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the CDC.

Gaianist is those who worship Gaia: mother Earth. Since you spout as truth the propaganda of its adherents, you should know more about where the mediated version of it in the Mainstream Media has its origins. You could have Googled it, or Google "Gaia Hypothesis". Also known as "Deep Ecology". Unfortunately, they have hijacked the environmental movement; which started out being about not soiling our own nest, to create a clean and safe environment for people; and turned it into a "four legs good, two legs baad" movement. "Silent Spring" represents that watershed.

Gainaist propaganda, like the DDT scare, kills at least as many people as the corporate kind. If we are to believe its core adherents, it requires a reduction of world population of anywhere from 50%-90%. That's a lot of people that have to die in the name of the religious belief of "sustainability" and "harmony with nature".

DDT losing its effectiveness over time is a non-sequitur in the ban or not ban decision. If it isn't effective, people won't use it. There's ample proof that banning it (sorry, refusing to allow USAID $ to be spent on it, which amounts to the same thing) has led to a massive increase in the incidence of Malaria in poorer countries.

The site is down, so forgive me if this is in TFA, but can't we treat anthrax with common anti-bacterials?

In fact, http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dbmd/diseaseinfo/anthrax_g.htm#What%20is%20the%20treatment%20for%20anthrax confirms this.

So what's the huge deal about using Anthrax as a biological weapon? You'd be about as successful using the Black Plague...

Bats are completely dependent on mosquitoes and, despite their image in movies, are vital to the health of many niches: rain, deciduous and coniferous forests all benefit from bat populations.
Yeah, and the histoplasmosisis fun to get as well.

Have you had a flu vaccine lately?

Thimerasol is in the majority of those.

Have they done any studies on the children of pregnant women receiving their recommended flu vaccine?

http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/qa/thimerosal.htm

>>> According to Wikipedia, the OSHA maximum occupational exposure to mercury is 0.1 mg/m3.

And according to OSHA, that's the acceptable amount for a full 8-hour shift of work. At roughly 1L/s, that's about 3.6m3/hr, or about 3mg/shift.

Or the entire contents of a CFL every day and a half.

>>> Somehow you haven't quite convinced me that inhaling four milligrams directly into
>>> my lungs isn't going to be a bad, if not a deadly, thing for me.

One presumes you don't go around snorting CFL bulbs; if you don't, you're never going to get the entire contents in a short period of time. Indeed, you're highly unlikely to get the entire contents at all if you simply air out the room like everyone suggests, and based on the shape of CFLs it's unlikely that anything less than crushing a bulb would release more more than a fraction of the mercury.

It's probably not a good idea to take up huffing CFLs, though, as the "immediate danger" level of mercury vapour is set at 10mg/m3. At ~5L/breath, that's about 20 breaths per mg, suggesting that rapid inhallation of large amounts of mercury isn't going to be much fun. It's pretty questionable whether it would be damaging, though, as animal studies show that mild organ damage occurs after an hour of 30mg/m3 exposure - a human in that environment would have breathed in over 100mg of mercury by then.

>>> When I start buying as many computers as I do light bulbs, I'll try to remember your enlightening comparison.

Try also to remember that computers are often bigger than light bulbs. Size - as you may have heard - matters.

In regard to all the replies you will see here, they discount several key issues, including:
* Diseases evolve, so today's vaccinations may not work against tomorrow's illnesses, and even when they are effective, other diseases may take the same ecological space (thus the proliferation of new vaccinations, while the old ones remain on the schedule just in case),
* It is not clear just how many pathogens a human immune system can be sensitized to without collapsing,
* Vaccines are not side effect free, they have been linked to lots of things even when prepared and dispensed directly.
* When improperly administered (injected directly into the bloodstream by mistake) there can be other hazards.
* Most vaccinations (unlike natural immunity) wear off in a decade or so (even if they are at all effective) -- this requires "booster shots" ad-infinitum to keep resistance.
* The previous way many people developed immunity was by extended nursing and low levels of infections in populations, where the mother's immune system scanned for threats and passed antibodies onto children to help them deal with threats, conferring life long immunity. Vaccines break this cycle of "software" memory. Pediatricians promote shots but when was the last time you heard one recommend nursing to age three or four like most of humanity has done historically?
* For many disease, improved sanitation and better nutrition have been reducing them greatly -- anyone hear of a "scarlet fever" vaccine, yet it has dropped along with all the rest (in part also by improved treatments).
* Whether vaccines work or not, there is a vast conflict-of-interest in the entire vaccine industry and its regulatory body (fox guarding the hen house) which has been long standing and is poorly addressed.

A fundamental aspect of medicine is to treat the individual and to "do no harm". Vaccines attempt to treat the population. Many diseases (though not all) take mostly the weak and sickly and badly nourished -- who are most at risk of serious complications but who also should have numerous other interventions in their lives (think health insurance and a social safety net). The whole premise of vaccine -- treat everyone in case a few are at risk -- is itself ethically problematical. An alternative emphasis is to come up with better ways to treat illnesses when they occur.

Another aspect is to accept that compulsory education is a primary vector of disease transmission and shut it down for that reason alone (beyond all the other good ones). :-) One can also think heavily about the profit motive to reduce apparent childhood illnesses (so parents don't have to stop work) but potentially produce long term consequences like autoimmune disorders and cancers where others pay the cost.

Anyone hear of Simian Virus 40 (SV40) contamination in polio vaccinations given to about 100 million US Americans?
http://www.cdc.gov/nip/vacsafe/concerns/cancer/default.htm
Can't happen again? The Amish produce many of the vaccines used in the USA (cultures in eggs which they keep) -- yet ironically enough they avoid vaccines themselves usually.

The state getting involved in forcing medical procedures on people "for their own potential long term good" is just a huge can of worms.

Modern vaccination schedules entail approaching 200 different batches of produced materials to be injected in a person's lifetime (if you include annual flu shots, and assume booster shots on a decade schedule) each of which bypass the body's normal mechanisms for developing immunity for many infectious disease (general first response in the tonsils, moving from there). Doesn't that general idea just bother people? But then a lot of people run Windows.

Also, each batch may be very different, and even if one tests safe, there may be "hot lots" and other issues as production continually changes to cheaper approaches, with conflict-of-interest oversight.

First of all, I'm on board with the idea that it's stupid to get one's medical advice from youtube.

On the other hand, you have to understand a couple of important factors:

    1. There's actually a good amount of information available at large about the health dangers of many vaccinations, including the flu vaccine. There is mercury in it, for example. See http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/qa/thimerosal.htm ... Yes, the industry will argue that there's such a small dose of mercury as to make it negligible. In the end, only you can decide how much you'd like to let into your own body; I'll go with none.

    2. There's plenty of industry personalities that will tell you that the flu vaccine is safe and great... Of course, their livelihoods depend on the performance of the industry, so that's pretty much what you'd expect them to shovel out.

Although I've opened my post by condemning the idea of relying on youtube for one's medical decisions, I have to say that their presence and popularity is as likely to be a good sign, as people are seeking alternative views on the matter. That they're suspicious with the industry (finally) is a good thing.

Who's to say that they're making any decisions based solely on that material, anyhow?

For instance, I would throw out all business licenses and the associated regulation, such as health inspections for restaurants;

I work in the food industry, as a manager (one of two lines of work I do). I do not want an unregulated food industry. Do you have any idea how many people would get sick and/or die form bad food products or unsafe environments? Do you have any idea how many have in the past? I also have worked closely with the health care side in many projects involving pathogens. Do you remember the issue with China sending us poisonous toothpaste? Do you remember the problems with tainted beef, or vegetables just this year? Do you know how fast bacteria grow in food? Have you ever inspected a small upstart's kitchen who does not understand food safety - a vast majority of people do not!

Do you know why it is not safe to drink the water in many countries? Or eat the food? Do you know why so many countries without regulations have so many health issues relating to flu-like symptoms, diarrhea, and other issues relating to food born illness?

Do you realize how little the average person knows about food safety, and communicable disease? Read this link to learn more different potential diseases, pathogens and toxins in food.

Even if disease were not a problem, the nature of people to do things (like toxic toothpaste because it is cheaper) still should be a gigantic red flag. Maybe the inspectors are a little overzealous at times (I have dealt with those), but I would prefer an overzealous inspector to a lax one anytime. BTW, I have never had a red and only a couple of yellows on an inspection - both yellows were quickly corrected and never repeated. Almost nothing but greens, even from the most picky of inspectors I have had to deal with. The people who work for me may think I am demanding, but we are not just talking about food quality, we are talking about food safety and the health and lives of people who probably do not want to run a risk of kidney failure, liver damage or worse because some uncaring twit decided their laziness or comfort was more important than the safety and quality of the food and environment we serve it in. I have often read about how doctors are the first line of exposure in an epidemic. I disagree, restaurants and food providers. Why? because we are exposed to the public and all it has to offer every day many hundreds of times to thousands of times more than a doctor is. A doctor only sees a patient when they are aware of the symptoms they will have. We see them in our restaurants and stores first. We touch the surfaces they have touched, the money they have handled, and get sneezed at, coughed on and believe it or not sprayed with their saliva (ever taken an order form a sprayer?) If we do not practice the best of health care and food care, we become the carriers and the source of diseases. We (food industry) have to know what is out their and what to look for. We have to be aware of our hand washing, surface cleaning (de-contaminating) and food safety. If we let a situation develop, then you wind up with an outbreak. It has happened many times. It might be flu, or a new Legionnaires Disease. It might be indigestion or a trip to the emergency room. So few people I have met in the food industry are actually aware of the realities that they do things that are unsafe and spread disease. Lets face it, the average person in the food industry is not a doctor. Most barely have a high school education and many are more worried about their next house payment than washing their hands. Some out and out just do not care. I have caught people in restaurants picking their nose, using the restroom, coughing and sneezing into their hands and then not washing their hands. I have caught people leaving meat out on the counter to thaw (very dangerous), trying to serve unwashed vegetables, not keeping counter food up to temperature - sometimes as low as 110 degrees - perfect

At the time, Steve Job's remark to John Sculley was understood by many people to be a huge insult. I am supposing that people still think that Jobs intended, maybe unconsciously, to insult Sculley. At the time, Jobs was so abusive that the Apple board of directors was insisting Apple get someone else to help operate the company. I suppose Jobs did not like that idea, but realized he could not arrange anything better. So, he insulted the candidate.

Obesity is a terrible health problem in the United States and elsewhere. Using billions of dollars of advertising, sugar-water companies encourage unhealthy consumption of calories. The resulting obesity kills some people. Does that qualify as abusive in your mind?

I think you are talking about risk compensation.

I don't see how that applies here. Radiation, in relatively small doses, may not cause death. But radiation sickness is some pretty nasty stuff.

The talk was titled "Nanotechnology; Is there a Risk?", and was given by Dr. John Howard, Director of the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).

Unfortunately no handouts or slides were made available with the talk. However, there is some good information on the NIOSH Nanotechnology page, and a detailed report on current progress [PDF] has been published. Also, if you do some searches for the obvious terms (NIOSH, Nanotechnology, safety, John Howard, etc.) you will find other statements/discussions on the same topics (e.g. this or this).

As I mentioned in my other comments, I work in the field (specifically studying nanoparticles and block-copolymer patterning right now), so if you have any other questions you think I might be able to answer, I'm happy to help.

The talk was titled "Nanotechnology; Is there a Risk?", and was given by Dr. John Howard, Director of the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).

Unfortunately no handouts or slides were made available with the talk. However, there is some good information on the NIOSH Nanotechnology page, and a detailed report on current progress [PDF] has been published. Also, if you do some searches for the obvious terms (NIOSH, Nanotechnology, safety, John Howard, etc.) you will find other statements/discussions on the same topics (e.g. this or this).

As I mentioned in my other comments, I work in the field (specifically studying nanoparticles and block-copolymer patterning right now), so if you have any other questions you think I might be able to answer, I'm happy to help.

I am a Public Health student currently, and I have been doing some research on this topic, was planning on writing a paper about it, but decided not to for the primary reason that there is little research data available on it and even less on implications from this data! The reason the general public is not concerned with the issue is two-fold.

One, the public becomes concerned with a public health issue when it affects them directly or more commonly when the threat of HOW the issue affects them is conveyed typically BY THE MEDIA! The Media spends very little time on this issue primarily due to its esoteric nature and its extremely low "sexiness" as an issue.

Two, its not a hot topic because there is little exposure from it to the general public. Certain industries and certain populations in these industries are exposed to it and even then, the awareness given to them about it is minimal.

Until nanomaterials are showcased on CNN in a show called Public in Peril: The Coming Nanomaterial Endemic or nanomaterials enter the average everyday workplace and an eight-hour training seminar on their safety comes to a conference room near you, this will be a non-issue as it should be.

The limited research going on is out there though, as it should be:

By improving education, equality, and economic opportunity the population will reduce.

A blank assertion which (without significant elaboration) is unlikely to be correct.

From the CDC:

"National Center for Health Statistics"
Mother's Educational Level Influences Birth Rate"
... "Educational attainment is a very critical factor in accounting for lifetime fertility differentials. Women with 1 or more years of college have sharply lower lifetime fertility than less educated women, regardless of race or Hispanic origin. Women with college degrees can be expected to complete their childbearing with 1.6-2.0 children each; 1.7 for non-Hispanic white, 1.6 for non-Hispanic black, and 2.0 for Hispanic women. For women with less education the total expected number of children are: 3.2 children for those with 0-8 years of education; 2.3 children for those with 9-11 years of education and 2.7 for high school graduates."

"Japan birth rate off record low as economy improves"

"Adolescent Sexual Health in Europe and the U.S.--Why the Difference?"
...
"In these nations, societal openness and comfort in dealing with sexuality, including teen sexuality, and pragmatic governmental policies create greater, easier access to sexual health information and services for all people, including teens. Easy access to sexual health information and services leads to better sexual health outcomes for French, German, and Dutch teens when compared to U.S. teens."

"Study urges action to raise birth rate"

FERTILITY: While most Taiwanese are married by the time they reach 40, well educated women are more likely to stay single, the latest study shows"

"California Reduces Teen Birth Rate Through Sex Education"[pdf]

Associated Press (05.10.04)
California's teen birth rate has fallen from 11th nationwide in 1991 to 21st in 2002. The drop of more than 40 percent is attributed to a state-sponsored program that provides information about abstinence and birth control. The pregnancy figures cited by California Wellness Foundation, which runs a statewide teen pregnancy initiative, were included in a brief the foundation gave California lawmakers last week in Washington. The drop exceeds the 30 percent decline in teen pregnancies nationally during the same period.

"The Chinese Economy"

Desperate for a baby boom
By Kalinga Seneviratne

SINGAPORE - Alarmed by a falling birth rate and its impact on the economy, Singapore badly wants its well-educated, career-oriented women to have more babies.

So, at 2.1-something children per female (your figure), that would class America as not being a developed nation.

The US is a special case, as I said "As the US is becoming more religious I wonder how much religion influences this as some of them call their followers to "multiply"."

Going through the rest of your reply, I see more arguments and one "table", I wish /. would allow html tables, you ran off on a spreadsheet with numbers you made up, without any real data. As I provided links to data as well as links to articles on how some governments are concerned about declining birthrates due to improvements in economic opportunities, educations, and or equality c

Part of the reason for the increase in degenerative diseases is that we're living a lot longer than we used too. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr54/nvsr54_14.pdf (detailed tables #10) 22,960 75-year-olds were alive in 1900, compared with 65,717 in 2003. Since we live longer than we used to, any diseases that are more common in the elderly are more common. Some of these are heart disease and cancer, dementia, alzheimers, etc. So it's really not all that surprising that as we get more 75-year-olds, we see a lot more degenerative conditions. Some of this may be food related, but I think there's also the cruel twist of evolution. Evolution cares whether you have and successfully raise children. Once you've reproduced and your children are grown, evolution doesn't care about what happens, so your body isn't designed to last much past that. Sure we can slow down the aging using tricks and modern medicine, but eventually you reach the upper limit of how long a human being can live.

That sounds to _me_ remarkably like the problem is the fat, not the BMI.

It might hurt more, but it's damage potential is less.
"It's the volts that jolts and the mills that kills"
Higher voltage may cause more muscle contraction but it's the actual current that kills you.
At 220 volts the current in a household system is half that in a 110v system for the same amount of power.

Oh, and to the people claiming AC is safer, poppycock.
DC is. "you have 60 times per second chance of letting go"... Muscles don't have that reaction time. If you're gripping something live, your muscles will contract no matter if it's ac or dc.

Why is AC more dangerous then? Simple. Alternating current forces the heart to spasm uncontrollably.
Even when the current is removed, the heart can't usually recover and remains in palpitation... Usually, the only way to get it back to its normal rhythm is actually a jolt of DC.

CLEAR! *BADOOMP*

Wasn't there a disease that made a cat not only unafraid of cats, but attracted to their smell? I can't remember the name, but it infects the cat too, which incubates and spawns more of the disease in the stool etc, which then infects more rodents. It's also supposed to be one of the reasons that pregnant women should stay away from cats (or at least litter boxes) as it may have links to various child developmental issues.

I'd like to see the robustness analysis of this metric. 18.5 to 25 is "normal" and 25 to 30 is "over weight." But according to this random link, in 1960 the US average was 25, and in 2002 it was 28. So, "overweight" is +/-3 from average, while "normal" is -3 to -9.5. Shouldn't we expect the average people to be the healthiest?

The correct measure is almost certainly deviation from average.

Obesity causes heart disease and cancer. Heart disease kills more people in America than all forms of cancer combined. People who die of diseases other than heart disease tend to waste away to nothing, then die. Those who die of a heart attack die instantly while they're still fat. If you click the link and read the chart, you'll see they saw "benefit" in being overweight, not obese.

Next, they'll do a study on weight fluctuation. Thanks to wasting due to illness, they'll find the obvious; Those who loose a lot of weight tend to die more often. You'll no doubt see that as an indication to stay on the sofa, stuffing your face with pork rinds.

I largely agree with you; my post above was just attempting to reiterate a point that Turn-X Alphonse had apparently missed. However, I wasn't thinking simply of the number of people killed.

As an aside - I don't necessarily advocate this as an argument, and it seems slightly morbid - could we work out the number of people undergoing severe psychological trauma? According to wikipedia, 2998 people died (or are missing presumed dead) as a direct result of the 9/11 attacks. There will have been further deaths as secondary results, but this figure still pales in comparison to the 652,486 deaths that occur in America every year due to heart disease. I'm not sure that fewer people (family, friends et cetera) will have been affected by these deaths than by the 9/11 attacks - even taking into account the iconic position the WTC took in peoples' minds. Perhaps, not being American, I am missing something fundamental.

I suspect, however, that the issue is one of both spontaneity, and that any one person is directly aware of a limited number of deaths due to heart disease, whereas entire nations watched the 9/11 attacks. So it comes down to what I said before about concentrating attention.

I would not suggest that terrorism be treated anything other than seriously - as I posted elsewhere in this thread that would be callous in the extreme. I was just reiterating the point that the response to terrorist acts as opposed to other events that frankly should be causing concern at the very least has been significantly disproportionate.

If Lead has had such and effect, I wonder what effect injection Mercury straight into a small infant must have.

From the CDC web site:
Thimerosal is a mercury-containing preservative used in some vaccines and other products since the 1930s.

The CDC saids it doesn't cause and harm ,but since it's introduction in Children's Vaccines, the Autisms rates are almost 1%!

The Law requires all infants and small children to be injected with these mercury-containing Vaccines on a regular basis!
Worse they can not enter school and it's considered child abuse not to have them injected. They will take the kids away to a foster home and have them vaccinated against the parents will.

It is just mind boggling that there could even be a debate about forcibly injecting potentially harmful heavy metals to our kids.

http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2004/02/17/cdc_knew_mercury_in_vaccines_induces_autism.htm
http://www.cdc.gov/od/science/iso/concerns/thimerosal.htm

responsible for this.

More like directly responsible, if there wasn't Roundup Ready crops then Roundup wouldn't be used so much if at all and without it being as much native plants would have as much an opportunity to become resistant. Therefore no RR crops mean less resistance.

It's the same principle behind antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Hit bacteria with enough antibiotics and the survivors become immune. Nature has a way of filling ecological voids.

Actually it works the opposite, though over use of Broad Spectrum Antibiotics leads to drug resistance the opposite is true as well. Improper usage of antibiotics, which includes not using the full prescription, leads to antibiotic resistant. Which is one why I oppose the use of antibiotics in household cleaners. The other reason is that the immune system in children isn't given the chance to buildup biotic resistance in a sterile environment, "Questions about antibacterial cleaning agents, acne medication, and probioticss". But the fact is is if a drug treatment course isn't finished it can lead to antibiotic resistance. "Finish treatment only when microbes were wiped out."

Treatment of a smoker is even more expensive then the longer life of the average non-smoker, and there are plenty of sources to back it up. Google pulled up these articles:
http://www.cdc.gov/MMWR/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5114a2.htm
http://www.bera.com/smoking.htm

Diamondmagic, this isn't aimed at you personally, but I feel I have to say a few things here.

~rant on

This is what I hate about strident anti-smoking groups and individuals. You could say the same about a multitude of perfectly legal accepted behaviors.

What about over-eaters? Those that participate in risky sports? People who work really hard at their jobs? Explorers? Astronauts? Scuba divers? Mountain climbers? Consumers of alcohol? Those that choose to live in high-crime areas? What about those irresponsible people that go outside in cold weather without a hat and heavy enough coat? Those that don't have an exercise regimen? Meat eaters? Those that (in someone elses' opinion) spend too much time at a computer/surfing the net/playing games that some may consider harmful?

How about people who deliberately expose themselves to harmful ultraviolet radiation to get a tan? Driving or traveling by automobile is one of the riskiest common behaviors, and far surpasses the costs to society of tobacco, even considering the insurance required of drivers in most states.

I flatly refuse to believe all these 'secondary-smoke' alarmist advertisements, stories, and studies. They fly in the face of common sense, and I believe they are constructed as a reason to further regulate and legislate behaviors for the sake of politics power and money. They rarely work as "intended", witness Prohibition and the "War On Drugs", but usually succeed at expanding government power and reducing individual rights.

It is the nature of humans to engage in risky behaviors, even those that they know are harmful to themselves. The only way to stop it is to put everyone in a Matrix-type tube of goo for their entire lives.

Sure, by all means make sure people understand the risks, and try to place minimal, well-reasoned, and practical restrictions that are agreed to by the majority on the extremes, but drop the idea that you can or should try to regulate through law and taxes every behavior that someone thinks may be harmful, for it may be something that matters to *you* that may be the next crusade of the behavior-gestapo.

~rant off

Strat

Treatment of a smoker is even more expensive then the longer life of the average non-smoker, and there are plenty of sources to back it up. Google pulled up these articles:
http://www.cdc.gov/MMWR/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5114a2.htm
http://www.bera.com/smoking.htm

The CDC Epidemiology Program Office is one the best, if not the best, epidemiology programs in the world. And they work with sanitized (i.e. private) data and they don't need to know how many times a day you read Slashdot or what type of dirty messages your sending your s/o (although that might be related to your infection ;p). As others have pointed out above, giving data like this to Google is just *stupid*. The medical records I have in my possession are in a locked fire-safe and only come out when I change doctors or go to a new one.

Valve problems are one particular type of heart disease that is often congenital, however, they are also not nearly as common as heart attack and stroke, which are strongly linked to lifestyle. For example, this report from the American Heart Association shows that out of nearly 7 million heart procedures performed in 2004, only about 100,000 were valve operations - less than two percent.

The US Center for Disease Control states that "Much of the burden of heart disease and stroke could be eliminated by reducing their major risk factors: high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, tobacco use, diabetes, physical inactivity, and poor nutrition."

So although you and your family fall into a small percentage of heart patients where lifestyle is probably not a factor, this does not make the well-recognized fact that most heart disease is strongly linked to lifestyle, as recognized by the CDC, the AHA, the AMA and every other evidence-based medical organization which has looked at epidemiological studies done in the United States.

I'm sorry to hear about your family's bad valves, and I apologize if you took my statements, based on broad statistics, as a criticism of your family's eating habits. Although only surgery is likely to fix your valves, you still get to choose your lifestyle, and this could determine whether you simply have inherited bad valves, or bad valves plus clogged arteries, which are a much, much more common killer.

Just as clarification, lead certainly does shatter and leave dust

Critics fear that the poorest countries need food, malaria protection and clean water far more than computers.

'Cause there's no way that you could possibly use one of these things to learn about sustainable agriculture, malaria prevention, or safe drinking water, right?

Then check yourself into a mental hospital for depression.

"From 1990--1992 to 2002--2004, the rate of hospitalization for depression increased approximately 81% for females aged 5--19 years, to 27.8 per 100,000 population. The rate for young females was nearly twice that for young males during 2002--2004."
as per National Hospital Discharge Survey annual data files for 1990, 1991, 1992, 2002, 2003, and 2004 (found here)

Well, seems that people exist who have intuition.

CC.

The single biggest reason for there not being more plane hijackings is that the passengers won't let it happen any more. 9/11's success is the limiting factor; now that we know that we will not survive the hijacking, we have no incentive to go along. You cannot control 150 people with 10 if the 150 refuse to be controlled.

Using the "There hasn't been another attack, so it is working" argument really falls down when there hadn't been an attack like that before either. During the time there was NO security at all, there had never been a hijacked plane flown into a building so evidence suggests that no security is actually more effective.

Terrorism was the number one cause of death in the US for less than a week (closer to 3 days really). It was passed by Americans killing themselves by a month and a half (murder took about 2.5) and was out of the top 20 causes of death in about 3 months. If you are supporting spending huge money (both in direct cost and delays/inconvenience) to stop terrorism, how much are you wanting to spend to stop Nephritis or Septicemia, which each individually kill about 10 times as many (and I had never heard of before I started researching this)? (http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/leadcaus10.html)

The biggest single problem in the US today is there are indeed terrorists

No, it's not. Not even close. The threat perceived is way out of proportion to the actual threat.

About 16,000 people are murdered in the U.S. per year; that makes the number of people killed in the U.S. by terrorist attacks over the past decade on the order of one fiftieth the number of people murdered in conventional assaults.

The annual number of deaths from AIDS are roughly comparable to those from murder. AIDS is about 50 times the threat to your life as terrorists.

Both murder and AIDS are of course tiny compared to deaths from cancer or heart disease, which together have killed somewhere in the neighborhood of ten million people in the past ten years. Bacon double cheeseburgers and lack of exercise are far more deadly to Americans than Al Qaeda.

Over a million people died in accidents in the past decade; about 400,000 of those were killed in motor vehicle accidents.

Heck, about as many people drown every year as died in the 9/11 attacks. 3,372 fatal drownings in 2001, versus 2,974 killed in the 9/11 attacks. And yet nobody gets all bent out of shape about how we have to suspend habeus corpus to protect ourselves from the dangers of swimming pools and lakes.

Fear terrorists? Feh. If you want to save lives, put resources into health promotion and medical care, safer roads, and crime prevention.

That doesn't mean "do nothing about terrorists"; but it does mean "do sane things, not crazy-ass useless things".

So according to your way of thinking nobody should become a dentist, because they have high suicide rates, and nobody should be a native american, because they too have high suicide rates, and god forbid ANYONE be a teenage girl, or black ...

So, since girls suicide rates are soaring, are you going to advocate they all start taking testosterone and getting sex changes? I doubt it.

Are you going to claim that, because blacks have a high suicide rate, that they should pull a Michael Jackson?

People are what they are ... its when they don't accept it, or society (and people like you) don't accept it, that stupid things happen. You're part of the problem.

Well, a few, intermittently. Not what I would describe as 'a lot'. I guess we're firing a lot of bullets over there. But not near as many as we're firing over here, and we're killing not nearly as many of them as we are of us, and I'd hate to think we're at war with us.
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5002a1. htm

So wait a minute, doesn't every disease have the chance to mutate into something much worse not just avian flu? Are there not super bugs who are already resistant to antibiotics? What if one of them combined into a flesh eating zombie disease? Everyday millions of bad things could happen and we are not panicking over all of them.

The solution for avian flu is simple. Stop office workers from handling live poultry and you'll prevent the only known vector for contracting the disease.

As you say, not exactly. Depends on your definition of 'domestic spying', I suppose:

Deaths from WTC: 2,726 See http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm51SPa6. htm

US deaths in Iraq, to date: 3,774 See http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iraq_ca sualties.htm

Could better 'domestic spying' have prevented the WTC atrocities, well, maybe.

See http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,333 835,00.html

From that last article,
"Could al-Qaeda's plot have been foiled if the U.S. had taken the fight to the terrorists in January 2001? Perhaps not. The thrust of the winter plan was to attack al-Qaeda outside the U.S. Yet by the beginning of that year, Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi, two Arabs who had been leaders of a terrorist cell in Hamburg, Germany, were already living in Florida, honing their skills in flight schools. Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar had been doing the same in Southern California. The hijackers maintained tight security, generally avoided cell phones, rented apartments under false names and used cash-not wire transfers-wherever possible. If every plan to attack al-Qaeda had been executed, and every lead explored, Atta's team might still never have been caught.

But there's another possibility. An aggressive campaign to degrade the terrorist network worldwide-to shut down the conveyor belt of recruits coming out of the Afghan camps, to attack the financial and logistical support on which the hijackers depended-just might have rendered it incapable of carrying out the Sept. 11 attacks. Perhaps some of those who had to approve the operation might have been killed, or the money trail to Florida disrupted. We will never know, because we never tried."

I'm very concerned about my civil liberties, but I'm even more concerned that the the next time I take the 'plane, the bus, the subway - or I'm just sitting at my desk, or on holiday with my family - I might get wiped out by some terrorist.

Where you have a point is that intelligent, positive options to resolve the inhuman mess in the Middle East probably did not include invading Iraq.

As to the WMD aspect of this, were you aware that botulism is a WMD? For those of you who don't know, botulism is what happens when you can food incorrectly. This means that there are literally thousands of WMD producing country folk out there in America. We must strip them of the constitutional rights they have so unjustly gotten used to and subverted for their canning purposes. They're domestic terrorists!

(Not actually advocating this, just pointing out the absurdity. Who knows, maybe next week propane or canned air will be listed as the next WMD.)

it's a WMD:
http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/botulism/
but wait, you can get it in the normal course of life:
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dbmd/diseaseinfo/botulis m_g.htm
especially if you eat improperly canned food:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canning
http://www.canningpantry.com/botulism.html

"Within a few generations, I think it'll be possible for pretty much anyone who really wants to, to put together some form of WMD -- or at very least, a severe mass-casualty weapon. Without completely halting progress in any number of industries (which itself would be an affront to freedom), I don't think there's any way to stop this. Therefore, we will have no choice but to decide how best we can keep rogue groups or individuals from paralyzing society while minimizing the danger to individual liberty. If we just put our heads in the sand and refuse to act, eventually we'll be caught unprepared in the face of some truly large-scale incident, and that will be exactly the sort of political ammunition that some fascist needs to put the country on the road to its demise."

Here you infer that 1. corporations deserve to be treated as individuals. and 2. that in fact they deserve preferential treatment vis a vis freedom. E.g. you seem to believe that companies are more legitimate possessors of goods than individuals. This is fatally flawed for a number of reasons, most notably that companies are comprised of individuals (sometimes just one or two individuals) and companies are immune to our usual punishments for criminal offenses. Recently I read about a company that was charged with manslaughter. How exactly will the government place the company in prison? Or do we move to a purely financial punishment which 1. is passed onto the investors in that company 2. fails to punish the actual people within the company responsible for the crime and 3. sets a disturbing precedent as far as the punishment of individuals is concerned?

By the way, this whole "treating companies as individuals" comes from a 1870's robber-baron era supreme court case. I.e. it is bench legislation. Which is something "conservatives" claim to hate. Yet most "conservatives" are in favor of this bench legislation. There were companies at the time of the revolution. I'm sure if the founders or our legislators since felt it was a good idea, they were perfectly able to make this happen in the open.

"(The best treatment of this scenario -- although perhaps not a particularly uplifting one -- that I've read in fiction would be in Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End. Although the book has some outlandish elements, or at least ones that I don't think we'll see in the timeframe it calls for, his treatment of terrorism and cybercrime is a scenario that could quite easily come to pass.)"

How about the rest of Vinge's projections, like the decline and fall of the government as a distinguishable entity from corporations? Or the free-trade-mixed-with-anarchy that results in the "burbclave" and private security with military weapons?

Oh wait. It's already happening.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackwater_USA

Stop the erosion of our Constitution! Stop accepting the fear our leaders are mongering!

As to the WMD aspect of this, were you aware that botulism is a WMD? For those of you who don't know, botulism is what happens when you can food incorrectly. This means that there are literally thousands of WMD producing country folk out there in America. We must strip them of the constitutional rights they have so unjustly gotten used to and subverted for their canning purposes. They're domestic terrorists!

(Not actually advocating this, just pointing out the absurdity. Who knows, maybe next week propane or canned air will be listed as the next WMD.)

it's a WMD:
http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/botulism/
but wait, you can get it in the normal course of life:
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dbmd/diseaseinfo/botulis m_g.htm
especially if you eat improperly canned food:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canning
http://www.canningpantry.com/botulism.html

"Within a few generations, I think it'll be possible for pretty much anyone who really wants to, to put together some form of WMD -- or at very least, a severe mass-casualty weapon. Without completely halting progress in any number of industries (which itself would be an affront to freedom), I don't think there's any way to stop this. Therefore, we will have no choice but to decide how best we can keep rogue groups or individuals from paralyzing society while minimizing the danger to individual liberty. If we just put our heads in the sand and refuse to act, eventually we'll be caught unprepared in the face of some truly large-scale incident, and that will be exactly the sort of political ammunition that some fascist needs to put the country on the road to its demise."

Here you infer that 1. corporations deserve to be treated as individuals. and 2. that in fact they deserve preferential treatment vis a vis freedom. E.g. you seem to believe that companies are more legitimate possessors of goods than individuals. This is fatally flawed for a number of reasons, most notably that companies are comprised of individuals (sometimes just one or two individuals) and companies are immune to our usual punishments for criminal offenses. Recently I read about a company that was charged with manslaughter. How exactly will the government place the company in prison? Or do we move to a purely financial punishment which 1. is passed onto the investors in that company 2. fails to punish the actual people within the company responsible for the crime and 3. sets a disturbing precedent as far as the punishment of individuals is concerned?

By the way, this whole "treating companies as individuals" comes from a 1870's robber-baron era supreme court case. I.e. it is bench legislation. Which is something "conservatives" claim to hate. Yet most "conservatives" are in favor of this bench legislation. There were companies at the time of the revolution. I'm sure if the founders or our legislators since felt it was a good idea, they were perfectly able to make this happen in the open.

"(The best treatment of this scenario -- although perhaps not a particularly uplifting one -- that I've read in fiction would be in Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End. Although the book has some outlandish elements, or at least ones that I don't think we'll see in the timeframe it calls for, his treatment of terrorism and cybercrime is a scenario that could quite easily come to pass.)"

How about the rest of Vinge's projections, like the decline and fall of the government as a distinguishable entity from corporations? Or the free-trade-mixed-with-anarchy that results in the "burbclave" and private security with military weapons?

Oh wait. It's already happening.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackwater_USA

Stop the erosion of our Constitution! Stop accepting the fear our leaders are mongering!

Actually, there ARE studies showing that kids that grow up in super clean environments have weaker immune systems. The immune system does in fact get "stronger" with exposure to moderate amounts of bacteria and viruses.

Anti-bacterial soap sucks
Anti-bacterial soap sucks
Immune system
More immune and hand-washing

"(the negative effects of antibacterial everything in the household)"

Tricosan is bacteriostatic, but so is soap. One of the points of washing is to get rid of bacteria. Every time you do anything against bacteria, you encourage bacterial evolution to find a new pathway.

1. First, the Slashdot story only references a press release on Physorg.org, an organization that apparently exercises little oversight over the articles it runs.

2. Second, read this article by the same author, which says exactly the opposite of the present article: Antibacterial Cleaning Products and Drug Resistance.

   Quote: "... we did not observe a significant impact on antimicrobial drug resistance during the 1-year period..."

3. NO development of drug resistance or Triclosan resistance has been shown as a result of use of Triclosan, apparently, although people have been speculating about that for at least two decades. There are some chemical pathways that bacteria cannot abandon.

   The story is not new, but is apparently chosen only because it easily excites the popular imagination.

4. The sloppiness and over-valuation of the work suggests either: 1) The University of Michigan does not deserve our confidence, or possibly 2) Allison Aiello is allowed to be sloppy because she is attractive.

5. This quote from the U. of M. press release is pure, wild speculation, not supported by theory or experiment, apparently: "Because of the way triclosan kills the bacteria, mutations CAN happen at the targeted site. Aiello says a mutation COULD mean that the triclosan can no longer get to the target site to kill the bacteria because the bacteria and the pathway have changed form." [my emphasis]

6. Yes, Triclosan may not prevent bacterial or virus infection. But no one said it did. The purpose of Triclosan is to prevent or reduce skin fungal infections, and it does that very well, in my experience.

In the United States roughly three times as many people are killed in gun accidents per year than 9/11.

So why is there talk about trading liberty for security? Even though the security vs liberty argument is as flawed as the mythical man month, the point still remains - why do I need this extra security anyway? It's expensive, it costs me my rights and it's ineffective.

In the United States roughly three times as many people are killed in gun accidents per year than 9/11.

Um, no, there weren't. I'm not arguing with your overall point but you really need to get your numbers straight before you start spouting stuff.

There were only about ~700 accidental gun deaths in the U.S. in 2004. It was slightly higher in 2001, but still only 802. That's slightly more than a third of the number of people killed on 9/11.

(Sources: for accidental gun deaths go to the very slick CDC Fatal Injury Reports Calculator and put in "Unintentional," "Firearm," and the year of your choice. 9/11 casualties are from NyMag's "September 11th By the Numbers".)

There is nothing unsanitary about walking a few feet without shoes, especially on a dry, hard surface. You can't spread any diseases that way.

Viruses can survive on the dry, hard door knobs for 24 hours. If whoever walked through the gates 5 minutes before me had a viral foot illness of some sort (such as HFHF), the subsequent passengers can pick it up — even through the socks — a wonderful thing to bring with you to vacation or a business trip.

If you are so concerned, wear socks or something.

I do — and I throw them out after the fact, leading to rather undignifying looks from the TSA people.

As far as having the TSA employees barefoot: that's just an incredibly stupid idea. I don't think more needs to be said.

Of course, there needs to be. You can't just call something stupid (credibly or otherwise) without substantiating. What's wrong with the idea? If the place is good enough for us to walk, certainly it is fine for the TSA folks.

If all your friends eat greasy burgers and pizza and have beer and then plop down to watch the game, you are likely to do the same to fit in.

Like people have not been doing that for the last sixty years. You can't tell me that all of the sudden 75% of the country is doing this and that is responsible for the fat epidemic that's happened since the 1980's. Something's changed and it's not football.

The most likely culprit are changes to food allowed by the Nixon administration, which include allowing high fructose corn syrup. Compare these two graphs side by side:

• Obesity trend from CDC
• High Fructose Corn Syrup Consumption

How is the parent post Flamebait? The post was not insulting or bating in any way and expressed a valid point. According to the CDC, Drowning is the second leading cause of death for children ages 1-14, with Motor vehicle accidents as the first. Unintentional firearms do not make the top ten list till the 10-14 age group, and even then are only at 9, behind suffocation.

Further more, the parent post does make a good suggestion, having the NRA teach gun safety would be a great step to reducing accidental and purposeful firearms injuries and deaths. Too many kids nowadays see guns as either something to be feared or else "toys" for adults. They should be taught that guns are nothing to fear but that they are definitely not toys. They are a tools and like all tools, improper care when handling them can cause people to get hurt or even killed. Of course there are a few adults who could learn that lesson as well.

Negroes will surely welcome this progress, because after homosexuals, Negroes carry more AIDS than any other group.

Blacks are 30 times more likely to have Gonorrhea than whites and 11 times more likely to have it than Hispanics. A large majority of all Americans infected with Gonorrhea are black, despite making up only 13% of the population. Source: CDC

Black women are 7 times more likely to have Chlamydia than white women and 2 times more likely than Hispanic women. Source: CDC.

Blacks are 5.4 times more likely to have Syphilis. Source: CDC.

Blacks are 15.7 times more likely to have congenital Syphilis than whites. Source: Source CDC

Black women are 24 times more likely to have AIDS than white women. Source: OMH

Black men (including gays) are 8 times more likely to have AIDS than white men (including gays). Source: OMH This disparity approximately doubles when gays are excluded. Source: Kaiser Foundation.

Blacks in general are 10 times more likely to have AIDS than whites, and the disparity is growing each year. Among teenagers diagnosed with AIDS, 66% are black. A staggering 67% of new AIDS cases among women are among black women. A study found that 2.2% of all blacks in the US were HIV positive between 1997-2002. AIDS is the 3rd leading cause of death for young African Americans. Source: Kaiser Foundation.

In 2002, AIDS became the #1 leading cause of death for young black in the US. Femicide is another leading cause of death among young black women. Source: Kaiser Foundation.