It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
A report on the Medical News Today website from September 15, 2006 reported the remarkable observations of Dr. John J. Cannell of Atascadero State Hospital in California, a center for incarceration and treatment of the criminally insane. Before becoming a psychiatrist, while still a general practitioner, the flu struck his facility in April of 2005. Dr Cannell’s report on the outbreak says in part:
“I guess our hospital was under luckier stars as only about 12% of our patients were infected and no one died. However, as the epidemic progressed, I noticed something unusual. First, the ward below mine was infected, and then the ward on my right, left, and across the hall - but no patients on my ward became ill. My patients had intermingled with patients from infected wards before the quarantines. The nurses on my unit cross-covered on infected wards. Surely, my patients were exposed to the influenza A virus. How did my patients escape infection from what some think is the most infectious of all the respiratory viruses?
My patients were no younger, no healthier, and in no obvious way different from patients on other wards. Like other wards, my patients are mostly African Americans who came from the same prisons and jails as patients on the infected wards. They were prescribed a similar assortment of powerful psychotropic medications we use throughout the hospital to reduce the symptoms of psychosis, depression, and violent mood swings and to try to prevent patients from killing themselves or attacking other patients and the nursing staff. If my patients were similar to the patients on all the adjoining wards, why didn't even one of my patients catch the flu?
A short while later, a group of scientists from UCLA published a remarkable paper in the prestigious journal, Nature. The UCLA group confirmed two other recent studies, showing that a naturally occurring steroid hormone - a hormone most of us take for granted - was, in effect, a potent antibiotic. Instead of directly killing bacteria and viruses, the steroid hormone under question increases the body's production of a remarkable class of proteins, called antimicrobial peptides. The 200 known antimicrobial peptides directly and rapidly destroy the cell walls of bacteria, fungi, and viruses, including the influenza virus, and play a key role in keeping the lungs free of infection. The steroid hormone that showed these remarkable antibiotic properties was plain old vitamin D.”
In a follow-up interview, I asked Dr. Cannell what his current thoughts on Vitamin D (D-3) are, especially since the new novel/swine variant is showing increased virulence in South America right now – in what is winter in the Southern Hemisphere.
He continues to hold the view that ‘normal’ levels of vitamin D, between 50-70 ng/ml of blood, were likely a very good antiviral strategy. He has continued work on possible links between vitamin D and cytokine storming – which is the actual mechanism of mortality in the majority of flu deaths. When asked about vitamin D levels among people who died from flu, he reported that some might reasonably be expected to have had 30 ng/ml levels – about half of what might be considered ‘normal’ levels
Originally posted by GorehoundLarry
Originally posted by Blaine91555
Fox News streamed the hearing yesterday on this subject live. I watched some of it. The other news channels don't even seem to be reporting on this much.
Because Fox is super cereal when it comes to caring about covering the truth and the audience it presents it to..
I wish everyone would just turn their televisions off.
[edit on 30-7-2009 by GorehoundLarry]
Originally posted by 13arrows
im glad i dont live in the US.
Originally posted by 13arrows
im glad i dont live in the US.