Archive for the 'Health' Category

Obama is doing more to combat smoking than any of his predecessors

From Politics Daily:

Clove cigarettes are officially history. So are “light” cigarettes and your favorite Marlboro billboard next to KinderCare. Monday in the Rose Garden, President Obama signed the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, a bill that gives the Food and Drug Administration the responsibility to regulate tobacco products.

Here’s some features of the new law:

* FDA regulations will supersede weaker state laws, a major expansion of federal power;
* The bill bans the words “light” or “mild” in tobacco advertising, as well as any words that give the impression that one cigarette is less dangerous than another;
* It bans flavored tobacco products, like clove or cappuccino cigarettes (yes, they exist);
* It requires companies to submit a complete list of ingredients in the tobacco, paper, filter and other components, and allows the FDA to require the removal of any additive it says is dangerous;
* It requires this list of ingredients to be placed on all labels, which will itemize chemicals added to tobacco products;
* It restricts tobacco marketing to children, such as tobacco billboards near schools.
* It applies to all tobacco products, not just cigarettes, and it passes all of the additional costs of new regulations back to the tobacco companies.

I think that Obama was actually helped by the hysterical reaction to this proposal, which seemed to drive many Republicans absolutely crazy:

By the way, it is the nicotine that kills. Smoking makes it worse, but nicotine itself is quite deadly.

Huffpo’s newest health reporter?

Simon Owens takes the Huffington Post to task for giving a homeopathic “healer” a byline that indicates that she’s a doctor:

Peter Lipson is an internist and a blogger for ScienceBlogs, run by Seed Media Group, and has been writing a series of critical pieces attempting to debunk the claims in many of the Huffington Post’s articles. He isn’t the only one; several of the other science bloggers under the same domain have been piling on as well, and recently two of them have gone after the credibility of “Dr.” Patricia Fitzgerald, a ” licensed acupuncturist, certified clinical nutritionist, and a homeopath,” who has received a “Master’s Degree in Traditional Chinese Medicine and a Doctorate in Homeopathic Medicine.”

The Huffington Post isn’t alone in misrepresenting the qualifications of health care professionals. I think that misrepresentation in the health care community has become endemic, and I outlined why I think it’s wrong and dangerous over at Owens’ site:

Read the rest of this entry »

When she’s not showing off her rack, Jenny McCarthy is out telling parents not to vaccinate their kids

From Reuters:

Researchers have found the first common genetic link to autism and said on Tuesday it could potentially account for 15 percent of the disease’s cases.

Three studies, two in the journal Nature and one in Molecular Psychiatry, suggest changes in brain connections could underlie some cases.

While the findings do not immediately offer hope for a treatment, they do help explain the underlying causes of the condition, which affects as many as one in 150 children, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

This is yet another blow to those who say that vaccines cause autism, a claim that was already thoroughly debunked. So, will the panic mongers and pseudoscientists now step aside and let doctors save children through vaccination? Not likely.

***

More info on the lack of a link between vaccinations and autism here. Also, remember that washing your hands before meals, after going to the bathroom, and when entering your home is the best way to prevent flu.

I think part of the problem is that Bush doesn’t understand what women’s health care is all about

From the Washington Post:

The Bush administration today issued a sweeping new regulation that protects a broad range of health-care workers — from doctors to janitors — who refuse to participate in providing services that they believe violate their personal, moral or religious beliefs.

The controversial rule empowers federal health officials to cut off federal funding for any state or local government, hospital, clinic, health plan, doctor’s office or other entity if it does not accommodate employees who exercise their “right of conscience.” It would apply to more than 584,000 health-care facilities.

Women’s health advocates, family planning proponents, abortion rights activists, members of Congress and others condemned the regulation, saying it would create major obstacles to a variety of health services, including abortion, family planning, end-of-life care and possibly a wide range of scientific research.

It’s not hard to see who this regulation is aimed at. There are a couple of dozen terminally ill patients in Oregon who are prescribed lethal doses of medication every year under the state’s Death With Dignity Act, and this regulation might make it slightly harder for these patients to undergo assisted suicide. But the real targets are the millions of women who will be denied abortions and birth control.

Already, women find it very difficult to obtain abortions and birth control, especially the “morning after pill”, in many areas of the US. In South Dakota, for example, there are only two doctors who perform abortions, and there are no providers in Rapid City (metro population 250,000, 350 miles from Sioux Falls). This regulation will make it impossible for many women to get an abortion, or to get the morning after pill in a timely fashion. The effect will be most acute in rural areas, where women may also find it difficult to get birth control pills.

Technically, the Bush administration’s new regulation doesn’t discriminate against women by denying them access to health care, because there might be some doctor out there who decides that it’s wrong to treat colon cancer because he objects to eating red meat on moral grounds, but in the real world virtually everyone denied care because of this regulation will be a woman.

Note that the “right of conscience” will only be available to workers in the field of health care. The Bush administration continues to pursue charges against Ehren Watada, who objected on moral grounds to participate in Bush’s war of aggression in Iraq. And for the past three years, the administration has hounded Thomas Tamm, who told the American people that their government was illegally spying on them.

Watada and Tamm are not given the “right of conscience”, probably because they aren’t trying to deny reproductive rights to women.

(cross posted at This Old Brit)

*

Be back soon.

Fed up of forever feeling full of flatulence?

Sick of so many assorted sodding stinks, smells and stenches?

Then don’t be.

From now on we should all just relax and feel free to let it rip, where ever and whenever we want to.

Today, for the first time, we found out how having a few farts a day can help keep the doctor away.

And that’s official.

Really!

Read all about it.

So remember, dear readers, from now on you need never be afraid to …

(Cross posted from How This Old Brit Sees It)

*

Did you know too?

(Cross posted from How This Old Brit Sees It)

Robert Kennedy Jr: Lawyer, Broadcaster, Anti-Vaccine Crusader, Idiot

There’s a small but vocal element to the far left that hates technology in all of its forms. I’ve been told not to cook in a microwave oven, because it would infuse my food with “negative energy”. I’ve been told by people who do use microwave ovens that food irradiation creates carcinogens and robs meat and vegetables of their nutrients. I’ve been told by people who use tanning beds that radiation from cell phones will cause brain cancer. But perhaps the most pernicious fantasy of the Paranoiac Left concerns vaccination.

Since around 1999, members of the Paranoiac Left warned parents not to immunize their children, since many vaccines contained a preservative called thimerosal (also known as thiomersol). Thimerosal contains ethyl mercury, and parents were told that ethyl mercury accumulated in the body and sometimes caused autism.

Medical researchers quickly debunked the theory that ethyl mercury causes autism (unlike methyl mercury, ethyl mercury is quickly expelled from the body), only to be accused of sacrificing the health of our nation’s children in exchange for big payoffs from the pharmaceutical industry. That’s right: the same Paranoiac Left that accuses pharmaceutical industry of deliberately not curing disease (healthy patients buy no drugs) also accuses the industry of being too aggressive in the prevention of disease.

Read the rest of this entry »

Just a few short days ago we said elsewhere (on an American forum), that most Americans were either completely unaware, or in a state of total denial, of the fact that they’re around 30/40 years behind as far as the ‘civilisation stakes’ is concerned.

Today we read this.

US slips down development index

Americans live shorter lives than citizens of almost every other developed nation, according to a report from several US charities.

The report found that the US ranked 42nd in the world for life expectancy despite spending more on health care per person than any other country.

Read the rest of this (alarmingly), revealing report.

And still, there are soooo many self deluded dudes (and dames), determined to dispute this sort of (self evident), stuff.

So, we strongly suggest that all such stupid sobs should simply sod off from this place, and take any/all their arguments to their very own ‘American Human Development Project’.

OK?

(Cross posted from How This Old Brit Sees It)

From Science Daily:

Most kids’ foods provide poor nutritional quality, but packaging claims and healthy images could be misleading parents, according to a Canadian study. Professor Charlene Elliott used US guidelines to review 367 products. 70 percent of the products had higher than recommended sugar levels, 23 percent had high fat levels and 17 percent had high salt levels.

Nine out of ten regular food items aimed specifically at children have a poor nutritional content — because of high levels of sugar, fat or sodium - according to a detailed study of 367 products published in the July issue of the UK-based journal Obesity Reviews.

Just under 70 per cent of the products studied - which specifically excluded confectionery, soft drinks and bakery items - derived a high proportion of calories from sugar. Approximately one in five (23 per cent) had high fat levels and 17 per cent had high sodium levels. Despite this, 62 per cent of the foods with poor nutritional quality (PNQ) made positive claims about their nutritional value on the front of the packet.

So if you count the sodas, candies, and twinkies that are marketed to children, the fraction of kids’ foods that provide poor nutrition probably rises to well above 95%. Is it any wonder that our kids are becoming obese, which causes them to have health problems in the future?

This isn’t really new information. We’ve known that our kids are getting fatter, and that the additives in their food are exasperating problems like Attention Deficit Disorder. And our response has been to subsidize junk food and to give professional marketers greater access to our kids. We pay agribusiness giants like ADM and Con-Agra billions to the corn that sweetens soda, that fattens pigs and cattle, and that makes up the lion’s share of “chicken” mcnuggets. We put TVs in our kids’ bedrooms and even classrooms, and we let fast food companies advertise in school buses and on school book covers. And we let soda companies and fast food restaurants sell their wares inside our schools. And taxpayers underwrite all of this, as we allow the people who are poisoning our kids to deduct the cost of advertising from their taxes.

Maybe it’s time to start protecting our kids with a little common-sense regulation.

(cross posted at This Old Brit)