Sodafone

Yaz is different. At least we are told that by the makers of this popular pill. The reason Yaz is so different is that it combines the two hormones estrogen and progestin. Estrogen is the essential element of almost all contraceptive pills presently on the market. It is the progestin component of Yaz that has a potassium sparing diuretic consequence in assorted patients that leads to Yaz side effects. Increased potassium levels can lead to the deadly side effects.

Even though Yaz went through clinical trials and received Food and Drug Administration approval in the U.S., the high-pressure promotion of the oral contraceptive for its effect of reducing the incidence of PMDD and acne led to its popularity and exposure. This exposure was to a much larger array of people than were initially involved in the clinical trials and subsequently, far more sufferers of the Yaz side effects were identified. The more serious side effects include stroke, kidney failure, and gall bladder disease. Among the minor and far more average side effects are headaches, weight gain, and reduced sex drive.

There is at least one widely heralded class action suit against the maker of Yasmin, Bayer Pharmaceuticals. If the effects of Yasmin are small, then you may want to think about becoming a part of that class action suit. If your Yasmin side effects are of a more critical nature, then you may want to consider seeking out an attorney who is knowledgeable with this type of lawsuit and initiate your own lawsuit against the pharmaceutical giant. There may also be a malpractice lawsuit depending on when the doctor prescribed the birth control pill and your medical history at the time of the prescription.

We all know that volunteer work can strengthen community bonds and at the same time assist those in need. Of course, freeing up the time to volunteer often squanders very time that could be put to better use elsewhere. It hardly needs pointing out, if you volunteer as part of a group effort with colleagues, it’s likely to be more enjoyable. As a reaction to this issue, some companies are making themselves into initiatives encouraging their employees to work for the community through volunteer activities. One of the leaders in this is Adaptive Marketing LLC who also offer shopping and financial benefits programs like Leisure Exclusives.

If you were asked for examples of company-backed volunteer work, you’d most likely talk in terms of blood drives, maybe an annual donation drive, but that’s no longer the case in today’s world. Looking at just one company, Adaptive Marketing has offered staff the opportunity to help with anything from tennis shoe recycling campaigns to local tree planting events. With all pertinent information - date, location, time, specifics of event, etc - prominently announced it has become very simple for staff to settle the precise amount of time they’d be giving and what they’d be doing as they did so.

Giving volunteers a say in which activities the company supports is important. At Adaptive Marketing, the people who brought you Leisure Exclusives, staff are given the chance to choose from a wide range of volunteer activities in the local area. These may include helping out young adults, getting involved in culture, working on green initiatives and so on. In many cases, the more the volunteer enjoys it, the more productive they are, so by providing so many projects Adaptive Marketing can be certain that progress will be made in as many projects as possible. Most often a company sponsored charity project - fundraising with a local school, say, or helping out at a homeless shelter - is either done on a regular schedule or as a one-off event. Staffers may well say they have no time to give, but usually even they can often set aside the resources to lend a hand with some smaller one-day event.

Taking the time to lend a helping hand is a practice with a storied history at many companies. Adaptive Marketing like many other firms sponsors volunteer projects to support the people of its hometown and to generate goodwill within the local community through its employees actions. The fact is, one of the benefits of volunteer work is a sense of accomplishment and generosity - a positive feeling that influences the entire corporate culture. It’s our hope that by now the benefits for everyone involved of a company-sponsored volunteer drive are are self-evident.

Drospirenone is just one of the reasons attributed to the onslaught of Yaz side effects reported regularly in America. Drospirenone is an ingredient allegedly unlike other progestins in the United States and was not found in America before it made an appearance in Yasmin, Yaz and Ocella. Also consider that the FDA issued advisory to the makers of Ocella, Yasmin and Yaz for using low-quality batches of drospirenone from Germany and you have the makings of a cautionary tale involving Big Pharma and its disregard for the wellbeing of the consumers using its products.

Eyebrows were raised when women in their 20s and 30s were suddenly falling victim to ischemic stroke and heart attack after being put on Ocella. Healthy individuals who were on this brand of contraception for as little as a few months were exhibiting symptoms of major side effects and serious health risks. Cardiovascular injury, organ failure, and blood clots are just some of the serious Yasmin side effects allegedly experienced by women put on this oral contraceptive pill.

Females taking Yasmin, Yaz or Ocella to avoid getting pregnant or to treat PMDD (Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder) or severe acne have reportedly sustained severe injury to their health and wellbeing. Although most pharmaceuticals present some form of side effects, the main event surrounding Yaz seems to be that the original commercials downplayed the health risks and side effects. This attracted users to the product that may not have taken it otherwise had they been properly informed about the risks posed by Ocella, Yasmin and Yaz.

Volunteering; coming together as a community, and assisting the poor in the vicinity. As they say, “charity begins at home”. Of course, freeing up the time to volunteer may easily squander some of that valuable free time. On the other hand volunteering can be more fun when your colleagues are pitching in by your side.

For this reason companies like Adaptive Marketing LLC, that developed financial benefits programs like Shopping Essentials Plus, are becoming the organizing points which co-ordinate volunteer activity and help their employees make time for reaching out.

Company sponsoring volunteering now goes beyond blood drives and once-a-year charitable giving. As an example, Adaptive Marketing has provided its staff with chances to help with anything from tennis shoe recycling efforts to tree replanting days. When Adaptive Marketing began central organization individual initiatives blossomed into larger events, with specific locations, dates and times publicized in advance to make time management easy for those signing up.

It’s hardly volunteering if there’s no choice between initiatives, of course. Members of staff from Adaptive Marketing, the firm that offers the shopping program Shopping Essentials Plus, can select from many programs. Staff members may find themselves helping out children, community projects in culture, encouraging green initiatives and so on. This provides Adaptive Marketing volunteers with opportunities to use their time as efficiently as they can and love participating in the process. Typically a company sponsored volunteer initiative - fundraising with a local school, say, or assisting at a homeless shelter - is either done on a regular schedule or as a one-off event. This means that if you’ve merely got enough time on hand to assist at a Saturday morning park clean-up or the public library’s sale of used books, there’s still a chance to help.

Lending a helping hand has long been a tradition at many commercial enterprises. Adaptive Marketing sponsors volunteer initiatives in part to spread positive feeling through its home community as a result of the hard work carried out by its staffers. What volunteer work is sure to do is provide your employees with a positive feeling about themselves, creating a motivated business. Creating the opportunity to help employees to volunteer rewards everyone involved.

Mesothelioma is a rare cancer of the tissue that lines people’s interior organs. Almost 2,000 brand new cases are diagnosed every year in the whole United States. Of these, nearly 75 percent of instances concern the sac around the lungs, referred to as the pleura. Also known as pleural mesothelioma. In about ten to 20 percent of cases, mesothelioma might involve the tissue that envelopes abdomen organs, referred to as the peritoneal membrane, generating what is then referred to as peritoneal mesothelioma.

Introduction to asbestos is positively the main influencing factor for this rare disease. Following asbestos exposure, the delay to progression of the mesothelioma disease may be two to four decades. Because of occupation introduction, malignant mesothelioma is nearly 3 times more regular in men, than in women. Due to the number of instances goes up with your age, there are nearly 10 times more instances in the males over age 64 than in the men in their midlife.

Getting Cancer of the mesothelium is a severe sickness, which, at the moment, has a very low degree of lasting endurance. Nonetheless, if it is spotted soon, regimens are then at hand that will considerably prolong the patient’s life. Cutting edge therapies continue to be and are being promoted through clinical trials.

I am an incurably ill American male forced to leave America to afford the medical care I needed. I live in Mexico. I now live in a country where “pulling the plug” for whatever reason is illegal!

I am not terminally ill. I have a lifelong disability that will never get better. I am much like Terri Schiavo, the woman who the State of Florida killed because she had a lifelong, incurable disability. Notice, like me, Terri Schiavo was not terminally ill but handicapped. There is a difference!

Every handicapped person in America has to ask, “Am I next?”

Am I the next disabled person about whom, at some point in the future, someone will make a claim that I said something about the issue of life-and-death and a judge will believe it without the benefit of due process? Will someone come along without a preponderance of evidence (And should not there be a preponderance of evidence and not the word of one individual?) and have some judge some court somewhere order my death by starvation–Or by whatever means that is convenient to the court?

I wonder what the criteria will be. Will the courts be the ones who now determine whether you serve some usefulness to society? Who will define usefulness?

Moreover, I wonder why someone was not asking these questions:

Did Terri Schiavo tell anyone other than the man who stands to make a bundle of money from a malpractice suit that she did not want to be kept alive via a stomach tube? (He claims he has already spent the money on her care. I want to see that proof!)

Why is the court taking only her adulterous husband’s word on this issue of life-and-death? Is that a preponderance of evidence?

Can’t the court see that this man has some nefarious motives?

Have the allegations of spousal abuse been investigated fully?

Why didn’t her husband allow Terri, ever, to have physical therapy that might have improved her state?

Is any one aware that others, in so-called vegetative states, have awakened years later?

Can science dictate morality? Though science sometimes can tell us why something is, can it tell us what is right and what is wrong?

Something smelled fishy in this entire thingand it still does.

What is next? Will disabled Americans whose families tire of them be able to find a judge who will order their deaths too? On the other hand, perhaps we will be told too much money has been spent on us in disability pension payments and now it is time to check out of living.

You have used up your quota! Now it is time to die.

I do not offer this as an exaggeration but an honest question. Just what is next? Every disabled person should be asking this question.

I wonder if the judge who ordered Terri Schiavo’s death forgot, or ever knew, the words of Hubert H. Humphrey:

“It was once said that the moral test of Government is how that Government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.”

My God, in heaven, what has America become?

Thank God, in heaven, I live in Mexico!

Doug Bower is a freelance writer and book author. His most recent writing credits include The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Houston Chronicle, and The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Transitions Abroad. He lives with his wife in Guanajuato, Mexico.

His new book Mexican Living: Blogging it from a Third World Country can be seen at http://www.lulu.com/content/126241

In the wake of the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election, and the news that approximately 24% of American Jews (an increased, but still relatively small percentage) voted for George W. Bush, it is, I believe, an appropriate time to examine (not for the first time, of course) the phenomenon of longstanding blind Jewish loyalty to the Democratic Party,

I was raised in a time and a place (the New York Metropolitan Area of the 1960’s) in which Jews were Democrats, period. Rabbis routinely preached politically liberal values from the pulpit and, although, in retrospect, some in the pews must have harbored some resentment for that, the consensus was so overwhelming that most, if not all, of those who dissented, did so privately, and chose to be silent. Astonishingly, not that much has changed. In those days, the only Jewish conservative I had even heard of was Norman Podhoretz, and he was roundly vilified by the Northeastern, liberal Jewish intelligentsia for bucking the tide. The prevailing attitude, I may say, without much exaggeration, was that voting Democratic was de’orraitah (Aramaic for from the Torah).

Even today, there is an attitude which I sense in the American Jewish Community in which the suggestion that one might consider support for the Republican Party, is considered fundamentally “un-Jewish.” After all, the unspoken reasoning goes, the Democratic Party is the party of “working families” (whatever that means), and social justice, while the Republican Party is an uneasy alliance of wealthy, coupon-clipping, Daughter of the American Revolution, Mayflower-landing Wasps, on the one hand and trailer-trash, ignorant, fundamentalist Christian yahoos, who would ban abortion, start the school day with a rousing rendition of “Onward Christian Soldiers,” and shoot–with automatic assault weapons, of course–all homosexuals on sight, on the other. (I can fairly visualize liberals reading this and nodding in agreement).

During the course of the recent and very contentious presidential campaign, many of my Jewish friends and family members expressed their pro-Democratic leanings in terms of their fear of domination of this country by Christian Fundamentalists. There is, of course, no evidence whatsoever that such fear is well founded, except that many Christian Evangelicals supported George W. Bush, because, I presume, he is known to be a man of deeply-held Christian faith. I know that many Jews, four years ago, were attracted by the presence of Joe Lieberman, a committed Jew, on the Democratic ticket. I don’t think I ever heard anyone suggest that we were in danger of a mandatory “Daf Yomi” (daily Talmud study), compulsory donning of tzitzis and forced consumption of P’tchah (believe me, you don’t want to know what that is). Parenthetically, the fear of Christian Fundamentalists also negates, in the minds of many Jews, the attractiveness of President Bush as a strong supporter of Israel. Evangelicals, they say, support Israel only because of Jesus-based Messianic zeal, which requires, in their prophecies, that the Jews prevail in Israel as a prelude to the Second Coming.

In a world in which Israel has precious few reliable friends and allies, I believe we should be grateful for those we have, and treasure them. Let the “End of Days” take care of themselves.

For the most part, in any case, I don’t “vote Israel” in presidential elections. In a rare exception, I did do so in 1992, when I voted for Bill Clinton, having been very disappointed in Bush Sr.’s statements and relationship with Israel, and my antipathy toward James Baker, in particular, who was reputed to say of the American Jews: “F—- ‘em! They didn’t vote for us, anyway.” Baker strongly denies having said this, but I have my doubts. In this recent election, Bush Jr. has a strong positive track record on Israel, and many commentators observed that Kerry, while having an excellent pro-Israel voting record, was, in his zeal to “mend fences” with European Allies, likely to put untoward pressure on Israel to make risky concessions. We will, of course, never know about Kerry’s policy toward Israel. Nevertheless, I considered Israel to be largely a neutral issue as between the candidates. I had, however, many other good reasons to support Bush, so that the Israel issue did not resonate much with me this time around. This, however, did appear to increase, albeit slightly, Jewish support for Bush in this election. Interestingly, support for Republicans has increased dramatically in the Orthodox community, to the point where Republicans can now boast majority support there. This is of limited value in presidential elections in which the Orthodox population centers tend to be found in “blue” states (where, as I am fond of saying, the Democrats could run Joe Stalin without much risk), and are, at least currently, insufficient to turn the tide. But this is a highly relevant development for State and Local elections. Much of the Orthodox support for the Republican Party is based, not only on Bush’s support for Israel, but on the Orthodox empathy for some of the social agenda items, such as, for example, opposition to gay marriage, which, ironically, is precisely what motivates much of the non-Orthodox Jewish Community to eschew the G.O.P.

The irony of the continued Jewish commitment to the Democrats is that many Jews are no longer voting either their philosophies or their pocketbooks. In the course of my discussions recently with many Jewish Democrats, it has become apparent, on an issue-by-issue basis, that they had much more in common with the Republican Party, both on the domestic and foreign policy fronts. Many support reduction, or at least containment of expensive social programs, and see that many have been wasteful failures. Many support the war on terror, and even the policy in Iraq, although they are distressed at the profound errors which have been made in its implementation (so am I). Many support tax relief and oppose multi-lateral foreign policy decision-making. These are all core values of the Republican Party. The social agenda which frightens many of them (and with which I, myself, mostly disagree) is, in the opinion of this writer, not shared by a high enough percentage of Americans to be a real threat. If it ever becomes so, it won’t matter what party is in power. Ultimately, we have no choice but to rely on the Constitution to protect us. I know that some fear the appointment of right-wing judges to the Federal judiciary and Supreme Court in particular, as a danger. But I take much comfort in the fact that the protections afforded by the Constitution have served us well for many years, under both Democratic and Republican Administrations. Roe v. Wade, the seminal abortion rights decision, was, after all, penned by Harry Blackmun, a Nixon appointee. Besides, the confirmation system is such that “extreme” judges simply don’t get appointed….anybody remember Robert Bork? Historical evidence strongly suggests that Federal Judges, with lifetime tenure, tend to rise above the political motives of their proponents, once they are in the job.

It has been 93 years since the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. FDR has been dead for 59 years; Emma Goldman, for even longer. We have effective labor laws and civil rights protections in this Country. Those issues and people should not be trivialized. They were important in their time, but America is not the same country anymore. Jews are not an ostracized underclass. We are, in fact, very much entrenched into the mainstream structure and, I daresay, the power elite in this Country. And yes, I know that the same was true, to an extent in Germany. But I believe that, as much as we must be vigilant and wary of our enemies, who are real, we ought not to conduct ourselves in America as though a pogrom were right around the corner. That would be an insult to a country we love and which has been very good to us.

Thus, although we should always consider social justice and values beyond our own parochial interests, our voting patterns should not be reflexive, Pavlovian responses; rather, they should be reasoned measures, predicated on our beliefs. Those Jews who truly support the weltanschauung of the Democratic party should continue to vote accordingly. But voting Democrat is NOT de’orraitah. It is not a sufficient reason to do so because Bubbie and Zaydie did it. I look forward to the day in which Jewish support will be based on issues, not on mere party affiliation.

Reprinted from the Canadian Institue for Jewish Research, December, 2004. Copyright 2004.

Warren R. Graham is an attorney with the New York Law Firm of Cohen Tauber Spievack & Wagner LLP. He specializes in the field of Bankruptcy and Creditors’ Rights. He is a frequent writer, contributor and commentator on political and Jewish affairs. The views expressed by him in this article are his own, and do not necessarily reflect those of his Firm or its Members.

A new report by the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) has showed remarkable statistics about how the world’s children are now at great risk.

The report shows that more than 640 million children don’t have sufficient shelter, while 140 million have never been to school. It also shows 400 million children do not have safe water to drink and 500 million live without basic sanitation. Another 90 million children starve.

The 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child asked countries to help give children a healthy and protected up bringing however violence, aids and poverty are still at their worst. Nearly one in six children suffers from severe hunger and one in seven has no healthcare.

Carol Bellamy, executive director of Unicef, indicated that the main cause of the great risk is wars. Over 20 million children are forced from their homes due to fighting and 3.6 million, half of which are children, have died in such conflicts although a much higher number of children have died from indirect causes of the wars.

However, even though wars are a great cause it is not the only one. Over 30,000 children died last year which would have been prevented if they had adequate healthcare. Another half a million children under the age of 15 died last year and some 2.1 million children across the world are living with HIV. Fifteen million children have lost a parent to Aids, while 80 percent of who live in sub-Saharan Africa.

Carol Bellamy and the Unicef agree that the answer is simple. Over the last year the world’s nations have spent 712,000,000eu on weapons, whereas only 52 billion eu is needed to reach status quo.

Currently the United States spends over $400 billion a year on military equipment and $200 billion is currently going towards the war in Iraq.

About the Author

Gary is a political writer for Political News and Comments