New Hampshire Health News Digest

The Australian: Agency's Strangeloves altered mind of a girl aged 4 [ 28jun07 ] Agency's Strangeloves altered mind of a girl aged 4 Robert Lusetich, Los Angeles correspondent 28jun07 EASILY lost, on page 425, in the mass of the CIA's notorious "Family Jewels" files is a short paragraph outlining "potentially embarrassing Agency activities". "Experiments in influencing human behaviour through the administration of mind- or personality-altering drugs to unwitting subjects." Of all the heinous acts committed by the CIA in the name of national security, these experiments, done on the agency's behalf by prominent psychiatrists on innocent victims - including children as young as four - may be the darkest. "We have no answer to the moral issue," former director Richard Helms infamously said when asked about the nature of the projects. The release of the Family Jewels documents revealed the CIA handsomely funded these real-life Dr Strang

How I tamed the voices in my head - Independent Online Edition > Health Dr Rufus May, a clinical psychologist, says the aim of getting people to connect with their voices is to enable them to incorporate them into their daily lives so they are not distressing. "Voices themselves are not a problem; it's people's relationship with them that's important. So, rather than voices being something that we should avoid at all costs - the traditional psychiatric view - we should be trying to get people to face them, understand them and work with them." May says negative voices can be turned into a positive experience. "If a voice is telling someone to kill themselves, that could be signifying rage. So the voice-hearer could say, 'Thanks for flagging this up. I'm not going to take you literally, but you've shown me there are things I need to change about me.'" He even talks to his patients' voices himself. "I ask the person to tell me ve

Baghdadee One thing we do know is that the body is a complex chemical factory and that good health is largely a result of keeping the chemicals in the body in the correct balance. If we introduce chemicals into our system that balance can quickly be upset and our health can suffer in a variety of different ways. We also know that there are many ways in which chemicals can enter the body, including through our skin which is of course porous. Against this background it would seem quite feasible that chemicals contained in soap could indeed enter the body. So just what are these chemicals and why might they be a problem. The chemicals in question are known as phthalates and appear in thousands of household products including children's toys, detergents, food packaging, pharmaceuticals and personal care products, such as nail polish, hair sprays, soaps, and shampoos. These chemicals have been under investigation for some time now and, although the connection is not yet fully understood

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