Vaccination made mandatory in Serbia on European Immunisation Week 

MP of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), Mileta Poskurica, has said that a new law predicts that only a doctor’s opinion will be enough and written parental consent will not be required for the vaccination of children. The new law is being discussed at the Parliament of Serbia and Poskurica said that the goal is to prevent parents from withdrawing from health protection, and any parent who continues to refuse to vaccinate will bear the legal consequences. Head of the Parliamentary Committee for Health and Family, Slavica Djukic Dejanovic, told reporters that vaccination levels in Serbia dropped to 85% when they believe they should be around 97%. She concluded that the goal is to return Serbia to the level of 97%. This occurs on the 10th anniversary of the WHO's European Immunisation Week, 'Protect. Prevent. Immunise.' and as the European Forum Vaccine Vigilance (EFVV) asks that Europeans sign a petition for Freedom of Informed Vaccination Consent, to ensure that the issue is tabled for discussion in Brussels. EFVV are also calling for an independent vaccino-vigilance unit to be established where Vaccine Adverse Effects (VAEs) will be reported and the number and severity of VAEs in Europe will be easily accessible information for parents to access.

Doctors say cutting carbs can ruin health

Doctors are now increasingly concerned that excluding all carbs could leave people lacking in energy, experiencing mood swings, showing poor concentration and with gut problems - and it may even make them put on weight. Experts believe that these foods have been unfairly demonised and Helen Bond, spokesperson for the British Dietetic Association, said that, “they are an essential part of a healthy, balanced diet - the general guidance is they should make up a third of our intake.” We beg to differ, as anyone who has read the ANH Food4Health Plate series will know. The Daily Mail article mentions the confusion over the difference between simple or processed carbs (such as white bread, cakes and biscuits) and complex ones (such as potatoes and wholegrains), but then goes on to report about Dr David Unwin, a Merseyside GP, who gave up carbs and gets his energy from healthy fats. As we’ve previously outlined, consuming too little fat and a lot of carbs, especially refined ones, and even consuming too much protein, stops you from becoming what we call ‘keto-adapted’, meaning you are an efficient fat burner.  Governments and most dieticians and medical doctors, but especially Big Food and Big Pharma, are not ready to tell this story. There’s too much money to be made.

Study shows glucose starvation may be vital to tumour suppression

Published in Nature, new research showing that, “AMPK modulates Hippo pathway activity to regulate energy homeostasis,” illustrates a key pathway known as ‘Hippo’. The Hippo pathway has been shown to regulate cell death and cell growth, therefore playing a role in the development or prevention of tumors. Chair of Experimental Radiation Oncology, Junjie Chen, PhD, said, “We have identified crosstalk between glucose metabolism and the Hippo pathway”. Chen and his colleagues revealed that the Hippo pathway can be manipulated to regulate the fuel, or glucose, that feeds all cells including those in tumors, thus presenting a potentially new avenue for cancer therapy. Proteins named YAP have previously been shown to promote cancer progression and metastasis, and Chen’s team found that when cells were starved of glucose, the AMPK enzyme was activated, which deactivated YAP. Chen concluded, “Our study proposes yet another cancer-related function of YAP. This provides an exciting link between glucose metabolism and the Hippo pathway in tissue maintenance and cancer prevention”. Yet another scientific reason why ketogenic diets are proving so invaluable for cancer patients.

Study encourages even more vaccinations

A new study from Canada shows the cost effectiveness of vaccinating boys for the human papilloma virus (HPV) to prevent oral cancer. The vaccine is mostly used as a measure in the prevention of cervical cancer, but a number of public health professionals have controversially suggested it might also be administered to boys to help reduce the risk of oropharyngeal cancer. Oral cancers account for 78% of HPV-related cancers in men, and some countries including the US, Switzerland, Austria and Australia have considered vaccination programs for boys. For the time being, however, the vaccine is not part of the official recommended immunisation schedule in any of these countries and is not typically covered by health insurance plans.

Erin Brockovich calls to end fluoridation

Erin Brockovich has posted on her Facebook page this morning calling for an end to fluoridation. She’s also asked for hearings to hold public officials accountable, for organisations to rescind their endorsements, and for further research on removing accumulated fluoride from our bodies. She believes that public drinking water is a basic human right and that the continued policy and practice of drinking water fluoridation must be ended immediately. In her post, she brings up the “especially shocking” responses of the dental and government officials to The Lillie Center for Energy & Health Studies that publicised the science showing disproportionate fluoride harm to the African American community. In her conclusion she writes, “Drinking water fluoridation takes away people’s freedom to choose what they take into their bodies. Low income families may not have the financial means to avoid over dosing with their drinking water”.

Junk foods change metabolism within 5 days

The journal Obesity reports that high-fat feeding alters a body’s healthy response within just 5 days. Dr Matthew W Hulver, PhD, department head of Human Nutrition, Food and Exercise at Virginia Tech and study author, said, “We were surprised how robust the effects were just with five days.” The study looked at 12 healthy college-age men, split them into two separate study groups and looked at the effect of a short-term high saturated fat diet on skeletal muscle and insulin sensitivity. The diet that the participants consumed was made up of around 55% fat but contained the same amount of calories as they consumed before the study. The result showed that the muscles’ ability to oxidise glucose was disrupted and even though overall insulin sensitivity didn’t change, the findings suggest that longer exposure to a diet of this kind might lead to insulin resistance down the line. Hulver and his team are now looking at how these changes effect the body long term and how quickly they can be reversed once someone returns to a low-fat diet. Given that the study was looking at the adverse effects of transitioning from a fasted to a fed state, it’s likely that the key to the metabolic changes lies there, rather than in the high fat diet.

Member states may be able to ‘opt-out’ of GMOs

Revisions on the EU authorisation procedure for GM imports were leaked a week ahead of today’s meeting of the Commissioner’s College. The leak revealed that the revisions will allow states to restrict or ban the use of genetically modified (GM) imports for food and feed that are authorised elsewhere in the EU. EU sources told feednavigator.com that they believe the amendment will be successful as EU Commission President, Jean-Claude Junker, is fully behind the proposal. Although the amendment will allow member states to ban the use of GM in their feed and food, they will have to justify those measures and the ban would need to be based on “legitimate considerations other than those linked to the safety of the products.” Clare Robinson from GM Watch commented that, “Member states wanting to use the opt-out will have to meet what appear to be impossible standards of proof,” and “it is revealing that opt-outs will not be allowed on health or environmental grounds - the very grounds on which GMO-sceptical countries base their rejection of GMO.”

ANH-Europe Homepage