With the identification of leptin and its receptors by our laboratory, two of the molecular components of a system that maintains constant weight have been identified. Leptin is a hormone secreted by the adipose (fat) tissue that modulates food intake relative to energy expenditure. Leptin also plays a general role in regulating many of the physiologic responses that are seen with changes in nutritional state. Our current research is focused on the genes and regulatory mechanisms that control body weight, leptin's mechanism of action, and its relevance to the pathogenesis of obesity. Other studies seek to elucidate the mechanism by which a single molecule, leptin, can modulate a complex behavior, feeding. Finally, efforts to establish the genetic basis of human obesity on the Pacific Island of Kosrae are also under way.

 It isn't McDonald's fault if some people can't stop eating.

 

 

Who has saved more human lives than anyone else in history? Who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970? Who still teaches at Texas A&M at the age of 86? The answer is Norman Borlaug.

Who? Norman Borlaug, the father of the "Green Revolution," the dramatic improvement in agricultural productivity that swept the globe in the 1960s.

In the late 1960s, most experts were speaking of imminent global famines in which billions would perish. "The battle to feed all of humanity is over," biologist Paul Ehrlich famously wrote in his 1968 bestseller The Population Bomb. "In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now." Ehrlich also said, "I have yet to meet anyone familiar with the situation who thinks India will be self-sufficient in food by 1971." He insisted that "India couldn't possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980."

But Borlaug and his team were already engaged in the kind of crash program that Ehrlich declared wouldn't work. Their dwarf wheat varieties resisted a wide spectrum of plant pests and diseases and produced two to three times more grain than the traditional varieties.

Over a billion lives saved because of one man. Yet how often do you hear his name? The argument against, that he created "Frankenfood" that needs far more bureaucracy and by the way we should all only eat organic - is again a utopian faith based idea. There is every reason to suspect that untreated "natural" fertilizer sitting in piles on a field can be a breeding ground for e coli. Science- over a billion saved. Religion? More government control, an unhealthy "healthy" food doctrine and who knows how many dead?  http://reason.com/0004/fe.rb.billions.shtml  The next post shows religious based belief, even if cloaked in political speak, can bring forth misery and mass death on a scale unimaginable. Just to create, a better world. (Heaven again).

In April 1972, after seven months of testimony, EPA Administrative Law Judge Edmund Sweeney stated that “DDT is not a carcinogenic hazard to man. ... The uses of DDT under the regulations involved here do not have a deleterious effect on freshwater fish, estuarine organisms, wild birds, or other wildlife. ... The evidence in this proceeding supports the conclusion that there is a present need for the essential uses of DDT.”*

Two months later, EPA head [and Environmental Defense Fund member/fundraiser] William Ruckelshaus - who had never attended a single day’s session in the seven months of EPA hearings, and who admittedly had not even read the transcript of the hearings - overturned Judge Sweeney’s decision. Ruckelshaus declared that DDT was a “potential human carcinogen” and banned it for virtually all uses.**

Since Ruckelshaus arbitrarily and capriciously banned DDT, an estimated cases of malaria have caused immense suffering and poverty in the developing world.***

Of these largely avoidable cases, people died.****

That exceeds one needless premature death every 12 seconds for more than three decades. Click on the link to watch the malaria clock move:

http://www.junkscience.com/malaria_clock.htm

good intentions sometimes go awry. Clever appeals often mask a hidden agenda that actually makes life infinitely worse for people on the ultimate "receiving end" of our kind-hearted donations.

Environmental groups like Friends of the Earth importune us for funds to help them battle proposed hydroelectric, coal, gas and nuclear power plants in India and Africa. Put solar panels on huts instead, preserve indigenous lifestyles, they plead. And the money rolls in -- from people, companies and foundations -- to the tune of over $4 billion a year to U.S. eco-groups alone.

The donors get warm fuzzies. The activist groups ramp up another campaign. And 2 billion people in Africa, Asia and Latin America continue to live without electricity -- and without lights, refrigeration, hospitals, water purification or better jobs.

Mothers and girls spend hours each day gathering wood or cow dung -- and more hours breathing acrid, polluted smoke from their cooking and heating fires. Four million infants, children and mothers die every year from readily preventable lung infections -- millions more from dysentery and other diseases caused by unsafe water and spoiled food. A huge brown cloud of pollution hangs over much of southern Asia, as a result of all these fires. http://www.techcentralstation.com/010704F.html