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No, I don't get your point. life expectancy, in the US has risen sharply since the 60s, especially if you're black. Medicine costs more, in an adjusted way, but we get more for it. Sure, it's not the difference between a 1960s computer and a smart phone, but it's still a remarkable improvement.

People want more. People want more over time, people want more than they have, and especially people want more than their neighbors have! ("Sure my life is better, but that other guy's life improved more, so the system is broken!") That will certainly keep us employed even after all the basics are made with no labor and are very cheap as a result. What will we all be doing? More.

http://jezebel.com/unintended-...

A recent survey by the Guttmacher Institute outlines some sobering details about unintended pregnancy in the United States: as of now, a whopping 49 percent of the 6.7 million pregnancies per year in the United States are unintended.

So that's 3.3 million new consumers a year in the united states alone from recreational sex.

http://www.cdc.gov/reproductiv...

Failure rates for birth control over 1% are common.

Combine birth control failure rate with anti-abortion beliefs for a generation or three and you end up with a larger share population against abortion than you started.

Nigeria managed to contain it.
Admittedly they have seen Ebola before, but they seem to have a more modernized health care "infrastructure" (facilities) than the regions where Ebola is out of control. I would be willing to bet that the US has a much higher density of health care facilities with supplies and personnel.

Saying that something is more lethal doesn't mean the same as saying it kills more people. What it means is that it is more "sufficient to cause death". So, while it's very true that more people have died from H1N1 than from EBOV, EBOV is still far more lethal.

http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/est... says that between April 2009 and April 2010 there were 61M cases of H1N1 resulting in 12.5K deaths. WHO says that, so far, there are 7192 cases of EBOV in the West African outbreak, and 3286 deaths.

I'll let you do the math.

Exactly. Tens of millions of people get the flu (of many variants) each year, and many thousands die from it - but in general it is mostly the very young or elderly who don't have the immune systems to fight it off (or of any age those with other serious medical conditions, AIDS, going through cancer therapy, etc, with compromised immune systems).

Ebola is different, even people with otherwise healthy immune systems are vulnerable. The flu kills a tiny fraction (less than 1%) of those who contract it... Ebola thus far has killed 50-80% of those who get it. Vast difference.

Saying that something is more lethal doesn't mean the same as saying it kills more people. What it means is that it is more "sufficient to cause death". So, while it's very true that more people have died from H1N1 than from EBOV, EBOV is still far more lethal.

http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/est... says that between April 2009 and April 2010 there were 61M cases of H1N1 resulting in 12.5K deaths. WHO says that, so far, there are 7192 cases of EBOV in the West African outbreak, and 3286 deaths.

I'll let you do the math.

haha, no.

" an estimated range of deaths from between 151,700 and 575,400 people who perished worldwide from 2009 H1N1 virus infection during the first year the virus circulated"

" 80% of 2009 H1N1 deaths were in people younger than 65 years of age which differs from typical seasonal influenza epidemics during which 80-90% of deaths are estimated to occur in people 65 years of age and older"

http://www.cdc.gov/flu/spotlig...
http://www.thelancet.com/journ...

As I wrote here: http://www.pdfernhout.net/basi...
"Right now, a profit driven health care system has sized emergency rooms for average needs, and those emergency rooms are often full. .........

One awkward truth is the ability to quarantine and isolate the folk running a fever and complaining is beyond the system.
Consider that some 5-20% of the US population get the flu and in the first 48 hours there is no easy way to isolate and maintain those
folk with the flu. Heck hospital food is terrible but hospital kitchens could not muster meals for 5% of the population for 48 hours.

http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/h...
"Initial signs and symptoms are nonspecific and may include fever, chills, myalgias, and malaise. Fever, anorexia, asthenia/weakness are the most common signs and symptoms. .....
"Due to these nonspecific symptoms particularly early in the course, EVD can often be confused with other more common infectious diseases such as malaria, typhoid fever, meningococcemia, and other bacterial infections (e.g., pneumonia)."

Today it is novel and clearly has a "traveler from " component. Should it escape Africa and the
bounded list become unbounded we have a problem Houston.

Pistols, however, are used by criminals, by people committing suicide, and by kids playing around with them. As a direct result, over 30,000 people die every year after being shot with a pistol.

This is an example of a truthful but not useful statement. Yes, 30,000 people die every year as a result of being shot by a pistol. According to the CDC, in 2010 there were 11K firearm homocides and 19K firearm suicides.

That's a big difference in perspective, since a regulation that might be justifiable to prevent an individual from shooting his wife or neighbor might not be justifiable to prevent him from shooting himself. It's not dispositive, of course, but society has a much larger interest in preventing individuals from killing each other than killing themselves.

Depending on which news network you check depends on what you are told... At this point I feel the major news media is covering up the fact he was contagious since Wednesday of last week by either saying his symptoms started later or that he has been in the hospital since Sunday.
The person arrived here on the 20th. I have read some articles saying he started showing symptoms on Wednesday Sept 24th and that he went to the Hospital (the same hospital that has been readying itself to handle Ebola) he was then sent home with Antibiotics. He then came back several days later VIA ambulance because his condition worsened.
“After arriving in the U.S. on Sept. 20, the man began to develop symptoms last Wednesday and initially sought care two days later. But he was released. At the time, hospital officials did not know he had been in West Africa. He returned later as his condition worsened.”
http://www.stripes.com/news/us...

Failure 1: They never asked him and he never divulged he was from Liberia?
Failure 2: They misdiagnosed the issue as a common cold or bacteria infection.
Failure 3: will they really be able to trace everyone if he went somewhere in public while showing symptoms (he must have gone somewhere to get the antibiotic prescription filled, how many people in CVS, Rite-Aid etc. got exposed?)

Failure 4: They are assuming he will divulge even people who may be here illegally living with his friends or family. Most likely these people will not seek medical treatment nor be reported for fear of deportation they may finally report to the hospital when critically ill but in the interim they are an exposure risk to the general public.
Failure 5: The hospital was not using any Tyvex suits, booties, face masks, etc when treating this patient on Friday. They were using no EBOLA precautions. This article from the New York Times also contradicts completely the BS being spread through NBC news that just washing your hands will prevent contracting Ebola. Two problems with that are that washing your hands will not stop ebola if you came in contact with infected fluids or someone with ebola you can’t just wash it off. Secondly this study here proves americans do not wash their hands enough
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/s...
Here is the CDC recommendations to the hospitals which this hospital DID NOT FOLLOW until the patient came back
http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/p...

The CDC list was revised after the doctors below spoke out about the initial precautions CDC recommended which were gloves and paper mask!

“But Dr. Michael V. Callahan, an infectious disease specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital who has worked in Africa during Ebola outbreaks, does not think it is wrong for hospitals to opt for more protective equipment.
The minimal precautions recommended by the C.D.C. “led to the infection of my nurses and physician co-workers who came in contact with body fluids,” Dr. Callahan said. “I understand the desire to maintain absolute protection in U.S. hospitals.”
Dr. Justin Fairless, an emergency physician in Tulsa, Okla., said that health care workers in Africa “are wearing the highest level of protection, but the C.D.C. recommendation lets us go down to the lowest level of protection.”
Dr. Fairless is considering buying his own air-purifying respirator to pair with a head-to-toe coverall. “I am not comfortable going to see an Ebola patient wearing a paper mask that doesn’t cover my entire face,”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08...

After the article CDC recently revised their recommendations to this:

Early symptoms of Ebola are "flu-like" and it is contagious during these "flu-like" symptoms. Now ... consider the fact that flu season is upon us. But you know what's _really_ frightening about this? Not one of the goddamn idiot "authorities" has even mentioned, let alone assessed, this confounding situation's impact on public health containment measures.

Now THAT'S frightening!

Read the CDC's guidelines on monitoring and movement of persons with "exposure" and tell me their guidelines work for a country in the throes of massive incidence of "flu-like symptoms".

While reading this wisdom from on high, imagine there is, in this multi-"culture"al heaven that is the US nowadays, a "community" somewhere with strong identity, Hollywood-fired resentment of the US's white-supremacist history of slavery and colonial exploitation with corresponding suspicion of its public health measures (just look at the murders of public health workers in West Africa -- and many of those health workers weren't even "white-devils"), strong relations in West Africa and -- to top it all off -- a flu season that has a good percentage of its community exhibiting the early stage symptoms of Ebola...

Which might be why the CDC has latched onto this as a teaching aid.

http://www.who.int/mediacentre...
http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/artic...
https://simple.wikipedia.org/w...

Seems to indicate that the bat species can be a host, but doesn't show the symptoms. Studies have also shown antibodies to previous strains of ebola in the areas where the matching outbreaks occurred.

As I said, I've been here for a decade now, and I work for a big company with great perks. It's been good for me, but now that I have a kid, the school-shootings thing is getting more and more worrisome. There's literally nothing I can do to prevent some moron raiding his mother's arsenal and killing my kid if that's how he wants to end his life.

Why this obsession with school shootings? You do realize your kid is far more likely to be murdered outside of school than in school? "Homicide is the second leading cause of death among youth aged 5-18. Data from this study indicate that between 1% and 2% of these deaths happen on school grounds or on the way to or from school." So 98%-99% of homicides of school-aged children happen outside of school. i.e. The place where your kids are safest by far from being shot or killed is in school.

If you look at the chart in the above link, on average fewer than 20 students are murdered each year in school shootings. If you look at causes of death, among 5-14 year olds (page 2), the #15 cause of death kills 18 per year, indicating school shootings doesn't even rank in the top 15. For age 15-24 (high school-college), the #15 cause kills 99 per year, so school shootings probably doesn't even make the top 20 or 30. By far the #1 killer of student-aged children is accidents - outnumbering homicides by nearly an order of magnitude, and school shootings by two orders of magnitude.

It's the media which has a morbid obsession with school shootings, causing them to devote wildly disproportionate amounts of coverage to it relative to other dangers and risks faced by school-aged children. Don't buy into it. Parents' fear of school shootings is completely irrational, just like fear of flying (which is also fed by the media's disproportionate coverage of plane crashes), or child abduction by a stranger (which is the rarest form of kidnapping, and also fed by the media's... well you get the picture).

As I said, I've been here for a decade now, and I work for a big company with great perks. It's been good for me, but now that I have a kid, the school-shootings thing is getting more and more worrisome. There's literally nothing I can do to prevent some moron raiding his mother's arsenal and killing my kid if that's how he wants to end his life.

Why this obsession with school shootings? You do realize your kid is far more likely to be murdered outside of school than in school? "Homicide is the second leading cause of death among youth aged 5-18. Data from this study indicate that between 1% and 2% of these deaths happen on school grounds or on the way to or from school." So 98%-99% of homicides of school-aged children happen outside of school. i.e. The place where your kids are safest by far from being shot or killed is in school.

If you look at the chart in the above link, on average fewer than 20 students are murdered each year in school shootings. If you look at causes of death, among 5-14 year olds (page 2), the #15 cause of death kills 18 per year, indicating school shootings doesn't even rank in the top 15. For age 15-24 (high school-college), the #15 cause kills 99 per year, so school shootings probably doesn't even make the top 20 or 30. By far the #1 killer of student-aged children is accidents - outnumbering homicides by nearly an order of magnitude, and school shootings by two orders of magnitude.

It's the media which has a morbid obsession with school shootings, causing them to devote wildly disproportionate amounts of coverage to it relative to other dangers and risks faced by school-aged children. Don't buy into it. Parents' fear of school shootings is completely irrational, just like fear of flying (which is also fed by the media's disproportionate coverage of plane crashes), or child abduction by a stranger (which is the rarest form of kidnapping, and also fed by the media's... well you get the picture).

Why are you assuming that male sexual assault victims are rare? According to the CDC:

19.3% of women and 1.7% of men have been raped during their lifetimes.
1.6% of women and a negligible number of men had been raped in the 12 months preceding the survey.
Note: Forced or otherwise coerced sex is not rape unless there is penetration of the vagina or anus, or penetration of the mouth by a sexual organ, as per the definition given by the US DOJ.

43.9% of women and 23.4% of men have experienced other forms of sexual violence during their lifetime, including being made to penetrate, sexual coercion, unwanted sexual contact, and noncontact unwanted sexual experiences.
5.5% of women and 5.1% of men had been victims of these other forms of sexual violence in the 12 months preceding the survey.

That does bring up the question of why these other forms of sexual victimization are nearly identical in the short-term (93 men for every 100 women), but somewhat disparate in the long-term (53 men for every 100 women). Even if we assume that the groups of rape victims and victims of other forms of sexual violence are mutually exclusive, that's 72 men for every 100 women in the short-term and 40 men for every 100 women in the long-term.

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/previe...

All deaths in the US are analyze and reported by the CDC, including gun deaths. All other crime related statistics are reported by individual police departments to the Uniform Crime Reporting program at the FBI. Of course, accurate reporting depends on the police actually being involved to observe an incident. If a gun owner brandishes a gun to avert a rape and never reports it, it will not appear in the stats even though it actually happened. If a mugger uses a gun to threaten a victim and the victim doesn't report it, it isn't counted either.

The fact that you're not willing to even do a quick search to find out whether these things are investigated and analyzed says more about you and your emotional fog than it says about any issues here in reality.

I don't really see any evidence for substantial spending on antibiotic R&D. If you can point to some kind of citation for this I'm certainly curious.

Antibiotics aren't really a chemical class either, since there are many mechanisms of action. A chemical class would be something like beta-lactam antibiotics, etc. I suspect that particular class is mostly played-out, but there are potentially as many mechanisms for attacking bacteria as there are unique metabolic pathways in bacteria.

I don't mean to trivialize drug development - it seems to have slowed down across the board which probably reflects that most of the "low-hanging fruit" is gone. I think it is a far stretch to go from that to saying that there won't be any new drugs of any particular kind.

Looking at this, it seems like we have about 75k MRSA cases per year. If you want to make a decent profit of around $100M/yr off of that, then you need to charge about $1500 per case. That wouldn't be an amazing blockbuster, but it probably would be sustainable. If you could charge $15k/case then it would be a solidly profitable drug.

There are a few problems with those numbers. One is whether introducing an antibiotic would reduce the incidence rate. Obviously we would want it to, but that means fewer cases, and so you need to charge more per case. Also, what percentage of those cases are among people with insurance willing to pay those kinds of fees for treatment. If you end up treating people for a reduced charge or for free, then again there isn't much profit.

If some first world nation offered a bounty for a treatment that made up for these shortcomings I bet you'd see a determined effort to discover a new antibiotic.

You are an Idiot!
If a LOT of people start dying from bacterial infections you'll see new antibiotics developed.
How do you think that should/could work? Oh, it is like software development: requiremt, a stuff that kills bacteria. Solution: take this. Done.
Moron!
The problem today is that there isn't much public funding for antibiotics, and there isn't much demand for new ones.
The demand is huge, but finding one that "works different" than all the ones before, hence the bacteria are not immune is nearly impossible.
Sure, the few who need them REALLY need them, but stuff like MRSA is still fairly rare.
Rare compared to what? Death by car accidents? MRSA is the next big killer to man kind, it is just waiting to happen. You really have no clue at all, you annoy me, you make me angry!

http://www.cdc.gov/mrsa/tracki...
Ten year old news: http://www.webmd.com/skin-prob...

Note also that an average of one such accident per year

One? Are you joking? According to CDC’s WISQARS, there are about 14,000-19,000 nonfatal injuries stemming from accidental shootings per year in the U.S. That's in addition to ~500-600 unintentional deaths per year. Gun "enthusiasts" like to cite statistics on gun deaths since the rise of conceal/carry (which truly have a lot more to do with better trauma medicine), but they never want to talk about the number of shootings. If you really want to understand the extent of the damage of America's gun fetish, count the number of people who get hit by bullets.
http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/...

Of these about 20% are under the age of 25 and 10% under the age of 12.

Where do you get "an average of one such accident per year" unless you are focused strictly on injuries to your penis? Although I guess there is some evidence that gun owners have issues in that regard.

But yours is a common mistake people make when talking about guns, because they just don't know (or care) about the actual numbers. Much of the misdirected focus comes from the faulty research of the only "gun expert" that ever seems to appear in the media, the dishonest gun industry lobbyist and "researcher", John Lott whose book, "More Guns Less Crime" has been completely debunked.

[Full disclosure: I have been a gun owner for more than 4 decades. I've qualified 3 times as an expert marksman and twice as a sharpshooter, which is the second highest marksmanship designation (not counting the pro-marksman, etc. I support legal gun ownership and very strict gun control laws.]

During their lifetime, 19.3% of women and 1.7% of men have been raped*.
During the year preceding the study, 1.6% of women and a negligible number of men have been raped*.

During their lifetime, 43.9% of women and 23.4% of men experienced other forms of sexual violence, including being made to penetrate, sexual coercion, unwanted sexual contact, and non-contact unwanted sexual experiences.
During the year preceding the study, 5.5% of women and 5.1% of men experienced these other forms of sexual violence.

Female victims reported predominantly male perpetrators in all categories.
Male victims reported predominantly male perpetrators for rape, female perpetrators for being made to penetrate and sexual coercion, and a nearly even split for unwanted sexual contact and noncontact unwanted sexual experience.

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/previe...

*The US DOJ definition of rape: “The penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.”

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/...

The CDC report is poorly summarised there - rape only counts penetration, and ISTR that it excludes prison rape.

If you look at the 12-month figures (pp 18-9), you'll see that the number of men forced to penetrate is virtually the same as the number of female rape and attempted rape victims.

http://www.cdc.gov/plague/faq/...

How many cases of plague occur in the United States? Globally?

Plague was first introduced into the United States in 1900. Between 1900 and 2010, 999 confirmed or probable human plague cases occurred in the United States. Over 80% of United States plague cases have been the bubonic form. In recent decades, an average of 7 human plague cases are reported each year (range: 1-17 cases per year). Plague has occurred in people of all ages (infants up to age 96), though 50% of cases occur in people ages 12â"45. Worldwide, between 1,000 and 2,000 cases each year are reported to the World Health OrganizationExternal Web Site Icon (WHO), though the true number is likely much higher.

Don't be so panicky.
It's a threat on the same level heebie-jeebies or scurvy are. Probably a lot less.

The only Bacteria that are scary are anti-biotic resistant ones, all the rest can be cured with a dose of anti-biotic.

Don't be so dismissive.

I realize the plague is so dark ages and that we have antibiotics, but from 1990 until 2010 the overall mortality rate was 11%.

People still die even with antibiotics.

Yep.

* Across all types of violence, the majority of female victims reported that their perpetrators were male.

* Male rape victims and male victims of non-contact unwanted sexual experiences reported predominantly male perpetrators. Nearly half of stalking victimizations against males were also perpetrated by males. Perpetrators of other forms of violence against males were mostly female.

The CDC disagrees with you. If you'd like a source for that data, you'll have to ask Nephandus.

Why would you trust that data without a source, when its counter to biological plausibility, and common experience?

Here's a CDC data sheet.
Note that:
Nearly 1 in 5 (18.3%) women and 1 in 71 men (1.4%) reported experiencing rape at some time in their lives.

And

4.8% of men reported they were made to penetrate someone else at some time in their lives.

Since only the 4.8% can be women forcing sex on men, that's about 3.8 rapes of women by men for every forced penetration by a man. And I'd suspect a lot of the 4.8% would be forced penetration of another man.

You could be a carrier for months to years and be a vector without showing up positive in a test.

Just for the record, this is not correct. While it is true that there is an eclipse period during which testing is not useful (as indeed, there is an eclipse period for any viral infection), for HIV that window is currently very small.

See:

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Monitoring selected national HIV prevention and care objectives by using HIV surveillance dataâ"United States and 6 dependent areasâ"2011. HIV Surveillance Supplemental Report 2013;18(No. 5). http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/library/reports/ surveillance/. Published October 2013.
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Association of Public Health Laboratories. Laboratory Testing for the Diagnosis of HIV Infection: Updated Recommendations. Available at http://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/23447. Published June 27, 2014..

You could be a carrier for months to years and be a vector without showing up positive in a test.

Just for the record, this is not correct. While it is true that there is an eclipse period during which testing is not useful (as indeed, there is an eclipse period for any viral infection), for HIV that window is currently very small.

See:

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Monitoring selected national HIV prevention and care objectives by using HIV surveillance dataâ"United States and 6 dependent areasâ"2011. HIV Surveillance Supplemental Report 2013;18(No. 5). http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/library/reports/ surveillance/. Published October 2013.
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Association of Public Health Laboratories. Laboratory Testing for the Diagnosis of HIV Infection: Updated Recommendations. Available at http://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/23447. Published June 27, 2014..

We have spent a ton of money on prevent education and detection. And it has done a lot of good.

Infections are way down.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/new...

"our" methods have caused huge reductions in new infections. Your methods at work in places in subsaharan Africa(until recently at least) have led to ignorance, violence, and huge spikes in infections as people try to home remedy HIV away.

No, not compared to Russian Roulette, compared to the things typical people do in a typical day. Also, with cars, death isn't the only danger. Permanent injury, significant temporary injury, and massive property damage are also dangers.

Typical people live their entire lives without playing Russian Roulette even once.

I don't really know why this is hard. Most people don't do a lot of dangerous things in a day.

In fact, even in terms of death: 22% of people who die between the ages of 1 and 44 in the United States die from a motor vehicle accident. Most of the other itemized are not daily (eg. fire, except for firefighters; firearm, etc.).

http://www.cdc.gov/injury/over...

If there was a more deadly daily activity, it should show up on that list. I mostly see things that are more deadly, but not daily. I have to admit I'm not quite sure what to make of "falls" from the under-45 crowd.

There is evidence for human canine transmission of TB http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/artic... and dogs were kept in the Americas so the transmission path could have involved another animal in addition to seals.

Fatness is associated with Type 2 diabetes, not Type 1, aka Juvenile Diabetes. Genetic, not related to diet or calorie intake, and untreated leaves you skinny as a beanpole. Educate yourself, APK

Ok here's a nice little chart from the CDCthat shows that not only is ADHD diagnosis on the rise, but its also more common in some states than others. Unless there is some environmental factor (other than poor parenting) to consider, I would say that culture and poor parenting is a strong indication of an ADHD diagnosis. In fact, if you look at the states with some of the highest diagnoses, you'll see that they're southern and midwestern states. I grew up in the West and live in the South now and I definitely believe that the parenting here in the south is sub par.

Of course, that is obviously speculation on my part, but how do you explain such differences in ADHD in the country?

Yeah, I know what the allegation is. Where's the evidence? Where's the clinical studies?

According to most leading ADHD researchers, the actual prevalence of the disease is somewhere between 3% and 7%. (E.g. Russell Barkley).

According to the CDC, the frequency of diagnosis in the US is 11%.

That disparity alone is very good evidence that a large proportion (somewhere between 30% and 70%) of diagnoses of ADHD are incorrect.

People think that airborne means it wafts from pole to pole. No. Airborne means it travels short distances. Measles for example spreads by air - up to 2 hours. Generally in the same room.

The deadliest virus in the past 100 years was the 1918 Spanish Flu. 75 Million dead. Less than 7% that got sick died. Source Over 60% of the population got sick, and most that did die died from complications. Airborne is not super nasty. A toxicity of about 20% would in the US kill 20 Senators, almost 100 congressmen, and 2 Supreme Court Judges (possibly more, SCOTUS are old and fragile).

Twenty percent toxicity would destroy our civilization. The fears of airborne are true, but overblown,

Did you have reduced liver or renal function?

Here's a little tip:

Ketonic diets make excessive use of liver function to produce the ketone bodies that get substituted in cellular metabolism for glucose.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K...

While in normal, healthy people the levels of produced acetone and other biproducts of ketosis are well within the body's ability to safely process and eliminate, renal failure restricts the body's ability to eliminate even normal waste products, such as urea, from the blood. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...

Engaging in a diet that is known to increase the production rate of these compounds, while suffering from a disorder that either 1) affects the liver's ability to even create these bodies as an energy source to begin with, or 2) affects the body's ability to dispose of the resulting reactive waste compounds, is a no-brainer for being a bad idea.

In the first, you can starve to death while eating lots of fat, and in the second you pickle yourself and can severely damage already chronically affected vital organs. (Acetone, one of the metabolites of ketosis, is known to damage kidney function in high concentrations. Reduced renal function results in higher than normal syrum concentrations of metabolites, which would include the acetone produced during ketosis. Many people with impaired renal function are not aware of it.)

http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxfa...
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medline...

Since you may feel perfectly healthy, and have impaired renal function and not even know it, (especially when one considers the risks associated with being obese in relation to renal disorders-- http://jasn.asnjournals.org/co... -- when coupled with the reason why one would engage in a ketogenic diet to begin with) you could very well be making a hidden but malignant condition worse.

Besides, asking your health care provider before doing *ANYTHING* extreme is simply good medicine.

Since 'the incident' the police is knocking on doors of young couples living in the Fukushima area and in the fall out zones north east of it, telling the couples: " you know, you should consider to have no children" (Or move away to the far south or Hokkaido)

Can you actually show this, or is this just the latest of the tall tales making its rounds on the anti-nuclear blogosphere? And anyway, even if it did happen in some form, all it would show is that people are afraid and giving each other potentially poor advice. It doesn't show that they're at actual substantial risk of harm, otherwise you could go around telling everybody to stay indoors to prevent them from being run over by cars (you know, this we can actually show to happen).

In Chernobyl the death toll over all is estimated to be a million, roughly. /. posters claim it was 3 or 5 ...

Ugh, not that rag again. Yablokov's publication is a book, not a peer-reviewed scientific paper. It contains tons of errors and was translated and pushed onto the New York Academy of Sciences by known anti-nuclear crazies who aren't above outright falsehoods (like their assertions that Fukushima killed 15000 people in US in the initial 14 weeks after the accident, even though their data is trivially shown to have been manipulated and utterly bogus; Mangano is often seen publishing together with another crazie, Sherman, and they've even been torn a new one by an avid linear-no-threshold-supporting researcher). The Yablokov publication has since been criticized by the NYAS and they've distanced themselves from it. The short story is that the NYAS' reputation was co-opted as a vehicle to fluff up the credibility of an utterly bogus piece of non-scientific writing by anti-nuclear activists.

I witnessed 1986 about a few ten thousand ... it was news every day on TV. I really wonder how people in our days with straight face claim only a few people died.

Oh my, so if something's on TV, it is truth! Well fire the scientists then, obviously all we need to do to determine fact from fiction is to listen to the daily news cycle. Fox News will be pleased.

Luckily the initial disaster in Fukushima was far away from this. However the long term issues we only will know in 30 years ... plus.

Even assuming the fairly uncontended (mainly in anti-nuke cycles) linear-no-threshold dose response model, according to actual peer-reviewed studies, on average we'd expect ~250 excess deaths over the years with an upper bound of ~2500 (and that's assuming no evacuations). Was the accident harmless? Certainly not. Should TEPCO be made to compensate people for their troubles? Absolutely! But this fear mongering using junk science is in no way different to global-warming deniers and 9/11 truthers simply ignoring scientific facts to meet their political agendas. Do be like them.

and the other is requiring you by law to be a responsible adult and not partake in activities that have been proven to kill people while driving and to perform those activities at a safe time

Sounds like drinking and driving. True vehicular manslaughter.

In 2010, 10,228 people were killed in alcohol-impaired driving crashes, accounting for nearly one-third (31%) of all traffic-related deaths in the United States.1

source: http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehicl...

Back to my original point, Just having a law to tell people to stop doing something, even if it's enforced like DUI's, still won't prevent everyone from doing it. I think having a safer alternative, like this HUD display, is optimal to solve the problem. That's what technology is for, solving problems. Grumbling and complaing about people being on their phones won't solve anything.

(in western nations, it kills maybe a dozen)

The CDC estimates the range of annual deaths from influenza in the USA is 3,000 to 49,000.
http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/disease/us_flu-related_deaths.htm

Keep these numbers in mind for perspective whenever you read news stories of "outbreaks" and "epidemics".

http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/r...

Once every 20 years my ass. Average numbers don't convey a lot of information.

Averages about 1 outbreak per year if you want to define "outbreak" as "outbreak", unless you want to define it some other way. The current lab-confirmed numbers for this one are 953, with a death rate about 60%. 953 out of your "less than 4000 so far" number seems to be a hefty chunk of corpses.

People study this in federal labs, with little chance of financial gain, in order to prevent it from spreading further. Not as drug researchers for a big pharma company hoping for a giant bonus. And they die sometimes, as that link shows.

The incentive is not dying of Ebola. It seems coincidental that a drug is ready now. There have been drugs in the past, but didn't seem to do so well. I suppose it was a coincidence they happened to be ready at that time, other than they didn't do so well. So now we have something that responded to exactly 1 patient.

Sure looks like a conspiracy to me.

Number of Gay people - 2.3 % - http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/n...

Number of blind people - 0.3% - http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What...


I know it sucks to be whatever victim you are but do I have to pay for everything?

Is it illegal to abuse legally obtained drugs?

Um.... Yeah, it is.

Taking it in any way that is contrary to the written prescription is illegal.

As another user asked above, can you cite the law that would be broken?

http://www.cdc.gov/homeandrecr...

The above page, for example, discusess "seven state legislative strategies that have potential to impact prescription drug misuse, abuse and overdose," but none of these are about what the patient may do with medication.

I'm sick and tired of the notion that it's OK to pollute, as long as you don't pollute "too much."

200+ chemicals found in samples of people's blood: http://www.forbes.com/2010/01/...

200+ chemicals found in newborn's umbilical core blood: http://www.scientificamerican....

http://www.cdc.gov/exposurerep...

These chemicals by and large don't go away...and time after time, we find chemicals that were thought to be "safe"...aren't. When are we going to learn that? When are we going to require chemicals be considered dangerous until proven otherwise, instead of the present situation, where chemicals are only later shown to be dangerous once scientists and environmental groups collect a mountain of evidence?

Companies should not be permitted to profit from the sale of addictive substances for recreational purposes.

like tobacco in cigarettes?

or the 200 other ingredients in there to get you addicted?

The poster is saying what's typically said. You would think that selling a highly addictive substances for recreational purposes would make you rich and invincible, entire nations hopelessly enslaved by your product. Addict-zombie attack. But you'd be wrong.

Sometimes, the answer isn't the easy one. The lesson painfully learned from prohibition is that prohibition raises demand, not lowers it.

On the other hand, education and regulation, not out-and-out bans, really work. Tobacco smoking in the U.S. used to be around 50% in the Don Draper years. Now it's under 20 and still dropping. Tobacco companies are having to merge to maintain market share.

The difference is between people politely, but firmly, told to take their habit outside or into a (dirty) designated area or else you'll get a fine, and police breaking down doors and throwing flash-bombs that kill your grandma with a heart attack (because the Informant lied, and the Chief gave the green-light because the Politician wanted to go on the news that evening with pictures of drugs on the table.

Perhaps, but those are longevity statistics (and not correct per CDC figures). You are ignoring the odds of making it to 60, mortality statistics.

Average life expectancy of people born in 1930, 59.20.
Average life expectancy of people born in 1940, 63.62.
Average life expectancy of people born in 1950, 68.07.
Average life expectancy of people born in 1960, 69.89.
Average life expectancy of people born in 1970, 70.75.
Average life expectancy of people born in 1980, 73.88.
Average life expectancy of people born in 1990, 75.37.
Average life expectancy of people born in 2000, 76.86.

Average number of years of life remaining for those who were 60 in 1930, 15.24 (i.e., live to average of 75.24).
Average number of years of life remaining for those who were 60 in 1940, 15.91 (75.91)
Average number of years of life remaining for those who were 60 in 1950, 17.04 (77.04)
Average number of years of life remaining for those who were 60 in 1960, 17.71 (77.71)
Average number of years of life remaining for those who were 60 in 1970, 18.34 (78.34)
Average number of years of life remaining for those who were 60 in 1980, 20.02 (80.02)
Average number of years of life remaining for those who were 60 in 1990, 20.90 (80.90)
Average number of years of life remaining for those who were 60 in 2000, 21.55 (81.55)

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/n...

Whoa! Wait a minute who ever said anything about solving overpopulation. I'm just saying that from a career perspective caregiver can be rewarding. Also, to really be a caregiver you are going to probably have to be married with your partner working, unless you want to be one of the government dependents but then why are you asking about jobs.

However, I do have some issues with your points.

Food scarcity is normally not caused by society not being able to produce enough food. Well maybe we can't produce a enough meat for everyone to eat like a fat American, but we could meet the current worlds total caloric needs with some work. However, due to war, oppression, terrible government, stupidity, and callously choosing to say screw the poor I want double Steak we make that hard.

Energy scarcity: We have tons of Uranium and Thorium. If we could get off our asses and actually use it to build useful things like Modern power plants instead of bombs we might be able to have a sensible energy agenda.

Pollution Levels: The modern world needs steel and steel is dirty. Unless you want to go back to a pre-steel world we are going to have to put up with some pollution for the foreseeable future. But with good management we can limit the pollution.

Disease Susceptibility: People get sick. Always have always will. Poor people get sick more than rich people due to malnutrition or improper hygiene. Things are still better now than they were though. Maybe we should raise the standard of living in the rest of the world some.

Psychological Disorder: Always existed, society just killed people with this because they were "Possessed by the devil" before the enlightenment. I am not for a return to that idea even if it puts stress on society.

Political unrest: Come on wars are as central to human activity as breathing. As long as humans exist there will be war or at least arguments over something. If you think otherwise have fun in your utopia fantasy land. I welcome getting proven wrong.

Overpopulation in the Western World: Most of the western world is in demographic decline. (I'm assuming this is a predominantly western audience being English language and all.) The US and EU only skirt by with immigrants. So clearly we are not prolific reproducers anymore. Now for the rest of the world, they may have to tone down the reproducing, but unless we want to use that war thing to stop them I'm not sure how we could. And I'm not sure I can support a government that would go to war against the breeders it sounds to Nazi like to me.

Though in the end I agree with you. If we keep growing our population we will eventually run out of resources to support that population. In the end the only real answer is to get off this rock and colonize space. But that's not really an answer to the problem. It's just kicking it down the road for a really long time. (Universal Entropy and what not) Any other form of forced population control will require some form of world government. Otherwise the countries that don't comply will just swallow you up in a few generations.

Well, this should be kept in mind every time someone says "we've eradicated disease X, lets destroy the lab samples".

http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/artic...

Those death rates for coal contain illnesses from mining and transporting coal which is a bit unconnected to burning it for energy. In most situations, those outside related deaths or illnesses can be attributed to improperly following MSHA regulations.

Needless to say, neither your article or you have provided any evidence that coal is super toxic. It simply isn't. More people die and need health care related to car accidents per year than from coal. But lets look at the real numbers for a minute. According to Wikipedia, in 2006, we generated 1.991 trillionkwh a year in the US from coal. According to your article, we experience 15,000 deaths per trillionkwh a year from coal generation (mind you, it includes mining, transportation, and everything else involved). So 1.991*15000 comes out to 29,865 deaths a year attributed to our coal usage for electricity. According to the CDC, there were over 10k more suicides in 2011 (38,364) than deaths attributed to using coal as electricity. There were 4 times the amount of accidental deaths than coal (120,859 accidental deaths). More than double the number of deaths from Diabetes that from using coal to generate electricity (69,071). But lets assume every single coal death in the US is from heart disease which is the number one killer listed by the CDC (597,689). Deaths from coal would be only 4% of the total (29865/597,689) .

Again, coal is not some super toxic material and neither is the byproducts. You can check the math, and please feel free to do so.

the decision for that should be made by the mother. Which eliminates everything that is morally wrong with eugenics.

Almost all. For full fairness, the father should have a say too — if he is on the hook for 18-21 years of child support, he ought to be able to weight-in on whether to abort, for example.

And then, of course, there is the uncomfortable truth, that fetuses of a certain race are aborted much more often, than others. Something, the noisiest defenders of the procedure's legality — had they been self-consistent in their thought — would've called evidence of racism...

Used to be if a man drank over 21 drinks a week, he's a heavy drinker. About 14 for women. Now it's 8 a week for women, 15 for men.

http://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/faq...

Some say - don't drink at all.