church. “Once that falls, the rest of Christianity will be easy”. Along these lines there was an article in the Honolulu Star Advertiser on November 11, 2013 about a church service in Los Angeles made up of atheists finding camaraderie without religion. “The movement dovetails with new studies that show an increasing number of Americans drifting away from any religious affiliation”. The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life released a study last year that found 20 percent of Americans say they have no religious affiliations, which was an increase from 15 percent in the last five years.

Maybe the concept of abandoning religious or spiritual values has not encompassed all of society, but as you can see it is growing. And what fruit does a Godless society bear? Chaos, quarrel and confusion. All leading to reduction.

Regarding the Bible, Dr. Day said the plan was underfoot to change wording. As he put it, “Words are weapons”. An example would be changing the word “alter” to “table” or “sacrifice” to “meal”. When you change words, you change ideas and thoughts.

Take the word “gay” for example. Years ago it meant “happy”. Today, it’s a pervert and never used in any other way. Then we have “sex education”. Is that not just a euphemism for conditioning? And why was the word “homophobe” created? The answer is obvious. That being the case, why has the word “heterophobe” never been used in the mainstream media? “Pimps. Hookers and Tricks”!

Let’s look at the reason for promoting abortion: when you kill them off early you will left with “oldies” that will die sooner with fewer behind them. Does this not blend in perfectly with population reduction?

So the concept of sex without reproduction was greatly emphasized. Hello birth control pills, abortions at will, and sense enjoyment “ubber alles”. Hitler said, “Deutchland ubber alles” (Germany over all others). Now it’s sex over morality.

The subject of population control was easily solved. The use of microchips solved that issue. By implanting microchips population control is simplified. Everything about an individual will be public. Their money, their sex lives, their contacts, their thoughts will be made available for the “haves”. Try to buck the system and your plug gets pulled. At that point you will have no life. But the “haves” will be exempt from that and will have their privacy reserved. No one else!

When it comes to music the young and the old have different tastes. The old like it quiet and the young like it loud and busy. The problem that this creates is turmoil in the family because of the sound variations in the house. So, in rebellion the youth take to the streets or vacate the house causing family dissention and distancing.

To implement these changes, the “New Authority” would have to present itself and its ideas. What better time than in the winter on a weekend. The reason for this is that in the winter people are less apt to travel and on the weekend government agencies are closed making it so no one would be able to question anything.

Also, an agreement would have to be signed. Sign and you’re good. Don’t sign any you will get any electrical impulses in your bank accounts, no impulses to pay your electric bills or your mortgage or buy food. So, when the impulses are gone, so is your livelihood and means of existence.

Your expenditures, through electronic surveillance would be tightly watched. If you spend too much money at your supermarket someone would come to you and say, “How come? What are you doing with all this food? You don’t look fat. You don’t have that many people to feed. We know you are not entertaining. What are you doing with all that food?” God forbid you reply, “I have seven people in my basement who object to the New World Order and I’m feeding them”.

Then you would be told that they do not belong there and you cannot feed them, and since you are sympathetic to them maybe your allegiance isn’t very trustworthy either.

Look what happened in China when they wanted to enforce the “one child family” concept. All education for the second child was cut off, and food rations were cut, and if someone found a way around that the government instituted compulsory abortions and compulsory plugging in of the IUD’s.

In the USA we have Planned Parenthood espousing “freedom of choice”. Really? One of the medical directors of Planned Parenthood, Dr. Allen Gootmacher, said, “Well, if people limit their families and do what we say, fine. But, if we need compulsory population control, we’re going to have it”.

The New World Order is not supportive of homeless people living in boxes on the street. In keeping with the actions of the Nazi’s and the Communists, people came in the middle of the night and by morning all those people were gone. Where did they go? Don’t ask. After all, when a person lives in a box he is littering. So, a truck comes at night and removes the litter. If you ask questions you draw attention to yourself. So, you mind your own business and step over the starving man on the street who didn’t play ball.

I was recently visiting a high school buddy who lived in a retirement home in New Jersey. I noticed that the exit was convoluted and not simple. So, here’s this little retirement community with one exit and entrance, no young people, and a hassle to get out of. Why? Maybe to minimize the times someone leaves so they stay home longer.

So, for everyone reading this, make sure that your kids see their grandparents frequently no matter how much that entails. If you see someone infrequently you forget they exist. If you forget they exist, love is lost. When that happens and you tell your child his/her grampa or gramma died, the last thing you want to hear is, “Who”?

Back in the late 30’s and early 40’s, manure was the fertilizer and the soil, being rich in sulfur, kept people healthy. The Rockefellers, under the guise of enabling the farmer to plant more crops and less time shoveling shit, switched to the petro-chemical fertilizers and killed all the sulfur in the soil. Illnesses abounded.

Then the food companies got involved and figured out if they could extend shelf life they could make more profit. This opened the door to synthetic chemicals being added to the food.

The pharmaceutical industry paid for more advertising and the mainstream media began running more drug ads in the newspapers and on television. That was unheard of in the 40’s and early 50’s.

Enter the biotech industry supplying us with heavily pesticide and insecticide sprayed foods telling us they were safe. Does anyone remember the Viet Nam war and the use of Agent Orange, which left enormous amounts of people dealing with illnesses and kids born with birth defects for the rest of their lives? Yet, Monsanto says that the corn-fields in the U.S. sprayed with 2-4-D, Agent Orange’s active ingredient is safe to eat.

Back in the 50s, fluoride used to be disposed of in lead-lined drums as a toxic waste product to the tune of millions of dollars a year. That was easily fixed. A PR campaign was undertaken and now it is dumped into the water supply as a dental cavity panacea and those polluters rake in millions of dollars a year.

There’s a couple of interesting facts about fluoride:

*NYC and Boston have been fluoridated since the 60’s and experience a dental cavity rate 4 times higher than the national average. How come no one spends time teaching people about how to brush and floss the teeth or how the ingestion of sugar leads to cavities?

*In the year 2000, Hawaii’s Dental Chief, Dr. Mark Greer, said on Hawaii Public Radio that the toxicology tests proved that fluoride was safe and effective. The problem with that statement is that the only independent toxicology report on fluoride was done by the National Research Council in 2007. They found that fluoride, in excess of .8ppm, was extremely detrimental to one’s health (at present, in addition to fluoride in the water supply and people ingesting foods sprayed with fluoridated water, people are getting 8ppm on a daily basis).

In 2003, we had a fluoride hearing in Honolulu. I followed Dr. Greer in testimony. I said that Dr. Greer was multi-faceted and that he missed his calling. He should have been president of the Liar’s Club. I then said I called our Dental Chief and liar in front of at least 300 people and said that I opened a defamation of character lawsuit. I then asked if there was a lawyer in the house and if there was, I begged him to take the case because in trial Dr. Greer would have to present the toxicology report he referred to, which does not exist.

Thirteen years later, except for the military bases, no fluoride in Hawaii’s water supply and no lawsuit.

So, here we are. All the things that Dr. Day spoke about get implemented little by little. But, we have three things we have no control over and three things we have control over. We have no control over getting old, no control over dying, and no control over karma. What we do have control over is being healthy, being fit, and actually having a relationship with God.

To be healthy we should adhere to a plant-based diet centered around organics and avoiding GMOs at all costs. So, if soy, corn, cotton or any products do not say “organic” or “non-GMO”, you must not eat them. There is no such thing as “organic” canola oil. How does an industrial solvent become “organic”?

Also, plant-based foods leave the body in two to four days, while flesh based foods leave the body in four to seven days. My question is, if flesh foods stay in the body up to seven days, where do all those poisons go?

If eating a plant-based diet not centered around organics, you will need to detoxify your system. The options are chlorella and spirulina or organic sulfur crystals, which you can read about on my website. But, the point is to take responsibility for yourself and get out from under your doctor’s grip with toxic, synthetic chemicals.

To get fit, those long things below your waist are legs and putting one in front of the other is called walking and this is the simplest form of exercise. An hour a day keeps the doctor away,

We can no longer remain complacent and simply bend over forward for the “powers-to-be”. Kind of like what Whole Foods did with Monsanto denying us the right to know what we are eating.

We have to become vocal, strong and assertive. If not, you will become a puppet on a string or a “sheeple” controlled by those that want us gone so they can “enjoy” false enjoyment.

The human form is the only form that has a choice: Derive false pleasure through the temporary gratification of the senses of the body, which puts you on a roller coaster ride for life, or try to develop a personal relationship with God by linking up with Him, following His will, and rendering service to Him. Isn’t that what Jesus did his whole life – trying to connect you with your and his father?

It will change the way you look at life and give you more actual pleasure, internal peace, a clearer position of life in the human form, and a greater clarity of what’s real and what’s illusion.

To fully understand spiritual-life you have to recognize the superficiality, hypocrisy, and duplicity of material life whereby you can accept being IN the world but not OF the world. Once you understand what this entails, you can fully understand the meaning of a peaceful life through not getting caught up in the ups and downs of happiness and distress.

Connecting with God is easy. In Psalms it constantly tells us His names will save us. He has millions of names that all refer to aspects of His personality. For example:

Jehovah means the All-Mighty One
Eloi or Eluhaynu means the Dear Friend
Krishna means the All-Attractive Person
Allah means the All-Compassionate One (Imagine blowing up people as a service to the All-Compassionate One)
Gopala means Protector of the Cows
Govinda means the One that Pleases the Senses
Abba means Father
Ajita means the Unconquerable One

So, find a name of His you like and talk to Him. As He is in your heart, He will know if you are serious.

Let you be in control of your life not some government run by uncaring dickheads.

Aloha!

Sources:
www.articles.mercola.com
www.uvm.edu
www.faculty.ferris.edu
New Order of the Barbarians: Overlords of Chaos

To learn more about Hesh, listen to and read hundreds of health related radio shows and articles, and learn about how to stay healthy and reverse degenerative diseases through the use of organic sulfur crystals and the most incredible bee pollen ever, please visit www.healthtalkhawaii.com, or email me at heshgoldstein@gmail.com or call me at (808) 258-1177. Since going on the radio in 1981 these are the only products I began to sell because they work.

Oh yeah, going to www.asanediet.com will allow you to read various parts of my book – “A Sane Diet For An Insane World”, containing a wonderful comment by Mike Adams.
In Hawaii, the TV stations interview local authors about the books they write and the newspapers all do book reviews. Not one would touch “A Sane Diet For An Insane World”. Why? Because it goes against their advertising dollars.

I have been doing a weekly radio show in Honolulu since 1981 called “Health Talk”. In the beginning of 2015 I started doing an internet show on americanvoiceradio.com.

In 2007 I was “forced” to get a Masters degree in Nutrition because of all the doctors that would call in asking for my credentials. They do not call in anymore.

Going to www.healthtalkhawaii.com enables you, among other things, to listen to the shows.

I am an activist. In addition to espousing an organic vegan diet for optimum health, I am strongly opposed to GMOs, vaccines, processed foods, MSG, aspartame, fluoridation and everything else that the pimps (Big Pharma, Monsanto and the large food companies) and the hookers (the doctors, the government agencies, the public health officials, and the mainstream media) thrust upon us, the tricks.

After being vaccinated with the DTP vaccine as a child I developed asthma. After taking the organic sulfur crystals (they are harvested from the pine trees in Louisiana) in November of 2008 for 3 days my asthma reversed and has not come back ever since, 29 cases, so far, of autism have been reversed, as has cancer, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, osteoarthritis, joint pain, astigmatism, gum disease, increased sexual activity, heavy metal and radiation elimination, parasite elimination, free radicals elimination, faster athletic recovery time, increased blood circulation, reduced inflammation, resistance to getting the flu, reduction of wrinkles, allergy reduction, reduced PMS and monthly period pain, nausea, migraines, erectile dysfunction and so much more.

And it’s only possible because of the oxygen it releases that floods the cells of the body. The sulfur, as proven by the University of Southampton in England, enables the body to produce vitamin B12 and the essential amino acids. You can find out more about this incredible nutrient also on my website – www.healthtalkhawaii.com -.

My book, “A Sane Diet For An Insane World”, has finally been published. It can be viewed at www.asanediet.com.

Hitler’s legacy continues

Alcohol continues to be sold at "pocket money prices", report finds

Alcohol continues to be sold at “pocket money” prices across the UK, with white cider on offer for pennies, according to a report.

The study from the Alcohol Health Alliance (AHA) concluded that little has changed in recent years when it comes to people being able to buy cheap booze from supermarkets and off-licences.

Meanwhile another study has found that British teenage girls are more likely to get drunk than their male counterparts. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) study found 31% of 15-year-old girls reported having been drunk at least twice compared with 26% of boys of the same age.

Researchers from the AHA analysed 480 products to find the cheapest drink on sale across the UK. The team found that high-strength white cider, which they say is mostly drunk by dependent and underage drinkers, is being sold for as little as 16p per unit of alcohol.

They said: “The conclusion is clear – alcohol continues to be sold at pocket money prices in supermarkets and off-licences across the UK.”

They found a wide range of cheap alcohol being sold by major supermarkets – including Asda, Tesco and Sainsbury’s.

Their report said: “Both Asda and Tesco were found to be selling perry at 19p per unit, while Morrisons were selling cider at 20p per unit and Sainsbury’s stocked perry at 22p per unit.

“In our research, we also found an abundance of summer-focused promotions. The promotions included deals on multi-packs and free giveaways with alcohol purchases, enticing people to buy.”

The report said that for the cost of a standard off-peak cinema ticket (£8.24), people could buy 7.5 litres of the cheapest white cider – the equivalent of 53 shots of vodka.

“The minimum hourly wage for those aged under 18 is £3.87,” the study went on. “After just an hour’s work, you would still have 38p change after buying a three-litre bottle of Frosty Jack’s containing 22.5 units of alcohol.

“For the cost of a monthly Netflix subscription at £7.49, you would have change from buying two three-litre bottles of Frosty Jack’s.

“Today, £10 will not buy you a large Domino’s pizza, but you would have a penny left over from a 700ml bottle of 40% Putinoff vodka at £9.99.”

The report concluded: “Cheap booze can be found on every street corner. Fundamentally, very little has changed since the last report was carried out five years ago.

“While the lowest price we report is 16p per unit, we found a broad range of products on sale for 25p or less, which is half the 50p minimum unit price recommended by health bodies and alcohol charities.

“At the cheapest price per unit for white cider (16p), the low-risk drinking limit of 14 units per week for both men and women could be purchased for just £2.24.”

Chairman of the AHA and former president of the Royal College of Physicians, Professor Sir Ian Gilmore, said: “In spite of a government commitment to tackle cheap, high-strength alcohol, these products are still available at pocket money prices. Harmful drinkers and children are still choosing the cheapest products – predominantly white cider and cheap vodka.

“We need to make excessively cheap alcohol less affordable through the tax system, including an increase in cider duty. It’s not right that high strength white cider is taxed at a third of the rate for strong beer.

“In addition, we need minimum unit pricing. This would target the cheap, high strength products drunk by harmful drinkers whilst barely affecting moderate drinkers, and it would leave pub prices untouched.”

Each year, there are almost 23,000 deaths and more than 1 million hospital admissions related to alcohol in England.

More than two-thirds of alcohol sold in the UK is purchased in supermarkets and off-licences.

Another report has found that British teenage girls are more likely to get drunk than their male counterparts. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) study found 31% of 15-year-old girls reported having been drunk at least twice compared with 26% of boys of the same age.

Alcohol continues to be sold at "pocket money prices", report finds

9/11 health crisis continues: New York cleaner fights cancer 15 years later

On September 11 2001, Merita Zejnuni began her shift at 7am, cleaning offices at Goldman Sachs on Maiden Lane in lower Manhattan. At 8.46am, she was in an internal stairwell. She didn’t hear a hijacked passenger jet slamming into the nearby north tower of the World Trade Center.

At 9.03am, though, she was on the 31st floor of her building. She saw a large plane speed past the window. It was the second hijacked jet, and it crashed into the south tower. Soon after, with sickening roars, the twin towers came down. Outside the Goldman Sachs office, the sky went dark.

“I was screaming,” she said, “screaming ‘We are going to die,’ the stuff was crashing on the window, probably it was pieces of bodies and planes and building, and so many papers, papers …”

Terrified office workers came pouring into the building, many covered in ash and soot. Zejnuni, who is now 52, handed out small towels and paper face masks and helped people clean themselves up. Then all the bankers began trying to make their way home.

“In one hour, the building was empty,” she said.

The boss of her cleaning company asked her and a few others to stay, to clean up. She did not sleep or go home for two and a half days, after which she was reunited with her 12-year-old son at their apartment in Queens.

In the days and nights she cleaned, she said, she had no masks left to use herself and no access to a shower or clean clothes. Soldiers stationed on the street outside gave her food. She was covered in dust; it filled her mouth and throat.

“It was disgusting,” she said. “I looked like a ghost. I was gray from head to foot.”

She took a day off, then came back to work.

Two months ago, despite an excellent health history and no record of cancer in her family, Zejnuni was found to have breast cancer. She has never smoked, but the doctors told her she also had a spot on her lung.

Two weeks before she sat down in Central Park to talk to the Guardian on Thursday night, she had a double mastectomy and breast reconstruction using flesh from her abdomen. She was already back at work.

‘I would cough so violently, like an old lady’

Smoke and ash engulf lower Manhattan on September 11 2001. Photograph: Greg Semendinger/AP

Zejnuni is one of many ordinary workers who dealt with the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks but who have never been publicly hailed as heroes like the firefighters, cops and workers who cleared the wreckage itself.

Certified as sick by the federal World Trade Center Health Program, created by the federal government in 2011, she sometimes still wheezes.

“In 2003, I got a painful cough,” she said. “I would cough so violently, like an old lady.”

Thousands are suffering in a post-9/11 health crisis. Many have died or are dying, despite government officials insisting in 2001 that the air in lower Manhattan was safe.

After the towers fell, Zejnuni managed to get a call through to her sister. “I told her, if anything happened to me, to look after my son,” she said.

Some time after 9/11, her company put her on night shifts, working virtually alone. Zejnuni said she asked her union if they could arrange for her to work days, as she was traumatized by her experiences after the attacks.

“A guy there told me, ‘Oh, that 9/11 bullshit – you’re lucky to have a job,’” she said. “I had to carry on working nights.”

Zejnuni moved to the US from her native Albania in 1997 and earned US citizenship. On 9/11, when she was asked to stay in lower Manhattan and work while most fled, she agreed because, she said: “I saw the army outside and I thought, ‘Let’s clean up in this country that opened its doors for me and gave me opportunity. I would give my life for this country.’”

For six years, her chronic cough was barely treated. Her chest was so painful, and her post-9/11 anxiety so acute, that although she never stopped working, she became depressed, drank too much and even contemplated suicide, she said.

Finally, she saw a poster on the train about specialist healthcare for 9/11 survivors. In 2009, she began receiving treatment at Mount Sinai hospital, one of the main centers looking after those affected by the attacks of 15 years ago.

“The doctors and nurses treated me like a human being,” she said. She stopped drinking and her self-confidence began to return. In October, she will consult with her doctors again, to assess the state of her cancer.

“I don’t want anyone to feel sorry for me,” she said. “I just want to work, but sometimes my body makes it difficult. I think back to those soldiers standing outside in the debris. They were so young and they would smile and say, ‘Hello, ladies.’ I wonder if they are even still alive.”

9/11 health crisis continues: New York cleaner fights cancer 15 years later

Divorce continues to take a psychological toll on kids

In the early 1920s, a list of exceptionally bright children was assembled for a study about growing up as a genius. These individuals affectionately became known to psychologists, affectionately, as the “termites”, after the Stanford researcher – Professor Frederick Terman – who began the study. The termites completed many surveys over their lifetimes, and the vast majority of the group have now died.

Their death certificates reveal that those whose parents divorced before their 21st birthday lived four years fewer than those whose parents stayed together until at least that point. Male termites typically lived to 76 as opposed to 80; female termites made it to about 82, instead of 86.

Although this group was a bit different to the rest of us – they each scored a minimum of 135 in high school IQ tests – brains and possible dweebish tendencies don’t appear to have exacerbated the impact of parental divorce. Overall, the termites handled life no better or worse than the US population as a whole. They committed suicide, developed alcoholism and themselves got divorced at the national rates.

Related: Divorced by 30: why do so many young marriages come to an early end?

So if parental divorce reduced longevity among the termites, it suggested worrying things about how divorce might affect all kids in the long run. The research subjects’ early deaths were pinned on higher rates of smoking, perhaps indicating a greater lifelong psychological stress following parental divorce.

But is this finding relevant today?After all, the termites experienced their parents splitting up during a period when divorce was much less common and much more stigmatized than it is now. Moreover, since that time, the reasons for divorce and the profile of couples most likely to divorce have changed in all manner of ways. So it seems reasonable to expect that whatever may have led these termites to feel stress more intensely than the other termites is no longer part and parcel of watching your parents split.

Researchers have a lot of disagreements about divorce trends. Most agree that divorce is less common today due to a rise in the age at which people first marry. But some experts believe that divorce rates in the US reached a peak among couples who married in the 1970s, and ever since the 1980s marriages have been more enduring. Other researchers, working with a different set of surveys, counter that the drop-off in divorce in recent decades has been overstated. In their view, divorce seems to have declined among younger couples, but it doubled in the two decades before 2008 among people over 35.

Divorce used to be the preserve of the upper classes. But as it has become legally less onerous, and its financial and social costs have been reduced, lower class couples have composed an ever greater share of divorcees.

Similarly, a highly educated wife used to be linked to greater odds of divorce, but that pattern has at least weakened in European countries taken together, and reversed in the most developed ones. In the US, too, women with a college degree are today far less likely to divorce than women who haven’t surpassed a high school degree. College educated women are also happier in their marriages and with their family life.

But what do these patterns have to do with how much divorce affects kids later in life? To answer that question requires comparing divorce trends to divorcees’ kids’ outcomes over time – outcomes that can reveal their levels of stress and how they have responded to stress as they have matured.

Various studies attempt this, but none over as long a period as an analysis of Swedish children. Astonishingly, Swedish records allow for comparison of people born more than a century apart, since face-to-face interviews using the same set of questions have been posed to Swedes born from 1892 onwards. Interviewees have been asked about their living arrangements growing up, about the extent of parental discord that they recall, and all about their mental health issues into adulthood, from insomnia to depression.

Many divorce trends over the 20th century suggest that children, on average, should have experienced noticeably less distress over time from their parents’ marriage ending. As divorce has become more common, it has become more socially acceptable. Female employment has risen and the welfare state has grown, meaning that single mothers are comparatively more able to provide for their offspring today than in the past. Custody arrangements have also changed, and children whose parents divorced in recent years are more likely than ever to maintain relationships with both parents.

But shockingly, divorcees’ kids in Sweden have seen no improvements in their relative educational attainment and psychological wellbeing. To this day, they are worse off by these measures than kids whose parents stay together. (And Sweden is, of course, a country with a far more generous welfare state and more liberal attitudes than most.)

The ongoing gap in educational performance appears to be due to families of a lower economic class becoming more prone to splitting up over the decades. Kids born into lower income families have always tended to do worse at school, so that trend isn’t due to divorce per se.

But the stubbornly lower psychological wellbeing of Swedish divorcees’ kids can’t be pinned entirely on income. Socioeconomics may explain part of it, but, instead, lots of family arguments appear to leave long term traces.

In short, the impacts of parental divorce are often subtle and long lasting. From the Stanford geniuses to Swedes born in the 1990s, the evidence suggests that kids whose parents have or are about to split up need more support than we realize.

Divorce continues to take a psychological toll on kids

Obama Continues Efforts To Curb Skyrocketing Heroin-Associated Deaths

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The Obama administration unveiled a new program that aims to tackle the country’s expanding heroin issue by diminishing heroin trafficking and growing help prevention efforts. In accordance to the Centers for Condition Control and Prevention (CDC), heroin use has much more than doubled amongst youthful adults in between the ages of 18-25 in the [...]

Obama Continues Efforts To Curb Skyrocketing Heroin-Associated Deaths

Nigerian mom continues fight to remain in United kingdom and stay away from FGM chance to daughters

Afusat Saliu, right, with her two daughters and her good friend Anj Handa, who lodged the petition on change.org. Photograph: Anj Handa

An 11th-hour legal challenge is currently being mounted in an attempt to halt the imminent deportation from the United kingdom of a Nigerian lady who is searching for asylum to safeguard her two daughters from becoming subjected to female genital mutilation in her native country.

More than a hundred,000 folks have signed a petition calling on the Property Workplace to reconsider its choice to send Afusat Saliu, 31, back to Nigeria, with her two daughters, aged three and 1.

Saliu, herself a victim of FGM, lives in Leeds and was ordered to report to Heathrow airport for deportation on Friday obtaining exhausted her legal efforts to fight towards her removal. The Property Workplace rejected new proof presented by Saliu’s legal team from her former boyfriend and her cousin about the threat of FGM to the infants if the family returns.

But on Thursday a leading worldwide lawyer, Felicity Gerry QC, took up Saliu’s situation and was preparing to apply for an emergency injunction with the court, to force a pause in the deportation ideas.

As the legal documentation was being drawn up, George Mudie, Saliu’s MP for Leeds East, wrote to James Brokenshire, minister for security and immigration, calling on the deportation ideas to be halted whilst planning for the emergency injunction was under way.

The campaign backing Saliu’s appropriate to continue to be in the United kingdom has grown quickly above the last 48 hours, with the quantity of men and women signing the petition exceeding a hundred,000 by Thursday afternoon.

Speaking from Leeds, Saliu, whose youngest child was born in the United kingdom, explained she desired to protect her daughters from the very same genital mutilation that she had suffered.

She mentioned: “I will not want my daughters to be mutilated like I was. That will come about if I get them back I know it because it is the culture of my family members. They think in it and I will not be in a position to do anything about it.”

Saliu, who has been supported by pals in Leeds, in certain by Anj Handa, who lodged the petition on alter.org, explained she was overwhelmed by the support from friends and members of the public who do not know her, saying it manufactured her stronger and gave her hope.

Saliu fled Nigeria in 2011 right after her stepmother told her she would get her oldest daughter, Bassy, minimize. She stated her dad and mom have been also forcing her to marry a guy forty years her senior, who she believed also posed a danger to her youngsters.

She 1st applied for asylum in 2012, but her application was denied. An appeal has been dismissed, and her recent application to the House Office presenting new proof was rejected on Wednesday.

The MP for Leeds North West, Greg Mulholland, and the anti-FGM campaigner Leyla Hussein have each backed Saliu’s battle towards deportation.

Mulholland explained: “I was extremely concerned to hear about the remedy that Ms Saliu has received from the Home Office, and I have written to the [Uk Border Company] and requested that they urgently investigate Ms Saliu’s situation and guarantee that the deportation is place on hold until finally the matter has been completely looked at once more and to let Afusat and her supporters to submit fresh evidence about the difficulties she and her children would face if they are returned to Nigeria.

“It is extremely worrying that the Residence Workplace are striving to deport her to Nigeria, regardless of the threat of violence she faces, and the threat of FGM to her two youthful daughters, which sadly Afusat has already been a victim of.”

The House Office stated: “The United kingdom has a proud historical past of granting asylum to those who need our safety and we think about every claim for asylum on its individual merits.

“We think that individuals who fail to establish a genuine fear of persecution need to return home voluntarily. If they do not, we will enforce their removal.”

Nigerian mom continues fight to remain in United kingdom and stay away from FGM chance to daughters

NHS will not survive soon after 2015 if austerity continues, warns chief

NHS chief executive Sir David Nicholson: ‘We know alter can be done. But it is difficult to imagine undertaking all these items with out some monetary flexibility.’ Photograph: David Levene

Billions of further funding will be necessary for the NHS to assist push via “unpleasant and unprecedented” modifications for the duration of the following parliament, the outgoing boss of the health support warns.

In a frank interview with the Guardian, Sir David Nicholson mentioned that whoever formed the next government would need to give the NHS extra funds simply because it could not survive if it had to continue to be in the straitjacket of austerity-era flat budgets following 2015.

The income would be necessary so the NHS can dramatically rationalise hospital providers, and concentrate its expert and GP solutions – enabling an NHS Nicholson calls “unsustainable” to ditch its outmoded reliance on hospital-based remedy and switch to a new model of neighborhood-primarily based care.

Nicholson declined to say how a lot far more cash he believed would be essential, but an additional senior NHS leader privately advised it could be up to £5bn additional a 12 months for several many years.

The NHS chief executive’s call for a “alter fund” on prime of the service’s present £110bn spending budget has sparked a renewed debate about no matter whether the NHS should continue to be a unique case for ministers confronting additional many years of tight public finances – and how much it wants to cope with the ongoing and long term rise in demand for healthcare.

Hospital services would also have to be centralised on a massive scale, he warned. GP surgeries essential to give up their part as the NHS’s equivalent of “corner stores” and a huge proportion of hospital care ought to be delivered in neighborhood settings if the NHS is to cope with the pressures posed by the ageing population, rise in the amount of sufferers with a single or much more lengthy-phrase conditions this kind of as asthma or diabetes, and demand for new remedies, Nicholson mentioned.

In long term there needed to be no more than 40-70 major centres of A&ampE care, even though the variety of organisations providing specialised services like cardiac care and transplantation had to shrink from 300 to just 15-30, he explained. He declined to put a figure on what would be the perfect quantity of GP surgeries in a streamlined organisation.

“We know this change can be completed,” he mentioned. “And we know that much more preventive operate in the local community minimizes demand on hospitals and that concentrating specialised solutions prospects to much better outcomes for sufferers.

“But it truly is challenging to envision doing all these issues without some monetary versatility to enable us to do that, some kind of modify fund that would enable us to do that”, explained the NHS boss, who leaves his publish at the end of the month soon after eight years to be replaced by Simon Stevens, former adviser to Tony Blair and Alan Milburn.

The further funds would enable the NHS to run existing hospitals although new solutions in the community had been created and created up with the intention of supplying a big sum of care.

It utilised a “adjust reserve” when it moved psychological well being care in the 1980s from standard asylums, which were closed, to new neighborhood-based providers – and that proved effective, he explained.

With out the NHS undertaking an overhaul in the way it delivered care it would encounter “managed decline above a period”, with fewer nurses on wards, rationing of medicines, longer waiting occasions for treatment method and a general decline in the good quality of care, he mentioned.

The alterations required had been important but are also “enormous, massive [and] unprecedented industry-broad change”, and would be “unpleasant for workers” and tough to persuade the public to accept. But failure to push them by means of could consequence in a decline in the high quality of NHS care – triggering a boom in personal healthcare and a collapse in public support for the support, he warned.

It is “unavoidable” that the next government would have to supply additional money to smooth that transition, he mentioned.

Paul Burstow, a Liberal Democrat health minister in the coalition right up until late 2012, explained that Nicholson’s message was “a reasonable evaluation of what’s essential to make change occur” but “will be unwelcomed by folks in all the events responsible for Treasury policies”.

Nicholson’s intervention comes as the tightness in the NHS’s finances will be illustrated when Danny Alexander, the chief secretary to the Treasury, announces on Thursday that all NHS staff will not be getting the 1% across the board spend rise from subsequent month promised final 12 months by the chancellor, George Osborne.

It is understood that the well being secretary, Jeremy Hunt, determined to block the award because he believed the NHS could not afford the expected £600m expense involved. Some workers are still expected to get an enhance.

Christine McAnea, head of overall health at the Unison trade union, stated: “If this rumour is true, NHS employees will be really angry. Their spend has fallen behind above the previous number of years and they deserve a respectable shell out improve and not to be treated with contempt by the coalition.

“I cannot feel that the government would be so foolish as to deny even a paltry one% to nurses, paramedics and therapists – it would be electoral suicide.”

Professor Chris Ham, chief executive of the King’s Fund overall health thinktank, also backed Nicholson.

“Our examination confirms that it is now inevitable that the following government will require to discover added funding for overall health and social care. The substitute is to accept important cuts to solutions that will harm care,” explained Ham, a former adviser to David Cameron on the NHS.

NHS will not survive soon after 2015 if austerity continues, warns chief