FSM News and Articles
Australia cancels all Bioresonance devices: From 2014 to 2018, [FSM] had repeatedly [asked the TGA] for these devices to be investigated. Meeting with the national manager in 2016, we were told that these devices could not be cancelled because they were ‘biofeedback’ devices, which had a legitimate place in health care. In 2018, FSM sourced comments from informed experts here and overseas. These disputed the ‘biofeedback’ claim. In 2019, after issuing a warning on bioresonance, the TGA closed the complaints and commenced an ‘education campaign’. They also engaged a credible Australian scientific organisation to review the evidence provided by eight ‘sponsors’ of 12 bioresonance’ devices listed in the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods. All devices have now been cancelled by their sponsors or by the TGA. The ‘education campaign’ continues. Even though the devices are still widely used, and courses still being run, FSM considers this a modestly satisfactory outcome.
ACCC targets alleged false and misleading Nurofen claims: The ACCC alleged that these representations were false or misleading because the caplets in all four Nurofen Specific Pain Products are identical and each contain the same active ingredient, ibuprofen lysine 342mg. All four products are also approved on the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods as being suitable for treating a wide variety of pain types.
FSM Friends’ News and Articles
Smoking and COVID-19: Early (March 2020) data on Chinese COVID-19 patients identified the low prevalence of smoking noted among hospitalized patients. This led to the hypothesis that smoking, or perhaps nicotine itself, may provide some protection against infection or worsening disease. Data that has emerged since that time does not give strong support to the “smoking is protective” hypothesis. There is no question that cigarette smoking causes lung damage, and it kills millions per year. Whether or not nicotine has any beneficial effects on COVID-19 is a related but distinct question that is now under investigation, using nicotine replacement (patches) to study the question. Over the next several months, better data should be available to provide a more definitive response. Until that time, quitting smoking (or not starting) even during a pandemic, remains an appropriate health strategy.
NewsGuard identifies social media “super-spreaders” of COVID-19 misinformation: “David Icke, with over 310,000 followers, is a former British football player, “who has repeatedly promoted conspiracy theories, including the idea that the world is under the control of shape-shifting aliens”. He tweeted both that the coronavirus does not exist and, in what would seem to be a mutually-exclusive proposition, that 5G technology is connected to its spread.”
General
Fiona Stanley on how she became the driving force behind folate for pregnant women: Professor Stanley established the WA Congenital Malformations Registry in 1979 and the Maternal and Child Health Research Population Database in 1980. Her team was working to discover if there was a kind of nutrition that helped prevent neural defects in unborn babies. Professor Fiona Stanley and Professor Carol Bower made a landmark discovery in 1989, realising the crucial link between a lack of folate in a mother’s diet and neurological tube defects such as spina bifida, anencephaly and encephalocele in babies. Because of that research, many women throughout Australia now don’t think twice about taking a folic acid supplement when they’re trying to conceive and during pregnancy. Folate is crucial for the human body to make DNA, form red blood cells and grow and repair cells and tissues. Our bodies do not naturally produce it.
Great Moments in Health and Science
The development of the heel prick neonatal screening test: Safe, easy and fast, this test screens for several life-threatening conditions, several complications of which can be prevented through treatment once diagnosed.
Today’s Abused Health Concept
New study says vitamin D can’t prevent or treat coronavirus: Yet another COVID-19 related idea that went viral turns out to not to be based on any evidence. “The continued spread of the novel SARS-CoV-2 virus, and the disease COVID-19 that is caused by SARS-CoV-2, has led to calls for widespread high-dose vitamin D supplementation,” the researchers write. “These calls are without support from pertinent studies in humans at this time, but rather based on speculations about presumed mechanisms.” In general, we are in the mis-information pandemic. If you see an idea going viral, don’t just run with it. Do all you can to question it.