“Remembering Nearfield” is a 9-minute animated film portraying the “cautionary true story” of its narrator, Corriëlle van Vuuren, who suffered for years with undiagnosed electrohypersensitivity.

In just over three months since its release, “Remembering Nearfield” has received 10 awards from international film festivals — in Sicily, Veneto, Brussels, Singapore, Gangtok and Cannes, among others.

“Nearfield” refers to the area close to a source of electromagnetic radiation (EMR) — such as cellphones and wifi transmitters — where there are “strong inductive and capacitive effects” that can harm the human body.

EHS, sometimes called electromagnetic sensitivity (EMS) or microwave syndrome, refers to a “clinical syndrome characterized by the presence of a wide spectrum of non-specific multiple organ symptoms — typically including central nervous system symptoms — that occur following the patient’s acute or chronic exposure to electromagnetic fields [EMFs].”

Miriam Eckenfels-Garcia is director of the Children’s Health Defense (CHD) electromagnetic radiation efforts. She commented on why CHD advocates on behalf of the EMS-disabled:

“We are very concerned about the growing number of people and particularly children suffering from some form of EHS/EMS and have sought recognition of the EHS/EMS-disabled’s rights and interests in several legal matters before agencies and the courts.”

CHD.TV aired the film and interviewed its producer, U.K. filmmaker Sean Carney.

Medical establishment ‘ill-equipped to discern’ electromagnetic hypersensitivity

Carney’s 9-minute film is a cautionary true story narrated by Corriëlle van Vuuren — a successful entrepreneur — who tells how she tragically lost everything as her health mysteriously declined and she was eventually diagnosed with EHS.

Carney, whose animation accompanies van Vuuren’s testimony throughout the film, told The Defender, “No public health policy on EHS has yet been formulated and the mainstream medical establishment is still in the dark about it.”

His film reveals how “the medical establishment is inclined to seek other causes rather than electromagnetically induced harm and is ill-equipped to discern whether someone has electromagnetic hypersensitivity,” he said.

“It took years to discover that the protagonist’s health problem was related to electricity and electromagnetic fields, after years of protracted puzzlement and misguided medical advice,” he said. “This highlights a big reason why education and awareness about electromagnetic radiation and EHS matters.”

Although estimates vary, a 2019 analysis suggested that 1.5% of the population experience severe EHS/EMS symptoms, 5% have moderate symptoms and 30% have mild symptoms. That means roughly 2.16 million to 99.7 million Americans are likely affected by EHS/EMS.

Groups for the electrosensitive have “spontaneously formed” in at least 18 countries as of January 2023, said scientists with the International Commission on the Biological Effects of Electromagnetic Fields (ICBE-EMF) in an April peer-reviewed report.

A report from the European Economic and Social Committee, referenced in the ICBE-EMF’s report, states:

“According to new estimates, between 3% and 5% of the population are electro-sensitive …

“Exposure to electromagnetic fields has been increasing in recent years, following the expansion of technologies. …

“People [with EHS/EMS] may sometimes suffer the incomprehension and scepticism of doctors who do not deal with this syndrome professionally and therefore fail to offer proper diagnosis and treatment.”

The ICBE-EMF report outlines a number of sensible EMR mitigation measures, including recommending the widespread adoption of fiber optic networks.

We need a ‘global conversation’ about electromagnetic radiation disability

Dariusz Leszczynski, Ph.D., adjunct professor of biochemistry at the University of Helsinki, Finland, in December 2022 called for a consensus debate on whether current global wireless radiation guidelines are sufficiently protecting people’s health.

Carney agreed. Society needs to recognize the problem of electromagnetic pollution’s potential to harm people, especially more vulnerable citizens, such as children and people with elevated sensitivity, he said.

“A lack of education has been an issue,” Carney said. “I believe society is open to learning about these problems and film can play an important role in the process.”

“‘Remembering Nearfield’’s testimony-driven animation powerfully informs on many levels and has real potential to catalyse positive social changes,” he added.

For Carney, a global conversation on EHS/EMS is “long overdue” and would be valuable for changing peoples’ views and behaviors.

“I hope my film can help this to happen,” he said, because “EHS/EMS is a debilitating condition that robs a person of their freedom, limits their mobility, brings on unpleasant symptoms and impairment and reduces employment opportunities and scope for societal participation.”

Since winning the Cannes World Film Festival award, “Remembering Nearfield” has garnered screenings at the Barcelona Indie Awards and the Film Collective Short Film Festival in the U.S., with additional screenings at other international film festivals throughout the fall.

Public screenings of the film will continue into 2024, Carney added.

Watch the film here:

MaineGeneral Health, which fired hundreds of healthcare workers in 2021 for refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine, is now reaching out to former employees — who were denied unemployment benefits — and asking them to come back, but many say they are reluctant to return.

Some of those workers were even slapped with misconduct charges for refusing to comply with the mandate, many were later denied unemployment benefits and no requests for religious exemptions were honored.

Now, one of the nonprofit hospitals that left some employees jobless and without recourse to Maine’s unemployment insurance benefits is sending text messages to the same employees it cast aside practically begging them to come back to work.

“MaineGeneral has eliminated the COVID-19 vaccination as an employment condition,” MaineGeneral said.

Poland, who lives in Augusta, had worked as a registered nurse for 33 years. Her career included employment with MaineGeneral, Central Maine Medical Center, Pen Bay Medical Center and the Aroostook Medical Center.

She couldn’t believe that the hospital would contact her in such a manner after casting her life into chaos for nearly two years.

[…]

A source told the Maine Wire that about 15 former MaineGeneral Health employees received similar text messages.

Poland refused to take the experimental COVID-19 shots after Gov. Janet Mills decreed on Aug. 12, 2021, that healthcare workers would be forced to receive the shots as a condition of working in healthcare by Oct. 1, 2021.

Documents reviewed by the Maine Wire show that MaineGeneral established a speedier timeline of Sept. 17 for compliance.

Eventually, the state pushed back the deadline to the end of October.

As a result of her choice, Poland faced not only termination but also an allegation of misconduct from her former employer.

When she applied for unemployment benefits, she was rejected because of the misconduct allegation.

When she appealed, she was turned away.

Documents reviewed by the Maine Wire show that the Maine Department of Labor determined that MaineGeneral Health “discharged” her; however, the agency concluded that Poland’s refusal to get the injections was a violation that constituted a “culpable breach of obligations to the employer.”

[…]

“Since Monday, we are only aware of a few people who have indicated that they are interested in having a conversation about applying for an open position,” she said. “We currently have 453 open positions, which is similar to our pre-COVID open position count.

A healthcare worker crisis caused by authoritarian policies

Thousands of former healthcare workers in Maine are currently unemployed or working in other fields because they refused to comply with Mills’ order that they receive injections.

Some refused because they were skeptical of all vaccines or because of religious beliefs concerning the ethical problems with vaccine research that uses fetal tissue.

Others were fearful that the long-term consequences of the experimental products were unknown, unknowable and potentially harmful.

But in every case, the substantial drop in employment in Maine’s healthcare sector because of the mandate has severely exacerbated a workforce shortage that threatens to undermine healthcare quality in the state.

Text messages like the one Poland received will hardly fix the problem.

It’s virtually impossible to determine how much of the sharp drop in healthcare employment has been caused by Mills’ order, how much of it was caused by COVID-19 and how much of it was caused by lockdown policies generally.

Regardless, labor statistics show Maine is in the middle of the steepest decline in healthcare jobs. Ever.

According to stats from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, those losses have been particularly acute in Maine’s nursing homes and assisted living facilities, like the facility where Poland worked.

In 2019, Maine had more than 22,600 individuals employed at nursing homes.

That number hit 19,800 in 2022.

At skilled nursing facilities, employment dropped from 8,426 in 2019 to 6,907 in 2022, according to Maine Department of Labor statistics.

The shortage of long-term care workers is all the more severe in Maine since the state consistently ranks as the oldest in the nation. As demand for nursing home beds increases, the number of workers available to provide that care has plummeted.

In home healthcare, total employment has declined from 4,401 workers in 2019 to 4,054 in 2022.

The same shortage can be seen in employment figures for hospitals in Maine. Mainers working in Maine hospitals declined from 33,000 in 2019 to 30,900 in 2021, according to federal statistics.

Even as Maine’s opioid epidemic has continued to break records for overdoses and deaths, the number of people employed in the health sector that includes substance abuse facilities has declined from 7,509 workers in 2019 to 7,149 in 2022, according to the Maine Department of Labor numbers.

One healthcare area that hasn’t seen such sharp declines is ambulatory healthcare, which includes facilities that are out-patient only, such as urgent care clinics and dentists’ offices.

At the same time the medical field is suffering from a lack of employees, Mainers have never spent more money on their healthcare.

Personal consumption of outpatient and in-home care topped $11,897,000,000 in 2021, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. That’s a massive increase over the $11.2 billion reported for 2019.

At least some of that money is making its way into the pockets of Maine’s remaining healthcare workers. According to federal stats, Mainers who work in healthcare or social assistance made a record $7,028,362,000 in collective wages — the highest ever in Maine history.

Vaccine mandate victims seek discrimination case

Mills’ mandate was based on the theory that the pharmaceutical products being touted as “vaccines” or “immunizations” would prevent healthcare workers from contracting the virus or transmitting it to patients.

It’s now generally understood that the vaccine never inhibited transmission of the virus.

Mills, who has followed the recommended injection schedule, has herself caught COVID-19 twice despite getting the jabs.

The Aug. 3 decision by the Mills administration to rescind the mandate after nearly two years following on the heels of an embarrassing legal defeat in a case challenging the constitutionality of Mills’ decision to eliminate religious and philosophical exemptions from the mandate.

That court case hinges on the fact that Mills continued to allow medical exemptions while denying a comparable exemption for medical reasons.

Although the plaintiffs in that case, several healthcare workers who lost their jobs over the mandate, initially lost in Maine District Court, an appeals court panel has determined that the lower court erred when it rejected their claim of religious discrimination.

In May, when that decision came down, Matt Staver, who represents the plaintiffs via Liberty Counsel, said he was looking forward to discovery.

[…]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/maine-general-hospital-nurses-covid-shots/

By  Angelo DePalma, Ph.D.

Research reported in Nature Neuroscience strongly links the gut microbiome to autism spectrum disorder (ASD), identifying four bacterial species tied to ASD and fueling hopes of microbiome-targeted treatments. But experts caution against expectations of a quick cure.

Now, results from a study reported in Nature Neuroscience in June support the connection between the microbiome and autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and provide clues about the microbes involved.

These data may eventually lead to “natural interventions” that promote a healthy microbiome and, it is hoped, relieve some of the burden of ASD on those affected, according to the study authors.

The difficulty with analyzing many studies

The authors of the Nature Neuroscience paper reviewed results from more than 70 studies investigating the microbiome-ASD connection.

A major problem with drawing conclusions from a large number of studies is that the sheer diversity of study designs, aims, methods and even investigators raises the possibility that the analysis will compare “apples to oranges.”

One paper may look at kindergarten-age girls while another studies adolescent boys. Some investigations may include an intervention — requiring subjects to eat certain foods or take a drug or dietary supplement, for example — while others are purely observational.

Additionally, not all “microbiome” studies focus on the same microorganisms or use the same analytical methods to find them. One study may look at proteins generated by bacteria while another measures genes from yeast. Both studies qualify as microbiome investigations but their conclusions may not be comparable.

This is a common problem with microbiome research as there are potentially thousands of species involved and a dozen ways to detect and characterize them.

An innovative approach

In the case of the Nature Neuroscience paper, lead researcher Gaspar Taroncher-Oldenberg, Ph.D., and his team solved this dilemma by using an innovative study design first described in 2019 by researchers at the University of Nevada, Reno, and Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan.

The method involves two steps: identifying a factor common to both data sets, and comparing those data (and assigning their relative significance) based on that relationship.

Take as an example a hypothetical review of studies on the effect of diet on the ability to hit a baseball. Let’s say half the studies measured protein consumption and the other half tallied the number of meals subjects consumed per day.

Both groups qualify as “diet” studies but they are not directly comparable because protein consumption and eating schedule are totally unrelated.

However, if it were possible to relate protein and meal frequency to a third factor that is easily measured and critical to hitting a baseball — say, visual acuity — it then becomes possible to compare the results.

In the case of the Nature Neuroscience study, researchers connected seemingly unrelated studies to the known, well-established connections between bacterial species and the biological “pathways” or mechanisms through which ASD develops.

They then used the strength of those associations to develop a system for ranking and comparing microbial species for their potential involvement in ASD.

In all, they drew data from 25 studies on individual microbiome species, dietary patterns, bacterial metabolites, inflammatory proteins and alterations in brain chemistry associated with ASD.

They found the strongest associations to ASD in the chemical profiles of bacterial metabolites consisting of fats, carbohydrates and protein breakdown products. Four bacterial species were primarily involved: Prevotella, Bifidobacterium, Desulfovibrio and Bacteroides.

The authors also noted “a strong association between temporal changes in microbiome composition and ASD phenotypes,” meaning that changes in a person’s microbiome can affect the type and severity of ASD symptoms.

It’s probably not all ‘in your genes’

ASD, which involves mild-to-severe impairments in cognition, behavior and communication, affects approximately 2.8% of American children. Its occurrence in boys is almost 4 times higher than in girls (4.3% versus 1.1%).

Parents usually notice symptoms by age 2, and as children mature, their cognitive and behavioral deficits often affect their performance in school or work and their ability to socialize.

Distinguishing vaccine injury from genetic and other developmental disorders has been difficult for a variety of reasons. Funding priorities and technology trends (like using knockout mice — mice in which researchers have inactivated, or “knocked out,” an existing gene by replacing it or disrupting it with an artificial piece of DNA) have resulted in a strong emphasis on investigating potential genetic vulnerabilities related to ASD.

So far, more than 100 genes have been linked to the disorder. However, these observations come with the caveat that many of the same genes are implicated in other neurologic processes or in broader childhood development — so the preponderance of studies looking for genetic causes for ASD needs to be understood in this context.

One previous study looked directly at abnormalities in brain structure for clues. Such abnormalities are subtle and, according to Taroncher-Oldenberg, their causal relationship with ASD has not been established.

“One comorbidity that has been linked to ASD with high confidence is the occurrence of gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms, such as constipation, diarrhea or abdominal bloating” even though “causal insights” have not been clear, wrote Taroncher-Oldenberg.

But this evidence, along with the observation that the severity of GI symptoms often correlates with ASD severity, makes this idea a reasonable starting point, and the basis of current investigations on the “gut-brain axis” and ASD.

The original article in The Lancet — which was retracted — connecting the MMR (measles-mumps-rubella vaccine) to ASD looked specifically at 12 children who presented with both acute onset ASD and severe gut symptomatology.

The gut-brain axis is a bidirectional chemical communication channel between a person’s digestive and nervous systems, particularly the brain. Communication occurs primarily through the release of chemicals by the brain and the trillions of microbes comprising the gut microbiome.

In addition to ASD, disruptions in the gut-brain axis have been associated with anxiety, obesity, schizophrenia, Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease.

Gut microbes a factor, not a cause

Although the association between the gut microbiome and ASD is strong, one cannot conclude, based on the evidence, that certain bacteria definitively cause autism.

Many possible contributors to the ASD-bacteria link remain uninvestigated. For example, children with ASD could simply be fussy eaters and be less likely to consume nutrients that promote a healthy microbiome. Their diets alone or some other unknown factors — or both — may be responsible for their behavioral problems.

Future investigations should also look into the possibility that ASD is the cause, and not the effect, of microbiome issues.

Other possible factors confounding the ASD-microbiome link are differences in study population demographics — including number of subjects recruited, race, age or sex — and that studies often collect data only from one point in time.

Since the characteristics of both ASD and the gut microbiome change over time, connections between microbial populations and the disorder are often difficult to pin down.

Taroncher-Oldenberg commented on this point in a July interview in FoodNavigator:

“So you don’t really know what came before, or what came after. All you know is that while you’re having the symptoms or whatever it is you’re measuring phenotypically, you know that you have this microbiome versus that microbiome composition. That’s all you know.

“So it’s very hard to infer any kind of mechanistic insights from this, other than to say there is a difference in the microbiome.”

“Phenotypically” refers to the observable, diagnostically-relevant symptoms of ASD.

Phenotypic variations between the sexes are also common. Taroncher-Oldenberg’s study corrected for both age and sex.

One problem this study could not address was the “time point” factor. Significant changes in symptoms are evident as subjects age, from infancy through their teenage years.

Taroncher-Oldenberg told FoodNavigator:

“In order for us to know if any of those signals were relevant or what they could mean, therapeutically or just in terms of disease, mechanistically, we needed to ‘ground-truth’ our results with longitudinal data, that had five or six data points over time that correlated with some kind of change in the autistic phenotype.”

The significance of this study lies in the potential to improve ASD symptoms in children or perhaps, should the brain-microbiome connection prove causative, even cure ASD.

Although Taroncher-Oldenburg dismissed the idea of an easy cure, his group did re-analyze data from a two-year, 18-subject open-label (i.e., without a control group) fecal matter transplant study with children with ASD.

Fecal transplants involve giving people beneficial bacteria they lack by having them ingest a capsule containing a small quantity of stool from a healthy donor.

The technique has been used, with positive results, to treat dangerous bacterial infections of the GI tract, Type 2 diabetes, multiple sclerosis and Crohn’s disease.

In the study, the children were first purged of resident gut bacteria through a two-week antibiotic treatment and a bowel cleanse, followed by daily fecal dosing for eight weeks.

Based on one common measure of ASD symptoms, the Childhood Autism Rating Scale, investigators noted significant improvements that persisted for two years post-treatment.

Taroncher-Oldenberg suggests interventions like fecal transplants “are consistent with a potential role of the microbiome in improving autism symptoms, but how the underlying changes in microbiome composition [are] related to those seen in other studies remains unknown.”

[…]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/microbiome-gut-brain-axis-autism-spectrum-disorder/