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Everything in your post is informative, up to the statement that "paranoia can and does *frequenttly* cause murders..." I work in mental health, and have had experience with the circumstances you describe. However, there are 1000's of more paranoid folks who don't go on to commit homicide/suicide than those who do. Just a quick google turned up this:

http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/318/7193/1225

which estimates roughly 8% of homicide perpetrators having contact with the mental health profession, but that certainly doesn't equate to them all being paranoid, or even having a true psychiatric diagnosis.

http://www.psychlaws.org/BriefingPapers/BP11.htm

And finally here:

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/355/20/2064

cites a study showing an approximately 5% prevalence rate of schizophrenia amongst persons convicted of homicide. Now I understand this is orders of magnitude higher than the general population, and there is certainly an increased risk of self-inflected injury or homicide as compared to folks who don't have a history of schizophrenia. But the fact still remains that the overwhelming majority of folks with a psychiatric illness, including paranoid schizophrenia are not at risk for perpetrating violence against themselves or others.

Not necessarily disagreeing with your post, per se. Just pointing out the other side of the equation as there is a common misconception that those with mental illness are a risk to themselves and others.

thx,
jeff

Again, you're trying to turn this into a binary black/white good/evil issue when it's not. The fate of the one person cannot be evaluated by itself. It has to be measured in relation to what's at stake for everyone else.

That sort of utilitarian ethic is absolutely terrifying. You can justify anything at all against a small number of people by weighing it against a relatively small good for a large number. That way evil does lie.

After United 232 crashed resulting in the death of a lap child (an infant or young child without a ticketed seat, and thus sitting in a parent's lap), one of the flight attendants lobbied to require all children and infants to have paid seats aboard airliners. I don't deny the emotional appeal of her story, nor do I wish to diminish the death that lead to it. If you listen to just her side of the issue, then by all means it sounds like the practice of lap children aboard airplanes should be abolished. However, this fails to take into consideration that the reason the FAA allowed lap children is because the death rate for children aboard airliners is far less than for children in cars. The FAA was afraid that if they required parents to purchase airline tickets for their children, more parents would opt to drive instead of fly, resulting in more children dying.

You have to carefully consider all sides before arriving at a decision. The best of intentions can have consequences you may not anticipate, or even be contrary to your goals.

Not that I particularly agree with the ban but it isn't anything new. As said the issue is only with lasers strong enough to reasonably blind people. Even as someone who regularly shoots firearms I fear said lasers more than a firearm - the laser is "on" or "off" and the "on" state lasts until the laser looses power. It is *immediately* dangerous through the whole process and is deceptively so (after all it is only a small dot). For various reasons people do not give it the necessary respect, if they did then I wouldn't mind so much.

The Red Cross has been trying to ban the blinding ones as weapons since the early 90's (and they explicitly state terrorist use even back then). A simple google search turned up a few articles on the front page, I'm sure there are better, yet since the first page results are good enough:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg14419521.100-ban-cruel-laser-weapons-says-red-cross.html
http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/315/7120/1392
http://www.iht.com/articles/1995/12/18/edmol.t.php

and finally what they actually passed: http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/0/49de65e1b0a201a7c125641f002d57af?OpenDocument

So, yea, not really anything new and is pretty much in line with international law. I don't know if Australia is a signatory to the law, however as we know from the US detractors that is irrelevant as it is an "international law".

Can't say as I agree with it (even as used as a weapon - better to be blinded than the alternatives) and I would really like one of the things that could pop a balloon, but for most of what the posters here who want to enforce this it *should* be a triumph of international law and the logical progression of said law. If you want your country to follow "international law" then kiss these thing good buy as you cant have them since the early 90's, Bush's term and the current so called "War on Terror" have nothing to do with said laws. We can't simply pick and choose which laws we observe (as is rightly said by Bush detractor's - it is pretty much all or nothing).

What I would love to see would be an analysys of the number of highway deaths that accured becase more people drove and are driving futher and more often since 9/11.

A good example of a similar phenomenon is what happened after United flight 232 crashed. The MO for small children was for parents to hold the child in their lap or under the seat in front in the event of a crash. The NTSB's rationale was that if parents were forced to buy a seat for their children, they might choose to drive instead of fly. The death rate per passenger mile for driving is much higher than for flying, even if the child is held in the lap during the flight.

Unfortunately, United #232 generated a heart-wrenching story about a parent losing a child because the child did not have a seat. This has resulted in a surviving flight attendant lobbying fiercely to require small children to have seats on flights. Her cause has gotten the support of other flight attendants and the NTSB. While her intentions are benevolent, if she succeeds the change will result in more small children (and their parents) dying in auto accidents.

United Airlines flight 232 - Lessons learned
Safety of infants on aeroplanes

Other researchers identified a genetic pattern, which is carried by a quarter of the population, which combined with cannabis use gives the carrier a five-times higher likelihood of developing psychosis. So in essence it might make you crazy.

Teenage pregnancies might me a partial answer it. They've gone down a lot more in most european countries. According to this diagram http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/content/vol324/issue735 0/images/medium/16874.gif it looks like it would be something like half in europe compared to the US (BMJ -> British Medical Journal). So maybe "planning" for children is much more common in europe and leads to fewer children.

"I would take a factory-produced antibiotic to stave off a serious infection any day over a natural-grown herbal remedy. Why? Because it's been scientifically shown to work."

Did you read the research yourself? If you would I think you would have chosen other words.
True, the dosage is easier with calibrated medicine, where herbs are very varying in content, but don't forget that quite some of todays effective medicine are based on herbal ancestors.
Also keep in mind that the effectiveness of medicines is sometimes just a little bit better than placebo. F.e. http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/314/70 77/334

Example: "....St John's wort to be significantly more effective than placebo ... but not significantly different in efficacy from active antidepressants" - http://www.intclinpsychopharm.com/pt/re/intcpsycho pharm/abstract.00004850-200109000-00001.htm;jsessi onid=FrZYWgcQpShPfqL1TzSNGH9JV0nLRVYbrwl4r3Kg4HNn1 GGZJSRh!-1455700262!-949856145!8091!-1

>the "secondhand-smoke" hysteria genuinely was shoddy pseudoscience

Reading carefully, it looks like this might have been speaking hypothetically. If not:

Are you referring to the peer-reviewed EPA report EPA/600/6-90/006F, or to the Surgeon General's report on second-hand smoke, or to the National Cancer Institute, or to the articles in this bibliography, or to the Journal of the American Medical Association, or to the American Heart Association, or to another article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, or to the British Medical Journal?

But for significant changes in cell organisation that occur in the same random manner, probabilities are very low, because some mutations need to occur together in order to be non-destructive.

I am saying that if we rewind and play, replicating the perfection that is nature will be virtually impossible.

while our obsession on anti-biotic this and that has created a world where people lack immunities to bugs that our ancestors would of shrugged off. as anyone should know when you are born you share the same anti-bodies as your mother for the first two weeks of life for protection while the baby's own anti-bodies learn from them. this is how polio became such a problem it's a weak virus but when has no immunity it's devastating. also it doesn't just stop there.
it's also what we eat. the human body evolved to basically eat animals for fat and protein and fruit/veggies for the rest, this may surprise people but we did not evolve to eat grain or dairy(other then human breast milk) yet the majority of our current food has the following.
        * Highly processed foods that are deficient in important vitamins and minerals
        * Synthetic food compounds
        * High in refined sugars
        * High in saturated fat
        * Deficient in fiber
        * Mega-size portions
        * High in calories
you can drink milk only because of a recent mutation of a human gene. a normal human would not be able to eat any kind of dairy with lactose in it because once they reach maturity the gene for that gets turned off. this was about 6,000 years ago. the rest of the stuff in cow milk other then the nutrients are things we are not evolved to eat and might be the cause of some of out illnesses, along with the lectains in grain which can even block the absorption of protein.

more information.
http://www.earth360.com/diet_paleodiet_balzer.html
http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/318/71 90/1023

to assume we know better then nature is the epitome of ignorance.

In short, you may be right that second hand smoke is bad for you, but if you don't do the research to actually find out whether and how much of an effect it has, then you are just as bad as creationists.

Here you go:
Epidemological study on the correlations between exposure to SHS and severe childhood asthma attacks.
A study showing the increased risk of developing heart disease from SHS.
An analysis of 37 studies on SHS and lung cancer.

Is that evidence enough for you? If not, you can play for days on Google's Scholar search putting in "second hand smoke" and various diseases caused by it. You will find next to no studies claiming that SHS is harmless. Much like global warming, you have to step outside the realm of experts on the subject to find "debunkers." I'm not sure what sort of logical process would invoke such a strong skepticism over the idea that the same chemical stew that kills smokers might also have effects on the people not holding the cigarette without questioning the effect on smokers themselves. Skepticism's healthy, but there's a limit.

In the few minutes he talked about it he seemed to be taking a reactionary stance against people like you who attack and namecall based on your unsupported assumptions. If you want to sway the middle-of-the-roaders like me, you need to provide scientific evidence rather than conjecture blown way out of proportion by people with extreme views.

Hrm. It seems interesting that a "middle of the roader" will hold me to standards of intellectual integrity that you won't hold Crichton to. I mean, nowhere do I see him making any support for his assertions (which is the bulk of what I actually wrote about, if you go back and actually read my post). Also, I do provide links to articles thoroughly debunking the assertions he makes in his books (even though there's nothing directly refutable in his empty statements of "they're just wrong" in his speeches). The best he ever gets is, "Scientists were wrong on this other completely unrelated subject material, so why trust them on this?" But, hey, I'm the one not backing myself up, right?

If you are simply asking for supporting evidence of global warming, then please go and read the many articles in RealClimate's archive. For a more layman's approach, go see the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth." There is no lack of consensus within the climate research community.

If you're actually attacking my assertions on SHS and not global warming, then fine. I did not back them up initially because I thought it was freaking obvious and because my post was excessively long at that point anyway. It was pretty rushed and had some nasty grammar errors because of cutting and pasting sentences into a more cohesive whole. (That's also how I lost the bit about DDT being banned because of effects on wildlife.) In my experience, the only people who seriously question SHS's effects on others are smokers in denial. Why bother trying to reach them? They've built up a lifetime of mental and emotional defenses against the ramifications of their actions, and no amount of truth will reach them.

The RIAA often make me wish we lived in times where bands of Indians and mass quantites of gold were still common in this country. Having molten gold poured into Cary Sherman's orafices would be suitably karmic, no?

Link to History.

/Sorry for the slight OT-ness of this post. But RIAA greed tactics make me wish that Karma would actually work against them for once.

Only 7% of cataract patients wait > 6 months. See this study in the BMJ, table 1.

"Despite widespread political and media attention little empirical evidence exists on the distribution of waiting and prolonged waiting in England. In most instances substantial numbers of patients waiting longer than six months in the main surgical specialties are restricted to a relatively small proportion of hospitals."

In other words, you'd be pretty unlucky to get a 2 year wait. And right now, there are no patients waiting more than 12 months. Zero. None. Nada.

Even before the waiting lists were cleared up a bit recently, the problem was overblown by the press. They pick up on individual anecdotes of long waiting times which were newsworthy *because* they are unusual, but constantly parading these cases gave the impression that long waiting periods were normal.

http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/322/72 84/447

It's not the fact your hands are busy that makes you have an accident, it's that you're not paying attention to the road as much consciously and unconsciously.

A study that proves it

All the current bans are useless. We need to ban USE in the car, not USE WITHOUT A HEADSET. Hands Free doesn't help.

                        --Michael

No, they haven't.

Education and rates of cognitive decline in incident Alzheimer's disease
N Scarmeas, S M Albert, J J Manly and Y Stern

Full text Abstract pdf

As others have pointed out, the study looked at rates of decline relative to initial performace, as opposed to examining the performance of individuals after 5 years of AD.

Education and rates of cognitive decline in incident Alzheimer's disease
N Scarmeas, S M Albert, J J Manly and Y Stern

Full text Abstract pdf

As others have pointed out, the study looked at rates of decline relative to initial performace, as opposed to examining the performance of individuals after 5 years of AD.

Education and rates of cognitive decline in incident Alzheimer's disease
N Scarmeas, S M Albert, J J Manly and Y Stern

Full text Abstract pdf

As others have pointed out, the study looked at rates of decline relative to initial performace, as opposed to examining the performance of individuals after 5 years of AD.

The reasoning for the functioning of a CSA as an antiviral seems fairly sound to me- the molecule structurally resembles peptides called defensins, which have potent activity against bacteria and viruses. The method of action, attacking the viral envelope, may make it more difficult for HIV strains to develop resistance. Current HIV drugs target specific molecules involved in the life cycle of HIV- reverse transcriptase, proteases, and the receptors involved in fusion with cells. Minor changes in these molecules could result in resistance to the drugs that target them. An approach based on the general properties of the viral envelope might be more difficult for HIV to sidestep (but by no means impossible).

That being said, I'm curious to know how specificity for HIV will be possible with this line of attack. One of the issues with defensins is that in addition to their direct attack on antigens, they stimulate the immune response in a more general fashion. Which sounds good, except that this stimulation includes inducing mast cells to release histamine, and encouraging the production of cytokines. Too much of those, and you can get anaphylaxis and septic shock, respectively. While this seems like a ludicrous notion for immunosuppressed AIDS patients, it's worth noting that one of the functions of the helper T cells that HIV destroys is to help put the brakes on the immune response once the threat of infection has passed. I'm not saying all CSA drugs would necessarily cause shock in all, or any patients, but I am tossing it out as an example of the sorts of hurdles this and every other promising compound in vitro can face on the way to becoming a drug approved for use in humans- a lot of complicated things are possible in vivo.

Nine states allow openly gay couples to joint adopt, only Florida forbids it outright.

These 8 million children overwhelmingly live a healthy, caring environment. I highly recommend reading about gay adoption, it may surprise you how common and healthy it is.

Speaking as a psychologist, there is no psychological reason why people need to be of opposite sex to be 'good enough' parents.

Children are remarkably adaptive, having care givers that love and support is what is important, not the sex of said caregivers. To suggest otherwise is to either show bigotry, demonstrate political bias or to be woefully ignorant. You may not like gays, but don't pretend to be protecting children by saying those that want to raise younguns can't be parents. You are insulting many healthy children, terrific parents and violating active empathy. Breath and accept. It's okay to be wrong.

I leave in South Africa where more that 10% of our Population are said to be HIV+. This question was onced asked by our State President Thabo Mbeki,"Does HIV cause AIDS? Can a virus cause a syndrome? How? It can't, because a syndrome is a group of diseases resulting from acquired immune deficiency." He said that the question still unresolved by scientists is: what contribution does HIV make to the collapse of the immune system?
Answer:HIV does not Cause AIDS, according to Mohammed Ali Al-Bayati,President, Toxi-Health International,

1) The HIV-hypothesis is not supported. HIV is a harmless virus in both the in vivo and the in vitro settings. Read more here... http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/eletters/324/7331/2 37

jongi

No problem:

Schoemaker M J, et al, (2005) Mobile phone use and risk of acoustic neuroma: results of the Interphone case-control study in five North European countries, British Journal of Cancer, September 2005.
Available from: Nature Journal .

Interestingly, Tony Swerdlow, one of the authors of the latest paper, also was an author of this paper which found an 80% increase in risk to acoustic neuromas (95% CI 1.1-3.1)

Hardell L, et al, (2005) Use of cellular telephones and brain tumour risk in urban and rural areas, Occupational and Environmental Medicine, June 2005.
Available from: Occupational and Environmental Medicine Journal .

This study had totally different authors, and found a three fold increase in regular digital phone users (>5 years of usage) living in rural areas.

There are a few more that I can get out of the files when I get back to work, but it is half past midnight our time and I can't think of the references off the top of my head.

um...there are several different techniques used to harvest stem cells. Do a Google search on stem cell harvesting...

They can even be harvested from embryos without destroying it. In fact, the embryos in question that had a stem cell removed where later put into the womb of a female mouse, and 23 of the 47 came to term in spite of having cells removed. The 47/23 ratio is the same rate as the control test of coming to term as embryos that had not been tampered with...

They can also be harvested from your own bone marrow and blood, although these cells are already partially specialized. There is research into de-differentiate of the cells. This article is all the way back from 1999. Here is more information on de-differentiation, in which cells from a fruitfly have been successfully changed back to stem cells. Human trials are a bit off yet, but it's not a far leap to being able to do the same in our cells.

The anti-stem cell crowd has ingraved in so many people's minds that "stem cells=dead babies". That might have been true in the late 1990s...but not true anymore. The information is widely avalible on the net to current research. Many people, especially religious people in the US, feel the whole idea of cloning is so creepy as to do anything to stop it, even if they have to lie about it.

You're right about spending a lot of money on oseltamivir being a bit of a waste. Your ideas, while fine from a lab point of view, are not possible in the 'real world', which is why public health people/ epidemiologists generally run the show in this kind of event, not lab people like your girlfriend, or clinicians (like me), although I am on a committee of 20 planning for pandemic influenza covering about 1m people.

Part of the problem with the purchase of oseltamivir from a political point of view is that it is necessary to be seen to be doing something, and the snake oil salesmen are only too happy to try to cash in, as you rightly point out.

Unfortunately you cannot build a vaccine straight away, and all the work being done now may not pay off. In addition to the research component, there are also major manufacturing problems, as most countries will nationalise existing vaccine production facilities.

This means if you are in a poor country, forget about vaccine. America is relatively underprovided but is building facilities - I think. Europe is OK, and I think Japan and Australia/NZ will be OK. Just storing and distributing the vaccine will be a nightmare. We are planning armed guards, military storage depots etc. as the potential for theft/ fraud/ corruption and general unhappiness is large.

The bad news for geeks is that it is the under 30s who will probably have the highest mortality: a sobering account from the 1918 flu pandemic in this week's British Medical Journal. On the other hand, if you survive, there will be plenty of job opportunities...

Instances of malfeasance by multinational pharmas during the course of clinical trials in third world countries have been well documented: see for instance this story about Pfizer's behavior in a Nigerian meningitis test; and this story (referred to in Marcia Angell's book) about ethics violations in an Ugandan HIV study.

A child that is forced into daycare (sometimes after six weeks!), is going to incurr many more illnesses than a child that has the benefit of a stay-at-home-parent.

That certainly feels true, but is it? Does anyone have supporting data?

At least one recent study suggests children who go to day younger get cancer less frequently. The study results summary:

Increasing levels of social activity were associated with consistent reductions in risk of ALL; a dose-response trend was seen. When children whose mothers reported no regular activity outside the family were used as the reference group, odds ratios for increasing levels of activity were 0.73 (95% confidence interval 0.62 to 0.87) for any social activity, 0.62 (0.51 to 0.75) for regular day care outside the home, and 0.48 (0.37 to 0.62) for formal day care (attendance at facility with at least four children at least twice a week) (P value for trend < 0.001). Although not as striking, results for non-ALL malignancies showed a similar pattern (P value for trend < 0.001). When children with non-ALL malignancies were taken as the reference group, a significant protective effect for ALL was seen only for formal day care (odds ratio = 0.69, 0.51 to 0.93; P = 0.02). Similar results were obtained for B cell precursor common ALL and other subgroups, as well as for cases diagnosed above and below age 5 years.

The study authors conclude "These results support the hypothesis that reduced exposure to infection in the first few months of life increases the risk of developing acute lymphoblastic leukaemia." The "dose-response" trend means that higher levels of social activity correlated directly to lower incidence of ALL.

ALL is acute lymphoblastic leukemia (aka acute lymphocytic leukemia and less commonly a couple of other "L" words as the second word), the most common childhood cancer. It's also the type of cancer my five year old son is being treated for. He went to daycare young, didn't get sick often (and still doesn't even though he is immunosuppressed from the chemotherapy), and was diagnosed a year ago after a period that did not include a cold. Of couse, our experience can't be extrapolated to trends of childhood cancer.

As a side note, a standard part of the treatment for childhood ALL includes twice daily doses of an antifungal and thrice weekly doses of an antibiotic. Patients undergoing chemotherapy are prone to getting bacterial and fungal infections. Supporters of alternative explanations for "cancer" claim these prophylactic meds may be what "cures" the cancer.

Everything I've heard from oncologists and other doctors indicates that early exposure to other children (e.g. daycare) tends to result initially in more minor illnesses and a stronger immune system with lower incidence of illness later.

Off topic reply:

Maybe you should read this

More details here, if you are not convinced (pdf).

Above links may require that you access them from a institution (a university fx) that subsribes to The British Medical Journal.

Off topic reply:

Maybe you should read this

More details here, if you are not convinced (pdf).

Above links may require that you access them from a institution (a university fx) that subsribes to The British Medical Journal.

For those who actually bother to know the basics of business law (should really be a college gen ed) would know their states discrimination laws.

In NJ for example, this practice has been illegal for several years already. I believe a few other states have also outlawed this practice.

Are you saying anyone who ever took part in a boxing-match can be sued for assault in the UK ?

No; the parent over-generalised. You can consent under certain circumstances, such as to allow surgery or as part of a properly conducted sporting activity. See here for example. Note, however, that attacking someone in a way that is not covered by the accepted rules of your activity, and therefore does not have the implied consent of the other party, can get you in a lot of trouble. Also, there are further legal requirements on boxing events specifically in the UK, including the presence of medical cover.

Historical Background of the _harms_

About the various substitutes mentioned and the lack of a "ban": From the American Council on Science and Health (disclaimer, they receive 75% of their funding from private chemical/pharmaceutical companies, although since DDT replacements are more patented and higher cost, you'd think that'd prejudice them the other way):
"Despite the cost in human lives, many groups stubbornly defend the ban. While the World Health Organization, the National Academy of Sciences, and UNICEF have recommended continued DDT use, influential organizations such as the Norwegian Development Agency, the Swedish International Development Agency, the Swedish Aid Agency, and USAID -- the sorts of groups from whom some poor nations such as Belize, Mozambique, and Madagascar receive the majority of their public health money -- continue to insist that DDT be left out of malaria-control efforts.

Countries have found themselves faced with malaria upsurges due to pressure from such international aid organizations to avoid DDT use, according to a report in the March 11, 2000 British Medical Journal. The use of DDT in Mozambique, noted the Journal, "was stopped several decades ago, because 80% of the country's health budget came from donor funds, and donors refused to allow the use of DDT."

The WHO estimates that malathion, the cheapest alternative to DDT, costs more than twice as much as DDT and must be sprayed twice as often, while another mosquito-fighting chemical, deltamethrin, is over three times as expensive, and the highly effective propoxur costs twenty-three times as much. For countries with minimal public health budgets, dependent on foreign aid, such substitutes are impractical. More importantly, there is no compelling public health reason to substitute these chemicals for DDT, which as stated is harmless to humans."

Anyway, Wikipedia has a relatively balanced article that covers both sides of the issue.

My conclusion is that DDT was banned in many areas in the early 70's at the behest of environmentalists relying on flawed science. A large number of people who would currently be alive are dead due to bans in various countries that still suffered malaria. Using DDT for regular agriculture instead of just anti-malarial spraying is probably a bad idea due to the possibility of mosquitos developing resistance.

The deaths are real, but probably exaggerated. Likely only hundreds of thousands per year have died uneccesarily since the bans started, not millions. The millions figure is an extrapolation that uses primarily most of the people who die from Malaria each year. Some contries who've substituted more expensive and/or less effective anti-malarial programs for widespread anti-malarial uses of DDT may not have as good of results as those who still use DDT widely have had, so it's better to be conservative on the numbers.

Finally, that hotbed of right-wing extremists, the British Medical journal states that "The Persistent Organic Pollutants Treaty aims to completely phase out global use of dicophane (DDT), while many donor agencies will not fund any malaria control programmes that use this insecticide. But dicophane is effective, with a remarkable safety record when used in small quantities for indoor spraying in endemic regions. Malaria cases soared in the KwaZulu Natal province of South Africa after it stopped using dicophane in 1996. Its reintroduction together with artemisinin based combination therapy for treating malaria brought the disease back under control. Dicophane, a "dirty word" in the malaria world, must surely be reintroduced into the conversation on rolling back malaria."

So it's fine and good to say "oops, the environmentalists screwed up and should stop pressuring people not to save li

Friday, 21 November, 2003, 10:27 GMT

Sun 'protects against cancer'

Staying out of the sun completely may increase your chances of developing cancer, say doctors.

For years, experts have advised people to cover up in the sun to protect themselves from skin cancer.

But a letter in this week's British Medical Journal warns people against taking this advice to the extreme.

Thatswhy some countries, most notably Finland sets the amount of a fine relative to the earning power of the (er! for lack of a better word) criminal.

Here's a link providing examples. I quote:

At 46 miles an hour, he didn't set any land speed records. But Nokia executive Anssa Vanjoki could set the record for the costliest ever speeding ticket--a $103 000 fine. He was fined for speeding on a motorcycle in a 31 mph zone on an island near Helsinki last October, chief police inspector Olli Yliskoski said.

It doesn't seem that the judges have a problem with the manufacturers, but rather the people relying on the machines do.

It will work like this: judge dismisses case because manufacturer is unable or unwilling to disclose how it works. Cops get mad, go to bosses and say "get rid of these machines", cops get new ones from manufacturer who is willing to disclose how it works (this is breath alcohol testing - it's not rocket science) and everyone's happy.

Why wouldn't the manufacturer disclose the methodology? Perhaps because it's unreliable; perhaps there are false positives associated with it; who knows. We never will.

"The test revealed that 522 (5.1%) employees had visual field abnormalities. And there appeared to be a significant link between these and heavy computer use among those with either long or short sight, collectively known as "refractive errors." The full text is from the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health and can be found here for subscribers.

You don't have to wait. In India and China the sex imbalance has been growing for over a decade. The peasants used to just smother unwanted girls at birth, now the middle class has ultrasounds and aborts them. That's one reason why there is a market for kidnapping and selling women to be wives of men in rural areas where there aren't enough to go around.

China grapples with legacy of its 'missing girls' "From a relatively normal ratio of 108.5 boys to 100 girls in the early 80s, the male surplus progressively rose to 111 in 1990, 116 in 2000, and is now is close to 120 boys for each 100 girls at the present time"

Ratio of girls to boys in India continues to decline "The sex ratio, calculated as number of girls per 1000 boys in the 0-6 age group, declined from 945 girls per 1000 boys in the 1991 census to 927 during the 2001 census... In 2001, four states--Punjab, Haryana, Himachal, and Gujarat--fell into the category of having fewer than 800 girls per 1000 boys for the first time. In Punjab the decline was in 10 of the 17 districts, whereas in Haryana state almost all districts recorded fewer than 850 girls. In Fatehgarh, in Punjab, the number of girls declined to 754 per 1000 boys."

The helmet issue is almost as controversial as the one about global warming.You cite the bike helmet safety institute, which sounds kind of biased. Here are some other links:

• There is no direct evidence that the wearing of cycle helmets has led to fewer deaths amongst cyclists.
• the tests on which these standards are based mimic a fall from a cycle rather than collision with a fast moving vehicle, which is most likely to harm an adult cyclist.
• Helmets which could provide significant protection (if they existed) would be of such construction that few would care to wear them.
• John Franklin's Cycling Digest on helmets - plenty of studies.

exposure to environmental tobacco smoke was associated with increased risks

Here is the best publically available intro on the subject I could find, although it's briefer than I'd like. Plenty of references, which you can trace through if you want to learn more. Also note the "Related articles in PubMed" link in the sidebar.

One problem, I admit, is that a lot of journal articles are locked up behind subscriber-only interfaces. (On PubMed, those that are freely available have a special icon, which is helpful.) If you have access to a university library, you can always try to find more information there. Also, any reasonably modern microbiology textbook (mid-1990's or later) should have a chapter on this -- actually, that might be a better place to gain a layman's understanding than combing through journals.

at least with personal accounts the money left over when you die can be given to your children instead of staying with the government 'trust fund'

with the life expectancy between the rich and poor widening: http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/315/71 22/1559/i

wouldn't it be good to give the poor the balance of the money they would have collected to their children? this could be lump sum or simply converted into the younger generations account that is 'hands off' until they retire.

its ridiculous that the way to 'fix' the system is to raise taxes both on wages and social security payouts, reduce bebefits and increase retirement age. that is what we have been doing since 1937 when the total tax was 1% - now 12.4% + medicare.

Apparently it's PC if it makes women better than men. It's what I've noticed. Perhaps it's backlash against centuries of oppression, I don't know, but people are getting irrational.

Your statement reminds me of this paper done by researchers who noted that women athletes were shattering records at a higher pace than men, and when they extrapolated their data, they concluded that women were were going to surpass men at some point in time. There were obvious errors in this paper, yet it was published in Nature. Where was the decision making behind that? PC or subjective PC?

Here's the link to the summary.

Many years ago, the British Medical Journal was a simple but honest medical journal. Then, it happened into possession of a wondrous ring that made it more visible. Unable or unwilling to resist this corrupting influence, the BMJ has over many years deformed into a grotesque birdlike creature recognizable by its diet of crickets, it ducklike call, and its monstrously overgrown left wing.

Many years ago, the British Medical Journal was a simple but honest medical journal. Then, it happened into possession of a wondrous ring that made it more visible. Unable or unwilling to resist this corrupting influence, the BMJ has over many years deformed into a grotesque birdlike creature recognizable by its diet of crickets, it ducklike call, and its monstrously overgrown left wing.

Many years ago, the British Medical Journal was a simple but honest medical journal. Then, it happened into possession of a wondrous ring that made it more visible. Unable or unwilling to resist this corrupting influence, the BMJ has over many years deformed into a grotesque birdlike creature recognizable by its diet of crickets, it ducklike call, and its monstrously overgrown left wing.

Actually there is bad scientific evidence of this.

The largest study to date on the effects of secondhand smoke has concluded that there is no evidence to support the claim that it is deadly.

Bullshit Bullshit

There is good scientific evidence that secondhand smoke exposure increases the risk of heart attack in the general population.

Bush plans to screen whole US population for mental illness

You do know where we inherit our mitochondria, right? For a health care worker, you seem to be pretty ignorant of basic reproductive science.

Right, because only Iraqis fuck their cousins to that degree. You don't have to actually see the rest of the world to know what it's like, right? You just know. How utterly parochial.

Try this link; I have met Dr. Nadia Sakati (one of the doctors who described/named this particular syndrome) and attended lectures she has given on the prevelence of genetic metabolic disorders among Arabs directly resulting from consanguineous relationships. And no, I don't have to see the rest of the world - the medical literature speaks for itself. Sorry if that disturbs you, but hey, as a troll, you probably have a little cousin-fucking in your non-nonbranching family tree, so I can see how my very accurate message could wind you up.