DO YOU KNOW... The difference between margarine and butter?

Both have the same amount of calories.

Butter is slightly higher in saturated fats at 8 grams compared to 5 grams.

Eating margarine can increase heart disease in women by 53% over eating the same amount of butter according to a recent Harvard Medical Study.

Eating butter increases the absorption of many other nutrients in other foods. It has many nutritional benefits.

Margarine only has a few added nutritional benefits. Butter tastes much better than margarine and it can enhance the flavors of other foods.

More facts about margarine: Very high in Trans Fatty Acids... Triple risk of Coronary Heart Disease... Increases total cholesterol and LDL (this is the bad cholesterol) Lowers HDL cholesterol, (the good cholesterol) .... Increases the risk of cancers by up to five fold... Lowers quality of breast milk ... Decreases immune response... Decreases insulin response.

And here is the most disturbing fact....
Margarine is but ONE MOLECULE away from being PLASTIC. This fact alone was enough to have me avoiding margarine for life and anything else that is hydrogenated (this means hydrogen is added, changing the molecular structure of the substance). YOU can try this yourself: purchase a tub of margarine and leave it in your garage or shaded area. Within a couple of days you will note a couple of things: no flies, not even those pesky fruit flies will go near it (that should tell you something) ... it does not rot or smell differently...because it has no nutritional value, nothing will grow on it...even those teeny weeny microorganisms will not a find a home to grow. Why? Because it is nearly plastic. Would you melt your Tupperware and spread that on your toast?

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The strength of the Earth's magnetic field has decreased 10 percent over the past 150 years, raising the remote possibility that it may collapse and later reverse, flipping the planet's poles for the first time in nearly a million years. At that rate of decline, the field could vanish altogether in 1,500 to 2,000 years, said Jeremy Bloxham of Harvard University. Here.

The SARS virus is capable of changing rapidly and unpredictably, which could present serious challenges for managing the disease and developing drugs and vaccines to combat it, research at the University of Michigan suggests.

Twelve of the most popular science textbooks used at middle schools nationwide are riddled with errors, a new study has found. Researchers compiled 500 pages of errors, ranging from maps depicting the equator passing through the southern United States to a photo of singer Linda Ronstadt labeled as a silicon crystal. None of the 12 textbooks has an acceptable level of accuracy, said John Hubisz, a North Carolina State University physics professor who led the two-year survey, released earlier this month. "These are terrible books, and they're probably a strong component of why we do so poorly in science," he said. Hubisz estimated about 85% of children in the United States use the textbooks examined. "The books have a very large number of errors, many irrelevant photographs, complicated illustrations, experiments that could not possibly work, and drawings that represented impossible situations,' he told The Charlotte Observer.

Paul W. Ewald's best thinking started with an attack of diarrhea on a field trip to Kansas. A zoologist, he was studying the social habits of sparrows. But during that ordeal 24 years ago, he had time to ponder other things: Was his personal predicament simply the havoc of a germ bent on spreading itself around? Or was his body trying to flush away the germ? Was this the evolutionary adaptation of an invader or the evolved human defense against it? Healthy again, he checked the medical literature. "I realized that virtually all considerations of evolutionary processes in the medical literature were incorrect," he says. So, he set out to fix that. Although not a physician, Ewald has applied the insights of 19th century evolutionary thinker Charles Darwin to help pioneer a perspective on disease now known as Darwinian, or evolutionary, medicine. Ewald has concluded that mainstream medicine, fixated on genes and lifestyle, is overlooking the chief cause of the most enduring, widespread and harmful illnesses of humankind. Heart disease? He suspects germs. Cancer? Likely infection by germs. Mental illness? Also germs.

A study shows for the first time that hospital patients often catch life-threatening staph infections from germs they harbor in their own noses. Staph infections are a serious threat to patients in hospitals and nursing homes who are already sick and whose immune systems are weak. Such infections can spread quickly and can be deadly if they enter the bloodstream. Until now, these infections have been blamed largely on germs that spread from person to person, often on people's hands. Experts caution that this is still a common means of transmission. In the latest study, researchers in Germany looked at two groups of patients with staph blood poisoning. In more than 80% of the patients, they found the same strain of staphylococcus aureus in the blood and the nasal passages of the patients. The nasal tract is a common site for the ordinarily harmless staph bacteria. That showed that the patients had infected themselves with their own germs, according to researchers. It was not clear whether they picked up the bacteria in the hospital or brought them with them.

A sometimes-lethal type of bacteria that causes many cases of pneumonia, bloodstream infections and other illnesses is rapidly becoming resistant to antibiotics, a government study found. Experts have warned for a decade that overuse of antibiotics is helping germs become resistant to drugs, first to penicillin, then to newer antibiotics, raising the specter of more deaths and amputations. Between 1995 and 1998, Whitney and colleagues collected 12,045 blood or other fluid samples from U.S. patients infected with Streptococcus pneumonia. Each sample was tested against antibiotics from nine of the 10 or so classes that fight bacteria, with increasingly strong doses of the antibiotic applied until the bacteria were killed. Over the three-year span, the percentage of pneumococcus samples resistant to three or more antibiotic classes grew from 9% to 14%. The percentage resistant to penicillin went from 21% to 25%.

Warning: Mom's old Barbie doll may be dangerous to your health. Researchers say that as plastic used in that and some other old toys decays, it can drip a chemical that disrupts hormone development in the young. Yvonne Shashoua, a preservation specialist with the National Museum of Denmark, said Wednesday that some dolls manufactured in the 1950s with polyvinyl chloride, a type of plastic, are deteriorating rapidly - and dangerously. The plasticizer in aged toys forms a tacky slime across the surface. It eventually crystalizes and turns to dust. Shashoua said that studies in Europe show that the plasticizer chemical can mimic estrogen and disrupt development in the very young. Some studies have blamed estrogen mimics in the environment for malformation of male organs.

Genetically engineered corn designed to kill an insect pest spreads enough of its pollen on nearby weeds to kill monarch butterflies, researchers said Monday in the latest study on the biotech crop's environmental effects. Iowa State University scientists found that one in five monarch larvae died after being exposed to the toxic corn pollen for two days. Three days after the initial two-day exposure more than half of the larvae died. The biotech corn, known as Bt corn for a bacterium gene that makes it toxic to the European corn borer, became controversial last year after a laboratory study at Cornell University showed it was toxic to monarch butterflies.

Researchers have identified the portion of the Ebola virus that causes massive bleeding, the frightening hallmark of the deadly disease that has begun appearing periodically in Africa. Although Ebola is not common or widespread, it has received much attention since first being reported in 1976 because of the fear generated by the heavy bleeding and the disease's 90% death rate. Researchers studying Ebola at the National Institutes of Health found a sugar-containing molecule called glycoprotein sticking out from the surface of the virus. In test tube experiments, they discovered a portion of this protein caused it to destroy endothelial cells. Endothelial cells line blood vessels, and by attacking them the protein caused the vessels to leak, the researchers said.

For years, doctors operated on premature babies without anesthesia in the belief that even if the infants felt the pain, they would not remember it. New research with rats suggests that the body does remember the pain and is forever changed. A study using newborn rats at the National Institutes of Health found that painful trauma that mimics medical procedures commonly performed on premature infants caused the rats to become much more sensitive to pain as they grew older. The reason is that pain causes the developing nervous system of the very young to grow more nerve cells that carry the sensation of pain to the brain, NIH researcher M. A. Ruda said. "We found that there are more nerve endings that fire and transmit the (pain) information," said Ruda, the first author of a study appearing in the journal Science.

Alzheimer's disease is increasing so fast that more than 22 million people worldwide will be affected by 2025, experts warned Sunday. They urged new research to spot the very earliest symptoms - subtle ones that can emerge a decade before true dementia hits - and hunt for ways to protect these people's brains. Already, doctors have discovered that a mild memory impairment sometimes confused with normal aging can progress to full-blown Alzheimer's at a rate of about 12% a year. This "mild cognitive impairment" is "a slippery slope to Alzheimer's," Dr. Ronald Petersen of the Mayo Clinic told scientists gathered for the world's largest Alzheimer's meeting. There is no known cure for Alzheimer's, which today afflicts about 4 million Americans and 8 million others.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that two government-certified labs found asbestos in crayons made by Crayola, Prang and Rose Art. Of 40 crayons that were tested from the three major brands, 32 were contaminated above trace levels, the newspaper said.

Scientists have discovered cracks in the ocean floor off the East Coast that they say could trigger a tsunami, sending 18-foot waves toward the mid-Atlantic states. In the journal Geology, the three researchers say they discovered the cracks along a 25-mile section of the continental shelf off the Virginia and North Carolina coasts. Those areas and the lower Chesapeake Bay would be at the highest risk for wave heights similar to the storm surge of a category 4 hurricane, which is characterized by top sustained winds of 131 mph to 155 mph. Neal Driscoll of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod, Jeffrey Weissel of Columbia University and John Goff of the University of Texas said the recently discovered cracks could mean the continental shelf is unstable.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is warning outdoor workers to be especially wary of Lyme disease. Outdoor workers are at particularly high risk, and the tick population may continue to increase this season due to the rising number of deer and recent mild winters.

Four reported outbreaks of unusual infections around the world have illustrated the surprising potential of new microbes to emerge and old ones to return with a vengeance. "On a good day, we hold them at bay. On a bad day, they're winning," said Dr. Michael Osterholm Minnesota's state epidemiologist for 24 years, wrote an editorial on emerging infections in the New England Journal of Medicine, which carried reports on the four outbreaks.

A medical examiner says long-term use of Ritalin, a drug used to treat hyperactive children, may have led to a 14-year-old boy's death. Matthew Smith collapsed at his home on March 21 while playing with a skateboard and was pronounced dead at a hospital a short time later. Oakland County Medical Examiner Ljubisa Dragovic concluded that the boy died of a heart attack likely caused by 10 years of taking Ritalin for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Chronic exposure to low-frequency electromagnetic fields may be responsible for a higher suicide risk among electric utility workers, according to researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. They found electricians for five U.S. power companies had twice the suicide rate and linemen 1-1/2 times the rate of utility workers not employed in those jobs. The findings appear in the April issue of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

Scientists calculated it takes about 10 million years after a plant or animal becomes extinct before anything resembling it reappears. This analysis confirms the fears of many scientists worried about the increasing loss of plant and animal life. Biologists estimate that up to half of the known animal and plant species in the world could be wiped out within a century.

In the first study to find a link between pot and heart trouble, Harvard researchers reported that the risk of a heart attack is five times higher than usual in the hour after smoking a joint. The researchers said that for someone in shape, marijuana is about twice as risky as exercising or having sex.

A new study raises the disturbing possibility that taking vitamin C pills may speed up hardening of the arteries. Researchers cautioned that more experiments are needed to know for sure whether megadoses of the vitamin actually are harmful. Still, they said the finding supports the recommendations of health organizations, which generally urge people to avoid high doses of supplements and to get their nutrients from food instead.

People with weakened immune systems who come in contact with birds may be putting themselves at risk for developing life-threatening illnesses, according to a study. The meningitis death of 72-year-old Boston woman might have been caused by breathing an airborne fungus found in bird feces, researchers report in a study published Tuesday in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The woman was infected with the Cryptococcus neoformans fungus and died 39 days after she was diagnosed.

Men who are balding at the crowns of their heads are up to 39% more likely to suffer heart disease. Well that's just GREAT! :-(

An Icelandic company plans to collect DNA samples from Iceland's 270,000 citizens and link the genetic profiles with their health records and family trees. The database it plans to build would offer an unprecedented chance to discover genetic links to disease - and an unprecedented danger to privacy, doctors and researchers attending a packed meeting of the American Society of Hematology said Sunday. Although people's genetic profiles, health histories and family trees will be linked, their identities will be encrypted by clinics and hospitals before the information reaches the company, said Dr. Kari Stefansson, founder and CEO of Decode Genetics, the Reykyavik company which will develop the database.

Failure to convert English measures to metric values caused the loss of the Mars planet orbiter, a spacecraft that smashed into the planet instead of reaching a safe orbit, a NASA investigation concluded.

Cell phones may cause long-term memory loss, a recent study on laboratory rats indicates. Dr. Henry Lai, a research professor in bioengineering at the University of Washington in Seattle has linked long-term memory loss and diminished navigating skills in rats with the microwaves emitted by mobile phones.

Drug-resistant tuberculosis has been found in 104 countries and could spread to every nation unless $1 billion is devoted to controlling it, according to a study commissioned by philanthropist George Soros and conducted by Harvard Medical School. Russian prisons are among the epicenters of the hard-to-treat and potentially fatal disease. About 100,000 inmates have active TB and about 40% have drug-resistant TB, said Gen. Vladimir Yalinin, the chief of prisons. About 30,000 people with active cases are released from prison in Russia each year, and 400 prison workers have developed TB, he said through a translator at a news conference in New York. There is a spreading fear that lice may be growing resistant to common treatments. "It is becoming a great concern to CDC and researchers throughout the United States," said Sue Partridge of the Centers for Disease Control's Division of Parasitic Diseases.

Researchers have for the first time detected in humans a certain tick-borne bacterial infection that was thought to sicken only dogs. The study gives no evidence to suggest that man's best friend is spreading the potentially deadly disease to people directly, through a bite or a lick. Instead, the researchers said ticks are biting both humans and dogs, and may be jumping from dog to master in some cases. The doctors found four human cases of the infection, all in Missouri, between 1996 and 1998, and four more cases during this tick season in Missouri, Tennessee and Oklahoma. The study, published in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine, examined a little-known, yet emerging disease called ehrlichiosis, which is similar to Lyme disease.

U.S. scientists have found live spores of the deadly anthrax bacteria in a pit on an Aral Sea island, where the biological weapon was supposed to have been buried safely more than a decade ago, The New York Times reported 6/2. The newspaper described the Central Asia island where the pit is located, Vozrozhdeniye or Renaissance Island, as "the world's largest anthrax burial ground." Hundreds of tons of anthrax bacteria, which were developed in the Urals region of Russia under the Soviet biological weapons program, were drenched in bleach, sealed in stainless steel drums and sent to the island by train. The bleach was to have killed the bacteria before it was buried in the sand, the newspaper reported.

Researchers have some advice for folks gathering goodies for picnics this summer: Zap that electric bug zapper to a remote corner of the yard. James Urban, a microbiologist at Kansas State University, says zappers and food should be kept apart because while they are killing insects, the devices can spread bacteria or viruses up to six feet away. "I think it means we should not use bug zappers in certain areas," Urban said. "It shouldn't be hanging above the condiment tray at your picnic. You might be careful having a bug zapper in areas where small children's toys might be."

Babies whose mothers smoke during pregnancy could be at a higher risk of growing up to be criminals, new research suggests.

The most common form of liver cancer, a type that is nearly always fatal, is on the rise in the United States and the increase is likely to continue until hepatitis is better controlled, researchers reported Thursday. The incidence of hepatocellular carcinoma increased 71% from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s, according to researchers at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Albuquerque, N.M.

HONG KONG - A supergerm that has proven resistant to one of the most potent antibiotics available has killed a Hong Kong woman, officials said Monday 2/22, raising fears that more germs could develop as doctors continue to misuse or overuse antibiotics. The middle-aged woman died last year at Queen Mary Hospital after becoming infected with a strain of staphylococcus aureus bacteria, or staph, despite two weeks of intensive antibiotics treatment, a spokeswoman from the official Hospital Authority said. The woman, who also suffered from cancer, was one of a few known cases in the world in which staph proved resistant to vancomycin, an antibiotic known as "the silver bullet," which doctors use as the last resort to treat infections when all other antibiotics fail.

When doctors restored Shirl Jennings' sight, his old world of darkness filled with fear and frustration. Used to seeing nothing, suddenly seeing everything was a shock. Images appeared but he did not know what they were without touching or smelling them. Lacking depth perception, walking down a sidewalk became a frightening journey. He tripped over curbs, stumbled over things and could not walk up stairs. He did not understand facial expressions. When he tried to go back to work as a masseur, the body parts began to disgust him. Jennings, whose story inspired the movie "At First Sight," had no visual memory when he regained his sight at age 51. The experimental surgery fixed his eyes, but his mind did not know how to interpret the images flooding his senses.

When scientists stick the nucleus from a human cell into a hollowed-out cow's egg, is the result a cow or a human? Is it a clone? Could it grow into a baby? President Clinton's advisers on such matters, the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, have been forced into a hasty consideration of such questions. They say it is not clear if the experiments by scientists at Massachusetts-based biotech company Advanced Cell Technology constitute the cloning of a human being. But if they do, they should be banned, the commission's chair, Dr. Harold Shapiro, said in a letter to Clinton.

Homepages devoted to beloved pets rarely provoke much attention. But a debate on the ethics of genetic engineering is hurtling across the Internet after Texas cat breeder Vickie Ives Speir posted pictures of her cat's litter online. She calls them Twisty Kats. Their extra-small front legs make movement difficult and cause them to sit up on their back legs like kangaroos. Speir says that keeps them from preying on small animals, like birds. Critics say she's gone too far.

A team of Harvard researchers witnesses the AIDS virus in the act of grabbing cells to create drug-resistant mutations.

The estimated cost of dealing with the millennium "bomb" in Europe and the U.S. has risen 20% and some organizations may not now finish their work in time. The comprehensive survey by European computer consultancy Cap Gemini found the total estimated cost of dealing with the problem had risen to $858 billion from $719 billion predicted in April. While there had been a greater sense of urgency within business in recent months, Cap Gemini Vice Chairman Geoff Unwin said: "But the brutal truth remains that the fight against the millennium problem will go right down to the wire.

Scientists at the world's largest agricultural research network, who focus on feeding the poor, will not develop crops with "terminator genes" that produce sterile seeds, the network's leaders decided. Crops with "suicidal tendencies" would be a nightmare in the developing world, where farmers retain part of each harvest as seed for next year, said Ismail Serageldin, chairman of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research.

Residents of city in Atlantic Canada are mystified that a government report is unable to explain why people in their community have been dying from cancer and other diseases at a far higher rate than the national average since the 1950s. The death rate in Sydney, on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, was 16% higher than the rest of Canada from 1951 to 1994, according to a report released by Health Canada. "Not a single cause can explain all this," said Michel Camus, a federal researcher involved in the study.

Scientists hauled two surgical tents into an Arctic cemetery preparing to exhume the frozen corpses of six Norwegian miners killed in 1918 by one of history's worst pandemics. Scientists plan to erect a blue tent, airtight to guard against any escape of the virus, over the graves before digging down to the bodies in the cemetery on bleak Spitzbergen island, 800 miles from the North Pole. The other tent will be set up as a clean area for workers, who will also be protected by space suits and special breathing apparatus.

Scientists have finally found proof for what weekday workers always suspected - weekends get the worst weather and the sun comes out once everyone is safely back in the office. Climatologists Randall Cerveny and Robert Balling of Arizona State University said research into weather patterns on the east coast of north America showed the massive drift of pollution from the area naturally created clouds and rain. As traffic builds up, and office air-conditioners and factories crank up between Monday to Friday, the pollution grows spawning the clouds for a wet weekend.

The first independent scientific review of purported UFO sightings in almost 30 years has concluded that some unexplained physical evidence warrants serious scientific study,. . The panel cited cases of intriguing and inexplicable details such as burns to witnesses, radar detection of mysterious objects, strange lights appearing repeatedly in the skies over certain places, aberrations in the workings of automobiles and radiation and other damage found in vegetation.

Dangerous ultraviolet rays can sneak into the shade along with people trying to evade sunburn. Ultraviolet B (UVB) rays - the most damaging UV rays from the sun - bounce around in the air and seeking shade may not offer the best protection from them, Richard Grant of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., and Gordon Heisler of the U.S. Forest Service said. They said someone sitting in direct sunlight but surrounded by a grove of trees or buildings might get less UVB exposure than someone sitting in the shade of a tree.

Even "dead" AIDS viruses that seem to be just quietly hanging around may actually be attacking the immune system. This explains why damage to the immune system continues even while strong drugs seem to be controlling HIV infection. Irvin Chen and colleagues at the UCLA School of Medicine were working with viruses produced by the bodies of people taking the strong drug cocktails - known as highly active antiretroviral therapy or HAART - that have been shown to drive HIV down to almost unmeasurable levels.

A biologist and a social activist said they had teamed up in a patent application for creating a being that would be part human and part animal. But rather than seeking to make such a creature, they said they wanted to stop anyone else from doing it. "This is going to raise one of the great social and constitutional issues of all times - can a human embryo be claimed as intellectual property?" said Jeremy Rifkin, president of the Foundation on Economic Trends. Rifkin, a writer and economist who has battled against granting patents on living things and Stuart Newman, a cellular biologist at New York Medical College in Valhalla, said they wanted to spark a debate on the issue.

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violent death tied to low cholesterol

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~Human RaDation EXperiments~