Killing (or damaging) your Baby with Ultrasound

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Fri, 15 Apr 2005 00:58:00 -0000

Killing your Baby with Ultrasound

 

 

For years I have wondered why the authorities NEVER bothered to check

the safety issue of ultrasound and say they are safe. I mean, when I

was a student. I zap ultrasounds to kill cockroaches, sanitize water

and once, I burned my fingers with ultrasound even when my hands were

submerged underwater. I found this " safe ultrasound " a bit of lies. So

I investigated and here is what I found:

 

1. Ultrasound will destroy cells in your body.

2. Ultrasound causes genetic damages (sounds like that xray issue all

over again.)

 

Here are two links you will find interesting:

 

http://health.consumercide.com/ultrasound01.html

 

Thanks to Sheri Nakken who " Consolidated a bunch of stuff [that she]

had on file " ...

 

Problems with Ultrasound/doppler by Edwards (immediately below)

Excerpts about ultrasound from " What Doctors Don't Tell You "

Excerpt from Anne Frye, midwife and author of " Understanding Lab Work

in the Childbearing Year " (4th Ed.)

Mercola reference to Journal of Epidemiology

Link to Mothering magazine

Link to " alternamums " site

Men's health issues that may be relevant

 

 

PROBLEMS w/Ultrasound & Doppler

 

Shadow of a doubt

 

by Rob Edwards

 

ULTRASOUND SCANS can stop cells from dividing and make them commit

suicide.

 

A research team in Ireland say this is the first evidence that routine

scans,

which have let doctors peek at fetuses and internal organs for the

past 40

years, affect the normal cell cycle.

 

A team led by Patrick Brennan of University College Dublin gave 12

mice an

8-megahertz scan lasting for 15 minutes. Hospital scans, which reflect

inaudible sound waves off soft tissue to produce images on a monitor,

use

frequencies of between 3 and 10 megahertz and can last for up to an

hour

 

The researchers detected two significant changes in the cells of the

small

intestine in scanned mice compared to the mice that hadn't been

scanned.

Four and a half hours after exposure, there was a 22 per cent

reduction in the

rate of cell division, while the rate of programmed cell death or

" apoptosis " had approximately doubled.

 

Brennan believes there will be similar effects in humans. " It has been

assumed for a long time that ultrasound has no effect on cells, " he

says.

" We now have grounds to question that assumption. "

 

Brennan stresses, however, that the implications for human health are

uncertain. " There are changes happening, but we couldn't say whether

they

are harmful or harmless, " he explains. The intestine is a very

adaptable organ

that can compensate for alterations in the cell cycle, says Brennan.

 

It is possible that the sound waves damage the DNA in cells, delaying

cell

division and repair. Brennan suggests that ultrasound might be

switching on

the p53 gene which controls cell deaths. This gene, dubbed " the

guardian of

the genome " , produces a protein that helps cells recognise DNA damage

and

then either self-destruct or stop dividing.

 

Studies in the early 1990s by researchers at the University of

Rochester in

New York and the Batelle Pacific Northwest Laboratories in Richland,

Washington, showed that tissue heating due to ultrasound can cause

bleeding

in mouse intestines. Ultrasonographers now tune the power of scans to

reduce

such heating.

 

But Brennan's work is the first evidence that scans create changes in

cells.

" Our results are preliminary and need further investigation, " he says.

The

team presented their results at the Radiology 1999 conference in

Birmingham

last month and are now preparing them for submission to a peer-

reviewed

journal.

 

Alex Elliott, a researcher in clinical physics at the University of

Glasgow,

thinks that Brennan's results are important and should be followed

with

further studies. " If the conditions of his experiments really compare

to the

clinical use of ultrasound, " he says, " we may have to review the

current

safety limits. "

 

From New Scientist, 12 June 1999

 

 

Here are some excerpts about ultrasound from " What Doctors Don't Tell

You "

by Lynne McTaggart. " No well controlled study has yet proved that

routine scanning of prenatal patients will improve the outcome of

pregnancy " - official statement from American College of Obstetrics &

Gynecology in 1984

 

Some studies show that, with ultrasound, you are more likely to lose

your

baby. A study from Queen Charlotte's and Chelsea Hospital in London

found

that women having doppler ultrasound were more likely to lose their

babies

than those who received only standard neonatal care (17 deaths to 7).

 

A Norwegian study of 2,000 babies found that those subjected to

routine

ultrasound scanning were 30% more likely to be left-handed than those

sho

weren't scanned. An Australian study demonstraates that frequent

scans

increased the proportion of growth-restricted babies by a third,

resulting

in a higher number of small babies. Exposure to ultrasound also

caused

delayed speech, according to Canadian researcher Professor James

Campbell.

 

The International Childbirth Education Association has maintained that

ultrasound is most likely to affect development (behavioral &

neurological), blood cells, the immune system, & a child's genetic

makeup.

 

Besides the safety issue, there are considerable questions about

accuracy.

There is a significant chance that your scan will indicate a problem

when

there isn't one, or fail to pick up aa problem actually there. One

study

found a " high rate " of false positives, 17% of the pregnant women

scanned

were shown to have small-for-dates babies, when only 6% actually did -

an

error rate of nearly one out of three. Another study from Harvard

showed

that among 3,100 scans, 18 babies were erroneously labeled abnormal,

and 17

fetuses with problems were missed.

 

 

According to Anne Frye, midwife and author of " Understanding Lab Work

in

the Childbearing Year " (4th Ed.)p. 405

Doppler Devices: Many women do not realize that doppler fetoscopes are

 

ultrasound devices. (apparently, neither do many care providers. Time

after time, women are assured by doctors and even some nurse midwives

that a doppler is not an ultrasound device.) . . . .

 

Not well publicized for obvious reasons, doppler devices expose the

fetus

to more powerful ultrasound than real time (imaging) ultrasound exams.

 

One minute of doppler exposure is equal to 35 minutes of real time

ultrasound. This is an important point for women to consider when

deciding between an ultrasound exam and listening with a doppler to

determine viability in early pregnancy. . . . .

 

If you have a doppler, put it aside and make a concerted effort to

learn

to listen yourself! Save your doppler for those rare occasions when

you

cannot hear the heart rate late into pushing or to further investigate

 

suspected fetal death. " copyright l990, Anne Frye, B.H. Holistic

Midwifery.

 

Personally, after 23 years of attending births, I would not permit a

doppler in my house if I were pregnant. You always know that something

 

is ultrasound because there will be " jelly " involved. If you want a

cheap listening device for the baby's heart just save the core from a

roll of toilet paper. Put one end on the lower belly and the other on

hubby's ear. If you want to know your baby is doing well, count the

fetal movements in a day. Starting at 9 a.m. count each time the baby

kicks. There should be l0 distinct movements by 3 p.m.

 

I think it's sad that some people will do anything to make a buck of

the

huge pregnant market in North America. Please feel free to forward

this

post on to any other lists.

 

Gloria Lemay, Vancouver BC

Wise Woman Way of Birth Courses

http://www.birthlove.com/pages/wise_woman.html>>>

 

 

Mothering Magazine did a good article on ultrasounds and such in their

last

issue. You can read the articles at http://www.Mothering.com Click

in

Recent Articles and they are there. [date of this post: June 30 2003]

 

 

 

This (via Mercola) is from the journal " Epidemiology " (Dec 2001), and

suggests that ultrasound is associated with mild brain damage.

 

http://www.mercola.com/2001/dec/19/ultrasound.htm

 

My boss, Dr. Mark Ellisman, is a world-renowned research scientist at

UCSD

who specializes in imaging technologies for the study of brain

structure

at the cellular level; he has personally found evidence of something

called " cavitation " , which is the " rapid formation and collapse of

vapor

pockets " in fluid within tissue. When my wife and I became pregnant

he warned me to keep the ultrasound as short as possible. He knows

what

he's talking about.

 

Here's a relevant quote:

 

" Free radical production in amniotic fluid and blood plasma by

medical

ultrasound, probably following gaseous cavitation, has been

detected

by Crum et al (1987). This provides a likely mechanism for the

origin of the DNA damage. Because of these confirmations and a

report

by Ellisman et al (1987) that diagnostic levels of ultrasound may

disrupt

myelination in neonatal rats, the need for regulation, guidance,

and

properly controlled clinical studies is clear. "

 

http://www.aimsusa.org/ultrasnd.htm

 

Here's another useful link:

 

http://www.alternamoms.com/ultrasound.html

 

mirror of this work held locally on consumercide

 

So please don't consider this a benign procedure or an opportunity

to get some pretty pictures. and *please* don't get an extra

3D ultrasound, which is a very long scan, to get the 3D picture

of your baby. There is a real risk, and it's just not worth it.

 

Do a Google search on " +ultrasound +cavitation " or " +ultrasound

+Ellisman "

and convince yourself.

 

Just my .02

 

Dave

 

 

 

http://www.ccli.org/contraception/vasectomy.shtml

 

I found this article quite interesting.

 

I also saw this one:

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/health/newsid_1751000/1751177.stm

 

This made me wonder what ultrasound does to developing babies if it

can have such a drastic effect on a testicle.

 

 

Genetic damage of ultrasound:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?

cmd=Retrieve & db=PubMed & dopt=Abstract & list_uids=10806310

 

DNA damage induced by micellar-delivered doxorubicin and ultrasound:

comet assay study.

 

Husseini GA, El-Fayoumi RI, O'Neill KL, Rapoport NY, Pitt WG.

 

Department of Chemical Engineering, Brigham Young University, Provo,

UT 84602, USA.

 

To minimize adverse side effects of chemotherapy, we have developed a

micellar drug carrier that retains hydrophobic drugs, and then

releases the drug by ultrasonic stimulation. This study investigated

the DNA damage induced by doxorubicin (DOX) delivered to human

leukemia (HL-60) cells from pluronic P-105 micelles with and without

the application of ultrasound. The comet assay was used to quantify

the amount of DNA damage. No significant DNA damage was observed when

the cells were treated with 0.1, 1 and 10 wt% P-105 with or without

ultrasound (70 kHz, 1.3 W/cm(2)) for 1 h or for up to 3 h in 10 wt% P-

105. However, when cells were incubated with 10 microg/ml free DOX for

up to 9 h, DNA damage increased with incubation time (P=0.0011).

Exposure of cells to the same concentration of DOX in the presence of

10-wt% P-105 showed no significant DNA damage for up to 9 h of

incubation. However, when ultrasound was applied, a rapid and

significant increase in DNA damage was observed (P=0.0001). The

application of ultrasound causes the release of DOX from micelles or

causes the HL-60 cells to take up the micelle encapsulated DOX. Our

experiments indicated that the combination of DOX, ultrasound and

pluronic P105 causes the largest DNA damage to HL-60 cells. We believe

that this technique can be used for controlled drug delivery.

 

PMID: 10806310 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]