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but most of those diseases are probably preventable by good nutrition and good lifestyle choices.

False. Personal behavior is only a small factor in health according to CDC research. The vast majority of your health is affected by things like the kind of environment you live in (do your have parks? Do you live near a freeway and pollution? and so on).

Dr. Anthony Iton and colleagues from Alameda County, CA cite research (longer presentation here) that indicates genes and access to health care account for about 30% of health outcomes. Wealth has a large impact on health outcomes. Essentially, poor health is more a problem of disparity and discrimination than anything else.

Strictly speaking, a lot of things are "simply not needed" and result in at least as many deaths as can be attributed to non-criminal firearm activity. (The exclusion is there because criminals can get guns if they want them.)

However, the last time I was in Australia, it was still legal to drink, smoke, and eat junk food. Yet somehow these things and others (like other sports) that result in death and reduced life span somehow never seem to be the target of calls for bans.

To put it in perspective, in the U.S. in 2007:

Firarm deaths accounted for 10.2 of 100,000. Homicide was the 15th leading cause of death, and keep in mind that not all of them are committed with guns.

5.67 per 100000 were firearms-inflicted suicides. I would argue that someone intent on committing suicide will find a way.

4.13 per 100000 were homicides committed with a firearm. I would argue that someone intent on having a gun illegally will do so. The statistic does not break down lawful use.

That leaves 0.4 per 100000 accidents with firearms.

Now consider these stats:

The #1 (25.4%, 204.3/100K) cause of death was heart disease (where's the junk food ban?).

The #2 (23.2%, 186.6/100K) cause was cancer and #4 (5.3%, 42.4/100K) was chronic lower respiratory disease (where's the national smoking ban?)

The #5 (5.1%, 41.0/100K) cause was accidents (where's the ban on ladders, cars, skydiving, contact sports, etc)?

In the U.S. you are individually more likely to die from the 14 top causes of death, assuming that all homicides were from firearms.

Yet, somehow firearms bans get more support than bans on alcohol, cigarettes, and junk food, all of which have documented high costs to society.

According to the CDC Mortality database, in 2006, there were 30,986 deaths by firearm. Of these:

• 642 were listed as unintentional
  • 107 by handgun
  • 73 by rifle, shotgun, or other larger firearm discharge
  • 462 unspecified)
• 16,883 were listed as suicide
  • 3,655 by handgun
  • 2758 by rifle, shotgun, or other larger firearm discharge
  • 10,470 unspecified
• 12,791 were listed as homicide
  • 997 by handgun
  • 768 by rifle, shotgun, or other larger firearm discharge
  • 11,026 unspecified
• 361 were listed as legal intervention/operations of war (not broken down by type)
• 220 were listed as undetermined
  • 26 by handgun
  • 23 by rifle, shotgun, or other larger firearm discharge
  • 171 unspecified

  It's not as thorough as we'd like, as these are based on people more concerned with saving a life, and bullet trauma is, for the most part, the same from wound to wound, just varying with degree of damage. Someone killed by a .22 Long and someone else killed by a .50AE will both end up listed as handgun, if anything. But the purposes are fairly clear, and roughly in line with what one would expect. I included the breakdown only because someone would likely ask about it.

  Anyone that would like to take issue with the suicide numbers should look at Japan, where firearms are essentially forbidden, and where firearm homicide rates are extremely low. The suicide rate is still roughly 2.5 times more than that of the United States. Lacking firearms, they turn to hanging, gas, and especially stepping in front of trains.

  For anyone else that would like to look them up, I sorted by Injury Intent, Cause of death, and Age Group, and used the following ICD-10 codes:

  U01.4 (Terrorism involving firearms), W32 (Handgun discharge), W33 (Rifle, shotgun and larger firearm discharge), W34 (Discharge from other and unspecified firearms), X72 (Intentional self-harm by handgun discharge), X73 (Intentional self-harm by rifle, shotgun and larger firearm discharge), X74 (Intentional self-harm by other and unspecified firearm discharge), X93 (Assault by handgun discharge), X94 (Assault by rifle, shotgun and larger firearm discharge), X95 (Assault by other and unspecified firearm discharge), Y22 (Handgun discharge, undetermined intent), Y23 (Rifle, shotgun and larger firearm discharge, undetermined intent), Y24 (Other and unspecified firearm discharge, undetermined intent), Y35.0 (Legal intervention involving firearm discharge), Y36.4 (War operations involving firearm discharge and other forms of conventional warfare)

There are about 75,000 gun deaths a year

Your number is nearly three times higher than reality but then the gun-grabbers never have let the facts get in the way of a bad argument. If you are wondering, they show 12,632 firearm homicides in 2007 along with 17,352 suicides. I'll let you perform the addition operation -- you'll note it's substantially less than 75,000.

That outnumbers the cases of self-defense by about 10 to 1

Where you'd pull the 7,500 cases of self-defense from? The same void that you pulled the number of deaths from?

Notice the Supreme Court didn't give you a right to carry a gun in their courtroom.

Of course they didn't. All they said was that outright gun bans aren't compatible with the 2nd amendment. Sorry if that notion bothers you.

"it might be foolish to assume that the players have the same rate of infection as their countrymen ... On the other hand, having more Toxo-infected people around you at a young age might help your development as a player. Second, some studies have shown that those infected with Toxo have slower reaction times on certain tests than matched controls"

The last part clinches it for me. Toxo infection does NOT confer enhanced motor skills or athletic ability. Quite the contrary. Perhaps the preceding sentence is an influence, but that isn't easy to determine. And toxoplasmosis is awful. My best friend cauaght it from her parakeet, or maybe the cat, when she was 11 years old, and she was yellow and jaundicy and sickly for years, even with treatment. The CDC http://www.cdc.gov/toxoplasmosis/ comments that it is the 3rd highest cause of food-related deaths in the US.

Disease Control: http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/surveillance/basic.htm. No, 2/3 of Americans do NOT have STDs. My friend, THAT is bullshit.

You say that as if the scale doesn't matter. It may not matter in a hypothetical happyland where results and not intentions matter scale is pretty damn important.

Yes, it doesn't matter. That is because you are failing to put it into perspective. According to the CDC (pdf) the number one cause of unintentional death is motor vehicle accidents. So lets keep in the meme of the antidote I presented earlier and assume each unintentional accident kills a family of 4.

You are not the only person driving and not the only person getting into accidents, especially in winter. In 2005, there were 6.4 million car accidents resulting in 42,600 some people dieing from those accidents. Now in the real world, a car manufacturer employs hundreds of thousands of people if not more. If none of those people knew that the car was dangerous, and none of the fatality accidents were caused by intention or reckless behavior, then more people are killed by accident with cars then by defects in cars.

But here is the rub, suppose a defect does work it's way into a car that makes it unsafe. What do you suppose should be done? Should No more cars be made? Should the car maker be sued into bankruptcy which would only hamper development and fixing of the problem? No, they issue a recall and fix the issue. If malice is shown to have existed, then whoever is responsible for that gets criminally charges just like you would if you caused a death. Something that you somehow do not seem to be understanding here is that a corporation can not act in any way, shape, or form, without a human making decisions. Often there are hundreds or thousands or more of humans doing this. In perspective, the bottom line is that the number of people who die per year due to safety defects in a car they purchased, is lower then the number of people who die each year from unintentional motor vehicle accidents.

If you are designing a network and ten thousand users go down are you going to argue that mistakes happen and it is no different having a single point of failure for four users versus having a single point of failure for ten thousand?

It's all relative and you are failing to see the real picture. Suppose this network is in one city and that city get nuked, a single point of failure right? Suppose that network was distributed across the world and an meteorite knocked out the satellite used to connect the backup stations as well as the main data center. Sure, it's like software as a service, host your apps on Google or set your servers up in the cloud at amazon- but what good does that do when a back hoe chops the fiber optics line leading from your production facility to the sales headquarters two states over. Sure, your local network is still working, your employees can play internet backgammon and print their scores out in the local building, but with no internet of communications access to the servers, everything else has stopped.

Or how about a more plausible point of failure. Suppose you have a tool that updates the routing in all the routers on the network. Now suppose this tool has the ability to do it all the routers at once so when you add a new node, you aren't updating 200 different routers individually. Now suppose one of the remote routers goes bad, you ask the tech to replace it with a backup and flash the configuration to the default so some diagnostics can be run. Now suppose this tech doesn't have the tools to do it, so you get a guy in another area to forward the tools and you will walk him through it. So you are off site, probably on the phone with this guy, he gets the tools that someone else left set in the update all mode, you walk the guy though flashing the router back to default which also flashes every other node back to default, and the single point of fai

Where do you get this from? Obesity seems to be on the increase - not normally an indicator of "healthier natural diets": http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/trends.html#State

Which is why most of the Nordic states and all of the Scandinavian nations are not knee deep in debt.

Norway's debt-to-GDP ratio is 60.20. The United States is 52.90. Outside of Scandinavia, France is at 79.70, and Germany is at 77.20.

It seemed the "socialist" nations balanced the books and survived the GFC. BTW, I'm using your definition of socialism, which means any nations that has social services,

That isn't my definition of socialism, that's evidently the previous poster's definition (he said "balanced" socialism).

Wow, citation needed, I can vouch for Sweden, Australia and the UK that if it comes out of a woman with a pulse, it's considered alive.

This compares America's infant mortality rates with that of Europe. America also has more premature births than Sweden, which further skews the statistics.

Right. I wish there were some organization the produced useful advice about how to manage exposure to solar radiation, which comes in various forms, and has various effects, so I could know what I should do to stay healthy when I go to the beach.

About one out of every three people who contract measles die.

http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/whatifstop.htm

How do most advanced drugs get created? By socialist governments? Or maybe by underground tech communities? Small businesses? Humanitarian groups? Nope, American and other free market Corporations.

In reality significant funding for pharmaceutical R&D in the USA comes from most of the sources you mention, not just corporate funding. First, there is direct funding from the the Federal Government through the auspices of the National Institute for Health or the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, along with some agencies (like both the FDA and CDC) doing direct research. Second ,there still is a lot of research done by universities and other primarily academic institutions (many of which receive some State and Federal funding). Third, there are non-profit funding groups, usually founded to support research into specific diseases, but some are more general. Corporate funding is only the fourth source of R&D funding, and by actual dollars only account for about one third of the money going towards pharmaceutical research. So in summation, while corporate dollars are useful, they are far from the only thing driving modern pharmaceutical R&D.

That is only half true. We have exchanged a less healthy life for a longer life. Modern conveniences have allowed more feeble people to survive. Now we have more people with chronic illnesses that require vast and expensive amounts of medical intervention to stay alive. Arterial bypasses, hip replacements, a slew of expensive drugs are just a few of the costs associated with growing old. We now have children getting type 2 diabetes which was unheard of a hundred years ago because they didn't have access to the processed foods that are high in sugar and fat that we have today.

It's sad to say but soon that expensive health care, or really "sick care", is going to be out of reach for all but the wealthy. The people that don't take care of their own health are going to be in for a rude awakening

I'm not so sure that's true. Vaccines are subject to extensive scrutiny, because the risks of something going wrong are high. The CDC protocols ensure that there is a process to eliminate problems, and to identify them early if things start to go wrong. With vaccines, the benefit far outweighs the cost.

There is nothing of the kind in place for food, probably because historically, the public health problems resulting from new food production have been virtually nonexistent. You can hardly compare the two. But we don't really know what the problems will be for transgenic/nano foods. They're too new. It's a small consolation to someone who develops cancer years down the road to say "I guess we should stop making it now." To be honest, I don't know the right answer-- the kind of testing that new drugs get would be prohibitively expensive in the food industry. But it's disingenuous to say that the risk is modest. The risk is unknown.

Most people don't get the flu each year, so we shouldn't care about people getting the flu or trying to prevent it?

Just for the record, your information is 100% wrong ..., most "Sexually active people" will contract HPV.

From http://www.cdc.gov/hpv/

Human papillomavirus (pap-ah-LO-mah-VYE-rus) (HPV) is the most common sexually transmitted virus in the United States. At least 50% of sexually active people will have genital HPV at some time in their lives.

"Most" being all values not fitting your particular viewpoint. I'd say that 50% is close enough to say that MOST people will contract a DANGEROUS disease HPV, which causes (like cigarettes cause) cancer.

"a manual for making illegal weapons of indiscriminate destruction."

Not really. It's just information. A manual describing how so-called WMDs work can contain the same information and be titled "WMD Processes, a Handbook for Investigators" or similar. An ordinary military close combat manual or unconventional operations manual or "Field Expedient weapons" manual can have the same info as a pub named "Eco-Necro-Pedo-Copro-Jihadist Tutorial for Total Annihilation!".

Specific example:
Phosgene is produced for industrial use, and is one of the first war gases.

http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/phosgene/basics/facts.asp

It can be used to make plastics, or for other things...

http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owen1.html

WTF? The stats you provide show the exact opposite of what you claim. Construction deaths in a workzone is akin to being struck by lightning. Literally. Murder accounts for some 306 times as many deaths. Driving account for some 670 times as many deaths.

844 deaths in a 7 year period. 120.5 deaths a year.

No more than half of those are caused by cars. 60.25

At most, likely less due to mobile equipment, 61 people a year die in work zones from cars. Nationwide.

That's one person a state per year. That's no where near dangerous. Here are some comparison numbers. http://www.weather.gov/os/hazstats.shtml http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr57/nvsr57_14.pdf

Deaths per year:
Car Accidents ~40,000
Murder: 18,573
Hurricane 116
Heat 114
Flood 64
Worker struck by Car in Workzone 61
Lightning 59
Tornado 56

Going grocery shopping is more dangerous than construction in a work zone.

Seriously? You can't do five minutes of your own research? I simply copied and pasted your above statement into Google, and this link, http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/highwayworkzones/ , was fourth from the top. It includes a lot of documents that are relevant, including this useful summary:

During the 1995 to 2002 period, 844 workers were killed while working at a road construction site. During this same period there were 9325 deaths in the construction industry. The 844 worker deaths in road construction represent 9% of all deaths in construction. More than half of these fatalities were attributable to a worker being struck by a vehicle or mobile equipment. Workplace fatalities that occur at a road construction site typically account for 1.5 percent to 2.0 percent of all workplace fatalities annually.

of this document: Source: Fatal occupational injuries at road construction sites

Road construction fatality rates are disproportionately higher than most other occupations. As to whether or not Arizona is more or less prone to road construction fatalities, the document only ranks the top and bottom five, and Arizona was in neither. But even if their work zones were among the safest in the nation, that's not saying much. It's still a very hazardous occupation.

Further summarizing the document's contents, of the 693 fatalities between 1995 and 2002, 509 were due to a worker being struck by a vehicle. The rest were "construction" types of accidents, including falls, struck by objects, contact with electricity, etc. Of the 509 deaths caused by vehicles, 363 occurred in the roadway, and 119 occurred off to the side of the road.

So don't delude yourself for a moment into thinking that work zones aren't dangerous places for workers, or that traffic isn't the primary cause of death for the workers. It is.

Actual measurement != media speculation or New Age conspiracy theories.

I'll give you the example of breast cancer:
http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/breast/statistics/age.htm

I could go on with more examples, but considering that I'm right, and I have to get back to work, I can't really be bothered.

But when an insurance company says to a poor person, "your money or your life," that is oppression too.

No, it is not. You are comparing "selling medical insurance" with "mugging someone." They are not the same, conceptually, legally, or morally. While I can't disagree that a "moral" society should look out for its less-fortunate members, I do have strong reservations with and concerns about the government's ability to deliver on that promise. It doesn't mean nobody should try, and I'm hopeful that this will not turn into another program where politicians raid the coffers and stuff it full of IOU's, but let's be honest - past precedent doesn't give us much cause for hope there.

But let's restrict this to your comparison, shall we? What is insurance? It is, at its core, the pooling of risk and the sharing of the costs of that risk with other people who belong to the pool. For the purposes of this discussion, let's look at the incidence of prostate cancer, which the CDC reported in 2005 was occurring at roughly 142 new cases per 100,000 men per year. For the sake of round numbers, let's say that prostate cancer costs $100,000 per year to treat. That means the cost of treating prostate cancer in a population of 100,000 men averages out to about $14.2 million per year. We'll oversimplify and stipulate that treatment is always successful, and takes exactly one year.

Now, obviously, for the 142 men who get prostate cancer, $100,000 is a LOT of money. But not every man gets prostate cancer. So some smart person (an actuarial mathematician) comes along and says, "If each one out of the 100,000 guys in the population gives me $142 a year, then we can pay the costs for prostate cancer treatment for all of them!" This is known as a risk pool, and is essentially how health insurance works. Obviously there are deductibles, and caps, and other conditions and everything else to worry about, but at it's core, health insurance is based on the premise that not everybody gets sick at the same rates or with the same conditions, and that if everybody pays a small amount, the people in the insurance plan who DO get sick will be able to get treatment.

This equivalency you're drawing is shockingly simple-minded and plain wrong. The insurance company does not tell you, "If you don't give us money, we're going to give you prostate cancer and you'll die," that is known as extortion, and is quite illegal, and no insurance company engages in it.

What is happening instead, is that the government will tell us "your money or that guy's life," setting up an institutionalized system of hostage taking, where I am made to pay for health insurance not just for myself, but also to cover the share of risk of a significant number of people who are presently uninsured because they don't buy insurance for themselves. And I'm told that those people "will die" if I don't give a bunch of money to the government. As I said earlier, the government has a track record of shockingly inefficient management of entitlement programs; if they can demonstrate that it can be done more effectively and efficiently by the government, I'm willing to listen. But drawing the equivalency you have simply demonstrates that you don't grasp the issues at hand.

But we just voted to protect the right to health care, and so it is a right, created as we create any right: by agreeing as a society to protect it.

No, our governing documents specifically affirm that some (many) rights are inalienable "natural" rights, and are not created by "society's agreement," but are granted to us as corollaries of our very existence, and which may not properly be denied to us by government or other men. Some other rights are granted by law ("civil" or "social" rights), but not all. And here's the rub: health care costs something. That money comes from someone. What the granting of this civi

People pull over all the time on the highway for emergencies such as flat tires.

Wouldn't a significant increase in breakdown lane usage increase accidents and deaths?

The number of lane changes required would also slow down traffic. There would certainly be people rushing to pull over suddenly to answer calls as well. And then add the rubberneckers looking to see why someone is pulled over.

One of the local highways, Interstate 93 north of Boston, has sanctioned use of the breakdown lanes during rush hour to add a 5th lane. So people in on that road wouldn't be able to pull over for that, unless they're driving off the road completely.

Rather than have the police target and fine people for this, why not have them go after distracted and poor driving in general?

These are things I see on a regular basis on Massachusetts highways:

Slow merging onto the highway, partially due to short merge areas.

2/3 of drivers do not use turn signals to change lanes.

Passing lane hogs who are not aware the vehicles behind them who wish to pass.

Would-be NASCAR drivers who do 8 lane changes in a mile to get ahead of everyone - by 4 car-lengths worth.

Idiots who believe CSI is going to show up over their fender-bender and so they don't move their vehicles out of the way. These people should be fined if they don't move.

Breakdown lanes not being used to keep traffic moving when roadwork is being done. There's no reason it can't be used, especially multiple State Police are used on significant projects.

The Big Dig just moved the bottlenecks from Boston to elsewhere.

Most firearm incidents are accidents &/or acts of compulsion/impulse.

Cite?

According to the CDC, firearms accidents account for only a very small percentage of overall firearms deaths. From 1999 to 2006, 2.5% of firearms deaths were unintentional. Another 0.8% were of undetermined intent. If we count all those as unintentional, that raises the total to 3.3%.

MOST firearm deaths are suicides. 56.4% of them, in fact, according to CDC figures from the above range of years. Another 1.1% are "legal interventions", meaning people killed by police and 5.1% are justifiable homicides by civilians. The remaining 34.1% of firearms deaths are criminal homicides -- I don't know how many of those are pre-meditated vs. how many are impulsive.

I found a report here that says the discrepancy is due to the high numbers of preterm births in the US. Though they don't give any explanation why this occurs.

And never before in U.S. history have people needed to go to the emergency room. How did our parents and grandparents manage in such a hostile and brutal world?

Many of them didn't live. Average life expectancy has gone up about 15 years since 1940. Source: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr57/nvsr57_14.pdf.

If you want to live in a hostile and brutal world, run off to Montana. I rather like civilization.

OPV has not been used in the United States since 2000. From 1980 through 1999, there were 152 confirmed cases of paralytic polio cases reported. Eight cases were acquired outside the United States. The remaining 144 cases were vaccine-associated paralytic polio (VAPP) caused by live oral polio vaccine (OPV).
From here.
I fail to see why you would view it as tautology, but I admit that my statement should have been phrased in the past-tense. Nevertheless, for those 144 cases, the cure was worse than the disease.

And that's why I don't want a nutcase like you making decisions that affect others.

Thank you :)

We tried "don't get vaccinations" back before we had vaccinations, and guess what? People died. Lots of them. And people were crippled. Lots of them. And you are advocating that.

And you are advocating that. ??? If you are making such strong and false statements about what I am advocating then you should read my post again.

Sure, it may not happen for a generation, but in two generations, when polio was "hiding" in remote locations for 30 years, it'll come back as bad as it was in the early 1900s. There can't be any other option. Unless you eradicate it from the surface of the planet, someone, sometime, will manage to make it to contact an American without immunization who will be in the US or bring it home, and we'll be back where we were.

Are you joking?
No it won't come back as in 1900's, Polio wasn't hiding and only 8 'wild' cases have come to the US in 30 years(reported cases), all of them in the last century.
I look forward to this disease being eradicated within my lifetime. But I'm sure the pharmaceutical companies do not.

That's a meaningless statement.

I see how you can view it as such.

Learn to love Alaska

Oh I would love it there :)

Good grief people, troll isn't a mod for disagree. For anyone interested, here's the CDC link: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd-vac/varicella/faqs-nipinfo-varicella.htm
In a nutshell, vaccinated people have had shingles. Whether the risk is identical is unclear at this point, and requires more study.

Your info is a little out of date. It's been put on the 2010 edition of the standard immunization schedule for both genders.

It was approved for use in men last month up here in Canada, but it's not on the standard schedule for men yet, so you need to specifically ask for it.

smallpox vaccines no longer exist.

Also untrue. According to the Centers for Disease Control:

Currently, the United States has a big enough stockpile of smallpox vaccine to vaccinate everyone in the United States in the event of a smallpox emergency.

The smallpox vaccine is an effective treatment post-infection if administered before symptoms appear.

I personally find the abundant anecdotal evidence of such a link quite disturbing, requiring thorough investigation, though this is unlikely to happen due to the above reason.

The thorough investigation has happened. Several times. See for example here and here. Or you could read the CDC article. Oh, but wait, they're all government institutions! They would all be devastated by that link! That's why they lie! They all lie! The cake is a lie! Wait, wrong channel...

The point is that the anti-vaxxers - and yes, the derogative term is appropriate - are about as concerned about truth and as scientifically literate as all the Moon-hoaxers. There is nothing that scientists can do to change the minds of the anti-vaxxers, because the anti-vaxxers do not operate on a scientific basis. I just hope this blows over before too many people stop vaccinating.

It's not even close. An estimated 440,000 smoking-related deaths per year in the US. Drunk driving - 25,000 deaths although admittedly another 70,000 seriously injured.

Now when it comes to domestic violence, there's over 500,000 incidents per year, but only a small fraction of that are alcohol-related, or result in death (2000-4000). Not trying to excuse that in the least bit BTW, domestic violence is despicable. However, while alcohol often is a catalyst in domestic violence, the relationship is usually already seriously dysfunctional.

28,000 annual deaths for liver failure. I doubt the number of deaths from purely alcohol-related diabetes would be significantly higher.

Oh, you were trolling? Never mind, carry on. I agree with you that banning smoking is stupid - making social pariahs of smokers has worked far better than any War on X. The only thing more stupid would have to be the 2-bit satire in your post.

I didn't know that non-ionizing RF can burn. I'll have to educate myself a little more. Can you offer a nugget or two to send me in the right direction?

Here's a citation: "Heat Stress Due to R.F. Radiation", Mumford, W.W., Proceedings of the IEEE, Feb. 1969. You can find a nice little synopsis on page 371 here.

Now, then...can you cite ANY studies that support YOUR claim?

Citations, PLEASE?

I agree with most of what you said, but

Consumers demand the world from providers because they don't see, care or understand the costs associated with the services they demand.

Most health care costs are consumed by a minority of people -- old people and people with chronic conditions. That's just a fact, should be intuitive to most people.

Check out http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr005.pdf:

In 1970, 20 percent of all inpatients were aged 65 years and over, with those aged 75 years and over representing 9 percent of all inpatients. By 2006, 38 percent of inpatients were aged 65 years and over, with those aged 75 years and over comprising 24 percent of all inpatients. During the same period, the percentage of inpatients under age 15 years declined from 13 to 7 percent, and inpatients aged 15–44 years declined from 43 to 31 percent.

Now looking at voting patterns and political activity, I think it's really damn clear that old people know exactly what health care costs and know exactly what their care in particular costs. That's why they're so politically active. And I don't mean that derogatorily, I have parents and grandparents too of course.

The other half of the population is looking at their bills and saying, umm why am I paying $400/month for insurance when I go to the doctor approximately twice a year, generally for preventive care or something minor like a flu or strep throat?

The goal here is an irrational rant. Preferably in wall-of-text format. Why bother actually forming an informed opinion when we can spume and froth at the mouth and work up a good outrage?

So please, quit confusing the issue with stuff like "facts" and "details" like the following.

Infant Mortality Rate and Life Expectancy, by Sex: Canada
Year: 2010
IMR Both Sexes: 4.99
IMR Male: 5.34
IMR Female: 4.63
Life expectancy both sexes: 81.29
Life expectancy male: 78.72
Life expectancy female: 84.00

Infant Mortality Rate and Life Expectancy, by Sex: United States
Year: 2010
IMR Both Sexes: 6.14
IMR Male: 6.81
IMR Female: 5.44
Life expectancy both sexes: 78.24
Life expectancy male: 75.78
Life expectancy female: 80.81

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, International Data Base.

United States - Latest Data Used in the Estimates and Projections
Reference years: 2007
Data source: vital registration
Data collection years: 2007
Notes: Preliminary data on total registered deaths.
Citation: National Center for Health Statistics. 2008. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr56/nvsr56_21.pdf.

Canada - Latest Data Used in the Estimates and Projections
Reference years: 2004
Data source: vital registration
Data collection years: 2004
Notes: Registered deaths by age and sex.
Citation: Statistics Canada. 2006. Annual Demographic Statistics: 2005. Ottawa.

Note: Infant deaths are approximated as IMR times births in the year and may not add to totals due to rounding.

U.S. data are based on official estimates and projections. Population estimates for 1950-1999 are based on the resident population plus the armed forces overseas. Population estimates for 2000-2008 are for the resident population and are based on Census 2000. Population data in the IDB for 2009-2050 are projections of the resident population. The U.S. population components shown in the IDB for 2000-2050 may not match the official population components for the United States, due to differences in how they are displayed (calendar year versus midyear estimates). Revised official population estimates are released each year (see http://www.census.gov/popest/). Therefore, the U.S. population estimates (official compared with IDB) may not match due to differences in the timing of their releases.

by wisdom_brewing (557753) writes: Alter Relationship on 03:30 PM -- Tuesday February 16 2010 (#31160516)
CO builds up in the blood binding to red blood cells until they die

First off, even that mechanism you described is wrong. It doesn't kill red blood cells any more than it does other cells. It binds with hemoglobin instead of oxygen causing hypoxia.

However, that's only one of the ways it kills you, and that particular way is one of the short-term toxicity effects, not the chronic toxicity effects. The primary chronic effects are lipid peroxidation causing loss of white matter and necrosis in the brain.

the concentration in the air will be much lower than in... say... cigarette smoke, orders of magnitude lower.

A room heavily polluted with cigarette smoke will contain about 20ppm CO. This particular skating rink was measured at over 90ppm due to zamboni usage, with readings as high as 500ppm from the machines themselves. The NIOSH-recommended level is an 8-hour TWA of 35ppm with a 200ppm ceiling limit.

There is a condition known as "hypothyroidism". There are many causes; in my case it was an auto-immune disease known as "Grave's Disease". It caused my body to attack my own thyroid gland - a gland in the neck that secretes thyroid hormone, which controls most of a person's metabolism. The reaction from the thyroid is to over-produce thyroid hormone, sending your metabolism into overdrive.

You raise an extremely valid point and whilst I sympathise greatly with your medically diagnosed problem, you need to look at the figures to understand why people are saying what they do

According to wikipedia about 3% of the population suffer "hypothyroidism".

Yet, according to the CDC:

In 2008, only one state (Colorado) had a prevalence of obesity less than 20%. Thirty-two states had a prevalence equal to or greater than 25%; six of these states (Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia) had a prevalence of obesity equal to or greater than 30%.

Once you take the 3% out of those numbers, the sad fact is that too many people just eat too much and exercise too little.

Are you crazy? Dihydrogen monoxide kills over 4000 people a year in the US alone!

Read the link he provided on Thiomersal. It has not been used in vaccines in the US in ten years,

That is false. The linked article does not say that. Thimerosal is used today, in many many vaccines. That is stated in the article you linked to, and according to the CDC, Thimerosal it is used in H1N1 vaccines used today

The half life of methyl mercury in the body is about 80 days, so a single exposure limit would be about 80X the daily limit.

The short term skin exposure limit is 3x (niosh) or 4x (osha) the 8 hour time weighted average exposure limit. http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npg/npgd0384.html.

Antibacterial soaps and solutions will never create super-germs

Those chowderheads at the CDC must not have figured that out yet: http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol7no3_supp/levy.htm
But give them time, and they will see the wisdom of your words.

"Your 1 in 20 million anecdote is not compelling - far more people would have died for not being vaccinated if the vaccines were removed."

And, what precisely did I post, originally? I posted that the inoculations weren't completely safe - but it was safer than doing without them. Go back, and reread, and you won't look so damned silly repeating the same thing I said, just to argue with me.

As for links - what did I post? READ THE DAMNED WARNING BROCHURES THAT ARE OFFERED WITH EVERY SHOT!!! If you are literate, then you will find a notice much like this one. ESPECIALLY NOTE the final side effect: o Permanent brain damage

MMR vaccine side-effects
(Measles, Mumps, and Rubella)
What are the risks from MMR vaccine?

A vaccine, like any medicine, is capable of causing serious problems, such as severe allergic reactions. The risk of MMR vaccine causing serious harm, or death, is extremely small.

Getting MMR vaccine is much safer than getting any of these three diseases.

Most people who get MMR vaccine do not have any problems with it.

Mild Problems

        * Fever (up to 1 person out of 6)
        * Mild rash (about 1 person out of 20)
        * Swelling of glands in the cheeks or neck (rare)
            If these problems occur, it is usually within 7-12 days after the shot. They occur less often after the second dose.

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)

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:
                    o Deafness
                    o Long-term seizures, coma, or lowered consciousness
                    o Permanent brain damage

Note: The first dose of MMRV vaccine has been associated with rash and higher rates of fever than MMR and varicella vaccines given separately. Rash has been reported in about 1 person in 20 and feverin about 1 person in 5. Seizures caused by a fever are also reported more often after MMRV. These usually occur 5-12 days after the first dose.

This information was taken directly from the MMR VIS Adobe Acrobat print-friendly PDF file [PDF - 54KB]
(This information taken from MMR VIS dated 3/13/08. If the actual VIS is more recent than this date, the information on this page needs to be updated.)

Browse side effects for other inoculations here:
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/side-effects.htm

At the time there also seemed to be quite a few incomplete studies found at various .edu sites which agreed with the autism MMR link.

citation please!!

I work at a University, and I've never seen any of those "Incomplete" studies you've mention. However, I have seen plenty of journal articles and write ups on those articles in the press showing no detectable connection between the 2, so if you want to make a bold assertion like that you are going to need to back it up with links.

I've also got an alternative explanation for the tenuous connection you are so sure is causational. Children are getting vaccinated every couple of months like clockwork, when is there a gap of more than 3-6 months between regularly scheduled vaccines during the time in which children are most likely to begin presenting signs of Autism?? The publicity this "debate" has garnered over the years makes it so parents are paying closer attention, whether they realize it or not, in the immediate wake of each round of vaccines thus making them more likely to notice the signs closer to a vaccination than in the couple of months between. (anecdotally, my wife and I both found ourselves thinking of autism when our daughter went unusually quite for 3 hours about a week after her last vaccination. Turned out to be nothing, but does anyone bother to record their anecdotal false positives??) That the first scape goat Thimersol, has been removed from virtually all children's vaccines without altering or slowing the rate of Autism diagnosis is pretty strong evidence that if the connection is real, they don't have the correct culprit yet. That epidemiological studies using a much more powerful sample size (ie much greater than an N of 12) have found no evidence of a causational link between vaccines and autism is further evidence that the temporal connection is due to a combination of observational bias (arising from the controversy itself), frequent vaccination throughout the period of time when autism is most likely to be diagnosed, and the fact that most autism screenings (Autism screening: 9, 18, and 24 months) are scheduled during the same visits in which vaccines are administered (Vaccine schedule: 1, 2, 4, 6, 12, 15, 18, and 19-23 months, 2-3 and 4-6 years ).

I know the meme that correlation is not causation but in my experience there often is a correlation.

It's isn't a MEME, defined as "an idea, belief or belief system, or pattern of behavior that spreads throughout a culture either vertically by cultural inheritance (as by parents to children) or horizontally by cultural acquisition (as by peers, information media, and entertainment media)." This is a fundamental principal of statistics and what helps differentiate scientific data from a collection of anecdotes. That you don't understand this is why you will continue to argue against all of the valid evidence.

Some of the studies were pretty simple, graphing autism rates compared to when the MMR vaccine was introduced.

This statement is further evidence of your lacking qualifications to contribute meaningfully to this discussion. The MMR vaccine was introduced in the mid 1960's and caused a precipitous drop in measles and rubella cases. The first 20 years of licensed measles vaccination in the U.S. prevented an estimated 52 million cases of the disease, 17,400 cases of mental retardation, and 5,200 deaths. What percentage of those 5,200 deaths were in children that would have been autistic? or those 17,400 cases of mental retardation from the measles that could have been masking cases of Autism? Or what about the confounding factor of increased screening, and the inclusion of more mild forms of autism that would hav

At the time there also seemed to be quite a few incomplete studies found at various .edu sites which agreed with the autism MMR link.

citation please!!

I work at a University, and I've never seen any of those "Incomplete" studies you've mention. However, I have seen plenty of journal articles and write ups on those articles in the press showing no detectable connection between the 2, so if you want to make a bold assertion like that you are going to need to back it up with links.

I've also got an alternative explanation for the tenuous connection you are so sure is causational. Children are getting vaccinated every couple of months like clockwork, when is there a gap of more than 3-6 months between regularly scheduled vaccines during the time in which children are most likely to begin presenting signs of Autism?? The publicity this "debate" has garnered over the years makes it so parents are paying closer attention, whether they realize it or not, in the immediate wake of each round of vaccines thus making them more likely to notice the signs closer to a vaccination than in the couple of months between. (anecdotally, my wife and I both found ourselves thinking of autism when our daughter went unusually quite for 3 hours about a week after her last vaccination. Turned out to be nothing, but does anyone bother to record their anecdotal false positives??) That the first scape goat Thimersol, has been removed from virtually all children's vaccines without altering or slowing the rate of Autism diagnosis is pretty strong evidence that if the connection is real, they don't have the correct culprit yet. That epidemiological studies using a much more powerful sample size (ie much greater than an N of 12) have found no evidence of a causational link between vaccines and autism is further evidence that the temporal connection is due to a combination of observational bias (arising from the controversy itself), frequent vaccination throughout the period of time when autism is most likely to be diagnosed, and the fact that most autism screenings (Autism screening: 9, 18, and 24 months) are scheduled during the same visits in which vaccines are administered (Vaccine schedule: 1, 2, 4, 6, 12, 15, 18, and 19-23 months, 2-3 and 4-6 years ).

I know the meme that correlation is not causation but in my experience there often is a correlation.

It's isn't a MEME, defined as "an idea, belief or belief system, or pattern of behavior that spreads throughout a culture either vertically by cultural inheritance (as by parents to children) or horizontally by cultural acquisition (as by peers, information media, and entertainment media)." This is a fundamental principal of statistics and what helps differentiate scientific data from a collection of anecdotes. That you don't understand this is why you will continue to argue against all of the valid evidence.

Some of the studies were pretty simple, graphing autism rates compared to when the MMR vaccine was introduced.

This statement is further evidence of your lacking qualifications to contribute meaningfully to this discussion. The MMR vaccine was introduced in the mid 1960's and caused a precipitous drop in measles and rubella cases. The first 20 years of licensed measles vaccination in the U.S. prevented an estimated 52 million cases of the disease, 17,400 cases of mental retardation, and 5,200 deaths. What percentage of those 5,200 deaths were in children that would have been autistic? or those 17,400 cases of mental retardation from the measles that could have been masking cases of Autism? Or what about the confounding factor of increased screening, and the inclusion of more mild forms of autism that would hav

But the large volume of anecdotal evidence should be enough to get the vaccine manufacturers to consider stopping the use of thimerasol as the preservative.

According to the CDC, "Since 2001, no new vaccine licensed by FDA for use in children has contained thimerosal as a preservative, and all vaccines routinely recommended by CDC for children under six years of age have been thimerosal-free, or contain only trace amounts, except for multi-dose formulations of influenza vaccine."

And even better, from later down on that page:

"Unfortunately, we have not seen reductions in the numbers of children identified with autism indicating that the cause of autism is not related to a single exposure such as thimerosal."

It certainly raises a red flag for me when you consider that a single vaccine can give a child an exposure 5-10x the OSHA limit for mercury poisoning.

Really? From childhood.com: "An infant who is exclusively breast-fed will ingest more than twice the quantity of mercury that was ever contained in vaccines and fifteen times the quantity of mercury contained in the influenza vaccine."

And: "Thimerosal — a preservative still used in the influenza vaccine — contains a different form of mercury called ethylmercury. Studies comparing ethylmercury and methylmercury suggest that they are processed differently in the human body. Ethylmercury is broken down and excreted much more rapidly than methylmercury. Therefore, ethylmercury (the type of mercury in the influenza vaccine) is much less likely than methylmercury (the type of mercury in the environment) to accumulate in the body and cause harm."

Are you going to argue that we should stop breastfeeding our children, since through breastfeeding children ingest a larger quantity of a more harmful form of mercury than was ever contained in vaccines?

And where are you getting the OSHA limit from? All I can find on their website is a limit on the air concentration of mercury, which is an entirely different issue.

It's quite likely that some small percentage of people are unusually sensitive to mercury, and a large dose can trigger autism in them.

What do you mean by "large"? According to this chart, the vaccine with the most mercury (Influenza-A) contains only .025mg of mercury, and is a one-time dose; this is much lower than OSHA's air-exposure limit of 0.1mg/m^3 per work week, if you somehow managed to ingest all of that mercury vapor.

And, as noted, most vaccines now contain zero mercury.

So much for your point ;)

Just to follow up on my other post, on example suggesting flu in the Tropics (and I can wonder about some other tropical diseases) is more common in the rainy season with high humidity:
"Do the tropics have a flu season?"
http://scienceblogs.com/effectmeasure/2009/03/do_the_tropics_have_a_flu_seas.php
"The scientific literature is full of specialized papers that on their face would seem to be of little interest. Here's a title like that: "Prevalence and seasonality of influenza-like illness in children, Nicaragua, 2005-2007" (Gordon et al., Emerging Infectious Diseases 2009 Mar).
http://www.cdc.gov/eid/content/15/3/pdfs/08-0238.pdf
Over 4000 Nicaraguan children, aged 2 to 11 years old and living in the capital of Managua were followed for 2 years, April 2005 to April 2007 and observed for development of ILI (influenza-like illness). We know a lot about influenza in major industrialized countries in the northern and southern temperate zones, but very little about the epidemiology of seasonal influenza in tropical regions. Is the pattern of the disease in these populations the same as in temperate climes? Is there a lot of flu or just a low level? Is it still seasonal influenza? The US and Europe have recently set up surveillance systems that help answer these questions but most countries don't have those resources."

So, understanding more about the effects of vitamin D deficiency may very well help a lot of people in the Tropics directly, much more than vaccinations, since adequate vitamin D is cheap to treat with, and that single thing might prevent a variety of illnesses, not just communicable ones, but also cancer, depression, heart disease, dementia, and so on.

Lots of sources here about vitamin D and influenza though:
http://www.google.com/custom?q=influenza&sitesearch=vitamindcouncil.org&sa=Search

Also, while it is often said people catch the cold and the flu because we are indoors more in the winter (or the rainy season), in the USA most people are indoors around others much of the time, between work, school, and malls. So, that explanation has limited value.

And vitamin D deficiency also impairs the bodies ability to deal with heavy metals, making vaccines harder to process that contain heavy metals (and causing seemingly random problems in those who are most vitamin D deficient and have an impaired ability to deal with heavy metals that don't show up in people getting enough sunshine?). Likewise, vitamin D deficiency impairs immune response (both potentially too little and too much), making vaccines less effective and more dangerous. So, there are lots of reasons to study this, even for those who still believe in the value of most vaccines.

Another comment on this:
"Flu is Vitamin D Deficiency Disease"
http://thehealthyhomeeconomist.blogspot.com/2010/01/flu-is-vitamin-d-deficiency-disease.html
"""
Why does the government push dangerous and untested vaccines on the public for the prevention of flu when it is so easy to prevent it with adequate blood levels of vitamin D? The answer is always the almighty dollar. Follow the green and you know why this simple flu prevention strategy is completely ignored. I personally haven't had the flu in over 8 years since I was informed of the critical role of vitamin D in preventing illness and have worked to keep my vitamin D blood levels adequate. In fact, I am so unafraid of the flu that I would be comfortable in a room full of swine flu patients with no mask! Fact is, you are not going to "catch" the flu if your vitamin D blood levels are normal any more than a sail

Leading Causes of Death
(Data are for the U.S.)

Number of deaths for leading causes of death

* Heart disease: 631,636
* Cancer: 559,888
* Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 137,119
* Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 124,583
* Accidents (unintentional injuries): 121,599
* Diabetes: 72,449
* Alzheimer's disease: 72,432
* Influenza and Pneumonia: 56,326
* Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 45,344
* Septicemia: 34,234

Source - 2006 data

Is the CDC good enough for you?

"In 1972 [year before Roe vs Wade], 24 women died from causes known to be associated with legal abortions and 39 died as a result of known illegal abortions."

The OP was a troll + a couple of friends with modpoints.

I'll leave it as an exercise for you to find out that the number of deaths per year since, say, 1950 due to illegal US abortions has been measured in the low 100s at most.

Wait, how do you compare something that has never been proven dangerous (power lines) to a manufacturing plant knowingly using a metal that is known to be both highly toxic and carcinogenic in children's toys?

that is just my point.
Autism is not ADD, however Autism diagnosis is very clearly rising. The rate of autism in adults is the same as in children. Yet Autism diagnosis is going WAY up.

And if you think ADD is nothing like Asperger's... why not look at the official DSM-IV Criteria? Here are a few that jump out:

stereotyped and repetitive motor manners (e.g., hand or finger flapping or twisting, or complex whole-body movements)
vs
Often fidgets with hands or feet or squirms in seat when sitting still is expected.

Often talks excessively.
vs
lack of social or emotional reciprocity and stereotyped and repetitive use of language or idiosyncratic language

Often does not seem to listen when spoken to directly.
vs
marked impairment in the use of multiple nonverbal behaviors such as eye-to eye gaze, facial expression, body postures, and gestures to regulate social interaction

Is often easily distracted.
vs
encompassing preoccupation with one or more stereotyped and restricted patterns of interest that is abnormal either in intensity or focus


If you are looking for ADD and you see a kid that monologues all the time, is highly focused on trains but doesn't care about spelling tests, doesn't stop moving his hands, doesn't seem to hear what you are saying... then you see ADD... If you are looking for Autism too, then you might see Autism.

AD(H)D vs Autism/Asperger's

that is just my point.
Autism is not ADD, however Autism diagnosis is very clearly rising. The rate of autism in adults is the same as in children. Yet Autism diagnosis is going WAY up.

And if you think ADD is nothing like Asperger's... why not look at the official DSM-IV Criteria? Here are a few that jump out:

stereotyped and repetitive motor manners (e.g., hand or finger flapping or twisting, or complex whole-body movements)
vs
Often fidgets with hands or feet or squirms in seat when sitting still is expected.

Often talks excessively.
vs
lack of social or emotional reciprocity and stereotyped and repetitive use of language or idiosyncratic language

Often does not seem to listen when spoken to directly.
vs
marked impairment in the use of multiple nonverbal behaviors such as eye-to eye gaze, facial expression, body postures, and gestures to regulate social interaction

Is often easily distracted.
vs
encompassing preoccupation with one or more stereotyped and restricted patterns of interest that is abnormal either in intensity or focus


If you are looking for ADD and you see a kid that monologues all the time, is highly focused on trains but doesn't care about spelling tests, doesn't stop moving his hands, doesn't seem to hear what you are saying... then you see ADD... If you are looking for Autism too, then you might see Autism.

AD(H)D vs Autism/Asperger's

It seems Wikipedia is not updated correctly.

Ref:
http://aac.highwire.org/cgi/content/abstract/45/2/428
http://journals.pasteur.ac.ir/FML2001/2021/2021001.pdf
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol7no3_supp/levy.htm