Pharmaceutical science graduate aspires to study Medicine – #ProudlyGriffith – Video

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Pharmaceutical science graduate aspires to study Medicine - #ProudlyGriffith
Griffith pharmaceutical science graduate Sam Mischewski was seleced to represent his cohort in the health sciences as a student speaker for his Griffith graduation ceremony on the Gold Coast...

By: Griffith University

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Pharmaceutical science graduate aspires to study Medicine - #ProudlyGriffith - Video

The Medicine Man

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Family ties: (from left) Marcus Blackmores son Alexander Borromeo, Blackmore, his wife Caroline and her daughter Imogen Merrony at their wedding.

Marcus Blackmore is riding the crest of a boom in sales of vitamin supplements, even though his products have been dismissed as a waste of money by many in the medical profession.

Long before Marcus Blackmore became king of the largest nutraceutical empire in the southern hemisphere, he used to study the scriptures of his father's faith, a heretic creed to many because of its fundamental belief in nature's healing powers. "Doctors can bury their mistakes," Maurice Blackmore, the man widely regarded as the father of Australian naturopathy, used to tell his son. "So why do patients only come to seek my advice after they've been to five doctors without any results?"

It was a good question and Marcus Blackmore was keen to learn. In 1950, at the age of five, he used to visit his father in his Queensland naturopathic clinic and idle away the hours by sticking product labels into an exercise book: "Fluvacs" (a mixture of iron and potassium) to combat flu; "Pep Ups" (a multi-mineral formula to restore energy); "Renatone" (to tone the kidneys) ...

Alternative view: complementary health-products mogul Marcus Blackmore at home in Pittwater, NSW. Photo: Tim Bauer

As a young teenager, Marcus Blackmore learnt how to prepare skin creams and ointments, although during one school holiday he and a friend decided to concoct a laxative formula consisting of dates, raisins and senna. His friend - later to become an eminent doctor - couldn't stop licking his fingers for the taste. "The next day he just shitted himself away," says Blackmore now, laughing. "He's never forgotten it."

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Raised in a household that banned white sugar and white bread (but gave considerable licence to Sanitarium Nutmeat!), Blackmore began working for his father full-time at the age of 18. Over the years - as young bull clashed with old - he was sacked three times before eventually taking over the business at 28.

That was in 1973 - 12 years before the company was publicly listed - and today Marcus Blackmore bestrides a complementary medicines industry in Australia that has grown 54 per cent in the past five years to be worth $3.5 billion in revenue a year, part of an estimated $138 billion annual global market.

Blackmore's father, Maurice, was already a pioneering figure in the world of Australian natural health when Marcus was born in 1945.

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The Medicine Man

A WARNING DREAM FROM THE LORD! STATUE OF LIBERTy BEING TAKEN CAPTIVE! – Video

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A WARNING DREAM FROM THE LORD! STATUE OF LIBERTy BEING TAKEN CAPTIVE!
DEUT 28 49 The LORD shall bring a nation against thee from far, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flieth ; a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand ; 50 A nation of fierce...

By: Boldsojah4Christ

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A WARNING DREAM FROM THE LORD! STATUE OF LIBERTy BEING TAKEN CAPTIVE! - Video

Post Sydney siege idea by David Leyonhjelm over gun laws idea is absurd

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If the government cannot protect individual Australians from evil acts of the sort that occurred at Sydney's Martin Place on Monday, then it ought not to stand in the way of a rational discussion about the practical right to self-defence, Senate crossbencher David Leyonhjelm said on Thursday. The liberalisation of Australia's gun laws, for that is what Senator Leyonhjelm desires, is of a piece with his neo-classical libertarianism, but the timing of his proposition is awful, and its logic absurd.

In the still confused aftermath of the siege, many questions have been raised about how Man Haron Monis came to be in possession of a shotgun. Prime Minister Tony Abbott presumably better briefed than most about Monis' personal details and history said on Wednesday that Monis had a NSW firearms licence (despite being charged with a number of serious criminal and sexual offence charges) and that gun control laws might need to be changed as a result. NSW Police swiftly rebutted the suggestion that Monis was a licensed firearm owner. Ergo, he must have acquired the gun illegally.

For someone as determined as Monis, that would not have been difficult. The number of firearms stolen and never recovered in Australia is thought to number in the tens, possibly hundreds of thousands. Moreover, significant numbers of guns are smuggled into the country illegally each year, ensuring a plentiful black-market supply for professional criminals and the criminally minded.

Police forces and gun control organisations have on occasion highlighted the growing incidence of gun-related crime (particularly in cities such as Sydney) and the need for greater controls. But resistance to such efforts is well organised and effective, not least because of the lobbying of the Sporting Shooters Association of Australia and the Shooters and Fishers Party.

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It would not be doing Senator Leyonhjelm a disservice to suggest that he aspires to nothing less than the complete rollback of the national firearms agreement enacted after the Port Arthur massacre in 1996. He has repeatedly claimed that those reforms of which a one-off compulsory buyback of automatic and semi-automatic weapons was the most prominent aspect have not noticeably improved public safety in Australia, and that he has statistics to prove it. But lobbying for a reversion to previous state-based firearms laws is one thing pushing for a discussion of US-style laws permitting the carrying of concealed weapons in public places, quite another. Not surprisingly, many people have questioned the basis for SenatorLeyonhjelm's thinking.

Not all US states allow their citizens to carry concealed weapons, and those that do (such as Florida) do not boast noticeably safer streets or neighbourhoods than those that don't. George Zimmerman, a native of Sanford in Florida, packed a gun for "protection" of life and property, which he used to fatally shoot an unarmed teenager he "suspected" of being an immediate threat to his personal safety. Under Florida's "stand your ground" law, moreover, Zimmerman was found to have acted lawfully.

As for Senator Leyonhjelm's contention, in effect, that the Martin Place siege would not have occurred had armed citizens been present, the supporting evidence is not strong. No right-thinking person, even one trained to shoot at individuals rather than targets, would lightly challenge a dangerous and armed individual like Monis. Nor, given the likelihood of accidental shooting, would police encourage such behaviour.

That the easy availability of guns tends to increase levels of homicide, suicide and unintentional injuries and deaths, has been pretty well established, but even the likes of Senator Leyonhjelm continue to dispute it with questionable statistics. The evidence that easy access to military-style automatic weapons results in mass shootings is near irrefutable, however. Australia has had no such atrocity since 1996, though Senator Leyonhjelm continues to lament the loss of his right to own weapons designed, not for hunting or target-shooting, but for killing people.

Senator Leyonhjelm's fascination with US-style small government and rugged individualism is understandable. Nowhere is the libertarian creed espoused by the likes of John Locke and Thomas Paine taken more seriously or given greater prominence. But in its attitude to guns, the US is hardly a paragon worth emulating here.

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Post Sydney siege idea by David Leyonhjelm over gun laws idea is absurd

Three parent babies given green light by government

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"The Government has run a comprehensive and transparent process over the lifetime of this Parliament to review the public acceptability of mitochondrial donation and the ongoing evidence of safety and efficacy of the new techniques involved, said public health minister Jane Ellison in a written statement.

The time is now right to give Parliament the opportunity to consider and vote on these regulations.

Around one in every 200 babies born in the UK has a severe mitochondrial disease. Although rare, the disorders can be passed to future generations through the maternal line.

Examples of mitochondrial diseases include conditions that cause muscle wasting, nerve damage, loss of sight and heart failure.

Chief Medical Officer, Professor Dame Sally Davies said: Mitochondrial donation will give women who carry severe mitochondrial disease the opportunity to have children without passing on devastating genetic disorders.

It will also keep the UK at the forefront of scientific development in this area.

If the new laws are voted in, it will be up to the fertility regulator, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), to decide whether a treatment can go ahead on a case-by-case basis.

Mitochondrial transfer will only be allowed when there is a "significant risk" of disability or serious illness.

Children born after mitochondrial transfer will not be entitled to discover the identity of the "third parent" donor.

While many doctors and scientists applaud the move, pointing out that it could eliminate terrible diseases, critics argue "mitochondrial transfer" could lead to designer babies.

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Three parent babies given green light by government

U.K. may allow embryos with DNA from 3 parents

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In this image made available by the Oregon Health and Science University, a faint white blotch in the tube at right is DNA that has been removed from a human egg, center. The red dot is from a laser used in the procedure. Scientists have successfully transplanted DNA between human eggs and grown them into early embryos. Someday that technique that may let children avoid inheriting certain diseases - and give them genes from another woman besides mom. AP Photo/Oregon Health & Science University

LONDON -- New rules proposed in Britain would make it the first country to allow embryos to be made from the DNA of three people in order to prevent mothers from passing on potentially fatal genetic diseases to their babies.

In a statement issued on Wednesday, the department of health said it had taken "extensive advice" on the safety and efficacy of the proposed techniques from the scientific community.

"(This) will give women who carry severe mitochondrial disease the opportunity to have children without passing on devastating genetic disorders," Dr. Sally Davies, the U.K.'s chief medical officer, said in a statement.

Experts say that if approved by parliament, these new methods would likely be used in about a dozen British women every year who are known to have faulty mitochondria - the energy-producing structures outside a cell's nucleus. Defects in the mitochondria's genetic code can result in diseases such as muscular dystrophy, heart problems and mental retardation.

Use of the "three-parent" in-vitro fertilization (IVF) technique is also under consideration in the United States, but it has not been approved by federal regulators. In February, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration held a two-day meeting to explore the scientific, clinical and ethical issues involved. Some scientists warned it could take decades to determine if the process is safe.

The techniques involve removing the nucleus DNA from the egg of a prospective mother and inserting it into a donor egg, where the nucleus DNA has been removed. That can be done either before or after fertilization.

The resulting embryo would end up with the nucleus DNA from its parents but the mitochondrial DNA from the donor. Scientists say the DNA from the donor egg amounts to less than 1 percent of the resulting embryo's genes. But the change will be passed onto future generations, a major genetic modification that many ethicists have been reluctant to endorse.

Critics say the new techniques are unnecessary and that women who have mitochondrial disorders could use other alternatives, such as egg donation, to have children.

"Medical researchers are crossing the crucial ethical line that will open the door to designer babies," said David King of Human Genetics Alert, a secular group that opposes many genetics and fertilization research.

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U.K. may allow embryos with DNA from 3 parents