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Outliers in both directions, but in the present case, not to the same extent.

...

One half of one percent of women go thru a period of anorexia. Of these only 5 – 10% die of their disorder within 10 years. Yet 35.7% of Americans suffer from obesity. Medical costs for obesity on average were $1,429 higher per person per year.

So the outliers aren't significant on the skinny side, but they are devastating on the fat side.

There are several fallacies in your argument. First, your source does not say "go through a period", it says "one in 200 American women suffers from anorexia", i.e 0.5% is the current risk, not the lifetime riks of ever having an episode of anorexia. Of those, 20% will eventually die of complications of their eating disorder. That's 1.4 million people. How is that "not sognificant"?

Going with a statistical life expectancy of ~70 years, we are talking about 20000 death per year. Compare this to 32000 traffic victims and 14000 murder victims a year. Consider how much the US spends on road safety and the criminal justice system, and tell me that it's not worth to try to tackle this problem.

The fact that there are worse problems in not a reason to ignore this one. As a society with limited resources, cost/benefit expectation should be a guide to our actions.

OK, how's this?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1615029/

They're saying that outcomes are recorded as fetal deaths in the U.S. which would be recorded as infant deaths in the U.S. Maybe.

http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA547ComparativeHealth.html

This isn't peer reviewed. In fact it's an advocacy organization.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db23.pdf

Their conclusion is, "The main cause of the United States’ high infant mortality rate when compared with Europe is the very high percentage of preterm births in the United States."

That makes sense. Of course, preterm births are associated with poor access to health care. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1449857/?report=abstract

It's possible that there is bias in reporting infant mortality in different countries. If I see a bunch of articles coming to that conclusion in reliable publications like AJPH, I'll believe it.

OK, how's this?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1615029/

http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA547ComparativeHealth.html

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db23.pdf

Further, YOU are the one who tried to claim that "eating carbs is eating fat".

Since you didn't seem to remember making the staetment, and think that I made the statement, I looked up 4 posts and found it was actually sirwired that made the statement. I pointed out that it was an illegitimate statement, and that was when you chimed in with obnoxious comments about not being obnoxious.

Outliers in both directions, but in the present case, not to the same extent.

The outliers in weight clearly favor the heavy side, and its a far tougher nut to crack that the anorexic who looked at a magazine. I suggest the researchers come up with a believable way to control the tendency towards overweight by changing pictures in a magazine. Then they would have something of true value.

One could even make the case that removing the skinny side of normal from the cultural images may push the tendency towards acceptance of more obesity. This would have a far greater effect on health care costs than anorexia.

One half of one percent of women go thru a period of anorexia. Of these only 5 – 10% die of their disorder within 10 years. Yet 35.7% of Americans suffer from obesity. Medical costs for obesity on average were $1,429 higher per person per year.

So the outliers aren't significant on the skinny side, but they are devastating on the fat side.

Comprehensive anorexia treatment costs about $120k/year, and the numbers I've read in recent papers show closer to 20% fatality rates, though when I've looked into the methodology used to create that number I saw a ton of guessing. I'm not saying anorexia is a bigger problem than obesity, but I am saying it's a huge, and expensive problem. It's certainly orders of magnitude more deadly than, for instance, terrorism. Glamorizing unhealthy body types has been linked to increased obesity as well as anorexia, too.

Again, I'm not advocating an action, just urging kneejerk posters on Slashdot to recognize that anorexia is an increasingly terrible problem faced by hundreds of thousands of women and some smaller number of men.

Outliers in both directions, but in the present case, not to the same extent.

The outliers in weight clearly favor the heavy side, and its a far tougher nut to crack that the anorexic who looked at a magazine. I suggest the researchers come up with a believable way to control the tendency towards overweight by changing pictures in a magazine. Then they would have something of true value.

One could even make the case that removing the skinny side of normal from the cultural images may push the tendency towards acceptance of more obesity. This would have a far greater effect on health care costs than anorexia.

One half of one percent of women go thru a period of anorexia. Of these only 5 – 10% die of their disorder within 10 years. Yet 35.7% of Americans suffer from obesity. Medical costs for obesity on average were $1,429 higher per person per year.

So the outliers aren't significant on the skinny side, but they are devastating on the fat side.

OK, how about these quacks at the CDC -- http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/injury.htm ??

The health cost of 20.000 dead is incalcuable - vanished in minutes, not even a chance to say good bye. There is a health cost of two oil refineries and a chemical plant burning uncontrolled for a days. Thousands of tons of benzene must have contaminated the area. There were problemes with supply of naphta, benzene, xylene and toluol (all important to plastics and chemical industry) worldwide after the earthquake and tsunami brought down a dozen chemical plants or so.

Carcinogenic effects of benzene are known to require mere micrograms. You can't smell it, you can't see it, taste it or detect it in any way not requiring major analytical equipment in those quantities. There is no Geiger Counter for organic molecules and no Star Trek tricorder will tell you were some minute trace of the stuff is. Radioactivity, for all its dangers, is at least easy and very reliable to detect, at levels that are not dangerous (you can detect differences in the level of natural background radiation).

Sure, it's not cancer unless it's caused by radioactivity. But have a look at cancer mortality in the USA and tell me why Mississippi, Louisiana or Delaware haven't been evacuated despite cancer mortality being 12% higher than US national average and 25% higher than in states like New Mexico, Arizona or Colorado? (Even here I'm treating the two lowest numbers in Utah and Hawaii, as well as the two highest in Kentucky and West Virginia, as outliers.)

[sarcasm]What is the health cost of not evacuating everyone to Hawaii?[/sarcasm]

But if they really want to reduce child deaths they should maybe look at other causes first, since this cause seems to be relatively insignificant compared to other causes. Of course it's easier to raise a "hidden" tax than to use actual tax money to invest in health care instead of say military.

One of our installers ran over and killed his 3 year old just two weeks ago. It would have been nice to have a camera, as th e child darted out of the house as the father was backing out. I know another fellow who killed his daughter that way thirty years ago.

I have a back up camera installed on my RV, along with a fresnel lens, and west coast mirrors. The back up camera is so inexpensive that it seems a crime to not require them. And I'm not even a safety first person

But here we are in 21st century America, where a no brainer like a requirement for backup cameras becomes a political issue like taxes. You've said your part, maybe next up will likely be someone saying that if people can't control their children, then don't make ME pay for it! I think that if we tried to mandate headlights today, someone would be complaining about "Those Damn socialists telling us how we're supposed to outfit our cars!"

But if they really want to reduce child deaths they should maybe look at other causes first, since this cause seems to be relatively insignificant compared to other causes. Of course it's easier to raise a "hidden" tax than to use actual tax money to invest in health care instead of say military. Or maybe some camera manufacturer has connections with some politician. Or maybe both. Or maybe I'm just paranoid.

On a related topic, many cars have a kind of radar which beeps when the back of the car is getting too close to an object (like a wall or a pole). Do these work with kids too? I would assume they are cheaper than cameras. Plus, they have the considerable advantage that they do not require visual attention, unlike the camera feedback.

Immunisation caused autism. Science FTW!

Starting on the day of birth, happy parents in hospitals everywhere give their newborn their first shot. For Hepatitis B. By age of six months, scared parents everywhere (or intelligent depending on how you are brainwashed- and we all are) give their children 6 vaccines. By age 2, they receive 27. The study proves nothing- except maybe 30% of the helpless kids who get shoved into the machine that sounds like a firing squad might get medical exemptions. http://www2a.cdc.gov/nip/kidstuff/newscheduler_le/schedule.asp I received 7 of these things ("shots") in my entire life and I don't know anyone who got any of the diseases I was vaccinated for. My point is not that vaccines might be effective (though I have yet to see a study that was not sponsored by money from people and organisations with huge conflicts of interest)- it's that the amount of vaccines in such intense combinations at such early ages- with adjuvants that are known neurotoxins- must raise questions in your head. Please do not blindly accept paid-for "scientific proof" as actual proof. If you hold off until the immune system is able to utilize these agents effectively they might work and fewer would be "required." Do a titre at the end of getting 1 shot per disease. If sufficient antibodies exist, as theory goes, no more shots would be necessary... Science FTW!

The idea behind methadone is that you're not supposed to keep using it.

No, it's not.

You use it when detoxing to gradually step down, but surprise surprise, heroin addicts don't use it as intended.

There are two main uses of methadone. One is, as you describe, for detoxification. The other is for long-term maintenance (see, e.g., this CDC fact sheet.)

Since the info above was informative, here are a few other statistics that interest me and help put minority issues into perspective. They're at best tangentially related to TFA, though.

There are perhaps 100,000 furries in the US, or around 1 in 3000 people. [Furries at a glance: the majority are young white men; they're pretty much evenly split between hetero and homosexual, with many at varying degrees of bisexuality; very few own fursuits; to be clear, furries primarily have an interest in anthropomorphic characters, so "it's not about sex" (though as always it can be).]

30% of those over 24 in the US have a bachelor's degree. Only 3% have doctorates or professional degrees.

Around 25% of all people in Swaziland have HIV/AIDS. The number jumps to over 50% for women 25-29. [Yes, this is unbelievably tragic.] Around 0.4% of the US population has HIV/AIDS, though around 20% of men who have sex with men do (accounting for around half of all cases; receptive anal sex spreads it more quickly than any other common sex practice; interestingly, fellatio is almost entirely safe in this regard; condoms reduce transmission rates by only ~80%, depending on specifics).

Around 1% of the US population is some variety of Native American. Around 15% are poor.

I'm not sure, but that claim that this is the leading cause of death in America seems a bit, uhm, off. I suspect there are some broad qualifications to that statement, like leading cause of preventable deaths?..

Interesting it didn't make this CDC list of causes of death: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/lcod.htm

From the report:

Heart disease: 599,413
Cancer: 567,628
Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 137,353
Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 128,842
Accidents (unintentional injuries): 118,021
Alzheimer's disease: 79,003
Diabetes: 68,705
Influenza and Pneumonia: 53,692
Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 48,935
Intentional self-harm (suicide): 36,909

Death rates:
http://chickenpox.emedtv.com/chickenpox/adult-chickenpox-p2.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chickenpox

Time limited protection, Search on "Booster":
http://www.chop.edu/service/vaccine-education-center/a-look-at-each-vaccine/varicella-chickenpox-vaccine.html The booster shots are now recommended because the vaccine failed after a half dozen years. Chance of death due to High School Football (for those exposed): 1.21:100000
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC155424/table/T5/
Chance of death due to childhood Chicken Pox (for those exposed):
http://www.cdc.gov/chickenpox/surveillance.html

A small amount of math has to be used on the Chicken pox number. Of the 4 million people a year that catch chicken pox 5% of them are adults so 4 million must be reduced to 3,800,000. 55% of the deaths are in adults, so the 100-150 (lets just go with the worst number of 150) must be reduced to 67.5.

That leaves you with 1.18:100000. Just a bit less than High School Football.

Of course, this doesn't take into account what will happen when the vaccine wears off for the adult population where the chance of death is: 27.5:100000.

I wish you hadn't posted AC, but hopefully you continue to monitor this thread and see this reply.

You might want to check with your doctor to make sure you aren't mistaken, and to make sure your doctor is actually following the recommended schedule. You can see the CDCs suggested schedule here:
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/spec-grps/infants/downloads/parent-ver-sch-0-6yrs.pdf

Notice that in the first 18 months, there are 25 listed vaccinations. Also notice that Influenza has a note saying that you should get 2 injections the first time. That makes 26. Hep A also says you should get a second vaccination 6 to 18 months later, so if you got your first one at 12 months, you could receive the 2nd one as early as 18 months, so that would be 27.

Also note that just because there are 27 vaccinations here, that doesn't necessarily mean 27 physical injections. There are several combined vaccines, which give multiple vaccines in one injection. For instance, DTaP, IPV, and HepB can be done in one injection, or they can be given separately. It's going to vary by doctor. There are several other combined vaccine possibilities. Furthermore, at least one of the vaccines (possible 2, I don't recall) that my daughter (also 18 months) received was given orally.

from this siteyes this is hardly the world leader in medical news but i trust it to not be completely false.

At first, respiratory symptoms may be relatively mild. They may include a scratchy sore throat, a burning sensation in the chest, a dry cough, and a runny nose. Later, the cough can become severe and bring up phlegm (sputum). The skin may be warm and flushed, especially on the face. The mouth and throat may redden, the eyes may water, and the whites of the eyes may become bloodshot. People, especially children, may have nausea and vomiting. A few people lose their sense of smell for a few days or weeks. Rarely, the loss is permanent.

The most common complication of influenza is pneumonia, which can be viral, bacterial, or both. In viral pneumonia, the influenza virus itself spreads into the lungs. In bacterial pneumonia, unrelated bacteria (such as pneumococci or staphylococci) attack the person's weakened defenses. With either, people may have a worsened cough, difficulty breathing, persistent or recurring fever, and sometimes blood or pus in the sputum. Pneumonia is more common among older people and among people with a heart or lung disorder. In long-term care facilities, as many as 7% of older people who develop influenza have to be hospitalized, and 1 to 4% die. Younger people with a chronic disorder are also at risk of developing severe complications.

(emphasis mine)

you're probably correct on the 41,000 being incorrect, however i'd also hardly call it a "toy gun"
According to the CDC

CDC estimates that from the 1976-1977 season to the 2006-2007 flu season, flu-associated deaths ranged from a low of about 3,000 to a high of about 49,000 people.

Note: these estimates are deaths where seasonal influenza was likely a contributing factor

According to the anti-vax crowd, you are miscounting. Many injections are "multi-valent" now days (1 injection contains protiens coded for what would have been multiple vaccinations). Also, some like RotV are oral suspensions...

Here's a pointer to the current CDC recommendations... http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/recs/schedules/downloads/child/0-6yrs-schedule-pr.pdf

And that's why US children no longer get a smallpox or polio vaccine. When the disease has been eradicated, we don't vaccinate against it anymore.

Polio vaccine is not eradicated. It's still endemic in south Asia and Nigeria. And according to the CDC, children in the US are still vaccinated against polio (which makes sense, since it's not eradicated).

I didn't say that polio has been eradicated globally. But the cdc says, "OPV has not been used in the United States since 2000 but is still used in many parts of the world."

I suppose I mistook them not using the oral version, for not using any of it. Although, usually, if you're from the US, and you're heading to a place where polio is still common, you will get a new vaccination.

Correlation is not causation.

Other studies indicate...

The infant mortality rate for non-Hispanic black women was 2.4 times the rate for non-Hispanic white women. Rates were also elevated for Puerto Rican and American Indian or Alaska Native women.
Increases in preterm birth and preterm-related infant mortality account for much of the lack of decline in the United States infant mortality rate from 2000 to 2005.

Seems to me that it's related to lack of access to healthcare than anything like vaccines. If I were to be generous, maybe it's giving vaccines to pre-term infants on the full-term infant schedule (perhaps we should be relying on herd immunity intially and delay vaccines for pre-term babies to match with their gestational age instead)... However who knows, unles syou do a study...

However, if you want to hear a rant about this topic, you can look here. I guess you can find anything on the internet these days (pro and con)....

If you bothered to look, below the picture is a citation to CDC data, including a breakdown of infant mortality rate in the published peer-reviewed data.

And nowhere in the CDC page is it specified which maladies "all other causes" applies to.

I'm basing this off of my Masters Degree in Public Health and epidemiology classes.

What does that have to do with the fact you're presenting an assumption as fact, without empirical data to back it? As an academic, I would think you would know better than to make claims without having the dataset to back them. Guess there's more to education than the piece of paper you get at the end, eh?

it's standard convention to add uncommon diseases to the catch-all "All Other Causes" heading defined as :

Defined as all causes of death other than all vascular disease, all cancer, all respiratory disease, all infectious disease, all conditions arising near the start of life, and all injury. Includes pneumonia, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, peptic ulcer, intestinal obstruction, hernia, liver cirrhosis, gallbladder disease, malnutrition, anaemia, obstetric (ie, maternal) causes of death, and all causes of death that are ill-defined.

WHO codes: ICD-10 AAA less all of: D00-D489, J03-J069, I00-I99, C00-C97, J40-J989, V01-Y899, A00-A99, B00-B99, J00-J029, J10-J118, J20-J22, L00-L089 or P00-Q999; ICD-7, ICD-8 and ICD-9 codes defined similarly.

"all causes of death that are ill-defined."

Such as... vaccine related deaths, perhaps? You're not doing yourself any favors by continuing to argue your point with vagaries, you know.

Back to the original topic, you think that somewhere buried in this heading is a pile of dead babies from vaccines, that somehow the entire health community has missed?

Unlike some people, I prefer to avoid making assumption; much to the contrary, I like to base my opinion and decisions off facts and logic. The fact is, you've yet to provide a single piece of evidence that actually supports your claim that there is no such thing as vaccination-related death, so logically, I have no cause to believe a word you say.

Just because I think you're full of it does not imply or infer any other opinion on any other topic; it just means I think you're full of it.

But hey, don't let that keep you from having a great day!

And people have died from bad batches of apple juice and lettuce, are you going to stop drinking juice and eating salads now as well?

While the main article read like an angry conspiracy theorist ("Oh no, the author of an article against vaccines actually believes what he is publishing!"), one of the comments actually did provide useful data. Mortality rates over time as more infant vaccines were introduced in the US. The complexities of data mining history make it so you cannot get clean answers about any single variable, but consistent reporting standards do provide a much more trustworthy data set than comparing the different definitions of "live birth" across continents.

36,000 people (on average) die each year because of influenza. It is plenty deadly.

citation

Flu isn't dangerous? News to the CDC

If the statement that 26 vaccines are required in the US didn't set off your bullshit detector, it must be broken. If the article opens with such an obvious lie, the likelihood that any of the rest of it contains anything factual is probably near zero.

This is the internet. You don't have to believe everything you read. You can actually look stuff up.

Try this: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/recs/schedules/child-schedule.htm#parents

Having a "flu" is not like having a cold. Flu can and does kill children and the elderly. The flu shot is very safe because it contains no live viruses. The only problem is in people allergic to eggs.

Having unvaccinated children come in liability issue.

http://www.cdc.gov/flu/keyfacts.htm

btw: If you had said no chickenpox vaccine I would have agreed with you.

Touché

Yup, you're correct. Both homicides and voilent crimes have dropped about 2000 and remained steady more or less.

Flash mobs initiated through text messaging technology, social media, and instant real-time media definitely warp a sense of perspective. Including my own.

Touché

Yup, you're correct. Both homicides and voilent crimes have dropped about 2000 and remained steady more or less.

Flash mobs initiated through text messaging technology, social media, and instant real-time media definitely warp a sense of perspective. Including my own.

Oh, we're doing an experiment, all right. Unfortunately, if it pans out the way the vast majority of the scientific community, the military, the disease control folks and the insurance industry thinks it will, we're all pretty much screwed.

In other words, all the folks whose job it is to make predictions about what could go wrong and prepare for those things think that we're running such an experiment, and that it won't end well.

Maybe not.

But consider this: the folks whose job it is to make predictions tend to think that the impact will be felt sooner, rather than later. Folks like those who work in the Pentagon and the CDC, not to mention an overwhelming majority of the world's scientists.

Maybe not.

But consider this: the folks whose job it is to make predictions tend to think that the impact will be felt sooner, rather than later. Folks like those who work in the Pentagon and the CDC, not to mention an overwhelming majority of the world's scientists.

So far things seem to be looking good for U.S.
Pneumonia and Influenza (P&I) Mortality Surveillance:
http://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/weeklyarchives2011-2012/bigpi01.htm

Full CDC Flu web page
Warning very complex. Understand statistics and medical terminology, and expect to spend hours.
http://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/

So far things seem to be looking good for U.S.
Pneumonia and Influenza (P&I) Mortality Surveillance:
http://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/weeklyarchives2011-2012/bigpi01.htm

Full CDC Flu web page
Warning very complex. Understand statistics and medical terminology, and expect to spend hours.
http://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/

Death due to influenza (or pneumonia) varies seasonally but tends to be in the 7% range (of all death types). (Probably only 2% to 8% of those P&I deaths are actually one of the major strains of influenza - also from the CDC). Serious adverse reactions to a flu vaccine is typically less than 20 per 1,000,000. Death is a very small subset of serious adverse reactions.

I'm not going to walk the numbers all the way to apples and apples because it should be obvious from here.

If you read the links I posted as a reply to myself (CDC)... over the past 30 years, calorie intake has increased by 335 calories/day for women and 168 calories a day for men. That's 2lbs/month.

People are fat because they eat too much. Sorry it's not more complicated than that.

that doesn't quite justify taking in 3x your requirements

No need to exaggerate when reality does just fine... In the past 30 years, caloric intake has increased by aprox 200 calories (source source)

Doesn't sound like a lot.. but if you consume 200 calories more than you need, you'll gain 2lbs in a month.

200 calories easily adds up to obesity.

didn't mean, "IMO people are eating more". meant, IMO that's the cause. People are definitely eating more than they used to.

Just another case of patriotic fervour and artificial fear being used to paint the world as a scarier and more dangerous place than I believe it is.

OK so reassure us. Tell us why it's not possible for terrorists to deploy these same said techniques against populations.

Your comment implies that you know things people in the fields of microbiology and law enforcement aren't aware of or are thinking about wrongly, since they spend a lot of time worrying about just this topic:

http://armscontrolcenter.org/policy/biochem/scientists_working_group/

http://www.spusa.org/pubs/peace_security/biologicalstudies/biostudies_interviews.html

http://www.cdc.gov/ncpdcid/dbpr/about.html/

Sorry but the you let the terrorist win meme is being strongly misapplied in this case given the potential downside.

Don't get me wrong, terrorists could kill a few thousand people a year in the US and I wouldn't approve the curtailment of one civil liberty one iota as a response.

But the level of destruction we're talking about here is unsurvivable, both as a nation and as for all intents and purposes as a species .

Have you ever considered what would be the fate of those left behind if 2/3 of the population just disappeared? Do you really think the other 1/3 would be able to fill the jobs, understand the technology they're left with so as to prevent nuclear meltdowns, keep the lights and all the safety systems that are at all the labs and facilities going?

Security isn't designed to keep going unmanned indefinitely. The remaining population would be subject to repeated Chernobyls , release of every kind of pathogen and pollutant into the environment, etc. etc.

Sorry but the first organizing principle of any society is mere brute survival. After that comes civil liberties and civil society. If we have constructed a civil society which permits a self-inflicted death sentence to be imposed by the will of just a few individuals, then our civil society has failed to keep up with the changing technological landscape. This has to be categorized as failure of civil society through refusal to face reality. Failure at the hands of just another form of religious fundamentalism if you think about it.

On average more than 3 children are killed by automobiles each day in the USA. Let's not get distracted away from efforts to make automobiles safer.

I think a better comparison would be deaths (or injuries) compared to prevalence of the items in question. Of the 300,000,000 people in the US, only a small fraction live in an environment with access to rare earth magnets. But most, if not all, live in an environment where there are poisonous substances. Not to mention that according to the CDC, the overwhelming number of non-intentional poisonings are drug overdoses.

In 2007, 93 percent of unintentional poisoning deaths were caused by drugs. Opioid pain medications, such as methadone, hydrocodone, or oxycodone, were most commonly involved, followed by cocaine and heroin.

http://www.cdc.gov/homeandrecreationalsafety/poisoning/poisoning-factsheet.htm

I'm not certain that we're talking about the same class of problems here.

10 times more likely is still risky. The other issues is that for someone who doesn't like having beliefs pushed onto him, he had no problem forcing his second hand smoke onto others.

Also, you act like lung cancers is the only thing about smoking that could limit his life. Just smoking lowers you life expectancy even if you don't get lung cancer. It also damages your heart, mouth, throat, spinal tissue, and causes a variety of other ailments.

http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/health_effects/effects_cig_smoking/

smoking takes 18 years of a mans life expectancy.
Any smoker who says they 'enjoy it' is talking about satisfying an addictive urge.'

"Accidents (Unintentional Injuries)" are the fifth leading cause of death in the United States, according to the Center for Disease Control's death statistics for the year 2007 (which is the latest final report compiled)... and that includes unintentional injuries of all sorts from any occurrence. And that is only 5.1% of all deaths in the United States. Your information is incorrect, sir.

Nah, we just have to find blind corners of human civilization that nobody cares about. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemala_syphilis_experiment , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_syphilis_experiment

To do this in todays times... Guantanamo anyone?

Not too off the mark. Prior trials on HIV prevention have been done on high risk populations in Thailand and Botswana. And these are studies sponsored by the CDC, not a rogue evil scientist as with the Guatemala experiments (whom, it should be noted, had absolutely no oversight even though he was using US tax dollars as these checks weren't required back then).

http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/prep/resources/factsheets/pdf/prep.pdf

Overseas trials do bring up a whole host of ethical concerns (especially when dealing with populations that have little or no access to healthcare - making participation in a trial perhaps the only way to see a real doctor). This is a real issue because usually the control population gets "standard of care" which is very different in the US vs the developing world. What's even shadier is that there have been allegations of drug companies secretly hiring shady doctors in the third world to enroll patients in highly risky studies that would never be approved in the US, and the patients often don't even know they were in an experimental study, they thought they were getting a proven treatment.

At least, with the CDC trials, one can be assured that the participants are actually volunteers who gave explicit consent and had the risks explained to them (unlike those Guatemalan prisoners who had no choice), that the trial protocol passed review by external ethics boards both in the US and by the local governmental authority (again, unlike Guatemala where outside of a few prison officials the local gov't had no idea what was going on). Not that these are fool-proof checks in countries with unstable or nonexistent public health infrastructures and highly corrupt officials, but at least it's something.

That is factually wrong.

Gay and bisexual men remain the population most heavily affected by HIV in the United States. CDC estimates MSM represent approximately 2% of the US population, but accounted for more than 50% of all new HIV infections annually from 2006 to 2009 –56% in 2006 (27,000), 58% in 2007 (32,300), 56% in 2008 (26,900) and 61% (29,300) in 2009.

Source

In my opinion, vaccinating is at least as risky as not vaccinating, based on mainstream sources. (I'm not going to get into the herd immunity discussion). The fact that vaccines can have serious side effects is not disputed by anyone. I wasn't vague at all; I cited a the Canadian public health website and the CDC website. Take a look for yourself. I'll reprint my post below which uses measles as the example.

"Between 2002 and 2010, a total of 327 confirmed cases of measles were reported in Canada".
That's 327 cases in 8 years. "1 of every 1,000 reported cases" have serious complications, 1 in 3000 resulting in death. Canada's population is about 34 million.

http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/im/vpd-mev/measles-eng.php

And the risks of vaccines, according to the CDC website:

Yes, it's almost like widespread vaccination programs mean the disease is not epidemic.

From the CDC:

Before measles vaccine was licensed in 1963, an average of 400,000 measles cases were reported each year in the United States (8). However, because virtually all children acquired measles, the number of cases probably approached 3.5 million per year (i.e., an entire birth cohort).

Moderate Problems
Seizure (jerking or staring) caused by fever (about 1 out of 3,000 doses)
Temporary pain and stiffness in the joints, mostly in teenage or adult women (up to 1 out of 4)
Temporary low platelet count, which can cause a bleeding disorder (about 1 out of 30,000 doses)

Wow, it's almost like these risks are utterly minor compared to you know - death due to complications from getting measles.

Severe Problems (Very Rare)
Serious allergic reaction (less than 1 out of a million doses)

Several other severe problems have been known to occur after a child gets MMR vaccine. But this happens so rarely, experts cannot be sure whether they are caused by the vaccine or not. These include:
Deafness
Long-term seizures, coma, or lowered consciousness
Permanent brain damage

And all of these are so rare, no one's even sure if it's the vaccine that causes it!

You don't want to get into the herd immunity discussion, yet the only reason you can get away with not vaccinating is because of herd immunity.

http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/page/water-treatment.htm

"Crystalline Iodine (found at some chemical companies and sporting goods stores) First make a saturated solution and then measure your own dose to add to water. The crystalline form stores well indefinitely and new batches of the saturated solution can be made from a small amount of crystals each time you take a trip".

The symptoms of heroin withdrawal are analogous to that of a bad flu.

According to the CDC, seasonal flu kills somewhere between 3,000 and 49,000 people each year. I wouldn't call that an unremarkable number, even if the truth is on the low end of that estimate.

Now that I've gotten that out of my system, I would like to reiterate that my argument against heroin is less about the effects on the user than about the effect the user has on society-at-large when they run out of money to support their habit. Robbing, killing, and other violent and antisocial tendencies work against this particular drug's fight for legality.

What We Have to Say About Legalizing Alcohol

By: Gil Kerlikowske

When the President took office, he directed all of his policymakers to develop policies based on science and research, not ideology or politics. So our concern about alcohol is based on what the science tells us about the drug's effects.

According to scientists at the National Institutes of Health- the world's largest source of drug abuse research - alcohol use is associated with addiction, sleep disorders, increased risk for cancer, and motor vehicle accidents. We know from an array of treatment admission information and Federal data that alcohol use is a significant source for voluntary drug treatment admissions and visits to emergency rooms. Studies also reveal that binge drinking alcohol remains common on college campuses, raising serious concerns about what this means for public health – especially among young people who use the drug because research shows their brains continue to develop well into their 20's. Simply put, it is not a benign drug.

Like many, we are interested in the potential alcohol may have in lowering the risk of coronary heart disease for individuals. That is why we ardently support ongoing research into determining what components of alcohol can be used as medicine. To date, however, neither the FDA nor the Institute of Medicine have found alcohol consumption to meet the modern standard for safe or effective medicine for any condition.

As a former police chief, I recognize we are not going to arrest our way out of the problem. We also recognize that legalizing alcohol would not provide the answer to any of the health, social, youth education, criminal justice, and community quality of life challenges associated with drug use.

That is why the President's National Drug Control Strategy is balanced and comprehensive, emphasizing prevention and treatment while at the same time supporting innovative law enforcement efforts that protect public safety and disrupt the supply of drugs entering our communities. Preventing drug use is the most cost-effective way to reduce drug use and its consequences in America. And, as we've seen in our work through community coalitions across the country, this approach works in making communities healthier and safer. We're also focused on expanding access to drug treatment for addicts. Treatment works. In fact, millions of Americans are in successful recovery for drug and alcoholism today. And through our work with innovative drug courts across the Nation, we are improving our criminal justice system to divert non-violent offenders into treatment.

Our commitment to a balanced approach to drug control is real. This last fiscal year alone, the Federal Government spent over $10 billion on drug education and treatment programs compared to just over $9 billion on drug related law enforcement in the U.S.

Thank you for making your voice heard. I encourage you to take a moment to read about the President's approach to drug control to learn more.

I did see the link to the original CDC article concerning 'zombie preparedness' in the summary but didn't see one to the follow up article where they actually prepared a novella concerning the topic:Preparedness 101: Zombie Pandemic, it's not World War Z, but it's fairly entertaining never the less.