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http://www.lomborg.com/dyn/files/basic_items/118-file/BL%20reply%20to%20Howard%20Friel.pdf

"Without reading both books, I can't take sides on the merits. But I will say some of the stuff in TFA sets off my alarms--like spending a footnote on a WHO report just to cite the population of Europe."

When doing math, statistical sources matter. But here we have something substantial to discuss. Is Lomborg dishonest in this case? Read along for the answer!

Friel: "But Lomborg's only source for these figures—a chart in the statistical annex of a 2004 World Health Organization report—contains
no data on human mortality due to excess heat or cold. In fact, the words "excess heat" and "excess cold" make no appearance in the WHO document; neither does the word "heat," and the word "cold" appears only once in a reference unrelated to death due to excess cold.

Lomborg's reference to the WHO document, which allegedly supports his claim that two hundred thousand people die each year in Europe from excess heat, reads in its entirety: "207,000, based on a simple average of the available cold and heat deaths per million, cautiously excluding London and using WHO’s estimate for Europe’s population of 878 million (WHO, 2004a:121).”

However, page 121 of the 2004 WHO report—The World Health Report 2004: Changing History— which is what this source references, lists no data on cold- and heatrelated deaths per million, or for cold- and heat-related deaths in any context.

  Likewise, Lomborg's very next reference-to support his claim that 1.5 million Europeans die annually from excess cold - reads in its entirety: "1.48 million, estimated in the same way as total heat deaths."

Thus, Lomborg's references indicate that page 121 of the 2004 WHO report is the source of his estimates of annual heat- and cold-related deaths in Europe; however, this page in the WHO report lists no statistics for either cold- or heat-related deaths. Consequently, there is no apparent basis here or elsewhere in Cool It for Lomborg's claim that 1.5 million Europeans die annually from excess cold. [LD, p. 86, emphasis added]

Lomborg: "In fact, the text and first endnote in this section make it very clear where the figures are sourced from: “Based on the summary of the biggest European heat and cold study (Keatinge, et al., 2000, p. 672).” (p. 170).

In the UK edition of the book, there is even a figure with the numbers, with the further explanation: “estimated in the text, using Keatinge et al., 2000:672.” (p. 233, CIUK) Friel’s claim that I relied on a WHO document that does not support my case is astonishing and profoundly disingenuous.

I clearly used the WHO report solely to provide an estimate of Europe’s population (because WHO uses the standard geographical definition of Europe to the Ural Mountains).This is evident in the text that Friel himself quoted: “and using WHO’s estimate for Europe’s population of 878 million (WHO, 2004a:121).”

Finding this study on Google Scholar took me all of two seconds using the reference provided by Lomborg (in his book).

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/321/7262/670

The quote is confirmed by Google Books:

http://books.google.se/books?q=estimated+in+the+text,+using+Keatinge+et+al.,+2000:672&btnG=S%C3%B6k+i+b%C3%B6cker

In short, from this example, picked by you - not me, it plainly evident that is Friels honesty or literacy that should be in question, not Lomborgs. This is likely to be representative of the "debunking" in its entirety, going from what I have read of the rebuttal so far.

http://www.lomborg.com/dyn/files/basic_items/118-file/BL%20reply%20to%20Howard%20Friel.pdf

"Without reading both books, I can't take sides on the merits. But I will say some of the stuff in TFA sets off my alarms--like spending a footnote on a WHO report just to cite the population of Europe."

When doing math, statistical sources matter. But here we have something substantial to discuss. Is Lomborg dishonest in this case? Read along for the answer!

Friel: "But Lomborg's only source for these figures—a chart in the statistical annex of a 2004 World Health Organization report—contains
no data on human mortality due to excess heat or cold. In fact, the words "excess heat" and "excess cold" make no appearance in the WHO document; neither does the word "heat," and the word "cold" appears only once in a reference unrelated to death due to excess cold.

Lomborg's reference to the WHO document, which allegedly supports his claim that two hundred thousand people die each year in Europe from excess heat, reads in its entirety: "207,000, based on a simple average of the available cold and heat deaths per million, cautiously excluding London and using WHO’s estimate for Europe’s population of 878 million (WHO, 2004a:121).”

However, page 121 of the 2004 WHO report—The World Health Report 2004: Changing History— which is what this source references, lists no data on cold- and heatrelated deaths per million, or for cold- and heat-related deaths in any context.

  Likewise, Lomborg's very next reference-to support his claim that 1.5 million Europeans die annually from excess cold - reads in its entirety: "1.48 million, estimated in the same way as total heat deaths."

Thus, Lomborg's references indicate that page 121 of the 2004 WHO report is the source of his estimates of annual heat- and cold-related deaths in Europe; however, this page in the WHO report lists no statistics for either cold- or heat-related deaths. Consequently, there is no apparent basis here or elsewhere in Cool It for Lomborg's claim that 1.5 million Europeans die annually from excess cold. [LD, p. 86, emphasis added]

Lomborg: "In fact, the text and first endnote in this section make it very clear where the figures are sourced from: “Based on the summary of the biggest European heat and cold study (Keatinge, et al., 2000, p. 672).” (p. 170).

In the UK edition of the book, there is even a figure with the numbers, with the further explanation: “estimated in the text, using Keatinge et al., 2000:672.” (p. 233, CIUK) Friel’s claim that I relied on a WHO document that does not support my case is astonishing and profoundly disingenuous.

I clearly used the WHO report solely to provide an estimate of Europe’s population (because WHO uses the standard geographical definition of Europe to the Ural Mountains).This is evident in the text that Friel himself quoted: “and using WHO’s estimate for Europe’s population of 878 million (WHO, 2004a:121).”

Finding this study on Google Scholar took me all of two seconds using the reference provided by Lomborg (in his book).

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/321/7262/670

The quote is confirmed by Google Books:

http://books.google.se/books?q=estimated+in+the+text,+using+Keatinge+et+al.,+2000:672&btnG=S%C3%B6k+i+b%C3%B6cker

In short, from this example, picked by you - not me, it plainly evident that is Friels honesty or literacy that should be in question, not Lomborgs. This is likely to be representative of the "debunking" in its entirety, going from what I have read of the rebuttal so far.

Risk factors include skin pigmentation, use of sunscreen or concealing clothing, being elderly or institutionalised, obesity, malabsorption, renal and liver disease, and anticonvulsant use

Here's two that show what St. John's Wort is about. First, not effective for major depression, but significantly better than placebo for mild depression. Comparisons seem harder to find, I can't access the ones I find on Google scholar.

I was so sensitive that, if someone else were turning the Wifi on and off, I could be in a different room in the house and still tell when it was on.

That's rather hard to believe. Three different studies found people unable to make the distinction (see below).

I do believe Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity exists, though, in the sense that the complaints are real.

[1] Regel, Sabine; Sonja Negovetic, Martin Roosli, Veronica Berdinas, Jurgen Schuderer, Anke Huss, Urs Lott, Niels Kuster, and Peter Achermann (August 2006). UMTS base station-like exposure, well-being, and cognitive performance. Environ Health Perspect 114 (8): 1270–5. PMID 16882538. PMC 1552030.
[2] Rubin, James; G Hahn, BS Everitt, AJ Clear, Simon Wessely (2006). Within-participants, double-blind, randomised provocation study. British Medical Journal 332: 886–889. doi:10.1136/bmj.38765.519850.55
[3] Wilen, J; A Johansson, N Kalezic, E Lyskov, M Sandstrom (April 2006). "Psychophysiological tests and provocation of subjects with mobile phone related symptoms". Bioelectromagnetics 27 (3): 204–14. doi:10.1002/bem.20195. PMID 16304699

Or possibly, it's because the scientific evidence shows that reducing the screening age doesn't make much difference in reducing cancer rates, and the number of false positives at younger ages means that more people would have to go through lots of unnecessary stress and months of tests and unnecessary, potentially harmful treatments. It doesn't have anything to do with money.

Not necessarily.. Particularly with wimpy stuff like over-the-counter painkillers, the expectation effects that people experience in response to brand names may well make a significant difference, even though the chemistry is identical.

Someday, some geek will try to overclock his artificial heart...

      Heck people overclock their normal hearts today anyway. It's called cocaine...

      I've actually seen someone with a cocaine induced long QT syndrome. A hairy day in the ER that was, considering he was psychotic at the time... it took quite a few of us to hold him still enough to get the IV going.

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/322/7294/1095

The median menarcheal age was 12 years 11 months (95% confidence interval 12 years 10 months to 13 years 1 month). The percentages of girls who reported having had their first period by their 10th, 11th, or 12th birthdays were 0.8, 3.6 and 21.7, respectively; 11.8% had their first period before leaving primary school.

These are uk figures for girls born between 1982 and 86 from the british medical journal as you can see its much younger than you think.

The UK age of consent is 16 as is the age of marriage drinking and smoking are both 18.
   

Surely a study like this is not funded by the organic food industry?

Do you think that junk food, including candy, can't be produced organically? Come into my kitchen...

"Organic" refers to how it's grown and produced, not how nutritious is is (other than that it is more likely to lack "negatively nutritious" contamination by pesticides, herbicides, GMOs, etcetera).

Anyway, there's nothing new about associating crime with poor nutrition (the article is a bit pop science sensationalistic but is a good summary, see here and here and here for some of the studies):

Stephen Schoenthaler, a criminal-justice professor at California State University in Stanislaus, has been researching the relationship between food and behaviour for more than 20 years He has proven that reducing the sugar and fat intake in our daily diets leads to higher IQs and better grades in school. When Schoenthaler supervised a change in meals served at 803 schools in low-income neighbourhoods in New York City, the number of students passing final exams rose from 11 percent below the national average to five percent above. He is best known for his work in youth detention centers. One of his studies showed that the number of violations of house rules fell by 37 percent when vending machines were removed and canned food in the cafeteria was replaced by fresh alternatives. He summarizes his findings this way: "Having a bad diet right now is a better predictor of future violence than past violent behaviour."

Recent research showed similar conclusions. Bernard Gesch, physiologist at the University of Oxford, decided to test the anecdotal clues in the most thorough study so far in this field. In a prison for men between the ages of 18 and 21 in England's Buckinghamshire, 231 volunteers were divided into two groups: One was given nutrition supplements along with their meals that contained our approximate daily needs for vitamins, minerals and fatty acids; the other group got placebos. Neither the prisoners, nor the guards, nor the researchers at the prison knew who took fake supplements and who got the real thing.

The researchers then tallied the number of times the participants violated prison rules, and compared it to the same data that had been collected in the months leading up to the nutrition study. The prisoners given supplements for four consecutive months committed an average of 26 percent fewer violations compared to the preceding period. Those given placebos showed no marked change in behaviour. For serious breaches of conduct, particularly the use of violence, the number of violations decreased 37 percent for the men given nutrition supplements, while the placebo group showed no change.

I strongly support government intervention to discourage any harmful product or behavior as long as such intervention is supported by appropriate evidence and as long as the risk/benefit ratio of what the government is trying to discourage is sufficiently high.

The increasing severity of the obesity epidemic over recent decades is alarming as demonstrated by the Center for Disease Control's map of obesity prevalence in the United States from 1985-2008. A government intervention to stop this epidemic is warranted, but that intervention must be backed by evidence.

The authors of the New England Journal of Medicine article cite the evidence demonstrating a correlation between the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages and obesity. They then cite the results of the four long-term randomized controlled trials that studied the effect of discouraging these beverages on weight gain in school children. A one-year United Kingdom study did not show a significant change in body mass index although a decrease in the overweight rate was statistically significant. The authors failed to mention, however, that a follow-up of these subjects two years after completion of the study showed that this difference in the overweight rate was not sustained. It would seem that this dietary intervention had no more than a transient effect without impacting the long-term propensity of these children to become obese.

The other three long-term studies cited by the authors all failed to meet their primary endpoints. Instead the authors rely on the results of sub-group analysis of these studies to conclude that there is a benefit to discouraging these beverages. The conclusions of the sub-group analysis between these studies don't even match up as one study suggested that only the more overweight kids would benefit, another study suggested that only the more overweight girls would benefit, and the last study suggested only a benefit of increased lean body tissue. These mismatched results of subgroup analysis are only useful as a basis for designing future clinical studies.

So which dietary interventions work? Well, all of them... and none of them. Clinical studies have show a wide variety of diets to be effective (e.g. low fat diets, low carbohydrate diets, etc.) but the most a population of highly motivated obese people can expect to keep off in the long term with any diet is about 5% of their body weight (although there is a lot of individual variability). No diet has been shown to effect the long term propensity to be obese - i.e. you must keep on the diet forever. I think that discouraging sugar-sweetened beverages probably will have some effect, but it is unlikely to be superior to any other intervention. Even if restricting sugar-sweetened beverages does cause weight loss we cannot assume that combining it with another dietary intervention such as a low-fat diet will result in an additive benefit.

Body weight is exquisitely regulated and "will power" can only be used to vary ones weight within a very narrow range. We need to admit to ourselves that we do not understand the etiology of the current obesity epidemic and we should not be distracted by trying to fix it via unproven interventions like restricting beverages. Maybe then we can focus more on basic science to find the true etiology.

I strongly support government intervention to discourage any harmful product or behavior as long as such intervention is supported by appropriate evidence and as long as the risk/benefit ratio of what the government is trying to discourage is sufficiently high.

The increasing severity of the obesity epidemic over recent decades is alarming as demonstrated by the Center for Disease Control's map of obesity prevalence in the United States from 1985-2008. A government intervention to stop this epidemic is warranted, but that intervention must be backed by evidence.

The authors of the New England Journal of Medicine article cite the evidence demonstrating a correlation between the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages and obesity. They then cite the results of the four long-term randomized controlled trials that studied the effect of discouraging these beverages on weight gain in school children. A one-year United Kingdom study did not show a significant change in body mass index although a decrease in the overweight rate was statistically significant. The authors failed to mention, however, that a follow-up of these subjects two years after completion of the study showed that this difference in the overweight rate was not sustained. It would seem that this dietary intervention had no more than a transient effect without impacting the long-term propensity of these children to become obese.

The other three long-term studies cited by the authors all failed to meet their primary endpoints. Instead the authors rely on the results of sub-group analysis of these studies to conclude that there is a benefit to discouraging these beverages. The conclusions of the sub-group analysis between these studies don't even match up as one study suggested that only the more overweight kids would benefit, another study suggested that only the more overweight girls would benefit, and the last study suggested only a benefit of increased lean body tissue. These mismatched results of subgroup analysis are only useful as a basis for designing future clinical studies.

So which dietary interventions work? Well, all of them... and none of them. Clinical studies have show a wide variety of diets to be effective (e.g. low fat diets, low carbohydrate diets, etc.) but the most a population of highly motivated obese people can expect to keep off in the long term with any diet is about 5% of their body weight (although there is a lot of individual variability). No diet has been shown to effect the long term propensity to be obese - i.e. you must keep on the diet forever. I think that discouraging sugar-sweetened beverages probably will have some effect, but it is unlikely to be superior to any other intervention. Even if restricting sugar-sweetened beverages does cause weight loss we cannot assume that combining it with another dietary intervention such as a low-fat diet will result in an additive benefit.

Body weight is exquisitely regulated and "will power" can only be used to vary ones weight within a very narrow range. We need to admit to ourselves that we do not understand the etiology of the current obesity epidemic and we should not be distracted by trying to fix it via unproven interventions like restricting beverages. Maybe then we can focus more on basic science to find the true etiology.

Don't laugh, college boy...

is who is going to enforce that right?
It's a proposal in french parliament, so we could guess.

As with ANY laws, that's the case. But that doesn't answer the question. In the end, it probably doesn't matter since the warnings are going to be on everything. The only exception might be if the power to enforce is left with someone who has no intention on ever enforcing it.

The obligatory warnings and disclaimers are printed across all kinds of products like cigarettes and electrical appliances in the US, why should ads be exempt?

Well, it depends on what you mean by "obligatory warnings and disclaimers." Many are not enforced by the law. Most are CYA warnings in hopes of providing evidence that the manufacturer told consumers that they should not put their cellphones into the microwave in a products liability case. Though, others are mandated by law: cigarette warnings.

As to the latter, there is some evidence to support the efficacy of warning labels where there is a serious gap in knowledge about the risks of the product to which it applies. But this proposal seems to require a generic warning be applied across huge swaths of products and advertising. But, in any case, I assumed that the warning would be efficacious for its purpose. The concern was more that it would become meaningless anyway because it would merely be applied everywhere just like the "this ad is paid for" statements in political campaigns.

His criticism is valid. Despite researchers' methodological rigour, social network analysis can identify causation that just doesn't exist. One study, using the same design that had previously identified obesity as being contagious or caused by an individual's social network, found that height, headaches and acne were similarly contagious. Height could be a good predictor of friends' height but your height won't be changed by your friends' heights. Granted, I haven't read the article and I'm not qualified to know whether the authors used the appropriate controls in the right ways, but it bears mentioning that even an ostensibly solid design can produce misleading results when trying to establish causation.

Reuters says it is the first American but Yahoo! changed it to a World first.

http://blogs.bmj.com/case-reports/2009/08/11/first-internet-connected-pacemaker/

One of the less known bad effects of nicotine is destruction of cartilage. This can show up as lower back pain or knee pain.

Not quite. In addition to several STDs, neonatal circumcision significantly lowers the (already low) risk of penile cancer and (the somewhat more common) balanitis. Then there are many recent studies indicating that it's protective against HIV, Chancroid and Syphilis, Herpes, and HPV (although I should point out that the previous two studies overlap and arrive at somewhat different conclusions, as the protective effect against Herpes was only borderline significant in the first).

And not only does it protect the male, but it reduces the risk of male-to-female transmission too.

Granted, there are other studies that arrive at opposite conclusions, though I haven't seen any on HIV in particular in quite some time. But it would be grossly inaccurate to claim that this link has been "long since disproven". At best, the jury is still out.

Look, the study also says that this has applications against lung cancer as well. This is good, because, even if you quit smoking, you don't actually reduce your chances of getting lung cancer.

That's not true.

While it is true that previous smokers will always have (if only slightly) a higher lung cancer risk than non-smokers, the relationship is dose-dependent based upon the additive amount of tobacco exposure over time. So, those who quit smoking (particularly those who quit smoking earlier), are less likely to get lung cancer. In fact, one major study found that those who quit smoking before the age of 30 had a lung cancer risk close to the non-smoker group. Those who quit smoking before the age of 50 had about half the risk of those who didn't.

-Grym

Not all checks are based on breath/air analysis. Saliva based checks are available that screen for drugs, such as this: http://www.angelscope.co.uk/oral_drug_tests.htm

If pot were to be legalized, the technology would develop quickly as the $$ would flow into the market to increase tests (eye/pupil dilation tests, saliva, urine, etc..) to meet the needs.

And, even if a person can pass a field sobriety test, or the saliva test, they may still be charged with traffic violations, even if they can't be given a DUI. But illegal drugs in any quantity would be grounds for DUI in my understanding.

Also, wasn't it shown that severe sleep deprivation to have an effect on driving ability the same as having several drinks? How do you test for/punish that?

http://oem.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/57/10/649?andorexacttitleabs=and&HITS=10&sortspec=relevance&hits=10&andorexacttitle=and&maxtoshow=&andorexactfulltext=and&FIRSTINDEX=0&fulltext=blood+alcohol+level+.05+sleep+deprivation&resourcetype=HWCIT%2CHWELTR&searchid=1&RESULTFORMAT=1

often like comparing apples to oranges.

and yet, apples and oranges can be compared

Clock rates have an effect on latency. They're not the only factor (as the P4 proved more neatly than anyone before) but they are relevant.

In 1992, I saw this abstract in the Journal of Medical Ethics, now on-line for your delectation.

"In a review of the relevant literature it is shown that happiness is statistically abnormal, consists of a discrete cluster of symptoms, is associated with a range of cognitive abnormalities"

Hoo yah.

There is a rather large difference between letting market forces have their way with oil prices, and actively banning marijuana or profanity. The first requires only that government not do something (disburse the enormous corporate welfare payments which the oil companies have been getting for so long they now regard it as their rightful due) while the second requires the government do something (fund the ever-growing War on Drugs industry, or censor communication.) As for your claim that "people driving a lot ... has very very very little short term effect on your health, and most likely you won't be alive for the long term effects of it," that's simply not true; living in a heavy-traffic area has a major effect on your respiratory health, comparable to that of regular smoking. See here for a decent open-access summary of the effects of particulate pollution on respiratory health, and here for an article (not open-access, but the major results are given in the abstract) specifically about the effect of automotive pollution on respiratory health in children.

Yeah, people always think hearts, kidneys and livers when you start talking about transplants, but insulin producing cells would be HUGE. Type 1 is the most common childhood chronic illness, and types 1&2 is affect nearly 3% of the population.

I was stunned to read, in the article, that "No cough remedies have ever been proven better than a placebo."

As I write this, I'm recovering from a stress fracture of a rib caused by a persistent cough.

Let me describe the sequence of events. I coughed nonstop for two weeks. I experienced rapidly-worsening pain in one rib. My doctor prescribed codeine-based cough medicine. I took it. Cough stopped; I slept through the night without coughing for the first time. My rib is getting better.

Placebo effect? I don't believe it.

So I followed the link to TFA... the second FA... the one that TFA cites. The title of that article is Should we advise parents to administer over the counter cough medicines for acute cough? Systematic review of randomised controlled trials.

It's the over-the-counter cough medicines that haven't been proved to work.

Which I can quite believe. Because I was taking them before the doctor wrote me the prescription.

While you are thinking about the right thesis, others are already work on it.

Correlation vs. Causation? Wow, why didn't the researchers think of that?

..actually they did, it's discussed in quite some detail (too much for me to examine right now, but it's definitely discussed). The paper was published in the respected Thorax journal (published by the British Medical Association http://thorax.bmj.com/).

Respectable journals tend to check that such issues have been closely examined, even if journalists rarely bother mentioning it.

Here's the BMJ editorial

Perhaps the pointed kitchen knife has a culinary purpose that we have failed to appreciate? We contacted 10 chefs in the UK who are well known from their media activities and chefs working in the kitchens of five leading London restaurants. Some commented that a point is useful in the fine preparation of some meat and vegetables, but that this could be done with a short pointed knife (less than 5 cm in length). None gave a reason why the long pointed knife was essential. Domestic knife manufacturers (Harrison-Fisher Knife Company, England, personal communication, 2005) admit that their designs are based on traditional shapes and could give no functional reason why long pointed knives are needed. The average life of a kitchen knife is estimated to be about 10 years.

I'm not enough an artist with the knife to judge whether my ten inch chef's knife really needs that point. However, the point on my five inch boning knife has come in handy, and I suppose it could work as an improvised weapon.

The full PDF of the article is available from the link given by the parent. In spite of the summary given by TFA, it shows that people die primarily from trauma.

Per the actual research, the primary cause of death (above basecamp) is indeed physical trauma. The table is here:
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content-nw/full/337/dec11_1/a2654/TBL2

The actual article is here:
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/337/dec11_1/a2654

Per the actual research, the primary cause of death (above basecamp) is indeed physical trauma. The table is here:
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content-nw/full/337/dec11_1/a2654/TBL2

The actual article is here:
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/337/dec11_1/a2654

You can read the actual research for yourself in British Medical Journal:

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/337/dec11_1/a2654

So what is you solution? The state takes all children of parents it thinks made bad decisions away?

I blame much of this problem on the British government which took an extremely patronising attitude to parents. Their leaflets supposedly explaining the safety of the MMR did not cite any facts other than that the vaccine had been used got a long time without any evidence of damage being found - it conspicuously failed to mention whether anyone had looked for such evidence. The rest of it was largely "we know better than you so you better do as your told".

It would have been perfectly easy to fund something like the Danish study much earlier.

Even better would be to fund a set of long term studies of the long term effects of all commonly used vaccines, proving them all safe. The datasets would overlap (reducing costs) and it might turn up other useful information as well, and datasets that could be mined if any future doubts were raised.

There is absolutely no evidence that stretching before exercise weakens muscles (note I used the exact same phrase as the title) so long as you don't over do it.

if you haven't actually read any peer-reviewed articles about it?! You do know about scholar.google.com, right? It's not that hard to check on the people interviewed in the NYTimes article. There are many papers on the subject. Yes, there is still work to be done to answer all the questions, but your ridiculous statement that there is absolutely no evidence that stretching (static) before exercise weakens muscles just shows that you haven't bothered to read about it.

Here's your spoon-fed google search with links to a few abstracts for your edification.

http://www.acsm-msse.org/pt/re/msse/abstract.00005768-200403000-00004.htm;jsessionid=JJgJGzgYVCy4qyLKzfW21kXYSGvYP3tWmM2WDyC6Nr1nvvvH7ykd!-1853705402!181195629!8091!-1

http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/contentdelivery/servlet/ERICServlet?accno=ED448119 [PDF]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9368275

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/abridged/325/7362/468

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119251161/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

http://www.cjsportsmed.com/pt/re/cjsm/abstract.00042752-200409000-00004.htm;jsessionid=JJgpcrQvSRyyCn1CG2XnW4WS6vzdsmrXnhG43kmLDT1CyhhCknr9!1600976923!181195628!8091!-1

http://apt.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1519%2F1533-4287(2001)015%5B0098%3AAEOSAN%5D2.0.CO%3B2

Whisky ages by evaporating bad alcohols while retaining tasty ones.

This statement is nonsensical. Whisky, and any other alcoholic drink for that matter, has one and only one alcohol, ethanol, C2H5OH. At least, it better, since any other form of alcohol is quite poisonous.

Most alcoholic drinks contain some methanol - and the drinks that contain more give you worse hangovers.

It is actually quite likely that methanol evaporates out of ageing significantly faster than ethanol, so he may well be right, but the main changes come from interactions with the barrel, oxidation, etc.

Flu shots haven't been shown to be effective, bicycle helmets seem to increase injuries. You can't plan for random events, you can't even imagine how it's going to go down. Work in a tall building? What's the plan? Have a parachute at work and practice your base-jumping I guess.

Please provide some sources for your wildly inaccurate statements.

Flu vaccination is quite efficatious. Helmets are shown to significantly reduce the risk of injury. And the tall building argument is a poorly conceived strawman. However the plan for working in a tall building might include knowing the best route out and practicing it a few times as well as ensuring that you exercise weekly to have adequate physical fitness to promptly exit the building. Though you aren't the first one to suggest parachutes.

Given the mess left behind by guns, along with the likelihood of screwing up with either guns, knives or drugs, if you want to be sure, hanging is actually a pretty descent way to terminate one's life.

Even if the actual death takes several minutes, the individual is most likely unconscious.

Even if you don't go for a long drop, several kids have successfully (if unintentionally) killed themselves with bathroom cloth towel machines by simply being patient.

Blacking out from oxygen loss to the brain doesn't generally seem to be as terrifying as suffocation/strangulation. (ie: cutting off the blood supply versus the air supply) and it's also much faster. However, achieving blood choke with a noose may be a challenge.

The last typical option that I skipped in the above is CO (carbon monoxide poisoning). This can be problematic as you need a vehicle, and privacy. It can also be dangerous to the discoverer if they wander into the area where you've contained the CO. ie: if you have a spouse/kids and you don't want them to be physically harmed or die when they find you.

It is well known that the athletic performance of women undergoes significant changes. It affects not only gymnastics but also ice skating, running, other sports. It also affects injury rates. For example ACL injuries occur at a much higher frequency rate in females after menarche.

Here is a link to one of the many studies on this topic:

http://bjsm.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/37/6/490

"Delayed menarche, menstrual irregularities, and low body fat are common in elite rhythmic gymnasts. Premenarcheal gymnasts train more often and for longer, and have a lower body mass index and less body fat, than menarcheal gymnasts. Prospective studies are needed to explore further these and other factors associated with delayed menarche and menstrual irregularities in female athletes."

There are physiological advantages as well. The less experience you have under this sort of pressure, the less likely you are to have built up a reaction to it.

This is why inexperienced troops were used during the first waves on D-Day.

Well, consider me wrong. I took some Health Policy courses a few years ago and we discussed medicine prices for a while (W.H.O. H.A.I.). I remember the professor telling us about the R&D prices of the individual countries/regions. Here is an article that clarifies that there isn't significant differences in contributions to R&D.

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/331/7522/958/

However, some quotes fom TFA:

"The campaign, strongly backed by the pharmaceutical industry, seems to have started in the late 1990s as a response to a grass roots movement started by senior citizens against the high prices of essential prescription drugs.4 This issue was the most prominent one for both parties in the 2000 elections and has since been fuelled by a series of independent reports documenting that US drug prices are much higher than those in other affluent countries.5-7 The idea that other countries are exploiting the US has led to a hearing of the US Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions and was behind a Department of Commerce report that strongly advocated that other developed countries raise prices on patented medicines.8 But are higher prices really necessary?"

"The US accounts for just under 48% of world sales and spent 49% of the global total on research and development to discover 45% of the new molecular entities... European countries account for 28% of world sales, 36% of total research and development spending, and 32% of new molecular entities..."

Here's some data for you:

http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/12/suppl_2/ii33

Specifically, let me call out the following information: "The majority of victims and perpetrators involved in homicide/suicide incidents were non-Hispanic white."

However, the study (which deals with all kinds of murder-suicides, rather than what is referred to as a "Family Annihilator" murder) notes that "the percentage of African Americans involved in homicide/suicide incidents is higher than their representation in participating states (approximately 16.7% in both years)."

However, other studies have found that "A significant shift in the characteristics of location, perpetrators, and victimology of such events between the two cohorts is demonstrated: events changed from urban, multiple victim events with a majority of white perpetrators to rural, dyadic events in which victims did not live with perpetrators, the majority of whom were black." Murder-Suicide in Central Virginia: A Descriptive Epidemiologic Study and Empiric Validation of the Hanzlick-Koponen Typology.

Adjusting for the differences in murder-suicide types, we can infer that the multiple victim family event is more common among whites than blacks.

This is not a normative statement. I cannot explain the reasons why these men do what they do. I can hypothesize, as I have done, but at the end of the day, the data supports the conclusion that white men are more often the perpetrators of this kind of violence then black men. Sadly the perpetrators of these crimes are rarely available for post-event interviews.

I'm not a forensic psychologist, or an epidemiologist. I have read some reputable secondary sources on this subject in the course of working in my field and am relying on the experts for that information, much in the way that I rely on experts in explaining the intricacies of stellar fusion or string theory. If you care to provide contrary data, I would be more than happy to review it and revise my understanding of this kind of homicide.

--AC

Bad example, the Nazi's already had studies showing the link between smoking and lung-cancer long before 1951 :-) http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/313/7070/1450 If they only have had cell-phones back then, we might actually have known now whether cell-phones really cause brain-cancer.

Well, gee, if you search for only websites that offer "suicide methods" (as most of the researcher's search terms were constructed), it's not surprising you're going to find exactly that -- a lot of websites that are biased toward providing suicide methods.

The researchers stacked the deck at the onset by carefully defining their search terms to focus exclusively on "suicide methods" (not reasonable other search terms, like suicide crisis, support, help, etc.) The one non-biased search term ("suicide") shows zero pro-suicide websites in the top 10 search results on the 4 search engines the researchers used.

Read my full response at the BMJ:

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/eletters?lookup=by_date&days=1#193559

--
Psych Central
psychcentral.com

The percentages were a joke. But I do mean in all seriousness to suggest that psychology researchers are often averse to math and tolerate math errors in papers.

It's not just psychologists.

It's statisticians as well. People decide what they want to prove and then stop when they get a result they like.

http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/cgi/eletters/9/3/266#59

A response to a paper by two statisticians showing that they've made a trivial error in their paper. And when the maths is done correctly it's obvious that the result is meaningless.

Tim.

Who is it that has popularized "suicide bombings"?

Based on your logic? "Individuals acting as individuals."

Please provide links to these websites and evidence or proof of this "community support".

Does the Federal Government count? Since it was the Federal courts who determined that the rights of Christians to set up online-based murder lists, and "mark off" individuals as they were assassinated, was inviolable.

Sorry, but I absolutely won't provide links to any murder-list website.

In fact, I contend it was a Muslim or atheist that committed the abortion clinic bombing

Naturally, since you're reflexive ideologue and bigot who continues to insist that your own religion is fundamentally different than all the others; that, indeed, it is the only religion that it is legitimate to define on the basis of the conduct of persons, thus ensuring by tautology that a Christian can never do anything bad, since to do something bad is to be un-Christian. (Never mind that this is not only a logical fallacy, but reasoning directly contradicted by the Bible.)

You, on the contrary, appear to harbor some serious hate and resentment toward Christians

Not in the least. I'm simply pointing out how absurd it is to claim that to be a Christian is to immunize oneself against the use of violence to one's ends, or that the rest of us have absolutely nothing to fear from organized, fundamentalist Christianity. If the whole of European history weren't sufficient to belie that claim, recent history more than proves it hollow.

atheism, in the form of communism

Communism is not, and has never been, a form of atheism. Additionally, the worst excesses and violence of China, Cuba, and the Soviet Union stemmed from a religious veneration of ideology and power, not from a commitment not to believe in something for no good evidentiary reason (the commitment of the atheist.)

Sorry, but it doesn't matter whether you believe in Jesus or in the State become God; to really fuck things up takes religion, religious belief, and faith. Atheism is blameless for the murders you refer to.

People have been. Perhaps not for radiation therapy, which tends not to leave residual radiation, but there are plenty of nuclear medicine diagnostic tests that, by design, cause a person to emit detectable radiation for hours or days afterwards. For most of these tests, the patient is injected with a radioisotope that concentrates in a particular part of the body, which is then imaged. The list of isotopes that get used is really mind-boggling. Most have half-lives measured in minutes to hours, but the amount of radiation emitted after many half-lives, while not medically relevant or useful, is still enough to trigger radiation detectors DHS has deployed. Some of them can be detected weeks after administration (e.g., Tl-201)

Here is at least one article on the subject. Here is another, and a third. Another (which you probably can't find for free, sorry) would be Dauer et al. in the J of Nuclear Cardiology (vol 14, no 4, pg 582) on Thallium-201 stress tests and homeland security.

So, in short, this kind of thing happens.

The inner surface of the foreskin contains Langerhans' cells with HIV receptors; these cells are likely to be the primary point of viral entry into the penis of an uncircumcised man

You're not three times more likely to be killed in a car crash if using a cell phone makes you four times more likely to be in that car crash in the first place. Any probability wiz care to run with this?

You still haven't read the wikipedia entry, have you? Do you have ANYTHING to support your version?

The name was originally adrenaline, EVERYWHERE. Then you Americans decided to call it epinepherine because the name was too close to Adrenalin, which is a trademark for a particular company's adrenaline product.

If wikipedia isn't a good enough reference for you, you're welcome to check THEIR references and go read the British Medical Journal paper that discusses all this. Actually, you should. Just in case you don't (which I suspect is likely because you haven't read any of the references provided to you thus far), I'll summarize the salient point:

Your point that epinephrin was used first is, on the surface, somewhat true. After the discovery (but not naming) of a hormone produced by the adrenal glands, John Abel prepared an extract he called epinephrin. Unfortunately it DID NOT contain any active hormone. The first actual isolation of what we think of as adrenaline/epinephrine was by the company that trademarked the name "adrenalin" for it. Henry Wellcome and Henry Dale had an argument about the correct name and Dale (adrenaline) convinced Wellcome. It seems Wellcome, whose primary argument was from the perspective of trademarks, yielded to Dale's physiological (that is, science instead of business) arguments.

For completeness, though you can find it easily enough through the previously linked wikipedia article, here's the reference (which is publicly viewable): http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/320/7233/506#B20

Further, your "correction" of the original poster, while arguably correct in the US and Japan, is incorrect in the rest of the world (that is, the majority of it). In the great majority of the world, both geographically and by population, adrenaline is the correct name. Here's your statement:

"(BTW: "adrenaline" is a brand name for one particular company's epinephrine. It is not a chemical name. Calling ephinephrine "adrenaline" is like calling all automobiles "toyotas".)"

Adrenaline is not a brand name (Adrenalin is). Adrenaline is most certainly an approved, official, chemical name, everywhere except the US and Japan. Calling epinephrine adrenaline is nothing at all like calling automobiles "toyotas."

Asserting your opinion over and over again doesn't make it any more true, you know.

So by "not technically accurate", you mean "not used by Americans of the specialty".

In addition to Wikipedia, BMJ article discussing the usage. Being a Nazi about terminology isn't good for your karma, especially when you're only half-right. Besides, this isn't a symposium where we're all specialists (though most of us pretend to be...). Adrenaline is the accepted lay-person's terminology, and you don't need to make a big deal of it.

norepinephrine