Skeptical Reporter @ 2013-09-20

Skeptical Reporter for September 20th, 2013 People who take antioxidant supplements don't live any longer than those who don't, and some antioxidants may even cut life short, a new review suggests. Danish researchers report that people who took three antioxidants — beta carotene, vitamin E and high doses of vitamin A — tended to have an increased risk of death. "This study confirms what we already know — that antioxidant supplements are not effective in saving lives or making people healthier," said Dr. Pieter Cohen, an expert on the safety of dietary supplements and an internal medicine specialist at Cambridge Health Alliance. The general idea behind taking antioxidant supplements is that they are thought to help rid the body of unstable, free radical molecules that can damage cells and lead to heart disease, cancer or other conditions. In the review, researchers compared the mortality rates of people who took at least one of five different antioxidant supplements — beta carotene, vitamins A, C and E, and the mineral selenium — with people who received a placebo, or took nothing at all. Nigeria’s This Day newspaper has published an article about a graduate university student who claims he’s “used science to prove that gay marriage is improper”. The newspaper reports that University of Lagos post graduate student Chibuihem Amalaha has made “many discoveries and inventions” in science and technology. Now, he’s turning his efforts to the issue of gay marriage. “In recent time I found that gay marriage, which is homosexuality and lesbianism, is eating deep into the fabric of our human nature all over the world and this was why nations of Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by God because they were into gay practice”, says Amalaha. He explains that “God gave me the wisdom to use science as a scientist to prove gay marriage wrong”. Amalaha says that his ‘groundbreaking’ experiments have shown that the north and south poles of two magnets are attracted to each other while same poles repel each other. He concludes that this “means that man cannot attract another man because they are the same, and a woman should not attract a woman because they are the same. That is how I used physics to prove gay marriage wrong”. His other high-school standard experiments include showing that negative ions are attracted to positive ones in the process of electrolysis. Despite massive evidence that homosexuality is all too common in nature, Amalaha further insists that biology also indicates that same-sex attraction is unnatural. Despite its purported cleansing properties, holy water could actually be more harmful than healing, according to a new Austrian study on "holy" springs. Researchers at the Institute of Hygiene and Applied Immunology at the Medical University of Vienna tested water from 21 springs in Austria and 18 fonts in Vienna and found samples contained up to 62 million bacteria per milliliter of water, none of it safe to drink. Tests indicated 86 percent of the holy water, commonly used in baptism ceremonies and to wet congregants' lips, was infected with common bacteria found in fecal matter such as E. coli, enterococci and Campylobacter, which can lead to diarrhea, cramping, abdominal pain, and fever. Nitrates, commonly found in fertilizer from farms, were also identified in the water. If ingested, water containing nitrates over the maximum contaminant level could cause serious illness, especially in infants younger than 6 months, which could lead to death if untreated. "We need to warn people against drinking from these sources," said Dr Alexander Kirschner, study researcher and microbiologist at the Medical University of Vienna. The study, published in the Journal of Water and Health, also found that all church and hospital chapel fonts contained bacteria -- the busier the church, the higher the bacterial count. Copper bracelets and magnet wrist straps have no real effect on pain, swelling,