>>10503085

Venom from honeybees found to kill aggressive breast cancer cells

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/09/200901093412.htm

Using the venom from 312 honeybees and bumblebees in Perth Western Australia, Ireland and England, Dr Ciara Duffy from the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research and The University of Western Australia, tested the effect of the venom on the clinical subtypes of breast cancer, including triple-negative breast cancer, which has limited treatment options.

Results published in the journal npj Precision Oncology revealed that honeybee venom rapidly destroyed triple-negative breast cancer and HER2-enriched breast cancer cells.

Dr Duffy said the aim of the research was to investigate the anti-cancer properties of honeybee venom, and a component compound, melittin, on different types of breast cancer cells.

"No-one had previously compared the effects of honeybee venom or melittin across all of the different subtypes of breast cancer and normal cells.

"We tested honeybee venom on normal breast cells, and cells from the clinical subtypes of breast cancer: hormone receptor positive, HER2-enriched, and triple-negative breast cancer.

"We tested a very small, positively charged peptide in honeybee venom called melittin, which we could reproduce synthetically, and found that the synthetic product mirrored the majority of the anti-cancer effects of honeybee venom," Dr Duffy said.

"We found both honeybee venom and melittin significantly, selectively and rapidly reduced the viability of triple-negative breast cancer and HER2-enriched breast cancer cells.

"The venom was extremely potent," Dr Duffy said.

A specific concentration of honeybee venom can induce 100% cancer cell death, while having minimal effects on normal cells.

"We found that melittin can completely destroy cancer cell membranes within 60 minutes."

Melittin in honeybee venom also had another remarkable effect; within 20 minutes, melittin was able to substantially reduce the chemical messages of cancer cells that are essential to cancer cell growth and cell division.

"We looked at how honeybee venom and melittin affect the cancer signalling pathways, the chemical messages that are fundamental for cancer cell growth and reproduction, and we found that very quickly these signalling pathways were shut down.

The US has banned antibacterial handwashes – here’s why Australia should too

September 8, 2016

https://theconversation.com/the-us-has-banned-antibacterial-handwashes-heres-why-australia-should-too-64965

The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last week ruled to disallow the use of the more than a dozen antibacterial compounds in so-called “antibacterial” handwashes. Australia’s regulator is now assessing whether it will follow suit.*

Triclosan is one of the most common antibacterial ingredients in domestic and medical handwash products, toothpastes and cosmetics. It is also used as a pesticide in many plastic consumer goods such as toys, and textiles such as carpets.

The FDA ruling applies only to consumer antibacterial handwashes and soaps designed and marketed for use in general domestic settings in the US. It doesn’t apply to those formulated specifically for hospital and other medical settings.

Manufacturers have a year to comply with the ruling.

Companies promoting these products have until now been able to make exaggerated claims about their relative germ-killing ability. As a result, they have enjoyed almost four decades of unfettered sales in a US handwash market, which is estimated to be worth about US$1 billion.

In theory, in order to be allowed to market products with a claim of antibacterial activity, there must be evidence to prove the claim as well as data showing it’s safe to use, including in the long term. Without data proving effectiveness and safety, products are not supposed to be approved.

It turns out that for triclosan and consumer handwashes, there was neither.

Effectiveness

Many studies have shown that the use of consumer antibacterial wash products is no better at removing germs than plain soap and water.

>>10503147

Melittin: from honeybees to superbugs

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30824944/

Abstract

The emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, dubbed superbugs, together with relative stagnation in developing efficient antibiotics has led to enormous health and economic problems, necessitating the need for discovering and developing novel antimicrobial agents. In this respect, animal venoms represent a rich repertoire of pharmacologically active components. As a major component in the venom of European honeybee Apis mellifera, melittin has a great potential in medical applications. In this mini-review, we summarize a multitude of studies on anti-bacterial effects of melittin against planktonic and biofilm-embedded bacteria. Several investigations regarding synergistic effects between melittin and antibiotics were also described. On the whole, the properties of melittin can open up new horizons in a range of biomedical areas, from agriculture to veterinary and clinical microbiology.

CNN's Brian Stelter appears on C-SPAN — and callers absolutely torch him: 'We all know you're not reliable.'

'Reliable Sources' host blames 'radicalization' in the U.S. that has led to 'media bashing that is absolutely unprecedented'

https://www.theblaze.com/news/cnns-brian-stelter-appears-on-c-span-and-callers-absolutely-torch-him

CNN's "Reliable Sources" host Brian Stelter appeared Tuesday on C-SPAN's "Washington Journal," and people took the opportunity to call in to the live broadcast and issue searing condemnations of Stelter and his network's reporting.

What are the details?

One man called in to comment, starting off with a criticism of CNN, lambasting the outlet for a chyron from last week that read, "Fiery but mostly peaceful protests after police shooting," while buildings burned in the background behind a correspondent reporting from Kenosha, Wisconsin.

The caller went on to refer to Stelter as "Humpty Dumpty" and "a stooge," adding, "We all know you're not reliable."

Revolver Exclusive Study: COVID-19 Lockdowns Over 10 Times More Deadly Than Pandemic Itself

https://www.revolver.news/2020/08/study-covid-19-lockdowns-deadlier-than-pandemic-itself/

A groundbreaking new study commissioned by Revolver News concludes that COVID-19 lockdowns are ten times more deadly than the actual COVID-19 virus in terms of years of life lost by American citizens.

Up until this point there had been no simple, rigorous analysis that accurately and definitively conveys the true costs of the COVID-19 lockdowns. Accordingly, Revolver News set out to commission a study to do precisely that: to finally quantify the net damage of the lockdowns in terms of a metric known as “life-years.” Simply put, we have drawn upon existing economic studies on the health effects of unemployment to calculate an estimate of how many years of life will have been lost due to the lockdowns in the United States, and have weighed this against an estimate of how many years of life will have been saved by the lockdowns. The results are nothing short of staggering, and suggest that the lockdowns will end up costing Americans over 10 times as many years of life as they will save from the virus itself.

The COVID-19 lockdown measures that Americans have had to endure for the greater part of 2020 represent one of the most dramatic, consequential, and damaging policy measures undertaken in this nation’s history. For the first time in its history, America has experienced a situation so crippling and perilous that long term financial and social stability have been legitimately threatened.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

CHEAT SHEET: Back-of-the-Envelope Calculations Show COVID-19 “Cure” Is Worse Than Disease

Standard approaches to evaluating epidemic policy responses, involving the Value of a Statistical Life, have conceptual problems and are biased towards the elderly and rich.

Using a life-years criterion as an alternative shows that the lockdowns cost an order of magnitude more life-years than they saved.

Most of the publicized cost-benefit analyses of COVID-19 lockdowns have used coarse measures like lives as units rather than life-years, which misleads politicians and the general public. COVID-19 deaths disproportionately impact the oldest members of the population, whereas the economic impacts of lockdowns disproportionately harm the youngest of the working population, who have far greater life expectancies at the time of impact.

Using prior research on workforce entrants and recent graduates entering into a market marred by an economic recession, empirical estimates of life-years lost can be determined. Extensive research on job displacement can be used to estimate the economic impact in life-years of starkly increased unemployment for mid-to-late career workers.

Combining these analyses, we found that an estimated 18.7 million life-years will be lost in the United States due to the COVID-19 lockdowns. Comparative data analysis between nations shows that the lockdowns in the United States likely had a minimal effect in saving life-years. Using two different comparison groups, we estimate that the COVID-19 lockdowns in the U.S. saved between a quarter to three quarters of a million life-years.

Every broad age category lost life-years from the lockdowns including those 55 and older.

The media and state and local governments contributed to the panic by selectively presenting evidence on COVID-19 and shutdowns of dubious benefit.

Public health researchers and health economists gave poor policy advice and made selective use of the prior research literature. They will likely be rewarded, not punished, by academia for their failure because of academia’s biases.

Public health in general is so biased and vulnerable to motivated cognition that it is not “not yet ready for policy analysis.”

>>10503597

China And US: The 21st Century’s ‘Great Game’ – Analysis

https://www.eurasiareview.com/22082020-china-and-us-the-21st-centurys-great-game-analysis/

From 1830 to 1895, the British and Russian empires schemed and plotted over control of Central and South Asia. At the heart of the “Great Game” was England’s certainty that the Russians had designs on India. So wars were fought, borders drawn, and generations of young met death in desolate passes and lonely outposts.

In the end, it was all illusion. Russia never planned to challenge British rule in India and the bloody wars settled nothing, although the arbitrary borders and ethnic tensions stoked by colonialism’s strategy of divide and conquer live on today. Thus China, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nepal battle over lines drawn in London, while Beijing, Tokyo and Seoul vie for tiny uninhabited islands, remnants of Imperial Japan.

That history is important to keep in mind when one begins to unpack the rationales behind the increasingly dangerous standoff between China and the United States in the South China Sea.

To the Americans, China is a fast rising competitor that doesn’t play by the rules and threatens one of the most important trade routes on the globe in a region long dominated by Washington. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has essentially called for regime change.

According to Ryan Hass, former China director on the National Security Council, the Trump administration is trying to “reorient the U.S.-China relationship toward an all-encompassing systemic rivalry that cannot be reversed” by administrations that follow. In short, a cold war not unlike that between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

To the Chinese, the last 200 years—China does tend to think in centuries, not decades—has been an anomaly in their long history. Once the richest country on the globe that introduced the world to everything from silk to gunpowder, 19th Century China became a dumping ground for British opium, incapable of even controlling its own coastlines.

China has never forgotten those years of humiliation or the damage colonialism helped inflict on its people. Those memories are an ingredient in the current crisis.

But China is not the only country with memories.

The U.S. has dominated the Pacific Ocean—sometimes called an “American lake”—since the end of World War II. Suddenly Americans have a competitor, although it is a rivalry that routinely gets overblown.

An example is conservative New York Times columnist, Bret Stephens, who recently warned that China’s Navy has more ships than the US Navy, ignoring the fact that most of China’s ships are small Coast Guard frigates and corvettes. China’s major strategic concern is the defense of its coasts, where several invasions in the 19th and 20th centuries have come.

The Chinese strategy is “area denial”: keeping American aircraft carriers at arm’s length. To this end, Beijing has illegally seized numerous small islands and reefs in the South China Sea to create a barrier to the US Navy.

But China major thrust is economic through its massive Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), not military, and is currently targeting South Asia as an area for development.

South Asia is enormously complex, comprising Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Tibet, the Maldives and Sri Lanka. Its 1.6 billion people constitute almost a quarter of the world’s population, but it only accounts for 2 percent of the global GDP and 1.3 percent of world trade.

Those figures translate into a poverty level of 44 percent, just 2 percent higher than the world’s most impoverished region, sub-Saharan Africa. Close to 85 percent of South Asia’s population makes less than $2 a day.

Much of this is a result of colonialism, which derailed local economies, suppressed manufacturing, and forced countries to adopt monocrop cultures focused on export. The globalization of capital in the 1980s accelerated the economic inequality that colonialism had bequeathed the region.

Development in South Asia has been beholden to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which require borrowers to open their markets to western capital and reduce debts through severe austerity measures, throttling everything from health care to transportation.