There will be court challenges to Obamacare but I doubt if they will be entirely successful. I further find it unlikely that the GOP, if they achieve majority status again, will be able to repeal it. Perhaps a combination of the two but that may be the most unlikely scenario at all.
Prediction? In five years, the Republican party will be embracing Obamacare and will be running on a platform that boasts they are the best party to manage it efficiently.
Rick Moran, “NATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE REFORM DONE”, Right Wing Nuthouse, 2010-03-22
March 23, 2010
March 18, 2010
What if they could make smoking safer?
My bet would be that the anti-smoking campaigners would still be as stridently opposed to smokers and their habit even if there were no health risks:
Australian boffins have developed a treatment which allows mice to smoke cigarettes without the usual negative health consequences. The method could potentially allow gasper-loving humans to sidestep some of the self-destructive results of their habit.
The key to the business, according to lead cig-boffin Ross Vlahos, is Granulocyte macrophage-colony stimulating factor (GM-CSF), an agent released by the lungs when they are exposed to cigarette smoke. GM-CSF causes inflammatory leukocytes to activate in the lungs, which then leads to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and other complaints such as “oxidative stress, emphysema, small airway fibrosis, mucus hypersecretion and progressive airflow limitation”.
Vlahos and his team at Melbourne uni decided to tackle this by the use of a blocking agent known as “anti GM-CSF”. As called for by tradition, they got hold of a group of mice and dosed half of them with the miracle smoko-proofing drug, and left the others alone. Then all the mice were given “the equivalent of nine cigarettes of smoke each day for four days”.
At the end of the test every single mouse was dead. However, this was simply because the boffins had killed them in order to examine their lungs. According to the mouse autopsies, the ones treated with “anti GM-CSF” were in much better nick than the others.
Of course, “safer” is not “safe”. This research implies that human smokers could benefit from use of this drug or similar formulations, but it doesn’t address all the health risks of smoking (chances of developing cancer appear to be the same, for example).
A rational reader would assume that this new research would be welcomed, but my belief is that anti-smoking groups will condemn it for “encouraging smokers” and call for the research to be discontinued. After all, this is a moral rather than a scientific campaign for many activists.
Full disclosure: I’m not a smoker, and never have been. I’m not particularly fond of being in smoke-filled rooms, but I do think the crusade against smoking long ago passed the health advocacy point and became mostly moralizing (see this for example).
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March 11, 2010
Food follies: the pinNaCle of idiocy?
The food police are after your salt:
Some New York City chefs and restaurant owners are taking aim at a bill introduced in the New York Legislature that, if passed, would ban the use of salt in restaurant cooking.
“No owner or operator of a restaurant in this state shall use salt in any form in the preparation of any food for consumption by customers of such restaurant, including food prepared to be consumed on the premises of such restaurant or off of such premises,” the bill, A. 10129, states in part.
The legislation, which Assemblyman Felix Ortiz, D-Brooklyn, introduced on March 5, would fine restaurants $1,000 for each violation.
I can only assume that Rep. Ortiz has no tastebuds, as the diet he’s prescribing would be bland, bland, bland. There’s also little chance that it’ll be passed into law, but you can consider it a shot across the bows of the restaurant trade . . . or a ranging round for the next salvo.
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Colby Cosh tries to introduce physics into hockey debate
Aside from women’s hockey at the Olympics, I don’t follow the sport, so I’m happy to depend on the educated opinions of those who do. Colby Cosh points out that the debate over blows to the head in hockey should concentrate on a simple, clearly defined rule:
A memo to those who are concerned with (hitherto) legal checks to the head in the NHL: I sure hope you’re not just fighting physics. Because you’ll lose.
I see nothing wrong with the proposed new rule against blind-side hits to the head. I’d be willing to take it even further, and adopt an easy-to-apply strict-liability standard; if you hit somebody in a way that induces unconsciousness, or causes a concussion, you sit out the next n games. This would spare us from adopting hard-to-apply rules whose enforcement might ebb and crest, vary between personalities, and differ between leagues and regions. (It would occasionally lead, like all strict-liability rules, to unfair-seeming results and punishments for actions that didn’t look unjust or vicious aside from the outcome. But almost anything is better, at least to my mind, than a rule defined by excessively complex language, taught by means of intuitive references to a mass of individual cases, and left to evolve so that everybody thinks he knows the offence when he sees it.)
[. . .]
It’s sometimes observed, for example, that the players are bigger and the game faster than 20 or 30 years ago. But nobody ever sorts out the relative importance of these effects; a player whose mass is 5% bigger has 5% more kinetic energy in open ice, but if his velocity is increased 5%, the energy varies according to the square, and thus increases by more than 10%. If you watch early ’80s hockey, what immediately strikes you, once you get past the sheer horribleness of the goaltending, is the relative slowness of the game. There’s no one reason for this: plenty of things have changed just a little bit, from the quality of icemaking to skate technology to the way skaters are trained. And the change isn’t that extreme, or else Chris Chelios, who actually played early ’80s hockey in the early ’80s, would be unable to draw a paycheque in his weak-bladder years. Still, it’s a factor with exponential weight.
Chris Chelios is nearly as ancient as I am . . . it’s utterly amazing that he’s still able to play at a professional level.
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Researchers say that fat may actually be a flavour
This may provide some clues to obesity, as tests show that some people can detect fat at much lower concentrations . . . and therefore consume less:
It’s a theory set to confirm why humans are so fond of fatty foods such as chips and chocolate cake: in addition to the five tastes already identified lurks another detectable by the palate — fat.
“We know that the human tongue can detect five tastes — sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami (a savoury, protein-rich taste contained in foods such as soy sauce and chicken stock),” Russell Keast, from Deakin University, said Monday.
“Through our study we can conclude that humans have a sixth taste — fat.”
Researchers tested 30 people’s ability to taste a range of fatty acids in otherwise plain solutions and found that all were able to determine the taste — though some required higher concentrations than others.
[. . .]
The results, published in the British Journal of Nutrition, have not definitively classified fat as a taste but Keast says the evidence is strong and mounting.
For something to be classified as a taste there needed to be proven receptor mechanisms on taste cells in the mouth, he said.
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March 4, 2010
Teenagers: Mom was right about your need for a good night’s sleep
I know, you stopped listening to your parents around age 12, but every now and again, they do have useful advice for you:
Only 5% of high school seniors get eight hours of sleep a night. Children get an hour less than they did 30 years ago, which subtracts IQ points and adds body weight.
Until age 21, the circuitry of a child’s brain is being completed. Bronson and Merryman report research on grade schoolers showing that “the performance gap caused by an hour’s difference in sleep was bigger than the gap between a normal fourth-grader and a normal sixth-grader.” In high school there is a steep decline in sleep hours, and a striking correlation of sleep and grades.
Tired children have trouble retaining learning “because neurons lose their plasticity, becoming incapable of forming the new synaptic connections necessary to encode a memory. … The more you learned during the day, the more you need to sleep that night.”
The school day starts too early because that is convenient for parents and teachers. Awakened at dawn, teenage brains are still releasing melatonin, which makes them sleepy. This is one reason why young adults are responsible for half the 100,000 annual “fall asleep” automobile crashes. When Edina, Minn., changed its high school start from 7:25 a.m. to 8:30 a.m., math/verbal SAT scores rose substantially.
Furthermore, sleep loss increases the hormone that stimulates hunger and decreases the one that suppresses appetite. Hence the correlation between less sleep and more obesity.
So, even though the temptation is to stay up as late as you possibly can . . . don’t. You’ll actually notice the difference the next day.
February 23, 2010
February 9, 2010
This week’s silly health panic: third-hand smoke.
Don’t worry, anti-smoking campaigners! Even though the evil smoking empire is in retreat, and smokers get worse press than child molesters and people who talk at the theatre, there’s a new moral front opening up: third-hand smoke! The war isn’t over yet:
Lingering residue from tobacco smoke which clings to upholstery, clothing and the skin releases cancer-causing agents, work in PNAS journal shows.
Berkeley scientists in the US ran lab tests and found “substantial levels” of toxins on smoke-exposed material.
They say while banishing smokers to outdoors cuts second-hand smoke, residues will follow them back inside and this “third-hand smoke” may harm.
Efforts are currently underway to determine if there’s a strong media response to this “new threat”. If so, funding will be sought to research the possibility of “fourth-hand smoke” and possibly even “fifth-hand smoke”.
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February 3, 2010
February 2, 2010
The Lancet formally retracts controversial paper on Autism
In a long-overdue move, British medical journal The Lancet has retracted a paper by Andrew Wakefield on links between the MMR vaccine and Autism:
The Lancet medical journal formally retracted a paper on Tuesday that caused a 12-year international battle over links between the three-in-one childhood MMR vaccine and autism.
The paper, published in 1998 and written by British doctor Andrew Wakefield, suggested the combined measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) shot might be linked to autism and bowel disease.
His assertion, since widely discredited, caused one of the biggest medical rows in a generation and led to a steep drop in the number of vaccinations in the United States, Britain and other parts of Europe, prompting a rise in cases of measles.
The knock-on effect of parents avoiding getting their children vaccinated creates opportunities for much more serious outbreaks of these diseases. Dr. Wakefield’s “research” has been harmful to the population at large for helping to create and exacerbate parents’ fears for their children, and in encouraging them to take the greater risk of not getting the MMR (and, in many cases, other vaccinations) for their kids.
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February 1, 2010
Cookie Monster after visiting Room 101
L. Neil Smith looks at the sad remains of a once-great Muppet:
My only child turned twenty years of age early last month, so it has been some time since I kept daily track with her of the various comings and goings of the diverse and colorful inhabitants of Sesame Street.
Thus it was with considerable dismay that I recently learned that my favorite of these denizens had been abducted, tortured, brainwashed by the vile forces of political correctness, and returned to society a broken, pitiable shadow of his former self, rather like Winston Smith in 1984, after rats had been used to force him to scream “Do it to Julia!”
A product of merciless North Korean-style mind-conditioning, the great blue googly-eyed Cookie Monster now mouths mindless, robotic platitudes and slogans like “cookies are a sometimes snack”. He even eats broccoli — the Green Death — in public, like a circus geek consuming broken lightbulbs and handsful of worms. Gone is the joyous hedonist we knew who was a living exemplar of Robert Heinlein’s famous dicta, “Dum vivamus, vivamus!” and “Anything worth doing is worth overdoing!”
He has become just another “progressive” icon, different-looking on the outside, yes, but filled up on the inside with the same bland, gray, unappetizing pablum as Smokey the Bear, Bono, and Janeane Garofalo.
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January 29, 2010
This is more than a slight confusion of terminology
Jon (my former virtual landlord) sent along a link to this FoxNews story indicating that there is a long road ahead — sociologically speaking — for Afghanistan:
An unclassified study from a military research unit in southern Afghanistan details how homosexual behavior is unusually common among men in the large ethnic group known as Pashtuns — though they seem to be in complete denial about it.
The study, obtained by Fox News, found that Pashtun men commonly have sex with other men, admire other men physically, have sexual relationships with boys and shun women both socially and sexually — yet they completely reject the label of “homosexual.” The research was conducted as part of a longstanding effort to better understand Afghan culture and improve Western interaction with the local people.
The research unit, which was attached to a Marine battalion in southern Afghanistan, acknowledged that the behavior of some Afghan men has left Western forces “frequently confused.”
The report details the bizarre interactions a U.S. Army medic and her colleagues had with Afghan men in the southern province of Kandahar.
[. . .]
Apparently, according to the report, Pashtun men interpret the Islamic prohibition on homosexuality to mean they cannot “love” another man — but that doesn’t mean they can’t use men for “sexual gratification.”
Trying to use a western term, which almost certainly has highly negative connotations to Afghans who may have encountered it, isn’t likely to be helpful in dealing with the Pashtuns. Labelling is the least of the concerns, I’d think.
The U.S. army medic also told members of the research unit that she and her colleagues had to explain to a local man how to get his wife pregnant.
The report said: “When it was explained to him what was necessary, he reacted with disgust and asked, ‘How could one feel desire to be with a woman, who God has made unclean, when one could be with a man, who is clean? Surely this must be wrong.'”
January 26, 2010
CF improve medical evacuation by adding medical technicians to crews
Strategy Page reports on a change in crew composition for Canadian Forces medical evacuation helicopters:
Canadian forces have added a medical technician to the crews of their medical evacuation helicopters, joining a trend that has played a part in saving the lives of many troops wounded in combat, or injured in a combat zone. Previously, Canadian troops had relied on American, or other NATO, air evacuation services. But now Canada has suitable helicopters (CH-146s) for that work, and established an air ambulance service. Following a four year old recommendation by their own military planners, Canada trained medical technicians to work on the medevac choppers, and thus increase the chances that badly wounded soldiers would survive. Canada has also upgraded all of its combat medical care during its years of operations in Afghanistan. This is part of a trend that has been going on since World War II. It’s all about having more medical care available sooner.
The fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan has brought about a major change in how the United States deals with combat casualties. The result is that over 90 percent of the troops wounded, survive their wounds. That’s the highest rate in history. There are several reasons for this. The main one is that medics, and the troops themselves, are being trained to deliver more complex, and effective first aid more quickly. Military doctors now talk of the “platinum 10 minutes,” meaning that if you can keep the wounded soldier, especially the ones who are hurt real bad, alive for ten minutes, their chances of survival go way up. Medics have been equipped and trained to perform procedures previously done only by physicians, while troops are trained to do some procedures previously handled only by medics.
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January 13, 2010
From scaling to NSFW images in a few short steps
I mentioned to Jon, my former virtual landlord, that I’d been to the dentist this morning for a scaling. Somehow this went straight to the hidden blogging streak he’s been concealing for the last few years:
Every three months? Wow — that’s aggressive. You’re showing that plaque who’s boss, I guess.
[We] picked up a set of powered toothbrushes — I think they might be the Arm and Hammer brand — and we’ve been using them for several months now. I think the powered brush has made a noticeable difference in icky build-up and in the time it takes the dental assistant to pry said ick from my stumps.
Previously, the inside surface of the lower stumps would become noticeably grainy as the dental appointment approached, and that’s the area in which the most scaling work is usually done. You can really hear it when the ultrasonic pointy-ouch machine digs in to the ick — the pitch of the tool changes from that of stepped-on marmot to roto-tilled kitten.
The brush seems to be able to reduce all that — I don’t notice an accumulation of crud on the bottom teef, and the scaling at the last appointment went very quickly. Which was a bit of a disappointment, really, as it reduced my face time with the dental assistant’s lovely bosom. Oh, yes — there is a trade-off for everything. A normal scaling may mean having to hold your mouth open uncomfortably wide whilst a machine making a sound like a flayed kitten dipped in hot oil digs around your gums, spewing forth a geyser of spit and blood and pus and plaque and tissue and soul which spatters all over your shirt and pants and shoes and the wall opposite whilst your fingernails splinter as you shred the arms of the chair with a grip that would turn coal to cubic zirconia, but all is forgotten as the young dental assistant nestles your head in her firm yet alluringly soft and ever-so-subtly yielding breasts. You know what? I can feel the plaque hardening on my teeth even now, just thinking about my next cleaning.
I think I blew it last time, though, when she paused in the ultrasonic inquisition to ask if I was OK. “Oh god, yes”, I replied. “More! More!”
But there was to be no more. We were done.
