“At first glance, world-renowned Israeli virologist Dr. Madeleine Mumcuoglu does not seem like the sort of person you expect to come up with what could turn out to be a cure for one of humanity’s biggest threats today – the avian flu.
She seems comfortable and grandmotherly, not the type you usually associate with the frontline of research into a potential pandemic. On the other hand, however, Mumcuoglu is clearly a very determined woman who has turned a lifetime of research into the health benefits of elderberry, an old folk remedy for influenza, into a clinically proven treatment for regular flu. Now, new in-vitro tests have proved that her remedy, the elderberry-based Sambucol, also appears to be effective against avian flu.
Last week, Retroscreen Virology, a leading British medical research institute associated to Queen Mary College, University of London, announced that Sambucol was at least 99% effective against the avian flu virus, H5N1, and in cell cultures significantly neutralized the infectivity of the virus.
“I think that Sambucol has a great role to play – it really can save lives,” Mumcuoglu told ISRAEL21c. “To my knowledge, it’s the only product that can cut the flu in half, before complications have a chance of setting in. If we do have a cure for chicken flu, this is a really positive thing for Israel.”
Let’s hear it for herbal medicine!!!

Jenny Hatch
UPDATE:
Flu Casters at the UN

A Columnist Backed by Monsanto
This is so important to remember when a popular and influential pundit is praising a cause or pushing an agenda. The words you read may be backed up by thousands of dollars in kickbacks from whatever cause or agenda is being shoved on the populace.
Monsanto, the father of Genetically Altered Frankenfood, has hired this writer to push the agenda of GM foods. (This is a link to Fumentos “Boo Hoo Hoo, Can’t we all get along piece at NRO – good work Cathy in helping to expose his fraud!)
Quote:
In a statement released on Jan. 13, Scripps Howard News Service Editor and General Manager Peter Copeland said Fumento “did not tell SHNS editors, and therefore we did not tell our readers, that in 1999 Hudson recieved a $60,000 grant from Monsanto.” Copeland added: “Our policy is that he should have disclosed that information. We apologize to our readers.” In the Jan. 5 column, Fumento wrote that St. Louis-based Monsanto has about 30 products in the pipeline that will aid farmers, “but also help us all by keeping prices down and allowing more crops to be grown on less land.”
He listed some of the products Monsanto has on tap: drought-resistant corn, crops that could reduce the need for environment-damaging fertilizers, and soybeans that might reduce heart disease.
“YOU SHOULD CONTRIBUTE.” In his career at Hudson, Fumento has carved out a specialty debunking critics of the agribusiness and biotechnology industries.”
No free speech for anyone but the Corporate shill…
“In 1999, he says, he solicited $60,000 from Monsanto to write a book on the business. The book, entitled BioEvolution was published in 2003. A spokesman for Monsanto confirmed the payments to the Hudson Institute.
Asked about the payments, Fumento says, “I’m just extremely pro-biotech.”
Fumento insists that disclosure of financial transactions between op-ed columnists and the companies they cover wouldn’t be practical. “The op-ed money trail is only now getting attention, he argues in an e-mail, because of BusinessWeek Online’s recent revelation that Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff had paid two columnists for years to deliver good press to his clients.”
So the question in my mind is….HOW PERVASIVE IS THIS PRACTICE??? And can we trust anything that any editorialist says??? How long is the op-ed MONEY TRAIL???
“Fumento also points out that he criticized Monsanto publicly in a 1999 Forbes magazine column, calling the company “chicken-hearted” for caving in to pressure from environmentalists to terminate a seed program. “I acted completely ethically, and within a month or two nobody will doubt that,” Fumento says.”
Puuleease…calling Monsanto “chicken hearted” towards environmentalists works completely in their favor, and shows no signs of ethics or bravado against his employer. This “chicken-hearted” claim justifys Monsanto in their monopolizing and bullying in the food industries and enables them to more fully go after critics.
“While Fumento doesn’t think he should have disclosed the payments to his readers, Hudson’s CEO Kenneth R. Weinstein is less sure. Asked if the scholar should have disclosed his financial relationship with Monsanto, Weinstein pauses and says, “that’s a good question, period.””
All disclosures should be made public. Perhaps each editorial should have a disclaimer at the beginning of it saying something like – Company XYZ paid me $40,000.00 over the past three years to shill for their goods and services…(hey, it’s cheaper than advertising!)”
Here’s hoping….
Let Freedom Ring!
Jenny Hatch
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Seed Savers Exchange
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*An unpaid endorsement for Seed Savers Exchange by Jenny Hatch*

Neo-neo-cons journey
Read the whole thing – simply excellent…
Can totally relate with this paragraph…
“Later, some time during the spring of 2002 I was doing a Google search. By chance it led me to my first blog, a now-defunct site the name of which I can’t even remember. The immediacy and vibrancy of the voice, talking about politics as though having a conversation with me in my living room, caught my fancy, and I started clicking on the blogroll. In short order I was hooked on blogs, a fascinating Greek chorus (or set of competing Greek choruses trying to shout each other out) commenting–sometimes brilliantly–on the action.”
I am a blog addict – the news junkies drug of choice!
Jenny Hatch

“Pregnant women who eat more fish, which contains omega-3 fatty acids, tend to have brighter, more sociable children, claim researchers.
The amount of omega-3 helps to determine the child’s intelligence, fine motor skills – the ability to manipulate small objects and hand and eye co-ordination – and the propensity to anti-social behaviour, says a study by Dr Joseph Hibbeln, of the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland.
The findings, which were presented to a meeting in London this week, show that the children of women who consumed the smallest amounts of omega-3 fatty acids during their pregnancies had a verbal IQ six points lower than average.
This is striking because pregnant women have been advised to limit their consumption of oily fish and seafood in order to avoid exposing their foetuses to trace amounts of dioxins and brain-damaging methyl mercury.
Dr Hibbeln, whose research is reported today in the Economist, says that his work shows that the benefits of eating such foods vastly outweigh the risks. The findings show that the children of women who consumed the smallest amounts of omega-3 fatty acids during their pregnancies had a verbal IQ six points lower than average.
Dr Hibbeln worked with Prof Jean Golding from Bristol University’s Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, which has data on 14,000 expectant mothers and their offspring, so that he could study the effects of omega-3 intake.
The researchers found that at 3½ years of age, those children with the best measures of motor performance had mothers with the highest intake of omega-3s. A low intake during pregnancy led to higher levels of pathological social interactions such as an inability to make friends as a child grew up, which are also linked to antisocial behaviour in later life.
About 14 per cent of seven-year-olds whose mothers had the lowest intake of omega-3s in pregnancy demonstrated such behaviour, compared with eight per cent born to women on high-intake.
Fish is a good source of omega-3 but because of dioxins, the Food Standards Agency recommends that women who might have a child one day, and women who are pregnant or breastfeeding, should have only two portions of oily fish a week.”
I don’t cook alot of fish, but I do keep sardines on hand when I am pregnant and breastfeeding. It is my “fast food” of choice. I usually eat them with crackers and sour cream when I am having a busy day. I purchase the brands that are packed in Olive Oil, sprinkle some sea salt on them and chow it down.
Jenny Hatch