Eeyore's News and View

Earthquake Rattles Jersey ... Again
For the second time in two weeks, a small earthquake has rattled an area of central New Jersey.
But like the last quake in Morris County, no significant damage or injuries were reported.
The latest earthquake, with a magnitude of 2.2, was recorded shortly before 5:30 p.m. Saturday, said Scott DiGiralomo, a coordinator with the county's office of emergency management. He told The Star-Ledger of Newark that the quake's epicenter was about 6 miles north of Boonton, and it was felt in neighboring Montville.
An earthquake of magnitude 3.0 had rattled windows and alarmed residents of several Morris communities on Feb. 2. That quake was centered in Rockaway, Dover and Morris Plains.
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Small-Earthquake-Rattles-Central-NJ--Again.html

Amid nurse shortage, hospitals focus on retention
February 15, 2009 - 12:28pm
By RASHA MADKOUR Associated Press Writer
MIAMI (AP) - Newly minted nurse Katie O'Bryan was determined to stay at her first job at least a year, even if she did leave the hospital every day wanting to quit.
She lasted nine months. The stress of trying to keep her patients from getting much worse as they waited, sometimes for 12 hours, in an overwhelmed Dallas emergency room was just too much. The breaking point came after paramedics brought in a child who'd had seizures. She was told he was stable and to check him in a few minutes, but O'Bryan decided not to wait. She found he had stopped breathing and was turning blue.
"If I hadn't gone right away, he probably would have died," O'Bryan said. "I couldn't do it anymore."
Many novice nurses like O'Bryan are thrown into hospitals with little direct supervision, quickly forced to juggle multiple patients and make critical decisions for the first time in their careers. About 1 in 5 newly licensed nurses quits within a year, according to one national study.
That turnover rate is a major contributor to the nation's growing shortage of nurses. But there are expanding efforts to give new nursing grads better support. Many hospitals are trying to create safety nets with residency training programs.
"It really was, 'Throw them out there and let them learn,'" said University of Portland nursing professor Diane Vines. The university now helps run a yearlong program for new nurses.
"This time around, we're a little more humane in our treatment of first-year grads, knowing they might not stay if we don't do better," she said.
The national nursing shortage could reach 500,000 by 2025, as many nurses retire and the demand for nurses balloons with the aging of baby boomers, according to Peter Buerhaus of Vanderbilt University Medical Center. The nursing professor is author of a book about the future of the nursing work force.
Nursing schools have been unable to churn out graduates fast enough to keep up with the demand, which is why hospitals are trying harder to retain them.
Medical school grads get on-the-job training during formal residencies ranging from three to seven years. Many newly licensed nurses do not have a similar protected period as they build their skills and get used to a demanding environment.
Some hospitals have set up their own programs to help new nurses make the transition. Often, they assign novices to more experienced nurses, whom they shadow for a few weeks or months while they learn the ropes. That's what O'Bryan's hospital did, but for her, it wasn't enough.
So more hospitals are investing in longer, more thorough residencies. These can cost roughly $5,000 per resident. But the cost of recruiting and training a replacement for a nurse who washed out is about $50,000, personnel experts estimate.
One national program is the Versant RN Residency, which was developed at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles and since 2004 has spread to 70 other hospitals nationwide. One of those, Baptist Health South Florida in the Miami area, reports cutting its turnover rate from 22 percent to 10 percent in the 18 months since it started its program.
The Versant plan pairs new nurses with more experienced nurses and they share patients. At first, the veterans do the bulk of the work as the rookies watch; by the end of the 18-week training program, those roles are reversed.
The new nurses must complete a 60-item checklist. They must learn how to put in an IV line and urinary catheter; interpret different heart rhythms and know how to treat them; monitor patients on suicide watch and do hourly checkups on very critically ill patients; know how to do a head-to-toe physical assessment on a patient, as well as how to inform families about the condition of their loved one.
For Yaima Milian, who's currently in the program at Baptist, this is markedly different from the preparation she got at her first hospital in New Jersey. She left after a six-week orientation because she didn't feel ready to work solo.
While Milian was paired with a more experienced nurse at the New Jersey hospital, they didn't see patients together; they split the workload. Her first week on the job, Milian was charged with caring for several patients with complicated issues _ those on ventilators and with chest tubes _ and she felt thoroughly unprepared.
"It just didn't feel right, it felt very unsafe," Milian said.
Besides the residency's professional guidance, which includes classroom instruction, new nurses also get personal support from mentors _ people they can call after a bad day or to get career advice. The new nurses also gather with their peers for regular debriefing, or "venting" sessions.
"Here you have this group that is pretty much experiencing the same things you're experiencing," Milian said, "and it makes you feel better."
To be sure, not all the nurses who leave do so because of a rocky transition. But for nurses who do leave because of stress, these programs seem to help.
The American Association of Colleges of Nursing and the University HealthSystem Consortium teamed up in 2002 to create a residency primarily for hospitals affiliated with universities. Fifty-two sites now participate in that yearlong program and the average turnover rate for new nurses was about 6 percent in 2007.
"We believe all new graduates should be given this kind of support system," said Polly Bednash, the nursing association's executive director. "We are facing downstream a horrendous nursing shortage as a large number of nurses retire from the field... So you need to keep the people you get and keep them supported."
The federal government has jumped on the bandwagon. Since 2003, it has awarded $17 million in grants for 75 hospitals to start first-year training programs.
The National Council of State Boards of Nursing is considering a standardized transition program. It cited a study showing a link between residencies and fewer medical errors, but also pointed to the inconsistency among current efforts.
That's something O'Bryan, the Dallas nurse, knows about. Her hospital _ which she declined to identify because she didn't want to be seen as complaining about a former employer _ had a three-month program, in which she attended weekly classes and was assigned a nurse to shadow. After that period was over, though, O'Bryan was abruptly alone, even as she continued to face new situations that she wasn't sure how to handle.
"When things are going good and I'm not overwhelmed and I'm able to help people, I love it," she said, recalling the gratification of seeing a bedridden patient finally manage to take a few steps.
"There are always those moments," she said, "but they're interrupted pretty quickly."
The 27-year-old is currently looking for a new job. She's not sure it will be in nursing.
American Association of Colleges of Nursing: http://www.aacn.nche.edu/

Vitamin B-6 Declared a “Drug” by FDA; to be Banned from Vitamin Supplements God help us, because the FDA has now opened the gateway for all vitamins to be declared “drugs” and removed from sale by the nutritional supplement industry. What they have done is declared that pyridoxamine (one of the three primary forms of vitamin B-6 found in nature, and the most widely used form in multi-vitamin supplements) is in reality a “new drug,” thus clearing the way for it to be banned from sale as a nutritional supplement. (See the news article below this commentary for more details.) Here’s what happened: A North Carolina-based firm called Biostratum began manufacturing pyridoxamine-based drug called Pyridorin designed to prevent the progression of diabetic nephropathy (kidney disease). The company then petitioned the FDA to declare pyridoxamine a “new drug,” clearing the way for them to hold an iron-clad monopoly on its sale. Today, the FDA agreed with Biostratum, and declared this most popular form of vitamin B-6 to indeed be a “new drug,” using the argument that its medical qualities had been under investigation for years before it was ever used as a nutritional supplement under the DSHEA, which ironically was enacted in 1994 in order to protect nutritional supplements from excessive FDA regulation. Not to worry, said many observers in the nutritional supplement industry. After all, there are two other natural forms of vitamin B-6 that can still be used in multi-vitamin formulations. The problem is, another drug company has already petitioned the FDA to declare the second most popular form of B-6, pyridoxal 5'-phosphate, which is also called P5P, a “new drug,” apparently for the very same reason pyridoxamine has been declared a drug, i.e., it’s purely medical qualities have been investigated long before it was ever used as a nutritional supplement. How much longer until the third most popular natural form of B-6 will be declared a “drug”? You can bet your boots the pharmaceutical companies are racing to get in on the FDA’s new fast-track for turning B-vitamins into drugs. Will All Vitamins Eventually Be Declared Drugs? Worst of all, the very same argument being used to declare vitamin B6 a “drug” can essentially be made for any vitamin. After all, every known vitamin on the face of the earth has been studied for their medicinal qualities even since the discovery of the existence of vitamins in food back in 1905, when a scientist named William Fletcher realized that foods contained special nutrients that actually prevented disease. It is easy to see that the day is soon-coming in which all vitamins will be offered solely as “drugs,” by prescription only. One of the most galling aspects of the whole thing is that the FDA flatly refuses to allow nutritional supplement manufacturers to even mention the incredible medicinal values of the vitamins, minerals and other supplements they sell. Indeed, the FDA routinely claims vitamin and mineral supplements are “useless” and “inert.” Yet when a drug company develops the same natural molecule as a “drug,” suddenly its medical benefits can be touted from the rooftops. The only problem is, the drug company is given a monopoly to produce the “drug,” and what was once a natural product available inexpensively in any health food store in America is now an expensive drug you have to get a prescription for. Drug-Induced B-6 Deficiency a Growing Phenomena Another serious issue regarding B-6 is that a growing number of medications actually deplete the body of this vital nutrient that is absolutely essential to life. The syndrome is called Drug Induced Pyridoxine Deficiency, and several drugs, including drugs for the treatment of tuberculosis, Parkinson’s Disease and for cancer are known to cause this syndrome, which essentially turns you into a mental vegetable by depleting your body of its needed stores of vitamin B-6. In the past, people having to take these drugs could simply go down to their local health food store and pick up an inexpensive bottle of vitamin B-6 in order to prevent the depletion syndrome. But due to the new FDA ruling, people using these drugs will no longer be able to do so. Instead they will have to get a prescription from their doctor, and purchase the expensive “drug” form of the vitamin in order to resolve the devastating mental side effects of the first drug! Foods that Contain Vitamin B-6 Naturally Under the circumstances it is important to note that certain foods contain vitamin B-6 naturally. They are, in order of their content percentage of the recommended daily value of the vitamin: Baked potato, flesh and skin, 1 medium: 0.7 mg ~ 35% DV Banana, raw, 1 medium: 0.68 mg ~ 34% DV Garbanzo beans, canned, 1/2 c: 0.57 mg ~ 30% DV Chicken breast, meat only, cooked, 1/2 breast: 0.52 mg ~ 25% DV Pork loin, lean only, cooked, 3 oz: 0.42 mg ~20% DV Roast beef, eye of round, lean only, cooked, 3 oz: 0.32 mg ~ 15% DV Trout, rainbow, cooked, 3 oz: 0.29 mg ~ 15% DV Sunflower seeds, kernels, dry roasted, 1 oz: 0.23 mg ~ 10% DV Avocado, raw, sliced, 1/2 cup: 0.2 mg ~ 10% DV Salmon, Sockeye, cooked, 3 oz: 0.19 mg ~ 10% DV Tuna, canned in water, drained solids, 3 oz: 0.18 mg ~ 10% DV Peanut butter, smooth, 2 Tbs: 0.15 mg ~ 8% DV More importantly, safe, simple Brewer’s Yeast contains relatively high levels of B-vitamins, including the pyridoxine form of B-6. Capsulated Brewer’s Yeast can be purchased in just about any health food store in the country, or is available through many online sources. What to Do Now Legally speaking, as of today, anyone wanting to purchase the pyridoxamine form of B-6, and probably soon the P5P form, will have to have a doctor's prescription to do so. Of course, the ruling is brand new, and it is going to take some time for the FDA to implement it. Meanwhile, the pyridoxamine form of vitamin B-6 is still widely available in health food stores across the country. I suspect, however, not for long. Today I went down to my local health food store and stocked up on a number of bottles of NOW Brand “B-50” vitamins, which contains the pyridoxamine form of B-6 along with all other B vitamins in 50 mg. per capsule dosages. I also picked up a number of bottles of the pure vitamin B6, in 100 mg. per capsule dosages. Since this vitamin is essential to cardiovascular health as well as mental health (and is also widely used to help heal carpal tunnel syndrome), it might be wise for you to do the same, particularly if the B vitamins are an integral part of your regular natural health regimen. Another thing you can do is go to the web site of the American Association for Health Freedom and sign their petition to stop the FDA from turning any more vitamins into drugs. You should also write and call your Congressmen and Senators immediately, and tell them you don’t want the FDA banning any more vitamins by turning them into “drugs.” It is high time we all start expressing our outrage at this outlandish behavior by the FDA and other bureaucracies in regards to their disdain for nutritional supplements. We now have the EPA trying to re-classify colloidal silver as a "pesticide" so they can ban its sale in health food stores. And we have the FDA actually re-classifying common vitamins as drugs. And it is all at the behest of the major pharmaceutical companies. The handwriting is on the wall. And frankly, it is up to "we the people" to put a stop to this egregious breach of our health freedoms. -- S. Spencer Jones FDA Declares Form of Vitamin B6 a Drug, Effectively Banning Pyridoxamine from Dietary Supplements http://www.naturalnews.com/025606.html Thursday, February 12, 2009 by: Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor (NaturalNews) The FDA has effectively banned a naturally-occurring form of vitamin B6 called pyridoxamine by declaring it to be a drug, reports the American Association for Health Freedom. Responding to a petition filed by a drug company, the FDA declared pyridoxamine to be "a new drug." Now, any nutritional supplements containing pyridoxamine will be considered adulterated and illegal by the FDA, which may raid vitamin companies and seize such products. See the history of FDA raids on vitamin companies here: http://www.naturalnews.com/021791.html Pyridoxamine occurs naturally in fish, chicken and other foods (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_B6), putting the FDA in the strange position of banning a substance from dietary supplements even though it is already present in the food supply. The FDA's war on Mother Nature It's not the first time the FDA has declared a natural molecule to be a "drug" while attacking nutritional supplements that contain the same molecule. A similar story unfolded with red yeast rice and the lovastatin molecules it contains that lower high cholesterol. The drug companies engaged in biopiracy, ripping off the molecule from red yeast rice to make their now-famous "statin drugs." Once the statin drugs were patented, Big Pharma and the FDA went after red yeast rice, claiming the supplement was "adulterated with pharmaceuticals." It wasn't really adulterated, of course. It just contained a natural statin-drug-like molecule that the drug companies copied and patented. It would be like Big Pharma patenting vitamin C, then the FDA claiming that all oranges and lemons were adulterated with drugs because they naturally contain their own vitamin C. This is the insanity of the FDA as it operates today. You can read more about the FDA on our channel webiste www.FDAreform.org which is updated every few days. So will this ruling on pyridoxamine affect nutritional supplements? Yes, any supplements containing this form of vitamin B6 can now be declared "adulterated" by the FDA. Manufacturers of such supplements can be arrested and shut down for engaging in "illegal drug trafficking." Such is the nature of the FDA's agenda to criminalize nutritional supplement companies and limit consumers' access to Mother Nature's remedies. The pyridoxamine "drug," by the way (which is just pyridoxamine), is designed to prevent the progression of diabetic nephrothapy (kidney disease). Most likely, the FDA will eventually approve the "drug" for that condition, even while claiming vitamin B6 supplements containing the very same chemical are useless and inert. This is another classic oppression tactic of the FDA: Ban the herb, but promote the drug using the same chemicals. The same thing happened with ephedra, a Traditional Chinese Medicine herb known as ma huang. The FDA banned the herb, saying it was "dangerous at any dose," but pharmaceuticals containing the very same molecules (ephedrine) are still being sold over-the-counter as cold medicines, meaning they're available to any child without a prescription. The bottom line is this: FDA approvals and bans have nothing to do with science and everything to do with protecting drug companies profits. If a drug company can make money selling a vitamin as a drug, the FDA will gladly ban the vitamin and protect the drug. If a drug company can rip off molecules from Mother Nature and patent them, the FDA will ban those same molecules found in nature. All of this points to the urgent need to reform the FDA. A new petition demanding real FDA reform will be announced here on NaturalNews in the coming days. Sources for this story include:
AAHF: http://aahf.nonprofitsoapbox.com/in... NewsFood.com: http://www.newsfood.com/?location=E... http://secretsofnaturalhealing.blogspot.com/

Federal obligations exceed world GDP Does $65.5 trillion terrify anyone yet? As the Obama administration pushes through Congress its $800 billion deficit-spending economic stimulus plan, the American public is largely unaware that the true deficit of the federal government already is measured in trillions of dollars, and in fact its $65.5 trillion in total obligations exceeds the gross domestic product of the world. The total U.S. obligations, including Social Security and Medicare benefits to be paid in the future, effectively have placed the U.S. government in bankruptcy, even before new continuing social welfare obligation embedded in the massive spending plan are taken into account. The real 2008 federal budget deficit was $5.1 trillion, not the $455 billion previously reported by the Congressional Budget Office, according to the "2008 Financial Report of the United States Government" as released by the U.S. Department of Treasury. The difference between the $455 billion "official" budget deficit numbers and the $5.1 trillion budget deficit cited by "2008 Financial Report of the United States Government" is that the official budget deficit is calculated on a cash basis, where all tax receipts, including Social Security tax receipts, are used to pay government liabilities as they occur. But the numbers in the 2008 report are calculated on a GAAP basis ("Generally Accepted Accounting Practices") that include year-for-year changes in the net present value of unfunded liabilities in social insurance programs such as Social Security and Medicare. Under cash accounting, the government makes no provision for future Social Security and Medicare benefits in the year in which those benefits accrue. "As bad as 2008 was, the $455 billion budget deficit on a cash basis and the $5.1 trillion federal budget deficit on a GAAP accounting basis does not reflect any significant money [from] the financial bailout or Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, which was approved after the close of the fiscal year," economist John Williams, who publishes the Internet website Shadow Government Statistics, told WND. Find out what's behind the chaos at the White House, in the No. 1 best-seller "Obama Nation" "The Congressional Budget Office estimated the fiscal year 2009 budget deficit as being $1.2 trillion on a cash basis and that was before taking into consideration the full costs of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, before the cost of the Obama nearly $800 billion economic stimulus plan, or the cost of the second $350 billion in TARP funds, as well as all current bailouts being contemplated by the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve," he said. "The federal government's deficit is hemorrhaging at a pace which threatens the viability of the financial system," Williams added. "The popularly reported 2009 [deficit] will clearly exceed $2 trillion on a cash basis and that full amount has to be funded by Treasury borrowing. "It's not likely this will happen without the Federal Reserve acting as lender of last resort for the Treasury by buying Treasury debt and monetizing the debt," he said. "Monetizing the debt" is a term used to signify that the Federal Reserve will be required simply to print cash to meet the Treasury debt obligations, acting in this capacity only because the Treasury cannot sell the huge of amount debt elsewhere. The Treasury has been largely dependent upon foreign buyers, principally China and Japan and other major holders of U.S. dollar foreign exchange reserves, including OPEC buyers purchasing U.S. debt through London. "The appetite of foreign buyers to purchase continued trillions of U.S. debt has become more questionable as the world has witnessed the rapid deterioration of the U.S. fiscal condition in the current financial crisis," Williams noted.

"Truthfully," Williams pointed out, "there is no Social Security 'lock-box.' There are no funds held in reserve today for Social Security and Medicare obligations that are earned each year. It's only a matter of time until the public realizes that the government is truly bankrupt and no taxes are being held in reserve to pay in the future the Social Security and Medicare benefits taxpayers are earning today." Calculations from the "2008 Financial Report of the United States Government" also show that the GAAP negative net worth of the federal government has increased to $59.3 trillion while the total federal obligations under GAAP accounting now total $65.5 trillion. The $65.5 trillion total federal obligations under GAAP accounting not only now exceed four times the U.S. gross domestic product, or GDP, the $65.5 trillion deficit exceeds total world GDP. "In the seven years of GAAP reporting, we have seen an annual average deficit in excess of $4 trillion, which could not be possibly covered by any form of taxation," Williams argued. "Shy of the government severely slashing social welfare programs, federal deficits of this magnitude are beyond any hope of containment, government or otherwise," he said. "Put simply, there is no way the government can possibly pay for the level of social welfare benefits the federal government has promised unless the government simply prints cash and debases the currency, which the government will increasingly be doing this year," Williams said, explaining in more detail why he feels the government is now in the process of monetizing the federal debt. "Social Security and Medicare must be shown as liabilities on the federal balance sheet in the year they accrue according to GAAP accounting," Williams argues. "To do otherwise is irresponsible, nothing more than an attempt to hide the painful truth from the American public. The public has a right to know just how bad off the federal government budget deficit situation really is, especially since the situation is rapidly spinning out of control. "The federal government is bankrupt," Williams told WND. "In a post-Enron world, if the federal government were a corporation such as General Motors, the president and senior Treasury officers would be in federal penitentiary."
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=88851

Wild birds carry avian flu viruses to North America: Report Reuters
Published: Tuesday, October 28, 2008
WASHINGTON - Migrating waterfowl may be carrying avian influenza viruses from Asia to the Americas, U.S. government researchers reported on Tuesday.
They found genetic evidence that some non-dangerous influenza viruses infecting northern pintail ducks in Alaska are genetically more closely related to Asian strains of bird flu than to North American strains.
"Although some previous research has led to speculation that intercontinental transfer of avian influenza viruses from Asia to North America via wild birds is rare, this study challenges that," said Chris Franson, a research wildlife biologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, who helped lead the study.
Migrating waterfowl may be carrying avian influenza viruses from Asia to the Americas, U.S. government researchers report.
USGS and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service experts have been testing birds in Alaska for any evidence they may be carrying highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu with them from Asia.
Writing in the journal Molecular Ecology, the USGS team said they had collected samples from more than 1,400 northern pintails from throughout Alaska and compared any viruses they found to virus samples taken from other birds in North America and eastern Asia where northern pintails spend the winter.
None of the samples were found to contain completely Asian-origin viruses and none were highly pathogenic. But certain parts of the genes of the viruses resembled Asian strains, they said.
Since 2003, H5N1 has swept through flocks in Indonesia, Korea, China and elsewhere in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and parts of Africa.
It has killed or forced the slaughter of more than 300 million birds.
Not only is it devastating to the poultry industry but it occasionally infects people and has killed 245 out of the 387 infected people so far, according to the World Health Organization.
Birds can carry dozens of different flu viruses, some dangerous and some not. So far there is no evidence any have carried H5N1 with them to North America from Asia.
http://www.globaltv.com/globaltv/national/features/Vital%20Signs/story.html?id=932145

Second B.C. farm reports avian flu
By Greg Joyce, THE CANADIAN PRESS
VANCOUVER, B.C. - An outbreak of avian flu has been detected on a second farm in British Columbia's Fraser Valley, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said Wednesday.
Sandra Stephens, veterinary program specialist with the agency, said testing confirmed the presence of an H5 virus on the second property.
The latest outbreak in the southwestern corner of the province is located fairly close to the farm where H5N2 virus was detected last month in two barns.
It's believed to be a low-pathogenicity virus, like the first one, said Stephens.
But what may be alarming to commercial poultry producers in the Fraser Valley is the possibility that the latest outbreak may not be connected to the first.
"Investigations to this point would indicate that we do not have any direct contact (between the latest property and the one last month) so it is quite likely that this is an independent introduction of a virus into the barn," said Stephens.
The first outbreak was of an H5N2 virus. In the latest outbreak, the specific type of virus - or N number - has not yet been determined.
The H5N2 virus is not related to the H5N1 avian flu virus that has decimated poultry flocks and resulted in human fatalities in Asia, the Middle East, Africa and parts of Eastern Europe.
It is, however, the same type of virus that caused an avian flu outbreak in the Fraser Valley in late 2005.
This second property has 12,000 breeder birds laying chicken eggs and officials say all will be destroyed.
There are now 43 properties in the area under quarantine, including 10 new ones as a result of the new discovery.
"The (most recent) flock was tested as part of a surveillance activity within three kilometres of the commercial poultry operation where low pathogenic H5N2 avian influenza was detected Jan. 24," Stephens said.
"Tests to date indicate the strain of avian influenza on the new premises is also low pathogenic and similar to the original strain identified at the initial premise."
The latest detection came from samples collected Jan. 31 along with followup samples taken Feb. 5.
The new premise is "toward the outer limit of that initial three-kilometre radius drawn around the initial premise."
Approximately 60,000 turkeys on the first affected farm were euthanized and they are being composted in the two barns at temperatures that should ensure any viruses are destroyed, the agency said.
More than 62,000 poultry had to be destroyed when avian flu was found in the Fraser Valley in late 2005.
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2009/02/11/8357311-cp.html