Progressive Wednesday

Plants are our friends.

It’s this kind of information that makes me glad I woke up in the morning, poured myself a cup of java (heavy on the cream), plopped myself down, and scanned through the day’s news, obscure and popular alike. Check it out:

The leaves of Aspilia africana, a plant used in African traditional medicine, can stop bleeding, block infection and speed wound healing, a new study from Nigeria confirms.

The leaves and flowers of A. Africana, a bristle-covered herb known as the “hemorrhage plant,” have been used to stanch bleeding, remove foreign bodies from the eyes, treat scorpion stings, and for several other purposes across the African continent.

I’m comforted, quite often, by science (you know, when people aren’t cloning goats, building a better thermonuclear bomb, or using their massive minds to concoct a tastier McBurger). The aforementioned information made my morning, quite frankly, and made me realize, yet again, how central to our lives the rest of the ecosystem is. We’re all part of one larger organism, and we’ve been given–by chance or by Divinity, depending on our beliefs–tools and cures, techniques and creations that we’ve barely tapped.

All this is to say, there’s more hope out there than the mainstream media will let us see with ease, and there’s more hope. And hope, my friends, might be the most progressive of emotions. Let’s not forget that, and let’s not lose it, despite the desires of the powerful few.

So let’s raise our collective mugs to Aspilia africana and to the scientists bringing it to the masses.

A welcome nugget of hope.

A friend of Progressive Wednesday recently lost her father to Alzheimer’s disease, so we take great interest when new approaches pop up to help treat this illness. And while today’s good news isn’t a cure, it is a damned good step in the right direction:

The first skin patch to treat the dementia that can plague Alzheimer’s patients gained federal approval, a drug company said Monday.

The drug in the patch, called Exelon or rivastigmine, is the same as that now available in capsule form but provides a regular and continuous dose throughout the day, according to Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp. Since the drug enters the bloodstream directly, the patch also eliminates some of the gastrointestinal side effects associated with the drug when swallowed.

And we all should care deeply about Alzheimer’s, and not just because we’re naturally empathetic. We should care since 4.5 Americans are living with the disease right now — that’s more than the population of Los Angeles. We should care, for our own sake and the sake of our loved ones, because, according to the CDC, Alzheimer’s is the 7th most common cause of death in America. And I don’t know about you, but slowly losing my mind, memories, and sense of self would be like slowly, slowly drowning. And no one should have to suffer this way.

So if you’d like to lend your hand and help make more good news, you might consider making a five dollar donation to the Alzheimer’s Association, an organization that funds research for treatments and a cure, provides care, and promotes awareness.

The anti-antibacteria

This May we talked about corn. We told you about the effects that this plant has on our society, economy, environment, and especially our health. If you haven't read it, you should. If you have read it, you should read it again. It's full of information that you won't want to know, but should. You can find the whole shebang here.

Corn is very quick to add weight to the animals (and, consequently, the people who eat those animals). But corn is not a natural food for the animals that eat it. In most cases, cows in particular, the animals require antibiotics in order to properly digest it. Here are some facts from the Union of Concerned Scientists:

An estimated 70 percent of antibiotics and related drugs produced in this country are used for nontherapeutic purposes such as accelerating animal growth and compensating for overcrowded and unsanitary conditions on large-scale confinement facilities known as “factory farms.” This translates to about 25 million pounds of antibiotics and related drugs fed every year to livestock for nontherapeutic purposes– ”almost eight times the amount given to humans to treat disease.

The use of these antibiotics on animals, along with the overprescription of antibiotics by doctors has led to a dramatic increase in bacterial resistance to these drugs, forcing doctors to use increasingly stronger antibiotics to treat relatively minor infections. In other words, the bacteria are becoming immune to the treatment.

Fortunately there is a bill in Congress that aims to eliminate those antibiotics in feed animals:

The Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act of 2007, bipartisan legislation introduced in Congress, would phase out the routine use of medically important antibiotics as feed additives in animal agriculture. More than 350 health, consumer, agricultural, environmental, humane, religious and other organizations have endorsed the legislation.

I'm asking you to join them, just click this sentance. It'll only take a second. Okay, maybe ten seconds. And next time you're buying beef, look for the pasture-fed stuff, and avoid that Vancomycin steak dinner. It's better for your health, the environment, the animals, the economy– ¦

Hopefully this photographer feeds his cows grass