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Benign skin growths that erupted on the face of Ukrainian president Victor Yushchenko helped save his life after he was poisoned with dioxin five years ago. That's the verdict of doctors who have treated and monitored Yushchenko since an unknown assassin made the attempt on his life by lacing his soup with dioxin during a dinner in Kiev on 5 September 2004. It now turns out that the lumps that grew on his face and body as a result probably saved his life by isolating the dioxin away from his vital, internal organs. They also helped to detoxify the poison,...

Major six page article covering essentially three areas: * GM crops, extremely aggressive law suits, suing wrong farmers, buying up nonGM seed suppliers, etc. * Dioxin production, trying to get navy subs to use PCB hydraulic fluids, Nitro W.Va. plant explosion, hiding risk from victims, etc. * Manufacturing rGBH cow hormone, suing farmers advertising milk "From cows not treated with rGBH", recent PA milk advertising ban on mentioning rGBH where E-mail protest caused fast Eddie to reverse, etc.Interesting and worth reading..... but can not post excerpt due to Vanity Fair restriction. Article is Monsanto's Harvest of Fear at Vanity Fare...

APPEALS COURT ORDERS PAYMENTS TO CHRONIC LYMPHOCYTIC LEUKEMIA VETS IN AGENT ORANGE CASES -- Court says: "The performance of the UnitedStates Department of Veterans Affairs has contributed substantially to our sense of national shame."<snip>"Three different Congresses in three different decades have enacted legislation signed by three different presidents, designed to ensure the payment of such benefits to veterans afflicted with Agent Orange-related ailments," Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote in the court's opinion. "We would hope that this litigation will now end, that our government will now respect the legal obligations it undertook in the consent decree some 16 years ago, that...

Low doses of dioxin may not be as carcinogenic as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) states in its draft risk assessment, according to a panel of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). In an analysis released today, the panel called on EPA to clarify uncertainties and better justify some assumptions about the danger of dioxin. Historically found in herbicides and industrial waste, today dioxins come mainly from incineration of municipal trash. Emissions have dropped by about 90% since 1987, yet the compounds have contaminated soils and water worldwide and have made their way through the food chain by accumulating in...

This is a very matter-of-fact true story about the supernatural. Moscow in the year 1991 was a city in which great changes were maturing, and resistance to those changes was assuming malevolent forms. It was a time and place of potentially deadly contradictions. I was there three times that year as an independent journalist, once using a journalist’s exchange visa under the auspices of Izvestia, the government newspaper (which was also undergoing great changes) and twice by the request of a new ecological organization called the Socio-Ecological Union. I lived in an apartment near the Taganskaya metro station with a...

What's New Cancer News from Johns Hopkins No plastics in microwave No water bottles in freezer No plastic wrap in microwave Johns Hopkins has recently sent this out in their newsletters. This information is being circulated at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Dioxin Carcinogens cause cancer, especially breast cancer. Don't freeze your plastic water bottles with water as this also releases dioxin in the plastic. Dr. Edward Fujimoto from Castle hospital was on a TV program explaining this health hazard. (He is the manager of the Wellness Program at the hospital.) He was talking about dioxin and how bad they...

FYI: tonite, on TV's 60 Minutes: interview with Ukraine's new president, Victor Yushchenko. See http://tinyurl.com/44k27 ... he [Yushchenko] tells Christiane Amanpour he will work to heal his face and the damage the incident caused his country, in his first U.S. interview since his election. ... Check your local TV listings here. ###

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Dioxin has gained media attention since Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yuschchenko was poisoned with the chemical. Alarmists refer to it as “the most deadly chemical known,” but such is not the case, says Michael Fumento of the Hudson Institute. Dioxin is a byproduct of certain industrial processes such as incineration and bleaching. Humans carry small amounts of dioxin in their fat and blood, but the myth of “deadly dioxin” began with an experiment with guinea pigs, who were fed 1,000 times as much before they died. Even though large amounts killed guinea pigs, the facts are: Yuschchenko carried about 6,000...

Ukraine's presidential rivals faced off in a live television debate, with opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko slamming his opponent for vote fraud while Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich scrambled to distance himself from his own government. "The election of November 21 was stolen by my opponent and his team," Yushchenko said, speaking in Ukrainian, in his opening remarks in reference to a vote officially won by his rival but later annulled by the supreme court because of fraud. "You stole three million votes," he repeatedly said to his opponent during the debate. "They tried to steal our future," said the leader of...

The extent of an apparent plot to poison Viktor Yushchenko, Ukraine's opposition leader, and then cover up the evidence now reaches across Europe. Soon after Yushchenko first claimed he had been poisoned, President Leonid Kuchma's son-in-law engaged a French public relations team to initiate a media campaign, centered on a Vienna clinic, calculated to disparage the poisoning accusations, the newspaper said. Yffic Nouvellon of EuroRSCG and his public relations team arranged a press conference where Lothar Wicke, general manager of Vienna's Rudolfinerhaus Clinic, contradicted Yushchenko's poisoning allegations. Nouvellon also contacted international media offering "evidence" Yushchenko had not been poisoned. When...

12-17) 12:40 PST KIEV, Ukraine (AP) -- Ukraine's rival presidential candidates made overlapping campaign trips to the eastern industrial city of Kharkiv on Friday, sparking fears of more tension ahead of the Dec. 26 rerun election as opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko warned of possible provocations. < SNIP > Across town, Yushchenko addressed a rival rally awash in his trademark orange color. He also toured the city's tank factory, a leading manufacturer of armored vehicles since Soviet times. < snip > Abraham Brouwer, professor of environmental toxicology at the Free University in Amsterdam, told AP on Friday that the dioxin was...

LONDON - Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko was poisoned with TCDD, the most harmful known dioxin and one contained in Agent Orange, a scientist who analyzed his blood said Friday. The tests showed the TCDD was pure and must have been concocted in a laboratory, lead investigator Abraham Brouwer told The Associated Press. The tests, confirmed by three labs in the Netherlands and Germany, also confirmed that Yushchenko's blood contained 100,000 units of the poison, the second-highest concentration on record. Doctors announced last weekend that the 50-year-old Yushchenko was poisoned with a dioxin chemical that left him disfigured, but Brouwer...

MEDICAL experts have identified the type of dioxin used to poison Ukraine’s opposition leader, Viktor Yushchenko, in a major breakthrough in his efforts to identify the culprit. Mr Yushchenko has forbidden them from disclosing the results, to avoid influencing the re-run of his presidential run-off with the Prime Minister, Viktor Yanukovych, on December 26. Mr Yushchenko, a Western-leaning former central banker, said yesterday that his opponent was planning unspecified “provocations” that could jeopardise the vote. He also said for the first time that he was sure he had been poisoned at a dinner with the head of the Ukrainian Security...

Dutch experts who have been examining blood samples from Viktor Yushchenko, the Ukrainian opposition leader, disclosed yesterday that the politician has staggeringly high levels of dioxin in his blood, the second highest ever recorded. And they confirmed the diagnosis of Austrian doctors that Mr Yushchenko could only have been poisoned. Abraham Brouwer, an Amsterdam professor who runs the firm Biodetection Systems, said that he was close to identifying the specific dioxin or dioxin compound in Mr Yushchenko's body. "The total dioxin toxicity in his blood is very high," he said, noting it was up to 6,000 times the normal level....

NEW tests reveal the level of dioxin poison in the blood of Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko is more than 6000 times higher than normal, according to the expert analysing the samples. The concentration, about 100,000 units per gram of blood fat, is the second highest ever recorded in human history, said Abraham Brouwer, professor of environmental toxicology at the Free University in Amsterdam, where blood samples taken last weekend in Vienna were sent for analysis. Prof Brouwer's team has narrowed the search from more than 400 dioxins to about 29 and is confident they will identify the poison by...

KIEV (Reuters) - Liberal candidate Viktor Yushchenko expressed unease on Wednesday at the effects of dioxin poisoning on his pocked face, but said he was fit to be president and predicted voters would hand him a landslide victory. Yushchenko, who takes on Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich in a Dec. 26 re-run of last month's rigged presidential poll, says authorities poisoned him in a murder attempt. Austrian doctors last week detected dioxin in him 1,000 times the normal level.

LONDON - New tests reveal the level of dioxin in the blood of Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko is more than 6,000 times higher than normal, according to the expert analyzing the samples. The concentration, about 100,000 units per gram of blood fat, is the second highest ever recorded in human history, said Abraham Brouwer, professor of environmental toxicology at the Free University in Amsterdam, where blood samples taken last weekend in Vienna were sent for analysis. A normal level of dioxin is between 15 and 45 units. Almost everyone has some level of dioxins because the toxic chemical is...

UKRAINIAN prosecutors will today begin an investigation into allegations that state officials tried to assassinate opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko, following weekend confirmation that he was poisoned in the run-up to presidential elections. It is an inquiry that is expected to be hugely divisive because the prime suspect is the head of the Ukraine secret service, the SBU. The official dined with Mr Yushchenko the night he was poisoned, and medical experts say the dioxin is likely to have been administered through the food and drink. Mr Yushchenko, expected to be elected president in re-run elections on 26 December, yesterday promised...

Sources in the Ukrainian intelligence and security community said Dec. 12 it was unlikely that opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko was poisoned by his political opponents. The sources say that if Yushchenko's opponents had decided to poison him, they could have used much deadlier and non-recognizable poisons, which are easily available for secret services in several countries in the world. The sources say that Yushchenko's political opponents easily could have tasked specialized professionals to execute the poisoning in such a way that it would have left no proof of deliberate poisoning. 1845 GMT - Tepttu Vartiainen, the leading scientist from a...

VIENNA, Austria Dec 12, 2004 — Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko called for an investigation into who poisoned him with dioxin but said Sunday it should wait until after this month's presidential run-off, as he checked out of a Vienna clinic where the poisoning was diagnosed. Doctors at the clinic called the poisoning potentially a "criminal case" but OK'd Yushchenko's return to the campaign trail. The opposition leader is facing a new runoff vote on Dec. 26, ordered by Ukraine's Supreme Court, which ruled that results that named Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych the winner in the initial vote on Nov....

Dec. 12, 2004 — A Ukranian presidential candidate's chief of staff believes "Soviet Union … sort of KGB experts" were behind the plot to poison his candidate, the aide told ABC News' "Good Morning America" today. Austrian doctors said Saturday that Viktor Yushchenko, who faces a Dec. 26 runoff in Ukraine against the Kremlin-backed candidate, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, was poisoned with dioxin as he campaigned for president. When asked by ABC News' Bill Weir if the Russian government, and specifically President Vladimir Putin, had anything to do with the poisoning, Oleh Rybachuk said: "I am not very positive about government,...

DOCTOR: NOT DIOXIN, PROBABLY BEAN DIP"Came right off with a washcloth..."DEVELOPING

Doctors at the Austrian clinic that treated Ukraine’s opposition leader confirm there was a plot to kill him MEDICAL experts have confirmed that Viktor Yushchenko, Ukraine’s opposition leader, was poisoned in an attempt on his life during election campaigning, the doctor who supervised his treatment at an Austrian clinic said yesterday. Doctors at Vienna’s exclusive Rudolfinerhaus clinic are within days of identifying the substance that left Mr Yushchenko’s face disfigured with cysts and lesions, Nikolai Korpan told The Times in a telephone interview. Specialists in Britain, the United States and France had helped to establish that it was a biological...

Ukrainian officials are reopening a criminal investigation into opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko's mystery illness, reports say. On Saturday doctors in Vienna confirmed his condition was caused by poisoning. The doctors said extensive tests showed a form of dioxin had been used, leaving Mr Yushchenko's face disfigured. Mr Yushchenko, 50, was taken ill in September as he campaigned for disputed elections that have now been declared invalid because of irregularities. In October, prosecutors concluded that Mr Yushchenko was suffering the effects of a virus. But media reports on Saturday said they were cancelling a previous decision to close the case....

unday December 12, 2004The Observer Viktor Yuschenko survived an alleged attempt to poison him by dissolving dioxins in his soup. Dioxins are among the most toxic chemicals. It is a general term used to describe hundreds of chemicals which are highly persistent in the environment. They are formed as a by-product of industrial processes involving chlorine, such as waste incineration or paper bleaching. But they also occur naturally in soil fungus and in grasshoppers. The most highly toxic is TCDD (tetrachlorodibenzodioxin). One sign of exposure to the substance is chloracne, an unpleasant skin complaint. They are so dangerous because they...

Dioxin poisoning caused the mysterious illness of Ukrainian opposition leader and presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko, doctors said today, adding it could have been put in his soup. Yushchenko is now in satisfactory condition and dioxin levels in his liver have returned to normal, Dr Michael Zimpfer, director of Vienna's private Rudolfinerhaus clinic, told a news conference. Dr Nikolai Korpan added that no functional damage would remain and that Yushchenko was "fully capable of working." A series of tests run over the past 24 hours provided conclusive evidence of the poisoning, Zimpfer said. "There is no doubt about the fact that...

Ukrainian opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko's mystery illness was caused by poisoning, his Vienna doctors say. The doctors said extensive tests showed a form of dioxin had been used, leaving Mr Yushchenko's face disfigured. Mr Yushchenko was taken ill in September as he campaigned for the Ukrainian presidency. Mr Yushchenko's supporters staged mass demonstrations to protest against election fraud, and the second round is now being re-run on 26 December. Published: 2004/12/11 14:25:50 GMT © BBC MMIV

VIENNA, Austria - The mysterious illness of Ukrainian opposition leader and presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko was caused by dioxin poisoning that was likely intentional, doctors said Saturday. Yushchenko has accused Ukrainian authorities of trying to poison him in the runup to a presidential vote marred by fraud. Ukraine's Supreme Court voided the outcome of that vote, which Yushchenko lost to Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, and a rerun of the ballot is slated for Dec. 26. Yushchenko first fell ill in September and was rushed to the Vienna hospital. He resumed campaigning later in the month but with a pockmarked and...

Four state agencies are warning against eating wild game downstream from Midland's Dow Chemical Co. complex, saying dioxin levels have become dangerous. However, others claim the dioxin warnings are exaggerated. The state Departments of Community Health, Department of Agriculture, Environmental Quality and Natural Resources issued an advisory today against eating wild turkey meat or deer liver and urged consumers to limit consumption of venison and squirrel harvested in or near at least 22 miles of the floodplain along the Tittabawassee River. Although numerous advisories exist for fish tainted with toxic chemicals, it is only the second time the state has...

WASHINGTON - More than one-third of the nation's lakes and nearly one-fourth of its rivers contain fish that may be contaminated with mercury, dioxin, PCB and pesticide pollution, the Environmental Protection Agency (news - web sites) says. The EPA released a list of advisories issued by states that monitor lakes and rivers for pollution levels affecting fish caught during recreational and sport fishing but not deep-sea commercial fishing. "It's about trout, not tuna. It's about what you catch on the shore, not what you buy the shelf," Mike Leavitt, the administrator of EPA, said Tuesday. "This is about the health...

<p>It's not news that the Environmental Protection Agency is out of control. Still, the agency's underhandedness never ceases to amaze.</p> <p>Three years ago, the EPA released a draft of its scientific reassessment of dioxin, the poster child for hysteria over chemicals in the environment.</p>

Vietnam War-era defoliant Agent Orange continues to contaminate livestock and fish eaten by Vietnamese decades after it was used, a study released on Monday showed. A 2002 study in Bien Hoa city, about 20 miles north of Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, showed residents and food had high levels of dioxin, the August issue of The Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine said. The report said about 95 percent of blood samples taken from 43 people in Bien Hoa "were found to have elevated TCDD levels," referring to the most toxic of the dioxins. "Although the spraying ended over...

The war in Iraq is pretty much over, except for junk scientists. For them, the war may continue for decades — just like Vietnam. Two developments bear this out. The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) last week announced it would study sites in Iraq where armor-piercing weapons containing depleted uranium (DU) were used by coalition forces. Then, a new study was published this week in the journal Nature reporting the amount of Agent Orange sprayed in Vietnam was significantly underestimated. The researchers called for more study of U.S. troops and Vietnamese civilians in the sprayed areas. Both lines of study...

Washington, November 8 Unsafe levels of dioxin were measured in a sample of Ben & Jerry's brand ice cream, according to a new study published on Junkscience.com. Ben & Jerry's promotional literature, available at its "scoop shops" and on its web site, states, "Dioxin is known to cause cancer, genetic and reproductive defects and learning disabilities... The only safe level of dioxin exposure is no exposure at all." Dioxin is a by-product of industrial processes and may also be created naturally through combustion of plant materials. The study authors report that, according to Ben & Jerry's and U.S. Environmental Protection...

<p>Gov. Gray Davis' top environmental adviser said Wednesday he has no recollection of -- or notes from -- a meeting two years ago with officials from an oil company that won state permission to increase toxic pollution into San Francisco Bay by nearly 400 percent after donating $55,500 to the governor.</p>

<p>An oil company that won state permission to increase toxic pollution into San Francisco Bay by nearly 400 percent -- just four months after donating $55,500 to Gov. Gray Davis -- apparently met with Davis' top environmental adviser the week before the donation, the Mercury News has learned.</p>

<p>THE folks are dressed in hazardous materials suits in Bill Simon's latest TV ad. And the pipes are spewing polluted water.</p> <p>Simon started running an ad last week that attacks Gov. Gray Davis for a decision on dioxin made by the San Francisco Regional Water Quality Control Board.</p>

This one Bears an investigation by a bold press agent. There are two dioxin dumps in Branson, MO. One is 4 miles N. on Hwy 248 ands the other is off Hwy 65 south, just at the Arkansas border. The one on 248 is / has been in the process of being cleaned up for several years now by a LA construction firm. The south dump is still enclosed by chain link fence and sometimes has a guard in the shack at the gate. These are sites where excess AGENT ORANGE was disposed in the 70's. What should concern all...

<p>GOV. Gray Davis once again is mystified. Why would anyone think he'd tried to influence a water board decision favoring a Tosco refinery two years ago?</p> <p>Maybe it's that odd series of campaign contributions totaling $70,500, starting the day after a vote that went against Tosco; then an unexpected reversal of the vote four months later; and through it all the continued flow of dioxin -- one of the deadliest industrial pollutants -- from Tosco's Avon refinery into the San Francisco Bay at five times the level originally allowed in its permit.</p>